THE BOYS IN THE BOAT**

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is a deeply dull, paint-by-numbers underdog sports biopic about a working class American rowing eight than won Gold at the 1936 Olympics. We don't learn much about them, other than that they are poor and motivated. We know they are poor because is an opening scene the hero (Callum Turner with an absurd and distracting blonde dye job) is putting cardboard inside his shoe. We don't learn much about their coach (Joel Edgerton) who just looks taciturn and unknowable for the entire film. We certainly don't understand why they are so good and what he did to make them that way. And we don't really understand the stakes.   

This was the Hitler/Berlin Olympics but director George Clooney has no interest in showing the real peril of fascist Germany, just as he isn't interested in showing the real tragedy of Depression-era America. Instead, he puts a few Nazi flags up, has a few brownshirts cheer for Germany, and some guy play dress up as the Fuhrer. It's actually so trivialising it's insulting - particularly to Jesse Owens. What we learn from all this is that Clooney doesn't want to get his hands dirty in the period.  

Instead he creates a film that is book-ended by a sappy grandpa-grandson bit of nostalgia; that is forever bathed in twinkling sunlight; and where the hero's girlfriend forever has perfectly styled hair and no character or lines to speak of.  This is dull retrograde film-making of the worst kind, and all the more embarrassing because CHARIOTS OF FIRE figured out how to inject emotion, stakes and modernity forty years ago.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 123 minutes. It was released in the USA on Christmas Day 2023, and in the UK on January 12th.

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. 

RED SPARROW

I sat down to watch RED SPARROW with limited expectations given the poor reviews and controversy surrounding the Jennifer Lawrence spy thriller.  But I found the film to be beautifully cast and acted, superbly photographed, evocatively scored, with a script that was intelligent and provocative and a directorial eye that rightly forced us to address all of the darkness inherent in the #metoo movement. I have since read some of the reviews and it feels as though many people are utterly missing the point of this slippery film.  But I would urge you to watch it, and to keep your wits about you and your loins girded.  No other film better speaks to our times.

The movie opens in contemporary Russia where Jennifer Lawrence's prima ballerina Domenika (shades of BLACK SWAN - Darren Aronofsky was originally attached to the film!) is savagely injured on stage and her career ruined.  Facing eviction and no means of supporting her sick mother (Joely Richardson - saying more with one look than many actresses with pages of screenplay), Domenika is lured into working for her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts - a dead ringer for a young Putin), the Deputy Director of the Russian secret services. He essentially pimps her out to an oligarch, deliberately putting in the way of sexual assault. When Domenika then becomes witness to that oligarch's murder she is given the non-choice of being assassinated herself, or joining the Russian SS4 spy school and essentially continuing her career as a spy/whore for her country.  Her specific mark is an American CIA agent based in Budapest, played by Joel Edgerton, who is running a mole in the Russian secret service. Her task is to seduce him and get the name of the mole. Meanwhile, she runs a side-con, offering him the information that a senior American official is selling state secrets.  

Let's start with the unequivocally good stuff. This is a movie that looks gorgeous. Every detail of the shabby 70s looking Budapest and Russian apartments contrasted with the ornate Russian government offices and ballet theatres is sumptuous and evocative, creating a world that I utterly believed in.  The cinematography and editing is similarly superb - particularly in the opening scene that intercuts the ballet accident and a spy meeting in Gorky Park that goes wrong. Even that name is evocative - and this is a film that clearly knows and respects the history of its genre, complete with a final handover scene straight out of SMILEY'S PEOPLE. Moreover, with the exception of a few very violent set-pieces this is not really an action movie at all. It's a genuinely tricksy intelligent spy thriller that has you genuinely guessing as to which side Domenika is on, and who the mole is.  It has the confidence to make its audience work hard, and to confirm a theory with a simply subtle smile between two characters rather than with heavy-handed exposition. 

And now to the controversy. RED SPARROW is a film about how men exercise power over women, subtly, obviously, through coercion or outright aggression, and more often than not through sexual violence.  This sexual violence graphically shown and so it should be  - to show the sheer fear of a woman physically assaulted by a powerful man - and to contrast with how Domenika slowly takes back that sexual and intellectual power from pretty much every man in the film.  It is - then - a film that doesn't shy away from showing scenes of rape, attempted rape, and sexual manipulation and humiliation. But each time, there is a power shift.  And how refreshing to see a woman's sexual power explored on film by an actress who was firmly in control of the film's development and her own nudity.  In other words, this isn't - per many reviewers - a sexist film - but a film about sexists.  It's a film about a woman's political awakening. And that couldn't be more relevant. 

RED SPARROW has a running time of 140 minutes and is rated R. The film was released in cinemas in March 2018 and is now available to rent and own. 

LOVING

Richard and Mildred Loving were a mixed race couple from rural Virginia who fell in love and wanted to make a life for themselves surrounded by family, on an acre of land on which Richard intended to build Mildred a house.  But in 1958, inter-racial marriage was illegal in Virginia, so they had to get married in DC, and even then, were victims of local police who imprisoned them and ran them out of the state.  And there they could've stayed were it not for this quiet and unassuming couple's deep desire to raise their children in their home town - their quiet stubborn refusal to be denied their dream.  So they returned, in subterfuge, and Mildred, the more vocal and gregarious of the two, wrote a letter to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.  This was then passed to the ACLU, who took up the case as a way of getting the Supreme Court to over-turn anti-miscegenation laws more generally.

The genius of writer-director Jeff Nichols' approach is to make a film that is an intimate portrait of a loving couple, and to follow their approach in being resolutely uninterested in the big courtroom drama that their marriage provoked.  There's a moment about half way through this film when the two young eager ACLU lawyers show up, full of glee and awe at being able to try what could become such a landmark case. But the Lovings themselves are uninterested even in attending the Supreme Court hearing.  They continue to do what they always wanted to do - just live a quiet married life in a quiet rural town.

JANE GOT A GUN

JANE GOT A GUN is a troubled film. The original director Lynne Ramsay either quit or was fired over differences with the producer the day before shooting was meant to start, prompting celebrated DP Darius Khondji and Jude Law to quit in solidarity. Earlier, Michael Fassbender got waylaid with an X-Men movie causing a last minute switch in casting.  And so the movie found itself in the hands of no-name director Gavin O'Connor (PRIDE AND GLORY), DP Mandy Walker (RED RIDING HOOD) who bathes every scene in sepia tint sunset to the point of banality.  The resulting film is dreary and emotionally uninvolving, grinding its way to the inevitable and absurdly buoyant conclusion.

Natalie Portman plays the titular heroine.  In the framing story her husband Ham is shot by the gang he used to belong to and she decides to arm up and get help from her neighbour,  Dan Frost.  Together they await the investable battle against Ewan McGregor's gang, having prepared with some A-Team style defences.  In the flashback story we learn that Jane and Dan used to be engaged, but he went off to the Civil War and after long delays returned to find her married to Ham.  We then discover her side to the story, which is pretty predictable.  It's the kind of film where the good guys have perfect teeth and clean skin and the baddies have rotten teeth.  The acting is undercut by the three lead actors' shaky attempts at a Western accent. 

JANE GOT A GUN has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated R. The movie was released earlier this year in Germany, France, the USA, Kuwait, Philippines, Greece, Cyprus, Singapore, Russia, Indonesia, Thailand and Israel. It is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on May 6th in Spain, May 19th in Macedonia and October 22nd in Japan.

BLACK MASS - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Six

BLACK MASS reminds me a lot of THE PROGRAM. Both are big glossy biopics on topics I am fascinated by, whose source books I have read, and whose cast and crew I admire. I found both to be well-made but ultimately rather dull linear paint-by-numbers narratives.  And in both cases, the real reason to watch are the outstanding acting performances.  In the case of BLACK MASS, that's Johnny Depp as the infamous South Boston gangster Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger and Joel Edgerton as his childhood friend FBI Agent John Connolly.

The story of BLACK MASS is so messed up you couldn't make it up, and speaks volumes about the incestuous corrupt politics of Boston in the 70s and 80s.  In what other universe of normality could Billy Bulger rise to be State Senator while at the same time openly consorting with his elder brother, a known felon?  And what kind of messed up world does their mutual childhood friend decide to co-opt Jimmy as an informant, so that while he and the FBI take down the mafia in a Rico case, Jimmy can move in on their territory?

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Listen to a ten-minute podcast review of the film here:

EXODUS: GOD AND KINGS isn't a good or a bad film but rather a collection of films that may or may not hang together as a sweeping biblical epic of the Charlton Heston kind.  It's long, uneven in pace, and takes too few chances to be really memorable. 

In its first act the movie feels like GLADIATOR.  The dying king is transposed from a Roman emperor to a Pharaoh played with surprising majesty by John Turturro. His jealous, power-hungry and paranoid son is transposed from Joaquin Phoenix to a shaven-headed and bejewelled Joel Edgerton.  And the rival for power who will lead a down-trodden people to freedom is transposed from Russell Crowe to Christian Bale.   This section is the most satisfying of the film - literally awesome in its lavish costumes, Egyptian cityscapes, jewels and vistas.  It feels like an old-fashioned big-budget epic of imperial power-politics, pitting two alpha males against each other.  Ben Mendelsohn is superb as the effete toady who reveals Moses' Jewish origin to both Moses and Ramses and I love the genuine conflict as Moses struggles to come to terms with his true identity. The only sadness was seeing Sigourney Weaver as Ramses mother use an anachronistic broad American accent and then become sidelined for the rest of the film.

THE GREAT GATSBY (2013)

Here's my one minute take on Baz Luhrman's GATSBY: it's something of an achievement to direct a movie that has such reverence to the source text, and yet misses the point so completely.

And of course, reverence for the text is perfectly correct. F Scott Fitzgerald's slim novel depicting the glitz and the loneliness of Jazz Age America is arguably the greatest American novel of all time, and certainly one of the greatest novels of all time period. It has an elegance and a depth that belies its brevity. The supreme tragedy of Gatsby is that he is a man who is desperately trying to be something that he can never authentically be - a man of inherited wealth - in order to win the love of the blue-blooded débutante Daisy.  But what we know, what Nick knows, is that Gatsby isn't really in love with Daisy.  She's just a cipher for his delusion that he can replay his youth - a youth blighted by his poverty and then parlayed into organised crime.  There's a sense - a much-needed and necessary sense - that while Gatsby knows that his lifestyle, his name, his means of earning  - are a lie - that he simultaneously totally believes the fiction. He is his own great work of art. 

Baz Luhrman's reverence for the text is literally writ large on the screen.  We see key phrases shown as written on the screen; the dialogue is almost entirely lifted directly from the novel; even key visual moments are taken from the book - such as the white drapes fluttering as Nick, our clear-eyed narrator,  first meets Daisy.  Luhrman even opens the movie out, giving it a framing device, wherein an older, jaded, alcoholic Nick (Tobey Maguire) is "automatic writing" his experiences with Gatsby and Daisy - and that written therapy will eventually become the novel, "The Great Gatsby".  And more fundamentally, with the exception of this framing device, the plot unfolds in the film exactly as it does in the novel.  Our young narrator Nick hires a humble cottage next to the extravagant mansion of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio).  Gatsby's famous for throwing marvellous parties that he doesn't attend.  And we discover that he's throwing them as bait to lure Nick's now married cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) - his first love - and the woman he hopes to begin again with.  Meanwhile, Daisy's husband Tom (Joel Edgerton) is having an affair with a brassy, blowsy mechanic's wife (Isla Fisher) - an affair that casually exploits and manipulates the emotions of the mechanic, but also belies Tom's proprietorial feeling toward Daisy, and his innate distrust of Gatsby.  

And within that reverential depiction of the novel, there are certain scenes that work brilliantly well.  In particular, Luhrman and Dicaprio totally get that the first scene where Gatsby meets Daisy is funny - it's painfully, embarrassingly, gauche and physically funny in a way that Robert Redford and other Gatsby avatars have never been.  I also think that the visual depiction of the Valley Of Ashes was truly inspired and brought them to dingy, desperate life in a way that I didn't really get from the novel.  And in terms of performances, I think Joel Edgerton and Isla Fisher are superb and vital in smaller roles;  I was shocked by how effective the casting of Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim was; Tobey Maguire is perfectly cast as the wide-eyed and yet not naive narrator; Carey Mulligan is suitably insipid although, if I were harsh, I would say that she doesn't quite get the quite whispering voice.  But this is really Leonardo Dicaprio's movie and the tragedy of this film is that in a quieter movie, his performance would be garnering Oscar buzz. As it is, you can't hear him above the sound of the Jay-Z.

So here's the problem with Gatsby. As much as Luhrman loves the text, he loves high-camp even more. Which  means that every scene gets Luhrmanned.  It moves, faster, brighter, louder, crazier than anything you've ever seen before. I lost count of the amount of times I was trying to look through things, or hear dialogue beneath music, to get at the performances.  It was like trying to watch a fundamentally great movie in a theatre filled with partying teenagers.  I guess the shock is that one might have thought that Luhrman's all-out glitz style might have worked in depicting the jazz age, but it just never seemed to coalesce. The sum of the parts drowned out the whole. 

THE GREAT GATSBY is rated PG-13 in the USA. It has a running time of 142 minutes.

THE GREAT GATSBY is on global release.

iPad Round-Up 6 - WARRIOR

WARRIOR is a movie that stands in the shadow of THE FIGHTER and looks pale by comparison. It also features two brothers as competitive fighters, one of whom is a "troubled", and a parent who is poisonous and controlling.  And is with THE FIGHTER, the fighting in the ring is secondary to the emotional conflict outside the ring, leading to an eventual reconciliation.  Moreover, both films show the impact of an intrusive media.  Where THE FIGHTER is steeped in an authentic locale, and powered by three superlative performances, WARRIOR feels contrived, emotionally manipulative, and powered by brawn rather than brains.  Nick Nolte, as the alcoholic father, received an Oscar nomination for his role, but this felt undeserved to me.  And as for the two brother, Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton have both done better work.  This is the kind of movie in which two brothers enter a mixed martial arts contest and, no shit, they end up facing off in the final.  Puh-lease.

WARRIOR was released in autumn 2011 and is available to rent and own.

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE

I really rather liked LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE. It is a beautifully animated, brilliantly voiced, old-fashioned story in the manner of WATERSHIP DOWN.  Moreover, it is blissfully absent of the sort of post-modern wit that propels the SHREK franchise. What's even more astonishing is that it was directed by Zack Snyder - purveyor of visually lush but morally vacuous, if not morally objectionable, fare like 300 and SUCKER PUNCH. The protagonists were sympathetic and endearing and their adventure story more compelling than any plot description would suggest. 

The story is based on the Guardians of Ga'Hoole books by Kathryn Lansky books, and this film focuses on two young owls, Soren and Kludd, who are kidnapped by some nasty racial purist owls. Luckily Soren is taken under the wing of a fellow inmate and taught how to outwit his captors and to eventually seek out the Jedi like Guardians who can teach him how to use his Gizzard and "save the world". If this sounds very STAR-WARS then it succeeds for the same reasons that Star Wars succeeds - it's a classic Saturday Morning Adventure Serial with good triumphing over evil, framed as a coming-of-age story. 

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE went on global release in autumn 2010. It is now available to rent and own.

ANIMAL KINGDOM

ANIMAL KINGDOM is a fascinating but not flawless Australian crime thriller that has garnered critical acclaim, not least in a Best Supporting Actress nod for Jacki Weaver. The feature debut of writer-diretor, David Michod, it's the kind of movie that has so much ambition, and has so many individual moments of brilliance, that you can't wait to see what the director does next, even though the product before you is fairly raw. 

The movie is loosely based on a true story of armed robbers in late 80s Melbourne. As we meet the characters, that era of armed robbers and corrupt police is coming to a close. The criminal Cody family is being hunted by the police, and once cornered, turn on each other. The film watches their disintegration and the shifting allegiances and power positions within the familial set-up. We see the weak killed; the under-estimated rise to the top; the old order removed and the so-called establishment side-lined. The nominal paterfamilias is "Pope" Cody (Ben Mendelsohn) - a man who we must assume was to be feared but who know, though still capable of extreme acts of violence - seems lost - uprooted - almost tragic. He is a man out of time. The world is moving on but he doesn't know what to do. His brothers are similarly adrift. Darren (Luke Ford) is scared and parasitical, just looking for another leader to cling to. Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) takes refuge in drugs. And into this mix comes "J" - their teenage nephew whose mum OD'ed and who looks brainless, comatose, and like a patsy in the making. But the REAL power in the family is the creepily over-emotionally involved mother, played by Jacki Weaver. A woman who'll call you "darling" and "love" while arranging your murder - a woman who epitomises the maternal survival instinct. It's a chilling and often blackly funny performance. 

ANIMAL KINGDOM is at its best when it's documenting the shifting power-structure within the family and watching these apparently fearsome robbers looking ineffectual. I love that David Michod has the confidence NOT to turn this into a courtroom drama, even though the final third of the movie is all about a big case. Rather, he cares about the "before" and "after". The scheming, the prep, the digesting of the results. In that way, this becomes a movie that constantly pulls the rug out from under your expectations. It feels satisfyingly dense and hangs on several highly impressive performances - Jacki Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn and Guy Pearce as the cop. But the movie has its flaws. I regretted never seeing the family at the height of its power against which to contrast its fall. Sometimes, when the guys were being completely ineffectual, it felt implausible that they had ever committed the crimes they were accused of. At times, the plot felt too messy - too hard to disentangle. Sure, it's great for a director to trust his audience and introduce ambiguity - especially regarding the final scene. But earlier on, some of the exposition seemed murky to me. And finally, a lot of the film just seemed plain implausible. I didn't buy that the girlfriend's family would let her hang out with "J". I didn't buy how she exited the film. And I really didn't buy the transformation of "J" at the end of the film. Major problems. Still, for all that, this is a brave movie containing powerful performances, and I can't wait to see what David Michod does next. 

ANIMAL KINGDOM played Sundance 2010 where it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema - Dramatic. It opened last year in the USA, Canada and Poland. It opened earlier this year in Spain and Finland and is currently on release in Denmark and the UK. It opens in France on April 27th. Jacki Weaver was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars and Golden Globes but lost to Melissa Leo for THE FIGHTER. She did however win at the National Board of Review awards.

KINKY BOOTS - ho-hum

By contrast with THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE, this week's new Region 1 DVD release KINKY BOOTS is entirely avoidable. It's just another in a long line of movies that uses people with mildly transgressive jobs or sexual preferences as a unique selling point. So where we had amateur porn stars in THE MOGULS, we know have a transvestite cabaret singer, played by the ubiquitous Chiwetel Ejiofor. The transvestite comes to the aid of a failing British shoe factory that's losing trade to cheaper factories in China and Eastern Europe. The solution: to make high-heeled boots that can bear the weight of a man. It's the usual sappy feel-good formulaic nonsense. A decent cast (not least Joel Edgerton as the owner of the factory) but less humour and less depth than THE FULL MONTY. One to avoid.

KINKY BOOTS was released in the UK in October 2005. It is now available on Region 1 and 2 DVD.

THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY - ring a ding ding!

THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY is a corker of a flick, that seems to have been somewhat overlooked by distributors and critics. It's essentially a long-drawn out one joke movie, but I think it has a lot of charm and a good few belly-laughs. It's apparently based on a true story wherein an ageing Frank Sinatra was brought to Australia by an upstart young promoter called Rod Blue for a comeback tour. Frank called an irritating young journo a two-buck whore, which caused all the Australian unions, headed up by a pre-premiership Bob Hawke, to go on strike. So you get two intransigent men who don't say sorry - Sinatra and Hawke, eye-balling it - and this young promoter who is one more cancelled concert away from bankruptcy, caught in the middle. What we get from all this is a nicely observed, frothy slip of a movie. Joel Edgerton is endearing as the chancer, Rod Blue. Melanie Griffith is convincingly ditzy as Frank's squeeze and Rose Byrne is suitably sweet as the straight girl with a crush on Blue. The only weak link is Dennis Hopper, cast as Frank. That's not because Dennis is bad - just that imitating Sinatra is near-impossible. For my money, Ray Liotta did it best in the TV movie, The Rat Pack. But this is more than compensated for by the sheer brilliance of casting David Field (notable as Keithy George in CHOPPER) as a young Bob Hawke complete with insane hair-do, aviator specs and bad suit. Genius. So for any of you looking for a bit of Ol' Blue Eyes nostalgia combined with a conventional heart-warming rom-com, knock yourself out.

THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY premiered at Cannes 2003 and goes on limited release in the UK this week.