10 Lives (2023)

Find a lap. Purr when stroked. Pampered streetwise cat Beckett (Mo Gilligan) takes for granted the lucky hand he has been dealt when he is rescued and loved by Rose (Simone Ashley), a kind-hearted and passionate student researching bees at university. Beckett settles into a comfortable life in the country. literally becoming a fat cat, while Rose and her klutzy boyfriend Larry (Dylan Llewelly) continue her project. Rose has to deal with the mentor Professor Craven (Bill Nighy) who unbeknownst to her is a rival plotting to sabotage her work because of a childhood incident with a bee. When Beckett loses his ninth life and he is inadvertently locked out of the house he shares with Rose, fate steps in to set him on a transformative journey … You don’t know how one small insect can change the world. Deviating from your premise with a subplot that also involves non-human species is an unusual way to navigate narrative. First this is about a cat. Then it’s about bees. The plot lines in the screenplay by Ash Brannon, Ken Cinnamon, Karen Wengrod and Leland Cox intersect in the character of Rose and when Beckett gets lost, they diverge and he goes through the kind of kitty cat disasters that clock up to his requisite number of lives. He presents himself to Rose when he comes back in different forms with the different-coloured eyes that mark him out. Look at you, all charm with your big stupid face! Despite the excursion into thriller territory there’s a buoyancy to the drolly villainous performance of Nighy as the fake mentor/real rival who will be pretty familiar to anyone carrying out research in the world of academia. The message here is about complacency,, valuing friendship and what you’ve got, the pointlessness of holding grudges and seeking revenge (even if Nighy makes it sound very pleasurable). Beckett gets to have a real hero’s journey and Gilligan acquits himself well as a presumably Sarf Lahndon feline. The animation is pleasing, the characterisation is fun and it all comes together in the end in a kind of animal shelter afterlife with a real-life conclusion bound to tug at the heartstrings. Pop star Zayn Malik makes his movie debut voicing Cameron and Kirk. Directed by Christopher Jenkins. When you live and love with all your heart one life is all you need

Asteroid City (2023)

Am I in this? In a retro-futurist kind of 1950s, a television host (Bryan Cranston) introduces a documentary about the creation and production of Asteroid City, a play by the famed playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). The play’s events are depicted in widescreen and stylised colour, while the television special is seen in monochrome Academy ratio. In the play, a youth astronomy convention is held in the fictional desert town of Asteroid City in the American Southwest. War photojournalist Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) arrives early to the Junior Stargazer convention with his teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) a would-be intellectual and his three younger daughters Andromeda (Ellie Faris), Pandora (Gracie Faris) and Cassiopeia (Willan Faris) . When their car breaks down, Augie phones his father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks) asking for his help. Stanley, who dislikes his son-in-law, persuades him to tell the children about their mother’s (Margot Robbie) recent death, which Augie had concealed. Augie and Woodrow meet famous and disillusioned actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) and her daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) who, like Woodrow, will be honoured at the convention. Augie and Midge and Woodrow and Dinah, gradually fall in love throughout the play. The other convention participants arrive: five-star General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), astronomer Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton), three additional teenaged honorees Clifford (Aristou Meehan), Shelly (Sophia Lillis) and Ricky (Ethan Josh) and their parents J.J.(Liev Schreiber) Sandy (Hope Davis) and Roger (Stephen Park), a busload of elementary-school children chaperoned by young teacher June Douglas (Maya Hawke) and a cowboy band led by singer Montana (Rupert Friend). A local motel manager (Stephen Carell) provides everyone’s accommodations. Gibson welcomes the attendees at the Asteroid City crater where the teenagers are to receive awards for various inventions. A UFO suddenly appears above the crater; an alien (Jeff Goldblum) emerges and steals the remnant of the meteorite that created the crater. Augie photographs the alien. Gibson, with instructions from the president, places the town under military quarantine, and everyone is subjected to medical and psychiatric examinations. Meanwhile, a romance blossoms between Montana and June, who assure the students that the alien is likely peaceful. The Stargazer honourees use Dr. Hickenlooper’s equipment to attempt to contact the alien. Tricking the guard watching the pay phone, Ricky calls his school newspaper to relay the quarantine details and cover-up to the outside world … They’re strange, aren’t they, your children. Compared to normal people. What is this, exactly? A faux-documentary about a play about a 1950s junior stargazer convention in the Southwest. After that indigestible meta-in-joke construction is absorbed, what is this – exactly? The latest Wes Anderson production is more ironic with flatter backdrops than usual, presumably to (ironically) play on the flatness of the desert itself with the theatrical sets, the drama is only truly enlivened by two performances, those of Cranston (primarily in black and white) who breaks the fourth wall by intruding on a scene in colour, and Hanks, appropriately whose charisma warms up a setting that is paradoxically stifling in the desert heat – well, as the film within the play within the documentary. I don’t understand that emotion. I’ve played it, of course. It’s difficult to know where to look but as a dramatic rule, when in doubt, follow the emotion, which leads back to the three delightful little girls who learn their mother has died and are determined to give her a funeral in the dust which their estranged grandfather (Hanks) eventually commits to performing even if the kids call themselves witches. I still don’t understand the play. There is probably a bigger point being made about political theatre with a Kazan-like narcissist director Schubert Green (Adrien Brody) leading the TV production and a needy self-conscious Methody movie star (Johansson) who, accompanied by that giant bottle of Chanel No. 5, can only be a parody Marilyn but this is ultimately confused. It’s not entirely unlikeable, not with those triplets, but it’s not very funny either. A real curate’s egg of shallow smugness from a story by those arch space cadets Anderson and Roman Coppola. You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep

Frida (2002)

I like you this way – you’re easier to keep up with. Young Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) is a rambunctious teenager who lives riotously and has an active sex life with her teenage boyfriend Alejandro (Diego Luna). When a tram accident lays her up with potentially life-threatening and crippling injuries she fights back and during all the months encased in plaster discovers a talent for painting, beginning with self-portraits. When she tries to interest people in her paintings she seeks out Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) whom she taunted as a student. Despite his womanising ways she falls for him and they begin an affair which his wife knows about. They end up living in an apartment above hers. Rivera continues to sleep with his models and Frida paints and her surrealist work attracts attention. In New York in 1934 where Diego has been commissioned to create a mural for Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton) his work is censored and both he and Frida have affairs with Tina Modotti (Ashley Judd) and Frida suffers a heartbreaking miscarriage. Back in Mexico her sister Cristina (Mia Maestro) becomes his assistant and Frida finds them in bed together. She returns to her parents’ home and descends into alcoholism. After meeting Diego again at a Day of the Dead celebration he introduces her to Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush) who falls for her when he moves into her house when he is granted political asylum and Frida leaves for Paris when Trotksy’s wife finds out. She returns to Mexico and Diego asks for a divorce then Trotsky is murdered … I should never have put you in a room with him. Adapted by Clancy Sigal, Diane Lake, Gregory Nava & Anna Thomas (and Antonio Banderas and Edward Norton, uncredited) from the 1983 book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera, this is a beautiful, reverential and somewhat stolid biopic despite the talents, the artistry and the protagonist herself, memorably played by Hayek (who shepherded the production) especially as a teenager. However the episodic nature contrives to mitigate against momentum in this cosmopolitan tale, despite the wonderful aesthetic embellishments – with scenes melting out of Kahlo’s paintings, animations bringing still lifes to fast-moving existence and the use of costume as signifier. As is so often the case in these historical stories, it seems the people around the main character are more interesting and the circumstances more stimulating – and here it’s Diego Rivera who controls the narrative: Frida’s life and fate are basically a reaction to him and that both unbalances the characters and tilts the story in a different direction than it wants to go. It really succeeds as a portrait of a country in a kind of turmoil and exercising fascination for artists, bohemians and the international left. It’s not a failure but more a near miss that ironically really comes to life in the music scenes when Hayek is singing those mournful Mexican songs that make the hairs stand up in thrall to the passions this woman conjures. Beautifully shot by Rodrigo Prieto and there’s a wonderful score by Elliot Goldenthal. Directed by theatre great Julie Taymor. A communist generous enough to pay off our mortgage

Christmas Time is Here (1965)

A Charlie Brown Christmas with the beautiful haunting music of Vince Guaraldi.

Happy 80th Birthday Terry Gilliam 22nd November 2020!

The only American on the Monty Python crew, that bunch of crazed anarchic geezers still setting audiences alight, animator, cartoonist, performer and visionary director Terry Gilliam celebrates his 80th birthday today. Responsible for some of the zaniest, trippiest films out there he seems dogged with terrible crises followed by disasters and public trouble with studios. He even had a leading man die (Heath Ledger) in the middle of shooting. Yet he eventually gets there and it’s always worth waiting for. Is his best film still Brazil? I love Time Bandits and Twelve Monkeys. There are bits of The Fisher King that are simply great. Life of Brian is a hoot. His decades-long attempt to get his Don Quixote film off the ground shows there ain’t a windmill he won’t tilt in pursuit of his art! He’s known almost as much for what he hasn’t made as what he has. He always goes for it and has a long set of working relationships with writers and editors. What a dude! Many happy returns and more of them to this archly anti-authoritarian surrealist!

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (2020)

Aka Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. I lost all sense of who I was. It’s open season on Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) when her explosive breakup with the Joker puts a big fat target on her back. Unprotected and on the run, Quinn faces the wrath of narcissistic crime boss Roman Sionis aka Black Mask (Ewan McGregor)), his right-hand man, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), and every other vile thug in Gotham. But things soon even out when Harley becomes unexpected allies with three deadly women – Helena Bertinelli aka Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) out to avenge the murder of her entire Mafia family as a child; club singer Dinah Lance aka Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) who’s forced to become Mask’s driver; and hot-tempered suspended cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) who’s keen to make her mark in a hostile male environment. And then there’s the tricky street thief Cassandra Cane (Ella Jay Basco) who’s swallowed that diamond with the mob’s bank account details in its mutiple surfaces and that’s what everybody wants most of all … Nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence. The sole bright spark in the otherwise execrable Suicide Squad was Robbie’s Quinn so you can see how she might have wanted to bring this powerhouse character back in a more equitable narrative. The driving force is to get the attention of the man who broke up with her, Joker, but as we know from other films, he’s kinda tied up elsewhere  and is quickly forgotten here. The idea of the girl gang that comes to fruition in the final 25 minutes is the MO but intriguingly it’s Harley who needs to be told to ‘focus’ – the other characters are more precisely delineated: the frustrated cop whose throwaway lines are from an 80s cop show, the ingenious pickpocket who unwittingly causes everything, the action babe singer, the highly creative crossbow killer with a serious revenge motive (whose name The Huntress everyone forgets, a nice running joke) which ironically leads to the whole premise being diffused, albeit for a higher feminist purpose. Each of them (bar Harley, who has a penchant for glitter) has a particular fighting style (and the stunts are real something.) McGregor’s psycho villain is thinly drawn and characterised. The fact that the penultimate sequence/showdown takes place in a fun house just exacerbates the cartoonish impact of DC’s all-women superhero squad. Yet it fizzes with antic, frantic, anarchic energy and a sense of its own ridiculousness expressed in many ways but most obviously in the title cards introducing all the characters and the batshit baby doll voiceover. Not to mention that rollerskating Harley’s pet hyena is called Bruce.  And yet it’s a story about female empowerment, diversity and righteous vengeance and is all done with effortless humour because Harley ultimately realises their talents are best deployed against their common enemies – scummy men. Robbie is charm itself and channels her inner Marilyn/Madonna with her performance of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. Written by Christina (Bumblebee) Hodson, produced by Robbie and directed by Cathy Yan. It almost makes you yearn for Tank Girl and Barb Wire, a pair of female action movies from the 90s that just missed their target. Almost. What a breakup movie – it even has a hair-pulling scene. Well what else would you expect from the fractured psyche of a PhD in Psychology? Girl Power kicks ass! You know, vengeance rarely brings the catharsis we hope for

First Love (2019)

Aka  初恋/Hepburn/Hatsukoi. It’s all I can do. One night in Tokyo, a self-confident young boxer Leo (Masataka Kubota) who was abandoned as a child and Monica aka Yuri (Sakurako Konishi) a prostitute hallucinating her late father for want of a fix get caught up in a drug-smuggling plot involving organised crime, corrupt cops and an enraged female assassin Julie (Becky) out to avenge the murder of her boyfriend who may or may be betraying his bosses. Kase (Shota Sometani) is desperate to ascend the ranks and kill whoever crosses his path to help his ambition but is plotting a scam with corrupt cop Otomo (Nao Omori) while the gang has to take on the Chinese but are unaware Otomo has infiltrated their ranks … I’m out to kill! Everybody let’s kill! A typically energetic, funny crime thriller from Japanese auteur Takeshi Miike, with an abundance of identity confusion, revenge, astonishing and surreal violence, savage humour and romance. The kind of film where the line Trust in Japanese cars is delivered with utter seriousness. Quite literally a blast from start to finish with bristling action, beautiful night scenes in neon-lit Tokyo captured by Nobuyashu Kita and brilliantly handled action. Written by Masaru Nakamura and produced by Jeremy Thomas. Still things to do before I die

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

Do you know what kind of bomb it was?/The exploding kind. Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) escapes from a mental hospital and determines to commandeer a Doomsday machine invented by Dr Hugo Fassbender (Richard Vernon) in order to wipe out the entire world if necessary – just as long as he can kiss his bête noire Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) farewell. He kidnaps Fassbender and his daughter Margo  (Briony McRoberts) and holds them captive in his Bavarian castle but not willing to take any chances, he also hires a series of hitmen (Eddie Stacey, Herb Tanney, Terry Maidment) to help out. Meanwhile, Clouseau is diverted by the attentions of alluring Russian spy Olga (Lesley-Anne Down) …  Now we’ll see who has the last laugh. They’ve all betrayed me, and now they will have to pay. What shall I destroy? Buckingham Palace? Too small. How about London? Not big enough. England! Yes, England. In which Dreyfus becomes a kind of Blofeld-styled criminal mastermind crossed with Count Dracula, the animated titles pastiche so many genres it’s just a shame they don’t get to pay homage to them all (including director Blake Edwards’ wife Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music!). Not as well constructed as the preceding films, this genre mashup written by Edwards and Frank Waldman does pay dividends in the expertly engineered sight gags and one extended action sequence involving Lom, Sellers and the redoubtable Burt Kwouk as Cato. Some might take issue with the scene in the gay club and the crossdressing performers but this is a scenario that Edwards would plunder to astonishing effect in the later Victor/Victoria. There’s a packed ensemble of English actors and it’s only a shame that the great Leonard Rossiter hasn’t more to do as Clouseau’s shocked opposite number. Look quickly for Omar Sharif as an Egyptian hitman while Byron Kane does a Kissingeresque Secretary of State. Lots of fun but not for the purist – even though it had us from the moment Lom’s eye twitched. I thought you said that your dog didn’t bite!/That is not my dog

The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

Compared to Clouseau, Attila the Hun was a Red Cross volunteer. The famous jewel and national treasure of Lugash, the Pink Panther, is stolen once again in a daring heist with only the trademark glove as evidence. Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) is rehabilitated from his demotion to the street beat by Chief Inspector Dreyfuss (Herbert Lom) of the Sureté and sets off on a mission to nab the notorious thief who is probably Sir Charles Lytton (Christopher Plummer). But when Clouseau carries out surveillance at his house in Nice he encounters his resourceful wife Claudine (Catherine Schell) who leads him on a wild goose chase to Gstaad… There’s something about a wife – even with a beard. Marking the return of both writer/director Blake Edwards (writing with Frank Waldman) and star Sellers to the series following a misguided iteration with Alan Arkin in 1968, this succeeds due to some fabulous slapstick set pieces with all kinds of ordinary things defeating the brainless Inspector – a blind bank robbery lookout with his minky (a scene that is actually gasp-inducing), a telephone, a vacuum cleaner, his own moustache and a fake nose. Great visual gags involving tiny vehicles (á la M. Hulot), an unfortunately located swimming pool, in-house martial artist Cato (Burt Kwouk) and some very funny verbals including Sellers’ horrific mangling of the French language make up for the deadening miscasting of Plummer in the role previously handled effortlessly by David Niven. Sellers is so hilarious as the anarachic disaster-prone idiot he had Schell giggling uncontrollably – and those takes are in the final cut! There’s also the priceless running joke of an increasingly deranged Lom and his gun lighter. If it’s in the first act … well, you know your Chekhov. Seriously funny at times with extraordinary titles designed by Richard Williams. With friends like you, who needs enemies?

FernGully: The Last RainForest (1992)

Our world was much larger then. The forest went on forever. Curious little Crysta (Samantha Mathis) is a fairy who lives in FernGully, a rainforest in eastern Australia and has never seen a human before:  fairies believe the race was made extinct by a malevolent entity called Hexxus (Tim Curry) whom mother-figure fairy Magi (Grace Zabriskie) imprisoned in a tree. But when a logging company comes near the rain forest, Crysta sees that humans do exist and accidentally shrinks one of them to fairy-size: a boy named Zak (Jonathan Ward). Zak sees the damage that the company does and helps Crysta to stop not only them, but Hexxus, back to feed off pollution after Tony (Robert Pastorelli) and Ralph (Geoffrey Blake) cut down the tree where he has spent so long. Zak falls for Crysta, whose friend Pips (Christian Slater) loves her but when the rivers and trees show signs of being poisoned Zak admits why he’s there and Hexxus starts to destroy the forest so it’s time for action and even sacrifice ... There are worlds within worlds. Adapted from Diana Young’s book by Jim Cox, this family-friendly musical has a great ecological message couched in action that while not completely jeopardy-free has a swagger and moves along quickly while also being sweet and funny. There’s a lot of humour provided in his first animation voicing role by Robin Williams, improvising his lines as Batty Koda. Perhaps the supernatural aspects de-claw the radical message at its heart, but that is certainly in the right place and there are some good songs by composer Alan Silvestri with Jimmy Webb, Thomas Dolby and Elton John. That’s Cheech and Chong as beetle brothers Stump and Root! Directed by Bill Kroyer.  All the magic of creation lies within a single tiny seed