Film

Thunder Road
Scene from the film Thunder Road

01/06/19

A few years ago, Jim Cummings was just another wannabe with a crazy dream of making a movie. In 2016, despite having no practical experience, he wrote, directed and starred in a short film, playing the role of a police officer making a disastrously misjudged  attempt to deliver a eulogy at his mother’s funeral. The short won a prestigious award at Sundance and, spurred on by this, Cummings decided to work it up into a full length feature, raising a shooting budget of around $180,000 via Kickstarter and several private investors. When distributors offered him a risible amount of money for world rights to the finished film, he figured he might as well go ahead and distribute it himself…

Now here is that feature, which starts – just as the short did – with Officer Jim Arnaud (Cummings) delivering his eulogy, including a toe-curling attempt at interpretive dance to Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road. Unlike the original film, this version is further complicated by the fact that he cannot get his daughter’s boom box to work. The camera remains unflinchingly focused on his humiliation throughout, and I sit watching in turmoil, unsure whether I should be cringing or laughing. In the end, I experience a combination of both extremes, as Cummings performs a perilous tightrope walk that feels simultaneously challenging and exhilarating. Happily, what follows doesn’t feel like a hastily conjured add-on, but a compelling story in its own right.

Arnaud is a man on the very edge of a nervous breakdown. He has recently separated from his wife, Rosalind (Jocelyn DeBoer), and is desperately trying to connect with his young daughter, Crystal (a delightful performance from Kendal Farr). Rosalind is making no secret of the fact that she’s planning to go for sole custody in the upcoming divorce, leaving Arnaud to face the prospect of being completely alone, something which terrifies him. Meanwhile, he struggles to carry on with his duties as a cop, pushing his best friend, Officer Nate Lewis (Nican Robinson), to the very limits of his patience.

Thunder Road is a terrific little independent film, a salutory lesson to those who claim that movies simply cannot be made without the investment of a major studio and a multi-million-dollar budget. Cummings depicts a character who is a bubbling cauldron of insecurity and anger, forever boiling over and giving others the wrong impression. Watch the scene where he meets up with Crystal’s teacher, Mr Zahn (Macon Blair), to explain why his daughter is having problems at school. As Arnaud becomes ever more volatile, we fully understand why Zahn chooses to surreptitiously slip a pair of craft scissors into his pocket.

Those who saw the trailer for this can be forgiven for expecting some kind of screwball comedy, but it’s so much more than that. There’s real poignancy here and a lightness of touch that usually only comes after years of experience in the film business. Cummings is evidently a natural, and a name to watch out for in the future. Meanwhile, those who’d like to see the original short (where Officer Arnaud does get that pesky Springsteen song to play) can check it out on Vimeo.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Aladdin

27/05/19

Next in line for the Disney-animations-transformed-into-live-action treadmill is Aladdin. What’s most interesting about this one is the fact that it’s helmed by Guy Ritchie, who – after the underperfroming Man Fom Uncle and the frankly disastrous King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – is clearly in dire need of a hit. (Those who, like me, were secretly hoping for a diamond geezer reinterpretation – ‘Aladdin, you slag, get off my turf!’ – are in for a real disappointment here.) Ritchie plays it safe and manages to emerge with a slice of undemanding, but entertaining hokum, which is probably the object of the exercise.

I won’t bore you with a plot description, but the classic tale has always raised some troubling questions for me, not least this one: why can’t the evil sorceror, Jafar (Marwan Kenzari), go into the treasure cave to claim the magic lamp himself, rather than sending young street-thief Aladdin (Mena Massoud) to get if for him? But, of course, Aladdin does go in, and unwittingly unleashes the genie, who gives him the opportunity to present himself to Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) as a potential husband – a move from which much hilarity ensues. Will Smith is burdened with the formidable task of attempting to follow Robin Williams’ memorable voiceover performance as The Genie, which, to be fair, he manages with considerable charm.

Jasmine is given a lot more to do than in her previous incarnation, and there’s an obvious female empowerment subplot going on. Even if her most memorable song owes an unspoken debt to Frozen, it nonetheless judges the zeitgeist perfectly, and seems to avoid any obvious cultural blunders.

If ultimately the film rarely dazzles, it’s nonetheless a perfectly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. I like this, but I don’t love it – and of course, I’m one of those annoying people who wishes that Disney would stop remaking its old hits and give us something new. You know, just for the novelty of it.

Next up, The Lion King. Ah well…

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Rocketman

25/05/10

Rock star biopics are big business of late. The rather pedestrian (and factually flawed) Bohemian Rhapsody absolutely cleaned up at the box office and even garnered some ill-deserved awards into the bargain. Rocketman has the same director as Bo Rhap – or, at least, Dexter Fletcher steered the former film to fruition after Bryan Singer was obliged to step away from it. But Rocketman almost serves as an object lesson in how entertaining this genre can be when the filmakers have the balls to step away from the obvious and offer up something infinitely more experimental.

This is a fantasia, in its purest form, something that dares to take Elton John’s life story and play around with it. Ironically, in the process, it manages to get closer to the truth of the man behind the myth than Bo Rhap ever managed with Freddie Mercury.

When we first meet Elton, he’s attending a therapy session, dressed as a bright red devil, having just walked away from an important gig – and then, in flashback, we encounter young Reginald Dwight (Matthew Illesley), strugglng to obtain affection from his distant parents, Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Stanley (Steven Mackintosh), establishing a distance between them that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Reginald learns he has an aptitude for playing the piano and an ability to effortlessly pick up any tune he hears. Pretty soon, he is older Reg (Kit Connor) and, in the space of one breathless fairground dance routine, he’s grown up to be Taron Egerton. We follow his career: his meeting with kindred spirit, Bernie Taupin (Jaimie Bell), his signing with hard-nosed business manager, Dick James (Stephen Graham), and his love affair with the cruelly manipulative John Reid (Richard Madden).

There’s his career making gig at LA’s Troubador Club and then all the manic excesses of rock hedonism are unleashed – alcoholism, drug and sex addiction, bulimia, that disastrous attempt at marriage… you name it, it’s all encompassed in a series of inventively staged scenes, backed by a seemingly endless collection of solid gold songs. Ironic then, that the film’s most effective moment has Elton belting out a cover version of The Who’s Pinball Wizard, while his piano spins giddily around and he goes through a whole collection of iconic costume transformations.

This film doesn’t attempt to cover EJ’s entire career, ending after his long spell in rehab and his triumphant return with I’m Still Standing, but it’s endlessly entertaining and doesn’t drag for a moment, not even through the inevitable nods to redemption at its conclusion. I am properly engaged from start to finish. Oh, and importantly – I think –  that’s actually Taron Egerton singing all the songs, uncannily nailing EJ’s distinctive phrasing, without it ever feeling like an impersonation.

With so many reasons to go and see it, Rocketman is in serious danger of giving the rock biopic a good name. And Dexter Fletcher is now clearly the go-to man for musicians with a story to tell.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

High Life

13/05/19

The first English language production by French auteur Claire Denis, High Life uses the conventions of a science fiction film to tell its rather bleak story, though there is little in the way of the kind of visual splendour you might expect to find in this genre. Here is a nuts and bolts future where space ships look like packing crates and space suits resemble things you might pick up in Gap. Monte (Robert Pattison) is a former Death Row inmate who, when we first meet him, is alone on a space ship with a baby. We then learn, through a series of flashbacks, how the two of them came to be there.

Monte, it turns out, was part of a team of prisoners, sent on a journey to a black hole deep in space in order to harness its energy. This crew of misfits is presided over by Doctor Dibs (Juliette Binoche), who – presumably spurred on by the knowledge that the mission is going to take longer than the average human life span – has become obsessed with the idea of starting new life aboard the ship. But instead of letting the crew just pursue things in the usual way of procreation, she keeps everyone heavily sedated. The male crew members have to submit a daily sperm sample to her, which she, in turn,  administers to the females.

Hardly surprising then, that deep resentment begins to simmer, and it’s only a matter of time before things kick off.

Denis has quite a reputation and it might be this, more than anything else, that has initiated the slew of glowing reviews this film has already garnered – but for the life of me, I can’t share this enthusiasm for it. It soon becomes apparent that, while the film’s setting might be futuristic, its sexual politics remain deeply entrenched in the stone age. And this prompts some worrying questions.

Why does Binoche’s character wander around the spaceship in a nurses’s outfit that is clearly several sizes too small for her? And why, in the extended sequence when she pleasures herself in the ship’s ‘fuckbox,’ does it look as though it has been choreographed to please some unseen male gaze, even though it’s been co-authored by Denis herself? There’s also a particularly nasty rape scene, later in the film, which culminates in the bloody death of the perpetrator, but which adds precisely nothing of value to the story. Presented as it is, it just feels salacious.

These are not the only problems I have with High Life. I learn very little about Monte and even less about his crew mates, which makes it hard for me to care about them when they end up as so much flotsam. I think that Monte has some feelings for Boyse (Mia Goth) but can’t be entirely sure – and what exactly is the story behind Monte’s childhood crime, only partially revealed in flashback? Finally… that harnessing of the black hole’s power… how was that supposed to work exactly? It seems a bit cavalier to use the conventions of a genre without properly thinking it through.

If High Life was the product of a debut director, it would be panned and quickly forgotten. But I fear it’s become one of those ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ movies, with few people prepared to step up to the plate and denounce it as the wrong-headed, misogynistic muddle that it surely is.

Unless I’m missing something? Answers on a  postcard, please…

2.8 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Long Shot

12/05/19

Long Shot takes place in an alternative version of America, where Charlize Theron could conceivably be Secretary of State and where she just might be having a covert affair with Seth Rogan’s amiable slacker of a journalist. Think, if you will, of a US version of a Richard Curtis film. It might have a perfectly preposterous story line but, if you turn a blind eye to that, it’s nonetheless pretty entertaining.

Theron is S of S Charlotte Field, looking towards turning her current situation into a bid to become America’s first female POTUS, having received an endorsement from  incumbent President Chambers (Bob Odenkirk), who has decided he wants to get out of politics and become a film star. At an upmarket party, Charlotte reconnects with Gonzo journalist, Fred Flarsky (Rogan), for whom she used to babysit back in the day, and with whom she clearly has unfinished business. Flarsky is newly unemployed after the paper he works for has been bought out by the odious capitalist, Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis), and it just so happens that Charlotte is looking for a speechwriter to help her launch her bid for the presidency.

With Flarsky on board, Charlotte sets off on a world tour in an attempt to sell herself as the next president of America but, inevitably, romantic sparks soon begin to fly between the odd couple. Problem is, Flarsky’s image may not be a suitable fit for somebody looking to be taking seriously as a politician…

As I said, Long Shot might not have the most convincing plot you’ve ever encountered, but it’s smart, clever, and – for most of its duration – very funny. Theron and Rogan manage to generate some convincing chemistry together, and somewhere in here there’s the age-old message about being true to yourself and never compromising on your beliefs.

So – fun while it’s happening, but probably not destined to linger in the memory for very long. And as for that title, I have no idea what it refers to.

3.9 stars

Philip Caveney

Beats

08/05/19

It’s cold and it’s raining and we’re in two minds about going out tonight. We’re booked in for an Unlimited screening of a film we know nothing about and it is really miserable out there. On the other hand, we reason, what if the film turns out to be great? We’ll be mad we missed it, won’t we? So, after some deliberation, out into the raging elements we go and boy, are we glad we do!

Beats is set in 1994. The TV screens are awash with images of Tony Blair and scenes of violent civil unrest. Johnno (Cristian Ortega) lives with his mum, Alison (Laura Fraser), and his would-be stepdad, Robert (Brian Ferguson), a straight-laced police officer. Alison and Robert dream of moving away from the depressing estate in which they live to a starter home in a nicer neighbourhood. In the meantime, schoolboy Johnno has a thankless part-time job stacking shelves at the local supermarket, and spends his downtime hanging out with his best pal, Spanner (Lorn MacDonald). This does not sit well with Alison and Robert, who openly refer to Spanner as ‘scum.’ Spanner’s older brother, Fido (Neil Leiper), is a notorious drug dealer, and seems to get a kick out of bullying his younger sibling at every opportunity.

On a local radio station, D-Man (Ross Mann) keeps trumpeting an upcoming illegal rave (details to follow) and Spanner tries to persuade his friend to go along to it with him, so they can have one last fling together before Johnno heads off to his new home in the suburbs. But nicking a stash of money from Fido to enable them to finance the trip might not be their wisest move…

Beats manages to do the impossible, making me nostalgic for a music scene I have no personal experience of. Ortega and MacDonald enact a brilliant odd-couple partnership – the former all glum-faced desperation, the latter a grinning, gurning powerhouse. (We last saw MacDonald in the terrific Mouthpiece by Kieran Hurley, who also wrote this screenplay.) Brian Welsh directs with aplomb, and the stark black and white cinematography of Benjamin Kracun is an absolute joy to behold, building as it does to an extended rave sequence, where the loved-up, E-fuelled revellers dance wildly and the screen suddenly explodes into full colour. The effect is, quite simply, mesmerising.

If I have a minor niggle it’s simply that the sound levels of that pulsing, throbbing soundtrack are kept a little too polite. I keep anticipating a sudden push into full volume that never comes – but, well, I guess you can’t have everything.

Beats is a film about escape. All the characters, for their own particular reasons, are trying to outrun something that brings them down – poverty, violence, bullying, boredom… you name it. For one night, in a deserted warehouse off the M8, it can all be put aside and forgotten in a blaze of lights and music.

On our way home it’s still raining, but somehow we barely even notice it.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney

 

 

Booksmart

06/05/19

It’s the day before they graduate from high school, and best friends Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are secure in the knowledge that they have achieved first class grades. They’ve managed this by working hard and staying well away from the kind of distractions that their less dedicated classmates have enjoyed to the full – parties, romances, drink and recreational drugs. Amy and Molly are the kind of students who spend their leisure time in the library and who can’t help correcting the grammar on the graffiti in the school toilets. They are – basically – swots.

So when Molly discovers that all her hard-partying classmates are also going to graduate with honours and will attend the finest universities in the land, she’s understandably dismayed. She vows that, tonight, she and Amy will attend the wildest party in town, that they will pursue the long-held romantic interests they have deliberately set aside, and  indulge in all the hedonistic pleasures they can lay their hands on.

In short, they will, for once in their lives, let their hair down and enjoy themselves. The only problem is, they don’t actually have the address where the party is being held…

Dever and Feldstein are terrific as the central couple and the witty script expertly kindles the laughs as the duo experience alarming setbacks in their quest to experience those forbidden pleasures. There are some genuinely heartwarming moments too, as the girls finally address the unspoken issues that lie at the heart of their mutual dependancy.

The real strength of Booksmart, however, lies in the way it cheerfully sets up a whole string of audience expectations, only to cleverly subvert them – from the school’s sardonic principal (Jason Sudeikis), who moonlights as a taxi driver, to the resident rich kid (Skyler Gisondo), reduced to trying to lure friends to his party by offering them free iPads.  Nothing here is ever quite what you expect and none of the characters are allowed to descend into cliché.

Directed by actor Olivia Wilde, Booksmart is a joyful little peach of a movie: sharp, clever and perceptive. It’s sure to make you laugh and you may even emerge from the cinema (as I did) with a lump in your throat. Enjoy!

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Woman at War

05/05/19

Halla (Halldóra Geirhardsdóttir) is a woman with a mission.

Well into her forties and gainfully employed as a respectable choir mistress, she spends her down time as an ecological avenger, waging a one-woman war on the local aluminium smelting industry, which she feels is despoiling the country she loves. With the aid of her trusty longbow and the occasional lump of stolen semtex, Halla takes every opportunity to disrupt the nearby plant, knocking down electricity lines and blowing up pylons. Secretly aided and abetted by minor politician, Baldwin (Joründa Ragnarsson), she keeps her mission a secret from her friends – and even her twin sister, Ása, a cerebral yoga instructor.

But when Halla learns that her four-years-pending application to adopt a child has finally come to fruition, she is faced with a difficult choice. Should she continue with her mission to save the planet or focus instead on her much longed-for role as a mother?

Director and co-writer Benedikt Erlingsson has created something really unique here. While he gleefully utilises all the tropes of the Hollywood action movie, Halla’s pursuits by helicopter and drone across stunning Icelandic backdrop still have a realistic tone that makes every scene feel perfectly plausible. But the film is much more unusual than that implies. A three piece band (and later a trio of Ukrainian singers) are constantly onscreen, like some weird Greek chorus. They provide a jaunty soundtrack, and also act as observers and commentators, sometimes complicit, sometimes disapproving. It’s this element more than anything else that lends Woman at War a surreal and quirky edge that you’d frankly never see in a Hollywood movie.

Geirhardsdóttir submits a fabulous performance both as Halla and her twin sister, and there’s nice support from Jóhann Sigurdarson as a local farmer who might just be Halla’s cousin. Whether you agree with her approach or not, you’ll be rooting for her every step of the way.

This was Iceland’s entry for the foreign language Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards, but it didn’t make the shortlist, which either means the standard was incredibly high this year or people just weren’t getting it – and for sure, this won’t appeal to everyone. If however, you relish original film-making with a delicious subversive tone, this one should be right up your alley.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Tolkien

04/05/19

The Tolkien Estate have taken against this biopic of the famous writer in no uncertain terms, but it’s hard to understand exactly why. As embodied by Nicholas Hoult, he’s an admirable fellow: handsome, witty and completely loyal to his friends – all attributes that he would eventually hand on to his fictional characters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The film concerns itself mostly with the writer’s early years: his childhood in Sarehole, Worcestershire (which would become the model for ‘The Shire’); his time at a boarding house in Birmingham, after the death of his mother, where he meets and eventually falls in love with fellow orphan, Edith Bratt (Lily Collins); and his school years at King Edward’s, Birmingham, where he and three close friends found a secret society, the TCBS. This fellowship continues when the boys go on to University, and it remains strong until the First World War intervenes and changes everything.

Director Dome Karukoski and screenwriters David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford are keen to show how Tolkien’s horrific experiences at the Battle of the Sommes contributed to the imagery that would dominate his future books, and the sequences that depict mythical beasts rising from the carnage of trench warfare are perhaps the strongest scenes here, handsomely mounted and never overdone. Tolkien’s protracted courtship of Edith, while rather less spectacular, is also nicely handled, and Hoult and Collins make an engaging couple. There’s a nice cameo by Derek Jacobi as the Oxford Professor who encourages Tolkien to develop his flair for languages, and another from Colm Meaney as the Catholic priest charged with the responsibility of ensuring that things work out for Tolkien in the long run.

While it’s certainly a gentle and low key affair, I find the film absorbing and, ironically, much more interesting than the great books themselves, which – try as I might – I have never really managed to enjoy. Don’t tell the Tolkien Estate. They’ll probably sue me. For heresy.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Avengers: Endgame
Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: ENDGAME..Nebula (Karen Gillan)..Photo: Film Frame..©Marvel Studios 2019

30/04/19

It’s pointless to try and give this one a body swerve. It lumbers over the cinematic horizon like a behemoth, gobbling up viewers and crushing box office records beneath its massive feet. Resistance is futile.

As one of the few reviewers who was distinctly underwhelmed by Infinity Wars, I still need to see how the Russo Brothers are going to extricate themselves from the corner they’ve seemingly painted themselves into. Oh, right… like that. Well, I guess it was the only way possible…

By the way, those of you who like to cry ‘plot spoiler!’ every time a tiny detail is revealed may want to think twice about reading the following two paragraphs. Just saying.

Endgame opens briefly on events shortly after Thanos (Josh Brolin) has made the most calamitous finger-snap in history. It then moves on five years to show the remaining Avengers trying to come to terms with what has happened to the world. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is now a ruthless swordsmen, carving up Japanese gangsters with relish, whilst sporting a disastrous new haircut that makes him look like a disgruntled cockapoo. Captain America (Chris Evans) is attending therapy classes, but is still impossibly clean and healthy. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), on the other hand, has really let himself go and now sports hippie dreadlocks and a fearsome beer belly. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) has learned to manage his anger issues and is permanently trapped in his green, oversized alter ego, Hulk. And… well, so on.

Then, up pops Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) recently returned from imprisonment in the quantum realm. He brings along an idea that might just undo the Infinity Curse and return the world to where it was five years ago. So the Avengers assemble for one more mission.

OK, so my main beef with this is the same as it was with Infinity Wars, only even more so. There are just too many superheroes for comfort. The way things stand here, they seem to outnumber ordinary people, which can’t be right, surely? And you know, I, for one, am happier with those movies (like Shazam!, for instance) that know they are essentially kids’ film’s and feel no shame about it. Endgame, however, is for the most part so serious it hurts – it’s a great lumbering leviathan, creaking beneath the weight of its own self-importance. Happily, the po-faced stuff is leavened every so often by some much-needed humour, most of it coming from Hemsworth’s corner. (I love the fact that Thor never has to apologise for losing that gym-ready look and Hemsworth always has a cheeky glint in his eye that suggests he knows how ridiculous it all is but couldn’t care less.)

To give the Russo Brothers their due, this doesn’t really feel like a bum-numbing three-hour marathon. It’s action packed enough to allow the time to zip by and, if the script occasionally feels ridiculously over-complicated, well that’s just par for the course when you have an audience that picks so avidly over every little detail. And pick they will. Reports are that people are going back to watch the film over and over again.

Of course, as ever, we are presented with a great big climactic battle, made even more of an endurance test by the fact that the scriptwriters feel duty bound to include every single lead character from the preceding twenty-one movies in the Marvel EU. That’s an awful lot of spandex to take in. And then of course, once the punch up’s done and the dust has settled, there’s the little matter of tying up all those loose ends…

Look, the cinema going public has made its mind up on this, and who am I to say that they’re wrong? I can only speak for myself when I repeat the old mantra ‘less is more.’ Give me one superhero and one villain, and I’m a relatively happy bunny.

Endgame is undoubtedly a big movie, but maybe not in the way it thinks it is.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney