Civil War (2024)

We are now closer than we have ever been to victory. The near future. A civil war has broken out between an authoritarian US Government and various regional factions. The dictatorial President (Nick Offerman) who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photojournalist, Colorado-born Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn. Lee and her colleague, Florida-born Reuters journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) intend travelling to Washington DC to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee’s mentor New York Times veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson)asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville where the Western Forces (‘WF’) of Texas and California are presently assembling. Despite Lee’s hesitance she and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie persuades Joel to take her with them as well. After leaving NYC, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men where Lee negotiates the purchase of fuel in Canadian dollars. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, which she saw from the road. There, she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After leaving, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos. Following an overnight stop close to ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie’s potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing on, the group spends the night at a refugee camp  before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Look at the tops of the buildings. Be subtle. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop. Later, they are pinned down in a sniper battle amid the remains of a Winter Wonderland theme park. No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us and we’re trying to kill them. The snipers they are with mock Joel’s attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply engaged in a struggle for survival. Jessie’s nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths and she develops a mentorship under Lee … They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film plugs into the inflammatory State of the Union as it currently pertains, figuring a fissure that is as much physical as ideological with the Western secessionist states of California and Texas pitched against the federal forces that protect a President hiding out in the White House. Garland’s work from The Beach onwards has focused on trouble in paradise and lately on dystopia. Lee and Joel are both camouflaging psychological disturbance from previous war zones – she has PTSD, he has modern-day shellshock and Lee especially exhibits something world weary cynicism to control symptoms that threaten to erupt into something worse. It’s gonna make a good image. How that dissonance within Lee translates into a kind of mentoring relationship with Jessie reflecting Sammy’s relationship with her provides much of the tension as the action and violence spiral the further into the US they travel. I remember you at her age. The juxtaposing of beautiful landscapes with jarring imagery of shock and awe combat provides much of the troubling visual texture. The sense of reality, the minutiae of a road trip under fire and the urgency of the storytelling has the quality of reportage from the front line. The fact that Lee wants to photograph the President to prove he is still alive speaks volumes. What happens ultimately is straight out of the Romanian playbook. The ones who get taken are always lesser men than you think. With no enemies identified, the viewer is asked to come to their own conclusions, a motley crew of varying protagonist-journalists providing a kind of collegiate and immersive focus group of the population, a prism for coming to terms with radical change and war as Americans fight Americans. Every instinct in me tells me this is death. Whether the presence and role of good old-fashioned photojournalists recording events makes a difference is not really questioned here – it’s presumed necessary for history: proof that things are happening because seeing is believing. Hence the acknowledged reference to Lee Miller in Dunst’s character’s name. What kind of American are you? A powerful state of the nation portrait that feels immediate and true. What happened back there is nothing in comparison with what we’re heading into

Happy 90th Birthday Shirley MacLaine 24th April 2024!

Hollywood legend, Academy Award winner, gifted actress, brilliant comedienne, dancer, singer and all-round star, the irrepressible Shirley MacLaine is a magnificent 90 years old today. What a career she has had, from her debut with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry, through an astonishing collaboration with Billy Wilder with The Apartment – one of the all-time great films – and the perversely charming Irma la Douce, a chance to return to her musical theatre roots in Sweet Charity and more than one alleged comeback in the 1970s with The Turning Point (another dance film) and later with Terms of Endearment and much more besides. That auburn pixie cut, those elfin features and the cunning impishness have always belied astonishing dramatic depths. Never mind those legs!! She was quite brilliant in Some Came Running and ran with the Sinatra crew for a spell. As well as being an author and spiritual seeker she and her younger brother Warren Beatty have always been immersed in Democrat politics, somewhere her commitment found a ready home. She has written autobiographies and directed too, a documentary and a feature, and has remained a vital part of the culture from her TV appearances in drama – her Downton Abbey role was an international incident – and in interviews: she made memorable appearances in the UK with Michael Parkinson on his chat show. Passionate, wickedly funny, smart and sensitive, she has crafted some of the most immaculate performances on screen. We salute you, Shirley! Many happy returns!

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

Pepi, Luci and Bom (1980)

Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón/Pepi, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom/Pepi, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap. Give him a good kicking, but don’t go too far. We don’t want anyone to die. Now is not the time. Pepi (Carmen Maura) a young independent woman living in Madrid, is filling up her Superman sticker album when she receives an unexpected visit from a neighbour policeman (Felix Rotaeta) who has spotted her marijuana plants whilst spying on her via binoculars from his house across the street. Pepi tries to buy his silence with an offer of anal sex, but instead the policeman rapes her. Thirsty for revenge, Pepi arranges for her friend Bom, a teenage punk singer, and her band, Bomitoni (Bom and Toni and also a pun of vomitoni or big puke), to beat up the policeman. Wearing Madrilenian costumes and singing a zarzuela Pepi’s friends give the man a merciless beating one night. However, the next day Pepi realises that they had attacked the policeman’s innocent twin brother by mistake. Undaunted, Pepi decides on a more complex form of revenge. She befriends the policeman’s docile fortysomething wife, Luci (Eva Siva) from Murcia with the excuse of receiving knitting lessons. Pepi’s idea is to corrupt Luci and take her away from the wife-beating policeman. During the first knitting class, Pepi’s teenage punk friend, Bom (Alaska) arrives at the apartment heading for the restroom in order to pee. This leads to the suggestion that, since Luci feels hot, Bom should stand on a chair and urinate over Luci’s face. Bom’s aggressive behaviour satisfies Luci’s masochism and the two women become lovers. Back home, Luci has an argument with her husband in which she complains about what he had done to Pepi. When he threatens to whip and kick her out, with a renewed sense of liberation Luci leaves her husband and her home, moving in with Bom. The three friends, Pepi, Luci and Bom are immersed in Madrid’s youth scene, attending parties, clubs, concerts and meeting outrageous characters. In one of the concerts, Bom sings with her band The Bomitonis a song called Murciana marrana (The slut from Murcia): Luci becomes a proud groupie. The highlight at one of the parties is a penis size contest called Erecciones Generales (General Erections), a competition looking for the biggest, most svelte, most inordinate penis. The winner receives the opportunity to do what he wants, how he wants, with whomever he wants. He selects Luci to give him oral sex, which makes her the most envied woman at the party. Pepi is forced to find work as her father decides to stop her income. She becomes a creative writer for advertising spots designing ads for sweating, menstruating dolls and multipurpose panties that absorb urine and can double as a dildo. Pepi also begins to write a script which will be the story of lesbian lovers Luci and Bom … With so much democracy in this country, where will it end? Those Communists need to be taught a lesson. Leave it to me. The debut of renowned filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, this document of Spain’s punk era, a transitional stage in the wider post-Franco culture known as La Movida Madrilena, is a wild movie about feminism, friendship, machoism, comic books and music. Its disarmingly straightforward presentation, sexual language and overt display of vulgarity verging on offensiveness marked it out. I love you because you’re dirty, Filthy, slutty, and servile, You’re Murcia’s most obscene, And you’re all mine. It can be read as a cry of freedom following decades of political suppression with each woman representing a different aspect of identity – its limitations and possibilities. There is no judgement here, not even with a teenage punk having a sexual relationship with a woman twice her age: their meet cute has to be seen to be believed. I believe that women have to find fulfillment. Lacking in the later sophistication and colour-coded mise en scene that has so defined Almodovar’s signature, the low budget determines the more realistic and tableau presentation of the comic interactions with Maura in a star making role: she make another five films with the director. Almost literally a laugh riot, this outrageous comedy shot in 1978 quickly became a midnight movie on its 1980 release in Spain where many of the figures became mainstream in the Eighties. It remains a cult item to this day. Cinema is not real life. Cinema is falsehood

Bob Marley: One Love (2024)

You can’t separate the music and the message. Jamaica, 1976. Amidst  armed political conflict that is affecting daily life in Jamaica, Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) announces he will perform at a concert, Smile Jamaica, devised to promote peace amongst the warring factions. While preparing for the concert, Marley, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch) and members of his band are shot by assailants. Rita and Marley are hospitalised but survive and recover from their injuries in time for the concert. After performing, Marley, saddened that his own countrymen would try to kill him and his wife, shows the crowd his bullet wounds before walking off stage. He tells Rita to take their children to Delaware in the United States where they stay with his mother Cedella (Nadine Marshall) as he and the rest of his band venture to London.  After struggling to come up with a new album concept, Marley asks Rita to rejoin him and the band in England where, inspired by the soundtrack of the film Exodus and their present situation, he and the band begin recording what would become their album of that name. It’s a big a hit and helps further popularise reggae and the Rastafari movement worldwide. The record company schedules a tour in Europe, Marley also aims for stops throughout Africa to inspire the people there. This leads to friction with Rita as she and Marley argue about his responsibilities and both his of their infidelities, with his constant companion Cindy Brakespeare (Umi Myers) a large part of his life. In addition to having given up on promoting peace back in Jamaica Marley also gets into an argument with manager Don Taylor (Anthony Welsh) over money  … Sometimes the messenger has to become the message. It’s not easy making music biopics. The subject is customarily iconic, visually difficult to impersonate and embody and fantastically easy to get wrong because so many masters are being served, usually the family and estate who as here are the producers. The screenplay by Terence Winters, Frank E. Flowers, Zach Baylis and director Reinaldo Marcus Green commences at the height of political turmoil in Jamaica when Marley headlines a gig dedicated to peace in an island riven by gang wars. The damage inflicted is monumental: Marley’s realisation that music does not speak to power in his island home is deep and wounding, not to mention the physical damage caused by being shot. Otherwise, this is a clearly sanitised version of the subject’s life with Ben-Adir a rather poor substitute for the real thing who is portrayed going through the ups and downs, highs (and there are a lot of highs …) and lows, including marital and relationship woes. It’s not altogether his fault – the lack of similarity and the sheer inimitability are complicated linguistically by the extensive use of Jamaican patois, making this distracting from scene to scene. The overwhelming series of ironies besetting peacemaker Marley from the racial violence requiring machine gun protection to his own immediate subjugation by business versus his creative urges are laid out well. When he gets to England, that bastion of racism and master versus servant, its desperate dullness and weather provokes him into his greatest burst of recording inspiration. It’s sad but this film never feels like it gets under the skin of its protagonist yet it has the familiar rise and fall, struggle, success and compromise contours of pop star biographies albeit this of course is a story in reality that concludes in a tragic illness and premature death, the ghost at the musical feast. It’s filled with two-dimensional characters in supporting roles and Marley himself isn’t fleshed out adequately for a miscast actor to persuade. A missed opportunity but the reggae is joyous, Mozartian in affect, as all of Marley’s fans already know without this official, authorised and not very informative history. One love, one heart, one destiny MM#4500 #660straightdaysofmondomovies

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

Richard III (1955)

Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York. King Edward IV (Cedric Hardwicke) has been placed on the throne with the help of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Laurence Olivier) having wrested power militarily from Henry VI of the House of Lancaster. After Edward’s coronation in the Great Hall, with his brothers George, Duke of Clarence (John Gielgud) and Richard watching, he leaves with his wife Queen Elizabeth (Mary Kerridge) and sons. Richard contemplates the throne, before advancing towards the audience and then addressing them, delivering a monologue outlining his physical deformities which include a hunched back and withered arm. He describes his jealousy over his brother’s rise to power in contrast to his own more lowly position. He dedicates himself to task and plans to frame his brother, George for conspiring to kill the King, and to have George sent to the Tower of London, by claiming George will murder Edward’s heirs. He then tells his brother he will help him get out. Having confused and deceived the King, Richard proceeds with his plans after getting a warrant and enlists two ruffians Dighton (Michael Gough) and Forest (Michael Ripper) to do the dreadful deed. George is murdered, drowned in a butt of wine. Though Edward had sent a pardon to Richard, Richard stopped it passing. Richard goes on to woo and seduce The Lady Anne (Claire Bloom). While she hates him for killing her husband and father she cannot resist and marries him. Richard then orchestrates disorder in the court, fuelling rivalries and setting the court against the Queen consort, Elizabeth (Mary Kerridge). The King, weakened and exhausted, appoints Richard as Lord Protector and dies after hearing of the death of George. Edward’s son the Prince of Wales (Paul Huson), soon to become Edward V, is met by Richard while en route to London. Richard has the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hastings (Alec Clunes) arrested and executed and forces the young King, along with his younger brother the Duke of York (Andy Shine), to have an extended stay at the Tower of London. All obstacles now removed from his path to the throne, Richard enlists the help of his cousin the corrupt Duke of Buckingham (Ralph Richardson) to change his public image in order to become popular with the people. Richard then becomes the people’s first choice to become the new King. Buckingham helps Richard on terms of being given the title of Earl of Hereford with its income, but baulks at the prospect of murdering the two princes. Richard asks a minor knight Sir James Tyrrel (Patrick Troughton), whom he knows to be ambitious, to have young Edward and the Duke of York killed in the Tower of London. Buckingham, having requested his earldom at Richard’s coronation, fears for his life when Richard (angry at Buckingham for not killing the princes) shouts I am not in the giving vein today! Buckingham joins up with the opposition against Richard’s rule. Now fearful of dwindling popularity, Richard raises an army to defend his throne and the House of York against the House of Lancaster led by Henry Tudor (Stanley Baker), the Earl of Richmond and later Henry VII of England at Bosworth Field. However before the battle Buckingham is captured and executed. On the eve of the battle, Richard is haunted by the ghosts of all those he has killed in his bloody ascent to the throne. He wakes up screaming … You should bear me on your shoulder! On 11th March 1956 this became the most watched film broadcast on TV in the US (simultaneously released in cinemas) and 11 years later when it was re-released in theatres it made records again – it’s probably the most popular historical Shakespeare screen adaptation and contributes to the (mis)understandings about its caricatured protagonist which have lately been corrected by the quietly powerful recent English film The Lost King. It was Laurence Olivier’s third time to direct and star in a Shakespeare production and if not as initially outwardly acclaimed as its predecessors latterly it is viewed as his best film, a stark and lucid narrative whose Technicolor visual influence could even be seen in Disney’s feature animation Sleeping Beauty, among others. Olivier of course makes for a classic, charismatic even campy villain and the contours of his rise and fall make for an utterly compelling watch. Sometimes criticised for a staid staging, this is a vividly played drama led by an incredible ensemble of British acting talent provided by producer Alexander Korda’s London Films contracted players, with its occasional flourishes all the more surprising when Otto Heller’s camera (shooting in VistaVision) underscores an incident, moving or tracking to heighten the impact. Murder her brothers, and then marry her. This study of power and undiluted, wicked ambition is quite thrilling with the occasional emotional note struck by Bloom as the seduced widow Lady Anne or those unfortunate children, guilt tripping the audience who cannot wait to see what Richard will do next. Conscience is a word that cowards use. Those soliloquies delivered to camera insinuate themselves into the viewer’s brain and sympathies. A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! Olivier had been working on this since he first portrayed Richard at the Old Vic in 1944 and after the successes of Henry V and Hamlet on the big screen this commemorated what might be his greatest performance as actor and director. Why, thus it is when men are ruled by women. Ably assisted by Gerry O’Hara, who took charge when Olivier was in front of the camera, this is literally masterpiece theatre, skillfully adapted (and heavily cut) by an uncredited Olivier from the 18th century stage presentations by Colley Gibber and David Garrick with a thrilling score from William Walton. I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks nor made to court an amorous looking glass, I that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph, I that am curtailed of fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into breathing world scarce half made up and so lamely and unfashionable that dogs do bark at me as I halt by them

#650straightdaysofmondomovies

The 1966 re-release poster

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Pretty much the bottom line is if you are in Iraq you are dead. The second year of the Iraq War. A U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with Bravo Company led by Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) identifies and attempts to destroy an IED (improvised explosive device) with a robot but the wagon carrying the trigger charge breaks. Team leader Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson (Guy Pearce) places the charge by hand, but is killed when an Iraqi insurgent in a nearby shop uses a mobile phone to detonate the charge. Squad mate Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) feels guilty for failing to kill the man with the phone. Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) replaces Staff Sergeant Thompson. He is often at odds with Sergeant J. T. Sanborn because he prefers to defuse devices by hand and does not communicate his plans, removing his headset to prevent communications. He blocks Sanborn’s view with smoke grenades as he approaches an IED and defuses it only moments before an Iraqi insurgent attempts to detonate it with a 9-volt battery. In another incident, James insists on disarming a complex car bomb despite Sanborn’s protests that it is taking too long; James responds by taking off his uniform headset and ‘flipping off’ Sanborn, saying if he’s going to die he might as well be comfortable. Sanborn is so worried by his conduct that he openly suggests killing James to Eldridge while they are exploding unused ordnance outside of base. On their return to base, they encounter five armed men in Iraqi garb by an SUV which has a flat tyre. After a tense encounter, James learns they are friendly British mercenaries (aka ‘private military contractors’) led by a handsome supposed crack shot (Ralph Fiennes). While fixing the tyre, they come under sniper fire. Three of the contractors are killed before James and Sanborn take over counter-sniping, killing three insurgents. Eldridge kills the fourth who attempts to flank their position. During a raid on a warehouse, James discovers a ‘body bomb’ he believes is Beckham (Christopher Sayegh), the Iraqi boy who sells him porn DVDs and plays soccer outside of base. During the evacuation, Lt. Colonel John Cambridge (Christian Camargo), the camp’s psychiatrist and Eldridge’s counsellor, is killed in an explosion; Eldridge is more deeply traumatised. James sneaks off base with Beckham’s apparent DVD sales associate at gunpoint in his truck, telling him to take him to Beckham’s home. He is left at the home of an unrelated Iraqi professor who tells him in English he is pleased to meet someone in the CIA and when his wife attacks James he flees. Called to a petrol tanker detonation, James decides to hunt for the insurgents responsible nearby. Sanborn protests but when James begins a pursuit, he and Eldridge follow. After they split up, insurgents capture Eldridge. James and Sanborn rescue him, although Eldridge gets shot in the leg … You are now in the kill zone. Independently directed and produced by Kathryn Bigelow with a screenplay by freelance writer Mark Boal who had been embedded in the war zone in 2004, this is a relentless, fully immersive trawl through a parched, sunblasted bombscape with three men whose differing takes on their shocking reality lend this an unparalleled realism. The management of the narrative is supreme. Episodic by nature, with six roughly fifteen-minute scene-sequences demarcated by alternating forms of action and different kinds of explosive and disposal style, the contrast between the characters and their various predilections or weaknesses exhibited in their dealings with each other and situations are heightened by the escalating violence, repetition and juxtaposition. Killing off a major star is an appropriately Hitchcockian start in a story that is structurally suspenseful. In comes Renner as James, a wild man who earns the admiration of a vicious commander Colonel Reed (David Morse in one of a number of notable cameos) who sees a guy after his own take-no-injured-prisoners (literally) heart. Sanborn’s ire is juxtaposed with Eldridge’s increasing fear, handled maladroitly by a Yalie shrink whom he inadvertently invites to finally see some action – and boy does he get his after engaging in a dumb talkshow with the local terrorists. This is what we think of psychology/psychiatry – we are in a film where the right wrench is more useful than trying to rationalise the unspeakable violence of modern warfare. When the scene changes and the guys encounter the mercenaries led by Fiennes out in the desert they form a tight trio – right after Sanborn has been conspiring with Eldridge to kill James, who invariably calms things and they are rewarded with a sunset after an exhausting thirsty day of picking off the Iraqis. That happens at 65 minutes and they finally let rip back at base where Eldridge finds James’s memory box of bomb parts that didn’t kill him under his bed. It’s a bonding experience which culminates in a bout of roughhousing between James and Sanborn in which the latter comes off much worse. They discover that James has a wife and son (he’s not sure if he’s divorced) and Sanborn wants that for himself. The scene shifts and another element is finally introduced – water: on the floor of a building where they find a dead boy rigged up with a body bomb and James exhibits emotion believing him to be Beckham, the teen chancer who sells him porn outside the base. A really good bad guy hides out in the dark. Then there’s a massive explosion which results in a cauldron of fire with James believing that it was done remotely and the bomber is likely just beyond the kill zone. So he and Sanborn and Eldridge set off into the nighttime streets in uniform – a difference to the preceding evening when he went out looking for Beckham’s home as a civilian and getting beaten up by that Iraqi woman for his trouble. He shoots Eldridge – accidentally? He’s the one who’s been keeping him sane, now Eldridge has a reason to go home, falling apart physically with a busted femur just as he’s been falling apart mentally with a broken mind. Sanborn stands in a shower and does it in his uniform, collapsing in grief, adrenaline rushing out of him. Then there’s a different kind of bomb – and another variety of conflagration. Back home, shopping in the supermarket, playing with his baby, cleaning the gutters, James tells his wife Connie (Evangeline Lilly) the military needs more bomb techs. And there’s a circular conclusion, like a hero’s journey tale. Bigelow says it’s about the psychology behind the type of soldier who volunteers for this particular conflict and then, because of [their] aptitude, is chosen and given the opportunity to go into bomb disarmament and goes toward what everybody else is running from. Unfailingly tense and suspenseful, this is never less than subjective. And there goes Renner, like an astronaut in his dirtbound bombsuit, walking alone, into a moral void. This was shot by Barry Ackroyd using four 16mm cameras at a time, in Jordan and Kuwait. Two hundred hours of material were edited by Chris Innis and Bob Murawski with a score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders. Simply stunning filmmaking, rivetting storytelling, anxiety-inducing, utterly compelling. Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director while the film got Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Film Editing. A modern masterpiece. Going to war is a once in a lifetime experience. It could be fun!

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