The Fall Guy (2024)

You fall down, you get right back up. How far would you go for the one that you love? Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) works as the double for famous action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson) who always says he does his own stunts. However, he is severely injured during a stunt gone wrong and he abandons his career and his girlfriend camerawoman Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). 18 months later, Colt, now a valet for a small Mexican restaurant, is contacted by Tom’s film producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham). She informs him that Jody is directing her first film, sci-fi epic Metalstorm, and wants him to work on the production in Sydney Australia. After arriving on set, Colt learns that Jody never requested him and is still angry about their breakup. Gail reveals that Tom has disappeared after getting involved with drugs: she wants Colt to find him before his absence causes the film’s cancellation. Not wanting Jody’s directorial debut ruined, Colt visits Tom’s hotel room and a nightclub, where he gets into fights. In the hotel room, he finds a dead body in a bathtub full of ice. When Colt returns with the police, he finds the body has disappeared. Meanwhile, as production of Metalstorm continues, Colt and Jody begin to rekindle their relationship until Gail abruptly informs him that he has to go back to the US. Instead, he continues looking for Tom by tracking down his PA Alma Milan (Stephanie Hsu) and they are both attacked by people looking for a phone belonging to Tom in Alma’s possession. Colt defeats them after an extended chase through Sydney involving a rubbish truck. He and his friend Dan Tucker (Winston Duke), the stunt coordinator on Metalstorm, unlock the phone at Tom’s apartment. They discover a video of an intoxicated Tom accidentally killing his previous stuntman Henry. The henchmen attack Colt and Dan, destroying the phone with shotgun pellets. Dan escapes, but Colt is captured and brought face-to-face with Tom, who has been hiding out on a yacht on Gail’s instructions. He reveals that Gail is framing Colt for the murder using deepfake technology to replace Tom’s face with Colt’s on the incriminating video. Tom also reveals that Colt and Henry’s ‘accidents’ were orchestrated by himself. Henry’s body is discovered and the doctored video is released on news media, while Gail tries to convince Jody that he is guilty. Colt escapes and is presumed dead after a boat chase, though he swims to safety … I’m the director. You’re a stunt guy. We need to keep it super profesh. If last year was the Summer of Barbenheimer, that compound of mutually assured box office billionairedom, the films’ respective supporting stars are the whole show of this decade’s Romancing the Stone, at least its descendant by way of Howard Hawks and screwball. Much has been written concerncing memed-about Gosling’s super-ironic commentary on modern masculinity, a career pivot which makes him – in the words of a Guardian writer’s recent article – the most important Hollywood star, so we’ll go with it. Dry supercilious wit being a thing Blunt does well, they’re a great pairing in a story that both sends up Hollywood and mines its great romantic inclinations. Adapted very loosely by Drew Pearce from the beloved Eighties TV show created by Glen A. Larson which starred Lee Majors, Heather Thomas and Jo Ann Pflug/Markie Post not to mention a Rounded-Line Wideside truck (and an outdoor bathtub). Stuntman turned director David Leitch cut his teeth on great action movies and is responsible for helming John Wick among others and this is not just the most recent ode to the craft (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Gosling’s own turn in Drive, Burt Reynolds was Hooper, then there’s The Stunt Man, to name the most outstanding in this sub-genre) which is due to be honoured at the Academy Awards one of these years, it’s a clever metatextual behind-the-scenes examination of the business, the deceptive nature of stars’ PR, and the pitiless nature of the production machine when you’re not flavour of the month (or fit to work). It’s all of that but mostly it’s a crash-bang-wallop action movie with ever more spectacular sequences. This is a precision-tooled mainstream hit with something for everyone, a genuinely warm and funny knowing adventure-satire with finely tuned star performances. Unlike the show, when Majors got to croon The Unknown Stuntman (covered here by Blake Shelton in a great soundtrack featuring AC/DC and Kiss), Gosling hasn’t got a theme song – this year’s showbiz highlight has got to be his Oscars rendition of I’m Just Ken, but he doesn’t need another tune, that’s already part of his star text so everyone just incorporates it and tucks it away into what they know about supposedly the most important Hollywood star, the self-deprecating caring sharing modern action man. And, since this is about stuntmen, big up to Logan Holladay for all those rolls. Huzzah! It ain’t about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward

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?

That Funny Feeling (1965)

The only important thing now is to save a buck. New York City. Joan Howell (Sandra Dee) intends to be an actress but for now she’s working as a maid. On three different occasions, she and Tom Milford (Bobby Darin) – a successful publishing executive and womaniser – accidentally bump into each other. The third time, Tom asks her for a date. Embarrassed by her own modest rented apartment, which she shares with fellow aspiring-actress friend Audrey (Nita Talbot), Joan invites him to the lavish apartment of one of her clients whom she believes to be out of town for a couple of weeks pretending it’s hers. What she doesn’t know, because she and her employer have never met, is that the apartment is Tom’s. He shocked to find himself being welcomed to his own place but he plays along to see how far Joan’s prepared to go. He then moves in with his friend Harvey Granson (Donald O’Connor) who has his own concerns about Joan to do with his acrimonious divorce and property he’s ‘hiding’ from his wife at Tom’s place. As soon as Joan becomes aware of the truth, however, she figures out how she might get even, starting with getting rid of Tom’s beautiful English-tailored suits … You know I’ve got the funniest feeling somebody’s trying to tell us something. Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee were a seemingly golden couple and this was the third time they were paired together in starring roles. It’s a mild comedy and a silly premise but it’s played for all it’s worth by a nice cast. The screenplay by David R. Schwartz from a story by Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore quickly pits our lovely couple together in a meet-cute scenario that’s the conclusion of a voiced montage about how all kinds of creatures collide: the key takeaway being, Bobby and Sandra can’t miss! How they keep coming back together is the whole show. The zipper’s stuck. Leo G. Carroll plays the heavily Oirish-accented pawnbroker Mr O’Shee, which provides the start of a running gag; Reta Shaw is one of the women who find Tom half-naked in a phone booth and Don Haggerty does a Zasu Pitts as the policeman who cannot believe his eyes on more than one occasion especially when a line of extravagantly garbed prostitutes shows up on his beat. There’s more eyerolling from the reliable Robert (Stalag 17) Strauss and Ben Lessy as bartenders who observe the ups and downs of the romance with pleasantly predictable cynicism. Could be he IS an interior decorator. O’Connor is given little to do which is surprising but Larry Storch does a good job as thespian Luther, ready to give the girls advice on the acting biz. How the knotty but lovely and loved-up pair of midcentury blond gods figure out their essential problem – mutual deception – as they constantly mistake the other’s line of work is fairly fun but it’s the ensemble that really make this PG sex comedy a decent watch. Naturally the title song over the weird (astronomy) titles and credits is written and performed by the redoubtable Darin. Directed by Richard Thorpe. Have you never seen a naked man in a phone booth?

The Equalizer 3 (2023)

They should have let me in. Sicily. At a remote winery Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) kills gangster Lorenzo Vitale (Bruno Bilotta) and his henchmen to obtain a key to the winery’s vault and recoup money stolen in a cyber-heist. While leaving the winery, Robert is shot in the back by Vitale’s young grandson (Adriano Sabrie). Robert attempts suicide due to his injury but finds his gun out of bullets and then takes the ferry back to the mainland. While driving on the Amalfi Coast, Robert pulls over and slips into unconsciousness from shock. He is found and rescued by local carabiniere Gio Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea) who brings Robert to a small coastal Italian town called Altamonte where he is treated by a doctor, Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone). As he recovers and regains his mobility Robert becomes acquainted with the locals and becomes fond of the town and its people. He makes an anonymous phone call to CIA officer Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) to tip her off about the winery’s role in the drug trade, disguised as normal business transactions in Sicily. Collins and other CIA operatives arrive at the winery and find millions in cash along with bags of synthetic amphetamines used by ISIS terrorists hidden in a storeroom, confirming Robert’s suspicions. Meanwhile, members of the Camorra harass and kill villagers in an attempt to coerce them out of their housing and take over Altamonte for property development. Robert overhears Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero) a high-ranking Camorra member, pressuring local shop owner Angelo (Daniele Perrone) for protection payments. To make an example of him, the Camorra firebombs Angelo’s fish store as the entire town watches. Gio reviews video of the firebombing and calls the Italian central police for an inquiry. Along with his wife Chiara (Sonia Ben Ammar) and daughter Gabriella (Dea Lanzaro), Gio is attacked by the Camorra and beaten for interfering in their operations. Thereafter, Marco demands that Gio set up a boat for him. Overhearing the conversation, Robert asks Marco to move his operations to a different location. When Marco refuses, Robert kills him and his henchmen. The Naples head of police Chief Barella (Adolfo Margiotta) is threatened and tortured by Marco’s brother Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio) the head of the Camorra and is ordered to find the person responsible for Marco’s death … Those people don’t know where to go. Our favourite vigilante returns to equalize everything in sight, starting with the mysterious catalyst whose payoff takes the entire film to establish. Transported to Sicily and the Italian mainland, the violence returns with verve in Robert Wenk’s screenplay, the scribe of the others in the series, in the finale adapted from the TV show that starred Edward Woodward and was created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. What do you see when you look at me? McCall is ageing now and even he must be tired of all the killing. Lord knows I’m allergic to bad things. Availing of R&R in a pretty village with a pleasant woman restaurateur Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) which introduces the hint if not the actuality of romance and a civilised doctor to oversee his recuperation he’s glad of it. Do I look like a guy who kills people? That’s an existential question that’s really kinda silly at this point in the trilogy: this film commences with a horrifying sequence of murders – yes, we know it’s McCall doing in some of the Camorra but it’s extremely shocking. Giving the CIA a tip-off is just the start of an elaborate denouement which unearths a terror cell and reveals the extent of the Mafia’s viciousness. The phone relationship with Emma is a preview of coming attractions: You don’t look like you sound/You do! That’s the opening gambit when they finally come face to face 48 minutes in. In these films Denzel is paired with younger women in a non-romantic way – they get the opportunity to do stuff and he returns to pleasantly predictable vengeful type. It’s his question to her that makes her think of the situation from a different angle: Why smuggle drugs into the most secure port in the entire region? That sets her off doing what he knows she will – directing the CIA action where it needs to go and hopefully keeping her out of the line of fire. While the women in this series are given an opportunity for some action it’s curtailed as here, where a well-timed call saves her but effectively puts her out of action – allowing him to rescue her and save the day because he’s the hero and that’s his job. That’s appropriate considering their previous pairing two decades ago in Man On Fire. Washington is an incredibly charismatic movie star and it’s a relief to have the first 45 minutes dedicated to rebuilding his constitution which allows him to cultivate relationships while the gangsters have their way with the locals, setting up an awesome revenge. His medical treatment and slow recovery gives the audience a chance to recover too before the inevitable kicks in. His visceral method leads him to explain his MO to a victim: It’s called pain compliance. It’s like he’s a doctor too! Shot in a palette verging on monochrome with chiaroscuro features by the brilliant Robert Richardson, the scheme complements the black and white morality, with the amorphous evil villainy of the Mafia rather less attractive than the mesmerising Marton Csokas in the first outing. It’s a stylish way for the series to take a bow – a kind of revenge Western with some spaghetti thrown in for good measure and a coda that explains why McCall fetched up there in the first place, a one-man reenacting of The Magnificent Seven against the mafia on their own turf. Directed as ever by Antoine Fuqua. I’m where I’m supposed to be

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

To start inventing you need something real first. Grenoble, France. In an isolated mountain chalet novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller) decides to reschedule her interview with a female literature student Zoe Solidor (Camille Rutherford) because her husband, university lecturer and aspiring author Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) plays music loudly on a loop in their attic, disrupting the interview, making recording impossible. After the student drives away from the chalet, Samuel and Sandra’s visually impaired son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) takes a walk outside with his guide dog Snoop (Messi). When they return home, Daniel finds Samuel dead in the snow from an apparent fall. Sandra insists that the fall must have been accidental. Her old friend and lawyer Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud) suggests the possibility of suicide while Sandra recalls her husband’s attempt to overdose on aspirin six months earlier after going off antidepressants. After an investigation, Daniel’s conflicting accounts of what happened shortly before his father’s death, combined with the revelation that Samuel sustained a head wound before his body hit the ground and an audio recording of a fight by Samuel and Sandra the previous day, Sandra is indicted on charges of homicide. A year later, during the trial, Sandra’s defence team claims Samuel fell from the attic window and hit his head on a shed below; the prosecution suggests that Sandra hit him with a blunt object, pushing him from the second-floor balcony. During a courtroom argument with Samuel’s psychiatrist Jammal (Wajdi Mouawad) Sandra admits she resented Samuel due to his partial responsibility for the accident that led to Daniel’s impaired vision: he should have collected him from school but called a babysitter instead so he could stay home and writer. In the recorded fight, Samuel accuses Sandra of plagiarism, infidelity and exerting control over his life before their argument turns physically violent. The prosecution claims that all the violence came from Sandra but she points out that they’d been having conversations and disagreements that he’d recorded for six months as a substitute for writing and his transcriptions when presented by him were not accepted by a publisher in lieu of a novel … I don’t believe in the the notion of reciprocity in a couple. Written by the married couple Justine Triet & Arthur Harari (who appears as a literary critic) during the COVID lockdown, director Triet’s film sustains its mysterious premise right until the conclusion which may prove disappointing – perhaps a European take on the customary bittersweet Hollywood ending. it’s a Choose Your Own iteration of the murder procedural with flashes of Hitchcockian wit throughout. There is a re-enactment and a single flashback but the eccentric courtroom presentation is very different to the Anglo-Saxon convention with witnesses for the prosecution and defence talking over each other, a low threshold for evidence and an equally bizarre concept of the burden of proof (opinion-led, apparently). Sandra’s bisexuality and her affairs are brought up as a reason for her husband’s violent arguments with her, his use of anti-depressants rooted perhaps at her contempt for him when their young son was blinded because he should have been picking up from school, her relentless output still not sufficient to pay the bills while he is at home, renovating, homeschooling Daniel, having no time to write outside of his teaching job. At the heart of the story is a blame game between husband and wife – an accident that caused Daniel’s sight loss and a burning envy of a wife’s success whose latest plot is largely ‘borrowed’ from a passage in a novel Samuel abandoned, a writer wannabe now reduced to transcribing daily home life as a form of autofiction. As the USB recording from Samuel’s keyring is re-enacted he accuses Sandra of stealing his time and ‘imposing’ her worldview upon him despite his having forced the family to relocate to his hometown where she speaks English and the use of language becomes an issue in this French-German union where nuance, suggestion and meaning are potentially lost in translation – English is the no-man’s land resort of communication. Sometimes a couple is a kind of a chaos. The discursiveness masks the fact that it is their blind son and his dog who are the sole witnesses to the accident, spicing up the issue of court appearances and compounding the ambiguous nature of the crime and the lack of compelling evidence. Triet and Harari wrote this with Huller in mind (following an earlier collaboration) and she is a very modern heroine, word-smart, intellectually able, psychologically penetrating and completely at ease with herself to the point of lying easily. She is superb as this take no prisoners character, taking nonsense from nobody and while profoundly concerned with her son’s well-being she also boasts a terrifically charismatic nonchalance. Nevertheless, she is obviously unnerved by the courtroom experience in a language not her own. A sidebar to the exposition is the frank admission by Vincent that he has long thought highly of her. This is of course about writers and what happens when one half of a couple is more accomplished and successful than the other and how envy can eat like a cancer through a relationship. Samuel is destroyed by what he has done to his son, Sandra has dealt with it through adultery while also cheerfully churning out novels and doing translations on the side. She is pragmatic above all. Does Samuel commit suicide and are the recordings made in order to frame Sandra for his alleged murder? Maybe. Did he fall or was he pushed? Is the flashback from the visually impaired son true? Does Daniel lie? Why did he make a mistake in his first account? Rage does not exclude will! Guilt, jealousy, blame, language, meaning, all suffuse this tension-filled narrative which asks questions about how writers make their work and how much it plunders their private lives. How and why the story turns unexpectedly marks out the forensic narrative style. Rightly lauded, the exceptional screenplay was awarded at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs and the Academy Awards among others and the film won Cannes’ Palme d’Or with the Palm Dog going to Messi! The first 9 minutes of the film are dominated by that appalling music which frankly would drive anyone to murder, if you want to know the truth. We won’t even name it such is its earworm potential for homicidal triggering. Gripping. A novel is not life! An author is not her characters! #700daysstraightofmondomovies! MM#4547

Civil War (2024)

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

And the Band Played On (1993) (TVM)

Is there a name yet for this disease? 1976: by the Ebola River in Zaire. American epidemiologist Don Francis (Matthew Modine) of the World Health Organisation arrives in a village where he finds many of the residents and the doctor working with them have died from a mysterious illness later identified as the Ebola haemorrhagic fever. It’s his first exposure to this kind of epidemic and the images of the dead he helps to cremate haunt him when he later becomes involved with HIV/AIDS research at the CDE (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) in Atlanta. 1981: Francis becomes aware of a growing number of deaths among gay men in Los Angeles, New York city and San Francisco from a rare lung condition – pneumocystis pneumonia. It only afflicts people with weakened immune systems. He moves to Atlanta, Georgia where CDC Administrator Dr. James Curran (Saul Rubinek) asks him to begin an in-depth investigation into this new immune disorder. Due to the Reagan Administration’s clampdown on public spending, Francis is forced to work with little money, limited space and outdated equipment including microscopes. He clashes with members of the medical community, many of whom resent his involvement because of their personal agendas. Francis comes into contact with the gay community after he and his colleagues find strong evidence that the disease is spread through sex. Some gay men support him, such as San Francisco activist and congressional aide Bill Kraus (Ian McKellen) but others such as Bobbi Campbell (Donal Logue) express anger at what they see as unwanted interference in their lives, especially in his attempts to close the local bath houses, read as homophobia. Kraus works with the doctors treating gay patients to try to save the gay community from the virus, to the point that it costs his own relationship with boyfriend Kico Govantes (BD Wong) who moves on with an architect. Francis and other CDC staff are shocked that representatives of the blood industry are unwilling to do anything to try to curb the epidemic because of potential financial losses. While Francis pursues his theory that AIDS is caused by a sexually transmitted virus (based on his own interest in feline leukaemia and Hepatitis B) his efforts are stymied because of competition between French scientists from Paris’ Pasteur Institute led by virologist Luc Montagnier (Patrick Bauchau) and American scientists, particularly Robert Gallo (Alan Alda) of the National Institutes of Health who is enraged when he finds out that Francis collaborated in typically collegiate fashion with the French scientists. The researchers squabble over who should receive credit for discovering the virus and for development of a blood test. Meanwhile the death toll climbs among many different types of people including children who receive infected blood. One day in 1984, while exercising at a local gym, Kraus notices a spot on his ankle and worries that it might be Kaposi’s sarcoma, an AIDS-defining illness … The party’s over. One of the two most essential publications of the 1990s (the other being Crisis in the Hot Zone) was Randy Shilts’ 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. Excellently adapted by the venerable screenwriter Arnold Schulman (who died February 2023 aged 97) and premiered at the Montreal Film Festival before being screened on TV first by HBO and later by NBC, it knits several strands of storytelling together. It of course has the flavour of public service broadcasting as well as that benighted niche, Movie Illness of the Week. But with this cast and talent never mind the source material it still possesses a unique urgency. This could be the first deadly epidemic in history in which nobody officially died. The intricate scaffolding of the screenplay is constructed to bring together the various aspects of the teams working in silos who unwittingly find commonalities but take their time to work out their findings collectively through accident and coincidence until finally they discover the starting point. Almost everyone I know has or wants to. An internationally starry cast including Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Nathalie Baye, Glenne Headly, Anjelica Huston and Tcheky Karyo – with Richard Gere’s cameo as a version of (unnamed) acclaimed choreographer Michael Bennett – finds itself linked to the impossibly handsome Gaetan Dugas aka Patient Zero (Jeffrey Nordlin) that French-Canadian air steward the carrier who is symptom-free until he gets Kaposi’s. It’s like all the plagues in the history of the world got squeezed into one. When it’s not just gay men but African women in Paris and Haitian people in the US and babies in NYC dying from what Prince called the big disease with a little name, the strands of the narrative are united just as the personal issues are pushed to the forefront with a race to find a vaccine. The sparing use of archive, timed to punctuate developments and place them in an historical context, assists the affect of the performances. I want to stop you from turning this holocaust into an international pissing contest. On the political front there are a number of interests – the Reagan administration, the CDC, the doctors whose big pharma investments are at risk, the blood banks, the gay activists resistant to the bath house closures and then there’s the rivalry between Gallo and the Pasteur Institute which the American narcissist insists is a competition between countries. When doctors start acting like businessmen, who do people turn to for doctors? The irony that the man preaching safe sex finds himself infected is wonderfully exposed in McKellen’s subtle performance. Ultimately progress comes down to the same sample leading the competitors to discover the first new human retrovirus. This is where the diseases are. In an impressive ensemble, which doesn’t extol one individual over any other, Modine as Francis is the motor and the conscience, the protagonist whose original findings in Africa trigger his understanding of the spread of the disease creating empathy for a difficult front line that involves the everyday problems besetting the medical profession. The credits rollcall of the dead – from Arthur Ashe to Ryan White – and the movement’s activists, over Elton John’s The Last Song, is sobering indeed. Elegantly directed by Roger Spottiswoode who delivers a coherent, moving and emotive docudrama with a powerful political punch about stigma, prejudice, ignorance and self-interest that still has the capacity to make jaws drop in chronicling an epidemic with lessons for everyone. Will we ever learn? And will anyone ever commit to the fact that the origin of the protein that evolved alternately into HIV/AIDS or Ebola in humans came from Africans eating monkeys? This was known in 1993, when this film was produced, six years after Randy Shilts’ book was published but presumably nobody dared bring it up. We still fear a little reality about the transmission of disease in a world where borders no longer exist in the rush for globalised profit and concomitant unstoppable uncontrolled migration. This didn’t have to happen. We could have stopped it

Happy 90th Birthday Shirley MacLaine 24th April 2024!

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

BlackBerry (2023)

We call it PocketLink. 1996: Waterloo, Ontario. The co-founder and CEO Mike Lazirides (Jay Baruchel) of Research in Motion and his best friend and co-founder Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson) are preparing to pitch their ‘PocketLink” cellular device to businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). Lazaridis is bothered by the incessant buzzing of Balsillie’s Chinese intercom and fixes it before Balsillie arrives to the meeting. Their pitch is unsuccessful but when Balsillie is fired from his job due to his aggressive ambition, he agrees to work with them provided he is made CEO of RIM and given one half of the company. They hesitate but after they confirm Basillie’s suspicion that their deal with US Robotics was a malicious attempt to bankrupt them, they bring Balsillie in as co-CEO with one third of RIM for a cash infusion that requires Balsillie to mortgage his house. Balsillie arranges a pitch for the PocketLink with Bell Atlantic and forces Fregin and Lazaridis to build a crude prototype overnight which he and Lazaridis take to New York. Lazaridis forgets the prototype in their taxi, leaving Balsillie to attempt the pitch alone. Lazaridis recovers the prototype at the eleventh hour and finishes the pitch, rebranding the PocketLink as the ‘BlackBerry’ which becomes massively successful. 2003: Palm CEO Carl Yankowski (Cary Elwes) plans a hostile takever of RIM which forces Balsillie to try to raise RIM’s stockprice by selling more phones than Bell Atlantic’s (now Verizon Communications) network can support. This crashes the network, as Lazaridis had warned, so Balsillie poaches engineers from around the world to fix the problem, as well as hiring a man named Charles Purdy (Michael Ironside) as RIM’s COO to keep the engineers in line but this upsets Fregin who values the casual fun work environment he and Lazaridis had created. The new engineers fix the network issue under Purdy’s strict management enabling RIM to avoid Yankowski’s buyout. 2007: RIM’s upcoming pitch of the BlackBerry Bold to Verizon is thrown into chaos when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone … You’re not selling togetherness any more. You’re selling self-reliance. The story of the original smartphone is equal parts horrifying and hilarious. The original Canadian tech bros vs their own boss (with differences cleverly signalled by their in-car musical choices) whose acquisitiveness culminates in a funny aeroplane chase across the US trying to buy out the National Hockey League is on the money when it comes to the cultural differences between creatives and financiers. Maybe we could call it the prophet: profit margin. The core initially is the long-term friendship between Mike and Doug which is gradually usurped by Mike’s dealings with the reptilian Jim who is performed with vainglorious precision by Howerton. His presence prises the friends apart as Mike cannot handle the pressure and Doug cannot comprehend his fraility. This has the virtues of a whistleblower-style docudrama, recounting that insanely good idea to combine a cellphone with a pager and email. The dark moment when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone triggers a chain reaction of events of a desperation that is blackly comic and (almost) tragic. Mike’s presentation to Verizon is a model of a public nervous breakdown. How a small operation of laidback tech geniuses is transformed into an impersonal profit-driven major player (albeit briefly) with grownups in the once friendly groovy music-filled workplace being supervised as though they’re retarded teens in a silent call centre is sobering but explains much about our paranoid surveillance society and the men who control it. This razor-sharp comedy drama is directed by co-star Matt Johnson from a screenplay co-written with producer Matthew Miller. I created this entire product class!

Bridget Jones’s Diary Was Released 13th April 2001!

In the week it’s been announced a fourth entry in this series Mad About the Boy is due for imminent production, it’s incredible to think that it has been going for close to a quarter of a century. The first adaptation in what became a franchise was released twenty-three years ago today.

Helen Fielding’s hit 1996 novel was a rewrite of Pride and Prejudice and became a cultural milestone. A film adaptation was inevitable.

If the search for the iconic and beloved 32-year old slacker singleton heroine wasn’t quite that for Scarlett O’Hara it seemed of almost national import so the casting of the very un-British Renee Zellweger caused a ripple of consternation but it turned out to be an inspired choice.

She allegedly gained twenty pounds to play Bridget who notes her weight daily in her diary and struggles into her clothes with the help of very big pants.

The meta-casting of Colin Firth, TV’s Darcy from the BBC’s global hit adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, as Bridget’s love object human rights lawyer Mark Darcy, hit the sweet spot. It also meant Firth could send himself up and move on from the typecasting that had followed that other iconic role.

That TV series’ screenwriter Andrew Davies co-wrote the screenplay with Fielding and her onetime boyfriend, romcom king Richard Curtis.

Hugh Grant delighted as the devilish Daniel Cleaver, the rival for Bridget’s affections.

Directed by Sharon ‘Shazza’ Maguire, Fielding’s BFF and immortalised in the film by Sally Phillips, one of the posse helping Bridget through her trials and tribulations, the film was a huge hit and a critical success.

Zellweger was nominated for an Academy Award for her charming performance. Long live Bridget Jones!