NOUVELLE VAGUE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 11

NOUVELLE VAGUE is a film made by a film lover for film lovers about a film lover who made an iconic film that all film lovers love. So if you love film you will love this film.

Okay, so let’s be a little more descriptive here. Richard Linklater - whose superb BLUE MOON is also playing in this year's fest - has made a film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic French New Wave film BREATHLESS, starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.  Filmed in black-and-white and in French, the film uses the rich historic record to recreate the chaotic, crazy but somehow genius creation of the cinema classic. The first forty minutes takes us through pre-production. All of Godard’s fellow critics at Cahiers du Cinema have made the leap to directing their own films, to great acclaim.  Godard is confident in his mission to make free, spontaneous cinema, but now’s the time to screw his courage to the sticking place and get on with it.  

The problems begin on the first day of filming when the cast and crew realise there is no script and that Godard does not care about such foundational concepts as continuity.  Jean Seberg, used to slick Hollywood productions, finds the whole thing ridiculous. Jean-Paul Belmondo, excited to be in his first film, is happier to go with the flow.  The producer, “Beau Beau” is pulling his hair out. And the two female editors complain that Godard won’t lose a single scene, but wants to micro-edit every scene in a manner that will seem choppy.

But somehow, somehow, as the inner team and Godard’s closest Cahier friends watch the Final Cut, they know it’s something special, even as they take the piss out of it.  And we cut to the closing credits, and the news that the film became iconic, and that this period of French cinema was ludicrously fecund - with over 130 directors making their first features in a three-year period.

There is nothing not to love about this scrupulous recreation of a moment of cinema history. Linklater’s film oozes love for the source material.  He uses the real locations and even the technical equipment that Godard actually used!  There’s also a lot of care taken to find good actors who look like the people they are playing - not just in the main roles but a massive cast of all the Cahier and Left Bank gang. Each gets a straight to camera shot, almost like a photograph, with a subtitle showing their name.  And this is a film that assumes you will know why they are important to cinema.  NOUVELLE VAGUE is kinetic, funny, voyeuristic and makes you fall in love with the act of film-making.  I love that Linklater will bring a whole new generation to the New Wave, especially as Netflix has bought the rights.

NOUVELLE VAGUE has a running time of 106 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride, Busan, Toronto and London. It goes on limited release in the USA on October 31st and on the internet on November 14th.

BLUE MOON***** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Ethan Hawke (TRAINING DAY) gives his career-best performance as the charismatic but despairing lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater's latest film, BLUE MOON.  

The entirety of the film takes place in the iconic Broadway restaurant Sardi's lending the film the air of a filmed play, but no worse for that.  This is because Hart's kinetic wit and a clever use of different sections of the restaurant keep us enlivened and riveted.

The entire movie also takes place on a single evening in the early 1940s.  Hart's old composing partner Richard Rodgers is debuting his latest musical with his new lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II. Just this little thing you may have heard of called Oklahoma!  Hart is in despair because he recognises that the musical will be a smash hit - bigger than anything that he wrote with Rodgers - and also that it's not very good.  He is also in despair because both of his loves are unattainable.  

The first of these loves is the beautiful 20-year old college girl Elizabeth Weiland (Margot Qualley - THE SUBSTANCE).  Elizabeth uses Hart for his connections and basks in his flattery but has no real interest in him.  The idea that they could ever be a real couple is a delusion that Hart knows is a delusion but indulges all the same.  Their scenes snap and fizzle in the same way that gossip between young female best friends snaps and fizzles.  Hart feels more like a gay best friend than a putative lover. The inevitable blow is well telegraphed and (literally) pathetic.

The second, and more significant unattainable love is that of Hart's friend and long-time collaborator Richard Rodgers. Their scenes are far more delicate and heart-breaking  than those between Hart and Elizabeth because the love has lasted longer and the break-up was more devastating.  Andrew Scott's Rodgers is a man with incredible respect for Hart as a lyricist, and his evident love for the man is signalled in every look and line. But Rodgers is also a man who has lived with the pain of being let down and let down again by an alcoholic and who cannot bear to see Hart himself more.  It's a performance of rare subtlety. In the wrong hands their scenes could have been soapy and melodramatic.  But the genuine love and hurt and need for self-protection are telegraphed with a delicacy and tenderness that moved me greatly.

I cannot speak highly enough of a film that will has the confidence to sit comfortably within its single location, that allows Rodgers to be the quiet straight man to Hart's brilliant and performative showboat, and that trusts its audience with its Easter Eggs - the inspiration for E.B. White's Stuart Little, or a cameo from Little Stevie (Sondheim).

Kudos to all in front of the camera but most of all to Robert Kaplow (ME & ORSON WELLES) for a script of rare insight and humanity.

BLUE MOON has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated R. It had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

HIT MAN***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 3

Richard Linklater's HIT MAN is a super-sexy, laugh-out-loud comedy that had its London Film Festival audience burst into spontaneous applause mid-way through.  This is a film so smart, so brilliantly written and acted, so full of uproarious mischievous joy, that everyone involved deserves accolades and awards.  

Linklater and co-writer/lead actor Glen Powell (TOP GUN: MAVERICK) based their script on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth: a formula that worked well for Linklater in his 2011 comedy BERNIE.  The film tells the amplified and fictionalised story of a real guy called Gary Johnson who pretended to be a hit man to entrap criminals for the local police. 

In this version of Johnson's story, we see Powell's Gary transform from contented but dull psychology professor to cool sexy hit man and discover that he is happier and more confident in his alter-ego of Ron.  Problem is, Gary invokes the jealousy of bent cop Jasper (Austin Amelio - The Walking Dead) and this causes even more complications when Jasper figures out that "Ron" has started dating one of his suspects, the glamorous Madison (Adria Arjona) who may or may not be organising a hit on her douchebag husband.

The resulting film is absolutely hilarious, as Powell transforms Gary into a variety of Rons, tailor-made to the fantasy each of his potential clients have of what a hit man would look like. He can be a Russian thug, a Maga Proud Boy, Patrick Bateman or a mop top Scouser. At a more profound level, we are seeing a man with a perfectly respectable life try on other lives for a day.  The question this movie asks is whether one can use that experience to truly change. How stable is the self, and why shouldn't we all have the chance to change?

Powell deserves all the credit for his outrageously good lead performance, but I have to say I was blown away by Adria Arjona as his love interest and Austin Amelio as Jasper. This is just an incredibly strong cast, having a blast, taking the audience with them. I loved every second, and wouldn't change a thing. Netflix have  acquired the rights but if you can, and they let you, do try and see it at the cinema. This is a film that deserves an audience reaction.

HIT MAN has a running time of 113 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2023.

LAST FLAG FLYING

LAST FLAG FLYING is the latest film by indie director Richard Linklater, famous for his BEFORE SUNRISE trilogy, and more recently, BOYHOOD.  It's based on a novel by Daniel Ponicsan.  The arthouse movie fans among you might remember that Ponicsan wrote an earlier novel set in Vietnam, which became the Hal Ashby movie THE LAST DETAIL. This film is then based on the sequel to that novel but chooses not to use those actors or character names.

Essentially it's a story about three old friends and Vietnam veterans who have fallen out of touch reconnecting when one of their sons is killed in Iraq.   The father, Doc, is played by Steve Carell, a performance of quiet grief that slowly amplifies into real anger.  He is supported by cynical bartender Sal (Bryan Cranston) and former tearaway turned reverend Richard (Laurence Fishburne).  What comedy their is stems from the battle of wits and values between Sal and Richard, and jokes about getting old, but really this is a melancholy and world-weary movie. It's a film shot in dull and muted colours, and staged in dingy wintery railway stations. run down motel rooms and unfashionable bars. It's about three men who are patriotic and served their country, but who no longer understand why Vietnam or Iraq were prosecuted.  This provides what little plot their is - Doc refuses to have his son buried as a war hero and so they need to find a way to take him back to New Hampshire to be buried as a son - a civilian. 

I really wanted to like this movie but found it a rather tedious watch - it takes a long time to get going.  I also found it confusingly jarring in tone.  One minute we're in a very moving scene in which a grieving father sees his son. The next minute the three friends are joking about visiting a whorehouse in Vietnam. The movie just never came together for me - the characters didn't seem real but personality types sent in to clash against each other - and I didn't really think I had been provoked to feel or think anything different about war by the end of it.  I also had issues with some of the easy emotional resolutions at the end which felt convenient, compromised and unearned. Ultimately, this was a forgettable experience. 

LAST FLAG FLYING has a running time of 125 minutes and is rated R in the USA and  15 in the UK for strong language and sex references. The film played New York and London 2017.  It opened in the USA, Canada and Portugal last year. it opened in France last week and opens in the UK and Ireland, Singapore and Mexico, this Friday. It opens in Argentina on February 8th, in Spain on February 16th and in Greece on March 15th.

BOYHOOD

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here, or by subscribing to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes:

In 2002, Richard Linklater (BEFORE SUNRISE) cast a six year old boy called Ellar Coltrane to play a kid called Mason, who lives with his sister Sam (Lorelai Linklater) and his single-mom (Patricia Arquette). He filmed the kids hanging out with their charismatic but clearly immature father (Ethan Hawke), cycling round their neighbourhood and acting out when their mom wants to move back home and go back to college.  Six years later and Linklater took up the project again.  The kids are dealing with life with a new stepfather, stepbrother and stepsister. Their mum has gone to college and gotten her career back on track, but the marriage is bad and their father is still a distant presence.  The difficulty of dealing with authority and life's sudden changes plays itself out.  The kids have an attitude because they can't see the full picture.  Fast forward another six years, and Sam has gone to college, and young Mason is on the verge of leaving. He's grown up now, but still growing - dating, excited and scared at the new life he's about to embark upon, sensitive and wise but still vulnerable and changeable.   Meanwhile, his dad has remarried and grown up and his mum has realised she's an empty nester.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 12 - BERNIE

“It’s not as bad as people say; he only shot her four times, not five.”

Bernie Tiede was a good, god-fearing man, who went out of his way to please.  His patient, caring manner was an asset as a funeral director, and his willingness to throw himself into small-town life made him beloved by his fellow residents of Carthage, Texas.  So much so, that when it was revealed that Bernie had shot Marjorie Nugent four times in the back, none of the townsfolk believed him guilty. Oh, they knew he shot her dead, for sure.  But they figured that someone as mean-spirited as Marjorie must have incited Bernie to take leave of his senses for a moment.  Tragically for Bernie, prosecuting attorney Danny Buck knew full well that despite a full confession, four bullets in the back, and Bernie’s ample use of Marjorie’s money, he wasn’t going to get a conviction in Carthage. So he got the trial moved a mere 44 miles away to Saint Augustine, where Bernie's charismatic personality wouldn't get in the way of a fair verdict.

The wonderful thing about Richard Linklater’s new fictionalized retelling of Bernie’s true story is that he allows us to fall in love with Carthage, its quirky inhabitants, and with Bernie himself. By the end of the movie, we can’t quite believe that any humane jury would convict Bernie, and sit in fear that those no-good inbred St Augustinians won’t do him right.   Because this movie isn’t so much a character-driven crime drama as a Coen Brothers style love-letter to small-town Southern life.   We luxuriate in the broad accents, marvel at the cast-iron certainty of the town gossips as they declare that Bernie FOR A FACT was or wasn’t this or that, and laugh at their incomprehension of Austin hippies.  It’s hard to think of any recent use of faux-documentary talking heads that is as successful and hilarious as Linklater's use of  the Carthage townsfolk – narrating, commenting on, and judging the story at each twist and turn. 

Because I warmed so much to these people, and started to identify so strongly with them, the movie turned from what could’ve been a real downer into effectively a rather heart-warming experience. On one level this was a movie about really nasty aspects of human nature – a man so wanting to be liked that he wills himself into an emotional prison, and a woman delighting in his pain.  But rather than being brought down by the depiction of a bizarrely, horribly, sado-masochistic relationship (emotionally, not sexually, that is!), I left the cinema positively full of faith in humanity. Because Carthage was a small town where ordinary townsfolk knew just what was what, and a good guy was a good guy, even if blighted by a sudden act of rage.

All of which tells you that native East Texan, Richard Linklater, is pretty much in love with Carthage, and doesn’t really make much attempt to give a balanced view of Bernie. Or maybe he does, but the truth really is that Bernie was a good guy, despite the slightly suspect love of the high life to which Marjorie's money gave him access. By now, I’m so complicit in the “free Bernie” campaign I can’t even tell. All I know is that Linklater somehow managed to capture both the black humour and the tragedy at the core of Bernie’s need to please.  I laughed a lot, I was fascinated, and I won’t soon forget the tale. Massive praise also to all three leads.  Jack Black gives a more modulated performance than is typical in his mainstream films, as the gregarious, needy Bernie. Shirley Maclaine as mean old Marjorie is just an acting masterclass. Look at the scene where she listens to Bernie sing a duet in a theatrical rehearsal, imagining him singing a love song to her. Her face shows a cynical old woman melting.  And finally, you have to hand it to Matthew McConaughey, an actor who is brilliant in inverse proportion to his screentime.  Banality in mediocre rom-coms turns into piquant cameos – first in TROPIC THUNDER, and now as the fame-hungry prosecutor Danny Buckland. 

BERNIE played Los Angeles and London 2011.

ME AND ORSON WELLES - thin

British thespian Christian McKay is charismatic, enigmatic and pitch perfect in his portrayal of legendary theatre and film director, Orson Welles. He is all thick, creamy charm and wonderfully, audaciously, self-confident. You want to be in his presence, to be caught up in the excitement of pulling off a daring production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar against all the odds. McKay's Welles convinces us that art matters, and that excellence is possible, and that if the artist wants to charm a little radio secretary or two in the meantime, well, who is he to be pinned down by conventional bourgeois morality? All hail, the brilliant wunderkind Orson Welles, and woe betide you if you dare to question his ducal rights.

The tragedy of ME AND ORSON WELLES is that Richard Linklater has not fashioned a framing device interesting enough to hold our attention when Welles is off screen. Indeed, Welles must be turning in his grave to see his grand personality reduced to romantic-comedy fodder. For, in this ill-advised film, we are asked to see Welles through the eyes of a naive, romantic schoolboy (Zac Efron with his first decent haircut), who gets a bit-part in Welles' production. For much of the movie's runtime, the schoolkid follows Welles around, filching his best pick-up lines and moving in on his PA (Claire Danes) only to get ideas above himself and mess it all up. We are supposed to care about this young kid losing his illusions about what it takes to get ahead, and worse still, to care about his romance with a drippy wannabe writer (Zoe Kazan) with eyes so wide she could be a Disney heroine.

All of this is so much nonsense. What we really care about is Welles and his genius and his relationship with long-time collaborators - his producer John Houseman (Eddie Marsan) and his best friend, Joe Cotton. The movie sags when Welles is off-screen. Frankly, I would've put up with just seeing him schmooze chicks, but what would've been superb would've been a portrayal of how he worked. Sadly, other than one seen where he discusses The Magnificent Ambersons, we get precious little of that.

The resulting film is too frail a frame upon which to hang a biopic of such a great man. It is likely to disappoint all potential audiences. The HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL crowd will no doubt be annoyed to see their pet outshone by an older, less handsome man, and the cineastes will be teased but not satiated by McKay's performance. Little scene gems - a big band led by Jools Holland with Eddi Reader as the singer - are wasted on such a thin film.

ME AND ORSON WELLES played Toronto 2008 but has only just been released in the USA and the UK. Never a good sign.

FAST FOOD NATION - the agit-doc is dead! Long live the non-fiction fiction film!

I am getting a little bit tired of earnest liberal agit-docs that usually have little visually to do with cinema, could equally well be shown on TV, and tend to preach to the converted. Michael Moore may have increased the sale-ability of documentary cinematic releases and part of me is happy about that but the other part bemoans the seemingly homogenous product now flooding arts cinemas across the land. I've written too many reviews starting: "this week's self-explanatory documentary..." or "the point being...?" That's not to say that I don't agree with everything these docs are trying to say. I do. I just wonder how effective they are. Clearly no nasty evil polluter is going to slap down ten squid at his local cineplex to say a movie called "Nasty evil capital bastards are raping the rainforest!"?

So it was with real interest that I watched Richard Linklator's new movie, FAST FOOD NATION. And appropriate since I just watched INFAMOUS - a movie about how Truman Capote invented a new form of novel - non-fiction fiction. Capote's idea was to "bring alive" the facts of the case by applying fiction techniques such as emotional insight and inter-cutting narrative structures. Richard Linklater is pretty much following the same logic here. He takes a popular non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser that tackles the murky, hidden world of the industrial food industry in the USA. Linklater opts not to make another earnest documentary out of this material. Instead he gives us a feature length movie.

So, FAST FOOD NATION is not a documentary. It's also not a comedy or satire, although it contains the odd funny line. Rather it is a straight movie that contains three inter-twining stories.

The first story is about a group of Mexican illegal immigrants, including Wilmer "Fez" Valderamma and Catalina Sandino Moreno, who are helped over the border by Luis Guzman's pimped-out van driver and taken to a meat-packing plant in Colorado. There, watched over by the sleazy Bobby Cannavale, they earn a pittance which feels like a fortune to them and put their lives at risk in horrific jobs, turning live cows into frozen meat patties. This strand is brilliantly acted - showing for instance that Valderama and Canavale can play it straight. But be warned, the footage is not for the weak of stomach.

The second story is about some teenagers - played by Ashley Johnson and Paul Dano who work in a fast-food joint in the same Colorado town. The strand shows Ashley's character becoming politically aware thanks to her hip uncle, played by Ethan Hawke and, I kid you not, Avril Lavigne.

The final story is about a Vice President of Marketing at the same fast food company played by Greg Kinnear. He is sent to the same Colorado town to find out - quite simply - why there is cow shit in the meat patties. It's not hard to find out why. Everyone in town knows - from Kris Kristofferson's wise old rancher, to his maid, to the morally-challenged realist who brokered the deal - played in a chilling cameo by Bruce Willis.

The advantages of the non-fiction fiction structure is that it gives the viewer some emotional engagement with the issues. I know we should care as much about employees losing limbs at a meatpacking plant in real life, but thanks to the way our brains are wired, it's easier to care and to "get it" if we have some charismatic characters on screen. The other advantage is that we get a proper movie with proper production values, visual style (which in fairness is not that spectacular in this particular film) and sound-track. The disadvantage is that on occasion characters say stuff which is just not credible, because they are basically making a speech. It doesn't happen often but it does happen, especially when the Ethan Hawke character is on screen or when a radical student says, "The patriotic thing to do at this point is to break the Patriot Act". A gloriously seditious sentiment. Similarly, there is an extended discussion between the students as to why the cows won't leave their pens even when the fence is broken - a rather clumsy extended metaphor for humans who know fast food is made from shit-infused meat but still eat it.

Still, for all its flaws and clumsiness, I think FAST FOOD NATION is far more successful in conveying its message and simply entertaining its audience than the usual agit-docs. To that end, it's a noble experiment and hopefully one that will be influential.

FAST FOOD NATION played Cannes and London 2006. It is already on release in Australia and Germany and opens in the US and France at the end of November. It opens in Israel and Belgium in January 2007 and in the Netherlands in March.

A SCANNER DARKLY - very funny, less profound

A SCANNER DARKLY is a new film from director Richard Linklater. To my mind, Linklater yo-yos as a director. DAZED AND CONFUSED and BEFORE SUNRISE & SUNSET are some of my favourite films, but BAD NEWS BEARS was one of the worst films I saw in 2005. A SCANNER DARKLY is a bit of a mixed bag.

It's based on a story by acclaimed sci-fi writer, Philip K. Dick, and, according to Doctor007, Linklater has managed the rare feat of adapting a Philip K Dick novel well. (I wouldn't know, as I haven't read the book upon which the movie is based.) At any rate, the movie is based in the near-future. California looks pretty much like it does now, just moreso. Government surveillance of its citizens is extreme and explicit and civil liberties have been eroded. Twenty percent of the population is addicted to a class A drug called Substance D and the Government is subservient to big pharma in the form of a company called "New Path" which may be peddling the drug as well as the cure. The only out-and-out neato sci-fi gadget is the "scramble-suit". This is basically an all-over body-suit that projects an ever-shifting array of faces and clothes to other people, totally disguising your identity.

In this world, we hang out with a bunch of junkies, played by Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Junior, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. Philip K Dick and Downey Junior clearly know whereof they speak and the resulting script and delivery is absolutely hysterical. The drug-fuelled paranoia and doped-out logic of the dialogue made me laugh so much I cried.

But the book and the movie are clearly not just there for laughs. There is serious matter to be considered. The role of the Government and Big Pharma in our lives; the severe medical damage caused by heavy drug use; the difficulty of keeping hold of your identity when you are an under-cover agent. I feel that Linklater is a lot less successful at getting a handle on the serious stuff, perhaps just because the laughs are so good and come so often that the thriller part of the plot is obscured. At any rate, Philip K. Dick's lament for his friends who died from drug over-doses at the end of the movie came as a hard slap to the face. It made me question whether I had missed something in what had preceeded it.

Anyways, despite that slight mis-step, A SCANNER DARKLY is still definitely worth checking out because it IS really funny and secondly it just looks so damn cool. The movie was shot on digital film and then, using a technique called roto-scoping, animaters sort of traced over the film images, colouring them and distorting them where necessary. What you get is a sort-of other-wordly feel. The characters all look like the actors but seem somehow at a distance. It's like watching a really well-made live-action comic. Awesome.

A SCANNER DARKLY premiered out of competition at Cannes 2006 and went on limited release in the US in July. It is currently on release in Brazil and the UK. It opens in Portugal and Australia in September and in Italy, Japan and Spain in October.