The Idea of You (2024)

What if I could be the sort of person who goes camping by myself? Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Forty-year old Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway) is a gallery owner and divorcee who plans a solo camping trip while her ex-husband Daniel (Reid Scott) takes their daughter Izzy (Ella Rubin) and her friends to Coachella. When he is called away on work assignment to Huston, she is left to accompany them. Daniel has arranged for a meet and greet with famous boy band August Moon, despite Izzy now dismissing them as so seventh grade. While waiting in the VIP area, Solène enters what she believes is a bathroom, only to discover that it is August Moon member Hayes Campbell’s (Nicholas Galitzine) trailer. The two are attracted to each other, although Solène, who is sixteen years older than Hayes, is uncomfortable. During August Moon’s performance, Hayes appears to change the show’s setlist, dedicating a song to her. Solène attends her birthday party where is fed up with prospective men her own age. Shortly after the festival, Hayes shows up unannounced at Solène’s gallery, interested in purchasing art. After he buys every piece at the gallery, Solène takes him to a friend’s warehouse studio, where they discuss life and art. After thinking that a restaurant would invite too much attention, the two go to Solène’s house to eat. They share a kiss, but Solène rebuffs him. Hayes leaves his watch behind, then, finding Solène’s phone number on the gallery invoice, texts her to join him in New York at the Essex Hotel. With Izzy away at summer camp, Solène meets him at his hotel where they have sex. Hayes persuades her to travel with him on August Moon’s European tour. Solène wishes to keep their relationship private and does not tell Izzy or anyone else. As the band takes a break at a villa in the south of France, Solène becomes uncomfortable about her age in relation to the other women travelling with them. Bandmate Olly (Raymond Cham Jr) tells her that Hayes’s dedicating a song to her is a tactic they use to impress women and that Hayes has previously pursued relationships with older women including a 35-year old Swedish film star he embarrassed. Solène feels misled and disillusioned and abruptly returns to Los Angeles … Is this your first time getting Mooned? Adapted by director Michael Showalter and co-writer Jennifer Westfeldt from actress Robinne Lee’s bestseller, this sees Hathaway getting into her groove in a seriously romantic drama. The ironic trigger for everything that now happens in her life is her ex’s need to prioritise himself and his business – just as his affair ended their marriage. When she meets a guy 16 years her junior and he reveals his own fear they find a kind of balance. He says: I think that’s my greatest fear in life – that I’m a joke. She counters with: What will people say? Galitzine at first seems like an overwhelmingly gallant white knight and Hathaway positively glows: being adored suits her. Watching her shrug off the mid-life nonsense purveyed by divorced men who insist on talking about themselves all the time is infectious – she is not in crisis. Naturally, once she goes on the road with the band Hayes’ alley cat past comes back to haunt him in a way that hers haunts her decision-making and the wheels come off when she can’t take the heat. The publicity leads her husband to gloat, I’m sure we can all agree that a relationship with a 24-year old pop star would be crazy on so many levels. Yet her daughter argues, Why would you break up with a talented kind feminist? And, for a while, it works, until the Moonfans get their way on social media. Tracy (Annie Mumolo) makes for a great BFF when she comforts Solène, People hate happy women. And that of course is the point. Women are supposed to suffer! Their cheating exes hate them except when they do what they’re told! Their kids don’t let them have a life if they’re not at the centre of everything! Other women hate them! Watching this lovely woman change her opinion of herself and her possibilities in the reflection of how a new guy sees her is wonderful. How the story beats are worked out might not be surprising but to say this is pleasurable and crowd-pleasing is an understatement: it’s a deeply sexy film. The leads are more than persuasive as the well met age-difference match, the scenario a delirium of groupiedom wish fulfilment (She’s with the boy band!!) and it’s all beautifully made with due diligence concerning the social media pile-on which is all too realistic as is the message that love at any age is a trial. A splendid soundtrack peppered with everyone from Fiona Apple to St Vincent as well as the songs from August Moon and Hayes as a singer-songwriter in his own right (with a score by Siddartha Khosla) makes this a total delight. Directed by Michael Showalter. We’re two people with trust issues who need to open up a little. What’s the worst that can happen?

One Life (2023)

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

Death Becomes Her (1992)

We’ve all heard his tall tales about the living dead in Beverly Hills. 1978. Narcissistic fading actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) performs in a Broadway musical. She invites long-time frenemy, mousy aspiring novelist Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), backstage along with Helen’s fiancé, famed plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis). Infatuated with Madeline, Ernest breaks off his engagement with Helen to marry Madeline. Seven years later, a lonely, obese, depressed and destitute Helen is committed to a psychiatric hospital where she obsesses over taking revenge against Madeline. Another seven years later, Madeline and Ernest live an opulent life in Beverly Hills but they are miserable: Madeline is depressed about her age and withering beauty and Ernest, now an alcoholic, has been reduced to working as a reconstructive mortician. After receiving an invitation to a party celebrating Helen’s new book, Forever Young, Madeline rushes for spa beauty treatments. When she mentions she will pay any price, the spa owner gives her the business card of Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini) a mysterious, wealthy socialite who specialises in rejuvenation, which Madeline dismisses. Madeline and Ernest attend Helen’s party and discover that Helen is now slim, glamorous and youthful despite being 50. Jealous of Helen’s appearance, Madeline observes as Helen tells Ernest that she blames Madeline for his career decline. Madeline later visits her young lover but discovers he is with a woman of his own age. Despondent, Madeline drives to Lisle’s mansion. The youthful Lisle claims to be 71 and offers Madeline a potion that promises eternal life and youth. Madeline hesitates but then buys and drinks the potion which reverses her age, restoring her beauty before her eyes. Lisle warns Madeline that she must disappear from the public eye after ten years, to avoid suspicion of her immortality and to treat her body well. Meanwhile, Helen seduces Ernest and convinces him to kill Madeline. When Madeline returns home, she belittles Ernest who snaps and pushes her down the stairs, breaking her neck. Believing her to be dead, Ernest phones Helen for advice but drops the phone in shock when he sees Madeline approach him with her head twisted backward. Ernest takes Madeline to the hospital where the doctor’s (Sydney Pollack, uncredited) analysis shows she is clinically dead. Ernest finds Madeline in a body bag and considers her reanimation to be a miracle. He uses his skills to repair her body at home. Helen arrives and, after overhearing her and Ernest discussing their murder plot, Madeline shoots Helen with a shotgun. The blast leaves a large hole in Helen’s torso but she remains alive – she also has taken Lisle’s potion. Helen and Madeline fight before apologising and reconciling. Depressed at the situation, Ernest prepares to leave, but Helen and Madeline convince him to first repair their bodies. Realising they will need regular maintenance, they scheme to have Ernest drink the potion to ensure his permanent availability. The pair knock out Ernest and bring him to Lisle, who offers him the potion in exchange for his surgical skills … You are in violation of every natural law that I know. You’re sitting there, you’re talking to me – but you’re dead! Eternal youth, cosmetology, the living dead, remarriage screwball, Gothic horror and mad science combine fruitfully in this satirical black comedy that takes swipes at everything within range – Hollywood, vanity, fame, narcissism, beauty, immortality and of course actresses, which leads to an interesting casting conundrum with two of the town’s most amazing fortysomethings as the leads. Hawn is a gorgeous and gifted comedienne but here she is the designated ugly duckling who blooms into a fabulous romantic novelist. Streep had actually played just such a character in She-Devil and essayed her BFF Carrie Fisher’s avatar in Postcards From the Edge a role which supposedly made this frosty technical performer more loveable, as the critics of the era might have it. Here she goes full Joan Crawford in a movie which asks the audience to see her as a legendary screen beauty but her singularity mitigates this proposal somewhat. (Un)naturally there has to be a quote from Bride of Frankenstein and Hawn is gifted It’s alive! It is of course Rossellini who astonishes in her semi-nude presentation, a luscious cross between Cleopatra and Louise Brooks. Now she really has a body to die for. This fact alone crystallises the point of the movie – the business’ attitude to its female cohort. That she’s escorted by Fabio places this in its time but luckily both Elvis and James Dean turn up at one of her gatherings which lands the premise about stars living forever. It’s nice to see Ian Ogilvy at hand as the master of ceremonies. With a combination of CGI (including skin texture) produced by Industrial Light and Magic, animatronics and blue screen, this is a triumph of special effects if not entirely of story despite Martin Donovan & David Koepp having a hand in the screenplay. The characters simply aren’t developed adequately and they feel like the object of a long joke that pitches actresses against each other and then forces them to finish out their days with their worst enemy – each other. The often hysterical lively fun occasionally feels like it has a hole in the middle, like Helen. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. You gave other people your youth and wasted your own

The Bricklayer (2023)

The days of the CIA treating Europe like the Wild West are over. After an assassination, to fight against supposedly dead formerly friendly foreign agent Victor Radek (Clifton Collins Jr.), junior CIA agent Kate Bannon (Nina Dobrev) and the agency’s director O’Malley (Tim Blake Nelson) decide to seek the help of a retired agent Steve Vail (Aaron Eckhart) off the books. O’Malley wants Vail to go to Greece with Kate to find Radek. Initially, Vail refuses to go on this mission. He reveals that he has moved on in his life and has become a bricklayer. But soon, a couple of shooters attack him and this makes him change his mind. Eventually, he reaches Kozani in Greece with Kate and meets his old army buddy Patricio (Oliver Trevena). With Patricio’s help, Kate and Vail put on disguises, get armed, and head to Thessaloniki where they check into a hotel. While Kate goes to take a shower, Vail sneaks out to rekindle some memories, related to Radek and his family. Later, he enters a fancy party and meets his old flame, Thessaloniki station chief Tye Delson (Ilfenesh Hadera). He tells her that O’Malley sent him to find Radek who is not dead as they thought. She warns him about Kostas. That night, Vail enters a pool party to meet Sten (Ori Pfeffer) and Crystal (Lili Rich) to know any details about Radek. Sten does not reveal anything. Instead, he threatens Vail, who takes it badly and fights Sten’s pawns. Luckily, Kate arrives there in time because she had put a tracker on him. I’m done with my country. Once in the car, she starts asking him about his history with Radek. Radek was performing assignments for them. He joined the CIA for asylum. But once his cover got blown, the Russians killed his family – so he responded with a killing rampage. As a result, the CIA asked Vail to track down Radek and neutralise him. We underestimated how vindictive the agency can be. Back in the US, the CIA receives a threat message from a person who wants to punish them for their wrongdoings. In exchange for not killing people, he expects a huge payment in Bitcoin. In Greece, Vail decides to follow Sten with Kate. They break into Sten’s house and look for any signs of his connection to Radek. Kate finds Greta Becker’s (Veronica Ferres) phone. Sten’s pawns enters the house. Vail and Kate fight back and escape after Vail kills him. Kate apologises that she froze during the fight. Vail asks her not to be so hard on herself. Patricio tells them where they can find the next target Alekos Melas (Michael Siripoloulos). They reach the location and see a peaceful political march turning into a street fight. Vail suddenly receives a call from Radek.  Now, the game is really on … I’m going to broadcast to the whole world what the CIA is doing in the shadows. Adapted from the Steve Vail novel in the series by Paul Lindsay (as Noah Boyd), this was originally intended as a Gerard Butler vehicle more than a decade ago. Now with 90s name director Renny Harlin at the helm its stars are more de nos jours in the sense that ridiculously good looking Eckhart brings a kind of Bogartian humour at least in the lines gifted him in the screenplay by Hanna Weg and Matt Johnson (and an uncredited Marc Moss). His dry worldweariness and arch sexism get turned around as you’d hope so it works well in the payoff department – a smart development in a rather hackneyed plot. However, the action really is action – down and dirty, no slomo SFX to beautify the violence. It’s bloody and horrible. Naturally our hero’s old friend is not a nice guy (not with a face like that, anyhow) but to humanise our hero not only does he have a cute little pooch he has a thing for Miles Davis and he doesn’t care who knows it: If you understood everything I said you’d be me. And when he’s asked why he chose to be a bricklayer, well, he’s away on a hack about the joys of form and function. You know where you are with a brick! Not to mention that a seasoned construction worker knows what to do with a tool. Dobrev is well positioned as the woman he has to work with and she gets some decent scenes challenging his preconceptions about women as well as a good portion of the action: they help to rescue eaach other. At the heart of this is betrayal – at every level. As a geopolitical action adventure starring the most exalted and maligned spy agency the world over this isn’t exactly breaking new ground but it’s a highly efficient genre outing. I can’t fight an enemy I don’t understand

The Secret of Seagull Island (1980)

Has anyone ever told you you have the most beautiful eyes? Barbara Carey (Prunella Ransome) flies to Italy to visit her blind sister Mary Ann (Sherry Buchanan) but arrives in Rome to discover she has apparently disappeared, last seen three weeks earlier, putting a concert at the music academy where she trains in jeopardy. Barbara approaches the British Consul for help in this uncharacteristic and worrying situation and Martin Foster(Nicky Henson) assists her. People don’t just disappear. He’s reluctant at first but then thinks a rather louche Italian Enzo Lombardi (Gabriele Tinti) might know of Mary Ann’s whereabouts but Lombardi denies all knowledge and Barbara doesn’t believe him, getting into a scrap on his boat which might turn into something much worse when Martin turns up and rescues her. Local police believe they might have found Mary Ann’s body with eyes gouged out and then when it’s not her, link Mary Ann with another blind woman who is in hospital after a marine accident, found adrift in a dinghy – that’s not her either. It’s suggested that a reclusive rich man called David Malcolm (Jeremy Brett) the owner of a private island between Corsica and Sardinia might hold the answer to the mysterious murder of a series of blind women. When Barbara visits the blind woman in hospital a weird high pitched recording of birds is played in her room and the woman throws herself out of the window while Barbara is hit on the head. She now is apparently blind and introduces herself to Malcolm who has a thing for blind women. Then she visits his island where his disfigured son makes her acquaintance despite the fact that along with Malcolm’s first wife he’s supposedly dead. Malcolm’s wife Carol (Pamela Salem) isn’t too happy at the new arrival on her patch … I don’t know what it is about you but ever since we met I’ve been behaving like James Bond. Once upon a time, the Summer of 1981 to be precise, ITV showed a compelling British-Italian drama miniseries at teatime on Saturday called Seagull Island. And we wanted to see it again. It has cropped up all these years later thanks to the Talking Pictures channel, but in an entirely different form, a feature film, meaning that a couple of hours of drama (actually somewhere in the region of 200 minutes) have been lost to editing antiquity. Barbara is constantly in jeopardy and physically attacked and her situation pivots on Malcolm’s storytelling and behaviour with Brett turning into an expansive and thrillingly evil bad guy and Henson rolling up now and again to save the day. The plot is a lot less clear in this version than in the original series but the generic ancestry is happily in the suspenseful giallo tradition where American actress Buchanan originally made her name with What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974). It’s satisfyingly glamorous, delighting in the setting and the trophies of wealth – speedboats, lovely production design and costuming. There are some very good underwater scenes but there’s also a deal of gore and violence. We know it’s more than forty years since this was made but it’s still rather sad that the four leads (Ransome, Brett, Henson, Tinti) are long departed this earthly realm. Directed by Nestore Ungaro who co-wrote the screenplay with Jeremy Burnham and Augusto Caminito. The score is by Tony Hatch. The island isn’t large enough to make one feel lonely

Nyad (2023)

It’s meant for you to be a champion. Sixty-four-year old sportscaster and marathon swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) wants a challenge. She decides to resume her old vocation and recalling past attempts and her childhood ambition, decides to swim from Cuba to the United States, a 110-mile stretch of shark–infested waters. Her coach, friend and former lover Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster) is frustrated with their dealings and manages to get her to meet no-nonsense John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans) an experienced sailor in the area to act as her guide. Finally the day arrives when storms abate and Diana has to tackle her own greatest challenge … What’s it been, like, thirty years since you put on a pair of googles? This adaptation by Julia Cox of Diana Nyad’s memoir Find a Way apparently plays loose with the facts, par for the course with biopics but disappointing, due perhaps to wanting to draw a veil over the childhood abuse which is tangentially mentioned. She is still alive, so that might be a factor too particularly for a woman who (allegedly) has a potentially elastic relationship with the truth about her accomplishments. Drawing a simplistic cause-effect line does not have any place here. Therefore the narrative feels as compressed in the same way that Diana’s attempt is – controlled by electronics and the limitations imposed by the nature of the task, no human contact, eating and defecating in the water. I don’t want an asterisk * next to my life’s greatest achievement. To a great extent this falls into the rise-fall-rise graph of the sports biopic. Bening’s Nyad is far from a water nymph – she’s an ornery older lady, somewhat didactic and stuck in her ways and comes off kind of like a bully: driven qualities perhaps necessary to take on such a gargantuan task. No money, no perks, no guarantees. In order to play this egotistical creature Bening ironically plays entirely without her own ego or vanity – going makeup free, allowing her inner beast to overwhelm people, trampling over everything to achieve her ends but of course she is the one who truly suffers. The film comes to life when Diana is presented with a male antagonist played by Ifans, one man who unlike the East Coast preppie who guided her to disaster years earlier, actually knows the Gulf Stream – it makes a change from the sharks. It’s their ocean. You’re just passing through. Foster has little to do other than act as metaphorical fluffer – perhaps an appropriate role for someone who was Diana’s lover before this aspect of their lives was dramatised. Foster does it perfectly well and perhaps this is also a significant role because for the first time she’s playing a Lesbian onscreen – something that must speak to her own issues having to avoid dealing with her private life despite the insistence of tabloids over decades past. You actually don’t know – you don’t have to do it. She and Bening make for an acting dream team and their byplay has a very realistic, natural affect. They’re good together: this former couple knows each other very well. Nyad has a songlist in her head to help her through the water, something that helps her achieve a rhythm. As she navigates her way through water and life and enemy territory with a team willing her on, our empathy grows, the scale of struggle palpable. If the film never quite musters the ‘dreamlike state’ avowedly experienced in distance swimming it’s not because every effort hasn’t been made to get there. Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi and Jimmy Chin, previously better known for the documentary Free Solo (2018). No one else can help you

How to Have Sex (2023)

Deep-fried fags! Sixteen-year-old best friends Tara (Mia McKenna Bruce), Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake) head to the party resort of Malia on the island of Crete rites-of-passage holiday to celebrate finishing their GCSE exams. While Em will be off to college in the Autumn, Tara and Skye are less certain of their futures. The girls all look forward to drinking, clubbing and hooking up in what should be the best summer of their lives. Tara, the only virgin in the trio, feels pressure to match the sexual experiences of her friends. Their neighbours in the next apartment are another trio – Badger (Shaun Thomas), his mate Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) and their bisexual female friend Paige (Laura Ambler). On a night out together Tara becomes separated from the girls at a club and finds herself pulled out of the building by Paddy and dragged to the beach where he rapes her. Back at the apartment the next morning Em and Skye worry about her but figure Tara is larging it as per usual. Tara shows up and Paddy forces himself on her in her bed and she recalls exactly what happened the night before … If you don’t get laid on this holiday then you never will. With that raunchy title and characters and presentation straight out of Girls Gone Wild and any number of Uncovered reality shows, it’s easy to dismiss this at first sight. However it’s a striking writing and directing debut from British cinematographer Molly Manning Walker and won over the critics at Cannes with the Un certain regard prize. The tensions between the girls, the assumptions and the reality, recalled in flashbacks by Tara, are cannily timed. As Badger figures out what must have happened and tries to comfort a silent Tara the issue of consent comes to the fore. It’s only at the airport that the truth ultimately emerges. The sense of excitement, of decadence, the overwhelming feeling of drink and drug-fuelled happiness and then the realisation of the total lack of control are cannily captured through a combination of humour, edgy performances and finally by McKenna Bruce’s shifting awareness and sad acceptance of what has occurred, making this an ultimately devastating experience. The side eye from her supposed friend Skye and the sympathy from Em are well established, ensuring that the complexity of teenage friendships is never far from the surface. Skye’s increasing jealousy of the attention directed at Tara makes their association horribly toxic while Badger’s knowledge of his friend’s wrongdoing doesn’t encroach on his conscience so that he might actually do something about it in Tara’s defence. Twentysomething Manning Walker based this story on what she describes as a formative teenage experience and then interviewed teenagers on their own concerns about consent after writing a 50 page script that won the Next Step prize at Cannes 2021 – that’s a festival that’s been good for this gifted cinematographer – and it was the disparity in the male and female responses to the story that made her realise how important this could be. The downside of hedonistic energy is everywhere to be seen in this bristling but nuanced tale of beach parties and excess, the desperate loneliness in the middle of a loved-up crowd who lack the wit or wisdom to hold back or the vocabulary to express even the simplest words of sympathy as their senses are overloaded to the max, blissful in their ignorance. I told you you would. Love you babe. Best holiday ever!

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Everything is flat and empty here. There’s nothing to do. In 1951 Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) are high-school seniors and friends in Anarene, North Texas. Duane is dating Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), who Sonny considers the prettiest girl in town. Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend Charlene Duggs. Over the Christmas holiday Sonny begins an affair with lonely Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman) the depressed wife of high-school “Coach” Popper (Bill Thurman) who is secretly gay. At the Christmas dance Jacy is invited by Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid) to a naked indoor pool party at the home of Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette) a wealthy young man who seems a better romantic prospect than Duane. Bobby tells Jacy that he isn’t interested in virgins and to come back after she’s had sex. Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) bans the boys from his cafe, pool hall and cinema when they mistreat their retarded friend Billy (Sam Bottoms) taking him to a prostitute who beats him for making a mess. Sam dies while the boys are on a road trip to Mexico and leaves his property to different people, including Sonny. Jacy invites Duane for sex in a motel and eventually breaks up with him by phone, eventually losing her viriginity on a pool table to her mother’s lover Abilene (Clu Gulager). Sonny fights with Duane over Jacy  and Duane leaves town to work on the rigs out of town. Jacy sets her sight on Sonny and they elope to her parents’ fury. The war in Korea provides an escape route for Duane but there’s one last picture show on before the cinema closes down forever … Nothing’s ever the way it’s supposed to be at all. They say the third time’s the charm and so it was for neophyte director Peter Bogdanovich in this adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel about kids growing up in small town North Texas which he co-wrote with the author as well as wife Polly Platt, who was the production designer and collaborator with Bogdanovich on all his films. (Then he fell in love with his young leading lady Shepherd, but that’s another story). The film was shot in black and white following advice from Orson Welles, Bogdanovich’s house guest at the time (and the best book on Welles derives from this era of their wide-ranging conversations, This Is Orson Welles, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum).  The cinematography rendered by Robert Surtees is simply exquisite, the attention to detail extraordinary but this is no nostalgic trip down memory lane. The universally pitch-perfect performances exist in this very specific texture as a kind of miracle, duly rewarding Johnson and Leachman at the Academy Awards. But Ellen Burstyn as Jacy’s mom Lois has some of the best lines and delivers them with power. She and Shepherd have one amazing scene together. This is a coming of age movie but it’s also about ageing and loneliness and deception and disappointment and it’s the acknowledging of the sliding scale of desperation where the emotions hit gold. And there are juxtapositions which still manage to shock – like when Sonny looks out the window to see one horse mount another while a great romantic poem is being read in class. The realisation that Sam’s great love was Lois and vice versa. The callous way sexual manipulation is used as a casual transaction for the bored. There were controversies over scenes of sex and nudity which didn’t make it into the initial release but those parts were restored in 1992 by Bogdanovich so that the full potential of the story could be contextualised. A poignant Fordian masterpiece now firmly imprinted as an American classic.  You couldn’t believe how this country’s changed

Pain and Glory (2019)

Aka Dolor y gloria. I don’t recognise you, Salvador. Film director Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is ageing and in decline, suffering from illness and writer’s block. He recalls episodes in his life that led him to his present situation – lonely, sick – when the Cinematheque runs a film Sabor he made 32 years earlier with actor Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia) and they haven’t spoken since due to the performer’s drug use. But now Salva is in pain and following the reunion with Alberto prompted by his old friend Zulema (Cecilia Roth) will take anything he can including heroin to ease his pain from multiple disabling illnesses. He recalls his mother Jacinta (Penelope Cruz) working hard to put food on the table;  moving into a primitive cave house; his days as a chorister whose voice was so beautiful he skipped class to rehearse and got through school knowing nothing, learning geography on his travels as a successful filmmaker. Now he is forced to confront all the crises in his life and his mother is dying … Writing is like drawing, but with letters. Pedro Almodovar’s late-life reflectiveness permeates a story that must have roots in his own experience. His protege Banderas gives a magnificent performance as the director pausing in between heroin hits and choking from an unspecified ailment to consider his path. The stylish visuals that often overwhelm Almodovar’s dramas are used just enough to textually express the core of the film’s theme – love, and the lack of it. Life is just a series of moments and they are recounted here with clear intent, plundering the past in order to reclaim the present. A triumph. Love is not enough to save the person you love

Palm Beach (2019)

It’s what they’ve dreamed of for themselves is not what they’ve turned out to be. Frank (Bryan Brown) is flying in his lifelong friends for his big birthday at his beautiful home overlooking the bay at Palm Beach, north of Sydney. Now retired from his tee-shirt business which made him very wealthy, he and his wife Charlotte (Greta Scacchi), feckless son Dan (Charlie Vickers) and medical student daughter Ella (Matilda Brown), are hosting the remaining members of The Pacific Sideburns, the band he managed in the Seventies who made the cover of Rolling Stone back in 1977 when they had their one big hit song. Now Leo (Sam Neill) is a journalist based in New Zealand, married to teacher Bridget (Jacqueline MacKenzie) and stepfather to her teenage daughter Caitlyn (Frances Berry). Billy (Richard E. Grant) is an ad man married to actress Eva (Heather Mitchell) who thinks at 60 she’s too young to be cast as Nicole Kidman’s mother. Holly (Claire van der Boom) is the daughter of their late lead singer Roxy and she arrives with her lover, an older man called Doug (Aaron Jeffery) in tow. Tensions erupt over money, career, cars and homes and then there’s a secret which has been niggling at someone’s conscience … The Pacific Sideburns go down as the voice of adult incontinence. Directed by that lovely actress Rachel Ward (who is of course married to leading man Brown), who co-wrote the screenplay with Joanna Murray-Smith, in her second theatrical outing behind the camera, this is a kind of Big Chill for a different generation and at a different stage of their lives. Fans of Australian cinema will be thrilled with the cast (which also includes blow-ins Grant and Scacchi), with Neill and Brown co-starring for the fifth time. This time out they’re in a production about rites of passage among friends (and frenemies) which isn’t afraid to be tough on its characters, none of whom is without baggage or post-60 year old issues. There are all kinds of relatable tensions over ageing, health and money with the added frisson of questionable DNA. The issue of whether Dan might be fathered by Leo becomes the main plank of the narrative particularly since Frank and Dan are permanently at daggers drawn. But Billy – who has made an ad for adult diapers in France using the band’s big hit – is envious of Frank’s money and taunts him about the chimneys on a neighbouring property blocking the view so often that Frank does something about it, leading to the film’s comic high point:  retirement is not for chickens, as his anti-depressants prove. Bonding over building a pizza oven is no picnic. It’s pretty hard to bond with the Gestapo, growls Sam Neill. The women have their own problems but try to get them out of their system with some therapeutic white wine-assisted yoga by the pool and tough conversations with their terminally self-obsessed men. The father-son relationship between Frank and Dan results in a terrible accident and it finally brings them all to their senses in a well managed conclusion to the comedy drama. This family affair also involves Brown and Ward’s real-life daughter as Frank’s daughter; while the film within a film is Ward’s 2001 short, The Big House. The songs are by the band The Teskey Brothers in a soundtrack peppered with great tunes. An extremely winning production with fantastic performances and smart writing, this is an amazing showcase for New South Wales in a location familiar to viewers of TV’s Home and Away. Very easy watching indeed. I’m on my way ASAP, especially if I can stay in that magnificent beach house. I call it uninvited clarity