Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)

One decision – one small mistake – can change everything. Federal police detective Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) attempts to coerce further information about an international money laundering scheme from a company employee, Alice Russell (Anna Torv) but she refuses to give him any further information when he approaches her on the school run. The next day, she embarks on a corporate team-building hiking retreat to the rainforest in the (fictitious) Giralang Ranges of Victoria with four other company employees, her boss Jill Bailey (Deborra-Lee Furness), childhood friend Lauren (Robin McLeavy) and sisters Brianna aka Bree (Lucy Ansell) and Bethany aka Beth (Sisi Stringer). Three days later, Falk receives an incomprehensible phonecall from Alice which quickly drops out, only to later be informed by fellow agent Carmen Cooper (Jacqueline McKenzie) that Alice’s hiking partners had returned from their trip injured and Alice is missing. Suspecting something has happened to her due to her being a whistle blower, Falk and Cooper quickly join the search to find her. In flashbacks, it is revealed that Falk’s mother Jenny (Ash Ricardo) also disappeared from the same area during a hiking trip with him (Archie Thomson) and his father Erik (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor). After tirelessly searching for her for days, the pair finally found her injured and malnourished but she ultimately died shortly afterwards in hospital. Alice’s co-workers reveal that during the first night of the trip, Jill’s husband Daniel (Richard Roxburgh) who was responsible for the laundering scheme, met up with the group and led Alice away from them. Afterwards, Alice became frantic and desperate to leave the trip early even after Daniel has left. Brianna, who’s been hospitalised due to a bite from a funnel web spider, reveals that she’d misread the map in her hungover state and caused the group to become lost. While attempting to follow the river back home, the map falls into the water and Lauren is injured while attempting to retrieve it. Bethany later admits to Falk that she previously had a drug problem, which had resulted her in serving jail time due to her neighbours reporting her for selling her sister’s belongings for drug money, which resulted in Alice not trusting her. The group continues on and Jill finds out that Alice has seemingly been intentionally leading the group in the wrong direction and becomes furious. The next day, the group discovers an abandoned cabin and decide to stay there for the night despite Alice’s protests. Later on, they discover the gravesite of a dog, causing Alice to insist they may be on the hunting grounds of an infamous serial killer who lured his female victims using his dog, but the group brushes her fear off as her trying to persuade them to leave the cabin … Your mind starts to play tricks on you out there. You get really paranoid. That talented Australian novelist Jane Harper wrote one of the best novels of the past decade The Dry and following its successful adaptation starring the great Eric Bana a followup was destined to be on the cards – the 2017 novel Force of Nature came first and this adaptation was made in 2022 in a very different and non-dry environment. Perhaps it should be called The Damp. Everyone is soaking. Moving deep into the undergrowth of the rainforest acts as a kind of metaphor for a story that has many tangled strands – Aaron’s own psyche and past, his association with whistleblower Alice, her school-age daughter Margot’s (Ingrid Torelli) alleged bullying of her colleague Lauren’s daughter Rebecca (Matilda May Pawsey), the financial misdeeds at Alice’s company boss and the crimes of a four decades-old serial killer in the very area Alice is missing. Knitting these together into a coherent screen story seems almost impossible very quickly particularly when the four remaining women’s recollections resemble those of Rashomon – overlapping, contradictory and untruthful. Linking the search for Alice with Aaron’s retracing his steps into his own history with a trip taken alongside his parents seems a trope too far – and one presumes it forms a link to the notorious serial killer – yet clever construction, transitions and characterisation through the twists and turns of a mystery plot ultimately keep everything from tipping too far into the realm of coincidence or predictability. The local police sergeant Vince King (Kenneth Radley) wonders why Aaron is really out here, a long way from finance fraudsters. Paired with the brusque Carmen, Aaron’s forced introspection means that the flashbacks conjoining his mother’s predicament with Alice’s situation force them – or squeeze them – into the same narrative loop. The undercurrent of female relationships – at work, mothering, friendship and colleagues – with their basis in bullying is never far from the surface. And could they be any worse prepared for this trek? Can we just keep this between the five of us please? And, the quid pro quo into which Alice has been forced by the feds for what she was prepared to do for her daughter is the moral quandary that literally turns this in to a guilt trip writ large, adding melodrama to an already busy screenplay. Everyone has reason to dislike and even motive to kill Alice but we find ourselves asking why sisters are working at the same company and why Alice and Lauren are friends. It seems unlikely. Perhaps this structure dilutes the impact of the first film with the multiple storylines and one unresolved plot issue but Bana is somehow the still centre of the complications, a restless soul with a desk job whose past knowledge of the territory makes it more navigable. Even with a background in tragedy however this doesn’t have the emotional resonance it strives for and the mood is broken by issues of plotting placing it at some distance from a famous Aussie film about a disappearance, Picnic at Hanging Rock. It helps that this is lined out with some of the country’s best (and best known) actors with Torv now an international name thanks to TV’s The Newsreader, while Furness, a scene-stealing Roxburgh and an underused McKenzie are a pleasingly familiar ensemble, driven by a powerful score from Peter Raeburn. Beautifully shot in a number of Victoria parklands by Andrew Commis, this is written and directed by Robert Connolly, reprising his role from the first film. At least out there Nature holds us all to account

Deja Vu (2006)

See you yesterday. New Orleans. A ferry carrying US Navy sailors and their families across the Mississippi River for the Mardi Gras celebrations explodes, killing 543 people. ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) Special Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) evidence of a bomb planted by a domestic terrorist and goes to the mortuary where he examines the body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) seemingly killed in the explosion but found in the river shortly before the time of the blast. Informing Claire’s father and searching her apartment, Doug learns that she called his ATF office the morning of the bombing and figures out that she was abducted and killed by the bomber hours before the explosion. Impressed with Doug’s deductive ability, FBI Special Agent Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) invites him to join a new governmental unit investigating the bombing. Led by Dr. Alexander Denny (Adam Goldberg) the team uses a surveillance programme called Snow White which they claim uses previous satellite footage to form a triangulated image of events four-and-a-half days in the past. Convinced that Claire is a vital link to the unfolding bomb plot, Doug watches her footage and can track the soon-to-be-bomber when he calls about a truck she has for sale. Figuring out that Snow White is actually a time window, Doug persuades the team to send a note to his past self with the time and place the suspect will be. However it’s his partner Larry Minuti (Matt Craven) finds the note instead, and is shot attempting to arrest the suspect. By using a mobile Snow White unit, Doug is able to follow the suspect’s past movements as he flees to his hideout with the wounded Minuti and then witnesses Minuti’s murder. In the present, the bomber is taken into custody after facial recognition systems identify him as Carroll Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel) an unstable self-proclaimed patriot rejected from enlisting in the military. He confesses to killing Minuti and Claire, taking her truck to transport the bomb and staging her death as one of the ferry victims. The government closes the investigation, but Doug, convinced that Snow White can be used to alter history persuades Denny to send him back to the morning of the bombing so he can save Claire and prevent the explosion … What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world but you knew they would never believe you? The premise of this dazzling sci-fi action thriller is perfectly preposterous but is set up so persuasively it never fails to engage. It helps that this has Washington at his most movie star-ish as you’d expect in his third of five collaborations with director Tony Scott, whose command of the medium is embellished by Paul Cameron’s elegant cinematography. For once in my life I’d like to catch somebody before they do something horrible. The actual time capsule that Doug enters literally enables a race against time. What if it’s more than physics? That’s what Doug suggests to elevate rationale for the potential experience because he’s fallen head over heels for the gorgeous Claire on the mortician’s slab so he calls it spirituality but it’s good old fashioned romance – and he means to have this woman come back from the dead. Seeing her eventually spring back to life is fabulous. One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot. As the domestic murderer paying homage to Oklahoma, Caviezel has the blankness to match his unshakeable convictions that what he is doing is righteous. Satan reasons like a man but God thinks of eternity, Doug counters with unarguable post hoc knowledge which momentarily throws his captive. Then there’s nothing for it but to enter the world as it was days earlier – and to alter one more bit of history to try change the outcome for hundreds of people: alt-history as we watch. There’s a terrific supporting cast including Kilmer and also Bruce Greenwood and the director’s wife, Donna. Super-stylish, fast-moving and an avowed homage to the great city of N’Oleans, cher. Written by Bill Marsilli & Terri Rossio. I see what’s coming

One Life (2023)

Lots of them grew up thinking the worst thing that was ever going to happen to them was piano practice. 1987, Maidenhead, England. Retired 79-year old Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) cleans up some of the clutter in his office, which his wife (Lena Olin) Grete asked him to do. He finds old documents in which he recorded his pre-war work for the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia and a scrapbook with photos and lists of the children they wanted to bring to safety. Winton still blames himself for not being able to save more. In 1938 just weeks after the signing of the Munich Agreement 29-year-old London stockbroker Nicholas (Johnny Flynn) encounters families in Prague who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria. They are living in bad conditions with little or no shelter or food and in fear of the invasion of the Nazis. Winton is introduced to Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) (BCRC). Horrified by the situation in the refugee camps, Winton decides to save Jewish children himself. Actively supported by his mother Babette (Helena Bonham Carter) herself a German-Jewish migrant who has since converted to the Church of England he overcomes bureaucratic hurdles, collects donations and looks for foster families for the children brought to England. Many of them are Jews who are at imminent risk of deportation. When the Nazis invade, Doreen and Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp) face unimaginable danger themselves. 1987: at lunch with his old friend Martin (Jonathan Pryce) Nicholas thinks about what he should do with all the documents. He is considering donating them to a Holocaust museum but at the same time he wants to draw some attention to the current plight of refugees, so he does not do it. I started the whole thing so I have to finish it. 1938: A race against time begins as it is unclear how long the borders will remain open before the inevitable Nazi invasion. The ninth train has yet to leave the platform when the Nazis invade Poland … You have to let go for your own sake. Based upon Winton’s life story which culminated in an absurdly moving reunion on a 1988 edition of TV’s That’s Life show hosted by Esther Rantzen (played here by Samantha Spiro), this true story from a screenplay by Lucinda Coxon & Nick Drake is a timely reminder of the ongoing plight of Jewish children in an anti-semitic world and the bravery of the pre-war humanitarians who sought to save them from certain and brutal death at the hands of the Germans. Part of the drama is the underplayed revelation that Winton himself has been assimilated in the UK, pivoting his role into one of recognition of the There but for the grace of God variety. Fifty years later Winton is still raising funds for refugees, still plagued by a sense of guilt that he could have done so much more for his own Kindertransports. I’ve learned to keep my imagination in check so I can still be of use and not go raving mad. Perhaps the feel-good factor predominates as opposed to the reality of what the children experienced but this is intended as an uplifting tale, hooking into the curated balm of a startling and beloved TV event. Based on the memoir If It’s Not Impossible …The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton, written by his daughter, the late Barbara Winton, who personally requested Hopkins play her father, he offers a performance of pitch perfect emotion, decent and unfussy – a thoroughly upstanding Englishman who wanted to do the right thing and now reflects on what he perceives as his tragic failure. He said: I was only interested in getting the children to England and I didn’t mind a damn what happened to them afterwards, because the worst that would happen to them in England was better than being in the fire. Praise too for Bonham Carter who is wonderful as his super efficient no-nonsense mother Babi, rattling the doors of Whitehall. (Shall we gloss over the fact that Marthe Keller is cast as Elisabeth Maxwell?) It’s not about me. In an era of shocking narcissism this is a wonderfully sobering story of selflessness and the consequences of bearing witness when the German tanks are rolling in. Absurdly moving, in its own very quiet way. Directed by James Hawes making his feature film debut. Save one life, save the world

Golda (2023)

I’m a politician not a soldier. October 1973. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad receives intelligence suggesting that Egypt and Syria are preparing to commence a military campaign against Israel, which it promptly relays to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren). Meir is dismissive of the intelligence, noting her inability to initiate a counter-plan without the support of her defence minister Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger) who is as sceptical as she is. 6th October: the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Meir’s inner circle informs her that Egypt has amassed a large force opposite the Suez Canal, concluding that hostilities would begin by sundown. Even though she knows her tardiness in preparing adequately has put them on the back foot, Meir refuses to make a pre-emptive move, instead ordering a partial mobilisation to face the threat. Nonetheless she is surprised when the attack begins early. Dayan, who is sent to inspect the Golan Heights on the Syrian border, is horrified to discover that Syria has launched a thorough attack against the ill-prepared Israeli troops. Shocked, he attempts to resign and Meir talks him out of it but loses confidence in him. Between 7-8 October, with Egypt and Syria making gains into Israel, Israeli Defence Force chief of staff Lieutenant General David ‘Dado’ Elazar (Lior Ashkenazi) proposes to relieve Israeli fortifications in the Sinai Peninsula using the 162nd Division. Despite opposition from Mossad chief Zvi Zamir (Rotam Keinan) the plan proceeds but the IDF is defeated by the Egyptians. The following day, with the Syrian offensive having slowed, Dayan proposes an air strike on Syrian capital Damascus to put pressure on Egypt. However, with a shortage of planes, the Israeli Air Force is unable to proceed. In response, Meir asks United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) to provide surplus jets, to which he reluctantly agrees but he expresses the view that it is problematic for the United States to increase its support for Israel in light of the 1973 oil crisis. On the fifth day, amidst increasing tensions, Major General Ariel ‘Arik’ Sharon (Ohad Knoller) proposes an operation to cross the Suez Canal using the 143rd Division to challenge the Egyptian 2nd and 3rd Armies. Zvi informs Meir that the Egyptian 4th and 21st Divisions would cross the canal in two days, leaving the capital Cairo undefended in the event of an attack. According to the intelligence, the Egyptians cross the canal, are met with resistance from Israeli tank forces led by Lieutenant General Haim Bar-Lev (Dominic Mafham) and are defeated. On 15 October, Sharon’s forces cross the canal at an undefended point called the Chinese Farm. They are ambushed by Egyptian units … This is 1948 again. We are fighting for our lives. Biographical films usually make the mistake of trying to fill in all the gaps of a Great Man’s life: here we have a crucial period in the career of Israel’s first (and to date, last and only) female Prime Minister. Non-Jewish Mirren was horribly criticised for donning a prosthetic nose to play the Jewish woman who held her own in a roomful of male experts which is just silly particularly since it was Meir’s grandson Gideon who wanted her cast. In any case this is not the reason this film doesn’t entirely work. For the most part it’s a low-budget talking shop, a war room convened at a distance while bad news is conveyed in the usual fashion. They say history doesn’t repeat itself in exactly the same way but in 2024 there’s something very familiar about the fifty-year old scenario in which Israel suffers a horrible surprise attack and is forced to respond in self-defence: We are facing an unholy alliance between the Soviets and the Arabs that must be defeated. In the midst of what looks like imminent disaster Golda is dealing with medical issues but drags herself (and is dragged by her secretary Lou Kaddar, played by Camille Cottin) to face down the enemy on a daily basis – sometimes in her own team. She has to rally Dayan when he loses faith in himself and finally agrees to visit the front line – and some archive footage verifies the event. If we have to we will fight alone. There’s some fun (kinda) banter when Kissinger arrives and Schreiber enjoys the cut and thrust of conversation with the woman occasionally known as the Iron Lady of Israel: Madam Prime Minister, in terms of our work together, I think it’s important for you to remember that I am first an American, second I’m Secretary of State, and third, I am a Jew/You forget that in Israel we read from right to left. Nothing if not pragmatic, we are firmly in the world of realpolitik. Mirren does well but is not particularly well supported by the setup or the direction by Guy Nattiv. Otherwise this is filled with tension but the suspense per se is thin on the ground despite this hastily constructed plan falling apart time and again in a race against imminent destruction and the world’s oil supply lines are up in the air. At a time when Jews are in more danger than at any time since the Shoah this portrait in miniature is flawed but essential viewing, a reminder that the state of Israel is permanently at risk while geopolitics continue to slash and burn. Written by Nicholas Martin. Knowing when you’ve lost is easy. It’s knowing when you’ve won that’s hard

The Life of David Gale (2003)

Rape. Murder. Death Row. Very intelligent guy. David Gale Kevin Spacey) is a former philosophy professor on death row in Texas. With only a few days until his execution, his lawyer negotiates a half-million dollar fee to tell his story to Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), a journalist from a major news network. She has a reputation of keeping secrets and protecting her sources and has herself served a jail term for just such an infringement in defence of someone producing kiddie porn. With four days before his presumed execution Bitsey arrives at his prison and his lawyer Braxton Belyeu (Leon Rippy) diverts her intern Zack Slemmons (Gabriel Mann) and Gale tells her his story in a series of flashbacks: In 1994, Gale is a successful public intellectual and the head of the philosophy department at the University of Texas at Austin. He is an active member of DeathWatch, an advocacy group campaigning against capital punishment. At a graduation party, he encounters Berlin (Rhona Mitra) a graduate student who has been expelled from the school that afternoon and who earlier asked him to up her grades in exchange for sex. When Gale gets drunk, she seduces him and they have rough sex. She then falsely accuses Gale of rape. The next day, he loses a televised debate with the Governor of Texas when he is unable to name any innocent people executed during the governor’s term. Gale is arrested, but the charge is dropped when Berlin disappears. However, his marriage, career and reputation are all destroyed, his home is sold and he struggles with alcoholism after his wife Sharon (Elizabeth Gast) takes their little son Jamie (Noah Truesdale) with her to Spain and disallows contact. Constance Harraway (Laura Linney) a fellow DeathWatch activist is a close friend of Gale who consoles him after his life falls apart. However, Harraway is discovered raped and murdered, suffocated by a plastic bag taped over her head. An autopsy reveals Gale’s semen in her body and that she had been forced to swallow the key to the handcuffs, a torture technique known as the secure top method which Gale previously wrote about in a journal article. The physical evidence at the crime scene points to Gale, who is convicted of rape and murder and is sentenced to death. Now Bloom investigates the case in between her visits with Gale. Gale maintains his innocence, claiming he and Harraway had consensual sex the night before her murder. Bitsey comes to believe that the apparent evidence against Gale does not add up. She is tailed several times in her car by Dusty Wright (Matt Craven) an alleged one-time lover and colleague of Harraway, whom she suspects was the real killer and who has been trailing Bitsey and Zack. Wright slips evidence to Bloom that suggests Gale has been framed, implying that the actual murderer videotaped the crime. Bitsey pursues this lead until she finds a videotape revealing that Harraway, who was suffering from terminal leukaemia had committed an elaborate suicide made to look like murder. Wright is seen on the videotape, acting as her accomplice, implying that they framed Gale as part of a plan to discredit the death penalty by conspiring to execute an innocent person and in its aftermath ultimately releasing evidence of the actual circumstances. Once Bitsey and Zack find this evidence, only hours remain until Gale’s scheduled execution and they enlist Nico the Goth Girl (Melissa McCarthy) who now resides at Constance’s old home to restage her death … Name one innocent man that Texas has executed during my tenure. Urgency is inscribed from the first frame when Bitsey is running down a country road. After a series of flashbacks and contemporary interview scenes we rejoin that particular scene at 114 minutes in and the finale unspools. The screenplay by Charles Randolph resulted in a uniquely polarising critical reception for what transpired to be the late and lamented Alan Parker’s final production. Hate’s no fun if you keep it to her she just wanted to help other people avoid it. It’s a cunningly contrived drama, giving Gale a fully established private life and then turning his choices in a very different direction on the basis of one bad decision at a party with a sexpot which throws his life into disarray. You’re not here to save me, you’re here to save my son’s memory of his father. In this race against time narrative, the plot construction necessarily revolves Bitsey chasing her tail a little – we are to some degree in Silence of the Lambs territory when she talks to David in prison so that the ultimate manipulation of this conscientious journalist makes more sense in retrospect. Part of the dramatic problem is Winslet’s performance – it doesn’t ring entirely true: yes, she’s been carefully selected for the job of ‘saving’ David Gale on the basis of her fearsome reputation for journalistic ethics but somehow she doesn’t seem entirely serious in her profession as it’s presented here. Winslet overacts somewhat particularly in the more emotive setups. Where this should perhaps have engaged more with the idea of the role of journalists in promoting a point of view and the machinery of the news industry in shifting or controlling social perspective on crime and the death penalty becomes a more personalised tale about the lengths activists go to in order to make meaningful change – and in the State of Texas, which has a very high annual body count when it comes to Death Row. The final twist is probably a move too far in a film which thrives on every kind of sensation, good and bad. It is however very interesting on several levels, including performance. Ironically, in view of the criticism, this was allegedly inspired by a true story. Co-produced by Parker and Nicolas Cage. Let’s not throw a pity party and sit around reading Kafka

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

The Zone of Interest (2023)

I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too busy thinking how I would gas everyone in the room. Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland, 1943. Camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Fuller) live in an idyllic home next to the camp with their five children: Klaus (Johann Karthaus), Hans-Jurgen (Luis Noah Witte), Inge-Brigitt (Nele Ahrensmeier), Heidetraut (Lilli Falk) and Baby Annegret (played variously by Anastazja Drobniak, Cecylia Pekala and Kalman Wilson). Höss takes the children out to swim and fish while Hedwig spends her time tending the garden. He receives colleagues who explain to him how the new crematorium can be run continuously. Servants take care of the household chores and the prisoners’ belongings are given to the family: Hedwig tries a lipstick left in the pocket of a full-length fur coat. Beyond the garden wall gunshots, shouting, trains and furnaces are audible. Höss approves the design of a new crematorium, which soon becomes operational. Höss notices human remains in the river when he’s fishing and gets his children out of the water. He sends a note to camp personnel, chastising them for their carelessness. He perhaps has sexual relations with prisoners in his office. Meanwhile, a Polish servant girl at the Höss villa sneaks out every night, hiding food at the prisoners’ work sites for them to find and eat. Höss receives word that he is being promoted to deputy inspector of all concentration camps and has to relocate to Oranienburg near Berlin. His objections are futile and he withholds the news from Hedwig for several days. Hedwig, now deeply attached to their home, begs him to convince his superiors to let her and the children remain. The request is approved and Höss moves. Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) comes to stay and wonders if the Jewish woman she used to clean for is in the death camp. Eventually she is horrified by the sight and smell of the crematorium flames at night and leaves, leaving behind a note that an irate Hedwig burns after reading. Months after arriving in Berlin, in recognition of his work, Höss is charged with heading an operation named after him that will transport 700,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz to be killed, permitting him to return to Auschwitz where he will be reunited with his family … I could have my husband spread your ashes across the fields of Babice. Loosely adapted by British writer/director Jonathan Glazer from the 2014 realist novel by the late Martin Amis, it’s incumbent upon everyone reporting on this to reference Hannah Arendt’s hoary old phrase, the banality of evil, if only to restate the obvious and the accurate for the hard of listening. And the senses are pricked as much as the conscience in this film which is replete with an array of auditory assaults. The original novel didn’t use the names of the real-life people but Glazer decided to use the historical figures on which Amis based his narrative and conducted in-depth research in conjunction with the Auschwitz Museum as well as using Timothy Snyder’s 2015 book Black Earth as a source. The leads had already acted together in Amour Fou and Huller’s own dog Slava was used for filming. The family’s villa is a derelict building adjoining the camp based on the original (which has been a private home since 1945) and 10 cameras were set up so that the effect as the director says is Big Brother in the Nazi house. Only natural lighting is used, embellishing the concept of cool observation. No atrocity is seen, just heard, with an astonishingly immersive soundtrack of effects created by Johnnie Burn based on testimony and maps of the site, while Mica Levi’s score is restricted in use to further the documentary feel of a story about a German family absorbed in its own pathetic validation against the background of the mass killing and burning of Jews next door which is organised as calmly and efficiently as the preparing of meals. A devastating film that is truly better seen (and heard) than described, this is an overwhelming achievement, filled with a ghastly dread both insinuated and expressed. Immaculate if truly grim filmmaking. Sadly, Amis died on the day this UK-Poland coproduction received its world premiere at Cannes 2023. The life we enjoy is very much worth the sacrifice

The Pleasure Seekers (1964)

I know everything about Spain except Spanish. Twentysomething American Susie Higgins (Pamela Tiffin) arrives in the Spanish city of Madrid and moves in with her old college roommate secretary Maggie Williams (Carol Lynley) and Maggie’s roommate Fran Hobson (Ann-Margret). Still a virgin, Susie is surprised to find both of the other girls have active dating lives. Maggie has recently ended an affair and is now seeing her married boss newsman Paul Barton (Brian Keith) much to the dismay of Paul’s jealous wife Jane (Gene Tierney). At the same time, Maggie’s co-worker Pete McCoy (Gardner McKay) is in love with Maggie but she barely notices him and he’s thinking of going to the bureau in Paris. Fran, an aspiring actress, flamenco dancer and singer, eagerly pursues Spanish doctor Andres Brioñes (Andre Lawrence). While at the Prado Museum, in front of Las Meninas by Velazquez, Susie catches the eye of wealthy playboy Emilio Lacayo (Tony Franciosa) who adds her to his already large group of girlfriends and who is already familiar with Maggie. The three girls spend the summer attending various parties while pursuing and being pursued by the men in their lives including a weekend in Toledo where Susie pretends to fall for Emilio and faints at a bullfight … Life has aged us in a week. Essentially a transplanted musical remake of the previous decade’s Three Coins in the Fountain and helmed by the same director, Jean Negulesco once again for Fox, this moves the action to Madrid and suffers a little since only Ann-Margret among the young leading ladies can sing and dance. She gets a nice entrance from under the covers with the line, Gone native and then has a terrific meet-cute on the street with a scooter-riding medic. Tiffin’s romantic moment is when she’s found by Emilio weeping at the wonderful art in the Prado which she explains away as homesickness. He’s the most heartless corrupt inhuman man who ever lived, Maggie tells Susie. You’ve just been chosen as the next sacrificial lamb. Edith Sommer’s screenplay is also derived from John H. Secondari’s 1952 source novel Coins in the Fountain and it was the second time the screenwriter was attached to a film with Lynley after the controversial Blue Denim. More brittle in tone than its predecessor possibly due to the changing times yet still luxuriating in the surroundings with stunning exterior cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp around Madrid, Marbella, Toledo and Castile, these are not complemented by the obvious studio sets used for the interiors. There’s a bright (and very popular) score by Lionel Newman (and an uncredited Alexander Courage) and it’s a wonderful showcase for the country as well as the performers, not to mention the opportunity to learn about Spanish art. Watch out for Antonio Gades performing a flamenco. He would become famous for his dancing and choreography which are memorialised in Carlos Saura’s Blood Wedding and Carmen in the 1980s. Lynley is posited against Tierney when she becomes The Other (Younger) Woman and they’ve one great bitchy scene together. Sadly this was Tierney’s final feature credit. This is also the final film for veteran actress Isobel Elsom (as Emilio’s formidable mother Donya Teresa) and she also appeared in that year’s My Fair Lady: not a bad way to go out. Just don’t go round thinking that I’m easy because I was once. Lynley’s tussle with Keith is tender, tough and believable. Everybody in Spain dances the flamenco! The theme song performed by an uncredited Ann-Margret is written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. She bemoaned the film’s box office failure (it wasn’t the big hit anticipated but did okay) which she said could be attributed to audiences not wanting to see her grow up. Mother told me never to knock. She told me I’d meet more interesting people that way. Tiffin has fun toying with the affections of Franciosa. She had been lauded as the next Audrey Hepburn by Billy Wilder when she featured in One, Two, Three and she would later run away to Rome after shooting Harper with Paul Newman. That’s a hell of a career trajectory. Maybe she was pining for the city as it was in 1953 – like this probably is. We’d like to read Tom Lisanti’s biography of the lovely actress and talented comedienne who died in December 2020. That’s next on our reading list! Look out for Manola Moran as the traffic cop and Vito Scotti as the suave neighbour. The tart response to this film is probably Woody Allen’s decidedly twenty-first century Vicky Cristina Barcelona, an endlessly watchable sorbet revisiting this rather richer fare. The romantic trials and tribulations of twentysomethings with marriage on their minds never get old. The late Lynley was born 13th February 1942 and this is in her honour. Happy Galentine’s Day! All I did was fall in love

The Lost King (2022)

Five hundred years of lies. Edinburgh, 2012. Separated mother of two boys, 45-year old Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins) is passed over for a promotion at work in favour of a less experienced better-looking younger woman. She unsuccessfully confronts her male boss that her chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) has never affected her work. Distraught at her distractedness and work absences, her estranged husband John (Steve Coogan), who lives in his own flat and helps out with their two teenage boys Max (Adam Robb) and Raife (Benjamin Scanlan), tells her to keep her job as they need the money. Philippa attends Shakespeare’s play Richard III which Max is studying at school and she identifies with Richard (Harry Lloyd) whom she feels was unfairly maligned as a hunchback, child killer and usurper. She begins to have visions of Richard who appears to her when she reads a biography that persuades her he has been unjustly treated by history. She joins the local Richard III Society who believe he was unfairly vilified by Tudor propagandists. Philippa stops going to work, manages her illness with medication and begins talking to her Richard III apparition (Harry Lloyd again). Her research shows some sources say he was buried in 1485 in the Leicester Greyfriars priory quire, while others say his body was thrown into the River Soar. After Greyfriars was demolished in the 1530s Reformation, Leicester mayor Robert Herrick around 1600 had a shrine built in his garden saying Here lies the body of Richard III, sometime king of England. Philippa attends a lecture in Leicester on Richard, lying to her ex-husband about it being a work trip and returning late forcing him to miss a date with his girlfriend. He knows she’s been skipping work and makes fun of her interest in Richard III. She meets Dr Richard Ashdown-Hill (James Fleet) who is publishing a genetic genealogy study on a Canadian direct descendant of Richard III’s sister, traced through maternal mitochondrial DNA. He tells her to look for Richard in open spaces in Leicester because people for centuries have avoided building over old abbeys. While walking around Leicester looking for the ancient site of Greyfriars, and seeing apparitions of Richard, she gets a strong feeling that an R painted on a car park is the site of Richard’s grave. Returning home, she confesses her activities to John. Philippa contacts University of Leicester archaeologist Richard Buckley (Mark Addy) who quietly dismisses her ideas but when the university cuts his funding, he gets back to her. Buckley finds a mediaeval map of Leicester marking Robert Herrick’s property, showing a possible public shrine in his garden. They overlay a modern map of Leicester and decide that the shrine may be in the middle of the car park that Philippa had felt strongly about. Philippa and Buckley team up. She pitches the project for funding to Leicester City Council. Richard Taylor (Lee Ingleby) of the University of Leicester advises that her amateur ‘feeling’ is too risky. The Council still approves her plan for the publicity it could generate but when ground-radar finds nothing, funding drops out. She turns to the Richard III Society to crowd-fund her Looking For Richard project and the money comes in from around the world to fund three trenches … I just don’t like it when people put others down for no reason. That’s Philippa’s take on Richard III’s bad rep but we know it’s a parallel with her own experience as an ME sufferer (the initials are unfortunate for an illness long rumoured to be imaginary). Plenty have tried to find him and failed. Not only does Philippa act on her feelings, she tells people about them – it takes Council funding committee chairman Sarah Locke (Amanda Abbington) to advise her not to mention them, they’re too female – but it’s her feeling when she stands above the letter R (for reserved) in the car park that she gets the greatest sensation of all. And she acts on it. Rewriting people into history isn’t just the story of Richard it’s the story of Philippa too – the amateur historian marginalised by the archaeological team at the University of Leicester whom she hired to do the dig and then finds them taking credit for her discovery in front of the world’s press. The same people who mock: It’s like someone with a home-made rocket saying they’re going to the moon. That Ealing feeling isn’t a coincidence in a tale of rehabilitation. The film reunites the Philomena team of star/co-writer Coogan with screenwriter Jeff Pope and Stephen Frears, making another mostly true seriocomic story about a seemingly eccentric contemporary woman trying to right the wrongs of history. Of course it has a preposterous provenance – imagine finding Richard III in a car park in Leicester (and this has four characters called Richard so it must be true). Yet they did and it actually took a decade but for dramatic reasons this is telescoped into a matter of months and Richard was indeed found on the first day, in Summer 2012. Look for an open space, advises Ashdown-Hill like some kind of academic Yoda to the expressive Philippa who follows her passion with determination and empathy. Eventually she even gets her ex to move back in with the family and he comes around to her feeling about Richard, making an anonymous donation to the cause which necessitates a small sacrifice on his part. So twisted spine equals twisted personality, does it? Philippa takes everything so personally. If I can find him I can give him a voice, she says but when she finally asks the dead king’s apparition why he never speaks to her, he tells her it’s because she’s never asked him a question – content to run off at the mouth with those monologues, probably an in-joke about Shakespeare in the narrative’s constantly self-reinforcing metaverse precipitated by a hunch(back). John initially sees Richard as almost a romantic rival yet he knows why Philippa is talking to herself – he’s seeing Seafood Sarah whom he calls normal but the difference is we never encounter this real-life woman whereas a long-dead king shows up all the time, often on his horse, quietly imploring Philippa to continue on her quest. This is perhaps taking the romantic notion of history a little far yet its role in the text is what a certain playwright got away with doing, on more than one occasion. When John takes the boys to the cinema it’s to see Skyfall – a monster movie production about as far from the world of this film as it is to imagine. And yet this sidebar is about an epic episode in history and what remains. Raife asks Philippa about getting a licence to kill – and this is a narrative all about (dramatic) licence, licence to read, remember, restore, exhume and, yes, to kill and to sideline. And as it’s a story about archaeology it has its procedural structure of excavation which in this interpretation involves the straightforward light-enhanced overlaying of maps (Buckley never thought of it, it’s too simple an idea, being a woman’s), radar views and a mechanical digger. When the skull with fatal wound and curved spine are uncovered it’s strangely moving. And our reactions are written in Hawkins’ extraordinarily mobile face. Naturally everyone must acknowledge the Tudor apologists: they’re going to have a field day. That phrase of course prompts a visit to Bosworth Field, where Philippa has her final encounter with Richard III, again on his fine white steed, accompanied by his men, about to meet his maker. The film concludes with real footage of the funeral of Richard III. And so it is that the rightful king of England, the last Plantagenet ruler 1483-1485, got his long-earned decent burial and Royal honours. Underdog Langley got an MBE but Buckley got the OBE, a higher honour, consistent with the doctorate he was awarded and again metaphorically expressing the idea here – that men write history and take the credit. This has led us back to crime writer Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel The Daughter of Time, a book that served to re-ignite interest in Richard for a twentieth century readership and also questioned whether he could have killed the Princes in the Tower (who were apparently still there after the Battle of Bosworth Field by order of Henry VII). The cover features the portrait that Philippa explains here to John was doctored by the Tudors to retro-fit his image to their scurrilous version of events in which he was cast aside to make way for a new dynasty: his descendants include a cabinet-maker currently living in Clapham – no wonder QEII preferred to give a higher honour to an alleged establishment liar. This is about the real person who lies beneath the reputation and the effort it takes to read between the lines and understand the role of bias. It is about the very construction of history and how Shakespeare’s mythical play came to determine our perception of this misunderstood if controversial man whose dignity had been lost. Adapted from The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, this is a small film about a mighty achievement. And, as the Titles inform us, it is Based on a true story. Her story

The Second Woman (1950)

There must be a reason. There’s always a reason for everything. Architect Jeff Cohalan (Robert Young) is haunted by the death of his fiancée Vivian Sheppard (Shirley Ballard) the boss Ben’s (Henry O’Neill) daughter the previous year. He sequesters himself in the modernist clifftop house he designed for himself and his beloved and broods over the incredible string of bad luck he has experienced since her death. His horse breaks its leg in its stable, his dog dies, his rose bush suddenly dies and a striking watercolour portrait by a dead local artist is deteriorating despite not being exposed to sunlight. Fortunately, his neighbour Amelia Foster’s (Florence Bates) CPA niece Ellen (Betsy Drake) a newcomer who has encountered Jeff on the train, takes an interest in his travails, and is determined to discover the real cause behind his misfortune, seemingly engineered by his workplace rival Keith Ferris (John Sutton) who has just divorced office secretary Dodo (Jean Rogers) and now has his sights on old Sheppard’s fortune. Local doctor Hartley (Morris Carnovsky) is convinced Jeff is mentally ill, guiltily replaying his suffering after taking the blame for Vivian’s death … Six accidents and every one of them killed something you love. It takes a while for this film noir-ish mystery to kick into gear but after the distraction of some on-the-nose dialogue, a poor score and the kind of shooting style familiar from live TV plays of the period it soon assumes the mantle of a clever gaslighting in reverse – a man is the victim in a drama displaying several Gothic tropes: a spooky portrait, a staircase, flashbacks, distinct shades of paranoia and all set in the interesting and highly dramatic seaside backdrop of Costa Del Rey, California, with waves as crashing accompaniment to the downfall of a decent man. Naturally the psychological element is personified in the local (but invariably European) GP who thinks he knows more about psychiatry than he possibly could and peddles the idea that persecuted Jeff is nuts: Interesting subject – who’s sane and who isn’t. Young’s affability is nimbly exploited as even his professional reputation is shattered while Drake is given one of her rare significant leads, both controlling the outcome and occasionally lending her thoughts to the voiceover, a welcome instance of a woman’s agency and investigative capacity in this sub-genre. Ferris practically twirls his moustache as the smarmy pantomime villain of the piece. A most unusual modern paranoid man’s thriller with plenty of good aspects to override the occasionally problematic direction by James V. Kern who did one more feature and then had a prolific career in television. Written by Mort Briskin & Robert Smith. Perhaps that’s why a woman gets out of proportion to a man