EMMA. (2020)

Autumn de Wilde's directorial debut is a handsomely made new version of Jane Austen's iconic romantic comedy, Emma. Except here it's cast as "Emma." with a full stop after it because the director wants us to know it's a period drama.  The film reflects some of this heavy handed and just bizarre gesturing. Why, for instance, do Harriet's schoolmates need to march around the village in red cloaks like something out of The Handmaid's Tale?  There's also lots of plain bad judgment.  Why does Mr Knightley have to be shown arse-bare? I blame Andrew Davies.  Why is Harriet's school bedroom more lavish than a country house?  Why do we need to see Mr Knightley petulantly throwing a fit when his initial attempt to propose to Emma is interrupted - and yes, dear reader, that is not a scene from the novel.

Still, one can forgive this EMMA.(!) its occasional lapses, and indeed its lack of ambition relative to - say - Greta Gerwig's superb meta-textual LITTLE WOMEN. This EMMA. is a movie for our strange times - and thanks to our strange times, available to stream at home. It is very pretty, very soothing, very funny, and very romantic. And indeed, apart from the lapses cited above, comfortingly faithful to the original text. 

It tells the tale of a spoiled young rich girl called Emma who takes pity on an illegitimate schoolgirl, much her social inferior, called Harriet. Rather than marry a solid, decent farmer, Emma persuades Harriet to aim socially higher, for the oleaginous reverend Mr Elton. Meanwhile Emma has her head turned by the similarly charming but nasty Mr Churchill, becoming nasty under his influence, until a third act redemption, with the social order being restored.  

I very much liked Anya Taylor-Joy (THE WITCH) as Emma. She gets that Emma really is a frightfully selfish snob at the start of the book with a nastiness that Gwyneth Paltrow simply wasn't willing to explore in her screen version of the heroine.  I also rather like Billy Nighy playing himself / Emma's hypochondriac father.  Whoever decided that his heavily brocaded jackets should camouflage themselves into his armchair and screens is a genius - and I like how the added comedy of the screens allows for a declaration of love later.  I even liked Johnny Flynn as a less than austere Mr Knightley and Mia Goth as Harriet Smith.

But the stars of the show are always in the smaller parts - with Miranda Hart heart-breaking as Miss Bates - and Tanya Reynolds of SEX EDUCATION simply brilliant as the odious Mrs Elton.   On the other hand, Amber Anderson was deeply anonymous as Jane Fairfax.

Overall, this really is a very charming, light, uplifting and wonderful piece of escapism. 

EMMA. is rated PG and has a running time of 124 minutes. The film is available on streaming services. 

THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020)

I'm not a huge fan of horror films - blame watching THE EXORCIST and THE SHINING waaaaay too young.  But needs must in these strange times.  THE INVISIBLE MAN is one of a handful of current releases also available to stream during the lockdown, and I thought I would give it a go. The good news is twofold - first, despite being written and directed by Leigh Whannell of SAW fame, it really isn't that horrific so people who have a low tolerance for horror can watch it; second, it's a really well-made and gripping thriller. 

The only name star in the film is Elisabeth Moss (THE HANDMAID'S TALE) and she basically carries the entire movie. As the film opens she's executing a plan to escape her abusive but mega-rich super-scientist boyfriend from their eery modernist mansion.  She hides out in her sister's boyfriend's house - said boyfriend is handily a cop.  And when her abuse ex apparently commits suicide, all seems rosy.  The problem is, an apparently invisible man is stalking her, frames her for murder,  and has her incarcerated as a psychopathic killer. Naturally there are more plot twists and jumps, but fair to say that this is a really slipper, clever drama that kept me guessing.  Even better, it's filmed in a really clever way, with lots of great jump cuts, and invisible man POV shots. The atmosphere is intense, tricksy and enthralling.  I would highly, highly recommend this film and insofar as it sets itself up for a #metoo revenge drama sequel, I am here for that.

THE INVISIBLE MAN is rated R and has a running time of 124 minutes. It is available on streaming services.

MILITARY WIVES

I've been taking advantage of certain studios making current releases available to stream at home.  The choice is limited, and MILITARY WIVES is perhaps not the movie I would have plumped for on a Saturday night had the full choice of London's cineplexes been made available to me.  Nonetheless, it did want I predicted and wanted - it was lightly funny, rather moving and allowed for some catharsis in these strange times.

Based on a true story, the film is about how women cope when their service-people go off to war.  There are lots of small but moving moments - of a woman packing away her husband's things as she becomes effectively a single mother for six months - or another woman telling a protestor she doesn't have the luxury of being against the war, she has to live with it.  You have to admire the grit and no-nonsense courage of these women who keep home life going, knowing their loved ones may not come back.   What I really like about the film is that it shows you a slice of life - with its own codes and expectations - that I hadn't known existed.  Because the wives are in some ways as regimented as their spouses - and when the fighters go to war, the highest ranking wives have to come up with "clubs" that keep the wives' morale boosted.

And so we have the Military Wives Choir - led by  the no-nonsense Sharon Horgan (CATASTROPHE) and the uptight closed off Kristin Scott Thomas (FOUR WEDDINGS etc).  Both actors are playing to type and the personality clash is both inevitable and inevitably resolved. Naturally, Sharon Horgan's character wants the women to sing pop songs and to be inclusive. Naturally, Scott Thomas' character wants the women to be dignified and to actually practice scales and keep time.  Quelle surprise - it takes both skillsets to create a choir that is genuinely good enough to sing at the Royal Albert Hall's memorial concert. Naturally there has to be a third act falling out and making up, just in time for the big concert.  Naturally, one of the wives turns out to have an amazing voice.

So none of this film is surprising in its broad strokes, and it's only intermittently funny in its scenes.  One wishes Sharon Horgan might have been allowed a pass at the script.  But what the film does do is show something of the real ordeal that these spouses endure, and some of the tougher details of military life.  I can't deny that it got a little dusty in the room on a couple of occasions, and genuinely put a smile on my face by the end.  The film appeals - after all - to that same spirit that has all clapping for carers. In adversity, we seek shared uplifting experiences. Which makes this film rather fitting for this moment. 

MILITARY WIVES is rated PG and has a running time of 113 minutes. It is available to stream on Sky, Amazon, Apple etc.

HUSTLERS

HUSTLERS is THE BIG SHORT for working class women - a film about what happens when people dependent on the trickle-down effect of boom-era money turn desperate in the post-Lehman Brothers economy. It stars CRAZY RICH ASIANS' Constance Wu as naive Destiny, who is schooled in the art of making phat cash through stripping by smart, cynical Ramona (Jennifer Lopez).  The game is to target uber-wealthy Wall Street bankers and flatter and twerk them into spending big.  Then the crash happens.  Destiny tries marriage and motherhood but comes crawling back to New York and Ramona. Only this time they have to pro-actively fish for their prey - luring in men from bars with the promise of the night of their life. And when that proves irksomely slow-going, drugging them, stealing their credit cards, and threatening them with blackmail if they go to the police.  This being a morality tale, it isn't that easy, especially when Ramona starts taking chances of her accomplices and clientele.  But the provocative question this films asks is how far the women really deserve to be punished when the people they are ripping off already ripped off the entire economy?

The result is a film that is smart and thoughtful alongside it's dazzling dance numbers featuring an absurdly athletic J-Lo. In a performance to match her best, she and her colleagues show us the truth about stripping. Indeed, the first ten minutes of this film is one of the most depressing I've ever seen. And then we get a star-studded cameo of girls in a dressing room discussing the absurd expectations men who date strippers have - made all the more real by the fact that Cardi B used to be a stripper.  It's rare to see such an unflinching female-centric movie at all. And even more rare to have that truthfulness play out amidst enough glitz and glamour to leaven its political agenda. Nicely done, all involved. 

HUSTLERS is rated R and has a running time of 110 minutes. It played Toronto 2019 and was released last year. It is now available to rent and own. 

UNCUT GEMS

UNCUT GEMS is perhaps the most unique and certainly one of the best films of 2019 - a surreal, 80s-vibe, darkly comic thriller, in which against all probability I became insanely invested in the largely self-inflicted travails of its hero Howard.  As played by Adam Sandler in a role reminiscent of his angry-loveable PUNCH DRUNK LOVE intensity, Howard has a life of unremitting stress. He's broken up from his wife (Idina Menzel) but still enmeshed in Jewish family dinners.  He's set up his mistress in a city apartment.  His diamond business is doing well thanks to the big music and sports buyers his middle-man (Lakeith Stanfield) brings in, and he's just been smuggled a super-valuable rock containing uncut gems. The problem is that Howard also has a massive gambling problem, and spends the entirety of the film's running time trying to fence the gems to pay the debt.  Oh yeah, and did I mention he finances his ever more gargantuan bets with mob loans?  

I was initially reluctant to watch this film because I'd heard such extreme reactions at the London Film Festival. People said it was nerve-wracking and intense - like having Adam Sandler just shout at you for two hours.  But I was pleasantly surprised at how funny the film was, and how the directors really did give the audience a chance to pause and recalibrate every once in a while - usually in a quieter family scene.  But the final act really is super-tense, and just phenomenally well crafted and I was literally on the edge of my seat. I was hugely invested in whether Howard would come through, despite his stupidity, because at the end of the day, the poor idiot is an addict, and actually he's not an idiot - there's something really impressive about his ability to keep spinning stories to keep his debtors at bay.  This is Sandler's best performance since PUNCH DRUNK and I was with him every step of the way. It's hard to think of anyone else carrying off this performance.

Phenomenal performance apart, everything about the production and costume design, the cinematography and the use of music is superb. Darius Khondji gives us  images that are at times gritty and urban-realist and at times claustrophobic and surreal and at times neon-lit 80s music video.  It's like being in a film that's at once recognisably the diamond district and at once something almost fairy-tale like.  Most of all, the Safdie Brothers have a confidence with tonal shifts that take us from casinos to auction houses and back again. This film is a tour de force and deserves to be seen. It also deserves far more awards love than it has been given.  

UNCUT GEMS is rated R and has a running time of 135 minutes.  The film played Telluride, Toronto and London 2019 and is now available to stream on Netflix. 

AMERICAN FACTORY

AMERICAN FACTORY is a chilling and provocative documentary, perfectly timed for our times.  It comes against a backdrop of a US-China trade war; suspicion of anyone who looks remotely Asian sneezing in earshot; and Andrew Yang running for President solely on the issue of the coming replacement of blue-collar workers with Advanced Robotics and white collar workers with AI and machine learning. More generally, we are living in a time where blue collar workers around the world are expressing their anger that they gained nothing from decades of globalisation other than lost jobs, stagnant real wages, and the contempt of the political parties that were supposed to be representing them. All of these issues and more are explored in this fascinating documentary - brought to us by husband and wife directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, and the Obama's production company. The ironies abound in that. After all, Obama was a so-to-say left-wing president but he took globalisation for granted and did nothing to reverse the damage it inflicted on blue-collar workers.  And it becomes rapidly clear that this "American" factory is nothing of the sort - it's Chinese through and through.

As the movie opens, a Chinese global glass company called Fuyao re-opens a former General Motors assembly plant in Ohio.  The workers are happy. When GM closed during the Global Financial Crisis they lost their jobs, homes and dignity.  But the venture is a disappointment all around.  The Chinese are frustrated with the US workers apparent lack of work ethic and their constant need for praise. They seem to either be ignorant of, or have contempt for, local health and safety regulations.  And they take every action necessary to prevent the workers from unionising - from sacking the agitators, to hiring a lobbying company to persuade them to vote against unionising. Indeed the workers are dispensable: the most chilling final scene is one of advanced robotics replacing actual people. 

On the other side of the coin, the American workers are similarly disappointed.  They refuse to work the long hours and compromise their safety, or indeed environmental standards.  They want to understand the reasons for being asked to do something, rather than just following an order blindly. And they want to be in a culture where good work is rewarded - not just with a living wage, but also with simple thanks. 

This culture clash speaks to a deeper colonial racism, and the fact is that this is the first time in a long time when white people are being dominated by non-whites*.  All the racism that the European and North Americans expressed toward other races - all the economic exploitation - is now working in reverse.  So we are shocked to hear a Chinese manager say that American workers are like donkeys, and need to be placated to avoid them kicking - or that the Chinese managers have to benevolently steer the American workers because the Chinese are clearly wiser.  But this is no different to how American or European managers would've viewed Mexican or Indian workers in colonial times (and maybe not that different to how they view them today.)

I guess the real shock of this film for many viewers is that it's a really tangible example of how America is no longer the world's foremost economic power. And adjusting to being condescended to is a rather painful process for all involved.  But frankly, I found our new robot overlords far more chilling than the Chinese.

AMERICAN FACTORY has a running time of 110 minutes. The movie played Sundance where it won the Documentary Director award, Tribeca and Sheffield DocFest 2019. It is available to watch on Netflix.  *I'm thinking the Muslim conquest of Spain was the last time?