Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019)

Sometimes a girl can find her best friend in her worst enemy. After her mother’s death, 16-year-old sleuth Nancy Drew (Sophia Lillis) and her lawyer father Carson (Sam Trammell) have moved from Chicago to the small town of River Heights. While Nancy struggles to fit in, Carson is active in local politics, fighting the development of a train line through the town. A local thug named Willie Wharton (Jesse C. Boyd) threatens Nancy one night to try to scare her father into backing down. While performing community service as punishment for a prank on a school bully, Nancy meets Flora (Linda Lavin), an elderly woman needing help with an apparent haunting in her home. Excited by the mystery, Nancy stays overnight at Flora’s home, along with Flora’s niece Helen (Laura Slade Wiggins), the girlfriend of the bully Derek (Evan Castelloe) who’s made Bess Marvin’s (Mackenzie Graham) life a misery and led to the girls and best friend George Fayne (Zoe Renee) taking revenge. That night in Flora’s exotic cluttered home, strange things begin to happen, with lights going out and then exploding, cabinet doors and drawers opening, and a cloaked figure in a pig mask appearing and warning Nancy to give up her mystery. The next day, Nancy believes that someone broke in and tried scaring them out. Nancy and Helen investigate, and they find a secret passage that leads outside, revealing how the supposed ‘ghost’ entered the house. The secret passage also contains props the intruder used to simulate a haunting, such as a rigged fuse box to manipulate the lights in the house. The rest of the strange phenomenon is explained by a rig that emits concentrated nutmeg through the house’s air conditioning, which triggers dangerous hallucinations. Later, Nancy realises her father, who is staying out of town on a business trip, has not checked in with her or her aunt Hannah recently. She calls her father’s best friend Nate (Jon Briddell) who tells her that Carson’s meeting is at a campsite and reception must be spotty. Nancy is not convinced, as Carson had told her he would be staying at a hotel. Worried that something has happened to him, Nancy and Helen head to Carson’s hotel. They discover that he never checked out, and his cell phone is still in his room. Security footage from the previous night reveals Carson was ambushed and kidnapped by Wharton … The way your brain works is so cool. Fans of the perennial favourite schoolgirl detective will always be interested in seeing new iterations because just as the ‘original’ books were the children of many, written and altered over different generations as tastes and sensibilities moved on, the film and TV adaptations have come to reflect the times in which they are made: from Bonita Granville’s 1930s’ movie heroine to Pamela Sue Martin in the 1970s’ TV version and a Canadian TV series set in the Thirties. There’s a series (three seasons since 2019) on The CW which we haven’t yet seen. This book in fact was previously adapted in 1939 although it was changed from the novel and this version is written by Nina Fiore & John Herrera. We don’t see a lot of those zesty sidekicks who are mostly confined to the introductory bullying subplot and Ned is missing in action altogether, replaced by police deputy Patrick (Andrew Matthew Welch) echoing a friendship from a more recent TV girl detective, Veronica Mars. However it shares with the 2007 feature a nice sense of legacy and a feel for modern comedy but it’s dogged by a kind of softness and sentimentality that didn’t affect the earlier film whose retro-fitted Hollywood setting was oddly more appropriate and was a lot sharper in execution. Carson is weaker and housekeeper Hannah Gruen is now his sister (Andrea Anders), portrayed as something of a loser who couldn’t cut it in New York. Lillis is rather charming and lively but Nancy was never a tomboy skater girl. The psychoactive conclusion at least features an interesting use of flamingo ornaments but it’s underplayed. Directed by Katt Shea (Ruben) who many will fondly recall from Poison Ivy but this doesn’t have that film’s claws although there is real jeopardy amid the fun and mystery. Executive produced by Ellen DeGeneres with a score by Emily Bear a musical prodigy who made many appearances on her TV show. Delivering justice isn’t a prank, it’s my duty

Seminole (1953)

Some things I felt that time alone could work out. Fort King, the HQ of the US Army in the Everglades, Florida, 1835. West Point graduate Second Lieutenant Lance Caldwell (Rock Hudson) is charged with the murder of a sentry. At his court martial, he recounts the story of the fragile peace between the settlers and the native Seminole Indians and how that peace is threatened by the inflexible and driven fort commander, Major Harlan Degan (Richard Carlson), who wants to wipe out the natives who he believes do not understand the agricultural potential of the land. Caldwell is a knowledgeable scout and he points out they mostly live in swamps but Degan refuses to hear him out. Caldwell’s childhood sweetheart, Revere Muldoon (Barbara Hale) is romantically involved with Osceola (Anthony Quinn) a Seminole chief and old friend of Caldwell’s. Through respect for Caldwell, Osceola comes to the fort under a flag of truce, but is imprisoned by Degan. Osceola dies while in captivity and Caldwell is accused of his murder and jailed … The wounds are healing, but not the heart. Director Budd Boetticher does a fine job utilising his customary vigour, intelligence and straightforward storytelling in translating the real-life story of the Second Seminole War as chronicled by Charles K. Peck Jr., with double-crossing nasty Degan’s real name (Jesup) changed at the last minute to avoid legal action from his descendants. It’s a ferocious indictment of how the U.S. Army conducted itself in its efforts to wipe out the native population under the auspices of Andrew Jackson’s removal policy and has some lively performances especially by the marvellous Quinn as the heroic and charismatic martyr. Hudson was of course being groomed for greatness by Universal and he’s a solid lead as the ethical soldier opposite the evil Carlson: has that mild-mannered performer ever been so possessed by a role? That’s in an impressive cast that also numbers Lee Marvin as Sergeant Magruder who’s quite a fair-minded fellow and James Best as a guy who suffers from swamp fever. Hale is fine as the woman caught between two fascinating, purposeful men. The whole thing looks rather lovely, shot in glossy Technicolor by Russell Metty. I must believe there’s a chance for peace for both our peoples

The Lake House (2006)

If she’s not careful she could spend her whole life waiting. Chicago, 2006. Dr. Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock) is leaving a lake house that she has been renting. Kate leaves a note in the mailbox for the next tenant to forward her mail, adding that the paint-embedded pawprints on the path leading to the house were already there when she arrived. Two years earlier in 2004, architect Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves) arrives at the lake house and finds Kate’s letter in the mailbox. The place is neglected, with no sign of paw prints anywhere. During the subsequent restoration of the house, a dog runs through Alex’s paint and leaves fresh paw prints right where Kate said they would be. Baffled, Alex writes back, asking how Kate knew about the paw prints since the house was unoccupied until he arrived. On Valentine’s Day 2006, Kate is enjoying a sandwich with her mother (Willeke van Ammelrooy) when she witnesses a traffic accident near Daley Plaza and tries to save the male victim, unsuccessfully. She impulsively drives back to the lake house, finds Alex’s letter and writes back. Both Alex and Kate continue passing messages to each other via the mailbox, and each watches its flag go up and down as the message leaves and the reply arrives as they wait at the mailbox. They cautiously look around each time the flag changes, hoping to somehow spot the other. It is in vain as they are alone at the mailbox. They then discover that they are living exactly two years apart. Their correspondence takes them through several events, including Alex finding a book, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, at a railway station where Kate said she would have lost it, and Alex taking Kate on a walking tour of his favorite places in Chicago via an annotated map that he leaves in the mailbox. Alex continues his work designing condos and enduring a fractious relationship with his narcissistic father Simon (Christopher Plummer) a renowned architect whom his architect brother Henry (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) sees differently. He eventually meets Kate at her boyfriend Morgan’s (Dylan Walsh) party, however he doesn’t mention their exchange of letters because it had not happened to Kate yet. They kiss without his ever saying who he is and it’s witnessed by Morgan and Alex’s colleague Mona (Lynn Collins) whose advances he rebuffs. Kate later remembers the meeting as a vague memory in the past. As Alex and Kate continue to write to each other, they decide to try to meet again. Alex makes a reservation at the Il Mare restaurant – two years into Alex’s future, but only a day away for Kate. Kate goes to the restaurant but Alex fails to show. Heartbroken, Kate asks Alex not to write to her again, recounting the accident a year before. Both Alex and Kate leave the lake house, continuing on with their separate lives. On Valentine’s Day 2006 for Alex, Valentine’s Day 2008 for Kate, he returns to the lake house after something about the day triggers a memory … These two people meet, they fall in love, the timing isn’t right, they have to part. This fantasy romance has an unbelievable premise but the rhythm eventually insinuates itself into the viewer’s brain and after a while we recall Professor Brian Cox informing us just a few days ago (maybe) that space and time are not fundaments of nature because there is a deeper reality that even he doesn’t understand. So that’s fine then. And now. And there. The world and his wife wanted Reeves and Bullock back together since Speed and this remake of the 2000 South Korean film Il Mare plugs into that universal wish with a crazy plot that somehow explains why it took so long to happen in the metaverse at least. Life is not a book, Alex. It can be over in a second. Literary references aside, this is also a how-to on timing – when is it the right time to declare yourself romantically and when is it okay to change someone else’s fate. We think they got that right at least in a film about emotional architecture and saving lives. Watch out for that traffic, dude. Forget the logic and dive straight in with the music of Rachel Portman, Paul McCartney and Nick Drake among others to make you swoon. Written by David Auburn. Directed by Alejandro Agresti. What if there is no one? What if you live your whole life and no one is waiting?

Trauma Center (2019)

These guys killed a cop. They’re dangerous. You’re a witness. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, Madison Taylor (Nicky Whelan) is injured when she’s caught in the crossfire of two corrupt cops, Detective Pierce (Tito Ortiz) and Sergeant Tull (Texas Battle) when they kill Detective Tony Martin (Tyler Jon Olson). Madison wakes up in a hospital where she’s told she’s been shot in the leg. It’s the same hospital where her teenage sister and ward Emily (Catherine Davis) is being treated for an asthma attack. As a witness to a vicious crime, she’s placed under the protection of respected police lieutenant Steve Wakes (Bruce Willis) who puts her in an isolation ward in an empty and rarely used part of the building. Madison’s misfortune turns into a real nightmare when Pierce and Tull turn up to finish the job, realising she is the key to tracing them back to the crime. Trapped and hunted by Pierce and Tull inside the locked-down hospital, Madison desperately calls Wakes for help. But she must use her surroundings to fight back alone during this night of survival if there is any hope of making it out alive. Then they find her and she knows her sister is now in jeopardy too as they chase her through the building. Madison has evidence on a memory card which Wakes needs to prove his colleagues in Vice are guilty but she can’t get him on the phone and when she does she wants to save Emily … You’re not Mom. Fans of Bruce Willis will feel shortchanged by a narrative in which he tops and tails the action and at one point actually phones it in. As he puts it, Guys like me don’t stick around. Talk about on the nose. The dialogue is as basic and declarative as the plot, a predictable genre outing with crooked cops and a woman in jeopardy. Whelan plays said female very well in a mostly deserted hospital setting and gets to have some action fun on her hobbled leg. What’s strange is the notion of isolation wards in a pre-pandemic world. It may be the most fascinating element at play in a film that some label a Die Hard wannabe. Then there’s Willis’ non-performance which is jaw-dropping to witness. Oh, and in a complete Ripley’s, that’s Steve Guttenberg as Dr Jones. Mercifully short. Written by Paul Da Silva. Directed by Matt Eskandari. Don’t worry – we haven’t had any outbreaks of Ebola. Yet

Happy 70th Birthday Kathryn Bigelow 27th November 2021!

With her stunning aesthetic, trademark action cutting and cinematic intelligence, artist, actress, screenwriter, director and producer Kathryn Bigelow first attracted our attention with her debut The Loveless a beautiful outlaw biker art film that was all kinds of fetish to the point that one critic commented, Genet would have loved it. With strong male and female protagonists and cult stylings, it was Point Break that finally sent her mega, an exhilarating surf film that broke the genre out of the low budget kitsch realm. In between films in a career that has seen her spend years between productions, she shot music videos and TV and did some teaching and returned to the masculine realm of brilliantly executed and exciting yet serious thrillers, minus the kind of denigrating humour that plagues that kind of filmmaking. She was finally rewarded with an Academy Award for directing The The Hurt Locker, a stunning representation of contemporary warfare. She doesn’t make enough films but what she makes are simply great and they are on her terms. Many happy returns to a modern classicist.

Stephen Sondheim 22nd March 1930 – 26th November 2021

Sondheim is gone. Long live Sondheim.

Chuka (1967)

In a lifetime I have learned that one man is the image of all men. After giving food to starving Arapaho Indians, travelling gunslinger Chuka (Rod Taylor) escorts the passengers of a broken-down stagecoach to Fort Clandennon, a remote Army frontier outpost run by stern British Coonel. Stuart Valois (John Mills). One of the passengers is Veronica Kleitz (Luciana Paluzzi), a widowed Mexican aristocrat who used to know and love Chuka but could not marry him because of the gap between their social classes. As Arapaho encircle the fort, led by Hanu (Marco Lopez), Valois prepares for a desperate last stand to redeem himself for an alleged act of wartime cowardice. All the while the fort is being infiltrated by Arapaho and Major Benson (Louis Hayward) brings in an Indian girl (Herlinda Del Carmen) for sex. Valois sends out his scout Lou Trent (James Whitmore) to reconnoiter, but the horse returns without the rider … You are not in command of a fort. You are in command of a bunch of cavalry foul-ups and unless you watch it you’ll have a massacre on your hands. Star Taylor shepherded this project to production and had a hand in the writing although the screenplay is credited to Richard Jessup adapting his own 1961 novel. The setup effectively pits this rough rider against a career man cashiered out of the British Army and it takes a long time before his loyal adjutant Sgt. Otto Hansbach (Ernest Borgnine) ‘fesses up to why he’s standing by him – some ghastly incidents in the Sudan. It’s a gnarly story with a subtext of honour and codes of conduct. Mills himself gets a lot of scenery to chew as the guilt-ridden but stubborn guy (riffing on Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai) who happens to be responsible for a gang of soldiers who rejoice in claiming We’re the scum of the U.S. Army, echoing the misdeeds of that year’s other band of dangerous reprobates The Dirty Dozen (released a month later and also co-starring Borgnine). Valois humiliates his colleagues during the drunken dinner party from hell. However they’re up against savages whose crimes here are vile indeed and the core themes of identity and social standing are explored in the penultimate assault on the fort. The romance is provided by Paluzzi who has a big love scene with Rod while Angela Dorian aka Victoria Vetri plays her niece and she has little enough to do other than trying to stay alive. (Vetri probably hindered her career by posing for Playboy a few months after this was released.) We’ve seen it all done before and often better but this star vehicle has a glitzy cast and Taylor and Mills give fascinating performances, both outsiders with very different outlooks and fates. Directed by Gordon Douglas. Whatever you’ve done before won’t come close to what you’re about to do now

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

All my life I’ve wanted to have a big family Christmas. Chicago-area resident Clark ‘Sparky’ Griswold (Chevy Chase) plans to have a great Christmas with his entire family. He gathers wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), daughter Audrey (Juliette Lewis) and son Rusty (Johnny Galecki) and drives out to the country to find a tree. After walking through the snow for hours, Clark picks out the largest tree he can find but without a saw they are forced to uproot it instead, before driving home with the tree strapped to the roof of their car. Soon after, both sets of parents Clark’s (Diane Ladd and John Randolph) and Ellen’s (Doris Roberts and E.G. Marshall) arrive but their bickering quickly begins to annoy the family. Clark, however, maintains a positive attitude, determined to have an old-fashioned family Christmas. He covers the house’s entire facade with 25,000 lights, which fail to work at first, as he has accidentally wired them through his garage’s light switch. When they finally come on, they temporarily cause a citywide power shortage and create chaos for Clark’s yuppie neighbours, Todd Chester (Nicholas Guest) and his wife Margo (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). While standing on the front lawn admiring the lights, Clark is shocked to see Ellen’s redneck cousin Catherine Johnson (Miriam Flynn) and her husband Eddie (Randy Quaid), as they arrive unannounced in their RV with their children, Rocky (Cody Burger) and Ruby Sue (Ellen Hamilton Lantzen), and their scary Rottweiler, Snot. Eddie later admits that they are living in the RV, as he is broke and has been forced to sell his home and acreage. Clark offers to buy gifts for Eddie’s kids so they can still enjoy Christmas. Soon afterward, Clark’s senile Aunt Bethany (Mae Questel) and grumpy toupeed Uncle Lewis (William Hickey) arrive as well. Clark begins to wonder why his boss Frank Shirley (Brian Doyle Murray) who never gets his name right, has not given him his yearly bonus – his best friend at work Bill (Sam McMurray) already claims to have his – and which he desperately needs to replace an advance payment he has made to install a swimming pool for the coming summer. After a disastrous Christmas Eve dinner, along with Bethany’s cat getting electrocuted and Uncle Lewis accidentally burning down the Christmas tree while lighting his cigar, he finally receives an envelope from a company messenger, who had failed to deliver it the day before. Instead of the presumed bonus, the envelope contains a free year’s membership for the Jelly of the Month Club. This prompts Clark to snap and go into a tirade about Frank and, out of anger, request that he be delivered to the house, wrapped in a bow, so Clark can insult him to his face … I don’t want to spend the holidays dead. The third in the series of family comedies, and with a couple of cast changes in the ensemble (the kids), beloved writer/director and humorist John Hughes wrote a short story Christmas ’59 for the venerated magazine National Lampoon in 1980 and was asked to bring it to the screen. Following clashes with Chevy Chase director Chris Columbus opted out of directing and was replaced by Jeremiah Chechik and eventually Hughes brought another Christmas screenplay called Home Alone to Columbus. Hmmm…. In the interim we had this typically shrewd blend of action, comedy, pathos, embarrassment, sentiment, yucks and family trials and tribulations in a story of hapless well-meaning middle class male humiliation at work and at home. He’s got that look in his eye, sighs his worried wife, D’Angelo once again bringing sanity to the saga as her optimistic overreaching husband triggers another chain of catastrophes. The moments of recognition and emotion are perfectly pitched in a narrative that’s well paced and staged, the outdoor lights sequence is practically Keatonesque (so much so that we wait for the house to fall down around Chase) and in a story filled with animal foes the final fight – with a squirrel – is wonderful. If it doesn’t quite hit all the vicious beats we might gleefully anticipate it’s often heartwarming and very funny indeed. Happy Thanksgiving! Nobody’s walking out on this fun-filled family Christmas

Riders of Justice (2020)

Aka Retfærdighedens Ryttere. If I can’t get my own piece of revenge I’m not sure I want to be part of it. Military commander Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) returns home from his tour of Afghanistan to care for teenage daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) when his wife Emma dies in a tragic train explosion. However when statistician and probability geek Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) a survivor of the wreck surfaces and claims foul play, Markus suspects his wife was murdered and embarks on a mission to find those responsible. They are joined by Otto’s hacker colleague Lennart (Lars Brygmann) who has decades of psychological therapy under his belt so he fools Mathilde with his shtick and gets her to drink Coke upside down to treat her grief and her father’s ingrained fear of her getting fat. Their angry techie friend Emmenthaler (Nicholas Bro) helps narrow down the suspects and they find the mastermind at home. Trouble is, he left his rent boy Bodashka (Gustav Lindh) tied up and he’s witnessed everything … Have you killed someone before? It certainly didn’t look like your first time. Framed as an off-kilter Christmas tale about a stolen bicycle, this blackly comic ironic actioner surprises on every front with liberal doses of quirkiness and amused savagery amid the cod psychology and stoicism: we know it’s going to be funny from Otto’s office meeting where car sales are being projected from a study of the correlation between being deaf and having a club foot. A lot of awful things can happen in your life. They probably will. When these eccentrics show up on Markus’ doorstep with their panoply of tics and obsessions they’re meeting the soldier who’s turned down therapy sessions for himself and Mathilde – who he wants to keep from getting chubby and even beats up her eager gourmand boyfriend Sirius (Albert Rudbeck Lindhart), whose mother is a psychologist. They think we’re just a couple of overeducated charlatans. It’s as though Beavis and Butthead have just rolled up at Liam Neeson’s house. And that’s before the weird cheese guy and then a rent boy slash au pair who likens his services to being a city bike for hire. This is a bunch of people who have things to work out. It’s pitched so that the shootout at precisely one hour expiates the pertinent issues on a spectrum from autism to murder meaning that there’s got to be a catch in the rationale of statistical probability – and at 85 minutes taciturn controlled Mikkelsen gets the opportunity to let rip with a breakdown all his own when they put together their catastrophic error of mistaken identity. Each of these events has its own individual course of events. The concluding sequence brings the father-daughter stories, the deep background problems of guilt and limitations and potential of each man and another band of vicious maniac crims together in the most pleasing of fashions – late at night, under siege, deep in the countryside. They have managed to lift each other up and become friends in a kind of faux counselling setting and the payoff is very satisfying. If I’d wanted to assemble stuff I’d have gone to IKEA. The oddball gang in this men on a mission movie are not your average crimebusters and they’re far from superheroes – they’re freezing in their Scandinavian barn with shitty computers talking about their personal problems when they’re not learning to put together guns. But who doesn’t want to see Mikkelsen in a Christmas jumper surrounded by autistic men comforting each other with a French horn? Talk about a motley crew. I sometimes think people with problems band together. A perfect seasonal appetiser, this screwball comedy revenge thriller is a left field delight. Written and directed by Danish superstar filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen who has been writing and directing productions for Mikkelsen for twenty years. The numbers never lie

King Richard (2021)

You think you have two Mozarts in your home. That’s very, very unlikely. Los Angeles, early 1990s. Armed with a clear vision and a brazen, 78-page plan, Richard Williams (Will Smith) is determined to write his two daughters, Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) into history. Training on public tennis courts in Compton, Los Angeles, with regular threats by local hoods who beat him for his stubbornness, Richard shapes the girls’ unyielding commitment and keen intuition. He persuades John McEnroe’s coach Tony Cohen (Tony Goldwyn) to take them on but Cohen will only train Venus for free. Venus competes on the ITF Junior Circuit but Richard expresses hesitation about her going pro, to the chagrin of her nurse mother Oracene aka Brandy Price (Aunjanue Ellis) who is training Serena and fixing her serve. Richard soon changes his mind and signs up both his daughters with coach Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal). The family move to his camp in Florida but Richard’s idiosyncratic technique lead Macci to despair that he is sacrificing his gifted children … They thought I was just another dumb nigger. When Venus Williams burst on the tennis scene she was a breath of fresh air with a quality that was delightfully distracted as though she had literally arrived from another planet and picked up a racquet and found she could hit a tennis ball effortlessly. She could charm the world – and did. That quality is well captured in the performance by Sidney and her distinctively different sister Serena is also marked out as quite a separate and driven personality. When Williams tells Venus that she’s not just representing herself but every little black girl it’s a powerful statement. When he tells Serena she’s going to be the greatest the world has ever seen you know he instilled that into her and we have the benefit of knowing it is true. Parenting is the other major theme that also distinguishes this sports story – how Williams believes in the power of education, how he thinks people should be rounded individuals, how he tells his and Oracene’s daughters (she has three by her late husband) to always have fun, how both he and his wife train the girls with differing approaches and how he is horrified at the way other (ie white) pushy tennis parents bully their children. The unfortunate Jennifer Capriati (Jessica Wacnik) is used as the poster girl for how not to treat prodigies. There is frank comment on the way the junior system treats the young players and dumps on them when they fail. There is enough specific information about the other sisters – Tunde (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew), Isha (Danielle Lawson) and Lyndrea (Layla Crawford) to bulk out the family situation with nuance and realism. The nature of these parents’ belief in their kids is refreshing. The lingering image of the five girls in the VW bus trundling over LA to and from the courts, being kept off the street corners and away from the gangstas in a febrile city with terrible race problems is very well established. Everyone is making sacrifices: the Williams’ situation is so unusual in Compton that the neighbouring mother of a hooker complains to the police that they are abusing their kids which warrants a home visit. The clear dramatic undertow is controlled by the issue of race and it’s handled very smartly with some extraordinary lines delivered in the context of the country club set that controls the sport. This feels paced wrong but that’s because there is an inescapable structural issue: two coaches, two successive stories of selective training are embedded in a story of not-quite-struggle. As a ‘true’ story executive produced by the Williams sisters this illustrates why biopics often opt to conflate characters because there is a real sense of repetition even while avoiding the usual episodic pitfalls with the change of location from sunny Southern California to sunny Southern Florida. Or, you could say that this is just part of Richard’s plan and they do it his way again – only better. He’s an entrepreneur, a huckster, a trier, who fully goes after his ideas yet he’s not without his flaws. As his wife finally points out when his conduct becomes truly problematic in Florida, he abandoned his first family without a second thought. When that revelation lands it has power. Oracene has a quietly forceful presence but operates at a different volume to the self-promoter that is Richard. At the 75 minute point this felt like at least 100 minutes had passed, making the second half more of an issue of tolerance with the surprising ending for those not au fait with Venus’ first major match. This differs from most sports biopics in that the focus is a step away from the practitioners and is about their mentor who also happens to be their father and at a crucial point in their nascent careers where every choice can make all the difference as the comparisons with other young players demonstrate. And there’s the overall sense that the story has been whitewashed to make Richard Williams into something close to a saint while all the evidence suggests he is anything but – we get a clear suggestion of that when he finally gets fed up of being whupped and goes after his tormentor – a sliding doors moment for this man. Smith is magnificent and utterly committed in a complete performance portraying this unexpected engine of change who looked into the future of the sport and saw it written by his extraordinary daughters – and him. Written by Zach Baylin and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. I call the shots