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

The Flash (2023)

You’re the reason this Zod character is going to destroy the earth? Gotham City. After he has helped Bruce Wayne aka Batman (Ben Affleck, uncredited) and Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, uncredited) stop a robbery by a terrorist gang, police forensic investigator and member of the Justice League Barry Allen aka The Flash (Ezra Miller) revisits his childhood home, where he lived with his parents Nora (Maribel Verdu) and Henry (Ron Livingston) before Henry’s wrongful imprisonment for Nora’s murder. On the day of her death, Nora had sent Henry to the grocery store for a can of food that she forgot to buy, leaving her alone in the kitchen where she was killed by an unidentified assailant. Overcome by his emotions, Barry accidentally uses the Speed Force to form a ‘Chronobowl’ and ends up travelling back in time to earlier in the day. Despite Bruce’s warnings of time travel’s unintended consequences, Barry puts the can in Nora’s trolley at the store, so that his father won’t have to leave the house. As he returns to the present, Barry is knocked out of the Chronobowl by an unknown speedster and arrives in an alternative 2013 where Nora is alive. He encounters his parents and his past self, and realizes this is the day he originally obtained his powers. To ensure his past self gains superpowers, the two Barrys go to the Central City Police Department, where Barry re-enacts the event for 2013-Barry to be struck by lightning. Both end up getting struck by the lightning, giving 2013-Barry powers, but causing Barry to lose his own. As Barry struggles to train 2013-Barry on properly using his powers, they find out that General Zod (Michael Shannon) is planning to invade Earth. In an effort to fight Zod, the Barrys attempt to assemble the Justice League but are unsuccessful; in this timeline, Diana cannot be located, Victor Stone aka Cyborg (Ray Fisher) hasn’t gained his abilities yet and Arthur Curry aka Aquaman (Jason Momoa) never existed. They travel to Wayne Manor hoping to find Bruce instead finding an alternate variant who has long retired. Bruce theorises that using time travel to alter history affects events both prior to and after the alteration. They persuade Bruce to return as Batman and help them find Kal-El aka Superman (Nicolas Cage) … We’re Barry. A project decades in development, this action hero time travel comedy has its tongue planted firmly in cheek but manages to straddle the line between daftness and sentiment. It benefits from a conscious exercise in superhero identity politics as well as the travails of adolescence, bereavement and the possibilities and problems of an alternative reality through a sliding doors moment. Miller gets the chance to flex those acting muscles as past/present/future versions of Barry and has a lot of zippy fun that explores the various identities with wit and verve, assisted by a gallery of superheroes to provide an array of powers and some nice casting in the ensemble including Kiersey Clemons as Iris West, Barry’s journalist love interest. Wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts! Typical of the genre it’s long but fortunately humorous and upbeat, dealing in an interesting way with deep psychological trauma as well as the utter misrecognition of adults regarding their teenage incarnations. Even if the effects leave a lot to be desired, many of the film’s highlights are about Keaton’s performance: when he dons the Batsuit 70 minutes in and reasserts his alter ego from his whimsical trampy iteration it gives the heart a lift and pushes the action in a more interesting direction – this narrative is really about men finding the better part of themselves not to mention we’ve had this facet of Keaton before in Multiplicity not to mention the Batman and Birdman personae and he’s having a ball. Meta is where it’s at and there are some extremely good jokes including a final appearance by another Batman which really tickles the funny bone: the multiple Batman concept really gives this a lift. Screenplay by Christina Hodson from a story by John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein and Joby Harold based on DC characters. The Extended Universe is in almost rude good health. Directed by Andy Muschietti who has a cameo as a reporter. Our kids are going to want to see this

No Hard Feelings (2023)

I’ll date his brains out. Montauk, New York. 32-year-old Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is an Uber driver and bartender at a seafood joint. As she owes property taxes on the childhood home she inherited from her late mother, her car is repossessed and she faces bankruptcy. Her ex Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) turns up to tow her car for non-payment of unaffordable property taxes and she sees it parked as she rollerskates to work and gets arrested attempting to steal it. Her surfing lawyer Gabe Sawyer (Zahn McClarnon) bails her out at court and warns her to stay out of trouble. Desperate to keep the home, a piece of real estate so valuable old classmate Doug Khan (Hasan Mihaj) tries to get her to give him the sale. She reminds him of his scandalous sex history with a teacher. Her friends Sara (Natalie Morales) and Jim (Scott MacArthur) are pregnant and hard up and thinking of moving to Florida. Sara points out a weird posting on Craigslist and Maddie feels forced to consider it even though she’s not a prositute. Wealthy couple Alison (Laura Benanti) and Laird Becker (Matthew Broderick) ask her to date their 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) in exchange for a Buick Regal. Since Percy is shy and has had no experiences with girls, drinking, parties, or sex, his parents hope to boost his confidence before he attends Princeton otherwise he will be hopelessly out of his depth. Maddie attempts to seduce Percy at the animal shelter where he volunteers and she pretends to be interested in adopting a dog but when she offers him a ride home, he thinks that she is attempting to kidnap him and pepper sprays her. Despite this, they agree to go on a real date the following day. Maddie and Percy meet at a bar the next night where one of her exes spills the dirt on her and Maddie introduces Percy to alcohol. Then they go skinny dipping at the beach. While they are in the water, a group of drunken teenagers steal their clothes. Maddie fights them in the nude, frightening Percy, who refuses to have sex with her. When she tries to leave without him, he jumps on her car naked and they outrun the local police. She and Percy try to have sex back at her house but he develops an anxiety rash so Maddie takes care of him. Maddie and Percy continue to date, sharing more about themselves and forming a friendship. He arranges to meet his former nanny but it turns out to be a manny named Jody (Kyle Mooney) and he’s jealous of Maddie because he wants to have sex with Percy too. Maddie and Percy confide in each other that they never went to prom. Maddie never went because her father didn’t respond to her requests to get to know him and that morning a letter arrived marked Return to Sender. He was a guy from the city where he lived with his real family and paid off her mother and ignored Maddie altogether. So they imitate a prom night, going to a fancy dinner where Percy plays the piano – he learned Maneater especially for Maddie. Percy meets an acquaintance from school, Natalie (Amalia Yoo) who’s going to Princeton too and she invites him to a party that night. After he and Maddie disagree about their long-term plans, he goes to the party while Maddie searches for him. She finds him with Natalie in bed, though nothing happened between them, after he took a painkiller with alcohol. After he and Maddie are asked to leave the party Percy confesses his love for Maddie. The next day, Percy tells his parents he wants to stay in Montauk with Maddie instead of going to Princeton … Need a car? Date our son. A return to mainstream non-superhero films for Academy Award-winner and newly married wife and mother Lawrence sees her in this Eighties/ Oughties sex comedy with the bonus of full-frontal nudity – hers. As the older woman educating a diffident younger man she has fun in this breezy if frank romp, high on the star’s charms in a screenplay co-written by director Gene Stupnitsky & John Phillips and apparently derived from a real world ad found by the film’s producers. It’s a well-worn story of a sentimental education but told knowingly, referencing everything from The Graduate to The Affair. In a script riddled with ribaldry and lewdness there are lots of good throwaway lines here – such as when Maddie and Sara inform Jim about the different kinds of one night stand a girl can have and when Percy has to have a talk with his parents while he acts as ‘the parents.’ His persistent abstinence is the perfect comic foil to Maddie’s sex drive. However as clever and funny as it is, the mystery persists as to why an A-list actress and producer would do full frontal nudity as Lawrence does here – albeit in an action scene after an open water coitus interruptus that Percy says reminds him of the beginning of Jaws. In the end it all revolves around property – location, pricing, ownership and the hold it has on people. That this ends on a road trip diffuses the issues of identity, class and money that this story is really about. It’s as if Benjamin drove off with Mrs Robinson, which is what should have happened. Isn’t it? Watch out for Achilles-Andreas of Greece (ie almost royalty, not since 1973, natch) in the small role of ‘Teen,’ These people use us so why don’t we use them?

Good-Time Girl (1948)

You are a born sybarite. Juvenile court magistrate Miss Thorpe (Flora Robson) is asked to give advice to a young delinquent Lyla Lawrence (Diana Dors) and recounts the sordid tale of Gwen Rawlings (Jean Kent) who left an abusive family home to take up work in a nightclub run by Max Vine (Herbert Lom) courtesy of fellow boarding house lodger Jimmy Rosso (Peter Glenville). When Rosso beats her up she takes refuge with band owner Red Farrell (Dennis Price) but winds up in an approved school after being framed for theft by Rosso. There she starts ruling the roost with Roberta (Jill Balcon) but sees a chance to escape when a melee erupts one day. She flees to Brighton where Max has a new club and then falls in with a bad crowd again causing a policeman to die in a hit and run. She is robbed by her lover Danny (Griffith Jones) on the London train and found by two GIs on the run (Bonar Colleano and Hugh McDermott) and together they embark on a crime wave … Smile at the customers that way and you’ve got a career in front of you. Adapted from Arthur La Bern’s novel Night Darkens the Street by producer Sydney Box, his wife Muriel Box and Ted Willis, this post-war British crime noir is a vivid, zesty and perfectly lurid cautionary tale. With Kent delivering a fabulously fruity performance amid lines like, You say that again and I’ll cop you a packet, you don’t mind she’s no sixteen-year old. More or less divided into three equal parts – the path to destruction, life at the girls’ borstal and the final spree with the copper-killing and then the GI spree, this simply brims with character and murk. Kent’s relationship with Price is unbelievable of course and this is a different take on the Gainsborough melodrama despite being framed as a sympathetic social realist portrait of JDs which betrays its protagonist by permitting a lie to entrap her and send her into a downward spiral. Great to see Dors in an early role and Daniel Day-Lewis’ mother Balcon giving such a wildcat interpretation. A wonderful portrayal of the grim underworld throbbing behind the neon lights of late Forties Britain. Directed by David MacDonald. You like nice things, don’t you Gwen?

Trent’s Last Case (1952)

 

The crowd is very friendly. English newsman Philip Trent (Michael Wilding) wants to retire and carry on with his art but he is lured back to the fray and reckons American business tycoon Sigsbee Manerson’s (Orson Welles) suicide was murder and that his widow Margaret’s (Margaret Lockwood) lover John Marlowe (John McCallum) did it but a series of interviews yield a very different perspective … Never cultivate a luxury until you can afford to support it as a habit. The third version of the 1913 E.C Bentley murder mystery adapted here by Pamela Bower is a stop-start affair with three flashbacks giving us the story as it might have been, a la Rashomon or even Stage Fright (which also starred Wilding) but there’s so much repetitive staging it might be twenty-three. Producer/director Herbert Wilcox had made a star of his wife Anna Neagle and for reasons one suspects might be nefarious gave her box office rival Lockwood her comeback here after two years away and tied her to a contract that ended her screen career. Hmm. One staid hour in finally sees the appearance of Welles (in the style of The Third Man) or more properly his huge prosthetic proboscis and the brows which enter the room ahead of him, then the plot really unfurls and it’s not as straightforward as the outline suggests. Kenneth Williams gives his best Welsh accent in the witness box, Sam Kydd shows up as a policeman and there’s an opportunity to see the acclaimed pianist Eileen Joyce perform in the concert sequence. For the second time the Manderson case is closed

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Wilfrid the Fox! That’s what they call him, and that’s what he is! When Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) approaches ailing veteran London barrister Sir Wilfrid Roberts (Charles Laughton) to defend him on a charge of murdering a wealthy widow who was enamored of him, going so far as to make him the main beneficiary of her will. Strong circumstantial evidence all points to Vole as the killer. Sir Wilfrid’s nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) objects on the grounds of her client’s ill health. Vole’s former wife Christine Helm (Marlene Dietrich) a German refugee provides an alibi for him. But then she turns up in court to testify against him and Sir Wilfrid is contacted by a mysterious woman, who (for a fee) provides him with letters written by Christine to a mysterious lover named Max  …  I am constantly surprised that women’s hats do not provoke more murders. Adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1953 stage play (based on her 1925 short story) by Larry Marcus with the screenplay by Harry Kurnitz (who had written whodunnits pseudonymously) and director Billy Wilder, who chose this project because he so admired its construction. Essentially, this is his Hitchcock film, a brilliantly made comic suspenser with rat-a-tat dialogue to die for and what an ending! And what stars! In a film which hugely improved on Christie’s characterisation, Dietrich smothers the screen with charisma in both her (dis)guises while Power is superb as the smooth charmer he made his own. Lanchester is gifted as many good lines as anyone in the cast including,  Personally, I think the government should do something about those foreign wives. Like an embargo. How else can we take care of our own surplus. Don’t you agree Sir Wilfrid? Her real-life husband of course plays the wily lawyer and he is magnificent: his expressions and business are masterful. There are some welcome familiar faces – John Williams (a Hitchcock regular), Henry Daniell and Una O’Connor, the only original member of the Broadway cast to reprise her role. Beautifully staged and paced, shot by Russell Harlan on sets by Alexandre Trauner with Dietrich costumed by Edith Head, this breathtaking entertainment is a classic film, an object lesson in adaptation with wit and ingenuity to spare. Both Dietrich and Power sing I May Never Go Home Anymore (uncredited) and this is his last completed film. But this is England, where I thought you never arrest, let alone convict, people for crimes they have not committed

The Divided Heart (1954)

When is the war going to end? After WW2, three year old Yugoslav child Ivan (Martin Keller) is found wandering around alone in Germany and then adopted from an orphanage by a German couple, soldier Franz (Armin Dahlen) and his wife Inga (Cornell Borchers). When Ivan (now called Toni) (Michel Ray) turns 10, he hears his mother Sonja (Yvonne Mitchell) is alive after surviving Auschwitz concentration camp and she commences a legal battle in Germany to regain custody with a sympathetic Chief Justice (Alexander Knox) arguing against his peers (Liam Redmond and Eddie Byrne) as to her rights and the child’s wishes… You think only blood mothers can have mother love. There’s a plaintive quality to this drama, made within a decade of a war that at that point still had visceral effects in daily issues. All the acting is superior but Mitchell is tremendous as the woman who has lost everything bar the son so cruelly taken from her. And he is a child terrorised by the sight of Germans in uniform – that subplot is very well dramatised in his reaction to the appearance of his adoptive father following barely realised memories of what happened to his real family:  his father was a Slovenian partisan executed by Nazis and his sisters were murdered by them. Based on a real-life case, this isn’t just realistic, it’s true in the best sense, filled with conflicting emotions and confused loyalties. Ray is astonishing as the child torn between the adoptive parents he loves and the mother he has forgotten. He would also appear in The Brave One, The Tin Star and Lawrence of Arabia but perhaps his most memorable role would be in cult fave The Space Children. He later became an investment banker and a champion skier, a renaissance man in every sense. Beautifully shot by Otto Heller with an exquisite dramatic score by Georges Auric. Written by Jack Whittingham and Richard Hughes, this is very effectively directed by Charles Crichton. Look out for future director John Schlesinger as the ticket collector on the train in the last scene. This is life. This is what we’re born for

Hurry Sundown (1966)

I’m home. I’m really home.  In 1946, bigoted, draft-dodging, gold-digging Henry Warren (Michael Caine) and his heiress, land-owning wife Julie Ann (Jane Fonda) are determined to sell their land in rural Georgia to owners of a northern canning plant but the deal rests on selling two adjoining plots as well, one owned by Henry’s cousin, returning veteran Rad McDowell (John Philip Law) and his wife Lou (Faye Dunaway, in her film debut); the other by black farmer Reeve Scott (Robert Hooks) whose prematurely aged and sick mother Rose (Beah Richards) had been Julie’s wet nurse. Neither farmer is interested in selling his land, and they form a dangerous and controversial black and white partnership to strengthen their legal claim to their land, which infuriates Henry. When Rose suddenly dies following a failed intervention by Julie, which she doesn’t admit occurred, Henry tries to persuade his wife to charge Reeve with illegal ownership of his property.  Local black teacher Vivian Thurlow (Diahann Carroll) searches the town’s records and uncovers proof that Reeve legally registered the deed to his land. Julie, upset with Henry’s treatment of their mentally challenged six year old son Colie (John Mark), decides to leave him and drops her suit against Reeve. With the help of Ku Klux Klansmen, Henry dynamites the levee above the farms, and tragedy ensues … Certain things are better left to experts. An overripe postwar melodrama that has Message Movie written all over its overacted over-obvious narrative, this was adapted by Thomas C. Ryan and Horton Foote from the 1965 novel by K.B. Gilden (husband and wife writing team Bert and Katya Gilden). Despite the lurid presentation in hotter than thou temperatures with the sun burning up the screen beautifully for cinematographers Loyal Griggs and Milton Krasner it seems undernourished, mainly because the characters are working through some Freudian issues about parenting and it’s told in broad strokes with some performances (like Burgess Meredith as Judge Purcell) bordering on caricature; the presence of Madeleine Sherwood (from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) as his wife reminds us of that other (superior) Deep South saga of family, sex, mendacity, greed and perversity. Henry’s son is retarded and Rad’s eldest son Charles (Steve Sanders) betrays his father, loyal to his cousin instead – there are no good outcomes for men here. The full-on language and sex scenes, complemented by Caine playing the devil’s horn to get his wife in the mood, don’t entirely achieve the effect a more subtle approach might have yielded for a social issue film. It was shot amid huge hostility in Louisiana due to the race theme. (Locally-born critic Rex Reed appears uncredited as a farmer).  Dunaway had to sue director Otto Preminger a huge amount of money to get out of her five-film contract because the two were wholly out of tune with each other. Law does very well here however and he and Fonda would appear together a couple of years later in the notorious Barbarella for her husband Roger Vadim. Do you think the twentieth century will stand still just because you want to hang on to a few little acres?

Bad Education (2019)

You were always the guy in the suits. Long Island, New York, 2002. Dr. Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) is the superintendent of Roslyn School District which oversees Roslyn High School. Frank, along with his assistant superintendent Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) have overseen major improvements in the district, with Roslyn becoming the 4th ranked public school in the country under their watch. This in turn stimulates the local economy, reaping rewards for school board head and real estate broker Bob Spicer (Ray Romano). Frank is beloved by students and parents alike, and sought after by women; Frank claims to have lost his wife several years ago, but is in fact gay, living with Tom Tuggiero (Stephen Spinella) in NYC. While attending a conference in Las Vegas, Frank begins an affair with former student Kyle Contreras (Rafeal Casal) who has given up his dream of writing sci fi for waiting tables and dancing. While writing an article for the Roslyn school paper about an $8m sky bridge the school is planning to construct, student reporter Rachel Bhargava (Geraldine Viswanathan) begins to discover discrepancies in the district’s finances. Unbeknownst to anyone at the school, Frank and Pam are co-conspirators in a massive embezzlement scheme that has cost millions of taxpayer dollars and her steady research leads all the way to the top and when Frank gives up Pam there will be hell to pay ... We come in here at the crack of dawn because we’re good people.  We want you to have a good life. Adapted from Bad Superintendent, a story by Robert Kolker in New York magazine by Mike Makowsky, who was a middle school student in that school district when Tassone was arrested for grand larceny.  Viswanathan isn’t a particularly interesting performer but she does what all journalists have done since watching All the President’s Men – she follows the money. It’s dogged old-school reporting stuff, looking at purchase orders, not finding receipts and then questioning everyone concerned.  It’s fun to see those moments with her doubtful student paper editor Nick Fleischman (Alex Wolff) doing a junior Ben Bradlee. The moment one hour in where she finds the so-called offices of the school’s pamphlet producer and realises it’s Tassone’s plush apartment where he’s co-habiting with a man is brilliantly done – capped when Tassone arrives and sees her desperate to leave the building. Jackman is superb as a charismatic man with many secrets, utilising his ability to psychoanalyse everyone around him to get the better of them since he seems to care so much about them. For the longest time we don’t even know the extent of his involvement as information is drip fed slowly through the narrative. His vanity is reflected in the scenes with him attending to his cosmetic routine, culminating in surgery. Jackman finds ways to plumb the breadth of the character and elicit empathy, stealing our hearts as easily as expensing first class flights to London with his boyfriend and deflecting come-ons from women in the parents’ association book club. Janney is superb in a chewy role – able to talk her way out of trouble, trying to buy her children’s affections even when her son is a total loser and ultimately choosing the path of revenge. Erring more on the dramatic rather than the comedic side of genre, this gives a rare insight into white collar crime – the quotidian corruption that afflicts cosy cartels running public bodies leading to those occasional stupefying headlines when you see something has gone bust yet all the admin people are living high on the hog while their workplaces are falling apart with damp. The sidebars about food intake, digestive issues, cosmetics, clothes, jewellery, pushy parenting and spoiling wrong ‘uns are well judged subplots amplifying the drudgery of the teaching environment and the desire to rise above the mere plebs. It’s wordy, it’s smart, it’s filled with people covering their asses and it’s called the ring of truth. Directed by Cory Finley. I am not the sociopath here

The Beach Bum (2019)

He may be a jerk, but he’s a great man. Moondog (Matthew McConaughey) is a fun-loving, pot-smoking, beer-drinking writer who lives life on his own terms in Key West, Florida. Luckily, his wealthy wife Minnie (Isla Fisher) loves him for exactly those qualities. She lives further up the coast in Miami and cavorts about with Lingerie (Snoop Dogg) courtesy of their open marriage. Following his daughter Heather’s (Stefania LaVie Owen) wedding, a tragic accident brings unexpected changes to Moondog’s relaxed lifestyle. Suddenly, putting his literary talent to good use and finishing his next great book is a more pressing matter than he would have liked it to be and he embarks upon a life-changing quest, encountering all kinds of freaks en route including a dolphin tour guide Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence), a sociopathic roomie Flicker (Zac Efron) in rehab and Southern friend and good ol’ boy Lewis (Jonah Hill) … I gotta go low to get high. An extraordinary looking piece of auteur work from Harmony Korine, courtesy of the inventive and beautiful shooting of cinematographer Benoît Debie, this is a nod to McConaughey’s arch stoner credentials and the persona he established back in Dazed and Confused. And what about this for an example of his poetry:  Look down at my penis./ Knowing it was inside you twice today/Makes me feel beautiful.  He is convinced the world is conspiring to make him happy no matter what happens. There’s little plot to speak of once the main action is established in the first thirty minutes but what unspools is so genial and unforced and funny that you can’t help but wish you were part of the woozy hedonistic bonhomie. Jimmy Buffett appears as … Jimmy Buffett in a film that’s so Zen it’s horizontal. Bliss. We can do anything we want or nothing at all