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
A spaceship has crashed in my back yard and has crushed my azaleas. Milton Robinson (Ben Kingsley) is a 79-year-old widower living on his own in his small town of Boonton in Western Pennsylvania. He regularly attends city council meetings where he asks the same questions every weeks and makes the same comment about the town’s slogan phoning home. He receives regular visits and help from his daughter Denise (Zoe Winters) a veterinarian locally. One day, a UFO lands in his backyard and a small humanoid alien (Jade Quon) crawls out. Milton attempts to get help, calling the police and his daughter and bringing it up at the city council meeting but is brushed off as senile. Milton brings the alien, who is nonverbal, a rug to keep him warm but after seeing he’s cold outside on the back stoop, coaxes him inside the house and treats him as a regular houseguest, providing him with a tray of assorted food but discovering that his guest only drinks water and eats apples. Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) an acquaintance from the meetings, stops by and discovers the alien, telling Milton that they should keep it a secret for its own safety. Joyce (Jane Curtin), another elderly woman from the meetings irritated that Milton has been keeping company with Sandy also discovers the alien when she doorsteps them. Jules, the alien, begins repairing his ship but does not appear to be making quick progress. Milton’s daughter hears about her father’s antics and schedules him for a mental evaluation at a local facility where a neurologist Dr North (Anna George) says his faculties are quickly diminishing and that they should consider assisted living. The idea that he might have dementia upsets Milton and he storms out. Sandy, who is attempting to start a programme to connect with the youth of the neigbhourhood, is robbed by Danny (Cody Kostro) a young man she invites in to her home after he’s called her up on seeing the poster around town. After she states that she will call the police, the man tackles and attempts to strangle her. However the alien (whom Milton and Sandy have named Jules but Joyce insists on calling Gary – is there a certain singer in mind? His birthday is tomorrow, fact fans!) receives a vision of the events and telepathically causes the assailant’s head to explode. This raises the suspicion of the National Security Agency since they are conducting an ongoing search for the crashed spaceship. Milton, Sandy and Joyce finally figure out from Jules’ regular cat drawings that he needs dead cats to power his ship, so Milton and Sandy go out to find some but Milton continues to be troubled by thoughts of his declining faculties. Meanwhile, they are unknowingly followed by police who observe their strange activities … I’m not sure what to do. This hasn’t happened to me before. At first the screenplay by Gavin Steckler seems like a blend of Cocoon and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (the situation plus verbal nods are more obvious than meta) but this witty portrait of pension-age life also hits dark notes with ease and bats them away as quickly – in one case in an act of astonishing violence, albeit offscreen. His eyes are very understanding. There are some fun running jokes – Milton walks everywhere and curses the lack of a crosswalk; his repeated requests at the local council meetings; and each time he says he’s got an alien living with him, it’s received with the same query – An illegal alien? How three very different elderly adults deal with this extraordinary situation is treated with kindness and humour – while Joyce insists on performing If I Leave Here Tomorrow a 70s song that recalls her wild days and nights once upon a time in Pittsburgh, Jules’ empathy is such that he sees that Sandy is on the verge of being killed and does the necessary as Joyce warbles away beside him. That’s some juxtaposition. He’s very friendly, he’s undemanding, he watches whatever I watch. Companionship, the ignorance of adult children getting on with their own lives and the patronising misperception of the elderly’s capacities to cope are part of the emotional tapestry being enacted here – against the backdrop of a grand science fiction scenario. It is quite literally a study of alienation. I don’t see why we should prejudice him with our fearful thoughts. This meditation on ageing and friendship has a serious subject at its heart and that’s our loss of control when our faculties start misleading us. But this has the happiest of outcomes, all thanks to an alien who has the power to explode the head of a marauding raping home invader. Aside from the references to Milton’s beloved CSI on TV three times a day, there’s a knowing nod to the Men in Black who are in pursuit of the gentle non-verbal alien in their midst. You’ve seen the movies, you know what happens to these guys, deadpans Milton. A droll, witty, assured and heartfelt paean to friendship and the ironies of people on their home patch where they wind up being treated as idiots once they hit a certain age. The performances are pitch perfect from all concerned and Joyce is right about Gary/Jules – those eyes really are understanding. Quon is remarkable in the role of listener as these seniors pour out their worries. A low key left field joy! Directed by veteran producer Marc Turtletaub. You’ve got to enjoy your life, not worry it away
I’m the beekeeper. I protect the hive. Rural Massachusetts. Retired schoolteacher Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) lives by herself on an isolated property but she has a tenant in her barn, Adam Clay (Jason Statham) who lives a quiet life as a beekeeper. Eloise falls for an online phishing scam and is robbed of over $2 million, the majority of which belongs to an educational charity she manages. Devastated, she dies by gunshot. Clay finds her body and is immediately arrested by FBI Agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Eloise’s daughter. After her mother’s death is ruled a suicide, Clay is released. Verona tells him the group that robbed Eloise has been on the FBI’s radar for a while but is difficult to track. Wanting justice for Eloise, Clay contacts the Beekeepers, a mysterious group, to find the scammers responsible. Clay receives an address for the scammers: a call centre run by Mickey Garnett (David Witts). Clay scares off the employees and destroys the building. Garnett informs his boss, technology executive Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), who sends Garnett to kill Clay. A violent confrontation ensues where Clay kills Garnett’s men and severs Garnett’s fingers. Garnett calls Danforth while stopped at a bridge, informing him that Clay is a Beekeeper. Having followed Garnett, Clay drags him off the bridge with a truck to his death and warns Danforth that he is coming after him. Danforth informs former CIA director Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons), who is currently running security for Danforth Enterprises at the request of Derek’s mother, Jessica, about Clay. Concerned, Wallace contacts the current CIA director Janet Harward (Minnie Driver) hoping to stope Clay. She contacts the Beekeepers and learns that Clay has retired from the organisation. The Beekeepers subsequently declare neutrality after Clay kills the current Beekeeper Anisette Landress (Megan Le) sent to kill him at a gas station. Meanwhile, Verona and her partner, Agent Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi), figure that Clay will assault the Nine Star United Centre in Boston, which oversees all of Derek’s global scam call centers. After informing FBI Deputy Director Prigg (Don Gilet) that Clay is a Beekeeper, they are shocked to get all the support they ask for. Wallace coordinates a group of ex-special forces personnel, revealing to them that the Beekeepers are a highly skilled and dangerous secret human intelligence organisation tasked with protecting the United States, operating above and beyond governmental jurisdiction. To improve their chances at stopping Clay, Wallace orders the group to secure the inside of the Nine Star Building, while the FBI places their own SWAT team around the perimeter. Danforth’s decision to not evacuate the employees enables Clay to quickly defeat the FBI SWAT team and infiltrate the building. After wiping out all of Wallace’s ex-Special Forces group, Clay proceeds to interrogate the manager, who reveals that Danforth is his boss. Verona informs Prigg that Danforth runs both companies, which several US government agencies use. Verona also brings up the point that not only will Clay try to kill Derek but he may also kill Jessica (Jemma Redgrave), the president of the United States, due to her association with the scam … Beekeepers keep working until they die. The Stath is back! And he’s in pursuit of righteous vengeance in this entertaining and well motivated thriller albeit this probably has the highest body count since the last John Wick entry with added fingers for electronic passes. Was it Aristotle that said character is action?! Literal to the nth degree, we have someone acting out his nominatively determined hobby, and killing his honey bees is just the worst thing you could do to the masked one. I taught CIA software to hunt money and not terrorists. The opening sequence is clear and concise – then we’re brought into a world where a very unlikely character (a very different looking Hutcherson as Derek) turns out to be the son of someone very important indeed – and while Redgrave is clearly powerful the big reveal doesn’t happen until c74 minutes into the running time – at which point many, many people have rued their crossing the Beekeeper. I will never steal from the weak and the vulnerable again! Then the action unspools at a supposedly impenetrable venue followed by a party at a coastal estate where Clay has to contend with a comic book South African mercenary Lazarus (Taylor James) who got unlucky the last time he met a Beekeeper and has the prosthetic leg to prove it. Obviously, this has to be the ultimate encounter. Throughout there are gnomic nods on the one hand to bees (what else) but on the other to the offspring of US Presidents with winks at the ethics of campaign fundraising, a fun set of references in election year. And this will not dissuade anyone of the justifiable fear that technology is theft. At the end of the day Mr Clay disappears just like the man with Black Magic chocolates – or James Bond. What a guy! He’s absolutely fucking terrifying! Truly the strong mostly silent killing machine. The well-hewn screenplay is written by Kurt Wimmer with tongue firmly in cheek and directed by David Ayer with stunning cinematography from Gabriel Beristain. Sometimes when the hive is out of balance you have to replace the queen
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!
Aka Ariane. I always tell you what I’m doing, but you never tell me what you’re doing. Paris. Young cello student Ariane Chavasse (Audrey Hepburn) eavesdrops on a conversation between her father, Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier) a widowed private detective who specializes in tracking unfaithful spouses, and his client, Monsieur X (John McGiver). After Claude gives his client proof of his wife’s daily trysts with American business magnate Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper) in Room 14 at the Ritz Hotel, Monsieur X announces he will shoot Flannagan later that evening. Claude is nonchalant, regretting only the business he will lose, since Flannagan is a well-known international playboy with a long history of casual affairs. When Ariane cannot get the Ritz to put her through to Flannagan on the phone, and the police decline to intervene until after a crime has been committed, she decides to warn him herself, and leaves for the hotel. When Monsieur X breaks into Flannagan’s hotel suite, he finds Flannagan with Ariane – not his wife (Lise Bourdin), carefully making her escape on an outside ledge. Flannagan is intrigued by the mysterious girl, who refuses to give him any information about herself, even her name. He starts guessing her name from the initial A on her handbag, and when she declines to tell him he resorts to calling her thin girl. She has no romantic history but pretends to be a femme fatale to interest him, and soon falls in love with the considerably older man. She agrees to meet him the next afternoon, not mentioning that she has orchestral practice in the evenings. She arrives with mixed feelings but spends the evening while waiting for him to leave for the airport. Ariane’s father, who has tried unsuccessfully to protect her from knowing about the tawdry domestic surveillance details in his files, notices her change of mood but has no idea that it proceeds from one of his cases. A year later, Flannagan returns to Paris and the Ritz. Ariane, who has kept track of Flannagan’s womanising exploits through the news media, meets him again when she sees him at an opera while surveying the crowd from a balcony. She puts herself in his path in the lobby, and they start seeing each other again … He who loves and runs away, lives to love another day. The first of twelve collaborations between Billy Wilder and screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond, this sprightly adaptation of Claude Anet’s 1920 novel Ariane, jeune fille russe is in fact the fourth screen version of the story, the second of which (1932) had a screenplay co-written by Wilder and the third which supposedly inspired this was made in Germany in 1931 by Paul Czinner. The attraction for Wilder is clearly in the potential for making a film along the lines of his hero Ernst Lubitsch with his fabled ‘touch’ and aside from the judicious use of eavesdropping (a suggestive trope Lubitsch loved), key to this is the casting. For Wilder, Hepburn was kissed by the angels and it was their second film following Sabrina. She shines here as the music student with ideas beyond those of the older men around her, curiosity stoked by those amorous files in her father’s office. According to her biographer Alexander Walker, there were alterations to the screenplay, so “Wilder had a heroine who behaved with the serene composure of a self-confident schoolgirl. It would work, he was sure. Truant and pert, Audrey bubbles along, sticking her oval chin out as if to invite love, the putting up her guard just in time.” Cooper remains an epic iteration of masculinity but wasn’t Wilder’s first choice – that would have been Cary Grant, who never agreed to appear in any of his productions. He comes to Paris every year and I always know because my business improves noticeably. Cooper, however was affable company for a location shoot in a city Wilder loved that had given him respite and a career after fleeing Nazi Germany. It was their second collaboration too because in 1938 Cooper had appeared for Lubitsch as another womaniser in France in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife on which Wilder had done some writing and that had also marked his first collaboration with previous writing partner and producer Charles Brackett. Now he tailored Cooper’s role more specifically to how he appeared twenty years later. There was a problem, though. “The day I cast Cooper, he got old,” Wilder told Charlotte Chandler. For Chevalier this gave him his first non-singing screen role in a decade. It restored his popularity following his conduct during the war – like many in the French film industry, he agreed to work in tandem with the occupying Germans. He wasn’t especially popular on set however, and Wilder left him out of the cocktails he hosted each evening (just as he had done with Humphrey Bogart on Sabrina). In Paris, people make love – well, perhaps not better, but certainly more often. They do it any time, any place. On the left bank, on the right bank, and in between! They do it by day, and they do it by night. The butcher, the baker, and the friendly undertaker. They do it in motion, they do it sitting absolutely still. Poodles do it. Tourists do it. Generals do it. Once in a while even existentialists do it. There is young love, and old love. Married love, and illicit love. It was a tricky shoot not merely because of unseasonable weather and mosquitoes but also because of the street demonstrations and violence in Paris following the Russian invasion of Hungary and the Suez crisis, forcing Wilder to speed up filming and organise evacuation plans if the worst occurred. The amoral tale is softened somewhat by the use of music and songs, almost as melodrama (in the original meaning) including Charles Trenet’s L’ame Des Poètes, Henri Betti’s C’est si bon and Fascination, a motif which is hummed throughout the film by Ariane in a score supervised by Franz Waxman and played by those obliging gypsies who also serve as a Greek chorus, discreetly disappearing when the action hots up. Cooper’s advancing age (56) and haggard appearance (he would have a full face lift two years later) made this stylish and witty exploration of sex a hard sell in the US market where the straightforward philandering didn’t go down well at a time when Lolita had just been published. However the content is mitigated by that lightness of touch that disguises discomfort while Hepburn performs beautifully as the naive daughter opposite Chevalier as her concerned father and of course Cooper who is taken in by her assumed identity in a story of double standards and hypocrisy. And a coda was added to the American production to make things right. You could fly in the twins from Stockholm. Hepburn remarked that the enterprise might have made more sense had the men’s roles been swapped. She discarded the possibility of playing Gigi on the big screen in part because Chevalier was in the cast – that twinkle in his eye didn’t seem paternal at all. She was drinking too much during production and presumed guilt led to a bout of the anorexia that plagued her. She’s a very peculiar girl. Not my type at all. As is the custom with Hepburn’s roles, there’s a fairy tale transformation here but it’s really that of Flannagan’s Don Juan – albeit there’s a fun reference to Cinderella when Ariane mislays her shoe in his hotel room. You know who I am, Mr. Flannagan, I’m the girl in the afternoon. Hepburn was outfitted by Hubert de Givenchy (and an uncredited Jay A. Morley) but her hairdo was altered from her previous urchin look in Funny Face with a centre parting introduced to a soft pageboy bob by Grazia di Rossi. She retained the look off the set, which caused quite the fashion brouhaha, and the Yorkie, Mr. Famous, which absent real life husband Mel Ferrer had bought to keep her company and wound up having a co-starring role here. The tiny creature gets smacked so much! For all its issues and complications, this is an irresistible, seductive, tart, wistfully romantic and sophisticated delight with an absurdly moving ending (plus that coda to emphasise a morally correct conclusion). And isn’t the Saul Bass poster ingenious? We did have a good time, didn’t we?
You need to stay on target. Introverted spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) has almost finished writing her fifth book about Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill), the title character of the Argylle spy series. On a train journey with her cat Alfie (Chip) to go and visit her mother Ruth (Catherine O’Hara) home in Chicago, Elly is saved from an ambush by an actual spy, Aidan Wylde (Sam Rockwell) who explains to her that a devious organisation, known as the Division, headed by Ritter (Bryan Cranston) has targeted her because her novels seemingly predict their future. Aidan travels with Elly to England, hoping that her next chapter will reveal how to stop the Division. In London, the duo searches for a Masterkey that would help expose the Division that Elly had also referenced in her novels. Suspecting Aidan wants to kill her too, Elly calls her mother for help and she immediately travels to rescue her daughter. There’s a knock at the door and it’s Elly’s father (Bryan Cranston). Then Aidan arrives and reveals that her parents are both operatives of the Division, forcing him and Elly to fend them off before fleeing. Who’s the only person who hasn’t tried to kill you in the past seventy-two hours? Escaping to France, Aidan and former CIA deputy director Alfie Solomon reveal that Argylle is not entirely fictional: Elly is in fact agent Rachel Kylle (‘Argylle’ having been derived from ‘R. Kylle’), who was captured and brainwashed by the Division five years ago and made to believe that Dr. Margaret Vogeler (Ruth) and Director Ritter (Barry) were her real parents. Elly put her suppressed memories into her novels in modified form … We’re on our own now. Cats. Writers. Spies. A recipe for success! Starwise it’s essentially Bryce versus Bryan – with a lot of Sam and Henry to spice things up. Even John Cena and pop star Dua Lipa show up in the great opening sequence and later Samuel L. Jackson and Ariana DeBose enter the fray. There’s an argument to be made for a director with such clear gifts as Matthew Vaughn that he should be making serious films – that is, narratives with more significant content and in reality it would appear he is painting himself into a corner of ridiculousness if not necessarily one of large scale likeable silliness. But we might mention that here he’s making a film about the inside of a woman’s mind (and even her eyelids) – kudos for that. Spies lie. It’s part of the game. As the perennially youthful Rockwell morphs into the amusingly Action Man-like Cavill we understand how a writer thinks, the rules of the espionage genre and enjoy Vaughn’s permanently witty point of view as Ellie figures out how to do adventure and spying in the real world (again). You’re just a character I made up. As usual in a Vaughn production, everything looks beautiful courtesy of DoP George Richmond and production designers Russell De Rozario and Daniel Taylor, the action is well managed and there are even some meta references (Argylle is definitely suited and booted by Kingsman). There’s an impressive score by Lorne Balfe with an astute use of the Beatles’ final song to lend poignancy. The midpoint reveal is great fun. Thereafter the conventions necessarily come into play. The greater the spy – the bigger the lie. There’s an easy bond (James?!) between our principals: You’re one hell of a spy, Ellie. Not a bad writer, either. And it’s a jolly sight indeed to have Howard spend most of the film carting her cat Alfie around in a posh backpack – and you know what they say about cats in dramatic structure (Save the Cat?!) – if there’s one in the first act, it has to go off in the third! It makes us think Vaughn is precisely the director to reinvigorate that moribund franchise albeit this is the first in a series of its own to perhaps be fused with Kingsman at a later date. Bonkers, nutty and fun, to be honest, this had us at Cat. Just tell us what happens in the next chapter
The world is changing. Truth is vanishing. War is coming – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Geopolitics are coming to get us, like it or not. Putin has presumably murdered Alexei Navalny (allegedly), the lawyer and anti-corruption blogger who held him to account and whose sudden death has been announced. It’s shocking and upsetting but hardly surprising given the regime’s actions in the North of Africa, the Middle East, the United Kingdom (more fools there) and of course the brutal encroaching upon Ukraine which commenced two years ago today. The ‘globalising’ EU has been the useful idiot for the Russian regime in all of this, opening borders so that Russians could install themselves everywhere, helping turn every country into identikit kips – in Ireland the true numbers will never be known due to the doctored Census figures. The only people allowed through the ports here without ID are foreigners (Irish people get arrested stet particularly at Dublin Airport, manned, curiously, by the Department of Defence) and there are Eastern Europeans (ie Russians) established in their thousands in even the smallest towns. The Russians were wargaming off Donegal a month before the invasion of Ukraine, they’ve been trying to dig up the transatlantic cables off Kerry for half a dozen years or more and the new iteration of the KGB has an enormous operation at the Embassy in Dublin’s Rathgar. Talk about the enemy within. The Irish Navy is retiring three ships and buying another – not to defend the coastline, which is extensive, but to dump more Moslems into Europe on the Libya-Italy route. The RAF is the country’s only air protection. The island only recently got radar. It is essentially defenceless. Then there are the few Russian spies we’re informed about – for instance the woman lifted in Australia who’d worked for an Irish Member of Parliament and then in the Space Observatory in Cork which is of course connected with the EU’s programme. Two leftwing Irish MEPs have recently been named as targets by a known Russian operative posing as an Estonian MEP. In this game of zero sums, Ireland is the EU’s useful idiot with a half-Indian Prime Minister and his similarly inclined Minister for Integration begging foreigners to repopulate it, advertising the country in Urdu in the anticipation presumably of eventually inviting that non-violent immensely tolerant Jew-friendly population of Gaza to move in en masse (the same Minister refused to confirm or deny Wednesday night when interviewed) – there are mosques everywhere and hospitals are taken over by Moslems with the removal of any signs of Christianity a common consequence of their increasing ubiquity not to mention their brazen unconcealed contempt for Irish women. Try visiting A&E and finding yourself the only Irish person among a sea of foreigners who don’t speak English. Did we mention that 26 years ago before the Good Friday Agreement which triggered the invasion, occupying and colonising of Ireland, nothing worked? And now there are even fewer houses, hospitals and schools for Irish people, with fewer Irish here as the natives are outnumbered yet mysteriously more housing is needed – just not for the locals. Vulture funds have snapped up property and hotels collude with the housing and dumping of so-called asylum seekers which even the most robustly generous non-racists now realise is a total scam. Just 3% of agricultural land is ‘permitted’ to be used to grow food (the EU, dontcha know) and another c15% of the country’s fisheries (the nation’s only remaining asset and purportedly worth 2,000 times more than has ever been given it by the EU) were handed to the EU a month ago with not a word about it in the Irish media, who are working hand in glove with the Government to propagandise the new normal (admittedly they’ve had 26 years of practice and as we can see they are all bought and paid for, sadly). There have been mysterious revelations – that in 2006 the Irish Government ordered mortgage lenders to give 100% loans to non-resident Poles, that the pro-EU airline Ryanair’s flights (from somewhere Warsaw/Krakow-adjacent…) to Dublin were responsible for the 90% decrease in criminality in Poland (one-way tickets handed out to individuals exiting prison?) not to mention the Good Friday Agreement’s weird coda which this author learned was allegedly the result of a secret 1990 agreement to turn Ireland into the refugee tip of the EU (mission accomplished, clearly with the Government in receipt of 10,000 Euros a head, apparently). A huge Nigerian population despite there being no direct flights until recently. 300 arrivals daily alone from Afghanistan and South Africa (just 2 of the 200+ nationalities in the country) at the height of COVID lockdown in one week during January 2021, according to the Dublin Airport Authority. And, by the way, Irish schoolchildren are being instructed to disavow the word ‘Irish’ from their heritage and to identify as ‘European,’ whatever that means. The Islamising of Europe facilitated by Angela Merkel and her cohort of Nazis (who were inspired to do that endlessly generative performative murder-art project The Holocaust by Yasser Arafat’s cousin, fact fans) makes it all a lot easier for the ongoing destruction of a people held in ideological capture. It took only 15,000 Russians to have the Crimea declared occupied yet Irish people are outnumbered in every single village, town and city by a polyglot multi-racial grouping of probably in excess of 5 million if anecdotal evidence, overcrowding and obvious lies are unpicked (in one town of our acquaintance the ratio is conservatively estimated at 9:1). Dublin had turned into a combination of Southall and Bradford within weeks of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and became impossible to live in – overnight the tension on the streets was palpable. Now it’s a no-go area. The westernmost island off Europe has been flooded with foreigners with no historical, racial, ethnic, religious, cultural or linguistic connection with the natives – who just got rid of the supposed shackles of the English to allow the Germans to take over in 1973 and then opened the floodgates in 1998 to finally rid ourselves of our independence, our borders and our language (BTW, Thank you, England, for that wonderful gift) not to mention our dignity and identity. Is this news to anyone? Very likely. Ireland is now a parallel universe for sentient individuals. A butterfly’s wings are broken in a Russian penal colony and the world falls apart. How this has affected recent Irish rural cinema is investigated in my latest book. In the meantime, be afraid. Be very afraid. Lock your doors. Shalom.
My interest is energy – transference of energy. Humanoid alien Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) comes to Earth from a distant planet on a mission to take water back to his home planet,which is experiencing a catastrophic drought. He uses the advanced technology of his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth, and acquires tremendous wealth as the head of a technology-based conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, aided by leading patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry) who carries out all the interactions with people. His wealth is needed to construct a space vehicle with the intention of shipping water back to his home planet. While revisiting New Mexico he meets lonely Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) who works as a maid, bell-hop, and elevator operator in the small hotel where he’s staying. He tells her he is English. Mary-Lou introduces Newton to many customs of Earth, including church-going, alcohol, and sex. She and Newton live together in a house Newton has built close to where he first landed in New Mexico many years earlier. Womanising college lecturer Dr. Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn) lands a job as a fuel technician with World Enterprises and slowly becomes Newton’s confidant. He senses Newton’s alien nature and arranges a meeting with Newton at his home where he has hidden a special X-ray camera. When he steals a picture of Newton it reveals alien physiology. Newton’s appetite for alcohol and television becomes crippling and he and Mary-Lou fight. Realising that Bryce has learnt his secret, Newton reveals his alien form to Mary-Lou. Her initial reaction is one of pure shock and horror. She tries to accept what she sees but then panics and flees. Newton completes the spaceship and attempts to take it on its maiden voyage amid intense press exposure. However, just before his scheduled take-off, he is seized and detained, apparently by the government and a rival company while Farnsworth, is murdered. The government had been monitoring Newton via his driver and he is now held captive in a locked luxury apartment, constructed deep within a hotel. He is kept sedated with alcohol (to which he has become addicted) and continuously subject him to rigorous medical tests, cutting into the artificial applications which make him appear human. Eventually, one examination, involving X-rays, causes the contact lenses he wears as part of his human disguise to permanently affix themselves to his eyes … It happened literally overnight. Paul Mayersberg’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’ 1963 novel is rigorous and finely attuned to the surreal. Bowie was living on milk and cocaine at the time, if his own admissions are to be believed, and his detachment and appearance are central to the success of probably the greatest science fiction film of the Seventies, an exploration of fragility and trust and rotten human behaviour. And it’s also about the alien nation of America, alienation and sex, feeding into contemporary paranoia about the political establishment. The flashbacks to Newton’s home and family are strange and lovely, his arrival in the nineteenth century simply dramatised for extra effectiveness in a narrative based on juxtaposition of the modern and the unknowable. Beautifully constructed, shot (by Anthony Richmond) and edited (by Graeme Clifford), this may well be director Nicolas Roeg’s greatest achievement with a wondrous soundtrack co-ordinated by John Phillips and featuring compositions by Stomu Yamashta. Stunning. I realise you’ve made certain assumptions about me
If anyone can put her spirit into this it’s you. Twentysomething dancer Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet) wants to honour her late mother Sarah’s (Candice Brown) memory by opening the bakery she was about to open with childhood friend Isabella (Shelley Conn) when she was tragically killed while cycling to recce their new premises. Trouble is there isn’t enough money. She moves in with her estranged grandmother, former trapeze artist Mimi (Celia Imrie) who is reluctant but then the three women pitch their talents and her money together, attracting Sarah’s dishy Michelin-starred ex Matthew (Rupert Penry-Jones) as the chief baker – and he may or may not be Clarissa’s father. Neighour Felix Rosenbaum (Bill Paterson) is a surveillance fan whose fancy turns to Mimi just as the gang hit on an idea to attract more customers and a Time Out review suddenly beckons … Imagine her baking that for you every morning with bacon and eggs – and sex. A thoughtful and low key study of grief written by Jake Brunger from a story by Mahalia Rimmer and director Eliza Schroeder, this is a beautifully made film set in London’s Notting Hill. If it lacks a dynamic centre there are compensations – not least in the performances by Imrie, Conn and Tarbet, the joint protagonists. Imrie is always worth watching, a pinch of salt and an amused twinkle never far from her features – here she needs to reconnect with her late daughter in a concrete fashion and (the very talented TV actress) Conn needs to repurpose her life which is falling away with the death of her best friend. Tarbet’s story isn’t as well dramatised but it’s a delicate performance, the dope-smoking ballerina wannabe who can’t make a go of anything, even a relationship that fails and renders her homeless. If the back story isn’t exposed in the melodramatic style we might expect in such a maternal narrative, and it never gorges on itself in the way its spiritual sister Chocolat does (another film about creating your own community), the complications arising from past and current romances, paternity and the idea about baking yourself out of existential and actual depression are movingly articulated. And it’s a nice reference for fans of TV’s Great British Bake Off to have winner Brown as Sarah, glimpsed in the final scene. Shot by Aaron Reid and designed by Anna Papa. Directed by Eliza Schroeder and dedicated to Sonya Schroeder. We make our bakery a home from home
He is alive. Greece, the 1960s. Doctor Gregorios Lambrakis (Yves Montand) leader of the opposition is injured during an anti-military/nuclear demonstration in an incident that causes his death. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth – their involvement with a right-wing organisation in a covert assassination. But they don’t control the hospital where Lambrakis is brought and the autopsy reveals the cause of death. Then tenacious Examining Magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is determined to not to let them get away with it despite every witness getting beaten up en route to his office … Always blame the Americans. Even if you’re wrong. Adapted from Vassilis Vassilikos’ 1966 novel by Greek-born director Costa-Gavras and Jorge Semprun (with uncredited work by blacklisted Ben Barzman), this political thriller gained its frisson and urgency from its lightly fictionalised portrayal of recent events in Greece which this more or less accurately depicts. Nowadays its style is commonplace but its skill in evoking the dangers of the official version and the suppression of free speech is more important than ever. Inspired by real-life events, including the ‘disappearing’ of opposition Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965, with a surgical reference to JFK, the beauty of the construction is in having Montand’s experiences including with wife Helene (Irene Papas) dominating the first half, while the second is about the steady work of investigation carried out by Trintignant, who winds up unmasking a conspiracy at the highest level. Beautifully shot by Raoul Coutard and scored by Mikis Theodorakis. Tough, taut, suspenseful filmmaking that is exciting and dreadful simultaneously, speaking truth to power about corruption, passionate engagement and the casual use of street thugs to commit murder for the state. There is even room for humour as Trintignant insists on treating the officers like anyone else when they are indicted and each one of them believes him to be a Communist when in fact his right wing credentials are impeccable. In real life the military junta came to power and banned the venerable Papas, who was a member of the Communist Party: she wasn’t the only one of course but she survived to celebrate her 94th birthday on 3rd September last. Essential cinema. Why do the ideas we stand for incite such violence?
mondomovies 