The Beekeeper (2024)

I’m the beekeeper. I protect the hive. Rural Massachusetts. Retired schoolteacher Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) lives by herself on an isolated property but she has a tenant in her barn, Adam Clay (Jason Statham) who lives a quiet life as a beekeeper. Eloise falls for an online phishing scam and is robbed of over $2 million, the majority of which belongs to an educational charity she manages. Devastated, she dies by gunshot. Clay finds her body and is immediately arrested by FBI Agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Eloise’s daughter. After her mother’s death is ruled a suicide, Clay is released. Verona tells him the group that robbed Eloise has been on the FBI’s radar for a while but is difficult to track. Wanting justice for Eloise, Clay contacts the Beekeepers, a mysterious group, to find the scammers responsible. Clay receives an address for the scammers: a call centre run by Mickey Garnett (David Witts). Clay scares off the employees and destroys the building. Garnett informs his boss, technology executive Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), who sends Garnett to kill Clay. A violent confrontation ensues where Clay kills Garnett’s men and severs Garnett’s fingers. Garnett calls Danforth while stopped at a bridge, informing him that Clay is a Beekeeper. Having followed Garnett, Clay drags him off the bridge with a truck to his death and warns Danforth that he is coming after him. Danforth informs former CIA director Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons), who is currently running security for Danforth Enterprises at the request of Derek’s mother, Jessica, about Clay. Concerned, Wallace contacts the current CIA director Janet Harward (Minnie Driver) hoping to stope Clay. She contacts the Beekeepers and learns that Clay has retired from the organisation. The Beekeepers subsequently declare neutrality after Clay kills the current Beekeeper Anisette Landress (Megan Le) sent to kill him at a gas station. Meanwhile, Verona and her partner, Agent Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi), figure that Clay will assault the Nine Star United Centre in Boston, which oversees all of Derek’s global scam call centers. After informing FBI Deputy Director Prigg (Don Gilet) that Clay is a Beekeeper, they are shocked to get all the support they ask for. Wallace coordinates a group of ex-special forces personnel, revealing to them that the Beekeepers are a highly skilled and dangerous secret human intelligence organisation tasked with protecting the United States, operating above and beyond governmental jurisdiction. To improve their chances at stopping Clay, Wallace orders the group to secure the inside of the Nine Star Building, while the FBI places their own SWAT team around the perimeter. Danforth’s decision to not evacuate the employees enables Clay to quickly defeat the FBI SWAT team and infiltrate the building. After wiping out all of Wallace’s ex-Special Forces group, Clay proceeds to interrogate the manager, who reveals that Danforth is his boss. Verona informs Prigg that Danforth runs both companies, which several US government agencies use. Verona also brings up the point that not only will Clay try to kill Derek but he may also kill Jessica (Jemma Redgrave), the president of the United States, due to her association with the scam … Beekeepers keep working until they die. The Stath is back! And he’s in pursuit of righteous vengeance in this entertaining and well motivated thriller albeit this probably has the highest body count since the last John Wick entry with added fingers for electronic passes. Was it Aristotle that said character is action?! Literal to the nth degree, we have someone acting out his nominatively determined hobby, and killing his honey bees is just the worst thing you could do to the masked one. I taught CIA software to hunt money and not terrorists. The opening sequence is clear and concise – then we’re brought into a world where a very unlikely character (a very different looking Hutcherson as Derek) turns out to be the son of someone very important indeed – and while Redgrave is clearly powerful the big reveal doesn’t happen until c74 minutes into the running time – at which point many, many people have rued their crossing the Beekeeper. I will never steal from the weak and the vulnerable again! Then the action unspools at a supposedly impenetrable venue followed by a party at a coastal estate where Clay has to contend with a comic book South African mercenary Lazarus (Taylor James) who got unlucky the last time he met a Beekeeper and has the prosthetic leg to prove it. Obviously, this has to be the ultimate encounter. Throughout there are gnomic nods on the one hand to bees (what else) but on the other to the offspring of US Presidents with winks at the ethics of campaign fundraising, a fun set of references in election year. And this will not dissuade anyone of the justifiable fear that technology is theft. At the end of the day Mr Clay disappears just like the man with Black Magic chocolates – or James Bond. What a guy! He’s absolutely fucking terrifying! Truly the strong mostly silent killing machine. The well-hewn screenplay is written by Kurt Wimmer with tongue firmly in cheek and directed by David Ayer with stunning cinematography from Gabriel Beristain. Sometimes when the hive is out of balance you have to replace the queen

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

Knight and Day (2010)

Sometimes things happen for a reason. June Havens (Cameron Diaz) is a car fanatic preparing to board a flight back home for her sister’s wedding when she bumps into Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) in the middle of a busy airport. A few minutes later, they’re making small talk on the plane when June excuses herself to the bathroom, and all hell breaks loose in the fuselage. By the time June emerges with her makeup fixed and ready for some romance, Roy has killed everybody on board, including the pilots. After crash-landing the plane in a darkened cornfield, Roy tells June that she should expect a visit from government agents, but warns her that by cooperating with them she risks almost certain death. He drugs her and she wakes up at home the following day, and his prediction comes true when June is confronted by a group of CIA agents who come under heavy fire while bombarding her with questions about her mysterious companion who it transpires is a lethal CIA operative who is to be feared. Suddenly, Roy is back, whisking June away to safety and away from her ex, fireman Rodney (Mark Blucas).  Before long the girl who never travelled far from home and doesn’t even possess a passport is off on an impromptu global adventure that takes her from the Azores to Austria, France, and Spain. Somewhere in all of the confusion and gunfire, June begins to forge a bond with Roy, a disgraced spy who’s trying to clear his name while trying to avoid being murdered. Unfortunately, it’s never quite clear whether he’s one of the good guys and by the time he reveals that he’s attempting to protect a valuable new energy source, a never-ending battery hidden in a toy knight and created by an autistic wunderkind called Simon Feck (Paul Dano), he’s got to protect him from not just his former colleague Fitz (Peter Sarsgard) but also a gang keen to get it for themselves … Nobody follows us or I kill myself and then her. A completely nutty action comedy with thrills, spills and mayhem is just what the doctor ordered so here it is, a star vehicle perfectly tailored to the respective talents of Cruise and Diaz, previously paired in the rather (in)different Vanilla Sky and taking place on planes, trains, automobiles and motorbikes. And yet they weren’t meant to be the stars when this was originally mooted and of the twelve writers – you read correctly, twelve – only one, Patrick O’Neill, gets credited. It takes some narrative shortcuts – every time June might pose a problem, Roy drugs her – but he doesn’t take advantage (no, really!) and she has some skills, and she gets to use them in the wittiest way possible no matter that she might fire off in all directions. Totally left field, barmy fun with amazing stunts, a stunning car-bike chase in the middle of a bull run and a nice twist ending. That’s Gal Gadot as a spy in a restaurant. Directed by James Mangold. Who are you?

Little Women (2019)

If the main character’s a girl she has to be married at the end. Or dead. In 1860s New England after the Civil War, Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) lives in New York and makes her living as a writer and teacher, sending money home, while her sister Amy (Florence Pugh) studies painting in Paris under the aegis of her wealthy Aunt March (Meryl Streep). Amy has a chance encounter with Theodore Laurence aka Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), a childhood crush from the upper class family next door who proposed to Jo but was ultimately rejected. Their oldest sibling, Meg (Emma Watson) is married to impoverished tutor John Brooke (James Norton) ,while shy sister Beth (Emma Scanlen) develops a devastating illness that brings the family back together under the leadership of their mother Marmee (Laura Dern) who is sad about her husband (Bob Odenkirk) being away in the War as a volunteer for the Union Army. As Jo recalls their experiences coming of age, she has to learn the hard way from a newspaper editor Mr Dashwood (Tracy Letts) and a fellow schoolteacher Professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel) that her writing needs a lot of work if it’s to authentically represent her talent… I will always be disappointed at being a girl. Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved American classic jumps around pivotal episodes and reorders them from present to past and back again, back and forth, to create a coherent, rising and falling set of emotions. Each sister has a distinct personality and aspirations;  each is valid, according to their wants and needs and desires; and each is bestowed a dignity. Ronan shines as Jo but all four are carefully delineated and Pugh as selfish Amy has the greatest emotional arc but she should sue the costumier for failing to tailor her clothes to her stocky figure. Watson isn’t quite right for Meg and her lack of technique is plain. Somehow though it’s always poor Beth who doesn’t get what she deserves:  charity does not begin at home in her case. Some things never change. Despite the liberties taken structurally the story feels rather padded and at 135 minutes it could do with at least 20 minutes being cut because the screenplay keeps retreading the same territory and spoonfeeds the audience in issues of equality and womanhood with whole dialogue exchanges that sound as though they’ve come from a contemporary novel. Even Marmee confesses to being angry all the time. The issue of copyright introduces an aspect of authorship in the last section which has a few different endings. Being a creative writer is one thing;  being an editor is quite different. Each serves a purpose and that is to serve the story well. A film that ultimately has as little faith in its audience as publisher Mr Dashwood has in his readership, this is undoubtedly of its time and it can stand the tinkering that has introduced Alcott’s own story into the mix with the ultimate fairytale ending for any writer – holding her first book in her hands.  Produced by Amy Pascal, who also worked on the 1994 version directed by Gillian Armstrong. Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for

 

 

Lizzie (2018)

Your face is familiar – perhaps it’s the scent that’s throwing me off.  In 1892 Lizzie Borden (Chloë Sevigny) lives a quiet life in Massachusetts under the strict rules established by her father, unscrupulous businessman Andrew (Jamey Sheridan) who has remarried to Abby (Fiona Shaw). Lizzie finds a kindred spirit in the new live-in Irish maid, Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart), called ‘Maggie’ by everyone else since her real identity is immaterial, and friendship soon blossoms into a secret romance. Tension mounts in the Borden household, with Mr Borden raping Bridget with his wife’s knowledge, Lizzie’s maternal uncle town constable John Morse (Denis O’Hare) attempting to rape her, and all over the inheritance which will one day be hers and her sister Emma’s (Kim Dickens) but which Lizzie discovers is now intended for Abby. All the while, Andrew is receiving written threats to do with his acquisition of local land … This attachment you’ve formed is unhealthy, and it must end. We all know the rhyme even if we don’t quite know its origins:  Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.  How fascinating that one-time It Girl Sevigny shepherded this production and teamed up opposite current It Girl and European art house darling Stewart, who nailed her millennial credentials long ago but took a leftward swerve into seriously good auteur territory. This is almost Bergmanesque in its studied still centre, so that the final sequences revealing in flashbacks the violent axe-murders as they happened, give a virtually orgasmic climax to pent up anger: well if someone brutally killed your pets and served them up for dinner, wouldn’t you? How not to be a parent 101. This refusal of emotionality and virtually flat, undemonstrative performances, until the unleashing, almost deprives us of empathy – but not quite. The stars are terrific in this low-key presentation of a lurid story.  Written by Bryce Kass and impressively directed by Craig William Macneill.  And at last, we are on equal footing, father 

 

 

Tormented (1960)

No one will ever have you! Jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) lives on the beach in Cape Cod and is preparing to marry Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders) when old flame Vi Mason (Juli Reding) turns up to stop him and falls to her death from the local lighthouse when he refuses to lend her a hand as the railing breaks.  Wet footprints turn up on his mat, a hand reaches out to him, Vi’s voice haunts him and he starts behaving strangely particularly in front of Meg’s little sister Sandy (Susan Gordon).  Blind landlady Mrs Ellis (Lillian Adams) explains to him that similarly supernatural stuff happened when someone else died in the area. Then the beatnik ferry captain Nick (Joe Turkel)  who took Vi to the island to see Tom appears and starts getting suspicious that she never returned particularly when wedding bells are in the air … I’m going to live my life again and stop running. With a pedigree crew – director Bert I. Gordon co-wrote with regular collaborator George Worthing Yates – who did the screenplays for some great pirate movies and sci fis including Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, which starred Hugh Marlowe, frequently mistaken for Richard Carlson – you’d be expecting a class act. And it’s a good story hampered by a minuscule budget which gives off a different kind of aroma. The effects are hilarious – particularly good is some woman’s hand entering frame when Tom is in young Sandy’s company and he hits it and runs off.  Sandy sees nothing, of course. My favourite moment is when Vi’s disembodied head appears and Tom reaches out and enjoys a tussle with a blonde wig which he then wraps in paper and throws down a step only to have it picked up by his blackmailer and opens it only to find dead flowers. Despite Carlson’s character mutating into a murderous beast and his ex spinning a Monroe-esque vibe, and the hilarious hey-daddy-o exchanges with the beatnik boatman (whom you’ll recognise as Lloyd the bartender in The Shining), by far the most complex performance comes from young Gordon (the director’s wonderfully talented daughter). The ending is satisfying indeed if you like really proper ghost stories. However if you think you’re going to hear some decent jazz, well, it’s hardly a priority in a camp outing such as this. This was Sanders’ last film in a strangely brief career.  She’s a perfume, she’s a footprint, she’s a hand, she’s a space in a picture

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

No, I am not finished. Look, I’m gettin’ old, you hear? Ageing low-level Boston gunrunner Eddie ‘Fingers’ Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is looking at several years of jail for a hold-up if he doesn’t funnel information to treasury agent Dave Foley (Richard Jordan) so he has to decide whether to turn stoolie. He buys guns from another gunrunner, Jackie Brown (Steven Keats), then gives him up to Foley, but it’s not enough. Conflicted, Eddie decides to also give up the gang of bank robbers he’s been supplying, only to find Foley already knows about them, and the mob believes Eddie snitched. The real permanent cop fink, barkeep Dillon (Peter Boyle) is called upon to render a service .. I wished I had a nickel for every name I got that was all right.  It could only be Robert Mitchum, couldn’t it, in this great gangster flick, one of the best films of the Seventies. Adapted from George V. Higgins’ classic novel, a gripping iteration of the Irish-American underworld given a stately interpretation by producer Paul Monash who knows just how to put the boot into that old saw about honour among thieves and how you really shouldn’t trust cops cos they’re just another gang.  There is nothing wrong with this film. It’s a snapshot of an anti-romantic world which we believe to be utterly true, and no higher compliment can you give a film. Mitchum is so good and gives such a committed performance as this determinedly anti-heroic loser that you cannot think of anyone else in the role. You believe a guy would shut a drawer on this bozo’s hand. The tone is just right, the danger palpable, the parameters real, the tension total. We’re looking at the world of Whitey Bulger and his gang in reality (Peter Boyle is Dillon, the avatar for Bulger, although Higgins denied the connection). Mitchum wanted to meet some of the real crims but was cautiously directed elsewhere although cast member Alex Rocco (he plays bank robber Jimmy Scalise) who had been associated with the Winter Hill gang and served a prison term during the Boston Irish Gang Wars in the Sixties prior to his name change and a Hollywood career may have made some introductions to the man who actually killed the prototype for Coyle. Let’s talk about screenwriter Monash who was a producer and TV scriptwriter (Peyton Place, among others) but really wanted to write a great novel. He was so good that Orson Welles tapped him to do rewrite work on Touch of Evil but for those of us who grew up in the Eighties he’s the guy who brought Salem’s Lot to the screen putting me at least behind a cushion and a couch to bridge the distance from the screen in order to somehow stop the fear (it didn’t); as well as a fantastic TVM remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, the series V and a very memorable film about Huey Long, Kingfish. Let’s not forget the wonderful British director Peter Yates who brings all his considerable weight and lightness of touch to this incredibly atmospheric production.  He’s made some of my favourite movies including Bullitt and Breaking Away, The Hot Rock, Eyewitness and this. He directed my friend Shane Connaughton’s quasi-autobiographical Irish production The Run of the Country and was responsible for a fantastic mini-series of Don Quixote starring John Lithgow. Not only that, he managed the legendary racer Stirling Moss in his heyday. Good grief I love the man! This is great, resonant filmmaking, desperate, downbeat and convincing with an incredible cast, including my beloved Joe Santos, Margaret Ladd and Helena Carroll. Listen to that dialogue:  it’s rare, raw and relentless. With friends like these, well, you know.  I shoulda known better than to trust a cop. My own goddamn mother coulda told me that

The Senator (2017)

Aka Chappaquiddick. To Ted. And the White House in ’72. On July 18, 1969, following a party with RFK’s secretaries (the Boiler Room Girls), his cousin Joseph Gargan (Ed Helms) and the attorney general for Massachusetts Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan), Senator Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke) drives his car off of a bridge into Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island. The accident results in the death of his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara), a 28-year-old campaign strategist who worked for Kennedy and who had quit as Bobby’s secretary in the wake of his death and whom Ted is attempting to woo into a relationship. He rushes back to the beach house they’ve rented and asks Gargan and Markham to help him see if Mary Jo is alive and when they can’t retrieve her from the upended car he persuades them to say nothing while he claims he will report the accident. The following morning word is out that the car has been found while he enjoys breakfast at a local diner and Gargan and Markham discover he didn’t report the incident and his bedbound father mutters the word alibi in a phonecall … I want you to know that every effort possible was made to save her. The patina long having slid off the Kennedy family’s halo, this is far from a hagiography yet it still leaves many unanswered questions. The long shadow of his brothers –  Joe was the favourite one, Jack was charming, Bobby was brilliant and I’m stupid – hung over Ted Kennedy, the boy who cheated at school, on his wife and then finally did something so horrifically spineless a year after RFK’s murder it destroyed the hope that this papa’s boy would become the second President in the family. I can be charming. I can be brilliant. I’m the only one left! There is nothing new here but what is interesting structurally is how this is bookended by a TV interview which Ted departs when the reporter introduces the subject of JFK’s legacy;  and concludes in his onscreen admission of guilt in Kopechne’s death while Joe watches from his sick bed and the public in Massachusetts are asked in a live vox pop how they feel about him potentially becoming President:  television’s role in politics was ingeniously utilised by the photogenic JFK and its influence seized upon by his wife when she decided to do some home decorating. The shadow not just of JFK but of TV news haunts Ted a week later when he and his kids sit around watching the moon landing and his young son reminds him all this space exploration is down to his dead uncle. No wonder Ted didn’t have a decent bone in his body:  imagine being the least promising son of a philandering billionaire bootlegger bully with political power who dallied with the Mafia (allegedly). The tragedy that this recounts of course is not that of the Kennedys but of the Kopechnes, whose daughter was made of such stern stuff that she quit politics when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and on 18 July 1969 she fought valiantly for her life, probably for hours, eventually succumbing to underwater suffocation evidenced by the post mortem foaming from her nostrils dramatised in some very distressing but necessary crosscutting – while Ted and his friends began the misguided cover up, subsequently engineered at the behest of a mostly mute stroke-afflicted Joe Kennedy (Bruce Dern) by the henchmen led by Robert McNamara (Clancy Brown) and Ted Sorensen (Taylor Nichols) who had been at JFK’s side when he took the 1960 election.  However the Kopechnes didn’t utter a squeak of protest. Nobody cared about Mary Jo or who killed her. There is little insight beyond the usual cod Freudian clichés of what made Ted tick.  Perhaps the post hoc paradox is that he went on to become just about the best legislator the United States Senate ever had, leaving a far more tangible legacy in his wake than that bequeathed by his charismatic but corruptible murdered brothers. A sobering portrait of the power wielded by the Kennedys on those in their immediate circle and those who should have resisted their supposed charm, this incomplete work was written by Andrew Logan and Taylor Allen and directed by John Curran.  I could have got her out of the car in 25 minutes if I got the call but no one called

Father Figures (2017)

I can feel your brother inside you. Oddball twin brothers, uptight proctologist Peter (Ed Helms) and laidback face of BBQ sauce Kyle (Owen Wilson) attend their mother Helen’s (Glen Close) wedding. While watching his go-to TV Law and Order SVU, Peter becomes obsessed with the idea that his biological father whose photo he’s kept resembles an actor on the show. Helen admits the photo’s a fake and she slept around ‘cos it was the 70s and says their father didn’t die after all – he was footballer Terry Bradshaw, now resident in Florida with a car dealership. The men take off on a road trip that sees them travelling the East Coast for answers … I stare at assholes all day long because of a fictional man’s colon cancer. Best thought of (if at all) as a kind of lewd fairytale (every father figure gives an inadvertent helping hand to the brothers resolving their fractious relationship, the fairy godfather is a lisping African-American hitchhiker); or a male Mamma Mia! in reverse with a kind of Wizard of Oz ending. I’m not sure that that much construction went into this but there are some funny moments (including a very lateral idea about Irish Twins…) despite – and this is a grievous insult – putting the marvellous Harry Shearer into the thankless role of Close’s new husband and a pissing competition with a kid. I mean, come on. Directed by cinematographer Lawrence Sher, making his debut with a screenplay by Justin Malen. I understand how Luke Skywalker felt now.

The Leisure Seeker (2017)

It’s just something I really need to do with your father.  Retired English teacher John Spencer (Donald Sutherland) and wife Ella (Helen Mirren) take off in their RV without telling anyone in order to escape a probable nursing home (him, with Alzheimer’s) and a punishing chemo regime (her, for cancer). They abandon grown up son Will (Christian McKay) who cares for them each day, despite knowing it’s his sister Jane (Janel Moloney) who’s the favoured offspring and college professor a comfortable couple of hours away. The siblings are up the walls about the disappearance. Even neighbour Lillian (Dana Ivey) is out of the loop. The couple negotiate the Seventies vehicle down the east coast via camp sites, diners, the world’s slowest police chase, historical re-enactments, a stint in a home and occasional beaches, to their eventual destination, the home of John’s hero, Ernest Hemingway, in Key West.  En route their journey has revelations, massive doses of forgetfulness, a holdup, a posh hotel, a terrible (unconscious) admission, illness and phonecalls home… Michael Zadoorian’s novel is adapted by Italian director Paolo Virzi, making his English language feature debut, with Stephen Amidon, Francesca Archibugi and Francesco Piccolo, and it bears up considerably better than you might think. This isn’t just down to the playing of the leads, who are brilliant, although Mirren’s Savannah accent slips a lot.  There are lovely moments particularly when Sutherland is regaling waitresses with lines from his favourite books and when one confesses she’s done her thesis on it he’s in hog heaven. Ella prefers the movie adaptations. They are a joy to watch, sparking off one another and falling into old habits and new ideas.  Their life together is recalled in tranquil bouts of watching slides on a sheet outside the RV at night when they’re camping. Their days are about coping and how exhausting it is to be a carer and to be ill but also how genuinely in love they have been and how that materialises in their concern for one another. Sutherland’s recurring obsession with Mirren’s first boyfriend from fifty years earlier has a funny payoff.  How she deals with his husbandly failing is hilarious.  His physical response to one medication is … unexpected! But its success is also to do with the deep understanding of Alzheimer’s which causes bouts of memory loss and bullying all too familiar to anyone with a relative suffering its predations – I laughed aloud with recognition far too many times.  While this is concerned with ageing in a semi-comic context it’s a very pointed narrative about the ways in which older people are made feel lousy about their right to exist, how they are treated when they are beginning to become infirm and the radical element here is how one couple choose how to live and exit gracefully when they take the opportunity (even if one of them doesn’t really know what in hell is going on). Immensely enjoyable.