Tallulah

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18/09/16

Netflix’s filmic arm continues to grow in stature and Tallulah is a fine example of the kind of project they do particularly well. It reunites Juno’s Ellen Page and Allison Janney, in an absorbing and entertaining story about relationships. Page (who has complained that she struggles to find decent screen roles since coming out as gay, obviously knows a good script when she sees one – she executive-produced this film).

Tallulah (Page) is a rootless young woman, who lives in a van and drifts around America making ends meet by indulging in petty crime. Her boyfriend, Nico (Evan Jonigkeit) is however, beginning to miss the stability of his former home (he hasn’t been back there for two years) and suggests that they pay a call on his mother, Margo (Janney) an academic living alone in a luxury New York apartment after her husband left her and moved in with a man. Tallulah is less than keen on the idea and she and Nico have an argument. The following morning, Tallulah wakes to discover that Nico has walked out on her.

She promptly heads off to Margo’s apartment asking if she has seen Nico, but Margo sends her packing. Shortly afterwards, Tallulah has a chance encounter with Carolyn (Tammy Blanchard) a character who initially seems to have been created to illustrate a ‘how not to parent’ video. Carolyn has a hot date that night and enlists Tallulah (who she’s never met before) to look after her toddler while she’s gone – but Tallulah decides to take the little girl and heads back to Margo’s place…

Tallulah is a decidedly amoral character but Page invests her with great charm, hinting at the damage that was caused to her when she was abandoned by her own mother as a little girl; Janney meanwhile, is on terrific form as a prickly introvert woman who finds all relationships difficult – her clumsy attempt to seduce an amorous doorman is a delight. As the two women spend time in each other’s company, a powerful bond develops between them; but meanwhile, the police are investigating what is, after all, a kidnapping and it soon becomes apparent that things cannot end well for Tallulah.

This is a superior slice of drama, nicely acted, wittily scripted and directed by Sian Heder. More than anything else, it’s a film about women and their relationships – and it absolutely aces the Bechdel test. If you have Netflix, you really should check it out. If you don’t, this could be a valid reason to sign up.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

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17/09/16

New Zealander Taika Waititi’s last film, What We Do In The Shadows, offered (against all the odds) a refreshingly original take on vampirism – and the oddly titled Hunt for the Wilderpeople is another quirky and unusual film, set in the writer/director’s homeland. It tells the story of Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison), a troubled teenager in care whose unruly behaviour has pretty much exhausted the list of foster families prepared to give him a chance. In a last-gasp effort to find him a suitable home, he is placed with Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her curmudgeonly husband, Hec (Sam Neill), who live in a shotgun shack in the middle of nowhere.

After initial teething troubles, Ricky takes a shine to Bella and, for the first time ever, his future looks promising – but then she dies unexpectedly and Hec isn’t slow to point out that having Ricky here was all his wife’s idea. Plans are set in motion to take Ricky back into care, whereupon, he heads off into the outback, determined to fend for himself – and Hec has little option but to go after him. After an accident obliges Hec to lay up for several weeks to recuperate, Ricky and Hec finally begin to bond…

The interplay between Neil and Dennison is a winning combination, delightful and often hilarious – while the succession of eccentric characters they encounter throughout the film adds to the fun, particularly Rhys Derby’s ‘Psycho Sam,’ a deranged hermit who spends much of his time disguised as a bush. Rachel House also shines as child services official Paula, determined to find Ricky and throw him back into care.

Okay, the film isn’t perfect – you can’t help wondering how Ricky can spend five months in the outback, living only on what he and Hec can forage, without losing so much as a pound in weight, for example –  but the New Zealand locations are absolutely ravishing and there’s no denying that the tale is enough to reel you in and keep you hooked right up until the epilogue. Waititi’s  decision to present the film as a series of chapters is also a nice touch. If you’re looking for something different from the usual Hollywood fare, this is a sure bet and the 12A rating means it’s suitable for family viewing.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

Blair Witch

15/09/16

In 1999, The Blair Witch Project was something of a phenomenon, a made-for-buttons movie that became a resounding success, both critically and financially. The pared back plot, the found-footage concept, the shaky-cam and the ingenious blending of the story with real life (fake news reports, the actors listed as ‘missing, presumed dead’ on IMDb, etc.) all combined to make a movie that felt – if a little ragged – at least original and compelling.

The same cannot be said for this 2016 reincarnation. Although ostensibly a sequel (Heather’s brother heads into the woods to search for his sister, taking along a group of friends, one of whom just happens – who’d have thought it? – to be a film student, making a documentary), it’s essentially the same story – but worse.

These adventurers have better technology than their predecessors (they’re definitely from the richer, privileged echelons of society, with student budgets that allow them to buy drones and tiny cameras with built-in GPS) but it doesn’t really help them – or us. The GPS doesn’t work properly in the haunted woods, the drone crashes – and we’re still left watching a load of blurry shaky images.

Where the original used the power of suggestion, showing little and leaving much to the imagination, this new movie shows us too much. The Blair Witch is far less scary when she’s visible, just a dime-a-dollar horror prop. And there are too many jump scares that are all the same: a loud noise, it’s getting closer, oh it’s you, please don’t do that! In fact, it’s repetitive all round. We don’t just run through the house once, we have to follow a second character in there too. And potentially interesting ideas are set up but then fade to nought (what’s the point of showing us Lane’s confederate flag if nothing else he does links back to it?).

It works on some levels: there is tension and a little suspense. The acting is fine. Some of it looks good. But, overall, this is one to miss. It doesn’t stand up to the original.

2.8 stars

Susan Singfield

 

Captain Fantastic

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14/09/16

The ‘Captain’ of the title is Ben (Viggo Mortenson) a former hippie who now lives off grid in the wilds of North America with his six children. There, he drills them in a hard and uncompromising lifestyle, equal parts physical exercise, reading quality literature and discussing philosophy. Living in homemade tipis, the kids hunt deer, make music and wait for their mother to return from the hospital. She’s been there for several months, suffering from a bipolar disorder.

But then some terrible news arrives. She isn’t coming back. In the grip of depression, she has committed suicide. Of course, there must be a funeral, so Ben loads the kids onto his trusty bus, “Steve”, and heads for civilization. But what will Ben’s kids make of the ‘real’ world? How will they ever interact with kids whose idea of ‘the wild’ is based entirely on what they’ve seen in violent  video games.

This is an appealing, engaging film, wittily scripted by writer/director Matt Ross, and Viggo Mortenson excels in the lead role. Much of the humour here comes from the culture-clash between Ben’s feral offspring and the more sedate family members they encounter who cannot grasp what Ben has been doing with them. His major adversary is his father-in-law, Jack (Frank Langella) who clearly thinks he’s a prize asshole – which to some degree, he probably is, refusing to compromise on any of his dearly-held beliefs, even when he discovers that his eldest boy, Bo (a delightful performance from George MacKay), secretly longs to go to university, where he can experience something that he hasn’t merely read about in books.

If there’s a criticism, it’s that the family’s wild lifestyle is perhaps too romanticised. Occasionally, their day-to-day existence resembles an improbable Eden, where the worst thing they can encounter is scratching themselves on a rock. But that’s a minor niggle – on the whole, this is hugely entertaining from start to finish. It’s probably worth the price of admission, just for the scene where Bo plights his troth to a teenage girl he meets on a campsite, working from ideas he’s encountered in classic fiction, while Ben’s oration at his late wife’s funeral is another toe-curling highlight.

Catch this before it escapes back into the wilds.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Anthropoid

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11/09/16

Based on the true story of the WWII Operation Anthropoid mission to assassinate Nazi third-in-command Reinhard Heydrich, this is a hard-hitting film, which offers very little respite from the bleakness it portrays. It’s unflinching, forcing its audience to confront the awful brutality of war, the vile atrocities we commit in the name of patriotism or fear. And it’s quite difficult to watch.

It’s 1942; Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) and Josef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy) have been tasked  with assassinating the Nazi leader of the protectorate, both to reassert the legitimacy of the exiled Czechoslovakian government, and as retribution for his harsh rule. Heydrich (who was also in charge of the so-called Final Solution) was clearly a hateful man, and this film focuses firmly on the victims’ experience; the Nazis are portrayed as a terrifying mass, with nothing to differentiate between them; they are uniformly evil. And that’s fair enough, I think; that’s how they would have appeared. I don’t imagine the people whose countries they occupied cared much about individual German soldiers’ situations, nor how propaganda and forced-conscription would have swelled the Nazi ranks. This film belongs to Jan and Josef, and the courage they and their tiny band of resistance fighters showed in taking on such a mighty foe.

The first half is slow and meticulous, focusing on the minutiae of living secretly and planning. Their developing relationships with Maria (Charlotte le Bon) and Lenka (Anna Geislerová) are subtly told, and the sense of imminent threat is ever present.

Once the assassination attempt is under way, the pace picks up, and the tension is unbearable. Indeed, the final battle is a fast-paced, relentless shoot-out, a bloodbath of the most ugly kind. No punches are pulled here. We see bullets rip through flesh. We see people being tortured until they lose all sense of who they are. But, ultimately, this is a tale of hope. Yes, human beings do terrible things. We can’t deny it. But other, better human beings will always try to bring them down. And, sometimes, they will succeed.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

Don’t Breathe

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Three disaffected youths, living in Detroit, (remind me to cross that off my list of potential holiday destinations), set out to rob the home of an elderly man rumoured to be in possession of a lot of cash. The youths in question are Rocky, (Jane Levy) who dreams of taking her little sister to California, the repellent Money (Daniel Zovatto) and the slightly more sympathetic, Alex (Dylan Minette), clearly along for the ride mainly because of his unspoken affection for Rocky. Getting in is a piece of cake, since Alex’s old man is a security guard who holds keys to various local properties – but once there, it quickly  becomes apparent that this time, the trio have picked on the wrong house. It’s owned by ex-army vet ‘The Blind Man’ (Stephen Lang) who is nowhere near as vulnerable as his name might suggest.

As you can appreciate, you’re not exactly rooting for the main protagonists, so it’s to writer/director Fede Alvaraz’s credit that he manages to generate levels of almost unbearable tension throughout proceedings, as the luckless trio stumble around in the dark pursued by their seemingly superhuman ‘victim,’ unearthing several unexpected twists in the process. The Blind Man also owns one of the most terrifying dogs ever committed to the big screen – even the most devoted canine-lovers are going to flinch when he puts in an appearance.

Okay, so events do stumble on a little too long, even at a pacey one hour, twenty eight minutes, and there’s an unfortunate incident with a turkey baster that definitely leaves a bad taste in the mouth – but if the object of this exercise is to push an audience to the limit, Don’t Breathe largely succeeds in its humble ambitions. I left the cinema with my fingernails well and truly chewed.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Sausage Party

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08/09/16

In the colourful cartoon world created by Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill (and, it should be said,  a whole bunch of other writers), the edible inhabitants of Shopwell’s supermarket have created a convenient myth for themselves – that when they are ‘chosen’ by shoppers, they embark on a journey to The Great Beyond, a paradise where they will be forever happy with their perfect partners. Frank (Seth Rogen) is one member of a pack of frankfurter sausages who longs to be lustily united with Brenda (Kristen Wiig) a shapely hot dog bun. (You’ll already have gathered that the minds behind this concoction are not reaching for anything too intellectual.) When a jar of honey-mustard is returned by a shopper (because he wasn’t quite honey and he wasn’t quite mustard), he terrorises the other inhabitants of the store  with nightmarish tales of what he has witnessed – food being horribly tortured and mutilated before being devoured by humans – which sets Frank off on a convoluted quest to discover the truth about the Great Beyond.

Okay, so Sausage Party is an allegory about religion and the lies that people are prepared to swallow in order to make their existence tolerable – and, to be fair, there are a few clever scenes dotted throughout this film that hint at just how good it might have been if a little more thought had gone into it; but, unfortunately, such scenes are brutally nixed by the barrage of appalling racial, sexual and gender stereotypes to which the plot continually returns. It’s a case of one step forward, two steps back. No sooner have you enjoyed, for instance, the quite clever parody of Saving Private Ryan, than the script is offering some clumsy interplay between a Jewish bagel and a Middle Eastern lavash (that’s Armenian unleavened flatbread, in case you were wondering) that seems purely designed to offend religious sensibilities with its supposedly funny, lascivious er… climax.

Look, this was never going to be a masterpiece – it’s clearly something that’s been put together based on the ramblings of a couple of stoners (‘Hey man, imagine if this food we’re about to eat could talk!’) and, all things considered, it’s surprising that the end result is as watchable as it is. Those who enjoy their humour rude and obvious will doubtless laugh along with this – but its ambitions rarely take it any higher than a snake’s belly – and what can you honestly expect of a film that features a villain that is… quite literally, a douchebag?

And be warned. The central premise of this movie could easily encourage an eating disorder. This is a public service announcement. You have been warned.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

Swallows and Amazons

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08/09/16

Although I was (indeed, still am) a voracious reader, I never read Swallows and Amazons as a child. I remember a copy of it on a school bookshelf, but it clearly wasn’t alluring enough to make me reach for it. I did see the rather marvellous Bristol Old Vic/Children’s Touring Partnership stage adaptation a few years ago, so I’m familiar with the story, and keen to see how it’s played here.

It’s a Thursday afternoon, so the kids are all back in school; today’s sparse audience is well and truly grown up. Which seems a little unfortunate as it gets going, because this is definitely a children’s film, with little of the crossover appeal of the stage production. Nostalgia, I suppose, is what draws these adults in and, even though this is clearly directed at younger viewers, it’s really a delight to watch.

Okay, so it’s a world bathed in a golden glow. Father might be away at war, and Uncle Jim(Rafe Spall) might be at risk from the Russian agents sent to capture him, but we’re soaking up the sunshine with the children, building dens and playing pirates. Life’s not too bad – even when there’s a war- provided you’re rich enough to go away for the whole summer, and your parents are liberal enough to let you camp out alone for days.

But it’s easy to mock the privileged lives depicted in so much children’s fiction from bygone days. And actually, in this film at least, there’s plenty that’s universal(ish): the difficulties of growing up and negotiating the awkward stage between child and adulthood; the sheer injustice of being disbelieved; the burning desire to be successful, and the pride that comes from knowing that you’re fighting for something that’s ‘right.’

The Swallows are the Walkers: John (Dane Hughes),Susan (Orla Hill), the controversially renamed Tatty (Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen), and Roger (Bobby McCulloch). With their mother (Kelly Macdonald), they have come to spend the summer with Mr and Mrs Jackson (Harry Enfield and Jessica Hynes). The Amazons are local kids, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, and they’re outraged at the Walkers’ claim to ‘their’ island. The Swallows and Amazons declare war, but their friendly fight is in stark contrast to the battles being fought by Uncle Jim, as he tries to expose the dastardly Russian plans he has purloined. The children’s bravery, however, is real and their games teach them teamwork and resilience; in the end, of course, it’s only they who can save the day.

The cinematography is lush, all rolling hills and gorgeous landscapes, the verdant copses idyllic and sublime. And the baddies are scary enough to keep children enthralled. A worthwhile family film, I think… what a shame there are no children here too see it.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Morgan

06/09/16

Morgan is a sci-fi thriller with a difference: this one passes the Bechdel test. And it’s really rather good.

Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a bioengineered life-form, an experiment in artificial intelligence. But her creators have become too emotionally attached, and are unable to treat her as anything less than human. When she attacks Dr Grieff (Jennifer Jason Leigh in a disappointingly small role), risk-management consultant Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) is sent in to sort things out. But the odds are stacked against her: Morgan might be dangerous and out of control, but the scientists are on her side.

Okay, so there are some issues. Let’s face it, credulity is stretched at times; it requires a gigantic leap of faith to believe that a being – however special – can jump into a car and drive it without ever having seen one before. And how does Morgan know, just by looking at him, that Dr Shapiro (Paul Giamatti) is married and has two kids? I’m happy to believe in the fi part of the sci, but it’s better when the ‘magic’ is explained convincingly. In addition, there’s a definite slump in the second half, when all the slice-and-dice stuff kicks in.

But overall, this is a lot of fun. Mara and Taylor-Joy are worthy adversaries, both wonderfully kick-ass and convincing in their roles. Paul Giamatti is as compelling as ever, and Rose Leslie (as Dr Menser) adds a quirky naivety to the tale. And the payoff is worth the wait.

Worth watching. So catch it while you can.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

 

 

The Scran & Scallie

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05/08/16

Stockbridge, Edinburgh

We’re all familiar with the term ‘gastro-pub.’ Sadly, we’re also familiar with the soggy -lasagna-soup-in-a basket standard of fare that generally masquerades as superior pub dining. So welcome to the Scran & Scallie, a joint enterprise between Tom Kitchin and Dominic Jack, that genuinly deserves that gastro-pub tag. Situated on a quiet road in Stockbridge, the place has a relaxed feel, the staff are friendly and, for those on a budget, there’s a daily set lunch menu at £15 a head for three courses.

Today, however, was a day for pushing the proverbial boat out, so we opted to go a la carte. Service takes long enough to persuade you that dishes really are being made to order. A basket of crusty bread and butter kept us going while we waited. I started with smoked trout and potato salad, the flakes of trout cooked to perfection, the potatoes just al dente enough, the light dressing perfectly judged. Susan went for a heritage tomato salad, with black olives & consommé, deliciously light and intensely flavoured. Beside me, our companion announced that he was enjoying his chicken liver parfait & pickled cabbage, served with a couple of pieces of crunchy toast.

For the main course, two of us opted for the steak pie, which sounded alluring and looked quite majestic when it arrived, the light-as-a-feather canopy of pastry supported by a great big chunk of marrow bone, packed with a rich salty filling. There’s a portion of chips, chunky, crispy, exactly as good chips should be; and I chose a side of roasted new potatoes with chorizo, which made an inspired addition to the already intense flavour of the succulent meat. Our companion, ever the individual, went for beef sausage & mash, which arrived looking as though it had been designed primarily to illustrate what such a dish should look like – thick, juicy sausages, smooth-as-you-like spuds and a caramelised onion gravy. The only oddity here was the inclusion  of a couple of hefty-looking onion rings; they were  nicely cooked, lightly battered, the onion within still crispy. Perfectly tasty, but did it really belong on this dish? I’m not sure, but hey, it’s a minor niggle.

Be warned, the portions at The Scran  are best described as ‘hearty,’ so be prepared for that belly-slapping, contented feeling you only ever get when everything is exactly as you want it and there’s plenty of it. We were so full, in fact, we very nearly convinced ourselves that we couldn’t possibly bring ourselves to order a pudding, but then we saw the menu and decided to sacrifice everything for our art.

So there was a delightfully light sticky toffee pudding, drenched in a sweet sauce and served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream; and a vanilla cheesecake with Scottish raspberries, the cheesecake rich, smooth and flavoursome, perfectly contrasted with the acidity of those fresh raspberries. Yum.

Okay, so TS&S lacks the finesse of say, Castle Terrace, but then, that’s entirely the point. This is superior quality nosh, artfully cooked, nicely presented in a relaxed environment where you can happily enjoy a pint with your food. And it’s excellent. Apart from those onion rings, I couldn’t fault this, not one mouthful of it. If you’re in Edinburgh, looking for a memorable meal without the pretensions, this should be your first port of call.

5 stars

Philip Caveney