OPERATION MINCEMEAT***

 

In 1943 the Allies were desperate to land troops in mainland Europe and open up a second front against the Axis powers, and the most obvious candidate was an amphibious landing in Sicily. The problem is that this was equally obvious to the enemy.  So, British counter-intelligence cooked up a cockamamie scheme to convince Hitler that the invasion would actually take place in Greece. The schemers did this by taking a dead Welsh man and floating him into harbour in Spain, disguised as a drowned Royal Marine Officer complete with locked attache case containing the fake plans. Why Spain? Because it was a technically neutral country filled with agents, double agents and triple agents, where the British felt they could map out the path of the fake intel all the way from Spanish fisherman to Hitler himself.  This operation was dubbed Mincemeat, and in Ben Macintyre's wildly popular non-fiction account of the ruse, he argued that it was the most successful intelligence operation in history. Who can tell? We can for sure say that by allowing the Allies to land on a less well defended beach, Mincemeat saved Allied lives.

This new film adaptation of the story is compelling when it sticks to the espionage plot.  John Madden (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) does a good job of telling a complicated story and while it does rather drip with British heritage derring do, it's not as jingoistic as it might have been.  Madden and screenwriter Michelle Ashford manage to add shades of nuance with the casting of Mark Gatiss as the potentially treasonous brother of the naval officer in charge of the deception (played by Colin Firth).  I wish they had explored this subplot further. Rather, they waste their time adding a fictional romantic triangle between Montagu - his nerdy colleague Cholmondely (Matthew MacFadyen - SUCCESSION) and their subordinate Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald - BOARDWALK EMPIRE).  I felt this love story was rather tacked on and artificial and simply distracted from the real meat of the story.  It was actually far more interesting to see what was happening in neutral but spy-ridden Spain and I was pleasantly surprised to see the rather frank depiction of how the British attache (Nicholas Rowe) was pleasuring his former handler into taking the bait. 

In the supporting cast I thought Jason Isaacs rather wasted in the role of the British military commander unimpressed by the Mincemeat plan. By contrast Johnny Flynn (EMMA) was having great fun as a young pre-James Bond Ian Fleming. But Penelope Wilton (DOWNTON ABBEY) was the real moral heart of the film as the secretary of the espionage unit.  The sight of her, on the eve of the Sicily landing, praying fervently in the office that the Germans had taken the bait, was genuinely moving and brought home the true stakes of the deception.

OPERATION MINCEMAT has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is now on release in cinemas and on streaming services.

1917

World War One films are typically set in the muddy, fetid horror of the trenches - a dark and dank world of rat-infested boredom with the occasional "relief" of going over the top into barbed wire, decomposing horses and machine-gun fire. The typical theme is one of madness - both personal and of the entire enterprise.  And the style is static.  The war doesn't move.  In the words of the inimitable Blackadder:  "Field Marshal Haig is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin."  Films of this type reach their apotheosis in JOURNEY'S END.

The innovation of Sam Mendes' new film is to set it in the final phase of the war, when the German's had retreated back to the Hindenburg Line, leaving miles of French countryside, previously so viciously fought over, empty. Of course, the Line was itself heavily fortified, and this sets up the plot of 1917.  Two young soldiers are selected by a general (Colin Firth) to get an urgent message to the new front line. The next morning, British forces will launch an offensive that will be a massacre: their commanders don't know about the fortifications. So these two lads have to cross No Man's Land, pass through the old German trench, get to a now destroyed French town, and down to the woods to the new Line.  

What this plot does is give us high stakes and fixed timeline, as well as - crucially - a dynamic style.  The entire film is a two hour journey against the clock, largely on foot.  And the emotional stakes are made even higher because of the boys, so carefully selected for the trip, has to save his own beloved elder brother, who is part of the new attack.  To give the movie an immersive and intensive feel, the director has worked with his DP, Roger Deakins (COEN BROS PASSIM) to make us feel as though we are with the boys every step of the way.   We never move away from their gaze - we experience the film as they experience the journey - in a simulated single-take movie. The result is absolutely impressive and emotionally involving.  But it doesn't feel like cinema in a way - more like playing Red Dead Redemption or Call of Duty, World War One edition.  That's fine - it just goes to show how influential video game style is in modern cinema.

There's much to love in Sam Mendes script (his first). By taking us over No Man's Land, and then into the French countryside behind it, he shows us the contrast between the rural paradise before the war and the bombed out nightmare after it.  He takes care to show us the better quality of the German trenches compared to the British ones.  And he doesn't shy away from showing us the devastation of the German razed earth policy - cities destroyed, livestock shot, a land made unfit for humans. We also see the change in landscape, from the mud of the old line to the chalk of the new line. It makes for an impressive visual contrast. 

His casting is also superb. Mendes even took care over the extras to show us that the war took really young men and made them weary and traumatised.  we see it in the faces of the men - in particular at a choral scene in a wood that's deeply moving. In the speaking roles there are some misfires.  Colin Firth is a bit pastiche as the noble, stiff-upper-lip British general who sets the film in motion, and Mark Strong's commander is similarly one-note - compassionate weariness. But I really loved Andrew Scott (FLEABAG) ias a cynical but actually helpful front-line officer. And the way in which Mendes overturns our view of Benedict Cumberbatch's front line commander in a very brief cameo is masterful. We start off thinking he's a gung-ho martial nut job but he's humanised very quickly.  However, it's GAME OF THRONES' Richard Madden who gets the best of the cameos - with a deeply moving performance all the more affecting because of the character's need not to fall apart. This is quite probably his best acting performance to date.  In the lead roles, I rather like GAME OF THRONES' Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman) as the soldier trying to save his big brother, even if his accent does rather veer from cockney to posh and back again. It's George Mackay as his companion who really steals the show and epitomises that combination of youth and weariness I spoke of earlier. 

The result is a film that's technically impressive and deeply moving and largely well written and acted. It is, however, not without its flaws. First, there's a mid-film scene involving milk that jumps the shark in terms of schmaltz for me.  Second, there's a moment involving the Mark Strong character that had me almost yelling at the screen as to why he didn't do more practically to help.  And finally, while Mendes is to be applauded for showing the contribution of Imperial troops to the Western Front war effort (in sharp contrast to Nolan's DUNKIRK) he seems quite uninterested in showing the Germans as anything other than barbaric shits.  

1917 is rated R and has a running time and has a running time of 119 minutes. The film is on global release.

TOLKIEN

As both a huge fan of test match cricket and Tolkien, it was a rare week to watch both THE EDGE and this biopic.  If the former was frustratingly tame, the latter didn't disappoint. In fact, it rather impressed as a study of a young smart, kind boy, orphaned at an early age, shamed into being the scholarship boy at an academically strong school, finding lifelong friends along the way, and ultimately both loves of his life - philology and his wife. We meet young Tolkien as an orphan, at a smart school in Birmingham, running with a super smart group of boys who must restrict their fantasy life of writing poetry or imagining worlds to their second life - the first aim is a profession.  The film beautifully captures the delicate class balancing act of the scholarship boy, living in a boarding house, courting the lodger's daughter.  He seems to take intellectual conversation for granted, casually cutting her off from discussion of Wagner when she desperately needs the outlet. We are subtly aware that the options for her - a similarly bright and talented woman - are slight because of her class and sex. As the boys move to university - Tolkien to Oxford - we discover that he nearly flunked out but was rescued by a philology don who allowed him to transfer courses of study.  I hadn't realised that this was the case, but thank goodness! But all too soon, war breaks out and the friendships of youth are tragically curtailed - whether by death or the traumas that estrange because they are unutterable.

All of this is sensitively and handsomely told, with Nicholas Hoult capturing both Tolkien's earnestness and his sense of child-like fun.  Lily Collins is superb in her few pivotal scenes, and together, this as her performance in LES MISERABLES show that she has real talent when challenged with good material. But best of all for the fans, we see everything that makes Lord of the Rings so unusual in fantasy literature. For here is an author who has actually fought in battle - knows the terror and fear of the jobbing ordinary soldier - the importance of camaraderie - and can describe the fear on the eve of battle.  It's not for nothing that Aragorn tells his men, scared at venturing into Mordor for the final battle, that there is no shame in turning back, that he understands their concern.  It's not for nothing that Frodo never recovers from his injuries - mental or physical - that his fellow friends always feel separate and unappreciated. So much of fantasy literature focuses on great heroes and high colours and banners. Tolkien focuses on the ordinary man, and this film shows why. 

I also enjoyed the film for the nostalgia it created in me. I suppose it's somewhat shocking to see how little things change, but I was also a scholarship girl at a private school, painfully aware of class privilege and the need to maintain one's financial aid.  I sat the same exams as Tolkien to get into Oxford and went to the college next door to his. The nervousness around college exams, the getting into trouble for seemingly petty violations, the mentoring by inspiring, exacting but eccentric dons - it all rang so true. And so thankfully did the establishment of lifelong friendships. It truly is a place out of time. 

TOLKIEN has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated PG-13.  It is available to rent and own. 

VICTORIA & ABDUL

Lavish costumes and location photography cannot help this thinly plotted, dull film with its anachronistic politics.  It takes what is a genuinely fascinating late life obsession of Queen Victoria with a handsome young Indian clerk and drains it of its spikiness and shoe-horns it into politically correct nonsense.  While still apparently in mourning for her long-dead husband Albert, Victoria had already conducted a scandalous romance with her Scottish servant Mr Brown (also depicted on film with Judi Dench as the Queen.) In her final decade, she took fancy (literally, creepily) to a young muslim Urdu-speaking Indian.  The spikiness of the relationship comes from its objectification of the young male, but also the fact that she used him to learn about the culture of her dominion which she had never visited. In reality, he was the fawning man we see on screen, but also potentially a chancer (as are all courtiers more or less). His brother in law was selling Victoria's jewels in London and he was using her to advance the cause of his father's pension.  Did Abdul really believe in deference and service or was he on the make?   Stephen Frears banal film never bothers asking the tough questions - about Victoria's frustrated sexuality and exploitation of Abdul - about Abdul's motivations - about the dangerous situation in India with the rise of the independence movement, and Abdul's potential role in gaining favour for the Muslim League.  It's only interested in an anachronistic tale of love across the class, race and religious divide.   Judi Dench's Victoria is thus a radically anti-racist Queen with an enquiring mind, embattled by her small-minded Royal Household, as embodied in her pantomime-villain son, Bertie (Eddie Izzard).  The whole thing is slow-moving, and so uncurious about motives as to be a profoundly boring watch.

VICTORIA & ABDUL has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Venice and Toronto and opened in September 2017. 

SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY

One of the most wonderful experiences of attending the San Francisco film festival was watching this fascinating film about film music in one of the theatres at the Dolby Laboratories - experiencing a visual and audio quality rarely seen in a commercial cinema. To be sure, this documentary didn't really warrant a screen that would've done a big budget action movie justice, but the sound quality was much desired.  Over 90 minutes, the film-makers give us an amazing insight into the history and current state of composing for film, including a quite dazzling access to composers including the pre-eminent Hans Zimmer.

The impression one gets is that movie composition has changed from writing and conducting a traditional orchestral score to something more akin to a polymath enterprise - creative originality; running a vast team of people; and enough IT knowledge to produce the music.  It's the middle part of that that really surprised me - these composers are essentially front-men for a team that includes people who will supplement their creative work, produce scores, and sometimes conduct so that they can be in the mixing booth ensuring the overall mix of the work produced.  And now they are supplemented by a new breed of conventional rock star turned composer bringing a new feel to the scores they create.

The last woman in England to watch SPECTRE, watches SPECTRE

Despite my avatar name, I actually don't like Bond. His glib superficial sado-masochistic fantasy world of spying struck me as thin soup compared to the morally murky but properly Romantic world of John le Carre. Insofar as I liked Bond, it was to appreciate the role that escapism and big brand consumerism has in all of our lives. In other words, if I must have Bond, let it be Bond - kiss kiss, bang bang - Roger Moore's arched eyebrow - absurd gadgets. And so I have struggled with Daniel Craig's Bond films, filled as they are with existential angst. They're Bond trying to be Bourne, lacking in self-confidence, desperate to show that they KNOW the very concept of Bond is absurd in our post-millennial world. Nowhere is this more obvious, nor as grating, as in SPECTRE.

BRIDGE OF SPIES

I begin with the proviso that I am not a fan of Steven Spielberg's films. Despite the high quality photography and acting, I always feel emotionally manipulated. Worse still, in his latter movies I have begun to feel bored as he constantly reworks the same themes - the search for a father figure, the need for a perfect hero, the idea that goodness must always win, even if the overarching time and tenor is bad.  He seemed to me to create movies that were high gloss schmaltz.  

Everything changes with BRIDGE OF SPIES, and I suspect that this has something profoundly to do with the fact that it was written by the Coen Brothers and stars Mark Rylance in a character of deeply ambivalent motives. The result is a film with a mordant wit, moral ambiguity, and one of the most convincing depictions of post-war Berlin that I have seen on screen. It is a movie of intelligence and nuance. Indeed, apart from the last five minutes where the Spielbergian schmaltz seeps back in, it's damn near perfect.

HE NAMED ME MALALA

Malala Yousafzai is familiar to us all as the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban on a schoolbus in 2012 for defying a ban on girl's education.  Today she is in exile with her immediate family, living in England as a schoolgirl, but also a globetrotting Nobel Prize winning campaigner for a woman's right to education.   

This is the story retold in David Guggenheim's documentary. It begins with some candid footage of the Yousafzai family trying to create a new life in England.  Malala and her two brothers are wonderfully frank and full of energy and on the surface it all seems remarkably buoyant. But we get a few glimpses of the reality of life in exile in a vastly different culture. Malala misses her home and friends and finds it odd to be schoolfriends with girls who are dating and wear school skirts. Her mother, who speaks very little English, is lonely and has to almost rebegin an education she never had. Malala also struggles to combine the normal stresses of schoolwork with the campaigning work that she is evidently utterly committed to - not to mention exceptionally good at.

The story of her present day life is interwoven with the real meat of the film.  Through archive footage, old photos and beautiful pastel coloured animation from Jason Carpenter and Irene Kotlarz we see village life in the Swat valley recreated.  We see that Malala's father and grandfather were campaigners and that she was raised in her father's school.  When the Taliban come to town, at first they are received warmly. But then comes the burning of televisions and CDs and the ban on women's education.  Her father campaigns and she defies the ban and in so doing becomes a target for retribution.  When she's shot (and two of her schoolfriends caught in the fire) her father even asks himself is she'll resent him for putting her in the path of fire. It's something David Guggenheim asks her about at the end of the film.  Malala takes ownership of her choice to defy the ban, and of course one senses her profound personal courage. Nonetheless, as the title of this documentary and the focus of its attention show, her father is an equally inspiring figure and undoubtedly deeply influential on his daughter.

The resulting film is interesting and well put together and benefits greatly from the exuberance of the Yousafzai family. But I do rather regret David Guggenheim not probing deeper into the story of difficult exile. It's starts to be really insightful as certain conversations are picked up, but they're never pursued satisfactorily. 

HE NAMED ME MALALA has a running time of 86 minutes and is rated PG-13.  The movie played Telluride, Toronto and London 2015. It was released earlier this month in the USA and Canada. It will go on release later this month in Germany, Chile and Denmark.  It will be released in November in Italy, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and Ireland, Chile, Brazil, Sweden and Finland. It goes on release in December in Argentina, Japan and Norway and on January 27th in France.

THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

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THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is the inevitable sequel to the surprisingly popular and lucrative British romantic comedy set in a crumbling Indian hotel filled with English residents.  Some had come for a holiday - some because they could make their pensions stretch further.  But all were on an exploration of what it meant to be in love at an old age - what does it mean when your kids leave home and you realise you have nothing in common with your partner? How does it feel when you find yourself redundant from your children's lives?  Is it possible to have a second chance at love or a second career in your sixties and seventies?

THE JUDGE

So I suppose when you earn shedloads of cash for a major studio as Iron Man, you get to create whichever vanity project you like.  And for Robert Downey Junior, it's this polished but ultimately overlong and unexciting thriller, THE JUDGE.  The self-consciously quality product start RDJ as a flash lawyer in a mid-life crisis who returns to his home town, where his cranky dad, the titular judge, is suspected for a hit-and-run murder. Naturally, the super-smart son, John Grisham-like in his smarmy brilliance, reconnects with his estranged father through the medium of sun-dappled flashbacks with trite piano music. There are two points when I thought the movie would pick up its pace and intensity. The first is when Grace Zabriskie, famous to Lynch fans as the hysterical mother of Laura Palmer, turns up as the enraged mother of the victim. At the point, the movie had the chance to do something new and off the charts, but no. The second point was when Billy Bob Thornton turned up as the prosecutor.  But not this was just high polish high profile stunt casting, and BBT just phoned his performance in.  So here's where the movie jumps the shark. About an hour in, the mid-life crisis lawyer meets his old flame, the wonderful Vera Farming, and she turns out to be the mum of the teenage waitress (Leighton Meester) he just banged.  It's not just that this is a cheesy and skeezy plot line but that it shows a complete lack of directorial judgment on the part of David Dobkin (THE WEDDING CRASHERS). Why try so hard to make a sleek, serious courtroom drama and then just kill its tone with a cheap and awkward gag?  The only ONLY time I've ever seen a successful and funny courtroom drama was MY COUSIN VINNY and this ain't that.

THE JUDGE has a running time of 141 minutes and is rated R.  The film is on global release.

SAVING MR BANKS - LFF 2013 - Closing Night Gala

SAVING MR BANKS is an emotional drama about the making of the Disney musical comedy, MARY POPPINS.  Specifically it's about the relationship between the apparently frosty British author P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson) and the jovial studio boss, Walt Disney (Tom Hanks). The reductive psychology of the movie is that Mrs Travers is stubbornly opposed to anyone trivialising her book with animation or songs because it is so intrinsically linked to her childhood trauma.  In flashbacks, we see her a small girl, living in a small Australian town, doting on her charming father (Colin Farrell) and drowning in guilt that she couldn't save him from his alcoholism.  As we move back and forth between her Australian childhood and 1960s Hollywood, we know only too well that the movie WILL be made, and it will contain dancing penguins, and songs, and Dick van Dyke with that ghastly attempt at a cockney accent.  And this takes much of the suspense out of the movie - it's only a matter of time before Travers capitulates to Disney's oleaginous charms and has a final act moment of catharsis at the première. 

The movie is simplistic and problematic. At times it reads like propaganda for Disney - who comes across as a thoroughly decent, fun-loving papa-bear in line with his public persona.  The psychology is reductive.  And there's way too much time spent watching Emma Thompson look stern and disapproving.  But in flashes - in moments - it really works. There's something wonderful and close to the bone in Colin Farrell's portrayal of a drunk but loving father.  There's a magisterial beauty to a pivotal scene on a lake at night.  And the Aussie landscape in general is just stunningly filmed, so kudos to the cinematographer John Schwartzman (THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN).  I also loved Paul Giamatti as Travers' Hollywood chauffeur. It's a relationship designed to be emotionally manipulative by the writers (Sue Smith and Kelly Marcel of the troubled FIFTY SHADES OF GREY) - the emotionally closed-off writer who forms an unlikely friendship with the warm-hearted writer - but it's hard to resist the genuine chemistry and high quality acting.  But overall, one can't help but feel that this movie would be a whole lot better if it were half an hour shorter, or had had the courage to be as forensic about Disney as it was about Travers. 

SAVING MR BANKS has a running time of 125 minutes and is rated PG-13.

SAVING MR BANKS played London 2013 and is released in the UK on November 29th, in the USA on December 13th, in Turkey on December 20th, in Australia on December 26th, in Hong Kong, Brazil and Spain on January 10th, in Argentina on January 23rd, in Germany on January 30th, in Denmark, Italy and Sweden on February 21st, and in France and Singapore on February 26th. 

SIDE EFFECTS

SIDE EFFECTS reads as one half New York Review of Books essay on the insidious pharmaceuticals industry and one half John Grisham knock-off.  Both halves sit uneasily alongside each other, and while well-enough done, never quite cohere. Moreover, they aren't satisfying in the conventional sense.

To my mind, the first half of the film is by far the strongest. The NYRB lecture on the complicity of Wall Street, psychiatrists and Big Pharma is elegant and concise. What's unnverving for a British audience, where medications is, if perhaps less common, certainly less overt, is how little surprise everyone evinces when the protagonist, Emily (Rooney Mara) tries to commit suicide.  As she returns to work and socialising with her ex-convict financier husband (Channing Tatum), everyone she comes into contact with has their own use of anti-depressants to relate. There is no sense of enquiry. It's taken for granted that everyone has periods where they need medication - whether for depression or just a sharpener before a job interview.  Of course, the first half of the film isn't really a film in a conventional sense. There's no sense of drama  - no tension.  Emily's family and friends are so understanding that it turns into a pharma-procedural - we are literally just being educated on what it is to be within modern psychiatry. 

The second half of the film is far less satisfying. It plays as a kind of sub John Grisham thriller in which a wronged man is reduced to nothing and then, with nothing but self-belief and his own intelligence, double-crosses all those who did him wrong.  Jude Law, as Emily's pyschiatrist Dr Banks,  is thus the avatar of Michael Douglas, using and abusing his ability to institutionalise and medicate his opponent. This part of the film works as a finely tuned clockwork toy.  You know precisely what the outcome is - it follows its genre conventions precisely.  There's no tension - no surprise.  I found myself marvelling at the interior design of Jude Law's apartment and the shockingly trashy ombre hair colour on Rooney Mara's hair extensions. 

So here's the deal, you can watch SIDE EFFECTS and have an okay time learning about stuff you already know and watching a thriller where every plot twist is expected. The performances are good enough, and the soundtrack by Thomas Newman is particularly good.  But let's not kid ourselves that this is a work of art.

SIDE EFFECTS has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

SIDE EFFECTS was released earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Romania, Australia, Russia, the Ukraine and Lithuania. It is currently on release in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and the UK. It opens next weekend in the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Kuwait and the Netherlands; on March 21st in Argentina, Singapore and Mexico; on March 28th in Chile, Estonia and Latvia; on April 3rd in France; on April 10th in Belgium; on April 19th in Poland and Sweden; on April 25th in Germany; on May 2nd in Denmark; on May 9th in New Zealand and on May 31st in Brazil.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is a movie of questionable taste and worse political judgement.  It's a testament to its charming cast that it manages to slip down rather easily, all the same. 

The basic concept is that a bunch of middle-class English pensioners move to a ramshackle Rajasthani hotel and experience epiphanies. The recent widow (Judi Dench) learns independence; the retired civil servant (Bill Nighy) and his wife (Penelope Wilton) learn that they do not love or even like each other; the two desperate singles (Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup) learn that are still sexually attractive; the racist (Maggie Smith) learns tolerance; and the gay high court judge (Tom Wilkinson) finds peace. 

The problem with the film is the typical problem that modern England has in viewing its colonial heritage. On the one hand, it simply has to acknowledge the dirt, disease, discrimination and general chaos of modern India. On the other, it is faintly embarrassed of this disapproval given its own guilt regarding the Raj, and still has a deep-seated love of the country whose culture, language and cooking have so influenced the home nations. The result is a depiction of India that is at once patronising and awe-struck.  India is the country of spiritual revelation and ancient wisdom.  But it is also depicted as a country of almost child-like innocents who believe in happy endings, ideally set to a musical number.  This absurd juxtaposition is best summed up in the movie SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - marketed as a "feelgood movie" despite scenes of child beggars deliberately blinded, capped off with the obligatory song-and-dance number straight after a scene where the hero's brother has shot himself.  

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL isn't quite as crass as SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. And indeed, in one storyline, we see a reconciliation between ruler and ruled played out as a reconciliation between two homosexual lovers - one a colonial, one an Indian. That at least shows some self-awareness on the part of the film-makers, although it falls far short of the kind of self-examination seen in the novels of E.M.Forster.  But at the end of the day, this is just another movie in which India is a colourful, exoticised backdrop against which pampered Westerners can gain "self-knowledge".  There's no real concern with what life there is really like. And the self-knowledge is easily gained - in the case of Maggie Smith's character, the personality alteration so swift as to beggar belief. 

Still, as I said, the movie is a surprisingly pleasant watch, mainly because it's cast is top-notch and charming, partly because where the movie is on "home soil" it is actually quite insightful.  In other words, when focusing on the disappointments of old age, the movie actually has interesting things to say about the way in which the middle classes are seeing their pension income eroded - their healthcare costs increase - the shock to discover the welfare state and corporate pension simply aren't enough - the indignity of realising one's sex life might be over - the desperation of knowing that the chances to turn one's life around are limited, if they exist at all.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on March 15th in Germany; on March 22nd in Australia; Norway, the Netherlands,  New Zealand, Russia, Estonia, Finland, Spain and Sweden; on March 28th in Belgium; on March 20th in Italy and Lithuania; on April 12th in Portugal; on May 4th in India and the USA; on May 9th in France; on May 11th in Brazil; on May 17th in Hong Kong and Singapore; and on May 24th in Argentina.

THE HELP - the Driving Miss Daisy de nos jours

Tate Taylor, director of the anonymous 2008 comedy PRETTY UGLY PEOPLE, somehow managed to get the studios to allow to write and direct THE HELP, a soupy drama based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Not having read Stockett's novel chronicling the travails in 1960s racist Mississippi, I don't know whether the emotional manipulation and superficial politics come from her of from the director.  Either way, the resulting movie looks handsome, and made me shed a tear in the final reel, but has all the genuine engagement with the issues of DRIVING MISS DAISY.  It's a bland feelgood movie about a topic that should make us angry and agitated.  It's a movie in which the main African American character's son is lynched and yet we come out feeling warm and fluffy.  Double plus not good.

The film makes the mistake of telling the stories of these African-American maids through the lens of a perky white wannabe journalist - Skeeter (Emma Stone) - a move that immediately tells us we're in a world where a harsh tale has to be made palatable for a mainstream audience.  Ironic, also, in a movie that makes such a big deal about going right to the source.  Skeeter serves as the vessel through which the maids will dish the dirt and get their story published.  The movie is scrupulous in telling us that Skeeter is sharing the royalties with her informants - but while she gets a cool job in New York out of it - they are at risk of being sacked, imprisoned or lynched. The risks and rewards are clearly completely asymmetric, but the film doesn't embrace and mine that fact - it would mess up the fluffy finale.

Worse still, there is no subtlety in the characterisation - no shades of grey. You're either a good-hearted liberal white (Skeeter, her shamed and reformed mother, Jessica Chastain's character Celia), or a nasty racist white (Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly and her acolytes).  And as for the African-American women they are largely painted in tones of full-on heroism, with even the thief seen as a martyr to a mean mistress.   As for the subject matter, awful, horrible petty racism is seen on screen, but racial violence is referred to rather than shown.  Ditto the subject matter of domestic abuse.  And I couldn't help feeling insulted that the subject of vengeance against racism was reduced to a scatological joke. 

All this isn't to say that the production isn't handsome - with lush on location lensing from DP Stephen Goldblatt (JULIE & JULIA) and wonderful period costumes.  And the female cast is good quality and does the best with the narrowly written characters they are given.  In particular, it was a joy to finally see Jessica Chastain able to round out a character - rather than just being a virtuous icon, as in THE TREE OF LIFE and CORIOLANUS.  

But this movie, so hyped, so likely to win awards, is not a good movie. It's politics are dicey - it's reluctance to truly grasp the profundity of what it's tackling frustrating - it's emotional manipulation dishonest.  I have no time for it.  

THE HELP was released in the autumn in the US, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and Sweden. It was released in October in Portugal, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Singapore, France, Ireland, the UK and Spain. It was released in November in Spain, Hungary, Poland, Malta, Estonia, Denmark, Greece, Kuwait and India.  It opens on December 8th in Germany; on December 28th in Belgium; on Dcember 29th in the Netherlands; on January 20th in Italy; on February 3rd in Bulgaria and on February 6th in Brazil.  THE HELP is likely to be feted during awards season judging by the studio campaign and early indications from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Hollywood Film Festival.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is a slick sci-fi thriller based on a story by Philip K Dick and adapted and directed by George Nolfi, the scrennwriter behind THE  BOURNE ULTIMATUM. Photographed by John Toll (THE THIN RED LINE, VANILLA SKY) to depict contemporary New York as adjusted to be slightly shiner and sharper than it really is, the movie starts Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as a politician and dancer, for whom The Adjustment Bureau has bigger plans than to "just" fall in love and be content.

I loved the look of the film, and I found the chemistry between Damon and Blunt convincing. I even found the idea of Damon as a young, charismatic politician credible.  But I hated pretty much everything else about the film.  Anthony Mackie's inert performance as the Adjuster with a heart was unconvincing, and the fact that these angels/aliens? wander round Manhattan in Mad Men style suits and hats just seemed anachronistic and laughably obvious. I also had a problem with the central premise that these Adjusters have allowed us to have free will on small things, like which colour tie to wear, but not on big things, like who to fall in love with. I mean, haven't we all been raised to believe in the Butterfly Effect - that everything matters? Surely, when it comes to free will versus determinism you can't be in a half-way house. This inconsistency and poor-logic extends to the ending, which, without spoiling it, is very unsatisfactory.   

The other problem with the concept at the heart of the movie is that it reduces the stakes of the film.  We are meant to empathise with the Damon and Blunt characters - to root for true love - to want them to be allowed to be together.  But when we discover that they only want to be together due to a kind of psychic residue from an earlier version of The Plan, frankly I didn't care too much. All of a sudden the movie wasn't about true love being hindered, but mopping up after an old version of the plan.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is on release in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Ireland, Philippines, Poland, Spain, Turkey, UK and Denmark. It opens on March 11th in Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Egypt. It opens later in March in Egypt, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Hungary. It opens in April in Mexico, Colombia and Israel. It opens in May in Brazil, Peru, Japan and Panama. It opens on June 16th in Argentina, Chile, Italy and Venezuela and on June 24th in Paraguay.