MARTY SUPREME*****

MARTY SUPREME is a gonzo caper about a narcissistic arsehole who will exploit everyone and everything to fulfil his dream. The challenge for writer-director Josh Sadie is to make us root for him, and maybe even like him, nonetheless.

Timothee Chalamet stars as the titular protagonist Marty Mauser - an acne-scarred hen-pecked shoe-salesman who dreams of travelling to England to become a champion table-tennis player.  Destroyed in that final by his Japanese opponent, the balance of the film sees Marty try to con and finagle his way into enough cash to go to Japan for the rematch, including but not limited to getting a schlubby put-upon live-at-home man called Dion to produce branded table-tennis balls called the "Marty Supreme", and conning a mafiosi (improbably played by Abel Ferrara) whose dog he was sitting, while also being on the lam from some white hick racists and a psychopathic rural farmer. And that's before we even get to Marty's two love interests: the  woman who loves him - his pregnant childhood friend turned lover played by Odessa A'Zion - and the woman who sees right through him - a faded starlet and trapped trophy wife played by Gywneth Paltrow. 

As that attempt at a synopsis might suggest, MARTY SUPREME is an absurd film, over-stuffed with memorable characters and crazy plot-twists.  It picks you up and takes you on a breathtakingly audacious ride. The running time is long but it never flags, thanks partly to pairing the 1950s setting with a superb 1980s synth-pop heavy soundtrack, just because.  But behind all of its craziness, there's depth.

We are in the mid-1950s, and the world is still recovering from the horrors and bigotry of World War Two. Everyone is shocked that Marty's Japanese opponent is allowed to travel given the recent travel-ban; Marty's good friend and competitor is a Holocaust survivor; and Marty will even exploit his prison camp experience to distract a love-rival.  There's also something to the idea of a film that posits a world of extreme self-actualisation. Marty is the ultimate fake it till you make it manipulative showman, who wants a woman just because she's a symbol of success.  In a weird way his charm is that while he IS manipulative he is also strangely honest.  He just can't help himself from mocking Gywneth Paltrow's heartbroken starlet for sleeping with him. He barely acknowledges anybody's wants and needs above his own, although does seem to have some kind of heavily submerged set of core values. He punches his pregnant lover's husband, saying "shame on you" and seems to mean it. I think he really does seem to see some talent in Dion and root for him.

The only weakness of the film is that Josh Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein decide to give Marty a transformative and perhaps even redemptive moment at the end of the movie.  I think I might have preferred if they had kept him as he was, but I cannot deny that I had an amazing time watching the film nonetheless.  This is full speed ahead, full commitment film-making.  Josh Safdie and Marty Mauser are as one. 

MARTY SUPREME is rated R and has a running time of 150 minutes. It will be released on Christmas Day in the USA and Boxing Day in the UK.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN**

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is a deeply frustrating biopic of Bob Dylan.  Rather than challenging his misogynistic bullshit, the film replicates it.  Director James Mangold (WALK THE LINE) is not interested in interrogating the complexity of Saint Bob. Rather, everything must be packaged neatly in a convenient narrative arc.

That arc is massaged to within an inch of its life. Young Bob - choirboy turned gravelly voiced folk-singer - makes a pilgrimage to New York to meet his chronically ill hero Woody Guthrie.  Scoot McNairy (IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS) stuns in an entirely wordless performance as Guthrie, struck mute with Hungtington's Disease, but still keen to be surrounded by music. Such is Bob's evident talent that he is taken in by a kindly, paternal Pete Seeger (Ed Norton) and his wife Toshi, a couple whose life was devoted to preserving the American folk music tradition.

Bob finds fame and massive music sales with his protest songs against a backdrop of the civil rights movement.  But this is the era of the Beatles and The Stones and The Kinks and he feels trapped in amber by the historicity of the folk movement.  He hires a blues rock band and records what will be his first electric rock album, Highway 61 Revisited.  

The narrative arc poses a big showdown at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Will Bob play nice and play folk? Or will he disappoint everyone around him and play electric rock?  We all know the answer. And we all know that what transpired afterwards didn't happen at Newport but in the Manchester Free Trade Hall a year later. But that doesn't fit Mangold's neat and claustrophobically American narrative. Nowhere do we see Bob travel to London and the influence the Swinging Sixties Carnaby Street vibe had on him. He just goes from one scene to the next transformed from shabby folk clothes to extra tight Carnaby Street suits and winkle pickers.  

The problem with the way this film is constructed is that most everyone is a single-dimension character, giving the excellent cast very little to do. Pretty much everyone just looks at Bob with an air of disappointment.  Elle Fanning (The Great) plays Sylvie Russo - a thinly veiled version of Bob's real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo - and just looks at Bob disappointed and heartbroken.  Monica Barbaro plays folk icon Joan Baez and just looks at Bob disappointed and contemptuous. Peter Seege looks disappointed and paternally heartbroken.  You get the picture.

And what of Bob himself? Timothee Chalamet (DUNE) plays Bob with pads in his cheeks to give him a boyish round-face, and has admirably mastered his growly deliberately ugly style of singing and playing. It's a great impersonation, but for my money, outclassed by Scoot McNairy in the acting department.  You get the ferocity of Bob, his uncompromising attitude toward music.  But the film skips so lightly over his way of mooching off women, or his initial passive-aggressive barb that Joan Baez sings too well.... Imagine a film with this cast that really wanted to get into the verbal attack on Joan in Like A Rolling Stone, or his womanising, or his fundamentally dishonest appropriation of a persona.  

But no, this is a film for fans that wants us to see (rightly) just how bloody brilliant his early music was. Where the film shines is in giving is so much music so brilliantly rendered. But by including so much music it squeezes out the time that could have been spent on personal relationships.  I feel like maybe this was a deliberate choice and a cowardly one too.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is rated R and has a running time of 141 minutes.  It was released in the USA on December 14th and opens in the UK on January 17th 2025.

DUNE: PART TWO***

DUNE: PART TWO is probably about as good a film as one can make about Frank Herbert's iconic religio-sci-fi book. The flaws I found in this film are mostly down to how distasteful and uninspiring I find the source material - with its superficial embrace of Middle Eastern and North African culture and the fact that its female characters are almost entirely reduced to breeding vessels. I understand that I am not perhaps the appropriate demographic for the books. But Denis Villeneuve has taken it and created two films of arresting visuals and a stunning score.  Greig Fraser's IMAX cinematography is bold and beautiful and truly envelopes us in Arrakis. And Hans Zimmer is at his finest combining sandworm-commanding drums, rock guitars, and menacing prophecy-reciting choirs.

As this instalment opens, we are mere days after part one. Paul Atreides and his mother Lady Jessica have survived the massacre of their House on the desert planet of Arrakis.  Paul has proven himself a fearsome warrior to the indigenous Fremen, some of whom think he is their long-awaited messiah.  This delights Lady Jessica and Atreides loyalist Gurney Halleck, who believes the Fremen will be a powerful fighting force. But Paul's lover Chani has it right - these prophecies are just stories being used to control the Fremen.  The narrative arc is powered by the choice that faces Paul. Will he be swayed by his prophetic dreams of devastating interstellar war and reject being a messiah. Or will he exploit the Fremen for revenge on the Harkonnens and seize the imperial throne?

There is so much to love in how Villeneuve brings this to the screen. He wisely leaves the sandworms as barely seen epic creatures. The production and costume design of the Harkonnen's world and of the Baron and Na-Baron in particular are arresting. 

But the performances veer from mediocre to weak. I found something almost comical in Timothee Chalamet's petulance as Paul and was unfortunately reminded of THE LIFE OF BRIAN - "He's not the Messiah - he's a very naughty boy!" Once you see the film through that lens - "the gourd!" - there's no turning back. There was zero screen chemistry between Chalamet's Paul and Zendaya's Chani which is odd as they seem to be constantly low-key flirting on the red carpet. Christopher Walken is hopelessly miscast as the Emperor - totally bringing me out of the film with his unique American accent. Only Javier Bardem stood out as Stilgar - petrifying in his increasing religious fervour.

I suspect that performances aren't really what interest Villeneuve. He is all about spectacle. Script and character are somewhat beyond the point for him. But this leads to weird choices around narrative. 

Most obviously, Villeneuve's choice not to allow the narrative to unravel over several years problematic. It felt as though Paul's journey from young pup to Emperor had taken place over a few weeks! Is it really so easy to seize power?  And how is this going to impact the timeline around Alia, who we see as a grown woman in Paul's dreams.  Another choice I disagree with is to minimise the influence of the Guild and put all of the machinations onto the Bene Gesserit cult. 

But perhaps the biggest macro issue I have with both books and film is that there's no-one to really root for. On the one hand you have a decrepit Emperor who seems flaccid and pointless. Then there are the comically evil and therefore uninteresting Harkonnens.  The Bene Genesserit are nuts and seem to have no endgame. The Fremen are religious extremists. And Paul is a self-acknowledged harbinger of mass genocide. It's like watching Succession but without the comedy swearing.

DUNE: PART TWO has a running time of 166 minutes and is rated-PG-13. It is on global release. 

WONKA****

So cards on the table. Gene Wilder is my Willy Wonka. I love that film. It remains perfection. Silly and fun and sinister and melancholy and everything wonderful and enchanting.* But I am pleased to report that Timothee Chalamet's musical origins story is charming and delightful, and if lacking the sinister melancholia, well he is just a young lad. 

This version of Roald Dahl's iconic character sees him as a young impoverished man, desperate to share his chocolate with the world so that he can feel close to his dead mother. (Okay it's not as creepy as that just sounded). But he is up against two interlocking groups of villains. First, Olivia Colman and Tom Davis are Wonka's evil landlords, straight out of Les Miserables, complete with an abandoned cute orphan girl called Noodle (Calah Lane). The second group of villains are the chocolate oligopoly who control the supply by bribing the local police chief (Keegan Michael Key) and cleric (Rowan Atkinson).  And in case you didn't think that was story line enough, we have a delicious cameo from a scene-stealing Hugh Grant as the original Oompa Loompa.

All of this makes for a complicated but never hard-to-follow adventure story set in a kind of fantasy Victorian mittel-europe that is sumptuous and wonderful in its production design. Chalamet is absolutely delightful as Wonka, Calah Lane adds empathy and earnestness as his sidekick Noodle, and all the adults are wonderfully cast. Of course, this is Hugh Grant's film. He is always better as villains and rogues, but his Oompa Loompa really does have some pathos to him too. Kudos to the writer-director behind PADDINGTON (Simon Farnaby and Paul King) for creating yet another warm-hearted but never schmaltzy family adventure. My only quibble is that the songs - from The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon - are not as immediately catchy as those from the original film - something that is highlighted whenever they use one of those iconic vintage tunes. Nonetheless, I await the inevitable West End musical!

WONKA has a running time of 116 minutes and is rated PG. It is on global release. *Let's not even discuss the abomination that was the Johnny Depp version. 

THE FRENCH DISPATCH** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 5

 

Wes Anderson's THE FRENCH DISPATCH is all whimsy and stunning design but completely lacking in meaning or profundity for all bar about 3 minutes of its running time. This gives me no pleasure to say as a great fan of his work. But the genius of GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL was marrying his unique eye with a story that both made us life but also made us cry, and tackled the most profound and moving of subjects.  By contrast, Anderson's homage to literary magazines seems deeply unambitious and frivolous and thus uninvolving and dull. This is no doubt exacerbated by a portmanteau structure that prevents or plot character development. Indeed, this may be his worst film since THE DARJEELING LIMITED.  I wonder if he is too spoiled by being able to get every actor he wants for cameos that pile up into shagpile carpet of zanily dressed but pointless characters. He badly needs an editor and some focus.

So, the film is about a literary review editor played by Bill Murray and the magazine he created as demonstrated by three stories from the magazine brought to life. The first is a prison love story about an homicidal maniac artist (Benicio del Toro), his muse / guard (Lea Seydoux), his agent (Adrien Brody) and an art critic (Tilda Swinton).   The second is about a 1968 student demo led by Timothee Chalamet and reported on by Frances McDormand.  The third has a food critic (Jeffrey Wright) recall the kidnapping of the son of a police chief.  

There are some, but not enough, laughs in the film.  Anderson flicks from colour to black and white for no real reason.  The only scene of any power is where Jeffrey Wright's critic, clearly influenced by James Baldwin, recalls how he was once arrested for being gay and the editor saved him.  

Every mirror needs a dark backing so that we can see our reflection in it.  Anderson needs to bear that in mind.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH is rated R and has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Cannes, San Sebastian and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It opens in the USA and UK on October 22nd.

DUNE (2021) ****

Frank Herbert's iconic ecological sci-fi/fantasy series, Dune, begins its first book with our hero, a young aristocrat called Paul Atreides, being yanked off his luscious home planet to travel with his family to an arid desert planet called Arrakis. The evil Emperor has lured them there with the promise of Arrakis' riches - the ability to mine "spice" - a drug that makes interplanetary travel possible. Really, the Emperor is jealous of Paul's father's charismatic power and is backing House Atreides rivals, the Harkonnens.  But Paul's father feels he can mount a challenge if he can form an alliance with Arrakis' indigenous population of Fremen....

Dune is notoriously unfilmable and yet it feels like every film-maker who read it as a teenager or somehow got their hands on Jodo's epic designs (see Frank Pavich's superb documentary JODOROWSKY'S DUNE) has somehow filmed it without acknowledging it openly.  To read Dune is to realise how much everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones has borrowed heavily from its tale of political infighting, inter-galactic warfare, and mystic religiosity. This means that anyone who ACTUALLY films Dune risks looking like they're ripping off later works who themselves ripped off Dune.  (Tatooine, Saarlaks and the Force anyone?!)  And then there's the terrifying experience of David Lynch in the mid-80s, creating a Dune that was a commercial failure, where he didn't have final edit, and where despite flashes of design brilliance the whole thing feels like a pantomime ghoulish mess. (See my DVD commentary here). 

So it takes a real fanboy to have the balls to actually film Dune, and that fanboy is Denis Villeneuve, most famous for his superb sci-fi film ARRIVAL and the recent  moody but unnecessary BLADE RUNNER sequel. It tells you a lot that despite his commercial track record, the studio was not willing to finance both films that would've covered book one of the series, wanting to wait and see if part one actually found an audience.  Hollywood scars run long and deep.

Villeneuve's DUNE is, I am relieved and happy to say, a visual and aural triumph.  From his creation of Caladan in the Norwegian fjords, to his stunning depiction of shifting sands in Arrakis, this is a film-maker with a keen sensibility who leaves us with instantly iconic scenes.  I also really loved his design aesthetic - with beautifully rendered space-ships and palace interiors and ornithopters that actually look like flying insects.  Where Lynch leaned into the grotesquery of Baron Harkonnen, Villeneuve realises that what lives in our minds when we read a book can look absurd when visualised on screen, and so he uses that character sparingly and in a very pared down design. Indeed, all the costumes and make-up feel sleek and and as modern as possible. Finally, behind the lens, Hans Zimmer's score is another triumph, and I am unsurprised to learn that he's another fanboy. 

The acting is by and large fine - with Charlotte Rampling's Bene Genesserit Reverend Mother the standout cameo. Timothee Chalamet - well he looks young enough as Paul - almost pre-pubescent - but it's just another Chalamet role where he plays a brooding kid.  He has zero range - or at least no range that I've seen. Let's see if he can actually look like a leader as and when the next film is made.  Javier Bardem is fun as Stilgar, but we see very little of him.  Where I started to have problems was the use of humour in the film. Herbert's book is really dour and unfunny and the insertion of a couple of deliberately funny scenes around Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck sat awkwardly with the film's overall tone. And then there was the problem of the audience i watched this with laughing at Zendaya's Chani as she mocked Paul.  And again, given that she needs to take a much larger role in any sequel, that may prove a big problem.

Overall, my feeling is that I enjoyed being in Villeneuve's world and fanboys will be happy that setpieces such as the fight with Jamis make the cut. BUT - BUT - I did find myself looking at my watch a lot.  It's a really weird decision not to film the whole book and because of that not much actually happens, there's no real narrative drive, and it's all just set-up. That's fine for me - I'll happily wait for another film, but is a mainstream audience going to wait? And if not, is this film going to make enough money to warrant a sequel?

DUNE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 155 minutes.  DUNE played Venice and Toronto 2021 and opens in the UK on October 21st and in the USA on October 22nd.

LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

Greta Gerwig has created perhaps the most beautiful, vital and affecting version of LITTLE WOMEN yet seen on screen. Even better, she has opened improved upon the original novel and more slavish adaptations by making Amy March a character of some wisdom and agency by the end, and by making Laurie's choices more credible. There is nothing I would fault in this film - nothing I would add or subtract. I was low-level crying for much of the final hour, and not just at *that* plot point.  I felt I had been through the wringer and really loved the March women and respected and understood their choices.

For those unfamiliar with Louisa May Alcott's classic novel - revered in the US but far less well known in Europe, the book is set during the American Civil War. An earnest Christian father is away at the front, leaving his wife Marmie to raise their four daughters - the little women of the title.  The eldest - Meg - is sweet and kind and aspires to be a homemaker like her mother.  The second eldest - Jo - is an aspiring writer, tomboy, and to many the true protagonist of the novel.  The next is Amy - beautiful and superficial in the novel, and given a revelatory expansion of feeling and story in this version.  And the youngest is piano-playing sweet Beth.  

Eliza Scanlan (SHARP OBJECTS), Emma Watson (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) and Laura Dern (MARRIAGE STORY) are all just right as Beth, Meg and Marmie respectively.  But they aren't the focus of the novel or this film. Jo is played with characteristic energy and earnestness by Saiorse Ronan, but I actually preferred Maya Hawke in the recent TV miniseries.  The real star of the show is Florence Pugh (MIDSOMMAR) as Amy, brilliantly playing both a petulant silly child and the more cynical, weary but fundamentally good older woman.  And a lot of the credit for this has to go to writer-director Greta Gerwig (LADY BIRD) - who has given the women a more pragmatic take on the economic position of women in the late nineteenth century without making their feelings seem anachronistic or overly "woke".  I also absolutely love the way Gerwig splits the story in two and has the adult Jo remember scenes of childhood in a way that enhances the emotional punch of the final choices of the girls. 

In the other roles, I particularly liked Tracy Letts (LADY BIRD) in a cameo as Jo's publisher Mr Dashwood and Louis Garrel as the blunt, honest Frederick.  I thought James Norton's dull Mr Brook was a bit forgettable. Finally, I really loved Timothee Chalamet (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME) as Laurie. His love declaration to Jo is utterly heartbreaking and their entire relationship fizzes with authentic sibling physical intimacy.  But it's his final realisation of love that's truly touching. It was also rather good to see him play a final meeting with a rival for laughs - a side of this rather intense young actor that we rarely see.

LITTLE WOMEN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 134 minutes. It is out in the USA on Christmas Day and in the UK on Boxing Day.

THE KING - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Three

David Michod (ANIMAL KINGDOM) and Joel Edgerton (THE GIFT) have reworked the story of King Henry V to create this beautifully acted but historically dodgy version of a familiar tale.  So heavy is the reworking that I felt its being marketed as an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henriad went against the Trades Description Act.  Those looking for Shakespeare's inspired comedy, beautiful poetry, or inspiring eve-of-battle speeches will be disappointed.  Really, this isn't Shakespeare at all, other than including a character called Falstaff, who turns up at Agincourt unlike in the play Henry V.  Still, once you throw off those expectations, what you are left with is a very serious, rather earnest character study, of a young man who hates his father's paranoia and penchant for war, but ends up committing the very same war crimes on a humbug.

Timothee Chalamet is absolutely superb as Hal, with a perfect upper class English accent and a deep brooding concern as he slides into war.  For such a young, skinny boy, he's absolutely credible in single combat and on the battlefield. He is matched turn for turn by Joel Edgerton in the role of a lifetime. Falstaff steals the show as he should, but as a far quieter, more sage, noble man than in the play.  Sean Harris is masterfully manipulative as the King's adviser William, and even Lily-Rose Depp, in a small role at the end has a very contemporary feminist gravitas.  The only bum note is Robert Pattinson as the dauphin, so camp and shrill as to be in another film entirely.  It's also clear that the team behind the film don't really know much about medieval warfare, in terms of when and how armour and weaponry is used. That said, they did successfully convey Falstaff's battle tactics in action.

Overall, this really is a compelling film, full of strong performances - maybe Chalamet and Edgerton's best - wonderful cinematography and a subtle score from Nicholas Britell. It deserves to be seen on the big screen rather than on Netflix's streaming service and I hope they give it a decent theatrical roll-out.

THE KING has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and London and will be released by Netflix on November 1st. 

HOSTILES - Late late review

Writer-director Scott Cooper (CRAZY HEART, BLACK MASS) returns to our screens with a deeply affecting, beautifully shot and acted western, penned by Donald Stewart, who scripted the The Hunt For Red October.  The story is set in 1892.  A tortured civil war hero called Blocker (Christian Bale - superb) has spent the intervening period slaughtering Native Americans.  And then, he's given a galling order, to accompany a dying Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) across the country to Montana so that he can die in his native land in Montana. And so what we get is  road trip of sorts, south to north through the most magisterial but hostile landscape. This hostility is displayed in a prologue that sees a settler called Rosalie (Rosamund Pike) lose her entire family in a vicious Comanche raid.  When Blocker rescues her, they and the Cheyenne come together in mutual defense against the Comanche who are tracking them. So who is truly hostile to whom? 

As the movie opens it's clearly the white people who are hostile to the Cheyenne. But Rosalie's desperate grief (Pike really goes for it in a career best performance) prompts an act of kindness from the Cheyenne and after that a kind of uneasy truce emerges that builds towards genuine respect and a willingness to die to defend the Other. Of course this comes at the expense of making villains out of the Comanche.  There's no real attempt to understand why they have turned to such violence, except that we know what Blocker and his ilk have done in the past. And so we end up getting evil "red indians".

Despite this mis-step I really loved this film.  Christian Bale's portrays a really complex tortured man mostly through his physical presence and facial expressions. Pike's transformation from bordering-mentally ill grieving woman to fierce warrior is stunning. Masanobu Takayanagi's cinematography is breath-taking and I loved seeing the American landscape change as we move from south to north. And last but not least, Max Richter's score is heart-breakingly beautiful. I felt that I had come to love these characters and care deeply about their future. And was held on the edge of my seat to the end of the very final scene - one that affected me profoundly.  

HOSTILES is rated R and has a running time of 134 minutes. It was released at the end of 2017 and is now available to rent and own. 

LADY BIRD - BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Day 11

LADY BIRD is a funny, moving, beautifully observed relationship drama centring around the teenage girl of the title.  It's an assured directorial debut from writer-actor Greta Gerwig (MISTRESS AMERICA) and features another impressive performance from Saoirse Ronan (ON CHESIL BEACH) in the lead role, fearlessly matched by Laurie Metcalf (ROSEANNE) as her mother.  This relationship is at the heart of the film, with its class-frustrations echoed in Lady Bird's relationship with her long-time best friend.  To be sure, we also see the 17 year old navigate relationships with boyfriends too, but these aren't at the heart of the film

Christine McPherson is a quirky, smart but frustrated teenager who adopts the Lady Bird persona to mark herself as different from the bland Sacramento society in which she lives.  She dreams of moving to New York and attending a liberal arts college where she'll find people with interests similar to her own. The central tragedy of this film is that she takes that frustration out on those who love her the most, principally her mother Marion.  Marion is another strong personality, and as much as she loves her daughter, she's frustrated that Christine doesn't appreciate what her parents have sacrificed to put her through private school.  Marion is also deeply hurt when she discovers that Christine has been mocking their house as being "on the wrong side of the tracks" because it doesn't live up to the flashier houses that some of her friends live in.  This relationship is at the very heart of the film and is so relatable and brilliantly observed that it's worth watching the film for that alone.

But there's so much more to admire in this film. Christine is oblivious to the fact that her father (a beautifully tender performance from Tracy Letts) has lost his job.  And although he's not the centre of the film there's such humanity in seeing this highly qualified man having to apply for the same graduate entry jobs that his also over-qualified son is applying for.  He seems to be a truly selfless and decent man, and reminded me a lot of Willem Dafoe's character in THE FLORIDA PROJECT.  I also loved the relationship between Christine and her childhood best friend - and the way Christine ditches her for a more glamorous set to attract a new boyfriend.  It's a betrayal and reconciliation we've seen a million times in teen comedies, but so much more authentic and real here.  Finally, I loved the way Gerwig handled Christine's love life, and a particularly touching scene between Ronan and her boyfriend played by Lucas Hedges (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA). My only minor criticism of the film is that I wanted to see more of that relationship after that scene - it felt strange to me that it didn't continue.

Overall, this is a truly impressive directorial debut from one of the most original and intelligent voices in cinema.  I really admire Gerwig's mission to give us something that feels more authentic than typical coming of age dramas, and her willingness to show life as it is - financial struggles, selfishness, arguments, even Christine's deliberate acne - the movie we LIVE rather than the movie that plays in our head, as she said in the post-film Q&A. 

LADY BIRD has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated 15 for very strong language  and brief strong nudity. LADY BIRD played Telluride, Toronto and London 2017. It will be released in the USA on November 3rd, in the UK on December 29th, and in Spain on May 4th 2018. The film has a running time of 93 minutes.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME - Day 7 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME has two problems that I couldn’t get over. In fact, even more than that, I had a miserable and difficult time watching this film - even though it was one of my most anticipated and by one of the most exciting directors working today - Luca Guadagnino. The first problem is its length. I kid you not, but basically nothing happens in the first hour of this film. A pretty arrogant and self-indulgent middle-aged man called Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives at an Italian villa owned by an academic (Michael Stuhlbarg) he’s working with. There seems to be an antipathy between Oliver and the professor’s teenage son, Elio and each of them seems to be flirting with girls about town. As we move into the second hour of the film it becomes clear that the antipathy is of the kind one might see in a playground where kids pretend not to really like the girl or boy they actually like. Oliver pulls back from taking the flirtation further but actually teases Elio by suggesting trips to town together and initiating physical intimacy. The messages are mixed but Oliver clearly knows that the relationship would be seen as wrong. He cites this as a reason to pull back. 

And this is where we get to the second problem with the film: the casting of Armie Hammer. For a start, he can’t match the acting ability of Michael Stuhlbarg (magnificent in his one big scene) or indeed newcomer Timothée Chalamet as Elio. When the father generously calls Oliver good, and the relationship meaningful, I just sat there wondering how he’d got that from the flaky, selfish  (and apart from one opening gambit to show his intelligence, not conspicuously smart or interesting) personality I’d seen on screen. A related issue is that while in real life Armie Hammer is 31, for me he looked a lot older than that. And that gave the relationship a pretty nasty feel to it - one of uneven power, grooming and exploitation. I feel that Guadagnino really messed up with his casting and should’ve gone for someone who actually looked like a mid-20s post-doc, and a kid who looked a more mature 17 then a 14/15. And I’m pretty amazed that audiences haven’t screamed louder about this. I wonder if the critical reaction would’ve been as warm if this had played out between an old man and a 15 year old looking girl. It left a very bitter taste in my mouth indeed. 

Meester Phil's points to other issues with the film although he didn't find age to be such an issue:  he found the pacing uneven - that the film somehow didn't cohere or feel credible to him. As a result he wasn't emotionally involved. 

So, for those looking for a truly beautiful gay love story, and one that isn’t shy about explicit sex either, then check out 120 BPM and leave this behind.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Sundance, Berlin, Sydney, Melbourne, San Sebastian, Toronto, New York and London 2017. It opens in the UK on Oct 27th, in the USA on Nov 24th, in Sweden on Dec 1st, in Canada on Dec 8th, in Thailand on Dec 14th, in Australia on Dec 26th, in France on Jan 10th, in Brazil on Jan 18th, in Greece on Feb 8th and in Germany on March 1st.