Leave the World Behind (2023)

I fucking hate people. New York City, the present day. Misanthropic customer relationship manager Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) arranges an impromptu weekend vacation for her and her family, with the goal of spending quality time together. She, her English and media studies college professor husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) and their children 13-year old Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and her older brother Archie (Charlie Evans), drive to a rental house on Long Island. While shopping for groceries, Amanda sees Danny (Kevin Bacon) stocking up on large quantities of canned food and water. As the family relaxes at a nearby beach, they run from an oil tanker as it ploughs up the shore, which is far from a deepsea port and they flee in shock. After returning to the rental house, they find the TV and Wi-Fi are no longer operating and a pair of deer watch them from the yard. That night, two people, George H. Scott (called G.H.) (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) arrive at the front door, claiming the house is theirs. Seeking shelter, they explain that a blackout in the city compelled them to come but Amanda is suspicious, especially when G.H. can’t produce ID, claiming it’s in his coat at the Symphony. Clay allows them to stay. The next morning, Rose is frustrated that the Wi-Fi and TV are still down, which has prevented her from watching the last-ever episode of Friends. Amanda notices news alerts on her phone about the blackout most of which are about hackers and the final one being corrupted code. The messages vanish. Rose witnesses a larger herd of deer in the backyard. Attempting to learn more and fix the Wi-Fi, Clay drives to town while G.H. heads to his neighbours’ house because they dug out a basement without permits. Death to America! Clay encounters a Spanish-speaking woman seeking help but drives off from her and flees from a huge cloud which transpires to be a drone dropping red leaflets written in Arabic script. G.H. finds his neighbour’s home a mess, discovers the wreckage of a plane crash with bodies littered everywhere and narrowly avoids a second crash as a plane drops out of the sky in front of him. Elsewhere, Rose hikes along with Archie in the nearby woods, where they come across an empty shed, and Archie removes a tick from his ankle on the way back. Returning to the house, the mysterious G.H. confides to Amanda the events he witnessed and tells her a little about his job and the important client he believes knew this was coming. He theorises that nationwide satellite connectivity has been disrupted but he is cut off by a loud shrill noise. Amanda recalls the man stocking water from yesterday, whom G.H. assumes is Danny, his housing contractor. Clay returns shaken and shows the pamphlet and Archie partially translates the Arabic script. Fed up, the Sandfords leave the house, intending to drive to Amanda’s sister in New Jersey but find the highway jammed with a long queue of collided self-driving white Teslas – they narrowly avoid incoming cars that crash as well and they are forced to return to G.H.’s house. Throughout the night, Ruth asks Clay provocative questions and later discovers flamingoes splashing in the pool. Amanda and G.H. establish a friendly bond but a second ear-splitting noise emerges and the power fails. Later, Rose tells Amanda a story from an episode of The West Wing where God attempts to save a man from a flood with several warnings and escape opportunities. The next morning, Archie’s teeth inexplicably fall out; believing it is related to the tick bite, G.H. suggests visiting Danny for medicine. Rose, however, is missing … We’ve made a lot of enemies around the world. Maybe all this means a few of them teamed up. Adapted from Rumaan Amam’s acclaimed novel by director Sam Esmail, this apocalyptic vision arrives trailing a bonfire of several vanities – executive producers Barack and Michelle Obama and their companion star-producer Roberts. In one of the more plausible what-if scenarios of recent cinema, this plugs into everything everyone fears, with Hawke’s lazyboy college prof Clay bleating to super prepper Bacon’s Danny, I can barely do anything without my cellphone and GPS. I am a useless man! We hear him. The initial setup brings to mind the race war situation mined in Lakeview Terrace and even perhaps nods to Us but swiftly changes tack, presenting G.H. and Ruth as the real thing and giving them equal dramatic time, making the audience question all kinds of perceptions and prejudices and the lure of property porn while the world goes to Hell in a handcart. Aren’t you the one who once said if you’re not paranoid by now you’re probably too late? G.H. and Ruth share some quality dance time; while he and Clay are confronted with Danny’s readiness to kill just as his ‘client’ warned him might occur. Ruth susses out Clay’s predilections, is shrewd about Amanda’s sociopathy and knows kids so it all pays off well when she and Ruth have to depend upon each other and then see the city blow in a 9/11 throwback. And that’s not even the conclusion. Psychologically exact, penetrating about the utter idiocy of modern man and the ineptitude of contemporary Western society to understand the graveyard it’s digging for itself with a dependence on satellites and foreign-designed tech, this is a satire that’s too smart for our own good. No one is in control. No one is pulling the strings

Rye Lane (2023)

Of all the toilets in all of London. South East London, the present day. Aspiring costume designer Yas (Vivian Oparah) encounters accountant Dom (David Jonsson) crying in a unisex toilet at an art exhibition featuring giant closeups of mouths organised by their mutual friend Nathan (Simon Manyonda). They meet again in the exhibition and walk through the Rye Lane Market, bonding immediately over their shared messed-up connection: Dom was recently cheated on by Gia (Karene Peter) his girlfriend of six years with Eric (Benjamin Sarpong-Broni) his best friend from primary school and has moved back in with his parents. Dom meets with Gia and Eric at a restaurant for the first time since the breakup; Yas joins them, posing as Dom’s new girlfriend. They pretend to have met while singing karaoke, and leave Gia bewildered. Dom and Yas have lunch at a tortilla shop. Yas reveals she has recently broken up with her boyfriend Jules (Malcolm Atobrah) a pretentious artist with a propensity to not wave at tourists on boats being a red flag for her. Tourism funds sex trafficking. When Yas recounts that she has forgotten her vinyl copy of A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory at Jules’s flat, Dom proposes that they steal her record back. They visit Jules’s mothers’ Tanice (Llewella Gideon) and Janet (Marva Alexander) house in order to retrieve a key to his flat, but when Dom is caught going through a panty drawer by Jules’s mothers, he is kicked out. Outside, Yas admits she started hanging out with Dom at first because she felt sorry for him, but came to enjoy their time together and even turned down a job interview that afternoon. After one of Jules’s mothers lends her moped to Yas, she and Dom go to Mona’s karaoke bar for Jules’s key. In exchange for the key, they have to perform sing karaoke. They sing Shoop and Yas kisses Dom afterwards. Breaking into Jules’s flat, Yas is furious that Jules’s new girlfriend can leave her menstrual cup out when she was not allowed. Dom and Yas get caught by Jules and his girlfriend and accidentally break Jules’s art on their way out when Jules declares it was he who dumped Yas … The mouth is theStonehenge of the face! The screenplay by Nathan Byron and Tom Melia for this British romcom is set over the course of one day and features sharp commentary on the tropes of the genre as well as on millennial politicking, gender issues, the art world and the neverending battle of the sexes: that meet-cute in the gender-neutral lavs sets the irreverent tone. This pair want to get revenge and settle scores with their exes, not fall in love. I’m interested in people’s messes. Flavourful, funny and fresh, it benefits hugely from the charismatic performances of the leads (Oparah has a double whammy this year with her role as Stink in Sky’s brilliant series Then You Run) and the overall attitude of the material which mixes street smarts with relationship woes. I believe in your ability to completely destroy someone’s life one day. A colourful showcase for London, this was shot by Olan Collardy at the Coal Rooms restaurant, Rye Lane Market, the grocery store Nour Cash & Carry in Brixton Village, the Ritzy, Peckham Soul record shop, Morley’s chicken shop, the Italian restaurant Il Giardino, Brockwell Park and the Peckhamplex. This is literally my dream date. There’s a funny cameo by Colin Firth that neatly references London’s 21st century romcom history. Now everyone’s only as good as their profile photo. With the soundtrack by Kwes threatening to turn this bright vibey comedy walkabout into a musical at any moment, this is confidently and stylishly directed by debutante director Raine Allen-Miller. Like a ‘Sunday morning in Kingston’ type vibe. Jamaica, not … Upon Thames

Now That’s What We Call New Year’s Eve!

Lenny and Mace get together in the great Strange Days (1995) by director Kathryn Bigelow from a screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks.

Happy New Year’s Eve 2023 from Mondo Movies!

Happiness is … celebrating the incoming new year with Gene Kelly and friends in An American in Paris (1951).

Ann (2022)

If I wasn’t here any more what difference would it make? They’d all be delighted. Granard, County Longford, Ireland, 31st January 1984. 15-year old Ann Lovett (Zara Devlin) wakes up and realises she’s about to give birth. She scribbles a suicide note and hides it in a box under her bed and leaves her home, a family pub on Granard’s Main Street, before anyone in the family notices she’s gone. She skulks up the street from the family pub and her younger sister Patricia (Senna O’Hara) is caught by their mother Patricia Sr. (Eileen Walsh) creeping back upstairs and sent on her way to school where the teachers notice Ann at the wall and question Patricia. Ann encounters Maguire (Joe Mullins) a former Garda who tells her Spring lambs will soon be here and she should work hard at school. On her way to Mass a friend tells Patricia she saw Ann going off to school far too early. Maguire wanders around the town enquiring about Ann and we learn she was beaten up (presumably) by former boyfriend Ricky (Darragh Gilhooly) months earlier. Ann’s father Diarmuid (Ian Beattie) is making a wardrobe for a customer and claims to an acquaintance he needs to do it because it’s impossible to make ends meet and pay the bills with the poor custom in the pub. Ann meets up with her friend Brenda (Molly Mew) who’s also bunking off school to babysit her younger siblings because her own mother is at an appointment. They share a cigarette and Ann runs off, crying. Then she realises she’s having the baby and goes to the grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary and eventually two young schoolboys find her schoolbag and think they can hear someone crying behind a hedge … What could possibly be wrong in a God-fearing town like Granard? This drama effectively retells the notorious story of a teenage girl who died giving birth at a Marian grotto in a small Longford town in 1984. It made headlines country-wide. Tragedy aside, it became a touchstone for generations dealing with the iniquities of women’s place in society and served as a prism (along with the famous Kerry Babies criminal case) on Irish life in the late twentieth century with all its contradictions and hypocrisies, dominated by a Catholic Church whose influence seeps through hospital scandals disproportionately affecting women to this day. Shot by writer/director Ciaran Creagh during the COVID-19 pandemic in Summer 2021 in Boyle, Co. Roscommon (with funding from the local Arts Office) presumably due to ongoing sensitivities in Granard (where special screenings were held, reportedly with minimal attendance) this is a discomfitingly intimate story tracing Ann’s last day. A harrowing and detailed account with cinematographer David Grennan following Ann as she skips school with a scissors and a page torn from a biology textbook, meets her friend and then realises she’s about to give birth alone, this naturalistic approach means that everyone who comes across her or asks about her until the final dreadful discovery of a dying Ann with her dead baby prompting an eleventh hour attempt at assistance by a number of different characters, imbues the film with realism but also carries the sustained weight of implication. If we extrapolate from the rumours, mocking comments by fellow students and enquiries about her well-being, the old saw that it takes a village to raise a child is here given its opposite meaning – it also takes a village to kill one (or, in this case, two). The state of denial is everywhere in abundance in a town where everyone is talking about Ann, about her previous boyfriend, about a beating she took. It’s hard to qualify Devlin’s performance principally because it’s mostly dialogue-free and is more of a literal embodiment, as though Robert Bresson were directing. We learn about her from other people. The busy walking and scarf-donning of Ann’s mother, the peculiar emotionalism of her father, the clear knowledge of her concerned sister (who committed suicide three months after the events of this day, as the end credits assert), the suspicions of a former Garda (policeman) who nobody likes but who seems to know all about Ann and exudes concern about her well being, and the insufferable ignorance of the local priest who won’t allow anyone to phone for help, just add to the intolerable viciousness of adults towards children being driven to conceal the reality of life in their midst. The clear-eyed and ironic juxtaposition of style and content – the insisting of the audience’s involvement in Ann’s life through the mobile camera, the over the shoulder shooting and framing, the constant exchange of rumour, gossip and insinuation about her by everyone else the camera follows – makes a clear moral statement. Every encounter is freighted with responsibility as people make remarks that suggest everyone knows there is something wrong in the Lovett family. As the reporter for the Westmeath Independent describes this observational drama, Ann is “a girl alone abandoned by society, by its prejudices, taboos and traditions” (2023: unpaginated). In the pass-the-parcel shooting style of long takes the geography of the town is established with the various characters walking, strolling, pacing, running up and down Main Street, to and from school, the GP surgery, the Grotto, the pub, marked by movement and distance, building tension, forcing the increasingly disturbed viewer to work out how long it might take to find a phone, to get help, to find her parents, medical assistance, someone – anyone – who cares. The framing of the Blessed Virgin statue in the scenes of Ann’s desperate unfolding trauma makes the myth of sexual innocence all the more lurid in the circumstances. The concluding sequences make these issues a matter of life and death in a race against time – the late introduction of the family’s GP (Sean T. O’Meallaigh), the rush to Longford Hospital by ambulance and the inevitable loss of life once proper medical services and responsible adults are involved far too late – just compound the awfulness of a town where it seems absolutely everyone knew about Ann’s condition and stayed schtum. Had he survived the birth, Ann’s baby would be turning 40 in January 2024 and Ann would now be 55 years old. That’s a powerful and sobering thought. Creagh’s immersive directorial and narrative trademarks were previously evinced in Parked (2012) and more recently In View (2016), an exploration of a woman’s experience of depression. Ann received its Irish premiere at the 2023 Dublin International Film Festival where Devlin received the Michael Dwyer Discovery Award. She and Walsh were also nominated for their performances at the year’s Irish Film and Television Academy Awards. A brutally conscientious commentary on rural Irish life, Screen Daily critic Amber Wilkinson says of the film, “Once the action leaves the streets of Granard it loses some of its concentrated power, with Creagh’s depiction of the end of the day less sure-footed than the start. Still, he refuses to let us or the townsfolk off the hook, leaving questions of why to hang in the air like breath on an ice-cold morning.” Controversial to this day, this is a story Ireland simply does not want to acknowledge forty years after the fact and it received a cursory release and minimal publicity. Ireland in the 1980s: what a place. What a time. Why didn’t she ask for help?

Poor Things (2023)

Why keep it in my mouth if it is revolting? Victorian London. Medical student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) becomes an assistant to surgeon Dr. Godwin ‘God’ Baxter (Willem Dafoe) and his maid Mrs. Prim (Vicki Pepperdine). He meets and falls in love with Godwin’s ward, a childlike young woman named Bella (Emma Stone). Godwin reveals that the woman, who was pregnant, had committed suicide by leaping off a bridge. He resurrected her by replacing her brain with that of her still-living baby, resulting in her having an infant’s mind. With Godwin’s permission, Max asks for Bella’s hand in marriage. Bella accepts but, desiring freedom as her intelligence rapidly develops, runs off with foppish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Deciding to let Bella go, Godwin starts a new experiment with a young woman named Felicity (Margaret Qualley), who is maturing much more slowly than Bella. Bella and Duncan embark on a Grand Tour, starting in Lisbon, where the two engage in frequent sex in addition to other forms of hedonism. Bella becomes difficult for Duncan to control so he smuggles her onto a cruise ship for a change of scenery. On the ship, she befriends fellow passengers Martha von Kutzrock (Hanna Schygulla) and Harry and opens her mind to philosophy. An exasperated Duncan starts to indulge in drinking and gambling. During a stop at Alexandria in Egypt, Bella is distraught after witnessing the miserable poverty of the locals. She gives away Duncan’s winnings, which are in turn stolen by the crew. Unable to afford the rest of the trip, the two are kicked off the ship at Marseille, after which they make their way to Paris. Having run out of funds, Bella begins working at a brothel, which further enrages Duncan and results in his mental breakdown, finally causing her to abandon him. At the brothel, she comes under the tutelage of Madame Swiney (Kathryn Hunter) and befriends fellow prostitute Toinette (Suzy Bemba) who introduces her to the political philosophy of socialism. Now terminally ill, Godwin asks Max to bring Bella to him. Max finds her after tracking down Duncan who has been institutionalised after his breakdown. Returning to London, Bella reconciles with Godwin and renews her plans to marry Max. The two are interrupted by Duncan and General Alfie Blessington (Christopher Abbott) on their wedding day … My father once told me, ‘Always carve with compassion.’ He was a fucking idiot, but it’s not bad advice. Adapted by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s 1992 Frankenstein-inspired novel, this wild ride through Victoriana features a never-better performance from Stone. Together with director Yorgos Lanthimos, it’s The Favourite team reassembled with an even more outrageous premise and production plundering a world of ideas about nineteenth century literature. A story of personal liberation totally free of social pressure is expressed dramatically, through the expansive costuming of Holly Waddington and production design by Shona Heath and James Price and most of all in Stone’s brilliant one of a kind comic performance as a bawd but there are many reasons to criticise this interpretation of Gray. It’s not set in Scotland, it betrays the novel’s feminism and it’s not so much Victorian as steam punk. Regarded as a thing in and of itself, independent of the source and its concomitant intentions, this is a hilarious, crazed, off the wall arthouse excursion into sexuality and full frontal nudity that finally perhaps exhausts itself of its rationale in a spin of over-stylising and a questionable finale. There are not sufficient superlatives for Stone however. We recall perhaps her first major performance in Easy A, as the high school teen who’s slut-shamed like a Hawthorne heroine but that couldn’t have prepared her or us for this extreme and bizarre allegorical take on the human condition. She knows? As the protegee to Dafoe’s mad scientist we are reminded of Shaw’s Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) and he’s just the first in a line of men who make her over, with sleazy Ruffalo bringing her on a trip which turns out to be a precursor to modern sex tourism and we are then given a hint of what might be a preview of Belle de Jour. For a brief moment we think of The Elephant Man but this is strangeness of an entirely different variety and it occupies a realm somewhere between fantasy and black comedy. Through it all Robbie Ryan’s inventive cinematography, the use of anamorphic lenses and the grading alternately in monochrome and saturated colours, point us at the referential context in which this reanimated living doll is observed gorging on life and comes out of a past under male control and into her own on a voyage into the self that as written by men involves a lot of furious jumping. Perhaps the director’s most perversely watchable film to date, like an extended Judderman commercial with explicit sex.  I have adventured it and found nothing but sugar and violence

Past Lives (2023)

Who do you think they are to each other? Seoul, South Korea. 12-year old classmates Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) and Hae Sung (Seung Min Nim) develop feelings for one another and go on a date set up by their parents. Shortly thereafter, Na Young’s family immigrates to Toronto and the two lose contact. Na Young changes her name to Nora Moon. Twelve years later, 2012: Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) has finished his mandatory Korean military service and Nora (Greta Lee) has immigrated to New York City. One day Nora finds out on her film director father’s Facebook page that Hae Sung had commented a few months earlier on a post that he was looking for Na Young, unaware of her name change. They reconnect through Skype calls but are unable to visit each other, as playwright Nora plans to attend a writer’s retreat in Montauk, Long Island, while engineering student Hae Sung is moving to China for a language exchange to learn Mandarin for his work. Eventually, Nora tells Hae Sung they should stop talking for a while as she wants to focus on her writing and life in New York. At her retreat, Nora meets aspiring novelist Arthur Zaturansky (John Magaro) and they fall in love. Hae Sung starts dating too. Twelve years later: Arthur and Nora are married and living in New York. Hae Sung, no longer with his girlfriend, goes to meet Nora. Arthur wonders if he is a roadblock in their own imperfect love story, admitting to Nora that he harboured suspicions that Nora married him in order to secure a Green Card for U.S. residency. Nora affirms that she loves Arthur. This is my life and I’m living it with you. This is where I ended up. This is where I’m supposed to be. The following night, the three of them go out to dinner. Initially, Nora translates each exchange but eventually speaks with Hae Sung exclusively in Korean – and Arthur has told her she never sleep-talks in English: she dreams in Korean. Who you are is someone who leaves. Hae Sung wonders what they were to each other in their past lives and what would have happened if she had never left South Korea and they stayed together … If you leave something behind you gain something too. Debut writer/director Korean-Canadian Cindy Song’s accomplished, touching romantic drama about the deeply felt connection between childhood friends is a what if scenario that really holds up, rooted in the Korean concept of in-yun (providence, or fate). That’s just something Koreans say to seduce someone, Nora says gleefully to Arthur. He was just this kid in my head for a long time and then he was this image on my laptop. Lee practically glows as Na/Nora and the opening scene, when an unknown observer ponders the relationship and identity of these two Koreans and the white man with them unspools and unveils a complex web of histories – of the cruel losses and opportunities of immigration, ambition, the long-term effects of meeting your childhood crush as an adult, the dangerously tricky sliding door moments offered by social media where the past can never stay past and the promise of long distance love as well as the possibilities offered in life when people decide to change who they are for what they think is love. Some crossings you pay for with your whole life. It’s a simple yet stunning premise, brilliantly made in a city overflowing with immigrant stories and utterly heartbreaking as these two separated souls tour NYC and revisit what might have been, acknowledging lives lost in translation. In the story I would be the evil white American husband who stood in the way of destiny. The beguiling beauty and palpable emotion of the film’s expressivity is enhanced by DoP Shabier Kirchner’s 35mm photography, every image bathed in beautiful light. How wonderful. It took me twelve years to find my friend

Priscilla (2023)

Do you like Elvis Presley? Bad Neuheim, Germany, 1959. 14-year-old Texan-born Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) is living with her family where her father is stationed in the U.S. Army. Spotted by one of Elvis Presley’s (Jacob Elordi) friends at a diner, Priscilla is taken to a party on the base where she meets the renowned 24-year old singer who has been drafted into the military at the height of his fame and is lonesome for home particularly since the recent death of his beloved mother. Elvis takes an immediate interest in Priscilla and the two begin casually dating despite her parents’ (Ari Cohen and Dagmara Dominczyk) concern over their age difference and Elvis’s celebrity. Elvis eventually returns to the United States after his service and loses contact with Priscilla, leaving her crestfallen. In 1962, Elvis reconnects with Priscilla, declaring his love for her and asking her to travel to the U.S. to live with him at his Memphis, Tennessee estate Graceland. He sends her airfare to pay a visit and she is welcomed by Elvis, his friends and business partners and his beloved grandmother. The couple take a trip to Las Vegas, where Priscilla indulges in prescription drug abuse with Elvis. A dishevelled Priscilla returns to her shocked parents back in Germany and, with Elvis’ help, eventually convinces them to allow her to move to Graceland and complete her senior year of high school in Memphis in 1963. While her time spent with Elvis at Graceland is pleasant, Priscilla is treated as an object of fascination and some derision at her Catholic high school because of her association with him. Though she is welcomed by Elvis’s grandmother ‘Dodger’ (Lynne Griffin) and his staff at Graceland, Priscilla soon finds herself controlled by Elvis’s gruff father Vernon (Tim Post) and stepmother Dee (Stephanie Moore). She is isolated during Elvis’s lengthy trips away to Los Angeles, where he is filming a number of musical comedies. On one occasion, Elvis has Priscilla model dresses for him and his friends and he urges her to revamp her appearance by dying her hair black and donning fake eyelashes. Distracted by the new conditions of her life, Priscilla narrowly manages to graduate high school. Priscilla’s isolation and the compartmentalising of her life begins to take a toll on her, a situation worsened by the highly publicised rumors of Elvis’s alleged infidelities, including with his co-star Ann-Margret and Nancy Sinatra. Priscilla makes an unexpected appearance in Los Angeles to confront Elvis about the affair but is defeated when Elvis threatens her and insists that she must learn to accept his behaviour. Eventually, in 1967, Elvis proposes to Priscilla, and the two marry. Their happiness is fleeting, however, as Elvis’s career pressures and worsening substance abuse negatively affects the couple’s relationship … You’re just a baby. She’s been called cinema’s Betty Friedan and it is surely the case that with this, filmmaker Sofia Coppola has nailed the culture yet again in a body of work that has shaped the contours of how we view women in and on film over a (shocking!) quarter of a century. This is however an intimate yet paradoxically overly respectful picture of life within the gilded cage which from an early point features pill popping, distance and control. He just lost his mother and he’s still grieving. He trusts me. Spaeny captures beautifully the literal dream come true sense of a besotted underage schoolgirl fan being found attractive by her love object. Promise me you’ll stay the way you are now. The textures of the film play out in the costumes and the hair styles as Elvis seeks to mould Priscilla into a female version of himself. Batwing eyeliner, false lashes and enormous backcombed frightwigs galore, the accoutrements of feminine accessories and beautifying exist almost in a parodic context of first love and bizarre excess. It’s Coppola’s first contemporary biopic and the perspective is limited to Priscilla Presley’s 1985 account Elvis and Me (a memoir co-written with Sandra Harmon) which the director explains as a way of delaying work on a big Edith Wharton adaptation: I just decided to pivot to making one film with one idea. I was just so interested in Priscilla’s story and her perspective on what it all felt like to grow up as a teenager in Graceland. She was going through all the stages of young womanhood in such an amplified world – kinda similar to Marie Antoinette. Her immense empathy for her subject was no doubt tempered by Presley’s involvement in the project as executive producer (and the script was severely criticised by Lisa Marie who tragically died earlier in the year). Presumably some of the predation and actuality couldn’t be dramatised on the grounds of taste but this bizarre inaugural rock ‘n’ roll Gothic fairytale of an imprisoned teenage Rapunzel also keeps our interest not quite at the bedroom door (it seems like half the film is set on a bed in a darkened room with a stuffed tiger watching everything) as it refrains from the kind of true intimacy that might make this more psychologically penetrating. This after all is about a doll-like child bride and a man who literally towered over her in every conceivable way (Elordi is even taller than Elvis while Spaeny barely hits five feet, making the physical disparity even more extreme). You can’t play without winning. If it feels too schematic and superficial that’s probably due to the necessity of shaping Priscilla’s shadow life as it was hidden away from the public against the contours of Elvis’ career in order to structure the narrative in recognisable phases – complicated by the refusal of the Presley Estate to permit the use of the man’s music. What do you mean, you don’t know if you like it? So it is that the soundtrack is peppered with the kind of songs that plug into Priscilla’s sensibilities and that conundrum – an Elvis movie without Elvis music! – just accentuates the scene when Elvis is listening to some garbage songs he’s been sent to consider recording and he flies off the handle when Priscilla doesn’t appear to be able to express an opinion. He responds to her unhelpful inarticulacy by throwing a coffee table at her head. This drug-fuelled violence is truly terrifying but reminds us that this is about her, not him, as his life comes off the rails and his substance abuse increases while his career stalls. When she complains about the spirituality he indulges in he takes more formal advice and performs a ceremonial book-burning (and we all know where that can lead). A woman with needs who needs to be desired. You can have your books and me too. This is life as we might imagine in a funeral parlour with the cosmetology practices intact. It’s a small film which viewed in tandem with Baz Luhrmann’s astonishing hagiographical Elvis bring us two versions of the same story – the dream and the gradually disappointing sordid reality of life with the first rock ‘n’ roll star which doesn’t really encroach too disastrously on this impression of a life, never quite blooming into full womanhood. The film’s first image is of Priscilla’s bare feet sinking into the plush carpet pile and focuses on them as they grow accustomed to the sensation and it never really delves beyond that idea or figures out the person beneath the makeup. Maybe she was never really fully formed. But Sofia Coppola knows what it feels like for a girl. This film about a famous jailbait lover, wife and mother is co-produced by Charles Finch, another scion of a famous man, the late great actor Peter. It’s rarefied air and we inhale the barely tangible memories. I’m leaving our marriage

Bell, Book and Candle (1958) Christmas Magic!

This enchanting adaptation by Daniel Taradash of the John Van Druten play is one of the most beautiful Christmas movies ever. Pick any scene and prepare to swoon.

Allelujah (2022)

He gives me tissue massage on my lymphomania. Wakefield, West Yorkshire. The Bethlehem hospital, nicknamed ‘the Beth’ is a small geriatric hospital being threatened with closure due to funding cuts to the NHS (National Health Service). Among the staff that work there are a doctor known simply as Dr. Valentine (Bally Gill) and no-nonsense head nurse Sister Alma Gilpin (Jennifer Saunders) who is to be honoured for her services to the Beth with a concert and the presentation of a medal. A film crew from a local television programme called Pennine People are invited to the Beth to document a volunteer-led effort to save it from closure, during which time they also interview the Chairman of the Board Mr Earnshaw (Gerard Horan) and some of the hospitals’ residents although erudite former schoolteacher Ambrose (Derek Jacobi) does his best to ignore them while assisting Dr Valentine in his attempts to learn the minutiae of English grammar to pass his citizenship test. At the same time, Colin Colman (Russell Tovey) a consultant to the Government’s Health Secretary, arrives at the Beth – whose closure he had advised – to visit his father Joe (David Bradley) and assess the hospital. One of the residents, former librarian Mary Moss (Judi Dench) is discouraged from being interviewed on-camera by the television crew but Valentine gives her an iPad and encourages her to document her day-to-day experiences. A frail incontinent 92-year old woman named Molly (Julia McKenzie) is admitted to the Beth and initially looked after by Valentine but attended by Alma the following night. She is found dead the next morning and the Beth is threatened with legal action by her daughter and son-in-law, who were due to inherit her home just three months later. The Beth takes on a work experience student, Andy (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) who is stunningly ineffectual while Colin reconnects with his estranged father, the two contemplating Joe’s attempts to politically indoctrinate his son during the miners’ strike in the 1980s when Colin’s beautiful singing voice attracted donations to the cause. Realising the Beth’s importance to not only his father but also the local community, Colin returns to London and passionately defends it in a meeting, storming out after his pleas are ignored by the others present. That night, Andy fails to act in enough time to prevent Joe from urinating on himself in his bed. He is tended to by Alma, who makes a reference to his being on ‘the list’. Afraid of what this might mean, Joe calls Colin and confides this fear in him but Colin is distracted at the opear he’s attending with his boss … When old people don’t cry do you care? Alan Bennett’s 2018 play is brought to the screen (adapted by Heidi Thomas, creator of BBC’s Call the Midwife) with some of the great and good of British stage and screen (big and small) with forensic empathy and not a few tears. Served by a framing voiceover from Gill, this delivers conflict in the figure of Tovey who has both heart and mind involved by virtue of his father and his job. Monetising old folk is the contemporary’s world’s dirty secret: The future is old age. Everybody knows that. There are some simple visual jokes to compensate for the lack of propulsive action – like the names of the various wards and suites: Nobody told me Joan Collins was a bathroom. The most impactful character arc is that of mousy Dench who declares early on, If you push yourself forward you get seen. Her obsession with ‘marginalia’ ie the things going on on the edge of frame that nobody ever notices, push the story forward so it’s her action that triggers the dreadful realisation of what’s really going on at The Beth. It’s always the quiet ones, as Bennett might aver of the horrifying revelation that crowns a portrait of deadly complacency. A solid comic drama with a cri de coeur conclusion that breaks the fourth wall in a plea to preserve the NHS, this uneven but troubling narrative never finds the right tone. Directed by Richard Eyre. All I can think of to say is, Don’t leave it too late to die