CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN'***

X-MEN actor James McAvoy turns director in this charming, fast-paced, you-cannot-believe-it's-true story of two young Scottish lads who adopt Eminem-adjacent American personas to fool the prejudiced London music industry into giving them a recording contract.  Unable to attract interest as "the rapping Proclaimers", Billy and Gavin get a recording contract as their California avatars Silibil and Brains, and predictably proceed to exploit their new-found access to booze and girls.  They want to reveal their true identities on a famous MTV show live on air, and show up the music industry as bigots, because will they have the courage to go through with it? And if they don't, what will lying to their colleagues, friends, family and even to themselves to do their psyches?

The arc of this film is pretty unexciting and predictable. Decent kids get fame, go crazy, fall out with each other, turn their backs on all that is wholesome and true, before a last-act redemption.  What makes the film worth watching are the kinetic, grab-you-by-the-balls direction;  the compelling central performances from Samuel Bottomley and Sean Maclean Ross, who have to rap as well as act; and the sheer insanity of the story.  After I watched this film, I went on to watch the documentary, "The Great Hip Hop Hoax", and to read the real-life Gavin's autobiography. If anything, this feature film re-telling underplays just how good the boys were musically, just how far they got in the music industry, and just what utter nightmares they were when they started exploiting alcohol and women. 

A special shout out to actress Lucy Halliday (currently starring in The Testaments), who forms the calm moral centre of the film.  There's something really transfixing about her stoicism and quiet, understated performance.  Where another actress or another director might have asked her for histrionics, Halliday just radiates good sense, disenchantment and a quiet fierce strength as Billy's girlfriend Mary.

CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN' has a running time of 107 minutes. It played Toronto 2025 and is currently on release in the UK.

DRAGONFLY****

Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams (LONDON TO BRIGHTON) has created a really haunting and stunningly well-acted film in DRAGONFLY. It's basically a two-hander between Brenda Blethyn as Elsie and her next-door neighbour Colleen, played by Andrea Riseborough.  As the film opens, Elsie has had a fall so her well-meaning but distant son arranges for her to have a carer come to the house. The carers are heavy-handed and cut corners and don't actually listen to what Elsie wants and needs. This is where Colleen steps in.  She is a traumatised and introverted woman hiding away from life with her gigantic dog - menacing to all others but clearly providing some kind of emotional safety support to its owner.  

The brilliance of Williams' script and Riseborough's performance is that we can never quite figure Colleen out. Is she using Elsie financially, or even emotionally? They seem to form some kind of genuine odd-couple friendship, bound together by mutual loneliness in a world that wants to park the damaged and the elderly out of sight and out of mind. This is the attitude summed up in Elsie's son, played in a brilliant cameo by Jason Watkins. He seems to be suspicious of, and resent, Colleen's help but unable to step up and provide that care himself. Something that Colleen is not afraid to point out, with devastating conseqences.

I really loved this film. It's spare and taut and keeps us in an increasing state of suspense and anxiety. The ending is brave and will sit with me for quite some time.  Kudos to all involved. 

DRAGONFLY has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated 15. It played Tribeca 2025 and opened in the UK last November.

THE SUBSTANCE*****

French writer-director Coralie Fargeat's THE SUBSTANCE is a body horror film that also works as social satire.  It is visually and aurally stunning and features a career-defining and award-worthy performance from Demi Moore that veers between MOMMIE DEAREST and heartbreak. It works all the better for Gen X viewers like myself because we have watched Demi's body-choices litigated over decades. Her buzz cut and ripped muscles for GI Jane.  Her Vanity Fair cover proudly showing her nude with a baby bump.  Her recent extreme plastic surgery. And there's an irony that she looks so good at 60 that she can play 50, but even good at 50 isn't good enough for Hollywood, or real life.

Moore's Elisabeth Sparkle is a preternaturally well-preserved middle-aged actress who now hosts a Jane Fonda-style aerobics show.  She is summarily sacked by her shark-like boss on her fiftieth birthday and turns to a black-market drug to remain attractive. The problem is that the brat-green injection doesn't restore your own body to youth but creates a younger, perkier avatar.  The avatar - "Sue", played by Margot Qualley - gets all the fame and adoration.  You, Elisabeth, become like the portrait of Dorian Grey, something abandoned, lonely, old, old, old.  And that's before you misuse the drug, stay longer as Sue, and reap the cost as Elisabeth.

There's a lot of stylish fun to be had in this film. It reminded me of Cronenberg and Vachon with its disciplined graphic design and willingness to push body horror to absurdity. Whoever did the sound design deserves an award. We hear and feel the grotesquery of every crunch of a prawn and every needle puncture. Dennis Quaid is game as the disgusting venal TV producer.  Moore and Qualley are courageous with their nudity and objectification. I laughed out loud a lot all the way through the film as well as having to look away and particularly gruesome scenes.

But there's so much more going on here.  Demi Moore is heartbreaking as Sparkle - a woman who by all standards is stunningly beautiful and youthful but is tormented by the giant billboard of Sue facing her apartment. There's a pivotal scene around half way through the film when Elisabeth tries to go out on a date and looks stunning to our eyes, but she is crippled by her internalised misogyny and ageism. It's tragic and credible and stunningly performed. She deserves an Oscar nomination for this career-best performance.

THE SUBSTANCE is rated R and has a running time of 140 minutes. It won Best Screenplay at Cannes 2024. It will be released in the USA and UK on September 20th.