The Fall Guy (2024)

You fall down, you get right back up. How far would you go for the one that you love? Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) works as the double for famous action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson) who always says he does his own stunts. However, he is severely injured during a stunt gone wrong and he abandons his career and his girlfriend camerawoman Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). 18 months later, Colt, now a valet for a small Mexican restaurant, is contacted by Tom’s film producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham). She informs him that Jody is directing her first film, sci-fi epic Metalstorm, and wants him to work on the production in Sydney Australia. After arriving on set, Colt learns that Jody never requested him and is still angry about their breakup. Gail reveals that Tom has disappeared after getting involved with drugs: she wants Colt to find him before his absence causes the film’s cancellation. Not wanting Jody’s directorial debut ruined, Colt visits Tom’s hotel room and a nightclub, where he gets into fights. In the hotel room, he finds a dead body in a bathtub full of ice. When Colt returns with the police, he finds the body has disappeared. Meanwhile, as production of Metalstorm continues, Colt and Jody begin to rekindle their relationship until Gail abruptly informs him that he has to go back to the US. Instead, he continues looking for Tom by tracking down his PA Alma Milan (Stephanie Hsu) and they are both attacked by people looking for a phone belonging to Tom in Alma’s possession. Colt defeats them after an extended chase through Sydney involving a rubbish truck. He and his friend Dan Tucker (Winston Duke), the stunt coordinator on Metalstorm, unlock the phone at Tom’s apartment. They discover a video of an intoxicated Tom accidentally killing his previous stuntman Henry. The henchmen attack Colt and Dan, destroying the phone with shotgun pellets. Dan escapes, but Colt is captured and brought face-to-face with Tom, who has been hiding out on a yacht on Gail’s instructions. He reveals that Gail is framing Colt for the murder using deepfake technology to replace Tom’s face with Colt’s on the incriminating video. Tom also reveals that Colt and Henry’s ‘accidents’ were orchestrated by himself. Henry’s body is discovered and the doctored video is released on news media, while Gail tries to convince Jody that he is guilty. Colt escapes and is presumed dead after a boat chase, though he swims to safety … I’m the director. You’re a stunt guy. We need to keep it super profesh. If last year was the Summer of Barbenheimer, that compound of mutually assured box office billionairedom, the films’ respective supporting stars are the whole show of this decade’s Romancing the Stone, at least its descendant by way of Howard Hawks and screwball. Much has been written concerncing memed-about Gosling’s super-ironic commentary on modern masculinity, a career pivot which makes him – in the words of a Guardian writer’s recent article – the most important Hollywood star, so we’ll go with it. Dry supercilious wit being a thing Blunt does well, they’re a great pairing in a story that both sends up Hollywood and mines its great romantic inclinations. Adapted very loosely by Drew Pearce from the beloved Eighties TV show created by Glen A. Larson which starred Lee Majors, Heather Thomas and Jo Ann Pflug/Markie Post not to mention a Rounded-Line Wideside truck (and an outdoor bathtub). Stuntman turned director David Leitch cut his teeth on great action movies and is responsible for helming John Wick among others and this is not just the most recent ode to the craft (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Gosling’s own turn in Drive, Burt Reynolds was Hooper, then there’s The Stunt Man, to name the most outstanding in this sub-genre) which is due to be honoured at the Academy Awards one of these years, it’s a clever metatextual behind-the-scenes examination of the business, the deceptive nature of stars’ PR, and the pitiless nature of the production machine when you’re not flavour of the month (or fit to work). It’s all of that but mostly it’s a crash-bang-wallop action movie with ever more spectacular sequences. This is a precision-tooled mainstream hit with something for everyone, a genuinely warm and funny knowing adventure-satire with finely tuned star performances. Unlike the show, when Majors got to croon The Unknown Stuntman (covered here by Blake Shelton in a great soundtrack featuring AC/DC and Kiss), Gosling hasn’t got a theme song – this year’s showbiz highlight has got to be his Oscars rendition of I’m Just Ken, but he doesn’t need another tune, that’s already part of his star text so everyone just incorporates it and tucks it away into what they know about supposedly the most important Hollywood star, the self-deprecating caring sharing modern action man. And, since this is about stuntmen, big up to Logan Holladay for all those rolls. Huzzah! It ain’t about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)

One decision – one small mistake – can change everything. Federal police detective Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) attempts to coerce further information about an international money laundering scheme from a company employee, Alice Russell (Anna Torv) but she refuses to give him any further information when he approaches her on the school run. The next day, she embarks on a corporate team-building hiking retreat to the rainforest in the (fictitious) Giralang Ranges of Victoria with four other company employees, her boss Jill Bailey (Deborra-Lee Furness), childhood friend Lauren (Robin McLeavy) and sisters Brianna aka Bree (Lucy Ansell) and Bethany aka Beth (Sisi Stringer). Three days later, Falk receives an incomprehensible phonecall from Alice which quickly drops out, only to later be informed by fellow agent Carmen Cooper (Jacqueline McKenzie) that Alice’s hiking partners had returned from their trip injured and Alice is missing. Suspecting something has happened to her due to her being a whistle blower, Falk and Cooper quickly join the search to find her. In flashbacks, it is revealed that Falk’s mother Jenny (Ash Ricardo) also disappeared from the same area during a hiking trip with him (Archie Thomson) and his father Erik (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor). After tirelessly searching for her for days, the pair finally found her injured and malnourished but she ultimately died shortly afterwards in hospital. Alice’s co-workers reveal that during the first night of the trip, Jill’s husband Daniel (Richard Roxburgh) who was responsible for the laundering scheme, met up with the group and led Alice away from them. Afterwards, Alice became frantic and desperate to leave the trip early even after Daniel has left. Brianna, who’s been hospitalised due to a bite from a funnel web spider, reveals that she’d misread the map in her hungover state and caused the group to become lost. While attempting to follow the river back home, the map falls into the water and Lauren is injured while attempting to retrieve it. Bethany later admits to Falk that she previously had a drug problem, which had resulted her in serving jail time due to her neighbours reporting her for selling her sister’s belongings for drug money, which resulted in Alice not trusting her. The group continues on and Jill finds out that Alice has seemingly been intentionally leading the group in the wrong direction and becomes furious. The next day, the group discovers an abandoned cabin and decide to stay there for the night despite Alice’s protests. Later on, they discover the gravesite of a dog, causing Alice to insist they may be on the hunting grounds of an infamous serial killer who lured his female victims using his dog, but the group brushes her fear off as her trying to persuade them to leave the cabin … Your mind starts to play tricks on you out there. You get really paranoid. That talented Australian novelist Jane Harper wrote one of the best novels of the past decade The Dry and following its successful adaptation starring the great Eric Bana a followup was destined to be on the cards – the 2017 novel Force of Nature came first and this adaptation was made in 2022 in a very different and non-dry environment. Perhaps it should be called The Damp. Everyone is soaking. Moving deep into the undergrowth of the rainforest acts as a kind of metaphor for a story that has many tangled strands – Aaron’s own psyche and past, his association with whistleblower Alice, her school-age daughter Margot’s (Ingrid Torelli) alleged bullying of her colleague Lauren’s daughter Rebecca (Matilda May Pawsey), the financial misdeeds at Alice’s company boss and the crimes of a four decades-old serial killer in the very area Alice is missing. Knitting these together into a coherent screen story seems almost impossible very quickly particularly when the four remaining women’s recollections resemble those of Rashomon – overlapping, contradictory and untruthful. Linking the search for Alice with Aaron’s retracing his steps into his own history with a trip taken alongside his parents seems a trope too far – and one presumes it forms a link to the notorious serial killer – yet clever construction, transitions and characterisation through the twists and turns of a mystery plot ultimately keep everything from tipping too far into the realm of coincidence or predictability. The local police sergeant Vince King (Kenneth Radley) wonders why Aaron is really out here, a long way from finance fraudsters. Paired with the brusque Carmen, Aaron’s forced introspection means that the flashbacks conjoining his mother’s predicament with Alice’s situation force them – or squeeze them – into the same narrative loop. The undercurrent of female relationships – at work, mothering, friendship and colleagues – with their basis in bullying is never far from the surface. And could they be any worse prepared for this trek? Can we just keep this between the five of us please? And, the quid pro quo into which Alice has been forced by the feds for what she was prepared to do for her daughter is the moral quandary that literally turns this in to a guilt trip writ large, adding melodrama to an already busy screenplay. Everyone has reason to dislike and even motive to kill Alice but we find ourselves asking why sisters are working at the same company and why Alice and Lauren are friends. It seems unlikely. Perhaps this structure dilutes the impact of the first film with the multiple storylines and one unresolved plot issue but Bana is somehow the still centre of the complications, a restless soul with a desk job whose past knowledge of the territory makes it more navigable. Even with a background in tragedy however this doesn’t have the emotional resonance it strives for and the mood is broken by issues of plotting placing it at some distance from a famous Aussie film about a disappearance, Picnic at Hanging Rock. It helps that this is lined out with some of the country’s best (and best known) actors with Torv now an international name thanks to TV’s The Newsreader, while Furness, a scene-stealing Roxburgh and an underused McKenzie are a pleasingly familiar ensemble, driven by a powerful score from Peter Raeburn. Beautifully shot in a number of Victoria parklands by Andrew Commis, this is written and directed by Robert Connolly, reprising his role from the first film. At least out there Nature holds us all to account

Samira’s Dream (2022)

Aka Ndoto Ya Samira. I’d want to leave my dad’s house one day. The fishing village of Nungwi, north Zanzibar. Producer and director Nino Tropiano’s voiceover explains that he has received funding from an Irish organisation to explore female education in Africa. He finds a group of high school girls under the shade of a tree and over a period of time (and the with assistance of a translator) he decides to follow one of the, Samira. He traces Samira’s progress once he secures the agreement of her family and teachers. So what is the origin of Swahili? Over a period of seven years Tropiano catches up with Samira, sometimes after one year, sometimes after 15 months, even three years. He observes the changes in her circumstances, her home, class attendance and interruption, house moves, her development, her maturity. I don’t have any freedom to do what I want. The film’s midpoint, more or less, sees Samira explain everything that is wrong in her life to her teacher. The pivotal issue is the terrible loss of her mother after which her father separated her from her mother’s family in Pemba and moved them to Nungwi where he remarried again twice and has more children whom she has been obliged to care for. Everything in her life including her education has hinged on this event and its impact makes her cry – a terrifically moving moment. Her friend Shamsa claims to be ‘under a magic spell’ but she is controlled by her boyfriend who bans the cameraman from the vicinity. She does what he tells her. She’s not even married! At the exams they’re not speaking; at the graduation there’s a chasm between them. Tension builds at home with her stepmother who insists that she go with her on a trip to the mainland where they stay in a mud hut in the countryside. Then the high school exam results await. She has barely scraped a pass. She’ll be doing this the hard way. Then, a surprising event: a marriage proposal. Despite not being presented as an overt study of girls in Islamic communities or a critique of the religion, this is an immersive account of a society governed by and for men, something the girls question more than once. That extends to the content of the curriculum – we were particularly amused by a kind of parable about theft concerning a duck and a man with feathers in his hair. The sometimes jarring gaps in the storytelling (presumably due to production and funding circumstances) are camouflaged by Samira’s own charm and the occasional intervening voiceover by the filmmaker. It is rare that we feel a subject deserves more time onscreen. However over the years a complete portrait is achieved as this charismatic young woman comes into her own. At least one of my two dreams came true

The Idea of You (2024)

What if I could be the sort of person who goes camping by myself? Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Forty-year old Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway) is a gallery owner and divorcee who plans a solo camping trip while her ex-husband Daniel (Reid Scott) takes their daughter Izzy (Ella Rubin) and her friends to Coachella. When he is called away on work assignment to Huston, she is left to accompany them. Daniel has arranged for a meet and greet with famous boy band August Moon, despite Izzy now dismissing them as so seventh grade. While waiting in the VIP area, Solène enters what she believes is a bathroom, only to discover that it is August Moon member Hayes Campbell’s (Nicholas Galitzine) trailer. The two are attracted to each other, although Solène, who is sixteen years older than Hayes, is uncomfortable. During August Moon’s performance, Hayes appears to change the show’s setlist, dedicating a song to her. Solène attends her birthday party where is fed up with prospective men her own age. Shortly after the festival, Hayes shows up unannounced at Solène’s gallery, interested in purchasing art. After he buys every piece at the gallery, Solène takes him to a friend’s warehouse studio, where they discuss life and art. After thinking that a restaurant would invite too much attention, the two go to Solène’s house to eat. They share a kiss, but Solène rebuffs him. Hayes leaves his watch behind, then, finding Solène’s phone number on the gallery invoice, texts her to join him in New York at the Essex Hotel. With Izzy away at summer camp, Solène meets him at his hotel where they have sex. Hayes persuades her to travel with him on August Moon’s European tour. Solène wishes to keep their relationship private and does not tell Izzy or anyone else. As the band takes a break at a villa in the south of France, Solène becomes uncomfortable about her age in relation to the other women travelling with them. Bandmate Olly (Raymond Cham Jr) tells her that Hayes’s dedicating a song to her is a tactic they use to impress women and that Hayes has previously pursued relationships with older women including a 35-year old Swedish film star he embarrassed. Solène feels misled and disillusioned and abruptly returns to Los Angeles … Is this your first time getting Mooned? Adapted by director Michael Showalter and co-writer Jennifer Westfeldt from actress Robinne Lee’s bestseller, this sees Hathaway getting into her groove in a seriously romantic drama. The ironic trigger for everything that now happens in her life is her ex’s need to prioritise himself and his business – just as his affair ended their marriage. When she meets a guy 16 years her junior and he reveals his own fear they find a kind of balance. He says: I think that’s my greatest fear in life – that I’m a joke. She counters with: What will people say? Galitzine at first seems like an overwhelmingly gallant white knight and Hathaway positively glows: being adored suits her. Watching her shrug off the mid-life nonsense purveyed by divorced men who insist on talking about themselves all the time is infectious – she is not in crisis. Naturally, once she goes on the road with the band Hayes’ alley cat past comes back to haunt him in a way that hers haunts her decision-making and the wheels come off when she can’t take the heat. The publicity leads her husband to gloat, I’m sure we can all agree that a relationship with a 24-year old pop star would be crazy on so many levels. Yet her daughter argues, Why would you break up with a talented kind feminist? And, for a while, it works, until the Moonfans get their way on social media. Tracy (Annie Mumolo) makes for a great BFF when she comforts Solène, People hate happy women. And that of course is the point. Women are supposed to suffer! Their cheating exes hate them except when they do what they’re told! Their kids don’t let them have a life if they’re not at the centre of everything! Other women hate them! Watching this lovely woman change her opinion of herself and her possibilities in the reflection of how a new guy sees her is wonderful. How the story beats are worked out might not be surprising but to say this is pleasurable and crowd-pleasing is an understatement: it’s a deeply sexy film. The leads are more than persuasive as the well met age-difference match, the scenario a delirium of groupiedom wish fulfilment (She’s with the boy band!!) and it’s all beautifully made with due diligence concerning the social media pile-on which is all too realistic as is the message that love at any age is a trial. A splendid soundtrack peppered with everyone from Fiona Apple to St Vincent as well as the songs from August Moon and Hayes as a singer-songwriter in his own right (with a score by Siddartha Khosla) makes this a total delight. Directed by Michael Showalter. We’re two people with trust issues who need to open up a little. What’s the worst that can happen?

The Equalizer 3 (2023)

They should have let me in. Sicily. At a remote winery Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) kills gangster Lorenzo Vitale (Bruno Bilotta) and his henchmen to obtain a key to the winery’s vault and recoup money stolen in a cyber-heist. While leaving the winery, Robert is shot in the back by Vitale’s young grandson (Adriano Sabrie). Robert attempts suicide due to his injury but finds his gun out of bullets and then takes the ferry back to the mainland. While driving on the Amalfi Coast, Robert pulls over and slips into unconsciousness from shock. He is found and rescued by local carabiniere Gio Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea) who brings Robert to a small coastal Italian town called Altamonte where he is treated by a doctor, Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone). As he recovers and regains his mobility Robert becomes acquainted with the locals and becomes fond of the town and its people. He makes an anonymous phone call to CIA officer Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) to tip her off about the winery’s role in the drug trade, disguised as normal business transactions in Sicily. Collins and other CIA operatives arrive at the winery and find millions in cash along with bags of synthetic amphetamines used by ISIS terrorists hidden in a storeroom, confirming Robert’s suspicions. Meanwhile, members of the Camorra harass and kill villagers in an attempt to coerce them out of their housing and take over Altamonte for property development. Robert overhears Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero) a high-ranking Camorra member, pressuring local shop owner Angelo (Daniele Perrone) for protection payments. To make an example of him, the Camorra firebombs Angelo’s fish store as the entire town watches. Gio reviews video of the firebombing and calls the Italian central police for an inquiry. Along with his wife Chiara (Sonia Ben Ammar) and daughter Gabriella (Dea Lanzaro), Gio is attacked by the Camorra and beaten for interfering in their operations. Thereafter, Marco demands that Gio set up a boat for him. Overhearing the conversation, Robert asks Marco to move his operations to a different location. When Marco refuses, Robert kills him and his henchmen. The Naples head of police Chief Barella (Adolfo Margiotta) is threatened and tortured by Marco’s brother Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio) the head of the Camorra and is ordered to find the person responsible for Marco’s death … Those people don’t know where to go. Our favourite vigilante returns to equalize everything in sight, starting with the mysterious catalyst whose payoff takes the entire film to establish. Transported to Sicily and the Italian mainland, the violence returns with verve in Robert Wenk’s screenplay, the scribe of the others in the series, in the finale adapted from the TV show that starred Edward Woodward and was created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. What do you see when you look at me? McCall is ageing now and even he must be tired of all the killing. Lord knows I’m allergic to bad things. Availing of R&R in a pretty village with a pleasant woman restaurateur Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) which introduces the hint if not the actuality of romance and a civilised doctor to oversee his recuperation he’s glad of it. Do I look like a guy who kills people? That’s an existential question that’s really kinda silly at this point in the trilogy: this film commences with a horrifying sequence of murders – yes, we know it’s McCall doing in some of the Camorra but it’s extremely shocking. Giving the CIA a tip-off is just the start of an elaborate denouement which unearths a terror cell and reveals the extent of the Mafia’s viciousness. The phone relationship with Emma is a preview of coming attractions: You don’t look like you sound/You do! That’s the opening gambit when they finally come face to face 48 minutes in. In these films Denzel is paired with younger women in a non-romantic way – they get the opportunity to do stuff and he returns to pleasantly predictable vengeful type. It’s his question to her that makes her think of the situation from a different angle: Why smuggle drugs into the most secure port in the entire region? That sets her off doing what he knows she will – directing the CIA action where it needs to go and hopefully keeping her out of the line of fire. While the women in this series are given an opportunity for some action it’s curtailed as here, where a well-timed call saves her but effectively puts her out of action – allowing him to rescue her and save the day because he’s the hero and that’s his job. That’s appropriate considering their previous pairing two decades ago in Man On Fire. Washington is an incredibly charismatic movie star and it’s a relief to have the first 45 minutes dedicated to rebuilding his constitution which allows him to cultivate relationships while the gangsters have their way with the locals, setting up an awesome revenge. His medical treatment and slow recovery gives the audience a chance to recover too before the inevitable kicks in. His visceral method leads him to explain his MO to a victim: It’s called pain compliance. It’s like he’s a doctor too! Shot in a palette verging on monochrome with chiaroscuro features by the brilliant Robert Richardson, the scheme complements the black and white morality, with the amorphous evil villainy of the Mafia rather less attractive than the mesmerising Marton Csokas in the first outing. It’s a stylish way for the series to take a bow – a kind of revenge Western with some spaghetti thrown in for good measure and a coda that explains why McCall fetched up there in the first place, a one-man reenacting of The Magnificent Seven against the mafia on their own turf. Directed as ever by Antoine Fuqua. I’m where I’m supposed to be

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

To start inventing you need something real first. Grenoble, France. In an isolated mountain chalet novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller) decides to reschedule her interview with a female literature student Zoe Solidor (Camille Rutherford) because her husband, university lecturer and aspiring author Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) plays music loudly on a loop in their attic, disrupting the interview, making recording impossible. After the student drives away from the chalet, Samuel and Sandra’s visually impaired son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) takes a walk outside with his guide dog Snoop (Messi). When they return home, Daniel finds Samuel dead in the snow from an apparent fall. Sandra insists that the fall must have been accidental. Her old friend and lawyer Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud) suggests the possibility of suicide while Sandra recalls her husband’s attempt to overdose on aspirin six months earlier after going off antidepressants. After an investigation, Daniel’s conflicting accounts of what happened shortly before his father’s death, combined with the revelation that Samuel sustained a head wound before his body hit the ground and an audio recording of a fight by Samuel and Sandra the previous day, Sandra is indicted on charges of homicide. A year later, during the trial, Sandra’s defence team claims Samuel fell from the attic window and hit his head on a shed below; the prosecution suggests that Sandra hit him with a blunt object, pushing him from the second-floor balcony. During a courtroom argument with Samuel’s psychiatrist Jammal (Wajdi Mouawad) Sandra admits she resented Samuel due to his partial responsibility for the accident that led to Daniel’s impaired vision: he should have collected him from school but called a babysitter instead so he could stay home and writer. In the recorded fight, Samuel accuses Sandra of plagiarism, infidelity and exerting control over his life before their argument turns physically violent. The prosecution claims that all the violence came from Sandra but she points out that they’d been having conversations and disagreements that he’d recorded for six months as a substitute for writing and his transcriptions when presented by him were not accepted by a publisher in lieu of a novel … I don’t believe in the the notion of reciprocity in a couple. Written by the married couple Justine Triet & Arthur Harari (who appears as a literary critic) during the COVID lockdown, director Triet’s film sustains its mysterious premise right until the conclusion which may prove disappointing – perhaps a European take on the customary bittersweet Hollywood ending. it’s a Choose Your Own iteration of the murder procedural with flashes of Hitchcockian wit throughout. There is a re-enactment and a single flashback but the eccentric courtroom presentation is very different to the Anglo-Saxon convention with witnesses for the prosecution and defence talking over each other, a low threshold for evidence and an equally bizarre concept of the burden of proof (opinion-led, apparently). Sandra’s bisexuality and her affairs are brought up as a reason for her husband’s violent arguments with her, his use of anti-depressants rooted perhaps at her contempt for him when their young son was blinded because he should have been picking up from school, her relentless output still not sufficient to pay the bills while he is at home, renovating, homeschooling Daniel, having no time to write outside of his teaching job. At the heart of the story is a blame game between husband and wife – an accident that caused Daniel’s sight loss and a burning envy of a wife’s success whose latest plot is largely ‘borrowed’ from a passage in a novel Samuel abandoned, a writer wannabe now reduced to transcribing daily home life as a form of autofiction. As the USB recording from Samuel’s keyring is re-enacted he accuses Sandra of stealing his time and ‘imposing’ her worldview upon him despite his having forced the family to relocate to his hometown where she speaks English and the use of language becomes an issue in this French-German union where nuance, suggestion and meaning are potentially lost in translation – English is the no-man’s land resort of communication. Sometimes a couple is a kind of a chaos. The discursiveness masks the fact that it is their blind son and his dog who are the sole witnesses to the accident, spicing up the issue of court appearances and compounding the ambiguous nature of the crime and the lack of compelling evidence. Triet and Harari wrote this with Huller in mind (following an earlier collaboration) and she is a very modern heroine, word-smart, intellectually able, psychologically penetrating and completely at ease with herself to the point of lying easily. She is superb as this take no prisoners character, taking nonsense from nobody and while profoundly concerned with her son’s well-being she also boasts a terrifically charismatic nonchalance. Nevertheless, she is obviously unnerved by the courtroom experience in a language not her own. A sidebar to the exposition is the frank admission by Vincent that he has long thought highly of her. This is of course about writers and what happens when one half of a couple is more accomplished and successful than the other and how envy can eat like a cancer through a relationship. Samuel is destroyed by what he has done to his son, Sandra has dealt with it through adultery while also cheerfully churning out novels and doing translations on the side. She is pragmatic above all. Does Samuel commit suicide and are the recordings made in order to frame Sandra for his alleged murder? Maybe. Did he fall or was he pushed? Is the flashback from the visually impaired son true? Does Daniel lie? Why did he make a mistake in his first account? Rage does not exclude will! Guilt, jealousy, blame, language, meaning, all suffuse this tension-filled narrative which asks questions about how writers make their work and how much it plunders their private lives. How and why the story turns unexpectedly marks out the forensic narrative style. Rightly lauded, the exceptional screenplay was awarded at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs and the Academy Awards among others and the film won Cannes’ Palme d’Or with the Palm Dog going to Messi! The first 9 minutes of the film are dominated by that appalling music which frankly would drive anyone to murder, if you want to know the truth. We won’t even name it such is its earworm potential for homicidal triggering. Gripping. A novel is not life! An author is not her characters! #700daysstraightofmondomovies! MM#4547

Challengers (2024)

You’ve never seen her, man. She’s in another league. 2019: married tennis power couple former player Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and currently injured star Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) have a young daughter Lily (AJ Lister) who likes to stay in hotels. Under Tashi’s coaching, Art has become a top pro. He is one US Open title away from a Career Grand Slam but he is struggling to regain his form after an injury. Hoping to return him to form, Tashi enters Art as a wild card in a Challenger event in New Rochelle, New York to boost his confidence by beating lower-level opponents. His former best friend Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend is now an unknown player living out of his car, scraping by on the winnings from the lower circuit and also enters the New Rochelle event. 2006: high schoolers and childhood best friends Patrick and Art win the junior doubles title at the US Open. Afterwards, they watch Tashi a highly lauded young tennis prospect make mince meat of the opposition on court. Then they meet her at a party later that night. Usually their attractions are separate but Tashi is the first person to whom Patrick and Art are both attracted. The three make out in a motel room but stop short of having sex. With the two boys playing each other the next day, Tashi says she will give her phone number to whichever of them wins. Patrick wins the match and later signals to Art that he had sex with Tashi by placing the ball in the neck of the racket prior to serving – a tic of Art’s. Tashi and Art go on to play college tennis at Stanford University, while Patrick turns professional and begins a long distance relationship with Tashi. A jealous Art questions Tashi about whether Patrick loves her, and Patrick, recognising Art’s jealously, playfully reassures him of his and Tashi’s connection. Patrick and Tashi fight when she gives him unsolicited tennis advice and he says he views her as a peer, not his coach. In the next match which Art watches without Patrick, Tashi suffers a severe knee injury. Patrick returns to comfort Tashi but she demands he leave, with Art taking her side. Art aids Tashi in her recovery but she is unsuccessful in resuming her tennis career. I want you to join my team because I want to win. A few years later Tashi reconnects with Art and becomes his coach and the two begin a romantic relationship. He reveals that he and Patrick have not talked since Tashi’s injury. In 2011, Tashi and Art are now engaged and Art’s career is on the up. Tashi and Patrick run into each other at the Atlanta Open and have a one night stand, which Art secretly notices. 2019: Starting at opposite ends of the seeding, Art and Patrick advance through the brackets at New Rochelle until they find themselves facing each other in the tournament’s final match. In a sauna the day before the match, Patrick attempts to reconnect with Art but Art rejects Patrick by saying his career is over and he, Art, will be remembered. Patrick secretly asks Tashi to be his coach and lead him to one last winning season, sensing she is unhappy with Art and that Art is tired of playing but she rejects him … Which one is which? Take three highly charismatic young actors, place them in competition with each other sexually and professionally, complicate things with a love triangle and the monotony and sacrifice of life as sportsmen and women and you have the ingredients for a cracking drama. Director Luca Guadagnino returns with a tennis story – a surprising fact particularly given that there haven’t been any good ones but the screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes is multi-faceted. Not just a sports film but a romance, a thriller and a portrait of generalised anxiety erupting from having to sustain a career, creating monetising opportunities from every win, enduring pain, dealing with catastrophic injury, burnout, a friendship contained within the rise and fall narrative that all sportspeople experience over time and driven characters playing at marriage. Using the New Rochelle Challenger event as a framing device intensifies the pressures of the relationship past and present – we see where they are now and how they got there with the catalysing event an almost-threesome that prefigures everything else in their destiny. And as Tashi explains, Tennis is a relationship. What an impressive cast. Faist is the dazzling actor who was by far the best thing about Spielberg’s West Side Story remake – awards should have come his way but the film fell foul of COVID lockdown release schedules just as this one was delayed from Fall 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. Here he’s the walking wounded and he plays tender and vulnerable so well. O’Connor is the talented Brit who has created so many great performances and powers his way through this with a life in freefall and a smirking swagger, never fully out of love with Tashi. Zendaya is finally being allowed to act nearer her age (27 at time of release) and is so famous she’s currently on the covers of both UK and US Vogue, such is her pull for advertisers and the youth audience, a combination of Euphoria and Spider-Man fans with a monster sci-fi epic under her belt following Dune 2. Watching the guys watch her on court at the 2006 US Open and later at a party, open-mouthed and lustful like heat-seeking missiles, is highly amusing and sets up the relationship’s eventual complexities with her at the fulcrum, literally calling the shots. Aren’t you everybody’s type? It also sets in motion the director’s familiar focus – young people and their romantic travails – although we know the starting point is the end point, or thereabouts, which is a little like watching Titanic and knowing the outcome but now we get to invest in the characters as they encounter each other 13 years later with everything that has gone on since that first fateful encounter. You typically fall apart in the second round. As the guys get reacquainted with their game and Tashi is turned off Art because his game is off and she lives through him, Patrick sees his chance to upset the applecart, pointing up the performative aspect of all their public lives. Thus the scene is set for Round Two in their lives, rivalries intact. It’s about winning. And I do. A lot. For a sports movie love triangle this fun and sexy we have to go back in time to 1977 and Semi-Tough with Burt and Kris and Jill. That was smart and screwball-y too but set in the world of football. How are you going to look at me if I still can’t beat Patrick Zweig? This is tense and exhilarating and wonderfully played by a cast that is exceptionally well matched and hot for each other. Love all? Not quite. But this is a smash, with a zippy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Who wouldn’t love you? MM#4545

The Lesson (2023)

Good writers have the sense to borrow from their elders. Great writers steal! Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) is an aspiring ambitious young writer and Oxford English grad whiling away his twenties tutoring potential Oxbridge entrants for their exams. He eagerly accepts a position at the family estate of his idol, renowned author JM Sinclair (Richard E. Grant) who hasn’t published since the tragic death of his older son. Liam is tutoring his seventeen-year old son Bertie (Stephen McMillan) under the watchful eye of his French mother, sculptress and art curator Helene (Julie Delpy). JM is cold to Liam whereas Helene checks up on her son each day. Liam manages to help JM with a computer problem when the novelist can’t print something out. Liam wonders about a second server in another location in the house. Helene asks Liam about his writing – and reminds him he included his dissertation subject on his CV – JM Sinclair. His technological nous is such that Sinclair eventually offers him to swap novels. Liam compliments his idol’s work but says the ending feels like a different writer whereas JM destroys Liam’s efforts with cutting comments. Then Liam finds a file that illustrates that he is ensnared in a web of family secrets, resentment, and retribution … We don’t talk of his work, we don’t talk of Felix. Follow those rules and you should be fine. A working class wannabe is invited into a wealthy household and eventually his presence apparently destroys the power base and he is handed the keys of the kingdom. The head of household is played by Richard E. Grant. Sounds like Saltburn? Yes, and any or all iterations of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley. In this case Grant is a revered novelist and the tutor for his truculent son has written his dissertation on him and has ambitions to write novels himself. And it appears that Delpy’s Helene is a real femme fatale as the story unravels. So we might call this Slowburn. In fact, it is a very clever wonderfully constructed mystery thriller focused on writerliness and authorship with death as its beating heart. Quite who might be teaching whom, and what the lesson is, changes with each of the three acts and there’s a great payoff (in fact, there’s more than one). Everyone’s intentions are concealed, nature and water are utilised symbolically to plunder the psychological text and the central motif – the rhododendron – is key to the family secret which spills out to engulf Liam, the visitor with ulterior motives. He is played by Irish actor McCormack, whose subtle ingratiating into this warped family picture is not necessary because for quite some time he’s the only person here who has no idea why he’s really been hired. As he adds to the Post-Its for his next novel trusted butler Ellis (Crispin Letts) takes note because the references are entirely parasitic, reminding us that this plot has been used before with Jean-Paul Belmondo in The Spider’s Web and Terence Stamp in Theorem, throroughoing murderous black comedies about the bourgeoisie eating itself. However, integrating the writing experience into this social analysis, the suicide of an older son and a wife’s intricate plan to get revenge while saving her younger son from the same fate, add an entirely new dimension to the premise by debut screenwriter Adam MacKeith. The scheme is brilliantly exposed, with even clever clogs Liam not anticipating the conclusion. You’re not the first. Grant is scarily good as the dinner table bully mercilessly exploiting his older son’s death in private while a chilly Delpy’s character has secrets in abundance. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Anna Patarakina at Haddon House in Derbyshire with a sharp score by Isobel Waller-Bridge to match the shrewd and finely etched performances, this is a marvellous watch, a modern British noir, with an appropriate reminder of an old school screen villainess in the film Grant’s vicious Sinclair watches in his cinema, another element of planting that pays off properly in a knowing thriller. Directed by first-timer Alice Troughton. What makes an ending?

Civil War (2024)

We are now closer than we have ever been to victory. The near future. A civil war has broken out between an authoritarian US Government and various regional factions. The dictatorial President (Nick Offerman) who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photojournalist, Colorado-born Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn. Lee and her colleague, Florida-born Reuters journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) intend travelling to Washington DC to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee’s mentor New York Times veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson)asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville where the Western Forces (‘WF’) of Texas and California are presently assembling. Despite Lee’s hesitance she and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie persuades Joel to take her with them as well. After leaving NYC, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men where Lee negotiates the purchase of fuel in Canadian dollars. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, which she saw from the road. There, she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After leaving, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos. Following an overnight stop close to ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie’s potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing on, the group spends the night at a refugee camp  before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Look at the tops of the buildings. Be subtle. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop. Later, they are pinned down in a sniper battle amid the remains of a Winter Wonderland theme park. No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us and we’re trying to kill them. The snipers they are with mock Joel’s attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply engaged in a struggle for survival. Jessie’s nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths and she develops a mentorship under Lee … They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film plugs into the inflammatory State of the Union as it currently pertains, figuring a fissure that is as much physical as ideological with the Western secessionist states of California and Texas pitched against the federal forces that protect a President hiding out in the White House. Garland’s work from The Beach onwards has focused on trouble in paradise and lately on dystopia. Lee and Joel are both camouflaging psychological disturbance from previous war zones – she has PTSD, he has modern-day shellshock and Lee especially exhibits something world weary cynicism to control symptoms that threaten to erupt into something worse. It’s gonna make a good image. How that dissonance within Lee translates into a kind of mentoring relationship with Jessie reflecting Sammy’s relationship with her provides much of the tension as the action and violence spiral the further into the US they travel. I remember you at her age. The juxtaposing of beautiful landscapes with jarring imagery of shock and awe combat provides much of the troubling visual texture. The sense of reality, the minutiae of a road trip under fire and the urgency of the storytelling has the quality of reportage from the front line. The fact that Lee wants to photograph the President to prove he is still alive speaks volumes. What happens ultimately is straight out of the Romanian playbook. The ones who get taken are always lesser men than you think. With no enemies identified, the viewer is asked to come to their own conclusions, a motley crew of varying protagonist-journalists providing a kind of collegiate and immersive focus group of the population, a prism for coming to terms with radical change and war as Americans fight Americans. Every instinct in me tells me this is death. Whether the presence and role of good old-fashioned photojournalists recording events makes a difference is not really questioned here – it’s presumed necessary for history: proof that things are happening because seeing is believing. Hence the acknowledged reference to Lee Miller in Dunst’s character’s name. What kind of American are you? A powerful state of the nation portrait that feels immediate and true. What happened back there is nothing in comparison with what we’re heading into

BlackBerry (2023)

We call it PocketLink. 1996: Waterloo, Ontario. The co-founder and CEO Mike Lazirides (Jay Baruchel) of Research in Motion and his best friend and co-founder Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson) are preparing to pitch their ‘PocketLink” cellular device to businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). Lazaridis is bothered by the incessant buzzing of Balsillie’s Chinese intercom and fixes it before Balsillie arrives to the meeting. Their pitch is unsuccessful but when Balsillie is fired from his job due to his aggressive ambition, he agrees to work with them provided he is made CEO of RIM and given one half of the company. They hesitate but after they confirm Basillie’s suspicion that their deal with US Robotics was a malicious attempt to bankrupt them, they bring Balsillie in as co-CEO with one third of RIM for a cash infusion that requires Balsillie to mortgage his house. Balsillie arranges a pitch for the PocketLink with Bell Atlantic and forces Fregin and Lazaridis to build a crude prototype overnight which he and Lazaridis take to New York. Lazaridis forgets the prototype in their taxi, leaving Balsillie to attempt the pitch alone. Lazaridis recovers the prototype at the eleventh hour and finishes the pitch, rebranding the PocketLink as the ‘BlackBerry’ which becomes massively successful. 2003: Palm CEO Carl Yankowski (Cary Elwes) plans a hostile takever of RIM which forces Balsillie to try to raise RIM’s stockprice by selling more phones than Bell Atlantic’s (now Verizon Communications) network can support. This crashes the network, as Lazaridis had warned, so Balsillie poaches engineers from around the world to fix the problem, as well as hiring a man named Charles Purdy (Michael Ironside) as RIM’s COO to keep the engineers in line but this upsets Fregin who values the casual fun work environment he and Lazaridis had created. The new engineers fix the network issue under Purdy’s strict management enabling RIM to avoid Yankowski’s buyout. 2007: RIM’s upcoming pitch of the BlackBerry Bold to Verizon is thrown into chaos when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone … You’re not selling togetherness any more. You’re selling self-reliance. The story of the original smartphone is equal parts horrifying and hilarious. The original Canadian tech bros vs their own boss (with differences cleverly signalled by their in-car musical choices) whose acquisitiveness culminates in a funny aeroplane chase across the US trying to buy out the National Hockey League is on the money when it comes to the cultural differences between creatives and financiers. Maybe we could call it the prophet: profit margin. The core initially is the long-term friendship between Mike and Doug which is gradually usurped by Mike’s dealings with the reptilian Jim who is performed with vainglorious precision by Howerton. His presence prises the friends apart as Mike cannot handle the pressure and Doug cannot comprehend his fraility. This has the virtues of a whistleblower-style docudrama, recounting that insanely good idea to combine a cellphone with a pager and email. The dark moment when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone triggers a chain reaction of events of a desperation that is blackly comic and (almost) tragic. Mike’s presentation to Verizon is a model of a public nervous breakdown. How a small operation of laidback tech geniuses is transformed into an impersonal profit-driven major player (albeit briefly) with grownups in the once friendly groovy music-filled workplace being supervised as though they’re retarded teens in a silent call centre is sobering but explains much about our paranoid surveillance society and the men who control it. This razor-sharp comedy drama is directed by co-star Matt Johnson from a screenplay co-written with producer Matthew Miller. I created this entire product class!