Aka Ndoto Ya Samira. I’d want to leave my dad’s house one day. The fishing village of Nungwi, north Zanzibar. Producer and director Nino Tropiano’s voiceover explains that he has received funding from an Irish organisation to explore female education in Africa. He finds a group of high school girls under the shade of a tree and over a period of time (and the with assistance of a translator) he decides to follow one of the, Samira. He traces Samira’s progress once he secures the agreement of her family and teachers. So what is the origin of Swahili? Over a period of seven years Tropiano catches up with Samira, sometimes after one year, sometimes after 15 months, even three years. He observes the changes in her circumstances, her home, class attendance and interruption, house moves, her development, her maturity. I don’t have any freedom to do what I want. The film’s midpoint, more or less, sees Samira explain everything that is wrong in her life to her teacher. The pivotal issue is the terrible loss of her mother after which her father separated her from her mother’s family in Pemba and moved them to Nungwi where he remarried again twice and has more children whom she has been obliged to care for. Everything in her life including her education has hinged on this event and its impact makes her cry – a terrifically moving moment. Her friend Shamsa claims to be ‘under a magic spell’ but she is controlled by her boyfriend who bans the cameraman from the vicinity. She does what he tells her. She’s not even married! At the exams they’re not speaking; at the graduation there’s a chasm between them. Tension builds at home with her stepmother who insists that she go with her on a trip to the mainland where they stay in a mud hut in the countryside. Then the high school exam results await. She has barely scraped a pass. She’ll be doing this the hard way. Then, a surprising event: a marriage proposal. Despite not being presented as an overt study of girls in Islamic communities or a critique of the religion, this is an immersive account of a society governed by and for men, something the girls question more than once. That extends to the content of the curriculum – we were particularly amused by a kind of parable about theft concerning a duck and a man with feathers in his hair. The sometimes jarring gaps in the storytelling (presumably due to production and funding circumstances) are camouflaged by Samira’s own charm and the occasional intervening voiceover by the filmmaker. It is rare that we feel a subject deserves more time onscreen. However over the years a complete portrait is achieved as this charismatic young woman comes into her own. At least one of my two dreams came true
Aka Tout s’est bien passé. This is our story. Novelist Emmanuèle Bernheim aka Manue (Sophie Marceau) receives a call from her sister Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas) informing her that their retired businessman and art collector father André (André Dussollier) has suffered a stroke. She rushes to the hospital in Paris where she sees the ill effects of this cardiac event: his face is horribly stricken, falling to one side, his speech is affected. She looks at the catscan of his brain on her computer at home. Manue is a devoted visitor despite the cruelties inflicted upon her in her childhood when he called her ugly, constantly berating her for her huge appetite (she is patently beautiful and thin). She used to fantasise about killing him. She is stunned when he asks her to help him die. It’s still illegal so Manue debates the situation with Pascale and then pays a discreet visit to a lawyer for advice and contacts a Swiss clinic run by a woman doctor (Hanna Schygulla). Their mother, his ex-wife (Charlotte Rampling) is a sculptress in the throes of arthritis, Parkinson’s and depression who doesn’t care a fig for him. She is already devastated by her own loss. She reminds her daughters that her parents didn’t attend their wedding because they warned her she was marrying a homosexual. His lover Gérard (Grégory Gadebois) creates a row in the hospital and the women have to stop him visiting. He says he’s getting the great watch he was promised by their father. As Andre gets better Manue is convinced he has forgotten about the whole idea but he tells several people including a cousin and regularly reminds her to make the arrangements. Then someone rats the women out to the police ... I want you to help me end it. Adapted from the titular autobiographical novel by Emmanuèle Bernheim by writer/director François Ozon, who regularly collaborated with the late novelist (she died in 2017), this difficult and highly emotive subject is treated in such a matter of fact realistic way and yet with a sure lightness of touch it becomes a remarkable viewing experience, decorated with stunning acting that nonetheless doesn’t feel like competitive performance. The unsentimental approach to a fraught scenario, dripfeeding backstory into the well managed narrative, subverts any potential for melodrama. Don’t tell your sister, but this story would be great for one of her novels! By turns desperate, petulant, pleading, sorrowful, distressed, enthusiastic, Dussollier is majestic as the playful monster, the gay dad whose bonkers lover has to be banned from visiting – until Manue sees them in a tender moment and eventually Gérard gets the Patek Philippe watch and it is clear the end is nigh. Manue is the daughter whom he treated disgracefully but whom he secretly adores as her sister clearly realises. Everything’s coming together. He wonders randomly when informed of the cost of the Swiss solution how poor people do it. They wait to die, shrugs Manue. This wealthy industrialist reminds her to get his Legion of Honour ribbon. We are in the world of the superannuated bourgeoisie for whom money is no issue but ill-health is the great leveller and financial comfort cannot stop the indignities of the loss of bowel control and the need for 24/7 care. As the moment nears and subterfuge is required the only person keeping a truly clear head is the man who sees only one option rather than succumb to the dreadful infirmities that will encroach upon him as further incidents will surely occur given his prognosis. He recognises his great life, his entitlement, his privilege and now his destruction. Amid all the superbly constructed tension there is great humour, telling detail, laughter, tears. A rich and timely drama, fair in every possible way. Mesmerising. You know, he’s a bad father. But I love him
I’m here to learn your ways. Following the destruction of the House of Atreides by the House of Harkonnen, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) daughter of Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) the head of House Corrino secretly journals that Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) may be alive. On Arrakis, Stilgar’s Fremen troops including Paul and his pregnant mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) overcome a Harkonnen patrol. When they arrive at Sietch Tabr some Fremen suspect they are spies, while Stilgar and others see signs of the prophecy that a mother and son from the so-called ‘Outer World will bring prosperity to Arrakis. Stilgar tells Jessica that Sietch Tabr’s Reverend Mother Ramallo (Giusi Merli) is dying and that she must replace her by drinking the Water of Life, a fatal poison for males and the untrained. Jessica’s body transmutes the poison, surviving and inheriting the memories of every female ancestor in her lineage. The liquid also accelerates the cognitive development of her unborn daughter Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy) allowing Jessica to communicate with her telepathically. Jessica and Alia agree to focus on convincing the skeptical northern Fremen of the prophecy. Jessica urges Paul also to drink the Water of Life and become the Kwisatz Haderach [‘the shortening of the way’ in the Kabbalah]. The young and rebellious Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya) and her friend Shishakli (Souhelia Yacoub) believe that the prophecy was fabricated to manipulate and subjugate the Fremen but she begins to respect Paul after he declares that he only intends to fight alongside the Fremen not to rule them. Paul and Chani fall in love as Paul embraces the Fremen ways: learning their language, participating in rites such as riding a sandworm, becoming a Fedaykin fighter and helping raid Harkonnen spice operations. Paul adopts the Fremen names Usul and Muad’Dib as he his likened to a kangaroo mouse. Due to the devastating spice raids, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Starsgard) head of House of Harkonnen and former stewart of Arrakis and enemy to the House of Atreides replaces his nephew Glossu Rabban Harkonnen aka Rabban (Dave Bautista) as Arrakis’s ruler with his psychotic younger nephew and heir apparent Rabban’s younger brother Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). Lady Margot Fenring (Lea Seydoux), a Bene Gesserit is sent to evaluate Feyd-Rautha as a prospective Kwisatz Haderach and to seduce him to secure his genetic lineage: she is duly impregnated. Jessica travels south to unite with Fremen fundamentalists who believe in the prophecy of the Mahdi. Paul stays north, fearful that his visions of a holy war will come to pass if he travels south as a messiah. He reunites with Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) the former military leader of House Atreides and Paul’s mentor who leads him to the hidden atomic stockpile of House Atreides. Paul was not able to foresee Feyd-Rautha’s attack on the northern Fremen, including Sietch Tabr, forcing Paul and the survivors to head south. Shishakli remains behind and is killed by Feyd-Rautha. Arriving south, Paul drinks the Water of Life and falls into a coma. Chani is angered by this but is forced by Jessica to revive him by mixing her tears with the liquid. Paul attains a clearer vision of the past, present, and future, seeing an adult Alia on a water-filled Arrakis and that Jessica is the Baron’s daughter, making Paul both an Atreides and a Harkonnen. Chani attempts to warn the southern Fremen that the prophecy will be used to enslave them, but Gurney quiets her down. Paul galvanizes the fundamentalists by showing that he can read their innermost thoughts. He declares himself the Lisan al Gaib and sends a challenge to Emperor Shaddam. Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and the Emperor’s Truthsayer Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) tells Irulan that she advised the Emperor to annihilate House Atreides because they had grown too defiant. Shaddam arrives on Arrakis with Irulan, Mohiam, and his Sarduakar troops. As he meets the Harkonnens, the Fremen launch a massive military strike using atomics and sandworms … He’s a sociopath, highly intelligent, in love with pain but sexually vulnerable. And so the behemoth that is the second half of director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci fi Dune carves its path into global consciousness with a positively Shakespearean scenario unfolding. Viewed through the prism of one of Herbert’s great influences, Lawrence of Arabia, the fey, androgynous and rather reluctant protagonist who rallies the rebels against the powerful desert overlords makes more sense of Chalamet’s casting, a callow youth not quite ready for his hero’s journey who says to Zendaya’s Chani, I want to be your equal. In the 1960s the interest in ecology and the world’s resources together with a question about the future of Islam can clearly be mapped onto today’s geopolitical catastrophes with Paul’s Messianic position as Mahdi key to the resumption of the Fremen fundamentalism and the miracles of Christianity given a wholesale workout. Essentially the Abrahamic religions intersect in battle and beliefs, the role of the desert prophet a common trope. The visual debt to Lawrence is clear in certain visual quotes but it’s mitigated by the murky palette of greige created by cinematographer Greig Fraser and the tendency to blur Chalamet’s slight figure against the rippling sands: not a visual choice Lean would ever have made when clarity and precision were key to the earlier film’s expressive beauty. Sometimes this looks like it’s shot through Paul’s dusty goggles and his lusciously long lashes. The extraordinary Colosseum/Nazi-styled gladiatorial fight in an infrared rendition of Harkonnen is a glorious and daring exception, a clear statement about a world drained of colour. And, not to put too fine a point on the general tendency of the film, when we step away from the major world building sequences, there are too many close ups – a problem afflicting many films at the present time. This can’t be a budgetary choice so must be an aesthetic one. The storytelling in the streamlined screenplay by Villeneuve & Jon Spaihts (with early work by Eric Roth) is much more efficient here than in the first part: that film’s setting up of the spice-mining story and the different planets’ ecological concerns permits a slicker narrative to unfold here, the 2 hour 46 minutes running time notwithstanding with a religious and familial fight resulting in war. Every beat is hit at the right time. Happily there are a couple of clunky moments which might make you giggle at presumably unintentional reminders of Life of Brian (sometimes this prophet doth protesteth too much) while the ladies say twice (repetition being a screenwriting trick) that the religious prophecy is designed to distract, a common Marxian precept (something about the spice of the people, natch). The major jaw-dropping story twist at 120 minutes is of the Star Wars variety and very pleasurable it is too, turning the last 45 minutes into an astonishing conflict of character, wits and strength. Every hero requires a vicious enemy and Butler makes for a mesmerisingly sadistic villain. Caveats aside, this is mostly masterful filmmaking with engaging characters, terrific timing and excellent structure, which creates a narrative matrix of totally absorbing events and developments with an open-ended conclusion in which we can see Paul evolving into an anti-hero while the women take charge. This psychedelic sci fi encompassing faith, friendship, fascism, imperialism, breeding programmes and destiny, is hitting theatres when the concerns of the recent past are replaying out in real time. Part three (Dune Messiah, which is set 12 years following the aftermath of the war) is in the works but according to Villeneuve, he is not rushing it. More’s the pity! I am not the messiah
Very soon, this place will be full of murderesses, drug addicts, prostitutes, just like before. Cabaret singer Yolanda (Cristina Sanchez Pascual) brings heroin to her lover who drops dead of an overdose. To escape from the police who arrive looking for her at the club where she works, the singer looks for refuge in a local convent where the Mother Superior (Julieta Serrano), a fan of Yolanda, rapturously greets her. The mission of the order, called the Humiliated Redeemers (Redentoras humilladas), is to offer shelter and redemption to fallen women. The convent once was a bustling haven for prostitutes, drug addicts and murderers, but it is now in disrepair. The order is facing serious financial hardships as their prime financial supporter, the vain and greedy Marchioness aka La Marquesa (Mary Carrillo), has decided to discontinue the convent’s annuity under the pretence of economising. The convent had taken in their wayward daughter Virginia who became a nun and ran off to Africa where she was eaten by cannibals. Six religious members of the community live at the convent: the mother Superior, four other nuns and the chaplain. To reinforce their vows of humility, the Mother Superior has given the other nuns repulsive new names: Sister Manure (Marisa Paredes), Sister Damned (Carmen Maura), Sister Snake (Lina Canalejas) and Sister Sewer Rat (Chus Lampreave). With few opportunities for spiritual ministry, the nuns have begun to indulge in their own idiosyncratic pursuits in order to pass the time. The nurturing Sister Damned compulsively cleans the convent and coddles all the animals under her care, including an overgrown pet tiger that she treats like a son, playing the bongos for him. Ascetic Sister Manure is consumed by thoughts of penitence and corporal self-sacrifice and cooks between LSD hallucinations. She murdered somebody and because the mother superior lied under oath to save her from jail she is devoted to her. The over-curious Sister Sewer Rat gardens and secretly under the pen name ‘Concha Torres’ writes lurid novels about the wayward souls who visit the convent. She smuggles the novels out of the convent through her sister’s regular visits. The unassuming Sister Snake, with the help of the priest (Manuel Zarzo) tailors seasonal fashion collections for dressing the statues of the Virgin Mary. Her piety is a cover for her romantic love for the chain-smoking chaplain. The mother Superior is a heavy drug user and a Lesbian, whose charitable work is a means of meeting needy young women of whom she says, From admiring them so much I have become one of them. At the convent, Yolanda mingles with the nuns and the Mother Superior soon falls passionately in love with her. Together, they consume coke and heroin until Yolanda decides both should come off the drugs. Withdrawal from the drug for Yolanda is like a painful catharsis but for the Mother Superior it confirms her very sinful nature. Yolanda keeps the Mother Superior at arm’s length and strikes a friendship with Sister Rat. The Mother Superior has to face both Yolanda’s rejection and the threats of closure … One of the bases of our community is self-mortification and humiliation. That’s why we have such bizarre-sounding names. Overdosing, Lesbian nuns, hard drugs, erotic novels. Not the best known of Pedro Almodovar’s films or even among his own favourites, principally because as critic Jose Arroyo points out, it was made more or less on commission, the first commercially produced among his body of work made by a multimillionaire for his actress girlfriend – this film’s leading lady. Notwithstanding that, this boasts a familiar cast that includes Eva Siva and Cecilia Roth in the ensemble with Maura making one of her five appearances for the director. Aren’t you a nun?/No, I’m a whore. The main storytelling issue is the passivity of the protagonist, something that led the writer/director to give the nuns more to do which is where the real fun happens. Nothing to do with the later Whoopi Goldberg movie Sister Act although there’s a certain broad familiarity, perhaps if this had gone the whole hog and been turned into a musical Almodovar might have achieved something closer to his ambitions. The uneven structure resulting from the unbalanced construction isn’t entirely satisfying and it leads to a bittersweet conclusion that feels rather abrupt. Never mind, we’ll never get over seeing these singularly human nuns with their loves and lusts and extremely bad habits! Eating this is like taking communion. Jesus appeared to me while I was making it. He offered me his wounds to suck, like a swallow
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 destinyMM#4500 #660straightdaysofmondomovies
You only wear makeup if you’re going out or you’ve been crying. Rome in the 1970s, Clara (Penelope Cruz) is a nonconformist Spanish expatriate trapped in a loveless marriage to Felice (Vincenzo Amato) an unfaithful and abusive businessman, with whom she has three children: twelve-year old Adriana aka Adri (Luana Giuliani), Gino (Patrizio Francioni) and Diana (Maria Chiara Goretti). Adriana experiences gender dysphoria. Adriana rejects girlhood and instead identifies as a boy, wearing boys’ clothes and adopting the masculine name Andrea. One day, Andrea befriends Sara (Penelope Nieto Conti), a Romani girl who knows him as a boy. Upon a shared sense of being outsiders, Andrea and Clara grow closer. During the summer holidays Clara and the children go to a villa with her sisters- and mother-in-law (Alvia Reale) and all the young cousins. Adri is the ringleader when they explore a well and gets everyone into trouble, confronting Clara and taunting her into hitting her. After fantasising that a church service becomes a variety performance like the black and white TV shows she watches with Clara, Adri witnesses her father’s very young mistress Maria (India Santella) arriving at their apartment and she hears the woman declare that she is pregnant with Felice’s illegitimate child. Clara finally falls apart … You and Dad made me wrong. Is it too late to say that Cruz has come into her own and is a towering acting force in world cinema? She’s a powerhouse here yet her performance is not overwhelming – she shares the screen with a very cool kid who frankly could easily be male or female – and this is written so carefully that we understand Clara’s understanding of an eccentric child who declares she is the offspring of an alien and wants to spend her life in the sky. It only becomes problematic when Adri befriends and deceives Sara in the guise of ‘Andrea’ and becomes embroiled in a tentative pre-pubescent romance. Thankfully a deus ex machina prevents it from becoming the devastating betrayal that is threatened. The underlying tensions in the marriage are not openly discussed, they’re introduced subtly because almost everything here is from the children’s perspective as they try to navigate a wonderful mother and a distant disciplinarian father who makes her sad. Clara dresses in bright colours and pops off the screen whereas Adri is forced to wear white like the other girls in the Catholic school where the boys were black surplices. When Clara is hassled by guys following them on the street Adri protest to Clara, You are too beautiful. I am ugly. Both are outsiders, they have that in common. There is a remarkable balancing act performed here – the troubles of both mother and daughter are never overstated, both are fragile yet when Clara can no longer even talk about the cuckolding and the prospect of her husband’s bastard offspring, Adri bangs at the door of the bathroom where Clara has locked herself in and shouts, We’re the kids! You’re the grown up! It is the admission that Clara can’t cope after putting on the show of shows for her children. When she wants to play with the kids it’s Adri who tells her she can’t. Then, of course, Felice takes charge and does to Clara what all husbands do when they’re found out. Immaculately staged and performed, this is a joy for anyone interested in Italian interiors circa 1972 with wonderful use of space and light, geometric patterns and amazing wallpaper in a developing suburb that if it were in an American movie would become a location for poltergeists. Everything is heightened by the marvellous costume design by Massimo Cantini Parrini and the performances of contemporary singers, including the title song and Adriano Celentano’s nonsense song Prisencolinensinainciusol. Above all, this is a beguiling family drama about people and a place in transition and sensibly offers no easy answers. Directed by Emanuele Crialese, who co-wrote the semi-autobiographical screenplay with Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni. Inside everything another thing is always hiding
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 world doesn’t make sense anymore. I mean, it’s on fire. The rich don’t give a shit. Poor kids are cannon fodder. Integrity is a punch line. Trust is just a name on a bank. December 1970 in New England. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is a classics teacher at Barton Academy, a boarding school he once attended on scholarship. His students and fellow teachers despise him for his strict grading and stubborn personality. Dr. Hardy Woodrup (Andrew Garman) Barton’s headmaster and Hunham’s former student, scolds Hunham for costing the academy money by flunking the son of an important donor (a senator), causing Princeton University to withdraw his offer of a place. As punishment, Hunham is forced to supervise five students left on campus during the holiday break, including troublemaker Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) whose mother cancelled a family trip to St Kitts to honeymoon with her new husband. Also staying behind is cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) whose son Curtis attended Barton and joined the military to pay for college but has been killed in the Vietnam. To the students’ chagrin, Hunham forces them to study and exercise on their break. After six days, the wealthy father of one of the students arrives by helicopter and agrees to take all five students on the family’s ski trip with their parents’ permission. Angus, who is unable to reach his parents for permission, is left alone at Barton with Hunham and Mary. When Hunham catches Angus trying to book a hotel room, the two argue about Hunham’s disciplinarian policies. Angus impulsively runs through the school halls and defiantly leaps into a pile of gym equipment, dislocating his shoulder. Hunham takes Angus to the hospital; to protect Hunham from blame, Angus lies to the doctors about the circumstances of his injury. At a restaurant, Hunham and Angus encounter Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston), Woodrup’s assistant. Hunham flirts with Lydia, who invites the pair to her Christmas party. Angus, Hunham, Mary and Barton’s janitor Danny (Naheem Garcia) attend Lydia’s party. Angus successfully flirts with Lydia’s niece Elise (Darby Lily Lee-Stack). Hunham is disappointed to discover that Lydia has a boyfriend and Mary gets drunk and has an emotional breakdown over Curtis’s death. Hunham insists on leaving early. Hunham and Angus argue; when Hunham references Angus’s father, Angus says his father is dead. Mary scolds Hunham for his unsympathetic attitude. Feeling remorseful for his actions, Hunham arranges his own small Christmas celebration … There’s nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion, but man’s every impulse and appetite from the disgusting to the sublime is on display right here all around you. So, before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see, history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present. Director Alexander Payne’s campus dramedy is set in the early 1970s so the mind turns to those wintry Love Story moments and the political satires of the era and even casts itself as a gnarly riposte to Dead Poets Society: this boasts none of those tropes or inclinations. Instead it’s about the accidental forming of an alternative family with Giamatti in the best performance he’s created since the last time he worked with Payne in the estimable and beloved Sideways. Their collaborations create nuanced portraits of masculinity in a continuum observed in Payne’s other work but somehow come off best when they’re together. At least pretend to be a human being. Please. It’s Christmas! Here he’s essentially Scrooge on the path to redemption as the seasonal setting and quasi paternal function require. I have known you since you were a boy, so I think I have the requisite experience and insight to aver that you are and always have been penis cancer in human form. Newcomers Randolph and Sessa are impressive indeed in their debut film roles. The backdrop of course is Vietnam and it’s foregrounded with the loss of Randolph’s son reminding us that it’s offscreen drama which informs a lot of on the nose exchanges in an often cliched character study that paradoxically ignores the contemporary politics in the main, lending its focus instead to the politics of the school. Twisted fucker orphaned that glove on purpose. Left you with one so the loss would sting that much more. If there’s a flaw in construction it’s in the absurd overlength at 133 minutes – something that definitely could not be thrown at the films it wants to retrospectively join in the pantheon. Those chilly scenes of Winter 1970 are authentically captured by cinematographer Eigil Bryld who perhaps surprisingly was shooting digitally. Written by David Hemingson, very loosely adapting Marcel Pagnol’s Merlusse to create a quasi-autobiographical tale, this is bracingly performed. Not for ourselves alone are we born
It’s going to be the best Seder ever! When sixty-something London-based widower and lawyer Lenny Rubins’ (Timothy Spall) plan for a relaxing round-the-world retirement cruise is disrupted by his elderly mother’s (Honor Blackman) hospitalisationg for a heart attack he is then further disturbed by her request from her hospital bed that he reunite with his estranged adult children so they can all celebrate Pesach (Passover) together. And it turns out she’s bought back the old family home in order to hold it there. Eldest son Danny (James Callis) is an obsessive and highly strung businessman constantly on the phone bullying his minions including new recruit Nick (Blake Harrison) whom he wants to go to Central Africa for a mining deal with a foreign company. He ignores his young son Jake (Theo Stevenson) in pursuit of his latest financial move for which he’s even learned to speak Japanese. Lenny’s daughter Andi (Rhona Mitra) is coincidentally in the same part of Africa as part of her political activism. Lenny almost moves mountains to find her and discovers she regards Danny as the enemy. Lenny locates his son Clarity (Asier Newman) in a Buddhist temple, silent, but ultimately willing to reunite with his grandmother. Then when all seems lost his last son Yona (Hugh O’Conor) shows up completely Orthodox – a new Rabbi – complete with heavily pregnant wife Miri (Loo Brealey) and three kids and he sets out to make the family kitchen completely kosher for the much-anticipated meal. Then there’s a tragic event and everything changes … It could be worse – he might have been a Scientologist. Yoav Factor’s family comedy drama could be damned with faint praise were it not for the fact that there’s a set of terrific performances at its core not least that of Spall with his frustrations writ large. After years of inexplicable behaviour from his warring offspring he’s fed up but his heart expands to deal with all of their problems as they arise, all the while trying to figure out how to take his long deserved holiday, get his money back because his mother’s prior heart condition wasn’t disclosed, and stop his offspring from killing each other. The throughline of identity, Jewishness, communication, language and misunderstandings keeps the family squabbles afloat with more meaning than they have on the surface. The running joke is pronunciation because Lenny is hardly observant yet two of his sons are deeply religious, one not even in the faith into which he was born. It’s a nice attempt to bring British Jewishness to the screen but probably doesn’t hit as many targets as it thinks, particularly since Grandma’s House and Friday Night Dinner on TV set such a high bar and the screenplay is rather clunky and isn’t sure where to lay the emphasis allowing the tone to drift. Nonetheless kudos to the debutant writer/director for dramatising the traditional meal and all that precedes it in a convincingly dysfunctional North London Jewish household where emotional blackmail is the raison d’etre. Tonight we’re all kings
When he dies, this town dies too. Hadleyville, New Mexico Territory. Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is newly married to Quaker Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) on the eve of retirement. The happy couple will soon depart for a new life: to raise a family and run a store in another town. However, word arrives that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) , a vicious outlaw whom Kane sent to prison, has been released and will arrive by the noon train, one day ahead of the new marshal. Miller’s gang – his younger brother Ben (Sheb Wooley), Jack Colby (Lee Van Cleef) and Jim Pierce (Robert J. Wilke) – await his arrival at the train station. For pacifist Amy the solution is simple: leave town before Miller arrives. But Kane’s sense of duty and honour make him stay and he says Miller and his gang would hunt him down anyway. Amy gives Kane an ultimatum: she is leaving by the noon train, with or without him. If Kane were to leave with her, he would be forced to confront Miller and his gang at the station, rather than in town. He visits a number of old friends and allies, but none can or will help: Judge Percy Mettrick (Otto Kruger) who sentenced Miller, flees the town on horseback and urges Kane to do the same. Kane’s young deputy marshal Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) remains bitter that Kane did not recommend him as his successor and says he will stand with Kane only if Kane goes to the city fathers and puts the word in for him. When Kane refuses, Pell turns in his badge and pistol. Kane’s efforts to round up a posse at Ramírez’s Saloon and then the church are met with fear and hostility. Some townspeople, worried that a gunfight would damage the town’s reputation, urge Kane to avoid the confrontation entirely. Some are Miller’s friends, others resent that Kane cleaned up the town in the first place. Others are of the opinion that their tax money goes to support local law enforcement and that the fight is not the job of a posse. Sam Fuller (Harry Morgan) hides in his house, sending his wife Mildred (Eve McVeagh) to the door to tell Kane he is not home. Jimmy (William Newell) offers to help but he is blind in one eye, sweating, and unsteady. Kane tells him he will call him and gives him money for a drink. Mayor Jonas Henderson (Thomas Mitchell) encourages Kane to just leave town. Martin Howe (Lon Chaney Jr.), Kane’s predecessor, is too old and arthritic. Herb Baker (James Millican) agrees to be deputised as Sheriff but backs out when he realises he is the only volunteer. A final offer of aid comes from 14-year-old Johnny (Ralph Reed) . Kane admires the boy’s courage but refuses his help. While waiting at the hotel for the train, Amy goes upstairs and confronts Helen Ramírez (Katy Jurado) in her room. Helen was once Miller’s lover, then Kane’s, then Pell’s. Amy believes the reason Kane refuses to leave town is because he wants to protect her, but Helen reveals there is no lingering attachment on Kane’s part and she, too, is leaving. When Helen questions why Amy will not stay with Kane, she explains that both her brother and father were gunned down by criminals, a tragedy that compelled her to become a Quaker in the first place. Helen nonetheless chides Amy for not standing by her husband in his hour of need, saying that if she was in Amy’s place, she would take up a gun and fight alongside Kane. At the stables, Pell saddles a horse and tries to persuade Kane to take it … Time’s getting short. The tension is palpable throughout the unfolding drama of this Fifties western with issues of loyalty and cowardice placed front and centre. The legend goes that John W. Cunningham’s 1947 Collier’s short story The Tin Star was adapted by blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman for producer Stanley Kramer, a man not known for subtle stories of social justice. In fact Foreman gave Kramer a four-page plot outline that happened to contain certain broad similarities to the published story the rights to which he then acquired. Then (maybe) director Richard Fleischer helped him flesh it out while they made another film together. Fleischer was contracted with RKO so couldn’t shoot High Noon. On the other hand altogether, the story might be just a rip off of The Virginian. Foreman refused to name names at HUAC so Kramer tore up their agreement, Foreman fled to England and John Wayne refused to make the film believing it to be a protest against blacklisting and celebrating ‘communist’ Foreman’s departure. Bizarrely, Cooper was abroad when he won the Academy Award and asked Wayne to accept it on his behalf – and Wayne did. Only in Hollywood. Cooper’s stoic and righteous brave persona is crystallised here as he stands up for the little guys, the closeups of those features as inimical as Mount Rushmore. Kelly was discovered by Kramer performing on Broadway. She reportedly felt embarrassed by her stilted performance here but in retrospect the very nature of the role and her wonderful posture and expression radiates a kind of luminosity that feels appropriate. Her scene with Jurado is just right. Both women are outstanding – each representing the poles of femininity that typify the genre, one the past, the other Will’s potential future, each in a position to help save him, each defending her right to do so. Van Cleef was originally supposed to play Pell but refused to have a nose job so was relegated to villain and he doesn’t have a single line – the only such role in his career. This is such a clear-eyed vision of small town viciousness, self-interest and structured so effectively with the editing decision to make it a race against time raising the dramatic stakes to those of a suspenseful thriller. It’s lustrously shot in monochrome by Floyd Crosby and the lilting score by Dimitri Tiomkin and the theme song with its words, Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, ironically compound the lack of sentimentality. It has often been remarked of director Fred Zinnemann that he made films of conscience and this is exemplary: sturdy, well-paced, characterful but also psychologically probing and deeply moral, a grim portrait of what happens to people when the chips are down and the bullies are in town and they’ll say and do anything to avoid getting involved, a statement that enraged both John Wayne and Howard Hawks and allegedly resulted in their humorous riposte, chamber western, Rio Bravo, seven years later. A bona fide classic that just looks better with the passing of time, the title has long entered the lexicon. Utterly iconic. We’ve got an hour
mondomovies 