GOOD GRIEF**

An artist turned househusband loses his apparently rich and loving spouse in a car crash on Christmas Eve. Over the next year he grieves with the help of his two best friends: an earnest art gallerist and a flaky creative with an problematic relationship with commitment and alcohol.  On the anniversary of the death they go to Paris for a healing weekend of indulgence and honesty.  The artist becomes an artist again. The addict gets sober. The nice gallerist doesn't grow because I guess he doesn't need to?  

The film is not funny. I don't think it's actually meant to be but the fact that it's written by, directed by and stars Schitt's Creek's Dan Levy is likely to raise some expectations in the audience. This wouldn't matter if the film worked as an emotional exploration of grief - after all, that's purportedly its aim. I don't think the writing is insightful enough or moving enough for that. Instead what we have are some very well-dressed moving around beautifully appointed houses having fairly superficial conversations. There is no actual peril - neither financial, nor emotional - and one could argue that the addiction story is not given the respect it deserves either. I remain convinced that Dan Levy is missing his true story as an interior designer. 

GOOD GRIEF is rated R and has a running time of 100 minutes. It was released on Netflix. 

JUDY

It's been a while since I watched JUDY and my reluctance to review it has been the unwillingness to commit to paper what a truly mediocre film - what a hammy absurd central performance - is gaining such awards success. I cannot for the life of me fathom why Renee Zellweger is being heaped with awards for a performance that verges on pastiche and is never convincing. And the only answer I can find is that this is the ultimate awards season Mercy Fuck.  Hollywood loves a broken bird, especially a woman tormented by her own self-image, and in Renee they have found the bats-squeak whisper of an echo of Judy Garland's psychological trauma.  I feel they aren't so much praising Renee's performance as applauding her mere survival, albeit in a weird Jennifer Lawrence-lite post surgery existence and speaking with a bizarre southern drawl. 

But let's get back to the film. It focuses on Judy in the final years of her life - battling Sid Luft Rufus Sewell) for custody of the kids - broke - playing gigs in London to pay the bills.  She's a neurotic, lonely alcoholic, always vulnerable to a young charmer (Finn Wittrock) who'll promise her riches but usually ends up swindling her.  Judy has to be manhandled on stage by Jessie Buckley's sympathetic stage manager.  We're meant to recognise her as still capable of being a true star through the eyes of her adoring gay fans.  But really this is just a pathetic portrait of a broken woman, running several leagues below her peak power.

Renee Zellwegger doesn't look like Judy, despite the short brunette wig and the costumes that ape her London look.  She doesn't sound like Judy when she sings.  She adopts a kind of slanting, stumbling walk and inverted kind of beaten up posture that makes us think - wow - Renee is broken - rather than telling us anything real about Judy.  Worse still, the film just isn't that well directed.  Rupert Goold - a stage director best known for the recent TV version of the Henriad -THE HOLLOW CROWN - doesn't have any visual flair, and doesn't really bring any insight to staging the show tunes.  And the script is really workmanlike and cliched.  Do we really need to have a lonely Judy having supper with a fawning gay couple, who have no interior life or meaning other than to just be cliche fawning gay fans?

The only parts of this film that I thought had real truth to them were the flashbacks to Judy's childhood as an abused child star, forced to slim, put on pills, with every date stage managed.  But even here the movie doesn't have the balls to depict the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Louis B Mayer. 

JUDY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 118 minutes.  The film played Telluride and Toronto 2019 and is now available to rent and own.

THE LITTLE STRANGER - Crimbo Binge-watch #7

Lenny Abrahamson (ROOM) returns to our screens with another film based on a prize winning book - this time the slow-burn period haunted house story THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters. The adaptation is faithful and so shares the books strengths and weaknesses.  Its strength is its evocation of post-war England in which the great estates are being bankrupted and social change is afoot. Our protagonist is a doctor (Domnhall Gleeson - Star Wars' Hux), soon to become part of the NHS. He still resents the fact that his mother worked herself to the bone in a grand country house, and while he ingratiates himself with the family carries a working class chip on his shoulder.  The grand family hard on its luck are made up of a still grand mother (Charlotte Rampling), a brutally war-injured son (Will Poulter - superb in a "posh" character role), and Ruth Wilson who as ever seems to be operating on a far higher emotional level than the other actors she's working with.  She's really the focus of our attention - a woman who is clever and capable but is stuck trying to keep the family together against financial ruin and now - apparently - spooky goings on.  I also love the theme that Sarah Waters often explores of how women, no matter how smart, are often under-estimated, unheard, or worse wilfully disbelieved simply because of their gender. 

What I like about the film is its patient slow build, but I can see why this might frustrate fans of more pacy and punchy horror. After all, I am a notorious coward when it comes to watching horror so if I can get through the film you know it's not really that scary - more of an emotional exploration of the history that is haunting the family.

THE LITTLE STRANGER is rated R and has a running time of 111 minutes. It was released earlier this year. 

AMERICAN ANIMALS

AMERICAN ANIMALS is a beautifully crafted docu-drama about four feckless college students who decided to try to steal some valuable books - including Audobon's Birds of America - from their college library. They don't need the money. One of them even aspires to join the FBI when asked to join the heist.  They seem to do it just because... maybe boredom, or the need to feel special in some way?  It's all so moronic it hurts my brain. Nonetheless, it makes for a fascinating story because documentary director Bart Layton (THE IMPOSTER) does a fantastic job of contrasting the slippery memories and justifications of the real life protagonists -interviewed on screen - with his docudrama recreation (starring Barry Keoghan - THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER).  For those of you who loved the conflicting memories and elisions of I, TONYA, then this is the film for you. In brilliantly edited and framed scenes Layton takes us from his fictional characters reminiscences of events to the real people, deftly altering the "record" and showing how untrustworthy it actually is. There's also a superb attempt to take us inside the mind of its protagonists, showing us the heist as they imagined it might go, in an Ocean's Eleven style, Dave Grusin scored tour-de-force. And the end of what do we get? Genuine remorse - yes. But also a faintly disturbing feeling that is what kids being raised on a diet of instant gratification will aspire to - life experience and defining moments that are unearned.  Frightening, indeed. 

AMERICAN ANIMALS has a running time of 116 minutes and is rated R. It was released in the USA this summer and is currently on release in the UK.