As I live in the countryside of Western Ireland, my opportunities to go to the movies are limited, but many of you may be in a similar situation, so I hope this little blog offers you some suggestions to go by. Those I have already reviewed in this blog are marked ‘See below.’
I have gone for up to 6 stars to rate them. Sometimes 5 are not enough.
So.
Joker ****** I cannot think of another movie that has taken me a month of reflection, and a second viewing, before I could be sure of how I thought/felt about it. The 6 stars say it all. See below.
Us ****** My second 6* film this year. Brilliant script, direction and ensemble performances, plus a devastating social critique. See below.
Rocketman ***** If you are going to make a biopic of Elton the music and showmanship have to be top-drawer, and here they are. Plus Taron Edgerton’s brilliant impersonation and Elton’s shattering honesty. See below.
Leave No Trace ***** I really admired Helen Granic’s Winter’s Bone (2010) and here she takes similar tropes, father/daughter and living on or beyond the margins, and makes a film that is as tough as Winter’s Bone but much warmer, with another stand-out performance by a young actress, Thomasina MacEnzie, and the ever reliable Ben Foster. See below.
Yesterday ***** A delightful fantasy, scripted by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle, about a singer/song-writer who suddenly finds he is the only person on Earth who knows the Beatles songs. Ed Sheehan makes a humble cameo as himself. It doesn’t aim too high, but hits the mark fair and square.
The Kid Who Would Be King **** A low key British movie, written and directed by Joe Cornish (Attack The Block and Ant Man) about a 21st century ‘kid’ (played by Andy Serkis’s son, Louis Ashbourne Serkis) who finds himself locked in battle with the Arthurian witch Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson) but aided by her brother Merlin (Patrick Stewart, enjoying chewing the scenery) and having to use The Sword Excalibur to save everyone. Simple and effective fun.
Avengers: Endgame ****. Well it had to come to a (sort of) end, even if we will still have Avenger movies coming out of Marvel. But this is the end of the epic, the wrapper-up, the answer to what happened next after Infinity War, and for me it does the trick. It is sad at times without being sentimental and, as many have said, it balances the tragic with the comic. Despite the huge amount of content it still has room to pause, to take a breath, to allow some of its actors space to breath in, to act.
The Favourite **** I felt I should have enjoyed Yorgos Lanthimos’s Lobster more than I did, and it took me a while to get into The Killing of a Sacred Deer, but The Favourite won me over straight away. I must add that my companion that night said that she hated it. I can understand why. It seems to be a costume drama about Queen Anne, crowned in 1702 when her brother-in-law William of Orange, died. Her best friend was Sarah, whose soldier husband, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, Anne put in charge of all her forces doing the turbulent and expensive War of the Spanish Succession (1701 - 14). So far so conventional. And unoffensive. However, the relationship between Anne, Sarah and Abigail Hill, a ‘woman of the bedchamber’ who some suspected of seducing Anne moves us into a place where emotional fireworks and ‘bad language’ fly and tears flow as Sarah, (Rachel Weisz) and Abigail (Emma Stone) vie for the love and attention of Queen Anne, (Olivia Coleman), who Coleman herself described as ‘spoiled, grieving sensitive and cruel. An actor’s dream’. And she did get an Oscar for playing her, after all. The cinematography by Robbie Ryan is as unsettling as the story, and the costumes (Sandy Powell) and production design are stunning. So, not a film for those who like royalty to be portrayed with dignity, but for some of the rest of us an accomplished and moving treat.
Toy Story 4 ***** A victory lap after the previous three Gold Medal Toy Story winners. See below.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse **** Maybe the most inventive Spider-man offering of them all. Such fun. See below.
Fighting with My Family **** Stephen Merchant’s account of the true story of an English wrestling family, and their hopes to break into the uS scene. See below. \
You Were Never Really Here****. Lynne Ramsay and Joaquin Phoenix combine in a brutal yet moving (sort of) thriller. See below.
Destroyer**** Nicole Kidman on absolute top form, shedding all dignity as a broken down cop and in flashback her younger self. See below.
Blinded by the Light *** Another British film, co-written and directed by Grinder Chadha, the British born Kenyan Asian who gave us Bend it Like Beckham, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, and Bhaji On the Beach. The film and its young, 1980’s British Asian hero, are inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s music. Funny, pertinent, and blessed by The Boss.
All Is True *** Kenneth Branagh has directed many Shakespearian plays on stage and film, but Ben Elton’s original screenplay he plays the Bard himself, retired to his home and (largely previously ignored) family in Stratford, where his wife (Judi Dench) and daughters give him a hard time. Ian McKellen turns up as The Earl of Southampton, and also gives him a hard time, but this is classically a comedy, not a tragedy, so all ends well. Charming.
First Man *** Josh Singer wrote First Man, and previously a lot of The West Wing’s episodes, as well as The Post and Spotlight, so we know where he is coming from. Damien Chazelle wrote and directed Whiplash and La La Land, so we know his ‘beat’. Then we have Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, as strong, silent and emotionally unobtainable as he can be, and Claire Foy as his wife, paying the personal price of such heroism, as so many women did. I admired this movie more than I enjoyed it.
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. *** A subtle and philosophical examination of the human condition as it faces the existential threat of candy coloured aliens who....oh, no; it’s just hugely inventive fun with a great American and British voice cast that includes the amazing Tiffany Haddish. Maybe it should be ****.
The Red Sea Diving Resort *** Gideon Raff wrote the Israeli TV series P.O.W. and the American version of it, Homeland. He also wrote and directed this, which is based on the true story of how Israeli Mossad agents set up the titular base as a cover to rescue imprisoned Ethiopian Beta Jews in the late 1970’s. Chris Evans, Greg Kinnear and Ben Kingsley lent it their acting support. This film did not get a positive critical reception, but I enjoyed it. Sadly, the rescued Ethiopian’s reception in Israel, and the ongoing immigration rules that apply to other Ethiopian Jews there, have not been as welcoming as some had hoped.
Ad Astra ** Sadly I was underwhelmed by this movie.
Alita: Battle Angel **. Underwhelmed by this one too, but at least it was never trying to be portentous, unlike Ad Astra.
Captain Marvel * Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Annette Bening and Ben Mendelsohn are all brilliant actors, utterly wasted here. I have written elsewhere (A Quiet Place) about the potential dangers of people directing their own scripts, but I would have expected Disney and Marvel to have licked this into shape. They did not.
The Lion King I really enjoyed Jon Fever’s version of The Jungle Book, but maybe that was because of the performance of the only non-CGI character, Neel Sethi’s Mowgli. I could find nothing engaging about his seemingly similar venture, despite an equally starry voice cast.
And on DVD I caught up with:
Green Book **** Joker came out of the Hangover stable, which seems to have wrong-footed some critics. Green Book was directed by Peter Farrelly of Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary fame, and written by Brian Currie, who wrote Armageddon and Con Air, so many expectations might also have been up-ended by this offering as it does a thoughtful and quietly moving account of the true-ish story of the journey made by the famous black pianist Dr. Don Shirley and his driver (and unofficial body-guard) Tony ‘the Lip’ Vallelonga through the Southern States in the 1950s, with Don playing to white audiences. But this sensitive and moving film was co-authored by Tony’s son Nick Vallelonga, and the lead actors are Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, both of whom provide committed performances.
Best Film of the year? The Oscars said so, but many disagreed. I think there were at least three other nominations I would have gone for, but hey, fourth is good.
The Breadwinner **** I love the Irish movie Song of the Sea, a Celtic folk tale beautifully animated in the 2 dimensional style of the Book of Kells (see also The Secret of Kells by the same company.) The Breadwinner comes out of the same stable, but is set in Afghanistan in 2001, where a young girl has to pretend to be a boy in order to support her family when her father is carted off to jail by the Taliban. The style is very different, the quality and ability to move an audience are the same.
The Handmaiden **** Some may have found the violence in Park Chan-Wook’s films Oldboy and Sympathy For Mr Vengeance hard to swallow. I did. But I enjoyed Thirst, his take on vampirism and Zola’s novel Therese Raquin, plus Lady Vengeance and his delightful I’m a Cyborg. The Handmaiden is his version of Sarah Water’s Victorian lesbian love-story Fingersmith, transplanted by Park to the 1930’s Korea. This is a complex and very erotic movie, brilliantly staged, filmed and performed. As it happens it was written by Sen-kyeong Jeong who also co-wrote Lady Vengeance, Thirst and I’m a Cyborg.
Shadow ***. I usually enjoy Zhang Yimou movies, and really like the historical Hero and The House of Flying Daggers, as well as his earlier, more conventional, productions set in the 20th century, such as Red Sorghum, Qiu Ju and Raise the Red Lantern. In Shadow he returns to China’s early history and wuxia martial arts, but makes what is for him a unique use of colour. Always known as a colourist, having initially trained as a cinematographer, in this film he uses black and a million shades of grey, with only the most sparse flesh tones and blood reds. Narratively complex and visually stunning.
Annihilation.*** Alex Garland adapted and directed Jeff Vandermere’s dystopian novel and used Rob Hardy, his cinematographer from Ex Machina, to shoot it. His lead players are Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason-Leigh, Tessa Thompson and Gina Rodriguez, a mixed-skilled team chosen to explore the strange, mysterious and expanding zone, the Shimmer, that surrounds the site where some kind of alien life-form (crash?) landed and seems to be changing the DNA of all life forms around it. The movie is as strange and mysterious as the Shimmer itself. The fact that the team are all women is very welcome. When they ask ‘Why didn’t you send any men in?’ they are answered ‘We did. None of them came back.’ None except (maybe) Kane (Oscar Isaac), the Special Ops husband of Lena, the Natalie Portman character. This was shot in England for Netflix by a very British team, including Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, who scored Ex Machina. Some of the male actors are also British, including Benedict Wong, David Gyasi and Josh Danford. I do not have Netflix (I am afeared of sitting in front of my TV 20/7 if nor 24/7) so I saw this on DVD. I think I might watch again.
I know Your Name***(*). A rather beautiful Japanese anime, concerning two contemporary teenagers who live miles apart but dream of being each other, and set out to find their dream partners. There are plenty of philosophical twists to this; not all of which I followed on first viewing, but again, I think it deserves a second.
The Assassin.***. Korean, gorgeous, somewhat impenetrable. See below.
You Were Never Really Here****. Lynne Ramsay and Joaquin Phoenix combine in a brutal yet moving (sort of) thriller. See below.
Destroyer **** Nicole Kidman on absolutely top form as a broken down cop, and in flashback, her younger self. See below.
