The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

I’m not in love with you any more. Ex-litigator Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) leaves his three gifted children in their adolescent years and winds up in prison for fraud then returns to them after they have grown, falsely claiming he has a terminal illness when he’s thrown out of the hotel whose bills he cannot meet. He insinuates himself back into the family home where his archaeologist wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) is dating accountant Henry Sherman (Danny Glover). Maths whiz and business genius Chas (Ben Stiller) is a widower who survived the plane crash that killed his wife the previous year and moves his sons Ari (Grant Rosenmeyer) and Uzi (Jonah Meyerson) back to the family home convinced their apartment is too dangerous. Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a depressive playwright who hasn’t had a play produced in seven years. She is married to older neurologist Raleigh St Clair (Bill Murray) who doesn’t know any of her secrets. Formerly successful tennis player Richie (Luke Wilson) is on a neverending world cruise following a disaster on court. When he realises he’s in love with Margot, his adopted sister he contacts their neighbour Eli Cash (Owen Wilson) a lecturer and popular novelist who himself starts romancing Margot but dabbles in drugs. Royal’s arrival coincides with each family member enduring a crisis that seems insurmountable and living together again brings things to a head …  This illness, this closeness to death… it’s had a profound affect on me. I feel like a different person, I really do. Flat symmetrical compositions with intricate production design and little camera movement. Ironic soundtracks. Blunt wit. At first glance Wes Anderson’s films might feel too contrived:  highly stylised yet with an inimitable tone, destined forever for the shelf labelled Quirk. This is reminiscent of Salinger with its NYC setting, big brownstones, a dysfunctional family full of supposed eccentrics and is openly influenced by Le feu follet and The Magnificent Ambersons. At first glance it’s rambling and lacking construction. But at the centre of it is a performance of paternal dysfunction by Gene Hackman that’s genuinely great – but even that appears to deflect from the roles played by his children.  They are a prism by which this deceitful man’s life is viewed. Hence the title.  It was written for him against his wishes, says Anderson. There is an undertow of sadness reflected by the repetition of Vince Guaraldi’s theme from TV’s Charlie Brown series (and what an extraordinary soundtrack underpins this bittersweet comic drama, with everyone from The Clash to Elliott Smith busy expressing those sentiments the characters refuse). It’s a determinedly literary experience with Alec Baldwin’s voiceover ensuring that even if we miss the beautiful Chapter Titles (because this is based on a non-existent book…) we are always anchored in a sprawling narrative with its endearing cast of characters. In truth these are people who are unsuccessful adults, mired in grief, lost in unrequited love (inspiring two suicide attempts), depression and psychological problems, constantly beset by memories of childhood achievements they cannot reproduce in the real world.  Faking it. It is a work of profound sadness and understanding. Just look at the pictures. Written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. I wish you’d’ve done this for me when I was a kid

Knives Out (2019)

I suspect foul play. I have eliminated no suspects.  When crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) dies just after his 85th birthday, inquisitive Southern detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) arrives at his estate to investigate despite the presence of police officers (LaKeith Stanfield and Noah Segan). He sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind the writer’s untimely demise as each of the family members and the immigrant nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) who cared for Harlan is questioned in turn. Harlan’s daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a successful businesswoman with a an unfaithful husband Richard (Don Johnson) and a layabout son Ransom (Chris Evans). Harlan’s son Walt (Michael Shannon) runs the publishing company his father founded for his writing output, but they’ve been fighting. Daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette) is an advocate of self-help and has been helping herself to the old man’s money. His ancient mother (K Callan) never seems to die. Harlan’s devoted nurse Marta then becomes Harlan’s most trusted confidante but who hired him in the first place? … This is a twisted web, and we are not finished untangling it, not yet. The closed-room murder mystery is a staple of crime fiction and it’s not necessarily where you’d expect writer/director Rian Johnson to turn after a Star Wars episode (The Last Jedi) although it harks back to his debut, Brick, a take on Chandler/Hammett with teenagers. The touchstones are pretty clear:  Agatha Christie; the game (and film) of Clue(do); Peter Sellers and Elke Sommer in A Shot in the Dark; and some of the grasping familial mendacity we recognise from Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. If truth be told, it’s not very mysterious and barely suspenseful with two big twists a regular filmgoer or mystery reader will see through easily which means that they of course are not the point. It’s the dismantling of those hoary old tropes that provides the narrative motor. Much of the entertainment value derives from game comic playing by an established cast with a soupçon of political commentary provided by the nurse’s immigrant status which leads to a good line featuring Broadway hit Hamilton and everyone gets her native country wrong, one of the running jokes. Another is her need to vomit when telling a lie. The other one is stretching out the syllables in Benoit’s name so it sounds like Ben wa although personally I find Craig more prophylactic than sex toy and his ‘tec is Poirot X Columbo with an affected drawl. It looks quite sober and already feels like Sunday evening TV. For the undemanding viewer. CSI KFC!

The Dreamers (2003)

Before you can change the world you must realize that you, yourself, are part of it. You can’t stand outside looking in.  In May 1968, the student riots in Paris exacerbate the isolation felt by three youths:  American exchange student Matthew (Michael Pitt) and twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). Having bonded over their mutual love of cinema, Matthew is fascinated by the intimacy shared by Isabelle and Théo, who were born conjoined. When the twins’ bohemian parents go away for a month, they ask Matthew to stay at their apartment, and the three lose themselves in a fantasy straight out of the movies that dominate their daydreams … I was one of the insatiables. The ones you’d always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. Adapted by the late Gilbert Adair (how I miss him) from his novel The Holy Innocents (inspired by Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles) this insinuates itself into the mind and the senses as surely as the French brother and sister at its heavily beating cinéphile’s heart. Scrupulously tracing the evolution of a romantic sensibility alongside a political education, this merges a rites of passage story with social and personal revolution in intelligently provocative fashion, fusing Adair’s narrative with director Bernardo Bertolucci’s sympathy for youthful yearning. And it’s sexy as hell, this movie about movies and movie lovers and passion and politics. Green is enigmatic and brave and beautiful, while the boys’ attraction for one another, emerging as a homosexual encounter in the original screenplay, is sacrificed by Bertolucci, whose sexual depictions are always of the hetero variety. There’s a delectable selection of movie clips and songs on the soundtrack of this startlingly beautiful dream of a film. The first time I saw a movie at the cinémathèque française I thought, “Only the French… only the French would house a cinema inside a palace”

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

The key is playing to win instead of trying not to lose. NYC:  Chinese-American economics lecturer Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) is happy to accompany her longtime boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding) to his best friend Colin’s (Chris Pang) wedding in Singapore. She’s surprised to learn that Nick’s family is extremely wealthy and that he’s considered one of the country’s most eligible bachelors. She meets up with college friend Goh Peik Lin (Awkwafina) who lets her in on the open secret. Thrust into the spotlight, she has to deal with jealous socialites, including his ex Amanda (Jing Lusi); quirky relatives (the aunties); and something far, far worse – Nick’s disapproving mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh)… It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. So wrote Jane Austen a couple of hundred years ago and the plot of Pride and Prejudice is writ large here in an adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s novel by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim. It’s a rock solid romantic comedy which morphs into a maternal melodrama before allowing the com to rear its head again in a pleasing conclusion in which the young economics lecturer uses game theory to best her dragon lady (potential) future mother-in-law in a face-off involving mahjong. (She might be clever and an economist but she doesn’t know she’s dating one of the wealthiest men in Asia. Hmmm…) Also in common with the works of Austen, the fathers are mainly absent – dead (maybe) or in Shanghai on business unless you count Peik Lin’s dad, played by Ken Jeong in the one really funny family here:  this is a matriarchy and what a vicious society it makes. At Minty’s (Sonoya Mizuno) bachelorette celebration Rachel has a bloody gutted fish left on her bed with nasty serial killer graffiti painted above because she’s not exactly a hit with the superficial Mean Girls;  Nick’s cousin Astrid (Gemma Chan) has married someone without money and he’s cheating on her – and it’s her friendship with Rachel that clarifies this family’s values and mirrors the ups and downs of her own bruising encounters. Rachel’s foreignness as a naturalised American is a problem, her perceived quest for happiness an issue, her ambition unacceptable. But it’s whatever Grandma (Lisa Lu) says that goes in a world of ritual, legacy and habit. The shape of your nose is auspicious Eleanor tells Rachel of her origins which are not as obscure as her single mother led her to believe. Her outsider status is confirmed and then some. The Asian lifestyle is fetishised through food and flowers and shopping and overpowering and gaudy production design – the fetid chaos of the region is well captured, the fabulous wealth jaw-dropping, the Chinese covers of Western pop songs jar at first and then please:  though it’s anyone’s guess as to why Coldplay’s Yellow features. The performances are spot-on but it’s Awkwafina who proves her comedy chops. It’s all a bit much until Yeoh’s story of jealousy and viciousness is integrated into an overstuffed menu, creating a sorbet effect:  otherwise it’s sickly sweet and a bit sticky, a fluffy fairytale with sparkles and gloss and jewels galore, a millennial soap opera with massive dollops of money. The final party scene is simply spectacular. Directed by Jon M. Chu. JFK just smells of salmonella and despair

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

We just have to stick together. We do that, we can win. Four high school kids discover an old video game console in detention in their high school basement. Spencer is a nerd beset with allergies, Fridge is a footballer who needs help with his homework, Bethany is a narcissistic beauty addicted to her iPhone and Martha is a friendless brainiac who has no fun. They are sucked into the game’s jungle setting, literally becoming the adult avatars they chose:  Spencer is now explorer and archaeologist Dr Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson) who has no weakness (except he’s still shy),  Fridge is zoologist Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart) who can’t eat cake,  Martha is curvy martial arts expert Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) who can be killed by venom and Bethany is an overweight male middle-aged cartographer Prof. Shelly Oberon (Jack Black). What they discover is that you don’t just play Jumanji – you must survive it. To beat the game and return to the real world, they’ll have to go on the most dangerous adventure of their lives by returning a jewel to a Jaguar mountain shrine, discover what Alan Parrish left 20 years ago, and change the way they think about themselves – or they’ll be stuck in the game forever.  They have to dodge treasure hunter Van Pelt (Bobby Cannavale), a corrupt archaeologist, and his henchmen, a crew of evil bikers plus a herd of rampaging rhinoceros, They enlist the help of Alex (Nick Jonas) who has one life left and is afraid to lose it and get stuck in here forever:  he thinks he’s been here a few months but he’s the kid from the Freak (Vreeke) House who disappeared in 1996 after getting lost in the original video game. They have to face up to their fears and join together to get out or it will be Game Over ... How can my strength be my weakness? A sequel and a reboot, this followup to the beloved adaptation of Chris van Allsburg’s book is PC, clever and fun, catering for nostalgia freaks harking back to 1930s jungle films, the 90s obsession with video games, and placating the millennial generation that thinks they can change their race and gender because, you know, it’s their human right and they can choose who they want to be and before they grow up and get real! (It’s not just a game… it’s a life lesson).  We no longer have the Jumanji board game that trapped Alan Parrish (Robin Williams, who’s mentioned here in tribute) but we do have all the ins and outs of a protagonist-led adventure where the rules always apply – until they need to be changed. There are a lot of bright moments – Jack Black the former mean girl coaching school swot Karen Gillan to flirt; tiny Kevin Hart realising he’s not the huge killer ball player any more; Johnson morphing into an unbelievably strong 6’5″ hulk from the puny geek with allergies:  his smoldering voice is hilarious and he just cannot get over the size of his arms. There are some fun penis jokes and a lot of throwaway lines that are laugh out loud good. Exceptionally well cast and performed, this is a very pleasant and funny entertainment that moves like the clappers. Written by Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers, Scott Rosenberg & Jeff Pinkner, from a story by Chris McKenna. Directed by Jake Kasdan.  Zoology, bitch!

Game Night (2018)

Any of you fucking pricks move, I’m gonna execute every motherfucking last one of you!  Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) are an insanely competitive couple who can’t conceive. Their weekly couples game night gets kicked up a notch when Max’s Wall St venture fund owner brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) comes to town and  arranges a murder mystery party including fake thugs and federal agents. It certainly beats Scrabble and Pictionary. And his house is amazing! And there’s a Stingray on the line! Annie finally realises where Max’s anxiety originated when they meet. When Brooks gets kidnapped, it’s all supposed to be part of the game but then it gets very real indeed. As the competitors set out to solve the mystery, they start to learn that neither the game nor Brooks are what they seem to be. They soon find themselves in over their heads as each twist leads to another unexpected turn and that’s a real gun that Annie finds herself firing and rich folk really do get poor people to play Fight Club … Mark Perez’ inventive script has a lot of movie references (albeit our thoughts naturally turn to that great, dark film The Game) and gets a highly energetic workout from co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. The alternate couples function as satellites of the central couple who are like a tech-friendly Nick and Nora, solving a mystery they don’t actually know is happening around them. Kylie Bunbury and Lamorne Morris are high school sweethearts but she fesses up to a one-night stand with a famous film star;  Billy Magnussen is the low IQ guy with a thing for idiot blondes but tonight he shows up with his super smart boss, Sharon Horgan, who’s Irish, not British, and no, it’s not the same thing, she keeps insisting; and next door neighbour, cop Jesse Plemons, lives with his dog Bastien since Max and Annie’s friend Debbie divorced him and they never invite him around on his own, cos, well, he’s plain weird. And he’s PO’d at being excluded. Just when the couples – and we – think the game within a game within a game is over, well, it’s not. There’s more. All of this is served up by sharply defined characters so that we believe all the plot turns and the lines are brilliantly delivered.  The action is flagged up by pieces on game boards, the titles are fantastic and the post-credits sequence is a winner too. A zippy and blackly funny entertainment, performed with vim and astonishing comic timing. You’re like a double threat. Brains … and you’re British!

A Quiet Place (2018)

Who are we if we can’t protect them? We have to protect them.  Over three months in 2020, most of the Earth’s human population has been wiped out by sightless creatures with hypersensitive hearing and a seemingly impenetrable armored shell that attack anything that makes noise. The Abbott family — engineer husband Lee (John Krasinski), wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), congenitally deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simonds), and sons Marcus (Noah Jupe) and Beau (Cade Woodward) — silently scavenge for supplies in a deserted town. Though skilled in sign language the family must nonetheless be vigilant in case they make accidental noise. Four-year-old Beau is drawn to a battery-operated space shuttle toy, but his father takes it away. Regan returns the toy to Beau, who unbeknownst to her takes the batteries their father removed. Beau activates the shuttle when the family is walking home through the woods, near a bridge. Its noise makes him an instant target for a nearby creature, and he is swiftly killed. A year later Evelyn is pregnant, Regan is plagued with guilt and convinced her father doesn’t love her (despite working on a cochlear implant for her) and he takes Marcus out on survival training just as the creatures are circling the farm and weeks before Evelyn is due to give birth … A canny blend of horror, sci fi and maternal melodrama, the fact that this has a somewhat unclear endpoint doesn’t necessarily ruin its affect. Third-time director and star John Krasinski contributed to the rewriting of the screenplay by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (which had just one line of dialogue) and it’s a testament to the construction that the hook gets a great payoff but still sacrifices a major character. The thrills mount as the tension grinds on, the family treading barefoot everywhere as the slightest noise could bring these aliens swooping down on them.  The elements – air, water, fire – are put to deft use in this clever narrative which tests the audience and not just because a lot of the diegetic atmosphere consists of … silence.  Mercifully short (at 90 minutes) this has all the best elements of 70s horror and a cliffhanger of an ending which means you just know there will be a sequel.

 

Stalag 17 (1953)

How do you expect to win the war with an army of clowns? 1944.  It’s the longest night of the year in a German POW camp housing American airmen.  Two prisoners, Manfredi and Johnson, try to escape the compound using a tunnel but are quickly discovered and shot dead. Among the men remaining in Barracks 4, suspicion grows that one of their own is a spy for the Germans. All eyes fall on cynical Sgt. Sefton (William Holden) who everybody knows frequently makes black market exchanges with the German guards for small luxuries. To protect himself from a mob of his enraged fellow inmates, Sgt. Sefton resolves to find the true traitor within their midst… Director Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum adapted the autobiographical Broadway hit by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trczinski, a canny blend of comedy and drama which asks serious questions of its players yet taints the seriousness with jokes and the high jinks with irony. Holden is superb as the entrepreneur whose go-getting attitude would be admired back home but in a POW camp it’s a different story. The men are stratified by their ethnicity and class. Rob Strauss and Harvey Lembeck repeat their stage roles as Animal and Harry, and are highly entertaining comic relief, with Don Taylor, Neville Brand and Peter Graves making up the principal roles. The Nazis are led by Otto Preminger’s rather hammily amusing Colonel von Scherbach which casts the enemy as something of a Greek chorus to the loyalties being figured out by the Americans under deadly pressure. Sefton is a model for the Scrounger played by James Garner in The Great Escape while the whole provides a template not just for the legendary Sergeant Bilko but Hogan’s Heroes on TV. Holden got a deserved Academy Award:  he stands out, yes, but in the right way. He’s not exactly Bogie in Casablanca but it helps to think of him in that shadow even if he felt he didn’t deserve recognition and many thought he should have had it for his previous work with Wilder – Sunset Blvd. He’s just swell in a film that is shrewd, bittersweet, hilarious, human and true.

Jumanji (1995)

You’re playing the game I started in 1969.  In 1869 in New Hampshire two men bury a board game. 100 years later young Alan Harris (Adam Hann-Byrd) can do nothing right for his exacting father (Jonathan Hyde) who owns a shoe factory and intends that Alan go to the same prep school he attended. Alan invites schoolfriend Sarah (Laura Bell Bundy) over and when they play the board game he found after being chased by bullies he gets sucked into it and she runs from the house. 26 years later orphaned siblings Peter (Bradley Pierce) and Judy Shepherd (Kirsten Dunst) move to the town with their aunt (Bebe Neuwirth). While exploring the old mansion she got at rock bottom price, the youngsters find a curious, jungle-themed game called Jumanji in the attic. When they start playing, they free the adult Alan Parrish (Robin Williams), who’s been stuck in the game’s inner jungle world for decades.  They go in search of the adult Sarah (Bonnie Hunt) who’s now a psychic with an extreme need for therapy. They join forces and if they win Jumanji, the kids can free Alan for good – but that means braving giant bugs, ill-mannered monkeys and even stampeding rhinos as well as a killer big-game hunter who bears a distinct resemblance to Alan’s father … Adapted from Chris Van Allsburg’s eponymous novel by Greg Taylor, Jonathan Hensleigh and Jim Strain, this is a superb, action-packed family adventure that never loses sight of the father-son story at its heart principally because the characters are highly relatable. Dunst plays a compulsive liar while her brother is more sensitive but they’re not obnoxious and their aunt’s impoverished attempts at parenting are entirely understandable. Particularly when a monkey takes over her car. When Robin Williams is unleashed from the game in full survival mode from the hellish jungle he’s absolutely on it with a few nice put-downs that aren’t too cruel for a school age kid. It’s great fun to see Pierce transform into a monkey – complete with tail. This is resolved wonderfully and directed at a terrific pace with superb design at every level. Cracking! Directed by Joe Johnston.

Our Man in Havana (1959)

Everything’s legal in Havana. Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness) is an English ex-pat living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his vain teenage daughter Milly (Jo Morrow). He owns a vacuum cleaner shop but isn’t very successful and Milly is annoyed he’s unable to fulfill his promise of a horse and country club membership, so he accepts an offer from Hawthorne (Noel Coward) of the British Secret Service to recruit a network of spies in Cuba. Wormold hasn’t got a clue where to start but when his friend Dr. Hasselbacher (Burl Ives) suggests that the best secrets are known to no one, he decides to manufacture a list of agents from people he only knows by sight and provides fictional tales for the benefit of his paymasters in London. He is soon seen as the best agent in the Western hemisphere and is particularly happy with his new friend, the beautiful spy Beatrice Severn (Maureen O’Hara) but it all unravels when the local police decode his cables and everything he has invented bizarrely begins to come true when they start rounding up his network and he learns that he is the target of a group out to kill him… This film is, rather like North by Northwest, a taste of things to come:  an irreverent picture of the Cold War, the assumptions of the West and of course a picture of Cuba on the verge of a revolutionary breakdown (it was shot immediately after the Batista regime was overthrown). Graham Greene was reluctant to let anyone film his novels following the near-desecration of The Quiet American but this novel (the last he would term an entertainment and based on his WW2 experiences in Portugal) survives pretty unscathed with its comic tone evident throughout the cast (albeit Greene hated Maureen O’Hara). Who doesn’t love Ernie Kovacs? Or Guinness, for that matter, who perfectly inhabits this hapless effortful beast Wormold. I particularly liked his take on a game of checkers. Beautifully photographed by the great Oswald Morris  – but in black and white – in Havana?! Why?!  Directed, not by Hitchcock, who had tried to acquire the rights from Greene, but by Carol Reed. It was their third collaboration following The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. One never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement.