PAPER TIGER***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 5

Writer-director James Gray’s PAPER TIGER is a handsomely-made, well-considered and strangely old-fashioned character drama set in early 80s New York. TOP GUN: MAVERICK’s Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson star as husband and wife Irwin and Hester, raising two teenage boys in a family home in Queens. They both work and are doing well enough but are acutely aware that they’re about to have to pay college tuition. 

At the start of the film, Irwin’s charismatic larger-than-life brother Gary (Adam Driver) arrives armed with a van of Peter Luger steaks and wearing a flashy suit and watch. He’s clearly done well with his security business since leaving the police, but he envies Irwin’s loving home life. His big idea is that they should go into business together advising the new Russian migrants taking over the docks on environmental matters. Of course, the new Russians turn out to be incredibly dangerous and Irwin’s family is at risk. But this raises the question of who really is family. Should Irwin care about Gary as much as he cares about Hester and the kids? And what will Hester do knowing her kids are at risk? 

What I love about this film is how I never really knew which way Gary would go right up until the final scene. I believed in the family dynamics completely. And all three leads give characteristically strong, layered performances. The film works as a play about institutionalised corruption and what happens to the small guy caught in its vice. It’s never obvious and always allows its plot moves to feel organic.  

But what elevates PAPER TIGER beyond another worthy drama is the visual and audio style of James Gray. Every scene, every frame, every audio cue is intentional and considered. It’s carefully constructed and you feel the emotional and psychological insight and weight that comes with that. The result is a grown-up film for grown-ups. One that rewards patient and careful viewing. 

PAPER TIGER is rated R and has a running time of 1hr 55m. It opens in the UK on November 13th.

MICHAEL***

Like many, I was reluctant to watch a Michael Jackson biopic sanctioned by his family. I was a huge MJ fan as a kid - his Bad tour was my first live concert - and I was crestfallen when the abuse scandal broke. Like many, my relationship with his art has become tainted.  And yet I know from my childhood obsession that he was a victim of physical and verbal abuse, with extreme body dysmorphia, and an exposure to sexuality way beyond what was appropriate at an early age. I don't think any of us truly have a hand on what his sexuality was - maybe he didn't either. And for me the jury is still out on his crimes.  

So we come to the film - which I watched VOD rather than in the cinema. It's a handsomely made straightforward emancipation story featuring some breathtakingly good performances from Juliano Valdi as young Michael, and Jackson's own nephew Jaafar as the older MJ.  They are both absolutely stunning as Michael and one can only imagine the innate talent and artistry and rehearsal time to pull of his singing style and dance moves. Jaafar in particular is absolutely joyous and breath-taking to watch.  The movie is worth it for the iconic concert recreations alone - whether the first Billie Jean moonwalk, or the final recreation of Bad live.  Kudos to director Antoine Fuqua (THE EQUALISER) and cinematographer Dion Beebe (CHICAGO) for getting us as close to that feeling of seeing MJ live as we could hope for.

The problem was always going to be what was unsaid and unexplored.  How did MJ's mum really feel seeing the family abuse?  Nia Long is warmly supportive as MJ's mother in this version, but wasn't she collusive, and what impact did her strict religion have on MJ's sexuality.  That sexuality is of course not explored at all. We fast forward through puberty. We never see any interiority from Michael about that. Only his need to escape his father.  His sisters get short shrift and his brothers barely feature.  How did they feel when he moved away from them? This movie does not care.  Yes there is the rising eccentricity and the menagerie of animals. A passing mention of vitiligo.  The awful Pepsi commercial fire.  But no interrogation of Michael's deeply messed up mental health. It's such a damn shame. But given the family estate constraints, I guess this is a good as writer John Logan (GLADIATOR) could have done.  Moreover, even without the constraints, going inside of Michael's head would involve making judgment calls, which would be highly contentious. This movie is for the fans, and most fans (unlike me) have long-since acquitted Michael of any wrongdoing.

MICHAEL is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 127 minutes. It was released in cinemas in April and is now available on demand.

BLEED FOR THIS - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 5

BLEED FOR THIS is a deeply mediocre entry into the underdog boxing genre - a film that feels like it wants to THE FIGHTER when it grows up.  It's a movie filled with caricatures rather than characters, hammy performances, and adds nothing to the august cinematic tradition of shooting boxing matches.  

The film tells the story of real-life 1980s boxing champion Vinny Pazienza, who suffered an horrific car crash and was told he'd never walk again. He eschewed neck fusion for a risky "halo" metal brace drilled into his head.  And while the slightest knock to that brace might have rendered him paraplegic, Vinny disregarded medical advice to train in his basement, brace and all.  He went on to win a title bout in his hometown, coming from behind, surviving ten rounds.  

The problem is that no-one in this retelling feels like a fully fleshed out authentic character.  Vinny's mother is simply a prayerful nervous Catholic - his sister is simply a nagging wife - his brother-in-law is just a dumbfuck - his dad is a cigar-chomping vulgarian - all the family scenes feature a loud Italian family eating lasagne and talking over each other.  This is the stuff of deep deep cliche.  The women Vinny dates get short-changed too - they're just interchangeable totty. The director is only interested in them insofar as he can relive some kind of sub-Scorsese vision of Vinny showering them with casino chips.  The lead characters don't fair any better.  Vinny's coach is a washed-up alcoholic whose only motive and purpose is to be Vinny's coach. There's no journey here - no emotional growth or nuance - compare and contrast to Clint Eastwood's character in MILLION DOLLAR BABY.  And what about Vinny himself?  He evidently has a tolerance for physical pain and a single-minded determination to win. But why?  Where did it come from? How does he sustain it through the crash? We never get any glimpse into his emotional life or thought process. And the risible attempt to wrap up his journey with a nice bow in the final interview of the film just makes no sense at all.

FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)

One gets the feeling that FOX have never really known who to handle the Fantastic Four IP, and with any luck the poor performance of this film will prevent a sequel and allow the rights to revert back to Marvel. We've had the broadly inoffensive but unmemorable 2005 and 2007 outings starring Ioan Gruffud, a pre-Cap Chris Evans and Jessica Alba.  And now we get a reboot of actively poor quality starring a much younger cast.   This causes as many problems as it solves - sure, the movie might appeal to a younger demographic but as a result the Four meet in a kind of super-nerd school that gives the movie a feeling of ripping of the X-MEN reboot.  Worst of all, the writer-director Josh Trank massively fell out with the studio and disowned the final 90 minute cut, and the resulting film feels incoherent in its editing.

Anyways, back to basics. The movie kicks of with twenty minutes of tedious pre-amble in which a geeky young Reed Richards befriends Ben Grimm and the two work on building a teleportation machine only to be mocked by teachers and students alike. Fast forward to their late teens and Reed (Miles Teller0 and Grimm (Jamie Bell) are recruited by Franklyn Storm (Reg E Caffey) to join his well-funded research org.  They hook up with Johnny and Sue Storm (Michael B Jordan and Kate Mara) as well as the rebellious Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) and create the transportation device.  Pissed off that pro scientists will get to pilot it, they decide to take the ship out to Planet Zero, shit hits the fan, they get their superpowers and Doom becomes a destructive comic book villain.  Thereafter we get a kind of Hulk goes to Latin America to find his soul interlude and the inevitable showdown.  

The actors are all decent, so why does this movie suck? A hammy derivative script, hamstrung by bad editing and shitty special FX. Move along, there's nothing to see here. 

FANTASTIC FOUR is on general release. It has a running time of 100 minutes and is available to rent and own.

INSURGENT

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below:

INSURGENT is the second instalment of the Divergent series based on the popular young adult novels by Veronica Roth.  I didn't review the first film even though I did see it on DVD. The movie just struck me as so derivative and banal and mechanical that I just couldn't be bothered. There wasn't anything bad about it per se - it was slick and well-acted for the most part - but there wasn't anything to get me excited either.  Sadly, that characterisation applies to the sequel too. It's well-made, well-acted for the most part, and full of great CGI action set-pieces.  But it's so mechanical, so derivative and so predictable that I found myself watching it in a rather mechanical way - utterly detached from the emotional journey.

WHIPLASH - LFF14 - Day Eight

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.



Writer-director Damien Chazelle's second feature, WHIPLASH, is a tour-de-force that's getting all the buzz at this year's London Film Festival and should, if there's any justice, clean up at Awards season.  The lead performances from JK Simmons and Miles Teller (THE SPECTACULAR NOW) are astounding in their commitment and intensity - the photography and editing push forward the boundaries of how we capture the energy and intensity of live performance - and the score is just sensational.  This movie works on so many levels - in front of and behind the lens - that I left the screening wanting to watch it again and really get under its skin beyond the initial reaction of just Wow.

The movie is basically a two-hander between Teller and Simmons as music student Andrew and teacher Fletcher.  Teller is at an elite music school and wants to be a legendary jazz drummer to the exclusion of all else. Simmons is the man to impress - his band the one to get into - but he runs that band as a dictator and cruelly abusive bully.  The first hour of the movie sees Andrew punished mentally and physically, drowning his bleeding hands in ice water to practice to the level that'll impress the impossible to impress game-player Fletcher.  This culminates in a set-piece so thrilling it could be in a David Fincher where each of them pushes each other to breaking point. In the final stretch we see the ultimate bait and switch that results in an on-stage concert that plays like a shoot em out between two obsessive characters.  What's spectacular about this is that so much is communicated between the two of them merely by virtue of who's giving the other cues and recognition via the eyes and hand movements.

The resulting movie is high octane, engrossing and memorable.  JK Simmons' Fletcher has to be the most charismatic and quotable bully since The Thick Of It's Malcolm Tucker. And you have to admire Miles Teller's work in being able to play the virtuoso jazz pieces. One final point to make is that I watched this film with a friend who hates jazz but loved this film. You don't need to like jazz or indeed music to find this move compelling but if you do it'll add another layer of enjoyment to the experience.

Teller and Simmons at the press conf yesterday.

WHIPLASH has a running time of 106 minutes.  The movie played Cannes, Sundance, where it won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize, and London 2014.  It went on release in the USA last week and opens this week in Hong Kong. It opens in Australia and New Zealand on October 23rd, in Thailand on October 30th, in the Netherlands on November 13th, in Sweden on November 28th, in Norway and Romania on December 5th, in France on December 24th, in the UK on January 16th, in Poland on January 23rd, in the Czech Republic on January 29th, in Portugal on February 5th and in Germany and Denmark on February 19th.

THE SPECTACULAR NOW - LFF 2013 - Day Three

Director James Ponsoldt's THE SPECTACULAR NOW starts with such verve and pace and authentic humour that it feels almost like a great John Hughes teen comedy.  In fact, the lead actor, Miles Teller (RABBIT HOLE), seems to be channelling a young John Cusack with his portrayal of charming, fun-loving but troubled teen Sutter  - a kid who thinks he's the life of the party but is really just a nascent alcoholic who's letting his issues with his absent father cloud his relationship with his well-meaning but distant mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and his sweet new girlfriend Aimee (Shaileene Woodley - THE DESCENDANTS). The first half of the film stays firmly in that John Hughes vein, despite the growing unease about the amount of drinking Sutter does, and how in dating Sutter, Aimee starts sipping from a hipflask too. But we're still just in the mode of looking at a meet-cute, an odd-couple dating story, with wryly observed tales of still being drawn to your ex-girlfriend, and Prom. 

But then something happens about half-way through the film that totally undoes its balance.  The lovely Aimee persuades Sutter to find his father, and casting Kyle Chandler against type, we can a lovable selfish drunk, who makes Sutter so self-loathing that he puts Aimee and himself in danger.  I won't say more for fear of spoiling the film, but it really bothered me that there were no consequences - whether emotional or external - to these events.  Worse than that, it broke that feeling of integrity and authenticity to the movie, and I was progressively less and less engaged with how it all worked out. I'm not sure whether that sharp right turn into nonsense is the fault of the original author, Tim Tharp, or the screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber (500 DAYS OF SUMMER). Either way, it's a real shame because it undercuts the great work done in the movie's first half. 

THE SPECTACULAR NOW has a running time of X and is rated R

THE SPECTACULAR NOW played Sundance, where it received the Special Jury Prize for Acting, SXSW and London 2013. It opened in the USA and Canada earlier this year and will be released in Australia on December 5th.