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Aka Arrête avec tes mensonges ie Stop With Your Lies. I don’t like raking over the past. You either feel nostalgic or disappointed. Novelist Stéphane Belcourt (Guillaume de Tonquedec) agrees to be the guest of honour at a celebration for a famous brand of cognac, even though he does not drink alcohol. When he returns to his hometown ofCognac for the first time in 35 years, he meets Lucas (Victor Belmondo) the son of his first love, Thomas Andrieu (Julien de Saint-Jean) a handsome farm boy who disappeared after they had a relationship in their final year at the local lycee when Stéphane (Jeremy Gillet) was hoping to become a writer after university in Bordeaux. Lucas represents the brand in Los Angeles and is leading a group of Americans around the area on a tour. Stéphane and Lucas go on an occasionally painful journey of discovery about who Thomas really was and why he did what he did throughout his life while attending events, embarrassing the Americans and socialising with the bourgeois great and good. Lucas tells Stéphane his father was only happy when Stéphane would appear on television yet wouldn’t have his books in the house. Lucas concludes that Stéphane has been writing about Thomas for years. Then the revelation that Thomas committed suicide the previous years shakes the author out of his complacency and he realises Lucas is the person really behind his invitation … What was my father like? The source novel by Philippe Besson is a confessional memoir of sorts, so this is a generative text on several levels – a kind of roman a clef transposed into a different format where other forms of recognition take place, catharsis on the part of the leading men just the start. He only ever brightened up when you were on TV. Writerliness is one facet, gay life another, rites of passage in a small town yet another. Life here and with you are different things. They’re different worlds. It is however a photograph which gives rise to the greatest gear shift – presaged when Lucas takes Stéphane to the quarry which was his father’s favourite location to hide from the world. It’s not the author’s first time at that spot. You write to someone to make them present again. The emotions of youth, the impact of first love, the knowledge that nothing can be that sweet again, the disappointment of adult experience, all coalesce into radically antithetical futures for this boy from his past. Nothing can ever be as fun as having sex and dancing in that bedroom to the music of Téléphone. One of the most gratifying moments is Thomas seeing Stéphane wearing his band shirt in the school corridor. There is comedy and irony aplenty – from the vehicle swaps to the running joke that an author who avoids alcohol is here to celebrate an internationally acclaimed drink and his attempts at humour when he recounts to the group of American tourists a story of what happened to him in a West Hollywood bar when he did consume a glass filled to the brim with pastis is disarmingly shocking. And, in the pantheon of French performers there is another kind of recognition because those mobile features and sad-dog eyes can only belong to the grandson of Bebel, the latest generation of Belmondo to take on the acting mantle. He plays the deceitful trigger to the opening of old wounds with sentiment and aplomb. I already know I’ll never be this happy again. When Stéphane ends up freestyling his speech at the end the themes are summed up in his monologue. The book (translated from the French by Molly Ringwald) is a deeply gratifying literary experience. The film has different modes of address, fulfilling in another way. The screenplay is co-written by director Olivier Peyon, Vincent Poymiro, Arthur Cahn and Cécilia Rouaud. You’ll write about all this. You can’t help it
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Hello, Cassie Holt. Private investigator Cassie Holt (Alice Eve) is hired by the local police force led by Rory McMahon (Paul Reid) to track down the killer of her mentor Mikeal Tallini (Antonio Banderas) who is implicated in a series of grisly crimes they were looking into. She quickly finds out that Jamie Douglas (Shelley Hennig) is on a quest to avenge the abuse she suffered as a child, held captive along with a lot of other little children by a local family who raped and abused them. Dottie Evans (Olwen Fouéré) and her husband Edgar (Nick Dunning) are the culprits but the chicanery of a local solicitor Victor Harrison (Matthew Tompkins) is protecting them. However Jamie’s mission will not be stopped … I’m a trained librarian, remember? The screenplay by Charles Burnley constructs Cassie’s relationship with regular flashbacks integrating her present-day skills with scenes of her training. Mikeal is an acerbic character who has taught her everything she knows but her own past as a victim of her step-grandfather intrudes into her life. When she encounters someone with a similar background and a different method for handling a terrible past this violent retribution ensues. What you two have going on is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen, observes Garda McMahon. Bad people did bad things. As Cassie and Jamie establish something close to equilibrium, the truth about the wealthiest people in the area becomes clear and a conspiracy is revealed. Some of this is about generational entitlement: We built this entire part of the country. Mostly it’s about perversion. Fouéré, who was we’ve pointed out elsewhere, is practically a trope unto herself (the madwoman with white hair) is an atypical Irish Mammy indeed, salivating over the prospect of torturing her favourite victim. All the broken dollies playing together. The weird scene-setting, illogical events and horrible images of raped children are not assisted by a rather uneven performance from Eve who is expected to be all things to everyone. Neither coherent enough tonally to make a comment on its avowed subject nor sufficiently stylish and batsh*t crazy to plunge into the realm of so bad it’s good trash, this certainly instills a newfound respect for librarians: information studies never looked so alluring. Directed by Jon Keeyes and shot on location in Ireland. When will this end?
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In your predicament, the black character is always the first to die. Ten years after graduating, friends Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and Shawn (Jay Pharoah) arrive at a cabin in the woods where they plan on celebrating Juneteenthon a weekend getaway with their group from college. In the game room, they find a board game called ‘The Blackening’ which features a racist Little Black Sambocaricature. The lights go out and a mysterious voice demands that the couple play. Shawn answers a question incorrectly and is promptly killed with an arrow to the neck. Morgan attempts to escape but is captured. The next day, Lisa (Antoinette Robinson), Allison (Grace Byers) and Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins) make their way to the cabin and discuss King (Melvin Gregg) bringing Lisa’s unfaithful ex-boyfriend Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls) for the weekend’s festivities. On her way to the cabin, Shanika runs into a former schoolmate named Clifton (Jermaine Fowler) while shopping at the gas station and he tells her he is also joining the party but she can’t figure out who might have invited him. Before leaving, Shanika is unnerved by the facially disfigured clerk Clive Connor (James Preston Rogers) who stands watching her menacingly. Once the group is all together at the cabin, they find Park Ranger White (Diedrich Bader) querying their right to be there and not allowing them entry until they produce evidence they’ve booked in. After settling the disagreement – the Connors usually let the property to white families – the friends prepare for a night of partying. White people scare me. After drinks, drugs, and games ensue, the group questions who specifically invited Clifton. After the lights go out again, the friends go to find a power box, only to come across The Blackening with game pieces which correlate to their personalities. The voice speaks to them, revealing that he is keeping Morgan prisoner. The voice forces the friends to play the game to save Morgan, and begins by asking trivia questions aboutblack American culture. This game is impossible to win. Unfortunately, the friends fail to sufficiently answer a question about all the black actors that guest-starred onthe TV show Friendsand Morgan is attacked. They are ordered to sacrifice one of their own based on whom they deem to be the blackest – the most black person among them will be sacrificed. Each then comes up with their own defence of why it cannot be them. After Clifton admits he voted forDonald Trump in both elections everyone chooses him out of spite. Clifton goes outside and is shot in the chest with an arrow by the killer. The rules are simple – survive. When the friends are freed from the room, they attempt to go look for Morgan and find help. Despite knowing better, they agree with Allison’s idea to split up. She goes off with King and Shanika (X Mayo). Dewayne has to go with Lisa and Nnamdi who end up running into Ranger White who is willing to help them until the killer shoots him in the neck with an arrow. Then Allison, King and Shanika encounter the killer … Time to die! If Get Out and Us played with horror tropes in the realm of political allegory, this is more akin to Scary Movie and its satirical relationship to the Scream franchise – which itself was founded on a fond homage to the legendary slashers Halloween, Friday the 13th et al. Written by Tracy Oliver and DeWayne Perkins of the comedy troupe 3Peat and based on their 2018 short film of the same name, this is both resonant in terms of stereotypes and smart with its targets, the cabin in the woods being just the first trope utilised, skewered and trussed up, and a masked killer concealing a dual identity – who isn’t really the culprit at all which means there are three of him. The one game I could never get a handle on was Spades. It may be a reunion of college friends but Return of the Secaucus Seven it is not. Taking its subject as the genre itself and making it from a black perspective pushes the parameters because once the first person killed is black – who do you kill next? More black characters. What about the characters who have sex? How long will they last? I’ve never been so happy to see a white saviour! And so it proceeds, wittily batting away the tropes with a mix of finely tuned wit and a deal of slapstick. What about a final girl? Well, the girl who knows the black anthem has a white father and she’s the one who has the courage to go after the killer. Who won’t stay dead. And he suggests that the colourist scenario he proposes is a black Sophie’s Choice. Lucky they can all do that handy ‘mind talking’ thang – which is all very well until the killer can too. More funny than scary, this makes no concession to anyone who doesn’t understand the references and simply hurtles through an action-packed narrative with verve and sociopolitical swipes. Directed by Tim Story. We are all alone in a cabin in the woods!
The only important thing now is to save a buck. New York City. Joan Howell (Sandra Dee) intends to be an actress but for now she’s working as a maid. On three different occasions, she and Tom Milford (Bobby Darin) – a successful publishing executive and womaniser – accidentally bump into each other. The third time, Tom asks her for a date. Embarrassed by her own modest rented apartment, which she shares with fellow aspiring-actress friend Audrey (Nita Talbot), Joan invites him to the lavish apartment of one of her clients whom she believes to be out of town for a couple of weeks pretending it’s hers. What she doesn’t know, because she and her employer have never met, is that the apartment is Tom’s. He shocked to find himself being welcomed to his own place but he plays along to see how far Joan’s prepared to go. He then moves in with his friend Harvey Granson (Donald O’Connor) who has his own concerns about Joan to do with his acrimonious divorce and property he’s ‘hiding’ from his wife at Tom’s place. As soon as Joan becomes aware of the truth, however, she figures out how she might get even, starting with getting rid of Tom’s beautiful English-tailored suits … You know I’ve got the funniest feeling somebody’s trying to tell us something. Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee were a seemingly golden couple and this was the third time they were paired together in starring roles. It’s a mild comedy and a silly premise but it’s played for all it’s worth by a nice cast. The screenplay by David R. Schwartz from a story by Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore quickly pits our lovely couple together in a meet-cute scenario that’s the conclusion of a voiced montage about how all kinds of creatures collide: the key takeaway being, Bobby and Sandra can’t miss! How they keep coming back together is the whole show. The zipper’s stuck. Leo G. Carroll plays the heavily Oirish-accented pawnbroker Mr O’Shee, which provides the start of a running gag; Reta Shaw is one of the women who find Tom half-naked in a phone booth and Don Haggerty does a Zasu Pitts as the policeman who cannot believe his eyes on more than one occasion especially when a line of extravagantly garbed prostitutes shows up on his beat. There’s more eyerolling from the reliable Robert (Stalag 17) Strauss and Ben Lessy as bartenders who observe the ups and downs of the romance with pleasantly predictable cynicism. Could be he IS an interior decorator. O’Connor is given little to do which is surprising but Larry Storch does a good job as thespian Luther, ready to give the girls advice on the acting biz. How the knotty but lovely and loved-up pair of midcentury blond gods figure out their essential problem – mutual deception – as they constantly mistake the other’s line of work is fairly fun but it’s the ensemble that really make this PG sex comedy a decent watch. Naturally the title song over the weird (astronomy) titles and credits is written and performed by the redoubtable Darin. Directed by Richard Thorpe. Have you never seen a naked man in a phone booth?
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They should have let me in. Sicily. At a remote winery Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) kills gangster Lorenzo Vitale (Bruno Bilotta) and his henchmen to obtain a key to the winery’s vault and recoup money stolen in a cyber-heist. While leaving the winery, Robert is shot in the back by Vitale’s young grandson (Adriano Sabrie). Robert attempts suicide due to his injury but finds his gun out of bullets and then takes the ferry back to the mainland. While driving on the Amalfi Coast, Robert pulls over and slips into unconsciousness from shock. He is found and rescued by local carabiniere Gio Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea) who brings Robert to a small coastal Italian town called Altamonte where he is treated by a doctor, Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone). As he recovers and regains his mobility Robert becomes acquainted with the locals and becomes fond of the town and its people. He makes an anonymous phone call toCIA officer Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) to tip her off about the winery’s role in the drug trade,disguised as normal business transactions in Sicily. Collins and other CIA operatives arrive at the winery and find millions in cash along with bags of synthetic amphetamines used by ISIS terrorists hidden in a storeroom, confirming Robert’s suspicions. Meanwhile, members of theCamorraharass and kill villagers in an attempt to coerce them out of their housing and take over Altamonte for property development. Robert overhears Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero) a high-ranking Camorra member, pressuring local shop owner Angelo (Daniele Perrone) for protection payments. To make an example of him, the CamorrafirebombsAngelo’s fish store as the entire town watches. Gio reviews video of the firebombing and calls the Italian central policefor an inquiry. Along with his wife Chiara (Sonia Ben Ammar) and daughter Gabriella (Dea Lanzaro), Gio is attacked by the Camorra and beaten for interfering in their operations. Thereafter, Marco demands that Gio set up a boat for him. Overhearing the conversation, Robert asks Marco to move his operations to a different location. When Marco refuses, Robert kills him and his henchmen. The Naples head of police Chief Barella (Adolfo Margiotta) is threatened and tortured by Marco’s brother Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio) the head of the Camorra and is ordered to find the person responsible for Marco’s death …Those people don’t know where to go. Our favourite vigilante returns to equalize everything in sight, starting with the mysterious catalyst whose payoff takes the entire film to establish. Transported to Sicily and the Italian mainland, the violence returns with verve in Robert Wenk’s screenplay, the scribe of the others in the series, in the finale adapted from the TV show that starred Edward Woodward and was created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim.What do you see when you look at me?McCall is ageing now and even he must be tired of all the killing.Lord knows I’m allergic to bad things. Availing of R&R in a pretty village with a pleasant woman restaurateur Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) which introduces the hint if not the actuality of romance and a civilised doctor to oversee his recuperation he’s glad of it.Do I look like a guy who kills people?That’s an existential question that’s really kinda silly at this point in the trilogy: this film commences with a horrifying sequence of murders – yes, we know it’s McCall doing in some of the Camorra but it’s extremely shocking. Giving the CIA a tip-off is just the start of an elaborate denouement which unearths a terror cell and reveals the extent of the Mafia’s viciousness. The phone relationship with Emma is a preview of coming attractions:You don’t look like you sound/You do!That’s the opening gambit when they finally come face to face 48 minutes in. In these films Denzel is paired with younger women in a non-romantic way – they get the opportunity to do stuff and he returns to pleasantly predictable vengeful type. It’s his question to her that makes her think of the situation from a different angle:Why smuggle drugs into the most secure port in the entire region?That sets her off doing what he knows she will – directing the CIA action where it needs to go and hopefully keeping her out of the line of fire. While the women in this series are given an opportunity for some action it’s curtailed as here, where a well-timed call saves her but effectively puts her out of action – allowing him to rescue her and save the day because he’s the hero and that’s his job. That’s appropriate considering their previous pairing two decades ago inMan On Fire. Washington is an incredibly charismatic movie star and it’s a relief to have the first 45 minutes dedicated to rebuilding his constitution which allows him to cultivate relationships while the gangsters have their way with the locals, setting up an awesome revenge. His medical treatment and slow recovery gives the audience a chance to recover too before the inevitable kicks in. His visceral method leads him to explain his MO to a victim:It’s called pain compliance. It’s like he’s a doctor too! Shot in a palette verging on monochrome with chiaroscuro features by the brilliant Robert Richardson, the scheme complements the black and white morality, with the amorphous evil villainy of the Mafia rather less attractive than the mesmerising Marton Csokas in the first outing. It’s a stylish way for the series to take a bow – a kind of revenge Western with some spaghetti thrown in for good measure and a coda that explains why McCall fetched up there in the first place, a one-man reenacting of The Magnificent Seven against the mafia on their own turf. Directed as ever by Antoine Fuqua.I’m where I’m supposed to be
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You’ve never seen her, man. She’s in another league. 2019: married tennis power couple former player Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and currently injured star Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) have a young daughter Lily (AJ Lister) who likes to stay in hotels. Under Tashi’s coaching, Art has become a top pro. He is one US Open title away from aCareer Grand Slam but he is struggling to regain his form after an injury. Hoping to return him to form, Tashi enters Art as a wild card in a Challengerevent inNew Rochelle, New York to boost his confidence by beating lower-level opponents. His former best friend Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend is now an unknown player living out of his car, scraping by on the winnings from the lower circuit and also enters the New Rochelle event. 2006: high schoolers and childhood best friends Patrick and Art win the junior doubles title at the US Open. Afterwards, they watch Tashi a highly lauded young tennis prospect make mince meat of the opposition on court. Then they meet her at a party later that night. Usually their attractions are separate but Tashi is the first person to whom Patrick and Art are both attracted. The three make out in a motel room but stop short of having sex. With the two boys playing each other the next day, Tashi says she will give her phone number to whichever of them wins. Patrick wins the match and later signalsto Art that he had sex with Tashi by placing the ball in the neck of the racket prior to serving – a tic of Art’s. Tashi and Art go on to play college tennis at Stanford University, while Patrick turns professional and begins a long distance relationship with Tashi. A jealous Art questions Tashi about whether Patrick loves her, and Patrick, recognising Art’s jealously, playfully reassures him of his and Tashi’s connection. Patrick and Tashi fight when she gives him unsolicited tennis advice and he says he views her as a peer, not his coach. In the next match which Art watches without Patrick, Tashi suffers a severe knee injury. Patrick returns to comfort Tashi but she demands he leave, with Art taking her side. Art aids Tashi in her recovery but she is unsuccessful in resuming her tennis career. I want you to join my team because I want to win. A few years later Tashi reconnects with Art and becomes his coach and the two begin a romantic relationship. He reveals that he and Patrick have not talked since Tashi’s injury. In 2011, Tashi and Art are now engaged and Art’s career is on the up. Tashi and Patrick run into each other at the Atlanta Openand have a one night stand, which Art secretly notices. 2019: Starting at opposite ends of the seeding, Art and Patrick advance through the brackets at New Rochelle until they find themselves facing each other in the tournament’s final match. In a sauna the day before the match, Patrick attempts to reconnect with Art but Art rejects Patrick by saying his career is over and he, Art, will be remembered. Patrick secretly asks Tashi to be his coach and lead him to one last winning season, sensing she is unhappy with Art and that Art is tired of playing but she rejects him … Which one is which? Take three highly charismatic young actors, place them in competition with each other sexually and professionally, complicate things with a love triangle and the monotony and sacrifice of life as sportsmen and women and you have the ingredients for a cracking drama. Director Luca Guadagnino returns with a tennis story – a surprising fact particularly given that there haven’t been any good ones but the screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes is multi-faceted. Not just a sports film but a romance, a thriller and a portrait of generalised anxiety erupting from having to sustain a career, creating monetising opportunities from every win, enduring pain, dealing with catastrophic injury, burnout, a friendship contained within the rise and fall narrative that all sportspeople experience over time and driven characters playing at marriage. Using the New Rochelle Challenger event as a framing device intensifies the pressures of the relationship past and present – we see where they are now and how they got there with the catalysing event an almost-threesome that prefigures everything else in their destiny. And as Tashi explains, Tennis is a relationship. What an impressive cast. Faist is the dazzling actor who was by far the best thing about Spielberg’s West Side Story remake – awards should have come his way but the film fell foul of COVID lockdown release schedules just as this one was delayed from Fall 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. Here he’s the walking wounded and he plays tender and vulnerable so well. O’Connor is the talented Brit who has created so many great performances and powers his way through this with a life in freefall and a smirking swagger, never fully out of love with Tashi. Zendaya is finally being allowed to act nearer her age (27 at time of release) and is so famous she’s currently on the covers of both UK and US Vogue, such is her pull for advertisers and the youth audience, a combination of Euphoria and Spider-Man fans with a monster sci-fi epic under her belt following Dune 2. Watching the guys watch her on court at the 2006 US Open and later at a party, open-mouthed and lustful like heat-seeking missiles, is highly amusing and sets up the relationship’s eventual complexities with her at the fulcrum, literally calling the shots. Aren’t you everybody’s type? It also sets in motion the director’s familiar focus – young people and their romantic travails – although we know the starting point is the end point, or thereabouts, which is a little like watching Titanic and knowing the outcome but now we get to invest in the characters as they encounter each other 13 years later with everything that has gone on since that first fateful encounter. You typically fall apart in the second round. As the guys get reacquainted with their game and Tashi is turned off Art because his game is off and she lives through him, Patrick sees his chance to upset the applecart, pointing up the performative aspect of all their public lives. Thus the scene is set for Round Two in their lives, rivalries intact. It’s about winning. And I do. A lot. For a sports movie love triangle this fun and sexy we have to go back in time to 1977 and Semi-Tough with Burt and Kris and Jill. That was smart and screwball-y too but set in the world of football. How are you going to look at me if I still can’t beat Patrick Zweig? This is tense and exhilarating and wonderfully played by a cast that is exceptionally well matched and hot for each other. Love all? Not quite. But this is a smash, with a zippy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Who wouldn’t love you? MM#4545
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Good writers have the sense to borrow from their elders. Great writers steal! Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) is an aspiring ambitious young writer and Oxford English grad whiling away his twenties tutoring potential Oxbridge entrants for their exams. He eagerly accepts a position at the family estate of his idol, renowned author JM Sinclair (Richard E. Grant) who hasn’t published since the tragic death of his older son. Liam is tutoring his seventeen-year old son Bertie (Stephen McMillan) under the watchful eye of his French mother, sculptress and art curator Helene (Julie Delpy). JM is cold to Liam whereas Helene checks up on her son each day. Liam manages to help JM with a computer problem when the novelist can’t print something out. Liam wonders about a second server in another location in the house. Helene asks Liam about his writing – and reminds him he included his dissertation subject on his CV – JM Sinclair. His technological nous is such that Sinclair eventually offers him to swap novels. Liam compliments his idol’s work but says the ending feels like a different writer whereas JM destroys Liam’s efforts with cutting comments. Then Liam finds a file that illustrates that he is ensnared in a web of family secrets, resentment, and retribution … We don’t talk of his work, we don’t talk of Felix. Follow those rules and you should be fine. A working class wannabe is invited into a wealthy household and eventually his presence apparently destroys the power base and he is handed the keys of the kingdom. The head of household is played by Richard E. Grant. Sounds like Saltburn? Yes, and any or all iterations of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley. In this case Grant is a revered novelist and the tutor for his truculent son has written his dissertation on him and has ambitions to write novels himself. And it appears that Delpy’s Helene is a real femme fatale as the story unravels. So we might call this Slowburn. In fact, it is a very clever wonderfully constructed mystery thriller focused on writerliness and authorship with death as its beating heart. Quite who might be teaching whom, and what the lesson is, changes with each of the three acts and there’s a great payoff (in fact, there’s more than one). Everyone’s intentions are concealed, nature and water are utilised symbolically to plunder the psychological text and the central motif – the rhododendron – is key to the family secret which spills out to engulf Liam, the visitor with ulterior motives. He is played by Irish actor McCormack, whose subtle ingratiating into this warped family picture is not necessary because for quite some time he’s the only person here who has no idea why he’s really been hired. As he adds to the Post-Its for his next novel trusted butler Ellis (Crispin Letts) takes note because the references are entirely parasitic, reminding us that this plot has been used before with Jean-Paul Belmondo in The Spider’s Web and Terence Stamp in Theorem, throroughoing murderous black comedies about the bourgeoisie eating itself. However, integrating the writing experience into this social analysis, the suicide of an older son and a wife’s intricate plan to get revenge while saving her younger son from the same fate, add an entirely new dimension to the premise by debut screenwriter Adam MacKeith. The scheme is brilliantly exposed, with even clever clogs Liam not anticipating the conclusion. You’re not the first. Grant is scarily good as the dinner table bully mercilessly exploiting his older son’s death in private while a chilly Delpy’s character has secrets in abundance. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Anna Patarakina at Haddon House in Derbyshire with a sharp score by Isobel Waller-Bridge to match the shrewd and finely etched performances, this is a marvellous watch, a modern British noir, with an appropriate reminder of an old school screen villainess in the film Grant’s vicious Sinclair watches in his cinema, another element of planting that pays off properly in a knowing thriller. Directed by first-timer Alice Troughton. What makes an ending?
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We are now closer than we have ever been to victory. The near future. A civil war has broken out between an authoritarian US Governmentand various regional factions. The dictatorial President (Nick Offerman) who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photojournalist, Colorado-bornLee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn. Lee and her colleague, Florida-born Reuters journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) intend travelling to Washington DC to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee’s mentor New York Times veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson)asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville where the Western Forces (‘WF’) of Texas and Californiaare presently assembling. Despite Lee’s hesitance she and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie persuades Joel to take her with them as well. After leaving NYC, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men where Lee negotiates the purchase of fuel in Canadian dollars. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, which she saw from the road. There, she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After leaving, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos. Following an overnight stop close to ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie’s potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing on, the group spends the night at a refugee camp before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Look at the tops of the buildings. Be subtle. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop. Later, they are pinned downin a sniper battle amid the remains of a Winter Wonderland theme park. No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us and we’re trying to kill them. The snipers they are with mock Joel’s attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply engaged in a struggle for survival. Jessie’s nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths and she develops a mentorship under Lee … They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film plugs into the inflammatory State of the Union as it currently pertains, figuring a fissure that is as much physical as ideological with the Western secessionist states of California and Texas pitched against the federal forces that protect a President hiding out in the White House. Garland’s work from The Beach onwards has focused on trouble in paradise and lately on dystopia. Lee and Joel are both camouflaging psychological disturbance from previous war zones – she has PTSD, he has modern-day shellshock and Lee especially exhibits something world weary cynicism to control symptoms that threaten to erupt into something worse. It’s gonna make a good image. How that dissonance within Lee translates into a kind of mentoring relationship with Jessie reflecting Sammy’s relationship with her provides much of the tension as the action and violence spiral the further into the US they travel. I remember you at her age. The juxtaposing of beautiful landscapes with jarring imagery of shock and awe combat provides much of the troubling visual texture. The sense of reality, the minutiae of a road trip under fire and the urgency of the storytelling has the quality of reportage from the front line. The fact that Lee wants to photograph the President to prove he is still alive speaks volumes. What happens ultimately is straight out of the Romanian playbook. The ones who get taken are always lesser men than you think. With no enemies identified, the viewer is asked to come to their own conclusions, a motley crew of varying protagonist-journalists providing a kind of collegiate and immersive focus group of the population, a prism for coming to terms with radical change and war as Americans fight Americans. Every instinct in me tells me this is death. Whether the presence and role of good old-fashioned photojournalists recording events makes a difference is not really questioned here – it’s presumed necessary for history: proof that things are happening because seeing is believing. Hence the acknowledged reference to Lee Miller in Dunst’s character’s name. What kind of American are you? A powerful state of the nation portrait that feels immediate and true. What happened back there is nothing in comparison with what we’re heading into
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There’s war and there’s war. 1990s: Renowned war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman) is recalling her youthful relationship with novelist Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen). 1936, Key West, Florida. She meets him by chance in a bar and back at his house run by his wife Pauline Pfeiffer (Molly Parker) the two’s undeniable attraction is noted. My husband always says kill enough animals and you won’t kill yourself. The two writers encounter each other a year later in Spain where both are covering theCivil War, staying in the same hotel on the same floor. Initially, Gellhorn resists romantic advances made by Hemingway but during a bombing raid the two find themselves trapped alone in the same room and are overcome by lust as dust from the conflagration covers their bodies. They become lovers and stay in Spain until 1939. Hemingway collaborates with Joris Ivens (Lars Ulrich) to make the film The Spanish Earth. In 1940 Hemingway divorces Pauline so that he and Gellhorn can be married. He credits her with having inspired him to write the novelFor Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and dedicates it to her. Over time however Gellhorn becomes more prominent in her own right, leading to some career jealousies between them. Gellhorn leaves Hemingway to go to Finland to cover theWinter Warby herself. When she returns to the Lookout Farm in Havana the maid has quit and she tells him the place looks like a Tijuana whor*house. Hemingway tells her that he has divorced Pauline. The two marry and travel together to China to cover the bombings by Japan. In China, they interview Chiang Kai Shek (Larry Tse) and his wife (Joan Chen) who Gelhorn can’t best when she expresses her horror after visiting an opium den where she has spotted a little girl. Chiang Kai shek is fighting the Chinese Communists and Japanese invaders. Hemingway and Gellhorn secretly visit Zhou Enlai (Anthony Brandon Wong) the revolutionary content to play both ends against the middle until his time comes. Gellhorn covers D-Dayin Normandy. She reports on the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps and his so horrified she runs out of them … There’s nothing to writing. Sit at your typewriter and bleed. Bluster and confidence, the devastation of war, lust and fine writing, a universe of division and conflict and conscience, all are called upon as the affair and marriage of two of the twentieth century’s best writers bear witness to unfolding history. Beautifully shot by Rogier Stoffers using different camera effects and archive montages to insert the characters into both colorised and monochrome footage, there is an uneven tone to this biopic as well as shifts in performance particularly by Owen who doesn’t quite capture the self-aggrandising charisma of Hemingway but certainly asserts his sexist boorish aspect. There is a certain comedy to the introduction of the famous characters, who take time to establish themselves in the narrative and sometimes play minor roles, there to augment and embellish the self-mythologising author who is hard to pin down here (Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris does this with caustic aplomb). Surrounded by an entourage of sycophants and hangers on, only John Dos Passos (David Strathairn) appears to question Hemingway’s macho posturing. When Hemingway admits he’s taken her Collier’s contract, Martha repeats what the man he calls the second best American writer has said of Hemingway and he hits her across the face: we know the marriage must be over. But not quite. There’s still a final act of war and humiliation. They have persuasively created a sexual and co-habiting relationship that is sometimes hard to watch when they exchange harsh words – but then wind up laughing at the good of it all. Until they fight again and it becomes ever more vicious. They’ll still be reading me long after you’ve been eaten by worms. Hemingway’s demise following his marriage to Mary Welsh (Parker Posey), who’s written as a celeb-hunting nicompoop, which may not be quite fair, is dramatic and swift in storytelling time (those presumably causative head injuries in the later aeroplane crashes are not covered albeit the car crash here with Welsh probably contributed to it). It’s a rich tapestry and while not successful overall, with an occasional (if forgivable) lurch into domestic melodrama, there are moments of genuine humour, black comedy and horror. For instance when Kai Shek dumps his dentures into a teacup and his verbose spider spouse does the talking and makes an unwilling Gellhorn take a gift. That’s history. The only thing that really interests me is people. Their lives. Their daily lives. And there are instances in war zones when Gellhorn scoops up children as their parents bleed to death and Hemingway, the father of sons by his previous wives, scoffs yet paradoxically admires her humanity. When Gellhorn walks into Dachau but then says Auschwitz was unbelievably worse and just takes off running we sense her disbelief. Kidman is quite splendid for much of the film. This is an amazingly comprehensive and visually immersive portrait of a man and a woman who were at the heart of a decade of world-changing events whose impact we still live with today. However their characters are almost too big to contain (and the gargantuan 2021 Ken Burns and Lynn Novick docu-series Hemingway has far more biographical information), literally covering too much ground with the prism of a domestic battle perhaps too slight for such an enormous focus. Necessarily episodic, the protagonists’ differences are sketched out schematically so this goes just a little way toward explaining why both are legends and Gellhorn fought so hard for her individuation. As she says here, she’s more than just a footnote to Hemingway. Consider this film restitution. At 155 minutes, this was premiered at Cannes but broadcast as a mini-series by HBO. Written by Jerry Stahl & Barbara Turner and directed by Philip Kaufman. We were good in war. And where there was no war we made our own. The battlefield we couldn’t survive was domestic life
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In the week it’s been announced a fourth entry in this series Mad About the Boy is due for imminent production, it’s incredible to think that it has been going for close to a quarter of a century. The first adaptation in what became a franchise was released twenty-three years ago today.
Helen Fielding’s hit 1996 novel was a rewrite of Pride and Prejudice and became a cultural milestone. A film adaptation was inevitable.
If the search for the iconic and beloved 32-year old slacker singleton heroine wasn’t quite that for Scarlett O’Hara it seemed of almost national import so the casting of the very un-British Renee Zellweger caused a ripple of consternation but it turned out to be an inspired choice.
She allegedly gained twenty pounds to play Bridget who notes her weight daily in her diary and struggles into her clothes with the help of very big pants.
The meta-casting of Colin Firth, TV’s Darcy from the BBC’s global hit adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, as Bridget’s love object human rights lawyer Mark Darcy, hit the sweet spot. It also meant Firth could send himself up and move on from the typecasting that had followed that other iconic role.
That TV series’ screenwriter Andrew Davies co-wrote the screenplay with Fielding and her onetime boyfriend, romcom king Richard Curtis.
Hugh Grant delighted as the devilish Daniel Cleaver, the rival for Bridget’s affections.
Directed by Sharon ‘Shazza’ Maguire, Fielding’s BFF and immortalised in the film by Sally Phillips, one of the posse helping Bridget through her trials and tribulations, the film was a huge hit and a critical success.
Zellweger was nominated for an Academy Award for her charming performance. Long live Bridget Jones!
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