Hurricane by Eden Golan at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024!

It’s that time of year again. Our phone vote later today will be going to the wonderful Eden Golan and her song Hurricane. Go Israel!

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

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!

Waterloo Wins the Eurovision Song Contest 6th April 1974!

Fifty years after ABBA won at Brighton where the UK jury awarded them the dread nuls points, you might say that ABBA have had the last laugh. Happy Anniversary!

Gran Turismo (2023)

Aka Gran Turismo: A True Story. There’s no future in racing. Following a pitch by marketing executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), Nismo, the motorsport division of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan establishes the GT (Gran Turismo) Academy to recruit skilled players of the racing simulator Gran Turismo and turn them into real racing drivers. Danny recruits former driver-turned-mechanic Jack Salter (David Harbour) to train the players. Jack is initially hesitant but accepts after tiring of the arrogance of his team’s driver, Nicholas Capa (Josha Stradowski ). Meanwhile in Cardiff, Wales, teenager Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) a university dropout, clothes shop employee and gamer is an avid player of the racing simulator and wants to become a racing driver despite the disapproval of his former footballer father Steve (Djimon Hounsou). His mother Lesley (Geri Haliwell Horner) suggests he return to college to study engineering and get into the racing business that way. Jann discovers he is eligible for a qualification race to join the GT Academy after setting a time record for a particular track. The night before his race, Jann is invited by his brother Coby (Daniel Puig) to a party and they take their father’s care. Jann flirts with a young woman named Audrey (Maeve Courtier-Lilley) whom he fancies. The gathering breaks up when police arrive and Jann initiates a pursuit after driving away when their friends are pulled over. The brothers escape but are caught returning by their father. Jann offers to take the blame for Coby if he admits that he is the better driver. Jann is brought to his father’s place of employment the following day in an attempt to be taught a life lesson but leaves early to partake in the qualifying race, which he wins, earning a place in GT Academy. At the academy camp, Jack puts the competitors through their paces in various tests, through which ten competitors are narrowed down to five. During one of the tests, Jann crashes with Jack in the car and claims that the brakes were glazed. This is later proven correct by analysts, to Jack’s surprise. The remaining five compete in a final race to determine who will represent Nissan. Jann narrowly wins the race against American competitor Matty Davis (Darren Barnet) but Danny insists Matty should be chosen as the representative due to his better commercial viability but Jann is selected at Jack’s insistence. Jann is told that if he finishes at least fourth in any one of a series of qualifying races, he will earn a professional licence and contract with Nissan. He finishes last in his first professional race at the Red Bull Ring in Austria after Nicholas taps him into a spin. Despite gradually improving over the next few races, he does not finish the penultimate race in Spain. He travels to Dubai for his last qualifying race during which Nicholas takes a corner too fast and crashes. Despite the debris from this crash cracking his windshield, Jann achieves a fourth-place finish and earns his FIA licence. He then travels to Tokyo with Danny and Jack to sign his contract and uses his signing bonus to fly Audrey to Tokyo as they start a relationship. Jann’s first race after signing is at the Nurburgring. He starts the race well and maintains a high position until the front of his car lifts into the air at the Flugplatz corner, hitting a barrier and launching into a crowded spectator area. Jann is airlifted to the Nürburgring Medical Center and is informed while in hospital that a spectator was killed in the crash, to his horror. When Jann is reluctant to return to racing and blames himself for the spectator’s death, Jack returns him to the Nürburgring. He reveals that he was involved in a fatal accident at the 24 Hours of Le Mans which led to a fellow driver dying and subsequently Jack’s retirement from driving. An inquiry clears Jann of any wrongdoing but professional sentiment turns against sim drivers. In response, Danny decides that a sim driver team needs to compete at Le Mans and finish on the podium to prove their viability. Danny enlists Matty and fellow GT Academy participant Antonio Cruz (Pepe Barroso) to make up the three-driver team alongside Jann … It’s like he suddenly remembered he was a racing driver. For petrolheads and gamers alike, this alternative sports biopic based on a true story written by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin has a lot to offer – a dream job for a kid whose life is dedicated to a simulation of it in the video game created by Kazanori Yamauchi, played here by Takehiro Hira. After a half hour setup, in which our hero is supposedly the offspring of the world’s least likely couple, he comes into the purview of a nasty looking man who’s hiding his own hurt under a cloak of viciousness. You’ve got instincts that can’t be taught. As the narrative demands, the key relationship here is of course with mentor Salter, the tough but decent father figure that Jann lacks at home and who of course is concealing the tragedy that led to his own retirement (perhaps the internet didn’t work a decade ago so Jann has to wait until the 70th minute for Salter to tell him). A wonderful running joke is Jann’s need to listen to MOR music to keep his nerves in check – while he has Enya and Kenny G in his ears, Salter is playing Black Sabbath on an old school Walkman: that leads to a change in song choice at the crucial moment on the race track. The other strand is the idea that learning how to drive on a simulator video game is not a bad thing (what else …) even if there are no real bumps on this road that can’t be straightened out. Anyone looking for a deep and meaningful discussion of the existential or actual gap between reality and simulation may look elsewhere – or find that this constitutes proof that there is no difference whatsoever. Of course this is all predicated on the fairy tale model, nowadays that means transposing things from self-imposed lockdown life to doing things for real and so it is – oh joy! – that Jann finally races at Le Mans, the ultimate proof of racing prowess. A colourful, splashy tale with so much great coverage by cinematographer Jacques Jouffret blended with game visuals that even a conservative storyline and the questionable use of a real-life tragedy can’t help but entertain once this gets wheels under it. The real Mardenborough performs as his avatar’s stunt double, fact fans. Directed by Neill Blomkamp. Somewhere out in the world there’s a kid who’s faster than all these arseholes

Ferrari: Race to Immortality (2017)

An intensely moving archive portrait of the early years of the Scuderia Ferrari, the Formula One team established by company boss Enzo Ferrari, famously more concerned with his machines than the men who risked their lives for him in those glory days: Eugenio Castellotti, Luigi Musso, Marquis Alfonso de Portago, Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn. How all five men lost the ultimate race is beautifully and horribly evoked with contemporary footage and recollections traced in voiceover from their loved ones and fellow drivers and racing commentators. Despite its patina of official approval it doesn’t skirt the opinions of those around the team who had a low opinion of Ferrari himself and his glacial dealings with the men, except for Collins who acted as emotional broker with Dino, Enzo’s terminally ill son. Even if it’s hard to get under the famously thick skin of the man and sketchy on his origins or motivations, this doesn’t romanticise the terrors of the fatal accidents – being crushed under cars, being burned alive, being thrown into the air with unsurvivable injuries, or, in the case of Hawthorn, battling a congenital kidney condition which he kept secret from insurers and then losing his life in a stupid race with a team manager en route to a luncheon date in London. A must for petrolheads, because as Sebastian Vettel so rightly says, even if you’re not a Ferrari fan, you love Ferrari, it’s so much bigger than F1. Hurray for the Red Cars. Always remember Castellotti, killed 14th March 1957. Directed by Daryl Goodrich and produced by Julia Taylor-Stanley and Sam Tromans.

60% car, 40% driver

I’m young, I’ll get another chance

I think he loved the cars more than the drivers because the cars were loyal to him

I don’t think Ferrari was really capable of handling relationships

It ultimately is about the car and not the driver

Ferrari is a dictator – if he doesn’t like you he won’t sell you a car

I know it won’t happen to me

They [Collins and Hawthorn] were such close friends they were almost happier when the other won

Bad luck is the consequence of what we haven’t been able to do or foresee

They were all aware in those days it was very dangerous

It was very easy to ignore any possibility of things going wrong

One must keep working continuously otherwise one thinks of death

The era of gentleman racing drivers is ended

I did nothing other than what gave me pleasure

To lose those drivers one after the other was a terrible thing

How Ferrari got through that period is a tribute to his passion for racing

To what degree he felt those things is hard to say

They were rather like fighter pilots – or gladiators. They were stars

Win or die, they will be immortal

Ferrari (2023)

We all know death is nearby. Summer 1957. Former racer now company manager Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is on the verge of bankruptcy. He and his estranged wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) put everything they have into the Mille Miglia race, a last role of the dice for them both following the death of their son Dino (Benedetto Benedettini) the previous year. The Miglia is an open road, endurance-based race lasting one thousand miles. While Enzo has kept Laura from learning of his infidelities, his mistress, Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley) pressures him to grant their illegitimate young son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese) the Ferrari name as his confirmation nears. Meanwhile, in the wake of the groundbreaking development of the team’s Formula One car, Ferrari’s manufacturing company is suffering from severe financial losses. Faced with no other choice, Ferrari must merge with a sister company to continue doing business. However, Laura owns half of Ferrari’s shares so in order to move forward on deals, Enzo has to persuade Laura to sign the entirety of the company over to him. A resentful Laura demands a check for $500,000, which will bankrupt the company if she cashes it. Laura confirms her suspicions that Enzo has been having an affair after finding where Lina and Piero live in the countryside outside Modena. Enzo agrees to write the cheque and trust her to wait. As the Mille Miglia commences in Brescia, Ferrari encourages his drivers to remain ahead of the competition. During a pit-stop in Rome, Enzo’s newest addition to the team, Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone) refuses to change tyres in order to stay in the lead; he suffers a blowout and loses control of the vehicle, which veers off the road, killing de Portago, his navigator and nine onlookers in the resulting crash … He is entitled to an heir. The films of that supreme visualist Michael Mann are usually about complex, tortured men of ambition and conscience who also lead rather complicated private lives. So the life of Enzo Ferrari seems to be a perfect aesthetic and narrative fit in this latest motorsports film which had many stops and starts in its development over the years. Adapted by the late Troy Kennedy Martin from the Brock Yates biography,  Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine, the focus is dual: on the extramarital affair with Lina that has produced an illegitimate son, a replacement for his beloved heir, and the participation in a more or less unregulated road race that could be the making of the firm. The speed, glamour and sheer style of the era is beautifully evoked without losing a sense of danger or the grit of the open roads, captured with terrific detail by cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt. Ferrari himself is not exactly an open book – closed off by damned business practices, bereavement, sorrow, frustration and his domestic attentions permanently elsewhere, he is not a likeable protagonist. You might say the glacial Driver is ideal, nominative determinism apart. What I loved in you I also found in him, Laura declares after lending him the money he thought would bankrupt the firm and castigating him for replacing their beautiful Dino with his mistress’ bastard son. She has only one condition because she knows the value of the Ferrari name. The wrong son died. It’s a great monologue and states the emotional stakes of the film in one scene. Is she different from the others? Mann is not rated enough for his female casting but it’s one of the most attractive facets of his productions – he never works to type. Here it’s no different. Cruz is superb as the beaten down wife who quietly holds her power despite her outward demeanour and the cuckolding by her cold husband. Woodley is equally an unconventional choice for her role. Sarah Gadon gets to land the legendary kiss that killed. We all know it’s our deadly passion. Our terrible joy. And of course there are the racers. It’s wonderful (at last) to see someone essaying the role of de Portago, one of the era’s luminaries, as well as Peter Collins (Jack O’Connell) who was such a star before his premature death the year after this race. Real life petrolhead and racing team owner Patrick Dempsey plays Piero Taruffi, one of the few men from that time who lived to a great age. Top Gear fans (the original iteration, natch) will recognise Ben Collins who plays Stirling Moss while Wolfgang von Trips is played by Wyatt Carnell. Those were the days when noble birth (and family money) was as much a condition of participation in big motor races as driving skill. Brake late. Steal their line. Make them make the mistake. At 104 minutes in is the accident that literally stopped the Mille Miglia in its tracks and it’s terrible. But this is all about legacy and achievement and what’s left in the ether: a lingering taste of petrol fumes powers this along even if it’s not without its flaws, like the man himself. When a thing works better usually it looks more beautiful to the eye. A good if not exactly iconic car movie but a decent explanation as to the place of Ferrari today. Go beat the hell out of them

Jerry & Marge Go Large (2022)

It’s a math problem, really. Evart, Michigan. Jerry (Bryan Cranston) and Marge Selbee (Annette Bening) live a quiet life in their small town home. Jerry, recently retired after forty-two years working in the local factory, spends his days unwillingly tinkering with the new motorboat his kids Dawn (Anna Camp) and Doug (Jake McDorman) bought him. But an accidental crash at the lake turns his attention elsewhere. One day, while at the local gas station, Jerry overhears a conversation about the WinFall lottery’s rolldown weeks. A mathematician at heart, he quickly figures out a statistical loophole. He realises that during rolldowns buying a large number of tickets almost guarantees a win. He does it in secret and hides the money all over the house but Marge wonders what’s going on. Sceptical at first, she soon gets on board with the plan: finally they have something together other than watching Jeopardy. They start small but Marge’s encouragement leads Jerry to go all in. They empty their savings, and the risk pays off – their $8,000 investment turns into $15,000. Excited by their success, they can’t keep it a secret for long. When WinFall closes in Michigan, the Selbees don’t give up. Marge organises a 10-hour road trip to Massachusetts, where the lottery is still active. They spend days at a small liquor store run by Bill (Rainn Wilson), printing ticket after ticket, doubling their money once again. They spend their nights at the Pick and Shovel Motel and eventually get their relationship back on an even keel. Back in Evart, they decide to share their secret. Their widowed accountant Steve (Larry Willmore) is the first one to get on board. They create GS Investment Strategies, allowing their friends and neighbours to invest. Daughter Dawn joins them one week but messes up the ticket checking. The investment reinvigorates the town. Old businesses reopen, and the local Jazz Fest venue is restored, all thanks to the lottery winnings. But their success attracts unwanted attention. Do you really think we’re the only ones who know? A group of Harvard students, led by Tyler Langford (Uly Schlesinger) have also discovered the loophole. They confront Jerry and Marge, arrogantly suggesting they combine forces. The Selbees refuse, standing firm in their methods and morals and Jerry points out Tyler’s shortcoming in relying on binomial distribution alone. As tensions rise, Tyler threatens Jerry, turning up in Evart and demanding he stop playing WinFall. Jerry almost gives in when he believes Tyler could hack all their bank accounts and expose them but the support of his son Doug and the community strengthens his resolve. They won’t be bullied out of their endeavour. Then Maya (Tracie Thoms) a reporter for the Spotlight section of The Boston Globe starts sniffing around when she finds out the lottery game is being gamed … Good luck happens same as bad. We’ve been fangirling over writer/director David Frankel since Miami Rhapsody (1995) so naturally we’ll beat a path to anything he makes. That sweet spot between drama and ironic comedy is where he lives. Here it’s a true story that turns on the issue of a retirement that works for both halves of a married couple. We need something for us. The process by which this is arrived at and how it is solved by becoming a project for the common good is neat and plausible – probably because it really happened. Frankel’s screenplay is adapted from the true story as written by Jason Fagone for HuffPost in 2018. We can’t win if we can’t play. The twist provided by the Harvard betting group as worthy smartass antagonists also gives grit to the otherwise wholesome plot (in a weird way we might infer that the outcome is a retrofitting of what we wish might have happened to Mark Zuckerberg, another alum). Jerry has to resort to figuring out people not math in order to get through the crisis presented when Harvard turns nasty. This may not hit all the heavily ironised story beats we’re accustomed to from this filmmaking source but it has a deal of them that it handles with care and heart. We know Cranston can do the crazy obsessive suburban entrepreneur from Breaking Bad but this plays it safe probably because it’s true albeit he has some moments where you believe he just might lose it. So the major irony is that unlike its protagonists the film doesn’t gamble at all. That aside, isn’t it nice to see a portrait of a married couple who stay together over the decades for the right reasons and end up living the dream. Beautifully performed. He finally got to use his gift to connect to people

The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019)

Gestures are all that I have. Seattle. Enzo (voiced by Kevin Costner) a golden retriever, is adopted as a puppy by Denny (Milo Ventimiglia) a racing driver whose whole life centres around cars and whose greatest wish is to drive in Formula One. Now Enzo is lying by the door, dying, waiting for his master to come home and he tells their story. Denny divides his time between teaching driving and caring for Enzo, while also pursuing a career as a race driver when he takes Enzo home and rears him, giving him the perfect childhood. Enzo is desperate to speak and be human. Enzo accompanies Denny to the track and his life too revolves around cars. A year later, Denny meets a teacher called Eve (Amanda Seyfried) while grocery shopping and the two begin to date. After Denny and Eve marry the following year, Eve’s mother, Trish (Kathy Baker) tries to be supportive but her father Maxwell (Martin Donovan) doesn’t like Denny’s career. Eve becomes pregnant. On Christmas Day, Denny receives an invitation to drive in the 24 Hours of Daytona race in February, another offer by Don Kitch (Gary Cole) who keeps mentoring Denny and keeping him connected with the sport. It unfortunately takes place close to Eve’s due date. She gives birth prematurely to a daughter named Zoë at home with a couple of midwives, while the TV in the adjacent room shows Denny racing in Florida, thus missing the birth. A few years pass and family life is idyllic for Enzo, while Denny spends prolonged periods away from home to race. Eve begins to fall seriously ill and Enzo can smell a ‘rotting wood’ odour coming from her ears and sinuses. She is diagnosed with brain cancer with she and Zoë (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) living with her parents during her treatment. Resigned to her fate, Eve admits to Enzo that she is no longer afraid of death and dies while he watches. Maxwell, who blames Denny’s absence for Eve’s illness, demands custody of their granddaughter and threatens to sue if Denny does not comply. Furious, Denny attempts to leave before being grabbed by Maxwell, who falls and breaks a rib in the resulting scuffle. Seeing an opportunity, Maxwell reports the incident to the police and Denny is arrested for fourth degree assault. If he loses the case, Denny faces a jail sentence plus his in-laws taking permanent custody of his daughter. The great driver will drive through the problem. The great driver finds a way to keep racing. Denny continues to race and is offered a job in Maranello testing new prototypes for Ferrari, an opportunity he has wanted all his life and could lead to becoming part of the driving team, which he is forced to decline due to his case; he makes the promise that if his case turns out in his favour, he will accept the offer …. He was a race car driver the way I was a dog, it was his nature, his destiny. This had us weeping at Hello. Adapted from Garth Stein’s prize-winning book by Mark Bomback, the tragic story of a woman’s death and a family’s breakup is only bookended by the racing which provides the philosophising of racing that translates to offtrack life that lovely Enzo gruffly espouses – a disappointment for petrolheads when so much more is promised. Sometimes I hate what I am. Nonetheless this comedy-drama is well written and it’s also one of the most beautiful looking films of recent times, with simply stunning cinematography by Ross Emery with track scenes on location at Monterey, California, Bowmanville, Ontario and Kent, Washington. Your car goes where your eyes go. Of course it shouldn’t work and frankly too much time is spent dealing with Seyfried’s illness and absence but it simply wafts charm. A dog can change the tempo of the world but people are at its mercy. The dog’s-eye view of life, laden with truisms and facts about F1 so convincing us we were sobbing about Senna and trying to find out about Kevin Finnerty and the 1989 Luxembourg Grand Prix, is completely endearing. This after all is a creature named after the man who founded Ferrari. There’s only dishonour in not racing because you’re afraid to lose. Have tissues at the ready for this quite wonderful film. Directed by Simon Curtis. Call it fate, call it luck, all I know is I was meant to be his dog

Misbehaviour (2020)

So this is the eye of the revolution – up close it sure is revolting. As the 1970 Miss World competition looms, divorced mother of a little daughter Sally Alexander (Keira Knightley) encounters sexism as she is interviewed for a place as a mature History student at University College London. She encounters Women’s Liberation activist Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley) painting slogans on a poster and warns her about bobbies patrolling the street. She joins her group which lives as a commune and advises them to engage with the media – they’re so shabby and disorganised and they don’t even have TV but another group in Peckham disagrees with their tactics. Meanwhile Eric Morley (Rhys Ifans) and his wife Julia (Keeley Hawes) are busy trying to secure Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear) as host of Miss World against his wife Dolores’ (Lesley Manville) wishes because when he last did it in 1961 he took the winner home. Pressured by London-based South African apartheid activist Peter Hain (Luke Thompson), Eric Morley decides to parachute in an extra contestant, black Pearl Jansen (Loreece Harrison) who along with Miss Grenada Jennifer Hosten (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is one of the few coloured contestants in the beauty contest. Then a wilder element of Libbers blows up a BBC van on the eve of the competition and the Grosvenor Road commune has to go through with a proper protest under cover of normal clothing during the live show … You think you can have the same freedoms as a man but you can’t. The screenplay by Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe from Frayn’s story is rooted in reality: this is a group biography but done as a comedy drama in the style of a heist story. It’s a conscientious and entertaining if mild intervention into the evolution of women’s rights. A touch more of zany might have helped this become a genre entry which it’s straining to do but respect for the (still living) heroines obviously hampers wilder moments. And perhaps the truth. It’s a political tale of unbelievable misogyny and inequality. The display of the beauty queens’ behinds for rating is truly shocking: how on earth did this outrageous cattle mart go on as long as it did?! However the lovely irony, that the protest (which occurs in the midst of infamous philanderer Hope’s outrageously sexist monologue) engenders a feminist movement is well played and the meeting between arrested Sally and newly-crowned winner Hosten nicely encapsulates the complex theme and issues which today’s feminists would call intersectional. Fun fact: Sally’s daughter Abigail (Maya Kelly) was the daughter from her marriage to legendary actor John Thaw. Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe. Turns out my seat at the table is actually a high chair