CONCLAVE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 3

Robert Harris' political procedural thriller, CONCLAVE, is one of his greatest novels and it has been beautifully brought to the screen by director Edward Berger (ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT) and screenwriter Peter Straughan (TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY). The resulting film is genuinely tense, visually stunning, brilliantly claustrophobic and occasionally hilarious.

Ralph Fiennes stars as the seemingly humble Cardinal Lawrence who is tasked with managing the papal election.  He is allied with the liberal Cardinal Bonelli (Stanley Tucci) who claims he does not want to be Pope, but come on, doesn't every Cardinal want the ultimate power?  They are united in opposing a return to reactionary religion whether in the form of the African Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), the American Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) or the Italian Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto).  

As each ballot is taken, we learn of reasons why each candidate is far from perfect. Lawrence chooses carefully what to expose and keep secret, even going so far as to break the papal seal on the dead Pope's locked door. And each ballot frames a debate about what the Church means - is it tradition or modernity - diversity or unity - progressive on race or progressive on sexuality?

What makes this procedural such an effective film? Well, the cast is exceptional. I would expect award noms for Fiennes and Tucci. But for me the highlight is Isabella Rosellini in a scene-stealing role, and the all-time most powerful on-screen curtsy. But more than the individual performances what makes this movie great is the deft way that Edward Berger creates his hermetically sealed world and helps us to understand its bizarre logic. We never cut away to waiting news crews or crowds in Vatican Square. Events beyond the walls might be heard but are not seen.  We are utterly immersed in the Conclave.  He takes us through the mechanics of the first ballot with precision and then elegantly edits the others.  He uses his editing and framing to give us a sense of moral corruption and stakes.  And then there are the visual flourishes that a 108 men in red robes against banks of white marble or teal cinema seats can give. The mood of the film is austere - the colour palette, score, even the amount of dialogue - is kept to the minimal. We are in a world where a glance, a sigh, a tug on a vape can be portentous. Bravo to a director who strips away rather than overloading us.

ALL QUIET  was a really good film that was perhaps lobbied into a greater awards tally than it deserved. Berger has moved far beyond that film with this one and it's likely awards will be even more richly deserved. Kudos to all involved.

CONCLAVE is rated PG and has a running time of 100 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2024. It will be released in the USA on November 8th and in the UK on November 15th.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY**

I said pretty much everything I wanted to say about Whitney Houston in my review of the two documentaries that came out after her death, Kevin MacDonald's WHITNEY and Nick Broomfield’s WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME? I felt the latter was particularly insightful about the problems Whitney faced due to her sexuality in a homophobic world; her persona as a post-racial artist in a highly racially charged world; and the less that ideal family life that certainly included drugs from the start, and potentially also sexual abuse. The docs were both good but both helped and hindered by lack of co-operation with the family.  By contrast, this new fictionalised biopic is both helped and hindered by the reverse.

Clive Davis, Whitney's record label CEO, is one of the producers on the film, and as played by Stanley Tucci is an avuncular witty and caring presence. No shit. The villains of the piece are her controlling and exploitative father (Clarke Peters), and the burden of expectations of an ever-greater entourage and family and public.  Bobby Brown is unlikeable as an abusive adulterer but Whitney's drug use is conveniently enabled by an anonymous white - natch - drug peddler. The film mostly proceeds as a series of set-piece performances that we are already intimately aware of, and while Naomie Ackie does a really great job imitating Whitney's facial expressions, it's just not the same as watching the old footage. The problem is that when you devote tens of minutes to music montages, there's very little space left for actual explorative dramatic writing, and even if there was, I'm not sure writer Anthony McCarten would be the man for the job, given his hackneyed  work here and on BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY.

I think anyone embarking on a project like this - or any artist interpreting a subject that has already been treated many times -  should ask themselves what they can bring to the table. What is their particular take - their particular insight? Or failing that, what is it that the medium of fiction film can bring that documentary can't? Well, clearly if we're just imitating Whitney's videos and concert performances that's low value add, if not value negative to watching the real footage. What a dramatic treatment COULD have brought is real insight into her state of mind, and the emotional toll of being closeted, hated by her own black peers, and exploited by her own family. I wanted less music and more drama. Still, you shouldn't review the film that wasn't made, just the one in front of you. And it's fine. Really fine. But the docs are better.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY has a running time of 144 minutes and is rated PG-13. It was released last December. 

SUPERNOVA - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 5

Sam and Tusker have been happily married for years, and clearly still absolutely adore one another.  But Tusker has dementia and is deteriorating rapidly in ways that he's trying to hide from Sam: a novelist, he can no longer write.  Meanwhile Sam has his secrets too.  He has steeled himself to the idea of caring for Tusker whatever may come, but he's absolutely scared of it. 

And so this couple set off in a camper van for a holiday in the Lake District to visit family en route to a concert that Sam is giving.  We see them bicker and snuggle as couples do.  We also see them edge towards the truth in the confined space of the camper van.  Finally, we enter a beautiful and isolated house where they have to tackle the most profound questions of love and life: what does one partner do when another faces death.

I don't want to say more for fear of spoiling the carefully constructed emotional arc of this film. Suffice it to say that Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as Sam and Tusker absolutely convince as a loving couple and it is heart-breaking to see them come to terms with what is happening. And all of this is set in the most beautiful of autumnal melancholy landscapes, captured by DP Dick Pope, and in a production design suffused with rich warm oranges, browns and teal. 

This is a deeply affecting film of quiet power.  It is likely to prove provocative for anyone in a loving relationship, or grappling with loved ones dealing with dementia. In my group of cineastes we are still debating the motives and meanings of the ending, and in the process examining our own attitudes to the issues raised.  That is the sign of an intelligent film that we have taken to our hearts. Kudos to all involved, but particularly sophomore director Harry MacQueen.

SUPERNOVA has a running time of 93 minutes.  It played San Sebastian and London 2020. It will be released in the UK on November 20th. 

A PRIVATE WAR

Documentary Matthew Heineman (CARTEL LAND) returns to our screens with a fictionalised account of the final years of war journalist Marie Colvin - a story told recently in the superb doc UNDER THE WIRE [link]. His film opens with Marie in Sri Lanka, covering the civil war, being shot in the eye and acquiring her trademark eye-patch. The movie ends 11 years later, inevitably, with Colvin's death, the victim of a targeted bombing in Homs. In between these two events, we see Marie move between war zones and metropolitan dinner parties, carrying with her her trauma, drinking heavily to forget, blaming her editors for sending her out, daring her colleagues to face their face, or overlook it, to return to the war zone, unable to allow herself to quit. She was truly a superb woman, committed to exposing the impact of war on ordinary people, and her cussedness and intelligence one her the access to figures such as Gaddafi, and the respect of her peers and readers. But questions must be asked about the risks she took, whether it was worth it, and the men she led in her wake, not least her photographer Paul Conroy. There's also some tough questions to be asked about why Marie, of all the dead war reporters, gets docs and films.  Because she was so good? Yes, maybe. But maybe also because she was the iconic woman with the eyepatch?

This fictionalised account is well-enough made, with Rosamund Pike doing a superb impression of Colvin. A gritty script doesn't shy aware from her private fears and trauma, the contradictions in her predicament, and the grim reality of being a war reporter.  There's a superb set piece argument with her editor, played by Tom Hollander, that captures the questions at the heart of her story.  But I couldn't help but feeling that this version of events didn't add anything to the experience of watching UNDER THE WIRE, and that rather than being mediated by a fictionalised retelling, I'd rather just here this story from Paul, and from old footage of Marie, and from her friends, editors, colleagues.  This didn't seem to add any greater insight, and because the direction here is workmanlike, it just didn't seem to add anything. 

A PRIVATE WAR is rated R and has a running time of 100 minutes.  The film played Toronto and London 2018 and was released last year in the USA. It will be released in the UK on February 15th 2019. 

THE CHILDREN ACT - Crimbo Binge-watch #9

Celebrated theatre director Richard Eyre (the superb NOTES ON A SCANDAL) returns to our screens with his adaptation of Booker Prize winning author Ian McEwan's THE CHILDREN ACT. A stunningly good Emma Thompson plays a high court judge who has to rule on a case where parents are refusing their child a life-saving blood transfusion on account of their faith.  The ruling is made, and without spoiling it, the ramifications are emotionally intense, both for the teenager involved and for the judge.  The teenager is played by Fionn Whitehead, who starred in DUNKIRK, but has far more to do here, and is really quite impressive, holding his own against Emma Thompson in an intellectually complex role. Stanley Tucci has rather less to do in what is essentially a two-hander.  

At first I thought this was going to be a rather sterile intellectual film, and the first half hour does take place mostly in court.  But as with all McEwan there's deep passion and provocation underneath that.  The film questions the idea of faith, the rights of children, and the sacrifice of family for career. It even questions the idea of judicial intervention and apparent neutrality. I found it to be a deeply stimulating film, and in its final scenes, profoundly moving.  I have no idea why Emma Thompson didn't receive wider recognition for her part. 

THE CHILDREN ACT has a rating of R and a running time of 104 minutes. It was released in 2018.

SPOTLIGHT

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A LITTLE CHAOS - LFF14 - Day Ten

You can listen to a podcast review of A LITTLE CHAOS here or by subscribing to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

A LITTLE CHAOS is a charming amuse-bouche - a witty historical fantasy - gently telling us much about the perils of court life. It stars Kate Winslet as a gardener, Madame Sabine de Barra, in the court of Louis XIV.  We watch her charm Power by speaking Truth, triumph over court intrigue and create a little chaos in the carefully ordered gardens of the newly built Versailles. In all this she is aided by her frank and simple manner and the kindness of many aristos - not least the King’s brother and sister-n-law - a delightfully flamboyant and honestly dutiful couple played by Stanley Tucci and Paula Paul. Sabine also falls for the married Master of the gardens, André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts), who throws off a typically cynical court marriage to pursue the affair. And what of the king himself? Alan Rickman plays Louis XIV as weary, conservative but willing to listen in a handful of charming cameo scenes.

The movie is so very dripping in charm and liveability that it’s easy to forget that the basic concept of a gauche outsider finding favour in surprising circumstances in lifted from many a genre movie. Alan Rickman’s direction is stylish, elegant and all elements combine so gracefully that it may seem a more frivolous thing than it really is. For behind the sumptuous clothes and reawakening of life are a handful of delicately played scenes about the reality of court life - trapped, bending to the will of the king, discarded as beauty fades, and unable to show public grief. I think the approach Rickman takes is superbly judged and best summed up in a brief scene where Sabine meets the discarded King’s mistress (Jennifer Ehle). It’s not the grandstanding scene with the king that I like, but rather the one that precedes it - as women of all ages meet in secret intimacy to discuss their figures, their loves and their children.

Praise then to Rickman, his cast and perhaps particularly to debut screenwriter Alison Deegan for giving herself the license to go off-piste with history. My only criticism, if criticism there must be, is that I was rather disappointed with just how formal and hard Sabine’s garden was. After all, having spent the opening scenes in debate with Le Nôtre about formalism vs organic beauty it might’ve been nice to see something of that in her final creation.

A LITTLE CHAOS has a running time of 116 minutes.  The movie played Toronto and London 2014 and will be released in the UK on February 6th and in Portugal on March 5th.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE begins in media res, assuming wisely that we've all watched the first movie if not read the wildly popular books.  We're in a harsh dystopian future where fascists keep the masses in penury, fobbing them off with glitzy super-violent reality TV. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is back from the Hunger Games of the first movie, struggling to explain her faked on-screen romance with fellow survivor Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) to her home-town love-interest Gale (Liam Hemsworth.)  But this nascent and hackneyed love triangle is rightly cut short by larger political dangers.  The evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland) fears that Katniss has become a symbol of defiance and, when she can't convince him or the crowds that she's an obliging mouthpiece of his regime, he orchestrates a Hunger Games in which she will once again have to compete for her life. The catch is that she will compete against those she cares for - Peeta and their mentor, Hamitch (Woody Harrelson).

What I love about The Hunger Games franchise is that while it does have a fair dollop of the typical teenage romance, it's given limited time and is handled with far more nuance than, say the Twilight franchise. Katniss is a strong woman - she isn't defined by her love interests - indeed, to Gale and Peeta's disappointment, she refuses to even acknowledge them.  We understand that she loves both men in different ways - Gale as a symbol of the home he loves but Peeta as the man who can empathise with what she has been through since she left.  And in an unusual twist on the typical romance, Katniss is the physically stronger of the two, whereas Peeta has the higher emotional intelligence. She may save him in the arena, but with his ruses to win the heart of the public, he saves her from the Capitol.

Given this film's emphasis on the political fallout from Katniss victory in the first film, and lesser time spent on the actual gladiatorial contest, I far prefer it to the original. I love seeing the dystopian world-building - the rich art direction - the beautiful costumes - the stark depiction of poverty.  More importantly, I love the satire on contemporary reality culture, and the sinister edge that Stanley Tucci's gamehost, Caesar Flickerman, lends to what most would leave as just a comic performance. There's something truly unnerving about his forced laugh and day-glo teeth.  But for me the real scene-stealer is Elizabeth Banks as Katniss and Peeta's stylist, Effie. As in the first movie, Banks has to sport the most outlandish costumes and toe the party line on being fabulous-dahling but in this movie, she gets to show the real heart beneath the wigs, while all the time pretending to still believe in the system. It's a marvellous portrayal.

As usual, I had less time from the games in the arena, which always seem like a series of levelling up quests followed by a tricksy ending. There's nothing to match the death of Rue in the original.  There are some new characters, all rather banal, and poor Jena Malone's over-acts fiercely as the angry Johanna Mason.  Most fascinating is the casting of my acting hero, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee, the new gamesmaker.  For most of the film, Hoffman is so anonymous as to almost look like he's in a different movie, or phoning it in.  I leave you to decide whether, given the final act, this is a clever choice or just lazy.

Overall, the best way to describe the movie is professional and faithful.  Taking over from writer-director Gary Ross, we have Francis Lawrence in the director's chair and Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt writing the script.  I could discern little difference - we still get a movie with rich production design, solid to excellent performances and a fascinating political plot.  Indeed my only real criticism of its direction and script is the rather underwhelming final shot - that said, this is probably faithful to the book.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE is on global release. The film has a running time of 146 minutes and is rated PG-13.

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

It turns out I was almost perfectly primed for Robert Redford's earnest new thriller, THE COMPANY YOU KEEP. I'd spent much of the year compiling playlists from Monterey, Woodstock and Altamont, as well as reading Thomas Mallon's superb fictional account of Watergate, and in doing so became fascinated with the politics of the time, the apparently high stakes, the desperation of the students being koshed at Kent State.  What would it have taken to turn a liberal-thinking, frustrated student into a militant radical along the lines of Baader-Meinhof?  This seems to be a fascinating question.  If I ad been alive then, how would I have reacted?  This isn't the first time I've been obsessed with this kind of practical historical moral dilemma.  I've always wondered whether I and my friends, Oxbridge contemporaries, would've been tempted to spy for the Soviets when faced with the seemingly unstoppable march of European fascism.

At any rate, for whatever personal obsessive reasons, THE COMPANY YOU KEEP found me primed.  As the movie opens a middle-aged woman (Susan Sarandon) hands herself into the FBI, admitting culpability in a radical political bank robbery that took place in the 1960s.  In doing so, she threatens the anonymity of her fellow radicals.  The most prominent of these is a small town lawyer played by Robert Redford, who in a Bourne-like road thriller, has to evade the gaze of both the Feds and Shia LaBeouf's investigative reporter, as he races to connect with his former lover and fellow radical, played by Julie Christie.  His road trip takes him across America and back through time, uncovering the complicity of cops and students alike.  

At times, Redford's ability to call in cameos from marquee name actors - Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Stanley Tucci - became a little distracting, but ultimately the clear lines and swift pacing kept me on track.  Whether or not it was plausible that a man of Redford's age could successfully go on the lam as he did, I was hooked by the bait of the final meeting between Redford's mellowing father and his still-radical former lover.   The final confrontation is essentially a talky set-piece, but I found it fascinating.  I loved the genuine respect and even-handedness accorded to each side of the debate, but was all the more disappointed when that was undercut by the final choice of a main character.  Ultimately, we are left with the question of whether familial concerns trump wider political concerns, and the movie clearly comes down on one side of this question.  It is, then, a deeply bourgeois piece, and the worse for it.

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP played Venice and Toronto 2012 and opened last year in Italy. It opened earlier this year in Sweden and is currently on release in the UAE and the USA. It opens next week in Israel and Portugal and on April 18th in Australia and Brazil. It opens on April 26yth in Finland, on May 2nd in New Zealand, on May 8th in Belgium and France, on May 23rd in the Netherlands, on June 7th in the UK, on June 20th in Argentina, on July 11th in Greece and on July 25th in Germany.

The movie is rated R and has a running time of 120 minutes.

THE HUNGER GAMES - eheu o me miserum!

HUNGER GAMES plays like a po-faced, de-fanged version of RUNNING MAN and BATTLE ROYALE. In a dystopian American future, the tyrannical 1 percent demand each district volunteer two kids to fight to the death in a gladiatorial reality TV show. Predictably, the two kids from the poorest district work together to game the system and survive - the only spin being that they become as manipulative as the game they are in to succeed - feigning teen love (or are they?! - who cares) to win public sympathy.  Clearly, the franchise, based on a trilogy by Suzanne Collins', is gearing up for a finale in which the triumph of the 99th percentile inspires a revolution of the Plebs. Which begs the question why, with all their technology, cash, and cunning, the 1% allows them to survive so long. Frankly, any ruling elite so utterly incompetent deserves to die by dingleberries. Dr No, sorry, Snow, is giving us a bad name. 

Anyways, what can we say about this film. It has less pretty lead actors (Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lawrence)than the Twiglet series but equally pitiful dye jobs.  (Picture the Celebrity Death Match between Josh Hutcherson's blonde highlights and Twiglet's Nikki Reed!) The acting is better in THE HUNGER GAMES, basically because Jennifer Lawrence can communicate so much nuanced and conflicting emotion without saying a word. But this is offset by some truly shitty production and costume design - so over-the-top, so absurd, that it looks cheap and trashy and completely undermines the attempt at portraying earnest emotion. The worst victim of this is poor Elizabeth Banks in what one can only call the Parker Posey Memorial Role, as inspired by Helena Bonham Carter. By contrast, Lenny Kravitz hardly looks like he's trying at all, and one can imagine an hilarious conversation between the rock musician and the make-up department where he just refuses to go with it. Finally, the direction (Gary Ross - THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX) is also pretty pedestrian.

But my real problem with the whole show was its hackneyed premise coupled with a pretty superficial use of Roman names and concepts.  The world really just doesn't need a desaturated RUNNING MAN. It's like the whole problem with Twiglet: vampires who don't have sex are about as compelling as a Death Match where studio economics require a PG-13 certificate, so that all violence happens off-screen. Apparently the books are more savage, which is great, but then again, Suzanne Collins does try to palm us off with a kind of lo-rent tipping-of-the-hat to Rome.  Clever, clever to call a food deprived land "Panem", and to keep the plebs happy with circuses, but you just can't call major characters Cinna and Caesar without following through. It all felt highly disrespectful coming from a woman who purports to have serious influences. Moreover, where's the subtle satire on reality TV? Where's the subversive politics? The film seems to pick up so many interesting, dangerous concepts, but doesn't seem to have the balls to follow them through.  Oh, and one final thing.  Why give your heroine a name that sounds like "catnip"?

THE HUNGER GAMES is on release pretty much everywhere except Chile and Vietnam, where it opens on March 30th; South Korea and Lithuania, where it opens on April 6th; South Africa, where it opens on April 13th; Spain where it opens on April 20th and Italy, where it opens on May 1st.

MARGIN CALL - the best film to date on the Great Crash

MARGIN CALL may well be the first Hollywood movie that doesn't elevate investment bankers into glamorous devils. It comes as close as any movie I can think of to depicting the reality of working in financial services. The key concept that behind the gravity-defying numbers are a bunch of normal people, with the same frailties and smallness of vision. People want to believe that Wall Street is run by a bunch of cackling, Mr-Burns-like speculators. But in reality, it's just a bunch of insecure kids who are good at maths. Sure, there are tails of mega-bonuses and luxurious off-sites. But what the movies never got until now was the dreary drudgery of the trading floor, the long hours, the self-aware sacrifice of family-time, the awful truth that no matter what you earn, you'll always be made to feel that it isn't enough. That there's always a bigger house, that isn't quite as big as the senior partner's. The absurd fact that you can earn millions at thirty and still feel stretched for cash. You never feel like you have a choice at the time, you probably don't even realise how much you've sacrificed until it's too late. These aren't Machiavellian geniuses but prisoners of the Game as much as the poor schmuck consumers who loaded up on cheap debt and are now trapped in negative equity. We were all conned into living a lifestyle that, in our hearts, we knew we weren't earning - we couldn't afford. 

Debut feature director J C Chandor depicts this pathetic and soul-destroying world with an authenticity that is breath-taking. There are some minor slip-ups - no security guard would allow a sacked employee to pass a USB key to a retained employee in plain sight; there is no killer margin call made in the film. But the crumpled messy trading floor, the tired crumpled traders, the coded conversations in which workers fearful for their jobs jockey for position - these things are actually pitch perfect. There are no Gordon Gekko grand-standing speeches in defence of capitalism. No adrenaline-fuelled boardroom shouting matches. Decisions are taken by tired men in boardrooms at three am. Dialogue is measured, non-actionable. But in a few short sentences, laden with unspoken meaning, a career can be an ended - a business shut down.

The movie takes place over a 48 hour period on the commercial mortgage backed securities trading floor of a Lehman Brothers type investment bank. The first day starts with the brutal sacking of half the floor - eerily similar to what you'll see in any FS firm in a down-turn. The relief, the guilt of the survivors - the repressed anger, acceptance of the shafted. After work, a talented young analyst (Zachary Quinto) figures out that the wild gyrations in the market have pushed the bank to the point of bankruptcy. He escalates the matter up the scale, through his direct line manager (Paul Bettany) to his boss (Kevin Spacey) to his boss (Simon Baker) until we get to a 3am board meeting where the super-boss (Jeremy Irons) decides to offload the toxic assets before the rest of Wall Street figures out that the party has ended. This of course means shafting everyone the bank has every traded with, doing it quickly, and for the people actually executing the trades, an end to their jobs. 

The second half of the film shows each character dealing with the ramifications of this decision. The senior trader (Kevin Spacey) has to trade-off loyalty to his firm with decency toward the street. The had of risk management (Demi Moore) has to come to terms with the end of her career. And in a superbly written and executed scene with Stanley Tucci's sacked risk analyst, where she asks if he has kids, you realise that she really has nothing now. Tucci's character has his dignity, his family, but is going to lose his house. Penn Badgley's young trader, the guy who bought the Wall Street mythos, has to come to terms with the fact that he's going to be sacked, and that The Street is dead. Only Paul Bettany's character seems to emerge unscathed. He had no illusions about The Street or his own lifestyle - he's been through market crashes before - and he's unsurprised by the super-boss' ruthless self-preservation.

Paul Bettany's character also has the best, most insightful, most lucid speech about the nature of the credit bubble and the ensuing popular backlash against bankers - the 99 percent who want fair pay and fair reward but still took three holidays a year and had a flat screen TV in each room on credit. "I take my hand off and then the whole world gets really fuckin' fair really fuckin' quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don't. They want what we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have know idea where it came from. Well, thats more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow, so fuck em. Fuck normal people."

I love that speech. I believe it. Problem is, it's the best and worst thing about this movie. Because the only serious flaw with this film is the editorialising. I'm sure that many a sacked Lehman Brothers employee, many a current investment banker, has thought the same things, but in the months and years that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers - not in the moments when it was actually happening. That kind of soul-searching happens when the dust has settled. It feels too prescient to have those speeches while the bank is still alive. 

Still, for all that, this is an amazingly well written and perfectly acted film. It explains, empathises, never glamourises Wall Street. It has tension and stakes, without ever using cheap tricks, grandstanding, flashy trading scenes. Jeremy Irons and Demi Moore are easily worth Best Supporting Actor nods. But I guess the lack of pyrotechnics means this film never really had a chance. 

MARGIN CALL played Sundance and Berlin 2011 and was released last year in Germany, Russia, Estonia, Spain, the USA, Romania, the Netherlands, Canada, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Turkey, Brazil, Greece, Poland and Singapore. It is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on January 19th in Israel; on January 25th in Belgium and Portugal; on March 16th in Sweden and on April 4th in France. It is available to rent and own in the US.

iPad Round-Up 6 - EASY A

In the wake of the critical acclaim for THE HELP, it is perhaps too easy for reviewers to see EASY A as the movie in which Emma Stone - the star of both - first made an impression, and perhaps to transfer their admiration of that film to this.  To  my mind, while Stone does have a kind of winning likeability and sass so often missing from today's bland young teen stars, EASY A is far from a compelling film. It doesn't have the dark humour and danger of a film like HEATHERS. It doesn't create a modern vernacular in the way that JUNO attempted to do. And it certainly doesn't treat its literary other, Hawthorne's Scarlett Letter, with the intelligence and respect that CLUELESS treated Pride and Prejudice.  Rather, director Will Gluck (FIRED UP) and writer Bert V Royal, create a movie that attempts to be clever, contemporary, and dangerous, but ends up looking like a movie that occasionally lands a comedic punch, but as often mis-fires.  I'm also pretty tired of seeing cheap shots taken at super-religious nutters.

Stone plays Olive, a girl who masquerades as a slut to gain credibility and cash, but is really a good-hearted virgin. Her parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) are completely unbelievable in their willingness to go along with this ruse.  Events spiral out of control as they are wont to do in such films - largely when a nasty school counsellor (Lisa Kudrow) uses Olive to cover up an affair with a student. But all's well that end's well, in a movie that is far more conservative than it wants you to think it is.  Essentially, this is a fluffy, patchy affair, worth a DVD rental at best.

EASY A played Toronto 2010 and was released last winter. It is available to rent and own.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

Once THE WIRE re-up was over, life seemed pretty empty. So empty that I submitted to a Buffy Re-Up, courtesy of two friends of mine who are super-fans of all things Joss Whedon. I was intially sceptical. Vampires? Teen angst? Lo-rent make-up effects? Seriously? However, I'm half way through series 2 and I have to say I'm really starting to enjoy Joss Whedon's wonderfully witty use of the English language - the energy and plasticity of it. I got that same sense of playfulness as I watched CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. What gave it away? Characters uttering dead-pan cool witticisms rather than screaming when a big bad man blows up shit. The tone was anachronistically, inappropriately US-teen-cool for a movie supposedly set during World War Two. 

And then it all clicked! Joss Whedon had been given the script penned by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the NARNIA movies). According to IMDBpro he is meant to have done a light re-write to tie it in to the wider Marvel universe, and in particular THE AVENGERS movie that he's directing. But I suspect that Whedon did more than just tie up some narrative threads. Because when this movie is at its most entertaining, and its most emotionally real, it simply DRIPS Joss Whedon.  You can see the impact of Whedon on the success of the final film. It works best in the first two thirds, where it really is all about character and relationships. It works least in the final third when it descends into a pretty much super-hero-movie-by-numbers final battle scene....

But anyway, enough of my current Whedon-kick and on with the normal review. CAPTAIN AMERICA is the latest feature-length incarnation of the comic book hero created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in the 1940s - a deliberately patriotic and wholesome character designed to boost morale during World War Two. The superhero is really Steve Rogers - a physically un-prepossessing but morally upstanding young man desperate to enlist and fight the Nazis. Dr Abraham Erskine, a German-Jewish refugee and Papa Stark use a serum and some Vita-Rays (TM) - to turn Rogers into a buff super-soldier. 

Interestingly, rather than kicking Nazi ass immediately, the lone super-soldier takes a side-turn, and is consigned to marketing war bonds - a parody of his future super-hero status, and highly reminiscent of the subtlety and post-modernity of Alan Moore's WATCHMEN. After this false start, Captain America start to fight in earnest, under the direction of Colonel Chester Phillips and his attractive protégée, Peggy Carter, not to mention Papa Stark. Captain America also has a bunch of mere mortal side-kicks, including his best friend Bucky, but rounded out with a Japanese-American, an African-American, an Irish-American, a Frenchman and a Brit. This isn't so much tub-thumping jingoism, then, as the United Nations. I would love to know from anyone who has read the comics whether this rainbow-nation of do-gooders is, as I suspect, a highly modern and politically correct re-write.

Steve Rogers' journey to becoming Captain America makes for a fascinating origins story. Chris Evans (FANTASTIC FOUR) gives a fine and convincing performance as the sensitive young man fiercely opposed to bullies, and he is ably supported by Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Haley Atwell and Dominic Cooper as Phillips, Erskine, Carter and Stark respectively. Stanley Tucci's Erskine has a wonderful comic interchange early on with Rogers over a bottle of schnapps that quickly and efficiently establishes a bond that pays off a few scenes later. It's a shame no comparable emotional bond was created between Rogers and best friend Bucky (Gossip Girl's Sebastian Stan). 

I loved the sepia-tinted 1940s production design, the costumes, the hair, and the sheer atmosphere of it all. And whoever CGI-morphed Chris Evans head onto a short, weedy body deserves much credit because the work is utterly seamless. I also loved the make-up that transforms Hugo Weaving's mad Nazi into the evil head of Hydra, Red Skull - intent on using the power of the Norse Gods to unleash war on the entire earth. In fact, just for the nostalgic look of the film - half Indiana Jones - half Watchmen flashback - this is probably my favourite superhero film of the summer, alongside the X-MEN movie. It turned out to be, rather to my surprise, a wonderfully well-made, beautifully-imagined, and Whedon-witty movie.

That said, the movie does have its faults. The Bucky storyline doesn't pay off in the way it should. The final third is dull. Peggy Carter has the beginnings of a great character - a feisty, bright woman. But what's she there fore apart from to look good? Stark builds shit; Phillips commands shit; everyone else fights shit; but Carter just pouts. I mean, what is this agent really meant to be doing? Is she a scientist? A military mind? What? Poor writing.  Similarly, the politically correct side-kicks are fine, but where is the moral clarity that should come with a fight against the Nazis. Oh but I forget. We're not really fighting the Nazis are we - but some weird ambiguous generally evil guy, who's harder to get a grip on, or care about. Speaking of which, I really do wonder at director Joe Johnston's (THE WOLFMAN, JURASSIC PARK III) indulgence in allowing Hugo Weabing to do the entire film with a German accent that sounds uncannily like Werner Herzog. It was so pitch perfect that is seriously took me out of the movie in every scene - undercutting the serious subject-matter and high emotional stakes.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is on release in Canada, Italy, Poland, the US, Iceland, the Philippines, Argentina, Australia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Estonia, India, Ireland, Lithuania, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Taiwan and the UK. It opens next weekend in Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Portugal and Spain. It opens on August 12th in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It opens on August 17th in Belgium, France, Germany and Finland. It opens on September 1st in Greece, the UAE and Turkey. It opens in Japan on October 15th.

BURLESQUE - nonsense

BURLESQUE is a Hollywood song-and-dance movie that exists entirely as a vehicle for Christina Aguilera and consists entirely as a collage of cinematic clichés, over-singing and over-acting. Debut writer-director Steve Antin should be ashamed to have so blatantly tried to rip off the style of the non-pareil musical, CABARET, harnessing Fosse's dance-steps to a plot so vacuous as to make a barbie doll look real.

Aguilera plays a wannabe who leaves rural Iowa for LA, stumbles into Cher's gorgeously appointed but dangerously over-mortgaged nightclub. By sheer irritating perseverance she works her way from waitress to chorus-line dancer to Star, allowing Cher to double the entry fee and potentially save her club from the twin clutches of the bankers and an oleaginous property developer called Marcus. Meanwhile, Christina, piqued that her room-mate Jack already has a fiancée is seeing the aforementioned Marcus, and risks losing her soul for fame, or something.

Everything here is hokey and unimportant. Of course the wannabe comes from the country! No aspiring singer in a movie of this sort comes from down the street, otherwise where would our greyhound bus scene be?! Of course the room-mate she thinks is gay turns out to be hot and fit and straight and to have a massive crush on her! Of course there's a richer older man waiting to tempt her away from true love! Of course Cher is a battleaxe with a fag hag best friend!

I couldn't care less. The reason why musicals like CABARET and CHICAGO work is that beyond their glitz and jazz there's some pretty serious satire and politics in there. And in musicals that are pure romance - Butterfly, Boheme, Camille etc - the romance is pitched at such a level that it transcends schmaltz and becomes tragedy. BURLESQUE has neither of these qualities. Rather, it's emotional concerns are straight from a Sweet Valley High novel.

Oh, and by the way, the reason why great musicals work is because, au fond, they have great showtunes. Even OKLAHOMA!, which I find really quite sinister and disturbing, has amazing numbers and set-pieces. The music in BURLESQUE is simply to weak - too forgettable - too paint-by-numbers.

So what do we have in the end? A threadbare plot of no consequence. Plenty of opportunity for Christina Aquilera to shriek. A complete waste of Cher's acting talent. Stanley Tucci reprising his fag-hag role from DEVIL WEARS PRADA. And dear lord, why on EARTH did they bother casting Alan Cumming not to use him at all. That man has more pure acting, dancing, singing and genuine CABARET instinct and talent running through his veins that the rest of this cast put together. And what does he get? Barely two scenes.

Shame, shame, shame.

BURLESQUE has somewhat bizarrely been nominated for three Golden Globes.

BURLESQUE is on release in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Japan, Belgium, France and Switzerland. It opens this weekend in Latvia, Romania, Vietnam and Denmark. It opens on December 30th in Portugal; on January 1st in Taiwan; on January 5th in Egypt and Jordan; on January 6th in Austria, Bahrain, Germany, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Thailand, the UAE and Turkey. It opens on January 13th in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the Ukraine, Brazil and Lithuania. It opens on January 21st in Argentina, Ecuador, Estonia, South Africa and Uruguay. It opens on January 26th in Indonesia, Bulgaria, India, Mexico, Norway, Sweden and the Philippines. BURLESQUE opens on February 3rd in Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Slovenia, Finland, Iceland and Poland. It opens on February 11th in Slovakia, Colombia, Kenya and Nigeria. It opens on February 17th in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Italy. It opens later in February in Bolivia, Russia, Serbia and Venezuela.

JULIE & JULIA - boring and brilliant respectively

JULIE & JULIA has the dubious honour of being the first movie based on a blog - the blog of a thirty-year old failed writer called Julie, cooking her way through the legendary cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child. I say legendary, and there's even an SNL spoof by a young Dan Ackroyd showing how far this 6 foot 2, preppy woman had entered the American mainstream with her cooking show. I'd never heard of her.

The movie, written and directed by Nora Ephron of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY fame, is a bit of a mixed bag. To my surprise, I was utterly captivated by the story of Julia Child. Meryl Streep is absolutely enchanting as Julia - no-nonsense, up for any challenge, relentlessly optimistic, and yet hard-working too. In Paris after World War Two, she took Cordon Bleu courses designed for professionals and peopled by men. She studied hard, tested and tested recipes, honed her skills, and many years later received great success. All this with the unfailing support of her charming husband, Paul, a US diplomat, played by Stanley Tucci. They seemed to have a rather wonderful marriage, appreciating each other's eccentricities. Indeed, this is one of the most wonderful depictions of a happy marriage I have seen on screen (and stands in contrast to the mawkishness of AWAY WE GO.)

I would have loved a proper biopic of Julia Child. But, the price we pay for this new-found interest in Julia Child is dealing with Julie Powell, the blogger. Now I know that there is no little criticism of Julie Powell on the blogosphere - that she exploited Julia Child for fame* - but that strikes me as partly envious of her ensuing book deal, and overlooking the naive and casual ways in which most of us start blogging. Okay, she didn't study like Julia, and so maybe didn't deserve her success as much. But she never claimed to be a master chef. No, my objection to Julie Powell is more simple. She takes time away from Julia Child. A mousy Brooklyn wife, who can't really cook and throws temper tantrums and moans about how poor she is really isn't any competition for Julia Child - a pioneer, self-taught expert and true-life eccentric.

The result is a movie that's still worth watching, purely for the Streep-Tucci segments, but which is boring during the Amy Adams segments. My only other criticism is that, unlike BIG NIGHT, this movie never had me drooling over the food, and surely that's a must?

*Judith Jones, senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf, and Child's editor and friend, shared Child's sentiments with Publisher's Weekly: "Julia said, 'I don't think she's a serious cook.' ... Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn't attractive, to me or Julia," Jones said. "She didn't want to endorse it. What came through on the blog was somebody who was doing it almost for the sake of a stunt."

JULIE & JULIA was released earlier this year in Canada, the USA, Germany and Austria. It is currently on release in the UK, France and Argentina. It is released next week in the Czech Republic and Estonia. It opens on October 2nd in Finland and Norway. It opens on October 9th in Australia, Bulgaria, Poland and Sweden. It opens on October 15th in Belgium, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, the Ukraine, Brazil, Denmark, Romania and Taiwan. It opens on October 22nd in Greece, New Zealand, Iceland and Italy. It opens on October 30th in Croatia and Mexico. It opens on November 6th in Spain, on November 19th in Portugal and on November 28th in Japan.

Overlooked DVD of the month - WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

Over a decade after making the political satire WAG THE DOG, veteran Hollywood director Barry Levinson made a Hollywood satire, WHAT JUST HAPPENED? It features Robert de Niro in the thinly fictionalised role of producer Art Linson, upon whose memoirs the film is based. De Niro's character is trying to get a British auteur (Michael Wincott) to recut his movie so that the studio (Catherine Keener) will give it a Cannes premier. Meanwhile, he's trying to get Bruce Willis to shave off his beard and look the part of a leading man in his forthcoming picture. And then there's the wife he wants to reconcile with (Robin Wright Penn) despite the fact that she's sleeping with the screenwriter (Stanley Tucci); the daughter (Kristen Stewart) who's going off the rails; and the Hollywood groupies who'll do anything, any time, for an interview.

I really liked this film for exactly the reason that all the other reviewers seem to have skewered it. They complain that it isn't caustic enough - that the stakes aren't high enough. All that's at stake, they say, is the continuing functioning of the well-oiled Hollywood money-making machine. By contrast, in Altman's THE PLAYER, or indeed in Levinson's previous political satire, it was a matter of life and death. But surely the point is EXACTLY that the studios, the starlets, the directors and producers are prostituting themselves for worthless commercial dross. In SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS the movies were worth something and that partially excused the shameless behaviour. But this movie is all the more tragic because it shows just how meaningless the whole sharade is.

More superficially, this flick is great because of all the scabrous one-liners. It's eminently quotable in the way that GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS is eminently quotable. It also features a great performance from Michael Wincott as the auteur - a guy who last got a role as memorable when he played Guy of Gisbourne in the Kevin Costner's ROBIN HOOD. You also get to see Catherine Keener in one her most subtle performances as the quietly threatening studio boss who can turn on a dime if she gets a faint whiff of box-office success.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED played Sundance 2008 and Cannes, out of competition. It opened in the UK and US in winter 2008. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX - less than the sum of its parts

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX is a rather wilted new children's animated feature based on the popular modern fairy-tale from writer Kate DiCamillo. It has been brought to the screen by directors Robert Stevenhagen and Sam Fell, who was behind the brilliantly funny and fast-paced FLUSHED AWAY. And the screen-writers worked on the similarly engaging ANGUS THONGS AND PERFECT SNOGGING. The voice cast is superb. The fairy-tale is narrated by Sigourney Weaver and our hero is voiced by Matthew Broderick. The Princess is none other than Emma "Hermione" Watson and in smaller roles we have character actors of such calibre as Frank Langella, Richard Jenkins, Robbie Coltrane and William H Macy. The animation is stunning - everything looks hand-drawn, like a medieval fable come to life. And the movie is filled with the best of intentions. The message is that honesty, sympathy, courage and forgiveness are the keys to a happy life.

Why then does this film fall so flat? Why then is it such a painfully slow watch? Maybe it's because there's simply too much story to get through? Maybe it's because it is too careful to be politically correct and spends too little time on good old-fashioned action-adventure? Maybe it's because it's basically a rather trivial story - as acknowledged in the narrator's epilogue. It's the story of a rat called Roscuro who falls into a Queen's soup by mistake, causing her to die of shock. The King, grieving, bans soups and rats and his kingdom falls into darkness. The Princess, longs for sunlight and in her anger upsets Roscuro who has come to apologise. She also upsets her servant Miggery. So Miggery and Roscuro allow the rats to capture the princess, though they regret it almost immediately. Which is when a courageous little mouse called Despereaux saves the day! Kind of. What really happens is that the Princess forgives Roscuro, Roscuro forgives the Princess, Miggery forgives the Princess and the people forgive the King. Phew! Everyone gets soup, the mice learn not be cowards, and Miggery finds her dad. Aah!

I think you get the drift of how hard it must have been for the directors to balance all this material, and how Despereaux sometimes gets lost in the muddle. It's a shame, but there it is. This movie is so jumbled that it's less than the sum of its parts.

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX is on release in the UK, US, Spain and Hong Kong. It goes on release in Hungary, Russia, Australia and Norway on Christmas Day. It opens in Chile, Croatia and Estonia on New Years Day. It opens in Brazil and Sweden on January 16th; in Turkey on January 23rd; in the Netherlands and Argentina on February 4th; in France on February 11th; in Belgium and Egypt on February 18th; in Denmark on March 6th; in Singapore and Finland on March 12th and in Germany on March 19th.

SWING VOTE - actually rather enjoyable!

I went to see SWING VOTE because my mum loves Kevin Costner and I love my mum. That age discrepancy leads you to the first stumbling block in the movie: how plausible is it that someone of Kevin Costner's age would have a 12 year old daughter? How much more fun would this movie have been if it had, for instance, starred Sam Rockwell? But this is the least of the film's problems in terms of willing suspension of disbelief: the conceit of SWING VOTE is that the whole US Presidential election is so finely balanced that it comes down to the vote of a single man and that, thanks to a malfunctioning electronic voting terminal, each party has ten days to win him over to their cause.

Despite these seemingly insurmountable odds, SWING VOTE made a really good attempt to make the electoral conceit seem believable, and the whole movie is so much fun that I simply went with it. Like a moody independent, I was won over by its earnest good intentions, its sheer audacity, and the fact that Kevin Costner and Madeline Carroll pull-off the central emotional relationship at the heart of the film. Kevin Costner absolutely surprised me with his humanity and ability to pull off physical comedy. He makes Bud Connell an everyman in the mould of Homer Simpson. Yes, he's a shirker, yes, he drinks too much beer, but at heart he wants to do right by his family and he's got a lot of common sense. Madeline Carroll is also really great as his daughter Molly. She plays one of those over-responsible kids of divorce, effectively parenting her own father. But she also acts like a kid and doesn't have the preternatural air of grim adulthood that I sometimes detect in Dakota Fanning.

Admittedly, this movie pulls its punches when it comes to satirising the political system. Kelsey Grammer plays a W-lite dumb Republican President and Dennis Hopper plays a candidate for "Change" Democrat. Their campaign managers are played by the ever-brilliant Stanley Tucci in Karl Rove mode and Nathan Lane respectively. But the jokes are as soft as the targets are obvious. This movie clearly doesn't want to upset anyone. Still, maybe this was the right way to go with what is, essentially, a sweet film about a father and daughter bonding. And on that level, this is a very satisfying film.

The SWING VOTE opened earlier this year in the US, Greece and Turkey. It is currently on release in Brazil and the UK. It opens in the Netherlands and Spain on October 30th.

SPACE CHIMPS - the great run of B-movies continues!

SPACE CHIMPS is another one those movies - like THE MUMMY 3 and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH - that is funnier and more enjoyable than I had any grounds to expect. It's an animated film that does exactly what it says on the tin. There are some smart-talkin' chimps and they get shot into space by NASA to see if there is life on a distant planet.

This isn't a movie working on the level of WALL-E. And, frankly, there's nothing special about the animation, and many of the characters are stock-types. But it is, nonetheless, an enjoyable film. The hero is a wise-crackin' cocky chimp called Ham III, who lives in the shadow of his grandfather, the original (and real life) space chimp Ham. He's always macking onto the uptight but pretty Lieutenant Luna. Naturally, they have one of those classic movie scenes where the laid-back cool guy gets the chick to loosen up through the power of....vodka? No, body-popping! The third member of the crew is a Buzz Lightyear-like chimp called Titan - earnest, brave but a bit stupid. The three chimps land on an alien planet where the mean Zartog has enslaved the other aliens thanks to his control of the original landing probe. The chimps have to go jump through some hoops (very Journey to the Center of the Earth/platform video-game) before freeing the aliens and returning home. On the way, they learn to clean up after man's metaphorical mess and the true nature of being an astronaut. The humans may use chimps as dumb animals but they can take control and become true space chimps.

Why did I like this movie so much? Maybe because it new its limitations, keeping to a brisk 70 minute run-time. Maybe because its colour palette is so bright and cheerful and because the aliens are do damn cute - especially a sweet little baby alien called Kilowatt. Mybe it's because the film-makers eschewed the usual cast of big-name actors and went for a cast of high-class TV comedians who know their craft? On the whole, I think I liked SPACE CHIMPS because it's genuinely funny and engaging. The jokes are clever - satirising the relationship between politicians and scientists and lovingly spoofing the sci-fi genre. But on a more basic level, who wasn't laughing when they saw three geeky scientists body-popping to Axel F?!

SPACE CHIMPS is on release in Hong Kong, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, the USA, Portugal, Kuwait, the UK and Israel. It opens later in August in Singapore, Croatia, Finland,Spain, Russia and Poland. It opens in September in Norway and Australia and in October in the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

THE HOAX - Richard Gere in outstanding performance shock!

Who knew?! Richard Gere throws off the facial ticks and smarm that make-up so many of his performances for a genuinely gripping turn as the real-life author and compulsive liar, Clifford Irving. Gere perfectly captures the genius of the failed author who displayed a gift for empathising with reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and sold a fake autobiography to McGraw-Hill publishing for a cool million bucks. The key is to make the character so charming that you almost want him to succeed but to under-cut his winning nature with a barely acknowledge manipulative streak. Nowhere is this more evident than in Irving's willingness to frame his best friend (played by the ever-brilliant Alfred Molina) as an adulterer.

There's lots to like here apart from Gere's performance. For a start, this really is an important and fascinating true-life story. Hughes knew Irving was faking his autobiography and anonymously sent Irving material incriminating Richard Nixon. What Irving didn't figure out till too late was that Hughes didn't want to bring Nixon down. Rather, he just wanted to scare Nixon into doing his bidding. And Nixon was scared. So scared that he allegedly ordered the Watergate break-in partly to snoop for advanced copies of the book!

Other great things about this pic: the production design and sound-track place us firmly in the late 60s/early 70s and the script-writers are good at making a contemporary audience understand the magnetic pull of the Hughes mythology. The film also boasts a strong supporting cast with Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis and Julie Delpy donning period costumes and Marcia Gay Harden struggling manfully under a bad wig. It all adds up to a high quality, intelligent movie that will appeal to those with an unhealthy interest in how establishment power structures (and bad marriages) really work.

THE HOAX was released earlier this year in the US, the Netherlands, Russia, Iceland, Belgium, France, Turkey, Israel and Portugal. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in Finland on August 24th and in Brazil and Norway on August 31st 2007.