Toy Story has 3 gold medals. This is the Victory lap.

I know there was some disquiet about Toy Story 4 even being made.   The BBC and Guardian film critic Mark Kermode was really anxious about it, fearful that the wonderful trilogy was going to be spoilt by an unnecessary addition,  one that was made for the money, ruining his ever-so-valued Toy Story experience.   He now knows that his fears were unfounded.   TS4(or TS Forky as some now call it) is a wonderful victory lap to be enjoyed knowing that the trilogy already has its own Golden medals.  We didn’t know we were waiting for it,  but now that it is here we can rejoice, cheering and waving goodbye.  I am pretty sure it is goodbye. 

It has been 24 years since TS first amazed and moved us.  It was the first ever full length CGI animated movie  and set the bar very high, but ever since then Pixar has pushed that bars  higher and higher both technically and content wise.  Do we remember how amazed we were by the details of the polyester hair on Monsters Inc, or Merida’s flowing hair in Brave, the photo-realist background in WALL-E?    Maybe not, but I can we ever forget the rumbling fears that TS3 fed to us towards the end;  then the triple whammy of  relief followed by the bitter sweet final scene that we thought was the end of TS. 

I will say no more about TS 4 than this.    It is an exciting and sometimes frightening adventure, and it is a love story.   Not just a romantic love story, it goes much deeper than that.    If you want to you can consider its deep existentialist depth - or you simply sit back and enjoy the ride.   If you saw and loved the others I think you will love this one too. If (somehow) you have never seen the others, you could actually start here.    It is not a sequel, it is just a toy story that happens later.  But don’t wait for the DVD;  a movie such as this was made for the Big Beautiful Screen (like Rocketman and BladeRunner 2049), so if you want to see it please go out and make it an event.  

I was prompted by seeing TS4  to write a longer piece about the deep emotional, moral, philosophical and spiritual richness of the movies.    That will be up next folks. 

Rocketman is a blast!

At the beginning of Rocketman we see Elton John march into a group therapy session, dressed as a fallen angel in a scarlet red be-winged outfit,  and declare  that he is an alcoholic, a cocaine addict, sex addict, bulimic  - and a shopping addict.    The rest of this  ‘true fantasy’  tells how little Reggie Dwight from Pinner got into this sorry state, and ends, as it starts, with him deciding to battle his way out of it.     It is a terrible story, wonderfully  told, and its postscript tells us that in the end Elton won.  He has of course just been awarded the French Legion d’Honneur to go with his English Knighthood. 

The story is well known,  from his childhood, when it seems his parents tried hard to live up to Philip Larkin’s famous nostrum  -

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you. 

We follow him through his acceptance at the age of 11 by the Royal College of Music,  meeting Bernie Taupin when he was twenty and breaking into song-writing with him.   That was followed by the fame and fortune that almost  appeared like magic, but were not what he really needed.   It tells of Elton’s  unhappy relationship with John Reid, his one-time lover/manager,  his spiral down into various  addictions and his attempted suicide, all the way to his decision to quit drugs and go into therapy.   The actual chronology is used freely, and in the case of the group therapy invented, but this rearrangement imposes some clarity onto what was really a very chaotic life.   

Most of the songs do not follow the actual chronology of Elton's life and career, and  of course none of them are to his own lyrics, even when they seem to be his personal commentary/confession, but Bernie's lyrics must have been informed by his friend’s  circumstances, and they are used here to fit the  ‘true fantasy’ well. 

Elton was a producer of this movie so I guess he must have put a lot of his money into it and thereby kept it out of the hands of the major studios.   Paying the piper  meant he could have ‘called the tune’ and given him license to whitewash the story  (as in the Queen produced Bohemian Rhapsody).  But Elton once said about being in therapy that "your pride will kill you" and I think this must be the most blisteringly honest bio-pic I have ever seen produced by its protagonist.    The budget also gave artistic freedom and it is, as they say, all up there on the screen.    Much of this story is illuminated by song and dance routines, which are large scale and impressive.    

Dexter Fletcher, who ended up directing Bohemian Rhapsody when Brian Singer was sacked, also directed this, delivering Lee Hall’s script (War Horse, Billy Elliot) and George Richmond’s images (he shot both the Kingsman movies, Tomb Raider and Warhorse) with a sure touch.   Matthew Margeson honours the original music and provides his own unobtrusively, and Taron Edgerton produces an award deserving performance as he sings, dances and plays the adult Elton (Matthew Illesley was nine years old when he played him in childhood).     Jamie Bell plays Taupin, and the guy from Bodyguard, Richard Madden plays Reid (who is painted very black and I suppose it must be true or he would have sued the hell out of them).   

It is good to see so many great  British actors on show, including Gemma Craven,  Stephen Graeme and Stephen Macintosh, alongside the amazing Bryce Dallas Howard as Elton's mother,  who I spent much of the move trying to identify as a Brit, never recognising her American self from Jurassic World – Fallen Kingdom.   

Bryce Dallas Howard

The postscript tells us the good news.   Elton did find someone to love.   Elton and David Furnish married in 2005 and have two adopted children.   Elton has been sober and clean for decades now,  and his AIDs Foundation has raised hundreds of millions of pounds.  He does, however confess to still having a problem with shopping.  I guess he can afford it. 

So,  although having doubts about the depiction of the therapy group, which might give some people a false impression of how they actually work, I think Rocketmanis a really good movie, telling an important story that has a clear message for all those who aspire for fame and fortune - and about the absolute need for forgiveness.     None of it would work, however, without the brilliance of the music, and I was very pleased to see it made clear that it is Taupin who has always written the brilliant and essential  lyrics for Elton to put to music,  and that Bernie retained his sanity while Elton was going crazy.  Their friendship is also a true love story, if never a romanic one..     

I saw Rocketman on a very big screen with a good sound system and if you can get to a proper cinema screen it is really worth the effort, this is a Big Movie, with Big Music - and a Big Story to tell.  

Could it be your Favourite?

The Favourite.   The Greek Director Yorgos Lanthimos has won many nominations and prizes at Cannes and Venice and at the Oscars for The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deerand, hugely, forThe Favourite.   These three films have also, however, divided audiences.    When I saw The Favouritein London I loved it, but my companion hated it.   It is certainly unlike any other period costume movie I have ever seen, taken from a script written by feature length film newcomers Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara.    It famously stars Olivia Coleman, the Oscar Winner among eleven  other nominations for the film, including Best Supporting Performaces for her co-stars Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone,  Best Original Screenplay,  Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Production Design, Costume Design, Directing and  Editing. 

So what is all the (divisive) fuss about?   The film is set during the early 18^thcentury War of the Spanish Succession, when England was ruled by the widowed Queen Anne.  The Queen’s physical and emotional wellbeing is fragile and she depends on her long term friend,  Lady Sarah Churchill,  Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) – wife of  John, Captain General (a very effective Chief of the General Staff.)    There is political opposition to the ongoing cost of the war, but Sarah effectively runs the  Court and sets the Queen’s policies.   Then Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives,  working as a maid but looking for advancement.    The film follows what swiftly becomes a love triangle between the three women, with Sarah using her brains, long term friendship and Anne’s dependency on her, and Abigail using her sexuality.   The plot follows the various personal and political intrigues with biting wit – and very rude language.    

I know some people dislike this latter aspect, not being inclined to believe that royalty and aristocracy would ever use such langua     ge.    It is not at all decorous, but I have no reason to doubt it probability.   One aspect of the so called ‘upper classes’ is that in the main they do not give a **** about what anyone else thinks.    I remember similar outrage at the scatological language used by Thomas More in Hilary Mantel’s  Wolf Hall, but it is amply documented by his own letters and the contemporary accounts of others.   More as not at all as portrayed in  ‘A Man For All Seasons’,it seems, and Martin Luther also used similar language.   Times and cultures change, and it is anachronistic to judge the past by our contemporary  mores.   None the less some find it difficult – and I found it occasionally shocking, but then I don’t really mind being shocked.  

And what I loved about the film was its wit, passion and compassion.     Olivia Coleman, as  the much bereaved Queen (she had not only lost her  husband, but all 17 of her children) is truly pathetic.   She is petty, vindictive, depressed and desperate for love – even if it is from the host of rabbits she keeps in her quarters.      I did not like anything about her, but I was very moved by her.    The great film critic Roger Ebert said that ‘movies are empathy machines’,  and Olivia Coleman’s deeply rooted performance tests and proves the point.   She is a  deserved Oscar winner. 

The rest of the  cast, including Mark Gatiss and Nicolas Hoult, provide great support and the cinematography by Robbie Ryan (Slow West) and  Lanthimos’s usual editor,   Yorgos Mavropsaridis, provide visuals that can be sumptuous (I suspect no use of artificial indoor lighting – a la the BBC’sWolf Hall) and disturbing (the use of some rather strange lenses). 

 So, you pay your money and you take your pick.  Or you take your pick and don’t pay your money.    It is only, ever, up to you.

Catch up.

So, having been rather busy since Christmas I am playing catch-up and  recommending some movies you might have missed.  

Here are brief notes, but I will revisit some of these films at length  later.

Destroyer. In Karyn Kusama’s film DestroyerNicole Kidman provides an amazing performance, playing  the kind of role usually reserved for male actors; a broken down alcoholic cop racked by guilt for a tragic failure years ago and by the breakup of his marriage which estranged him from his daughter.   But this time it is a woman in the role, with flashbacks to the crucial events fifteen years earlier.   So Kidman (now in her early fifties) plays both the decrepit present day cop aged maybe around 40,  and her much more sprightly younger self.   The film has a good story line  and able support from Sebastian Stan (Avengers), Bradley Whitford (The West Wing)  and Tatiana Maslany (who played multiple roles as the lead in  Orphan Black, but this is absolutely Kidman’s movie, and she is astonishing. 

                                              

Spiderman; into the Spider-verse.   I enjoyed the first two Spiderman movies but lost interest in those that followed, until this movie came along.  It is animated to wonderful (and Oscar winning) effect in ways that honour the comic book origins of the character, and the writing keeps Spider-man’s backstory but does utterly new things with him, or rather with them.      An evil experiment breaks the bounds of the multiverses – the billions of other parallel universes hypothesized by some cosmologists – allowing other manifestations of the character to appear to aid this young  working-class mixed-race  New Yorker,  a teenager who isn’t quite Peter Parker.    These visitors include  a film noir, very black and white, Philip Marlow figure, ananime heroine and her futuristic robot-spider, a Spider-Pig and (of course) a Spider-Woman,  alongside two alternative versions of Peter Parker himself.   The splendid voice cast includes Chris Pine,  Jake Johnson, Shameik Moore, John Mulaney,  Nicolas Cage, Hailee Steinfeld,  Mahershala Ali and Lily Tomlin.   This is not just a film for Spider-man fans,  it is absolutely accessible, enormous fun and beautifully animated.

  Long Shot is a rom-com starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogan written by Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah and directed by  Jonathan Levine. (Seth Rogan was in Levine’s 2011 50/50)    Once upon a time she was his babysitter.   Now she is the US Secretary of State and he is a radical journalist.   Happenchance brings them together (of course) as she prepares her bid for the upcoming Presidential nominations and she decides to hire him to add some humour and pizazz to her rather flat speeches.   You can guess the rest,  but don’t let that stop you seeing it.   It will not quite shake up the gender politics of Hollywood, but it does offer us a smart and powerful woman in a funny rom-com, who does not have to sacrifice her smarts or abandon her power in order to find love.    Being a Seth Rogan movie there is one gross out scene, but otherwise the humour is benign and tasty. 

    

  Fighting with My Family is a British (very British) movie that has a very different female star in a very different female role.    Florence Pugh (Lady MacBeth andThe Little Drummer Girl)  plays Sayara Knight, who is part of the real life English wrestling Knight family.  Stephen Merchant wrote and directed this,  and persuaded The Rock, Dwayne Johnson to play himself, recreating the part he actually played in the Knight family’s fortunes.  Sayara and her brother Zac (Jack Lowden, England is Mine andDunkirk)  try to break into the American World Wrestling Entertainment circuit.    She succeeds, he does not, and they both struggle with the consequences,  but this is not a down-beat docudrama, it is a funny and heartwarming story.   Nick Frost and Lena Headley (Game of Thrones) play the wrestling parents with enormous gusto, properly vulgar humour and great charm.   In fact that is what describes the whole movie, despite the hard falls some of the Knights have to endure.   Vince Vaughn is an actor whose performances I do not always admire, but that may be more to do with the roles he accepts rather than his acting ability.  Here he does very well as the  apprentice’s wrestling boot-camp  boss.   Stephen Merchant has made an impressive directorial job, his second after his 2010 Cemetery Junction.    

Leave No Trace.   Eight years ago I saw Debra Granik’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning film Winter’s Bone,  a simple, stark story simply told, set in the Ozark wooded hills in a community characterised by poverty and consequent criminality.   A young woman, 17  year old,  has to find her crystal-meth brewing bail-jumping father.    Unless he appears in court on time the family home will be forfeit and the family homeless.    Jennifer Lawrence  (aged 19 at the time) played the girl and the film and its star blew me away.    

Granik’s  2018 film Leave No Trace  takes place in the forests in coastal Pacific Northwest Oregon, the same setting as  Captain Fantastic, a movie that shares some its elements, but has a very different tone.   

Winter’s Bonefelt like a black and white movie – even  black and grey – and the woodland setting  was lean and bleak.   Here the woods are a lush,  luxuriantly fertile green and this reflects the  much warmer daughter/father relationship at its heart.   The father, Will, is a PTSD damaged vet.    He identifies the horror of war with the conformity of those who accept the rules of society, who follow orders, do as they are told and so march off to war when told.   So he has rejected all conformity – and even the houses that ‘conformists’ live in.     So he lives in the forest with his daughter Tom,  where he uses his intelligence and army training to survive and avoid detection.  Father and daughter are clearly devoted to each other.  She is well trained and disciplined,  knowing their situation is bizarre, but accepting it because it seem necessary for her father’s mental stability.   But when they are spotted by a jogger the local authorities come looking for them, find them and offer them a place to live and work for Will to do.  Will and Tom react to these radical changes in different ways.  That is all that happens.   There is no high drama.   There are no extravagant outbursts of emotion.   In fact the script is as lean as the Ozark woodland.    But the two stars are  amazing in their ability to convey subtle but profound internal changes without words, or even gestures.  Ben Foster (Hell and High Water, Kill Your Darlings)  plays the father and Thomsasin McKenzie (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) plays the girl, Tom, and it is one of the most impressive films I have seen this year – almost up there with Winter’s Bone,and that is very high praise indeed. Both films were shot by Michael McDonough. 

US.    I have been thinking and writing notes on Jordan Peele’s film Us for many weeks now.   I will continue to work on them, as this remarkable movie deserves the effort of a really considered response.    All I will say at the moment is that this may well be my film of the year.   It uses the horror tropes, but is much more complex and profound than any horror film I have ever seen.    Us provides a scathing critique of America,  using an inventive script that includes sound characterization and humour alongside the horror of the central metaphor.   The acting is amazing,  with all of the main character’s having doppelgangers, both played by the same actors, including  Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Even Alex.    If you saw and enjoyed Get Out!  This is a film for you.    

Another film I really do want to promote is Widows, Steve McQueen’s exhilarating remake of Lynda La Plant’s 1970’s TV thriller, adapted by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) and starring Viola Davies (Doubt, The Help, Fences), Michelle Rodrigues (Avatar), Elizabeth Debicke (The Great Gatsby, The Night Manager) as the widows, alongside Cynthia Erivo (Hard Times at the El Dorado),   Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya,  Jackie Weaver and Liam Neeson.   This movie has pace, thrills, convincing characters, and heart.   McQueen makes genre movies, but all in different genres, and all with  elements that transcend their genre.