TO LESLIE**

TO LESLIE is an underwritten hokey film about addiction and redemption that is almost insultingly simplistic about how easy it is to quit years of heavy drinking.  One can forgive its broad strokes as it's the debut feature of director Michael Morris and writer Ryan Binaco.  It has come to fame for the social media campaign run by feted actors to get its star, Andrea Riseborough, an Oscar nomination.  Her performance is committed and big - very big - in the films early scenes. Indeed it veers into that well-known Oscar-bait trope of getting fucked up and ugly for a nomination.  But Riseborough is a good actor, and while this isn't her best performance, I'm happy she's getting some overdue notice. But let's not get carried away about the merits of this film.

Riseborough stars in the titular role as a working class single mother who wins the lottery, blows the money, and ends up drunk and homeless.  In the film's opening scenes she reconnects with her now grown son (Owen Teague) and immediately betrays his trust by stealing money and getting high.  He kicks her out and she heads back to a home town full of people who either mock or detest her.  But she's held out a lifeline by Marc Maron and Andre Royo's motel bosses who give her a job as a maid. She cleans up and finds acceptance. The end.

There are better, more heartbreaking, and more complex depictions of addiction on screen, most notably by Andre Royo as Bubbles in TV's The Wire. Riseborough and Maron do the best they can with the script they're given.  Janney is too good for the kind of schmaltz we get in the final scene.  This is not a film of note. But it's great Riseborough is getting recognised.

TO LESLIE is rated R and has a running time of 119 minutes. It played by SXSW 2022 and was released last year in the USA.

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH***** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Closing Night Gala

Joel Coen's first non-Coen Brothers directorial film is a triumphantly bold, searing, fast-paced production of Shakespeare's brutal, nihilistic tragedy, MacBeth. 

This incredibly cine-literate production features stunning, atmospheric, chiaroscuro black and white photography from Bruno Delbonnel, that gives us hints of Bergman, Welles, Hitchcock and the German expressionists. We are at once in a particular place - medieval Scotland - but also in a slippery dreamworld of stripped back interiors, dream-like landscapes, and sinister shadows. Every scene is deliberately framed, composed, lit and blocked. Silhouette is important. Emergence from shadow is character. Costumes are pared down, graphic shapes and deep textures. 

Denzel Washington's MacBeth and Frances McDormand's Lady MacBeth are older than some stage and screen incarnations and this may add to their urgency to bring the three witches' prophesy into fruition. It also makes hollow King Duncan's promise to plant MacBeth and watch him grow as he already looks on the verge of retirement. Washington's hero is a straightforward military man who descends into arrogance and then fatalism in a worthy performance that didn't quite catch alight in the most memorable soliloquy "tomorrow, tomorrow...".  McDormand was far more powerful and memorable as his wife, more nakedly ambitious at first and then unravelled by her guilt. Her final anguished howls will not soon be forgotten. But for me it's Kathryn Hunter's three witches, AND, masterfully, the Old Man, who steal this film with a powerful physical and vocal performance that contorts and transforms.  She is everywhere and everything - man, woman, spirit, crow. In the smaller parts, I thought the RSC's Alex Hassell was superb as Ross, slippery in his loyalties, pivotal in hiding Fleance, and with a particularly excellent costume design. 

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH is rated R and has a running time of 105 minutes. It opened the New York Film festival and closed the London film festival. It will have a limited cinematic release in the US on 25th December and will be released on the internet on January 14th.

SEBERG - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Three

Director Benedict Andrews (UNA) returns to the festival with his biopic of the  Amercian actress who became a French New Wave icon - Jean Seberg.  The script from Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel focusses on the period in her life when Seberg was persecuted by the FBI for sleeping with and funding a "radical" black activist. What starts as a sting on peripheral people in the Black Panthers' funding circle becomes years of aggressive stalking, wire-tapping, defamation through gossip columnists - nothing less than an attempt to drive her crazy and out of Hollywood for daring to hold progressive views and sleeping with a black man.

The tragedy of Seberg's story is that it worked.  She became rightly paranoid, nervous, manic, was effectively blacklisted from Hollywood films, fleeing to Paris.  Her affair with activist Hakim Jamal was exposed - she was slandered as being pregnant with his child when she was really pregnant by a Mexican activist. The stress caused her to attempt suicide many times, and to the premature death of her baby daughter. As the film ends, Seberg has some kind of closure and reclamation. She meets one of the Feds who's been harassing her, and has the confirmation that she's not crazy. The film ends on a bravura held close-up of her reaction to this. But we know, and the end credits next to her face tell us, that she ultimately found no peace, dying in what we assume was a successful suicide attempt a handful of years later.

The resulting film has many merits. Kristen Stewart is absolutely sympathetic as Jean Seberg.  The physical resemblance isn't there, but the costume design is superb - and that's all beside the point. I absolutely believed in her as a young, good-hearted woman being driven to a breakdown by sinister forces. It's another in a line of really strong performances from her in small arthouse films that show she's really a superb actress. Last year's festival pick, LIZZIE, and PERSONAL SHOPPER before that, are cases in point.  It's gotten to the point where I now trust Kristen Stewart implicitly as a curator of my film experiences. If she goes for a project, I will assume it has an interesting subject, director, approach, and I will watch it. I can't say that about many actors.

I also liked Benedict Andrews direction and Rachel Morrison's cinematography - the film has a moody, sensual, sun kissed look, with beautiful Hollywood interiors belying the darkness at its core. And I really loved the score from Jed Zurzel (SLOW WEST) and especially the unusual song pics - not least a wonderfully melancholy cover of Tom Thumb's Blues by Nina Simone at the end.

My only real issue - but it was an issue - was with the script. I felt that the focus was too narrow. I wanted more context. Let's see the civil strife in America and why the Feds were so on edge.  Let's see the true contrast between Compton and Seberg's Hollywood.  Let's see the consequences of her affair - let's see how her colleagues react with prejudice to her sleeping with a black man - let's see her lose roles.  And let's understand more of her husband Romain Gary (Yvan Attal) - let's see why he decides to stand by her, really to the end, despite mutual infidelities and a divorce.  

Let me be clear - Stewart is amazing here, and focusing specifically on her mental state is almost enough to make a compelling film, but not quite - this film could've done so much more.

SEBERG has a running time of 98 minutes. The film played Venice Toronto and London 2019. It will be released in the USA on December 13th. It does not yet have a commercial release date in the UK.

ON THE BASIS OF SEX

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become something of a cult figure among today's "woke" youth. She is often portrayed as The Notorious RBG on t-shirts and memes.  Seen as a champion of progressive values, and most particularly women's rights, her newfound fans are putting faith in her longevity to prevent a conservative takeover of the court.  Her legacy, marriage and mind were all celebrated in the recent, superb, RBG (reviewed here) which featured many interviews with her family. At the time, I commented how refreshing and perhaps surprising it was to see RBG as a young woman, in contrast to her current familiar image. 

This new film, written by RBG's nephew, focuses on that young smart woman and how she established herself as one of the pre-eminent sexual discrimination lawyers.  It opens with Ruth as one of a handful of female students attending Harvard Law School, sees her forced to switch to Columbia to support her husband's career, rejected by all the major law firms, and almost as a second choice, become an academic.  Her lack of appellant experience becomes alarmingly clear when she takes on a landmark legal case that the ACLU hasn't the time for - defending a MAN who has suffered from discriminatory legislation.  She works in partnership with her tax lawyer husband Marty, preparing a brief and then arguing in front of the appeals court, leading to a classic final act stirring speech that wins the day. In a final, rather deliberately emotional scene, we see a young RBG climb the steps to of the Supreme Court to argue another landmark case, transitioning to the present day Justice.

As directed by veteran Mimi Leder, this movie has a charming and handsomely old fashioned feel of telling a character driven story patiently and building toward a set-piece finale. The script is just fine - and perhaps best in using Ruth's daughter as a provocation toward more strident and direct action. By contrast, the motivations of the dean of Harvard Law School who at once lobbied to admit women but then is seen as so sexist remain frustratingly opaque. Felicity Jones makes only a cursory attempt at RBG's accent and neither she nor Armie Hammer as Marty seem to age much, even as they acquire a teenage daughter.

And yet for all these faults, I still found this a fascinating and satisfying film, with enough provocative angry-making insults to our heroine, and a sense of purpose and triumph at the end.  It makes a nice pair with the aforementioned documentary - although if you only have time for one, I would still go for the doc, for its wider scope and greater insight.

ON THE BASIS OF SEX has a running time of 120 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film is on global release.

GET OUT

GET OUT is a confident, subversive and visually assured horror movie from debut feature director (and longtime stand-up comedian) Jordan Peele.  It tells the story of a young African American man called Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) whose girlfriend (Allison Williams - GIRLS) takes him home to meet her parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford) for the first time.  As with all the best horror, there's a deep and subversive commentary on social conditions here.  And in the case of GET OUT, Jordan Peele is trying to tell us that the most insidious form of racism is that is secretly practiced by liberal educated rich white people - the people who vote for Obama and donate to the ACLU but don't actually want their daughters to date black men.  The director also seems to be sending a message to his fellow African Americans - a message warning against complacency about race relations. And this message is embodied in Chris' hilarious best friend Rod, who warns him against going to his girlfriend's parents house in the woods early on, and is instrumental in helping Chris as her parents turn out to be quite literally using the silver spoon of privilege to subjugate him.

This tale of modern day racial slavery is, then, deeply profound and provocative, but this film is also hilarious and frightening by turns.  It's quite astounding to see a debut director handle the tonal shifts with such aplomb, not to mention the impressive production design of the oppressive house and his eye for framing a visually iconic shot. The cast all deserve praise, although it was particularly interesting to see Allison Williams subvert her GIRLS character's preppy self-absorption in this film. But the subversive nature of this film is many faceted. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the most hated of bureaucrats and petty power brokers - the TSA - turn out to be good guys here. 

Ultimately, GET OUT feels like exactly the right movie for our times - in which the happy surprise of Obama's election is over-turned by the surprise victory of Trump - and in the wake of the #blacklivesmatter movement.  It entertains us but also reflects the deep fractures in American society.  And this may well be why the film continues to do so well at the box office.  

GET OUT has a running time of 104 minutes and is rated R.  The movie played Sundance 2017 and opened earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Philippines, Greece, Singapore, Estonia, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Kuwait and France. It opens on April 7th in Indonesia, Lithuania and Norway; on April 20th in Sweden, Hungary, Malaysia and Turkey; on April 28th in Poland; on May 4th in France, Australia, Switzerland, Chile, Germany, Portugal and Finland; on May 11th in Russia; on May 18th in Hong Kong, Italy and Spain; and on June 15th in Brazil.

TRUMBO - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day 3

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

It isn't too hard to imagine a time when an over-weaning government declared an un-ending war against an abstract noun and used that war to invade its citizen's privacy and over-ride their constitutional protections.  But I suppose there is some savage comfort in knowing that there are no new challenges that haven't already been overcome.  And as the protagonist of this new movie tells us, there are no heroes or villains, just ordinary people victimised by the terrible choices they should never have been asked to make.

So let us turn to the particular. It's the late 1940s and America is in a Cold War with the Soviet Union.  It's government has decided to investigate communist party members at home, despite the fact that it is not illegal to be a member of the Communist party.  In Hollywood, a group of right wing fearful and powerful individuals - including Ronald Reagan and the influential gossip columnist Hedda Hopper - make it their business to expose the Communists and blackmail any studio who hires them with picket lines and protests.  They might act from a misplaced sense of patriotism but the tactics are dirty, and hint at the latent anti-semitism in the Hollywood system at the time. 

iPad Round-Up 2 - THE CONSIPIRATOR

Yet another thumpingly pedestrian issues-film from Robert Redford.  The movie takes the form of an historic court-room drama, with James McAvoy playing the lawyer defending Robin Wright's Mary Surrat of conspiracy to murder President Lincoln (she was Booth's landlady and her son has mysteriously fled.)  This being a Redford film, the politics are naively simple and oppositional: McAvoy's lawyer is the champion of all things good - liberty, the constitution and the right to a fair trial even in the wake of an appalling political crime.  Kevin Kline's war minister represents the forces of evil:  putting ends before means, willing to sacrifice right to expediency, with a contemporary relevance in that Surrat was denied a civilian trial before her peers, and tried under military law. 

The issues are fascinating, the casting top notch, Newton Thomas Sigel's cinematography is superb, and the dilemmas at the movie's heart are clearly highly relevant today.  The problem is that it feels like a college debate rather than a movie.  Movies must entertain. If they educate and provoke as well, then all to the good. But no-one ever learned anything while their eyes were rolling to the back of their head in boredom.  Castigat ridendo mores. Moliere knew this. Redford apparently does not  He needs to treat his subject matter with a little less respect and his audiences with a little more.  

THE CONSPIRATOR played Toronto 2010 and opened in summer 2011 in the USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, Ireland, the UK, Portugal, Australia, Turkey, Kuwait and Germany. It opened last month in Singapore. It goes on release in Belgium on November 16th and in Spain on December 2nd. It is available to rent and own.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 3 - EVERYTHING MUST GO

You lose your job. You come home. Your wife has locked you out of your house, left your belongings on the front lawn and asked for a divorce. What do you do? If you're Nick Halsey, you drink beer, you order take-out, you shower with a hose and start a yard sale, largely to pass the time. You strike up a friendship with the nice pregnant lady across the street, you ask your neighbours to throw you some electricity, and you play ball with a young bored kid. Maybe you even start to think about your life - about the alcoholism that has landed you in this situation - and try to reconnect with an old high school friend. But there are no easy answers.

It's a great movie set-up, and Dan Rush's debut feature, based on a short story by Raymond Carver, is a quiet, sympathetic little movie. Will Ferrell, in the lead role, gives a muted, restrained performance that is convincing and charming. He is ably supported by Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern and, in particular C J Wallace as the little kid. I like that Rush/Carver give the alcoholic no easy wins - this isn't that kind of film. But, still, this movie has a sort of Hollywood sheen to it - a warm glow - that was entirely subverted in another low-key film - CYRUS. During the movie, I really did care about what happened to the lead character. But once the lights came up, it was utterly forgettable. There wasn't enough bite to it - or enough content to sustain the run-time. Apparently this movie started off as a short-film, and I couldn't help but wonder if that was the best format for this novella turned movie.

EVERYTHING MUST GO played Toronto and London 2010. It doesn't yet have a commercial release date.

London Film Fest Day 2 - THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS - A Funny Idea In Search Of A Plot

From the producer of GOOD NIGHT, GOOD LUCK and the writer of SIXTY SIX, comes a directorial debut that is uneven, misguided and ultimately unengaging, despite occasionally very funny scenes indeed.

The film is about as convincing as Ewan MacGregor's dodgy American accent. He stars as a naive young journalist who goes to Iraq when his wife dumps him. He takes up with a strange man called Lyn (George Clooney in a "trying-to-be-goofy" moustache). Lyn used to be part of a secret US military programme that was training soldiers to use paranormal powers (mind-bending) and so become "Jedi". The title of the film comes from an experiment whereby the Jedi soldiers would try to kill a goat by staring at it. As the Jedi and his acolyte cross Iraq looking for the US Army psych-op/PR-op base, the movie periodically flashes back to the story of how this bunch of kooks got government funding and were ultimately taken down by a cynical soldier jealous of Lyn's power (Kevin Spacey.)

Now, given the sheer ridiculousness of the premise, we could have had a seriously wacky, funny movie. People might reference the Coen Brothers because of Clooney, but I could imagine Guy Ritchie in the old LOCK-STOCK days handling the voice-over and the freeze frames brilliantly. Sadly, director Grant Heslov has neither the flair nor the confidence to pull off the kind of bravado-film making needed to sell such a ludicrous (even if true) concept.

As for the modern day footage in Iraq, as I said before, Ewan MacGregor is mis-cast, while Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges are type-cast as the Antagonist and The Dude respectively. The plot seems to meander aimlessly, just like their journey in the desert. Worse still, when Heslov does try to show something serious - something that's meant to shock - like an IED explosion or incarcerated, tortured Iraqis - the scene is trivialised by the surrounding ludicrous material.

The upshot is that this is a movie that works neither as a comedy nor as a provocation about the war in Iraq.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS played Venice and Toronto 2009. It will be released on November 6th in the USA: November 19th in the Netherlands; December 4th in the UK; December 24th in Slovenia; January 2010 in Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway; February 2010 in Turkey; and in March 2010 in Germany.

Kevin Smith retrospective - JERSEY GIRL (2004) - in which Kevin Smith proves he can direct a movie as banal as any mainstream rom-com offering

JERSEY GIRL is a travesty - a movie in which hard-edged indie film-maker Kevin Smith jumps the shark with a movie as schmaltzy, formulaic and manipulative as the worst of the romantic-comedy genre. And no, the fact that his hero and heroine meet-cute over video-porn does not mitigate the BOMF trite denouement in which the hero has to choose between a big-shot job in New York and attending his daughter's school play. Liv Tyler's soft-spoken dead-pan certainly suits the merciful, porn-researching new girlfriend but Ben Affleck is typically wooden as the newly widowed single dad. Raquel Castro is fine as the kid, and George Carlin is heavily sanitised as her grandfather in this mainstream release. The only good thing about this movie, and I doubt I'm the first to say it, is that Jennifer Lopez' character dies in the first fifteen minutes.

JERSEY GIRL was released in and is available on DVD.