Cooper Hoffman

The Long Walk

14/09/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

As I’ve observed elsewhere, Stephen King is one of the most screen-adapted authors in living history and you’d think, wouldn’t you, that by now they’d have run out of titles to turn into movies? I mean, what stone has been left unturned? Well, there’s always The Long Walk, a story about a dystopian future where young men enter a lottery in order to be able to compete in a gruelling competition – where the winner will be handed a fortune while losers will be eliminated one by one, with a well-aimed bullet.

And before people start muttering about this being ripped off from The Hunger Games, it’s worth mentioning that King wrote the original novel when he was seventeen and that it was published way back in 1979, under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. (Bachman also wrote The Running Man, already filmed in 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a new version looming on the cinematic horizon.)

The competitor we’re rooting for in the titular ordeal is Raymond Garrity (Cooper Hoffman) and the guy he pals up with is Peter McVries (David Jonsson) – but there are plenty of other participants and we learn something about most of them by the time we approach the three-hundred-mile marker. The event is presided over by The Major (an almost unrecognisable Mark Hamill). As the walk progresses, we witness some truly horrible executions and some almost as awful depictions of what happens when the participants are not even allowed the luxury of a toilet break…

The danger here, of course, is that such a stripped-back storyline might mean that the narrative becomes repetitive, so kudos must go to director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner, who somehow manage to incorporate enough gear changes to keep me thoroughly entertained (if that’s the right word) throughout a one hour and forty-eight minute run time. It’s also chilling to note that, with the current political upheaval in the USA, the premise of this story feels queasily credible.

More than anything else, this is a film about male friendship, about honour and sacrifice. Hoffman, who made such a confident debut in Licorice Pizza is quietly compelling here as a young man nurturing a secret thirst for vengeance, while Jonsson makes the perfect foil for him: relaxed, compassionate and nurturing. As I say, we do learn about several of the other competitors, but this film belongs to its central duo, who keep us walking alongside them right up to the shattering conclusion.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Saturday Night

11/01/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

It’s Saturday night, so this Unlimited screening of er… Saturday Night feels entirely appropriate. Directed by Jason Reitman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Gil Kenan, it tells the inside story of a turbulent midnight production at NBC studios, New York, on the 11th October 1975. Saturday Night Live is of course, still running, a major American institution, but Reitman’s film shows how close it came to never being transmitted in the first place.

Ambitious young TV producer, Lorne Michaels (Gabrielle LaBelle), his wife and lead writer, Rose Schuster (Rachel Sennot), and their understandably nervous co-producer, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), find themselves trying to control an anarchic bunch of comedians and musicians. They include the assured front-runner, Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), the ever-adaptable Dan Ackroyd (Dylan O’ Brian) and the doomed, drug-raddled John Belushi (Matt Wood), who hasn’t even managed to sign his contract.

As Michaels wanders disconsolately around the studio, trying to instil some kind of order to the deranged proceedings, he’s uncomfortably aware of old hands gleefully anticipating a disaster of Titanic proportions. Sneering TV producer Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe) and legendary presenter Milton Berle (JK Simmons) both offer scene-stealing cameos. A special nod should also go to Succession’s Nicholas Braun in the duel roles of Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson, the former weird and inexplicably funny, the latter dismayed and strangely puritanical about the ways in which his Muppet creations have been despoiled by their co stars.

There’s a terrific sense of urgency about Saturday Night. I’m alerted to the fact that time is ticking away from the opening scenes onwards and the various confrontations, problems and disasters that occur are initially well handled – but it’s hard to instil any sense of real jeopardy when the world knows that everything is going to turn out fine in the end. And, while that sense of propulsion works well at the beginning and end of the film, there’s a somewhat lumpen middle section that never seems entirely sure which direction to take.

American viewers will be invested in the story, but it doesn’t mean as much here in the UK where SNL isn’t as well-known – and audiences whose only connection to any of these stars is via the National Lampoon and Ghostbusters films may struggle to identify with it.

But that said, there’s plenty here to enjoy. I particularly relish Jon Batiste’s spirited impersonation of Billy Preston and Naomi McPherson’s turn as Janis Ian, singing At Seventeen. LaBelle’s performance as Michaels is also assured, pinning down the inner struggle between the man’s vulnerability and his soaring ambition.

This film won’t be for everyone, but for those who were enthusiastic cinema-goers in the 1970s, it’s fascinating to witness how many stellar (and sometimes spectacularly short-lived) acting careers were launched by what happened on that fateful Saturday Night.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Licorice Pizza

03/01/22

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh

Paul Thomas Anderson has directed some of my all-time favourite films.

Boogie Nights, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood are all gems, a triumvirate that any filmmaker would be proud to leave as a cinematic legacy. But more recently, his work has underwhelmed me. Inherent Vice (2014) was an incoherent mess and 2017’s Phantom Thread – though wildly acclaimed by many critics – left me curiously unmoved.

On the face of it then, Licorice Pizza feels like a return to his comfort zone, exploring the sleazy canyons of the San Fernando Valley in the early 70s, an era that yielded such delights in Boogie Nights. This is the story of Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), a supremely confident fifteen-year-old child ‘actor’ and all- round entrepreneur, with an extended family working to his orders on a variety of different projects. While it quickly becomes clear that Gary may be overestimating his own genius, he seems to have convinced a surprising number of others to give his projects a whirl.

Then, out of the blue, he falls in love at first sight with Alana (Alana Haim) who is twenty-five and makes no bones about telling Gary that he hasn’t a hope in hell of ending up with her. (This age thing, by the way, feels needlessly controversial. Hoffman’s actual age is eighteen and Haim thirty, so it would have had the same dynamic if they’d simply nudged Gary’s age up a year or so. Just saying.)

Despite Alana’s protestations, something sticks and she agrees to meet him for a drink. Soon enough, she becomes his loyal sidekick (although she’s insistent that they’re just friends), and he’s trying to get her into the movies…

What follows is an exuberant scramble of a film, as Gary and Alana run (and I mean literally) all around the valley, struggling through the ups and downs of an on/off relationship, while Gary tries out his madcap enterprises, setting himself up as a purveyor of waterbeds and – when the oncoming fuel crisis puts the kibosh on that – relaunching himself as the owner of a pinball arcade. The anarchic sprawl that ensues in that emporium probably mirrors the kind of youthful carnage that was played out in the Licorice Pizza record stores from which the film takes its name. – but that’s just my best guess.

Along the way, the duo encounter ageing action-movie star, Jack Holden (Sean Penn), desperate to impress Alana with an impromptu motorbike stunt, and terrifying coke freak Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) who urgently wants to purchase a water bed for his wife, Barbara Streisand! Watch out too for a sensational cameo from Harriet Samsom Harris as Gary’s agent, Mary Grady, who delivers an object lesson in how to make the most of limited screen time.

This is a kinetic, adrenalin-fuelled movie, pushed along by bold, swooping cinematography and a no-holds-barred 70s soundtrack. Hoffman (the son of Anderson’s old muse, Philip Seymour Hoffman) is terrific as Gary and has great chemistry with Haim. She is, of course, a member of the rock trio that bears her name (for whom Anderson has shot several videos) and, as if to emphasise the ‘home movie’ feel of the project, Haim’s sisters – and even her parents – have supporting roles to play in this story.

While Licorice Pizza can’t claim to be up there with the very best of Anderson’s films, it nevertheless delivers a thoroughly enjoyable ride as Gary and Alana run side-by-side and finally – inevitably- towards each other. I fully expect to see its two stars going on to greater things.

And for Paul Thomas Anderson, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

4 stars

Philip Caveney