THE PIGEON TUNNEL*

The problem with Errol Morris' latest documentary is its slightness.  It takes the form of an interview with the now deceased Cold War spy novelist John Le Carre. The problem is that Le Carre aka David Cornwell is a practiced liar and has no problem answering only the questions he wants to answer in exactly the way he wants to answer them. His protestations of candidness merely add to the mockery of the project.  And let's be clear, David Cornwell does not actually want to reveal anything that he hasn't already revealed in interviews over the years, or indeed in his recent biography of the same title.

The problem is that this is a rather sanitised version of his story, shorn of all of his sexual misdemeanours. And this film, and the book upon which it is based, are rather a nasty revenge tactic played upon his official biographer Adam Sisman. When Sisman drafted his book, Cornwell persuaded him to leave out all of the sexual infidelity and to only publish after Cornwell's death. Cornwell then proceeded to publish his own autobiography to reclaim his narrative from Sisman, and now this film is being released precisely at the point when Sisman publishes his sex-filled follow up.

This all sounds like I don't like David Cornwell. Actually I am indifferent. I just don't trust him.  I LOVE the works of John Le Carre, and the Smiley novels in particular. I even picked my Oxford college on the basis that it was his alma mater.  My point is that if you already know and love the novels of John le Carre, there will be nothing new in this documentary. And if you don't already know and love the novels of John le Carre why on earth would you watch?

The story here is the one we all know. Cornwell was born in the postwar period to lower middle class parents. His mother abandoned him at 5. His father was a fraudster and bankrupt who periodically paid for Cornwell to have the upper class education he (the father) aspired to. Cornwell therefore grew up only knowing duplicity and a lack of love.  He goes to Bern (not mentioned in this doc) and then to Oxford where a Fellow recruits him to spy on the other students, arranges for him to continue when his father has no money, arranges teaching jobs for him, and finally a fully-fledged but short-lived career as a spy. He drops out and writes a spy novel that is immediately wildly successful, continues in that vein, shags around, makes this film, then dies. 

The stuff on Kim Philby IS interesting, though covered in other interviews. I find it fascinating that Cornwall recognises addiction to lying in Philby. Did he in himself?  But of course there is a category difference.  Philby was a traitor, and in Cornwell's words "evil".  I just wished we had had a more nuanced discussion of Cornwell's own relationship to his spying, his lying, and his dual persona in this film.

THE PIGEON TUNNEL has a running time of 93 minutes and is rated PG-13. It played Telluride and London 2023 and will be released on Apple TV on October 20th.

THE KITCHEN** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 Closing Night Gala

Acclaimed actor Daniel Kaluuya (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH) turns his hand to writing and directing in partnership with Joe Murtagh (AMERICAN ANIMALS) and Kibwe Tavares respectively.  Together they have crafted a film that is superficially a dystopian political nightmare about gentrification and police brutality.  But it soon becomes apparent that the film's real themes are of fatherhood and community. 

The film takes place in The Kitchen - the last piece of social housing in London. The government wants the residents cleared out so that they can build luxury flats instead, and when the residents refuse to leave they are punished by having their utilities cut off and periodic brutal police raids. Against this backdrop we meet Izi - a cynical man desperate to leave The Kitchen for luxury housing but constrained by the sudden appearance of a young boy called Benji who may be his son. What are the stakes of this film? At first we think they are whether Izi will have the money to move out. Then we think it's going to be a struggle for Benji's future - on the straight and narrow with Izi or joining a biker gang. 

Part of my problem with this film is that actually the dystopian future idea is never particularly well fleshed out. We are just meant to understand - instinctively - as contemporary Londoners - that the housing situation is rigged. Maybe we do - but will global audiences?  My second issue is that there are literally zero female characters that matter. In 2023. In a progressive, politically aware film.  Seriously? I guess the writers might say that this is because the entire point of the film is to focus on fatherhood, and that its key narrative arc is a selfish man taking on that responsibility. Maaaaybe. Overall, the film just feels underwritten and lugubrious. I enjoyed the creation of The Kitchen in the first hour but very little actually happened.  As I said, I could and did enjoy derping around with these characters for a while. I really enjoyed the more informal banter about cardamom flavoured pancakes and Hawaiian dancer lamps. But at some point we need to get out of The Shire.

In front of the lens, Kane Robinson/Kano (Top Boy) shows little range as Izi, playing him as looking conflicted and staring into the middle distance all the time. He doesn't have much help from a script that makes him taciturn so this role needed some good, nuanced facial acting and we just didn't get it.  We are on far more impressive ground with Jedaiah Bannerman, who is both heart-breaking and hilarious as Benji. He is an actor to watch.  I will also confess that I got a thrill from seeing Ian Wright playing the voice and heart of The Kitchen, a DJ who spins classic vinyl while preaching solidarity. As a Gooner, I could happily watch hours of Wrighty vibing along to classic tracks. I am pleased and relieved to say that this is no cheap cameo either: Lord Kitchener is the emotional heartbeat of the plot.

Behind the lens, production design did wonders with what I suspect was a small budget. I loved the grungy, vibrant, rotting, exciting, space of The Kitchen.  It felt real somehow, and something worth fighting for, which is really important. This also felt disturbingly like the present - maybe because the budget to do anything too radical wasn't there - maybe because the film-makers were making a point - maybe because I am so familiar with the shooting locations I knew exactly where they were. Isn't it funny how people wanting to create the future always come back to my beloved brutalist notorious Barbican Centre?  I also really loved the aural landscape of this film - the richness and diversity of hearing a cappella gospel; bass-thumping EDM; and classic tracks from Lord Kitchener. But films start and end with scripts and this one needed another pass.

THE KITCHEN has a running time of 104 minutes, is rated R, and will be released on Netflix in 2024.

ANATOMY OF A FALL****

Writer-director Justine Triet's Palme D'Or winning ANATOMY OF A FALL struck me less as a masterpiece of direction than a well-acted murder mystery.  

In my more mischievous moments I thought of it as BASIC INSTINCT as channelled through Agatha Christie.  Think about it:  Sandra Hueller (THE ZONE OF INTEREST) stars as an unapologetically successful, bisexual, author who is accused of killing her husband, of even referring to his future murder in her work, and has a somewhat flirtatious relationship with both the young journalist who interviews her at the start of the film, and with her attorney later on. In both films, we discuss gender roles, including toxic masculinity being undermined by a strong woman. In this case, the accused refuses to pander to her husband's need for more parental help and time to focus on his work. Bluntly, she tells him and the court to stop blaming her for his inability to finish his work, and his jealousy of her success. As the film progresses it becomes clear that her husband has been emasculated not only by her success but by her having an affair with a woman.  Both films also talk about consent. In BASIC INSTINCT it's sexual consent: in ANATOMY OF A FALL it's whether the husband recording his interactions with his wife was done with consent. 

Of course, this is a differently serious endeavour, and the genre it ploughs is that of courtroom drama.  The twist in the tale, or should I say tail, is that the key witness is the couple's son.  He has the cruel experience of hearing the state's prosecution of his mother, and has to parse his own memories of the fall, and prior conversations with his father, to work out what he heard, and what it meant. Milo Machado Graner is superb in this role.

I really liked how Triet raised questions about gender roles in marriage and how far a single argument or episode can be taken as indicative of a relationship as a whole. It's great to see Sandra as a well-drawn, nuanced strong female character who is allowed at times to be "unlikeable". And I love the moral ambiguity that is not entirely resolved, even when we do know whodunnit. Is this a Palme D'or winning film for me? No. But it's a very fine, grown-up, character-led drama of the type I am pleased is still getting made. 

ANATOMY OF A FALL has a running time of 152 minutes and is rated R. It played Cannes 2023 where it won not just the Palme D'Or but also the Palme Dog! It went on limited release in the USA this weekend and opens in the UK on November 10th.

POOR THINGS***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 11

Iconic director of scabrous black comedies, Yorgos Lanthimos (THE FAVOURITE) returns to our screens with a steam-punk set, sexually charged satire so dark and strange that is left me gasping for breath.  Along with ZONE OF INTEREST, this film is doing something so audacious, so compelling and so far removed from the ordinary run of films that it deserves all the awards.  Whether it proves too strange, disturbing and provocative to appeal to a mainstream jury remains to be seen.

Emma Stone gives an astoundingly brave and career defining performance as Bella Baxter, a Frankenstein creation of adult woman and childlike brain.  We watch her rapid acquisition of language and intellectual ideas and sexual desires. Better explained in the source novel by Alasdair Gray, as she only knows her adult body, she has no shame or internalised misogyny. Bella is as free with her body as her thoughts.

Bella was brought to life by her guardian, Godwin (Willem Dafoe) and lives in an elaborate steampunk world of Lanthimos' vivid imagination. In Lanthimos' conception "God" is himself a victim of his surgeon-father's experiments.  Bella finds herself falling for the harmless, earnest Dr McCandless (Rami Youssef) but elopes with the charming, rogueish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn. It is here that her adventures, and ours, really begin, thanks to an uproariously funny and award worthy performance from Mark Ruffalo - apparently having the time of his life - and Lanthimos' beautifully reimagined  Mediterranean cities and Victorian hotel rooms. A shout out too for casting the iconic Hanna Shygulla as a wise old woman called Martha and Kathryn Hunter as a jaded Parisian madam. 

I cannot begin to describe the delights of a film that gives full flower to Lanthimos' dark gothic imagination - whether the production design of Baxter's house and successive interiors, to the wildly transgressive costumes that Bella wears, to the jarring, disturbingly brilliant score from Jerskin Fendrix. It is as if every element of the crew comes together in to deliver a heightened, sensual experience that frames and enables Stone's outlandish but also deeply moving performance. This is complete film-making of an extra-ordinary level of skill and accomplishment.  This is not to be missed, and on a big screen if possible.

POOR THINGS has a running time of 141 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and London 2023. It will be released in the USA on December 8th.

CHICKEN RUN: THE DAWN OF THE NUGGET***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 11

CHICKEN RUN: THE DAWN OF THE NUGGET is an absolute delight and a worthy sequel to the beloved first film. It has everything you want from a family adventure comedy - verbal, visual and physical humour; beautifully executed action set-pieces; characters you actually care about; and an uplifting message about caring about your community and female empowerment.

As the film opens, we see our liberated chickens living the good life in a chicken version of The Shire. Our hero and heroine Rocky and Ginger have a lovely baby daughter, Molly, who seems to have a spirit of adventure that her mother at least is eager to suppress.  They are so happy, and the world so unsafe, why leave their idyllic island?  All of this changes when Molly runs away to an apparently bucolic chicken fantasy land only to discover that it's an horrific factory designed to make chickens docile so that they make tastier nuggets. And so, after the escape movie if the original, we now get a heist movie, as Ginger Rocky and their friends have to break IN to the chicken farm to liberate their daughter. 

The resulting film is beautiful, smart, imaginative and endless fun. I wouldn't change a single stop-motion frame. It was wonderful to be back in the company of old friends, if newly (and controversially) voiced.  Bella Ramsay (The Last of Us) is wonderfully courageous and earnest as Molly and I particularly loved her rogueish rat uncles voiced by Romesh Ranganathan and Daniel Mays. But most of all it was wonderful to see the cine-literate team behind this film reference and re-imagine so many heist movie and evil lair tropes - not least British ones! - with just the right amount of mischief and irreverence.  We had a wonderful time, and our lovely youngsters were bouncing with delight all the way through. 

CHICKEN RUN: THE DAWN OF THE NUGGET is rated PG and has a running time of 97 minutes. It opens on limited release in UK cinemas on December 8th and then on Netflix globally on December 15th.

THE END WE START FROM** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 10

Contemporary England is subject to horrific and sustained rainfall resulting in devastating flooding.  Low lying cities are laid to waste and people scramble to find shelter in higher ground. Soon humanity turns on itself, trampling on each other for scarce food parcels. Some choose to find shelter and blissful isolation in island communes. Others choose to cling onto their past, their memories and some kind of future. 

Within this world, we meet Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) - a young hairdresser - and her husband (Joel Fry).  She gives birth on the night of the flood, and our threesome have to somehow navigate this disaster with a small baby.  The high concept of the film is to show us the everyday frustrations of being a mother in this context. Comer's character finds companionship with another mother played by Katherine Waterston. It's a touching and rarely seen story of shared burdens, sympathy, and female friendship and strength. 

Mahalia Belo’s debut directorial feature has a lot going for it - an assured visual style; some stunning landscape shots; and some haunting CGI-effect depictions of a post-flood London achieved on what was presumably a small budget.  Belo even elicits good performances from her cast - not least the deeply talented Jodie Comer in the lead role, but also Katherine Waterston who arguably has the best-written character.  

The problem with the film, based on a novel by Megan Hunter adapted by screenwriter Alice Birch, is that it feels underwritten. There is very little that is new in disaster movies, to be sure, and this film has nothing new to say about the likely human response other than combining it with he insecurities and trials of new motherhood. Even worse, the characters feel underwritten. I didn't feel that Comer had anything much to do here (contrast with her exceptional performance in THE BIKERIDERS).  Poor Joel Fry has even less to do. There's a moment at the end which is meant to be very deeply affecting but as I didn't really believe in the characters of their relationship outside of Comer and Waterston, that moment had no impact on me. We also have a handful of cameos, but none of them really amount to much. 

So, while I very much look forward to seeing what Belo does next, I hope she has a stronger script to work with.

THE END WE START WITH has a running time of 96 minutes. It played Toronto and London 2023. It will be released in the USA on December 8th and in the UK on January 19th 2024.