On the Basis of Sex

Dir: Mimi Leder

2018

***

Political biographies are usually reserved for Presidents and Dictators, so it is nice to see one that is focused on an inspirational person who would ordinarily be overlooked. What is also refreshing, is that said politician (not really a politician but rather Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States), Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is still alive and active at the time of the film’s release. While much of her life is either missed out or simplified, for no other reason than run time, the audience can take extra reassurance of an authentic story, thanks to the fact that the script was written by Daniel Stiepleman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's nephew. The film begins when Ruth Bader Ginsburg (played by Felicity Jones) is a first-year student at Harvard Law School. When her husband Martin (Armie Hammer), a second-year student, falls ill with cancer, she attends both her classes and his, taking notes and transcribing lectures while caring for Martin and their infant daughter Jane. Two years later Martin, his cancer in remission, is hired by a firm in New York. Ruth petitions Harvard Law School Dean Griswold to allow her to finish her Harvard law degree with classes at Columbia Law School in New York, but he insists on following Harvard University policies at the time and denies her request, so she transfers to Columbia. In spite of graduating at the top of her class, she is unable to find a position with a law firm because none of the firms she applies to want to hire a woman. Instead, she takes a job as a professor at Rutgers Law School, teaching "Sex Discrimination and the Law". Fast-forward to 1970, Martin brings Moritz v. Commissioner, a tax law case, to Ruth's attention. Charles Moritz is a man from Denver who had to hire a nurse to help him care for his aging mother so he could continue to work. Moritz was denied a tax deduction for the nursing care because at the time Section 214 of the Internal Revenue Code specifically limited the deduction to "a woman, a widower or divorcée, or a husband whose wife is incapacitated or institutionalized". The court ruled that Moritz, a man who had never married, did not qualify for the deduction. Ruth sees in this case an opportunity to begin to challenge the many laws enacted over the years that assume that men will work to provide for the family, and women will stay home and take care of the husband and children. She believes that if she could set a precedent ruling that a man was unfairly discriminated against on the basis of sex, that precedent could be cited in cases challenging laws that discriminate against women and she believes that an appellate court composed entirely of male judges would find it easier to identify with a male appellant. Ruth meets with Mel Wulf of the ACLU to try to enlist their help, but he turns her down. She also meets with activist and civil rights advocate Dorothy Kenyon (played with gusto by Kathy Bates), who is cold to the idea at first but later meets with Wulf in his office and convinces him to sign on. Ruth then flies to Denver to meet with Moritz, who agrees to let the Ginsburgs and ACLU represent him pro bono after Ruth convinces him that millions of people could potentially benefit. The Ginsburgs and Wulf file an appeal of Moritz's denial with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Department of Justice Attorney James H. Bozarth asks to be the lead counsel for the defense. He does a computer search to find all of the sections of the US Code that deal with gender. His defense will contend that, if section 214 is ruled unconstitutional, that will open the door to challenge all of America's gender-based laws. Ruth, having no courtroom experience, does poorly in a moot court, and Wulf convinces her to let Martin lead off arguing the tax law, with Ruth following up with equal protection arguments. The government offers Moritz a settlement of one dollar. Ruth makes a counter-proposal: the government will pay Moritz the sum he claimed as a deduction and make a declaration that he did nothing wrong, and also enter into the record that the gender-based portion of section 214 is unconstitutional. The government declines this proposal because of the constitutionality element. At the oral argument in the Court of Appeals, Martin takes more of their side's allotted time than he had intended. Ruth is nervous but makes several key points and reserves four minutes of her time for rebuttal. Bozarth frames his side's argument as defending the American way of life, implying that the Ginsburgs and ACLU want "radical social change" and maybe Moritz "just doesn't want to pay his taxes". In her rebuttal, Ruth is much more confident. She states that societal roles that existed one hundred years ago, or even twenty years ago, no longer apply. She does not ask the court to change society, but to keep the law up with social change that has already taken place. To a judge's objection that the Constitution does not contain the word "woman", she responds vigorously that neither does it contain the word "freedom". Outside the courthouse, judgment being reserved, Wulf, Moritz and the Ginsburgs celebrate that, win or lose, Ruth has finally found her voice as a lawyer. Titles over the closing scene indicate that the Court of Appeals found unanimously in Moritz's favour. Ruth went on to co-found the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, which struck down many of the gender-based laws Bozarth identified, and in 1993 the Senate voted 96 to 3 for her to become an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. The final scene shows the real-life Ginsburg walking up the steps of the Supreme Court building. The film highlights the rewards of hard work, determination and support. If this were a fictional story Ginsburg’s husband would no doubt be against his wife’s ambition but the script quite rightly acknowledges Martin Ginsburg’s support that was less common in the era. The film is really brought to life by Felicity Jones and Armie Hammer, two actors at the top of their game and the two people anyone would want to portray them in a film. I can’t say I was that enamored by Mimi Leder’s direction though. I do wonder why she was seen as an appropriate director, considering she’s really only done sub-standard action and wishy-washy drama. I’m sure it is because she worked on L.A. Law back in the day and not just because she was the only female director available at the time. Don’t get me wrong, I get why the studio would have wanted a female director but really, shouldn’t the point be that it should go to the best person for the job. I can think of loads of directors, male and female, who would have been better suited, although it is adequate. It works thanks to the great performances and the fact that the script focuses only on the important facts of the case and Ginsburg’s career. Hopefully it’ll start a trend of other like-minded biographies of people who deserve more recognition of their achievements for others.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

Dir: Susanna Fogel

2018

**

Comedy Spy films generally suck but I still give them a chance. I quite liked the idea of two best friends being chased by assassins through Europe after one of their ex-boyfriends turns out to be a CIA agent and learning that said best friends would be played by Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon got my attention. I thought, at least the performances would be good, even if the story isn’t. Sadly I was wrong on all fronts. The story is rubbish and the characters misfire at every given moment. I adore Kate McKinnon, and while she was full of energy and did the best she could, there was no getting away from how badly written and annoying her character was. The film has glimmers of greatness but overall its terrible. The film starts with Audrey Stockman (Kunis), a supermarket cashier who spends her birthday upset after being dumped, via text, by her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux). Her best friend and roommate, Morgan (McKinnon), convinces her to burn Drew's things and sends him a text as a heads up. Unbeknownst to Audrey, Drew is a government agent being pursued by men trying to kill him. He promises to return and asks Audrey not to burn his things in the meantime. The next day at work, Audrey flirts with a customer who asks her to walk him to his car. She is then forced into a van. Inside, the man identifies himself as Sebastian Henshaw and states that Drew works for the C.I.A. and has gone missing. Audrey claims not to have heard from Drew and is allowed to go home. However, Drew shows up to retrieve his possessions, including a fantasy football trophy. People begin shooting at them and Drew tells Audrey that, if anything happens to him, she must go to a certain café in Vienna and turn over the trophy to his contact. Drew is then apparently murdered by a man Morgan had previously met at the bar who had stayed the night, who is then pushed off the balcony by Morgan. Morgan convinces Audrey to go to Vienna and, after realising she’s pushed a man to his death, decides to go with her. At the café, Sebastian appears and demands the trophy at gunpoint. Audrey reluctantly hands it over before the entire café is attacked. Audrey and Morgan flee, chased by men on motorcycles. Audrey reveals that she still has Drew's trophy since she switched it with one of several decoys they purchased at the airport. They board a train to Prague and discover that the trophy contains a USB flash drive. Morgan calls her parents, who tell her they can stay in Prague with Roger, a family friend. Audrey and Morgan make it to the apartment, but quickly realize that Roger is actually a spy who has killed the real Roger and drugged the two ladies. Audrey tries to get Morgan to swallow the flash drive. When that fails, Audrey tells their captors that she flushed it down the toilet. The ladies then wake up in an abandoned gymnastics training facility, about to be tortured by Nadejda, a Russian gymnast/model/assassin trained by an older couple who had previously masqueraded as Drew's parents. The couple reveals that Drew was discreetly negotiating with them to sell the flash drive, and Audrey came along as part of his cover. Audrey and Morgan are rescued by Sebastian, who defied orders to save them. He brings them to meet his boss in Paris, where they once again tell the C.I.A. and MI6 that the drive was flushed. The women are given tickets back to America, and Sebastian is placed on leave. As Sebastian drives the women back to the airport, Audrey confesses that she hid the drive in her vagina. When Sebastian is unable to decrypt the information, Morgan calls Edward Snowden - who had a crush on her in summer camp - and he helps them hack the drive. The trio travel to a hostel in Amsterdam, where they are attacked by Sebastian's C.I.A. partner Duffer, who wants to sell the drive himself. They are rescued by their hostel roommate, who thinks they are being robbed and body slams Duffer to his death. Audrey answers Duffer's phone when it rings and agrees to sell the drive at a private party in Berlin. To get into the party, Audrey and Sebastian disguise themselves as the Canadian ambassador and his wife, while Morgan pretends to be a member of Cirque du Soleil, the entertainment. Sebastian is attacked and Morgan is confronted by Nadejda on an acrobat swing, eventually killing her by throwing her onto the nearby set. Meanwhile, Audrey goes to meet her mysterious contact and finds Drew, still alive. Drew acts suspiciously and goes through her purse to find the flash drive. Sebastian arrives, being held hostage by Drew's fake parents. After a standoff, Drew's fake parents are shot, leaving Sebastian and Drew, who accuse each other of trying to hurt Audrey. Drew then shoots Sebastian, and Audrey pretends to be glad before grabbing Drew's gun. After Drew tries to attack Audrey, Audrey kicks him in the crotch, then he falls to the ground when Morgan throws a cannonball at him. Drew is arrested, and Audrey, Morgan, and Sebastian walk away. Sebastian later gives Morgan his untraceable phone so she can call her parents to tell them she is alive. While on the phone, Morgan receives a call from Sebastian's boss telling him he is off suspension. Morgan begs her for a job as a spy. Meanwhile, Sebastian and Audrey share a kiss. A year later, while celebrating Audrey's birthday in Tokyo, her party is revealed to be a ruse. Audrey and Morgan are there on assignment with Sebastian to stop a group of Japanese Yakuza gangsters. The best films of this ilk are the ones that convince an audience that the most outrageous of situations are in fact quite easy to fall into. The Spy Who Dumped Me doesn’t do this. It feels like someone came up with the title first and then tried to create a story around it. Director and co-writer Susanna Fogel said that she wrote the movie with David Iserson because they were "looking for a hole in the marketplace - a good friendship movie with lots of action" but the truth is they wrote something that has been done time and time again. A few years back a taxi driver went to a TV news studio in England and through a series of misunderstandings he found himself being interviewed live on television on a subject he knew nothing about. That was funny and it really happened. In no circumstance can anyone found themselves in a situation where they would have to, or indeed would be able to impersonate a member of the Cirque du Soleil. The truth is Cirque du Soleil is popular at the moment, so they shoehorned a bit of pop-culture into a film even though it didn’t fit, didn’t work and wasn’t funny. The story was feeble and the script was awful. A huge wasted opportunity for an idea that actually had a lot of potential. The three or four punchy scenes just could make up for the overall dreck of what the film was.

The Dark Crystal

Dir: Jim Henson, Frank Oz

1982

*****

The Dark Crystal was a huge part of my childhood. While I adore the Muppets, I liked its darker side while also feeling safe, knowing that uncle Henson was at the helm. According to co-director and fellow Muppet man Frank Oz, Henson's intention was to "get back to the darkness of the original Grimms' Fairy Tales", as he believed that it was unhealthy for children to never be afraid. I’ll be honest and say that I always preferred Labyrinth but Dark Crystal was something else, something made for us kids that felt like something we shouldn’t be watching while also feeling like something we simply couldn’t miss. The film's conception lay in Jim Henson's short-lived The Land of Gorch, which also took place in an alien world with no human characters while the visuals were influenced by Leonard B. Lubin’s illustrations that featured in a 1975 edition of Lewis Carroll’s poetry showing crocodiles living in a palace and wearing elaborate robes and jewelry. Henson combined his ideas into a 25-page story he entitled The Crystal, which he wrote whilst snowed in at an airport hotel with his then 17-year-old daughter Cheryl on scraps of hotel note paper. Work on the film didn't begin in earnest until 1979, after the completion of The Muppet Movie in 1979 which was shot in Los Angeles. Dark Crystal was shot in England, back to back with The Great Muppet Caper in 1981. Set a thousand years ago on the planet Thra, we learn that two new races appeared when a powerful Crystal cracked: the malevolent Skeksis, who use the power of the Dark Crystal to continually replenish themselves, and the kind wizards called urRu, more commonly known as the Mystics. Jen, a young Gelfling taken in by the urRu after his clan was killed, is told by his urRu Master on his deathbed, that he must heal the Crystal, which can only occur if he finds a Shard being kept by the astronomer Aughra, Keeper of Secrets. If he fails to do so before the planet's three suns align, then the Skeksis will rule forever. Jen's Master then dies. Meanwhile, the Skeksis' Emperor also dies and a duel ensues between the Skeksis' Chamberlain and the Master of their large crab-like Garthim, both of whom desire the throne. The Garthim-Master wins and the Chamberlain is subsequently exiled. Learning of Jen's existence, the Skeksis send the Garthim to track him. Jen reaches Aughra and is taken to her home, which contains an enormous orrery she uses to predict the motions of the heavens. She has a box full of Shards, from which Jen selects the correct one by playing a note on his flute, causing it to resonate. Aughra tells Jen of the upcoming Great Conjunction, the alignment of the three suns, but he learns little of its connection to the Shard. At that point, the Garthim arrive and destroy Aughra's home, taking her prisoner as Jen flees. Hearing the call of the Crystal, the urRu leave their valley to travel to the Skeksis' Castle. On his journey through the swamp, Jen meets Kira, another surviving Gelfling who can communicate with animals. They discover that they have a telepathic connection, which Kira calls "dreamfasting", and share memories of being forced from their homes. They stay for a night with the Podlings, who raised Kira after the death of her parents. However, the Garthim raid the village, capturing most of the Podlings. Jen, Kira, and Kira's pet Fizzgig flee when the Chamberlain stops the Garthim from attacking them, intent on gaining their trust. Jen and Kira discover a ruined Gelfling city with ancient writing describing a prophecy: "When single shines the triple sun, what was sundered and undone shall be whole. The two made one by Gelfling hand or else by none." They are interrupted by the Chamberlain, who claims that the Skeksis want to make peace and wants the Gelflings to return to the Castle with him, but they do not trust him and refuse his offer. Riding on Landstriders, Jen and Kira arrive at the Skeksis' Castle and intercept the Garthim that attacked Kira's village. While trying to free the captured Podlings, Kira, Jen, and Fizzgig descend to the bottom of the Castle's dry moat and use a lower-level entrance to gain access. They are followed by the Chamberlain, who repeats his peace offer; when they refuse again, he buries Jen in a cave-in and takes Kira to the Castle. The Garthim-Master reinstates him to his former position, and the Skeksis' Scientist tries to drain Kira's life essence for the Garthim-Master to drink so that he can regain his youth. Aughra, imprisoned in the Scientist's laboratory, tells Kira to call for help from the animals held captive; they break free in response, releasing Kira and causing the Scientist to fall into the pit to his death. His urRu counterpart simultaneously vanishes. Aughra also escapes, and later rescues Fizzgig. The three suns begin to align as Jen and Kira reach the Crystal Chamber, and the Skeksis gather for the ritual that will grant them immortality. Jen leaps onto the Crystal but drops the Shard; Kira throws it back to him but is fatally impaled by the Skeksis' Ritual-Master. Jen inserts the Shard into the Crystal, fulfilling the prophecy just as the Mystics enter the Crystal Chamber. The Castle's dark walls disintegrate to reveal a structure of a bright Crystal; and the urRu and Skeksis merge into tall glowing beings known as urSkeks. The leader of the urSkeks explains that they had mistakenly shattered the Crystal long ago, splitting them into two races and decimating Thra, and that Jen, in fulfilling the prophecy, has restored them. The urSkeks revive Kira in gratitude for her sacrifice and Jen's courage, and then ascend to a higher level of existence, leaving the Crystal to the Gelflings on the now-rejuvenated Thra. It was one of those films that stayed with you long after viewing and I felt as a child that I’d learn something new in every repeat viewing – and there were many repeat viewings. It was dark, I was scared of the Skeksis and the Garthim. Chamberlain’s whine went right through me and even Aughra frightened me in a septic Miss Piggy sort of way. However, addressing the balance was the wonderfully cuddly urRu, the Dozer-like Podlings and of course Fizzgig. Henson's original concept was set in a world called Mithra, a wooded land with talking mountains, walking boulders and animal-plant hybrids. The original plot involved a malevolent race called the Reptus group, which took power in a coup against the peaceful Eunaze, led by Malcolm the Wise. The last survivor of the Eunaze was Malcolm's son Brian, who was adopted by the Bada, Mithra's mystical wizards. This draft contained elements in the final product, including the three races, the two funerals, the quest, a female secondary character, the Crystal, and the reunification of the two races during the Great Conjunction. "Mithra" was later abbreviated to "Thra", due to similarities the original name had with an ancient Persian deity. Most of the philosophical undertones of the film were inspired from Jane Roberts' "Seth Material". Henson kept multiple copies of the book Seth Speaks, and insisted that Froud and screenwriter David Odell read it prior to collaborating for the film. Odell later wrote that Aughra's line "He could be anywhere then," upon being told by Jen that his Master was dead, could not have been written without having first read Roberts' material. The Bada were renamed "Ooo-urrrs," which Henson would pronounce "very slowly and with a deep resonant voice." Odell simplified the spelling to urRu, though they were ultimately named Mystics in the theatrical cut. The word "Skeksis" was initially meant to be the plural, with "Skesis" being singular, though this was dropped early in the filming process. Originally, Henson wanted the Skeksis to speak their own constructed language, with the dialogue subtitled in English. Brian Froud was chosen as concept artist after Henson saw one of his paintings in the book Once upon a time. The characters in the film are elaborate puppets, and none are based on humans or any other specific Earth creature. Before its release, The Dark Crystal was billed as the first live-action film without any human beings on screen, and "a showcase for cutting-edge animatronics". The hands and facial features of the groundbreaking animatronic puppets in the film were controlled with relatively primitive rods and cables, although radio control later took over many of the subtler movements. Human performers inside the puppets supplied basic movement for the larger creatures, which in some cases was dangerous or exhausting; for example, the Garthim costumes were so heavy that the performers had to be hung up on a rack every few minutes to rest while still inside the costumes. A mime from Switzerland was hired to help choreograph the movements of the puppeteers. When conceptualizing the Skeksis, Henson had in mind the Seven deadly sins, though because there were 10 Skeksis, some sins had to be invented or used twice. Froud originally designed them to resemble deep sea fish, but later designed them as "part reptile, part predatory bird, part dragon", with an emphasis on giving them a "penetrating stare."  Each Skeksis was conceived as having a different "job" or function, thus each puppet was draped in multicolored robes meant to reflect their personalities and thought processes. Each Skeksis suit required a main performer, whose arm would be extended over his or her head in order to operate the creature's facial movements, while the other arm operated its left hand. Another performer would operate the Skeksis' right arm. The Skeksis performers compensated for their lack of vision by having a monitor tied to their chests. In designing the Mystics, Froud portrayed them as being more connected to the natural world than their Skeksis counterparts. Henson intended to convey the idea that they were purged of all materialistic urges, yet were incapable of acting in the real world. Froud also incorporated geometric symbolism throughout the film in order to hint at the implied unity of the two races. The Mystics were the hardest creatures to perform, as the actors had to walk on their haunches with their right arm extended forward, with the full weight of the head on it. Henson himself could hold a position in a Mystic costume for only 5–10 seconds. The Gelflings were designed and sculpted by Wendy Midener. They were difficult to perform, as they were meant to be the most human creatures in the film, and thus their movements, particularly their gait, had to be as realistic as possible. During scenes when the Gelflings' legs were off-camera, the performers walked on their knees in order to make the character's movements more lifelike. According to Odell, the character Jen was Henson's way of projecting himself into the film. The character Fizzgig was invented by Frank Oz, who wanted a character who served the same function as the Muppet poodle Foo-Foo, feeling that, like Miss Piggy, the character Kira needed an outlet for her caring, nurturing side. The character's design was meant to convey the idea of a "boyfriend-repellent", to contrast the popular idea that it is easier to form a bond with a member of the opposite sex with the assistance of a cute dog. The Dark Crystal was the last film in which the great cinematographer Oswald Morris involved himself in before retiring. He shot all the footage with a "light flex", a unit placed in front of the camera which gave a faint color tint to each scene in order to give the film a more fairy tale atmosphere similar to Froud's original paintings. Once filming was completed, the film's release was delayed after Lew Grade (who famously brought the Muppets to the UK) sold ITC Entertainment to Robert Holmes à Court, who was skeptical of the film's potential, due to the bad reactions at the. The film was afforded minimal advertisement and release until Henson bought it from Holmes à Court and funded its release with his own money. I think it is safe to say the world wasn’t ready for it in 1982 (they were expecting more Muppet-like things from Henson), at least, the adults weren’t. Us kids loved it and it has since become a beloved classic.

If Beale Street Could Talk

Dir: Barry Jenkins

2018

*****

There was a great deal of anticipation for Barry Jenkins’ If Beeale Street Could Talk, following the huge success of his 2016 award-winning drama Moonlight, and while the film didn’t quite have the same fanfare, it certainly maintains the directors striking aesthetic and mesmerizing mood. Jenkins, much like his characters, say so much by saying nothing at all. His strength is in his subtleties, he doesn’t hammer the message through but rather plants a seed and gives it water. I would argue that no one is making soul-searching passion films better than Barry Jenkins right now. The film is presented in a non-linear structure, which I wasn’t sure worked at first, but soon found myself adjusting to. In retrospect I think it was the right choice for the style of narrative. Clementine "Tish" Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Alonzo "Fonny" Hunt (Stephan James) have been friends their whole lives, and begin a romantic relationship when they are older. It is the early 1970s, and they struggle to find a place to live as most New York City landlords refuse to rent apartments to black people. They eventually find a place in a warehouse in the process of being converted to loft apartments; Levy, the Jewish landlord (played by Dave Franco), agrees to rent it to them at a reasonable rate because he enjoys seeing couples who are in love, regardless of their race.That night, Tish is harassed by a man while shopping at a mostly white grocery store. When he begins to assault her, Fonny physically throws the man out of the store. A white policeman nearby, Officer Bell (Ed Skrein), witnesses the incident and attempts to arrest Fonny, but reluctantly lets him go when the white woman who runs the grocery store vouches for them and calls Bell out for his racism. Fonny is later arrested and accused of raping a woman named Victoria Rogers. Although it would have been nearly impossible for him to have traveled from the scene of the crime to the apartment where he was arrested in the amount of time between the rape and the arrest, the case against Fonny is considered strong due to Officer Bell's testimony, in which he claims to have seen Fonny fleeing the scene, and Victoria having identified Fonny in a lineup as her rapist. Tish, as well as Fonny's friend Daniel Carty (Brian Tyree Henry), were with him at the time of the rape, but his alibi is not considered reliable due to Tish's romantic relationship with Fonny and Daniel's previous conviction for grand theft auto (the result of a plea bargain after being arrested for marijuana possession). Tish visits Fonny in jail as he awaits trial, and reveals to him that she is pregnant with their baby. Fonny is excited to be a father, but is saddened by the fact that his child might be born with him behind bars. Later, Tish tells her parents, Sharon and Joseph, and sister, Ernestine, about her pregnancy. Though worried for her, Tish's family is supportive and decide to invite Fonny's family over to share the news. Frank, Fonny's father, is excited about the pregnancy. However, Fonny's highly religious mother declares the child to be a sin due to being conceived out of wedlock, and rants about how Tish and her child are damned. As Mrs. Hunt begins to leave with her daughters in disgust after Frank hits her, Sharon reminds her that she has just condemned her own grandchild, leaving her emotionally distraught as she is escorted away. In a bar, Frank and Joseph discuss how the former is worried about paying for a child and Fonny's legal expenses, but Joseph convinces him that they will be able to provide for their grandchild the same way they provided for their children. After tracking Victoria to her native Puerto Rico, Sharon travels there to plead with her to change her testimony. Sharon attempts to convince Victoria that she made a mistake when she identified Fonny as her rapist, but Victoria refuses. When Sharon questions whether Victoria could have seen her rapist's face in the dark, Victoria says the police told her to identify Fonny in a line-up, and she did so. When Sharon gently touches her, Victoria begins to scream, attracting the attention of her neighbors, forcing Sharon to leave. Discouraged by the seeming hopelessness of his case and the constant trial delays, Fonny eventually accepts a plea deal. In the last scene of the film, Tish and the child, named Alonzo, Jr., after his father, are visiting Fonny in prison. They all share a dinner together from the vending machines, while looking forward to Fonny's eventual release. The lack of happy ending speaks volumes and I wonder whether this hindered it’s performance at the box office and at the awards. However, it makes it all the more real. There is nothing extraordinary about the story in many respects because it’s a scenario that has happened time and time again. Jenkins’ matter of fact approach allows the audience to reflect, which is far more powerful than to provoke or to preach. The story is an adaptation of the book written by the great James Baldwin and Jenkins captures the essence and the idea and point laid out by the title - ‘IF Beeale Street Could Talk’ - perfectly. To bring the words to life, Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton looked at the work of Harlem artist Roy DeCarava. DeCarava received early critical acclaim for his photography, initially engaging and imaging the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. Over a career that spanned nearly six decades, DeCarava came to be known as a founder in the field of black and white fine art photography, advocating for an approach to the medium based on the core value of an individual, subjective creative sensibility, which was separate and distinct from the social documentary style of his predecessors. It translates perfectly with Baldwin’s words with his book The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a pictorial narrative of family life in Harlem published in 1955, is clearly the main source of inspiration. While the film received critical acclaim, the lack of hype bothered me. It’s a stunning piece of work that I believe will become recognised as a modern masterpiece in the near future.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot

Dir: Robert D. Krzykowski

2018

*****

I have a rule that applies to film, beer and betting on horses – be weary of the one with the funniest name, as it is almost always disappointing/tastes bland/comes last. Not The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot though, this film is one of 2018’s best. Robert Krzykowski’s debut boasts beautiful visuals and a brilliant leading performance from the great Sam Elliott but the name is clearly an issue for some people. I think people have passed it by and brushed it aside, mistaking it for a b-movie, or even worse, a satirical b-movie with an amazing poster that is smug and self-aware, but still a crumby b-movie. It may be a low-budget film but it ain’t no b-movie. In fact, its one of the last great American-American films in my humble opinion. Set sometime in the mid to late 1980s, the story follows Calvin Barr (Sam Elliott), an old man living his retirement days in his quiet hometown with only his faithful dog as company. While resting, walking and sitting upon his porch, Barr reminiscences about his past, specifically his time as a special ops soldier during the Second World War. It is clear that Barr is full of regret, resentment and sadness. As a young man (played by Aidan Turner) he was full of life and was looking forward to a life with his sweetheart Maxine (played by Caitlin FitzGerald) until his country asked him to make the ultimate sacrifice, saying goodbye to his old life and going on a secret mission to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He does indeed kill Hitler but the operation was made classified and was never revealed to the public. Barr returned home to the life he had before, no heroes welcome and Maxine had moved on. Barr doesn’t like the thought that he has killed, even though it was Hitler and he feels quiet resentment for the loss of the life he wanted to have.  Life now is about reflection, he is a man of few words. He has a daily routing, one that sometimes includes visiting his brother Ed (Larry Miller) in his barbershop, the only person he speaks with and has a connection to. We soon learn though that he isn’t such an old man and his abilities and strength are still sound as he fights off a group of thugs intent on stealing his car. Soon after, he notices he is being followed by two mysterious looking men. The men eventually approach him identifying themselves as joint American and a Canadian government agents. They explain that all life on Earth may be coming to an end as a strange virus has been killing people and animals around the world and the original source of the virus is Bigfoot itself. Knowing Barr is a highly trained tracker and survivalist, can keep a secret and is somehow one of the few people on Earth immune to the virus, the agents try to recruit him to go into the wilderness and kill the Bigfoot in hopes it will end the epidemic. Barr hunts the Bigfoot, wounding him. After much tracking, he finds the Bigfoot dying. Barr chooses to burn the body rather than turn it over to the government, but this was a trap set up by the Bigfoot who then attacks Barr, maiming him. The two fight until Barr stabs the Bigfoot to death. Barr lays back, seemingly dying from his wound. The screen fades to Barr's funeral as his brother gives a beautiful eulogy. He is presumed dead and a few of his belongings are buried instead of a body. A little time passes and Ed goes fishing with Barr's dog whom he has adopted. Barr appears and greets him and the two go fishing together. Barr later digs up his casket to retrieve keepsakes. Like I say, this ain’t no sensationalist b-movie and the fact that John Sayles and Douglas Trumbull acted as producers should go some way in suggesting as much. It also stars Ron Livingston, who seems to be concentrating on quality over quantity of late and I seem to love pretty much everything he has appeared in, proving himself to be something of a quality measure. The assassination of Hitler and the killing of Bigfoot are side-notes in a slow-burn character study, however, the character here is bigger than just one man. Basically, Barr is an allegory of modern America. Stay with me here folks. The film starts as an allegory of the USA vs the Nazis and then the fight against Bigfoot is an allegory of the cold war. Russian solders help Barr locate Hitler and in one particular scene where he is shaved by a Russian General, the General predicts the outcome of the war by comparing the two men. The shave is an act of great trust and he refers to Barr as ‘Mr. America’. Barr feels empty, as if the mission wasn’t over after he killed Hitler. He killed the man but he didn’t kill his ideas. Bigfoot represents an illogical fear, it is both sensationalist (as were many scandals and ideas of the time) and ridiculous (the idea that Bigfoot is a virus that will spread to the whole world (like communism). Barr is somehow immune (the American soldier/patriot) and others are either too old or too young to do the job. It’s another sacrifice, an easy one for the government, because Barr has nothing to loose, knows that it needs to be done and is well aware of what the American dream is and that in reality, it is all an illusion. The Bigfoot isn’t quite the beast we all think of it as and Barr sees himself in it. Once he does vanquish him though, he feels that somehow his mission is complete, he is declared dead but he lives on and is at peace. The dates on his grave are the same as the fall of the Soviet Union but he digs up his own grave and collects his possession so that he, the American solder, is ready to fight again in needed. There are lots of things to consider and I think a lot of it is open to interpretation. Hitler did exist but killing him didn’t really do anything and nobody knows about it, while on the other hand, Bigfoot doesn’t really exist but killing him did make a difference, and the fact that no one knows about it is fine. I think it’s a great personal and historical journey through America, not necessarily based on fact (definitely not based on fact) but on feeling. It’s quirky but also compellingly deep. Make what you will but if you’re looking for a film along the lines of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter than I’m afraid this isn’t it, it’s far better in my opinion. I’m going to go as far as saying that its something of an alternative masterpiece.

Burning

Dir: Lee Chang-dong

2018

*****

It is fair to say that I was sold on the film as soon as I heard that it was a Lee Chang-dong adaption of a Haruki Murakami story. Japanese broadcaster NHK, which owns the rights to Murakami work, approached Lee Chang-dong and asked that he’s pick any Haruki Murakami story he wanted and to adapt it as he saw fit. I believe there were a few disputes between Murakami and NHK but in my opinion, Chang-dong absolutely captures the mood and essence of the author’s style. Chang-dong decided to adapt the short story Barn Burning from Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes – a collection of short stories. The film itself could be called The Slow-Burning as it slowly lures the viewer in, building up the characters but without giving away any of the mystery. It’s an absorbing work of psychological unease, there are scattered clues along the way but this certainly isn’t Agatha Christie, it is pure Murakami from start to finish and exactly what I see when I read his novels. The story’s protagonist is an aspiring young novelist called Lee Jong-su (played by Yoo Ah-in). He’s shy, quiet and somewhat awkward but we soon understand that he’s more of a thinker than a speaker but is certainly brighter than he often appears. After finishing university he find himself working odd jobs in Paju. One day he runs into Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a childhood neighbor and classmate whom he does not remember at first. She is working as a promotions girl, dancing in a mini-skirt outside a busy supermarket. When she realises he doesn’t quite remember her she tells him she had plastic surgery. Later, as they have dinner together, she tells him about her upcoming trip to Africa, and asks him to feed her cat, Boil (named so because he was found in the boiler room of her building), while she is away. Jong-su's father, a cattle farmer, is in prison awaiting trial for assaulting an officer over legal affairs, and Jong-su has to return to the farm he grew up on but he agrees to travel to her apartment every day to feed her cat none the less. Jong-su meets Hae-mi' at her apartment, where she gives him instructions about feeding the cat, who remains unseen. Unexpected to Jong-su, Hae-mi seems to have lured him there for sex and the two copulate for the rest of the afternoon. After Hae-mi departs, Jong-su dutifully feeds her cat, although he never sees it. He does, however, know that a cat is there because he finds feces in the cat's litter box. He also begins habitually masturbating in her apartment, looking out of her window as he does, thinking about the intimate afternoon they spent together. One day Hae-mi calls, saying she had become stranded at Nairobi Airport for three days after a terror warning. When Jong-su comes to pick her up from the airport, she arrives with Ben (Steven Yeun), whom she met and bonded with during the crisis. The three go out for dinner, where Hae-mi recalls a sunset she witnessed during her travels. Moved by the memory, she cries and confesses that she wanted to disappear. Ben is well-off and confident, though it is never entirely clear what he does for a living. Jong-su, struggling to get by and taking care of his family farm while his father is in prison, envies Ben and his relationship with Hae-mi from afar. Hanging out at Jong-su's farm, Hae-mi recalls a childhood memory wherein Jong-su rescued her after she fell into a well near her home, which Jong-su does not remember. The trio smoke cannabis and Hae-mi dances topless in a rather trippy scene that feels like a tribute from Lee Chang-dong to European cinema. After Hae-mi falls asleep on the sofa, Ben confesses a strange hobby. Every two months, he burns an abandoned greenhouse. He notes that Jong-su's rural neighborhood is full of greenhouses. When asked when his next burning will take place, Ben claims it will be very soon and close to Jong-su's house. Jong-su tells Ben that he loves Hae-mi, but later berates Hae-mi for disrobing in front of other men. Hae-mi quietly gets into Ben's car and as they leave Jong-su tells Ben he will keep an eye on the greenhouses in his area. Over the following days, Jong-su keeps watch around the neighborhood to see if any greenhouses burn down, but none do. One afternoon, in front of an intact greenhouse that he happens to be inspecting he receives a call from Hae-mi, which cuts off after a few seconds of ambiguous noises. Jong-su becomes worried as she does not answer any of his calls afterwards, and begins to investigate after her phone number becomes disconnected. Eventually he convinces the landlady to let him into Hae-mi's apartment so that he can feed her cat. Hae-mi's apartment is unnaturally clean, her pink suitcase remains but all signs of the cat are gone. Jong-su begins stalking Ben, staking out his apartment and following him to see where he goes. When he sees Ben's Porsche parked outside a restaurant he goes inside to confront him. A young woman suddenly approaches the table, apologizing to Ben for being late. As the three of them leave the restaurant, Jong-su asks Ben if he has heard from Hae-mi and whether she had gone on a trip. Ben says he has not heard from her, and he doubts she had gone on a trip. One day, Ben finds Jong-su outside his place and invites him up to his apartment, where he finds that he has a new cat which he claims is a rescued stray. Jong-su's suspicions are raised further when on a visit to the toilet he finds a watch, similar to the one he had given Hae-mi, hidden in a drawer containing other pieces of women’s jewelry. Shortly afterwards, Ben's cat runs out of the apartment and Jong-su finds that it answers to "Boil", the same name as Hae-mi's cat. Jong-su asks to meet Ben in the countryside, claiming he is with Hae-mi. After Ben sees that Hae-mi is not there, Jong-su stabs Ben several times, killing him. Jong-su douses Ben's car and body in gasoline and sets it all aflame, tossing his blood-soaked clothes in as well. He stumbles naked to his truck and drives off. It’s a rather enigmatic affair and much of the mystery is unanswered, but then that really isn’t the point. It is intentionally ambiguous and it is about the bigger picture, the one where we are all still looking for answers. Life doesn’t always have the answers but as Hae-mi says in her pantomime, Once you convince yourself something's there, it's hard to believe that it's not. I think that is where Murakami was coming from, via William Faulkner's 1939 story "Barn Burning" and of course The Great Gatsby. Indeed, Lee Chang-Dong described the film as "the story of a young Faulkner living in the Murakami world." The film is mysterious but it really tells you all you need to know, especially in lines such as "the gaping holes in the chain of events, the missing piece from which we can never know the truth, alludes to the mysterious world we live in now; the world in which we sense that something is wrong but cannot quite put a finger on what the problem is". It’s clearly a personal story to Murakami, as our protagonist is a writer and the film is both a tribute to two of his biggest inspirations; Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’m glad Lee Chang-Dong respected this, but then it is probably one of the reasons he himself loved it in the first place. Each character gives the audience something to ponder and even in the most ordinary scenes, a fleeting character can give an insight to the mysteries of the universe and the faults of mankind. This is what happens when two great artists collide, Burning is utterly absorbing and is a modern day masterpiece.

Fighting With My Family

Dir: Stephen Merchant

2019

**

As the age old saying states ‘You can’t polish a turd’, but you can cover it in sugar and convince people it is edible it seems. Back in 2012, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was in the UK filming Fast & Furious 6. After a hard day of flexing his muscles and wrestling Luke Evens, he retired back to his hotel room and flicked the telly on to see what crap us Brits like to watch of an evening. As it happened, the former wrestler found a show about wrestling called The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family. The show was a one-off documentary about a family of four (Mum, Dad, Son, Daughter) who traveled round the country putting on wrestling shows in working men’s clubs. Mum Julia "Sweet Saraya" Knight was once homeless and ‘in a bad way’ when she met armed robber and wrestling fanatic Patrick "Rowdy Ricky" Knight. The pair believe their love for each other and their shared love of wrestling is what saved them as people and once their kids were old enough to pick each other up, they formed a four person show where they would fight each other. I’m not a wrestling fan but I certainly see the appeal of the story, especially as the daughter, Saraya "Paige" Knight, became a professional wrestler for WWE. It’s a great underdog story featuring an unlikely family. An entertaining documentary. Johnson certainly thought so, so much in fact, that he got in contact with Stephen Merchant, with whom he made Tooth Fairy with a couple of years before, to write a script about the family and to develop their story for the big screen. The only rule it seems was to not let fact get in the way. The film starts with a flashback to 2002, where, in the English City of Norwich, we see 12-year-old Zak Bevis as he is engrossed by the WWF (now WWE) King of the Ring pay-per-view event until his younger sister Saraya changes the channel to her favorite program, Charmed. The siblings wrestle, urged on by their parents Rick (Nick Frost) and Julia (Lena Headey). Rick books the children for their first wrestling match where Saraya, initially reluctant to wrestle a boy, goes on to win as planned. Fast-forward to the present day, at age 18, and competing under the ring name “Britani Knight”, Saraya (Florence Pugh) and her brother “Zak Zodiac” (Jack Lowden) help their parents train prospective wrestlers while working toward their own promotion. Rick and Julia, struggling financially, ask WWE trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) to sign the siblings. He finally agrees to a tryout before a SmackDown taping at The O2 Arena, and tells Saraya to find a different name as they "already have a Britani". The siblings end up bumping into Dwayne Johnson (who plays himself) and beg him for advice. Saraya decides to adopt the name Paige from her favorite character on Charmed. The two try out with several other wrestlers and are all belittled by Morgan. He ultimately chooses Paige over the rest, despite her attempt to have Zak signed as well. With her brother’s encouragement, Paige leaves for America while Zak continues wrestling on the British independent circuit, assisting his parents’ wrestling school, and tending to his girlfriend and newborn son. Arriving at NXT in Florida, Paige has difficulty adjusting to the WWE style of entertainment – chiefly, the inexperience of her fellow female trainees Jeri-Lynn, Kirsten, & Maddison who are all models with no wrestling experience. Paige struggles with performing promos and Morgan’s constant belittlement. Morgan makes it clear to Zak that he will never be signed to WWE, and Zak falls into a depression. Paige discovers her parents are selling merchandise of her likeness without her permission and have booked her in a match against Zak scheduled for her Christmas break. At an NXT live event and her in-ring debut, Paige is heckled by the crowd and freezes up, leaving the ring in tears. She decides to bleach her hair blonde and spray tan to look more like her fellow trainees, which only causes more friction between them. After failing an obstacle course, Paige lashes out at the trainees for gossiping about her when they were actually discussing Kirsten, who has been away from her daughter in order to give her a better life. Morgan tells Paige that her brother’s future in WWE would only have been as enhancement talent and signing would have ruined his life, implying that it did the same to him. Morgan encourages Paige to quit and return to her family for a happier life. She travels home for the Christmas break. Just before the match against her brother, Paige tells Zak she is leaving WWE. Angry that she is giving up the dream he failed to achieve himself, Zak goes off-script, defeats Paige and then tells their parents her plans to quit, devastating Ricky. After the family find Zak in a drunken bar fight, Paige admits that Morgan declined to sign Zak to protect him and he needs to focus on what is important in life; his family and coaching children who look up to him. Paige changes her mind after Zak berates her for giving up on their shared dream, and she returns to Florida, resuming her original hair color and skin tone. She drastically improves in training, befriending and encouraging her fellow trainees. Zak returns to training his parents’ students, including a blind boy. Morgan brings the trainees to WrestleMania XXX, where Paige is booked in a suite with The Rock and learns she will make her Raw debut the following night against WWE Divas Champion AJ Lee, as recommended by Morgan. Paige makes her Raw debut and again freezes up, but Lee starts the match and unexpectedly puts the Divas Championship on the line. With her family watching on TV, Paige wins the match and the title, finally comfortable enough to say a promo, "This is MY house!". An epilogue explains that Paige remains the youngest Divas Champion and was an early leader in the ongoing Women's Revolution, that one of Zak's trainees, who was blind, became a wrestler, and pokes fun at The Rock's movie career and Rick selling shares in the family business. The closing credits include footage from the family’s 2012 documentary and Paige’s debut match. While I understand certain truths had to be omitted for a 90 minute film, I do find the sugar-coating of the family rather questionable. My mate at work is obsessed with wrestling and he tells me that the family are not a nice bunch. Making them family-friendly for a big WWE Studio film is faker than any wrestling match – and that brings me to my biggest gripe. Early on in the film, when Zak is introducing his family to his girlfriends well-to-do parents (the dad played by Stephen Merchant), it is explained to the non-wrestling fans that the sport isn’t ‘fake’, rather it is fixed, that is, the wrestling moves are choreographed and the outcome is decided before the match but the wrestling is essentially real. So, even after explaining how it works, its strange that the last scene tries to convince the audience that Paige somehow didn’t know she was going to win her first official fight and that she won it as a boxer would win a boxing match. Also, even as someone who knows nothing about wrestling, I know that you can go from passing training to fighting in a championship final just like that. I wasn’t expecting a modern masterpiece from WWE Studios but I thought they would at least keep the wrestling element of the story true. In conclusion, I find Johnson’s enthusiasm misplaced and Merchant’s involvement ill-suited. It’s basically nice people portraying nasty people as nice people. It’s not for me but credit it to Pugh and Lowden who are both convincing in their roles.

Vice

Dir: Adam McKay

2018

*****

Following on from his successful and effective financial comedy/drama The Big Short, writer and director Adam McKay set his sights to politics. He’s basically taken Oliver Stone’s 2008 film W as a template and added heaps of satire and tells of drak truths. Interestingly, Christian Bale was originally set to play George W. Bush in W.  before dropping out of the movie and being replaced by Josh Brolin. Vice is a step up from W for a few good reasons. We know far more now about the things that happened during the W. Bush presidency and we’ve lived through more of the repercussions. Under the Trump administration things look o get worse. Vice is essentially an explanation, using 100% fact I might add, as to why the world is in such a state. George W. Bush, until 2016, was widely regarded as the worst American president of all time but what Vice reminds us is that behind every idiot, there is usually a bigger one. That said, Dick Cheney, Vice President during the W. Bush administration, wasn’t just an idiot, he was a manipulative, cunning and conniving idiot, and I still don’t think we will know the full extent of his actions for years to come. The film is narrated by a guy called Kurt, we know very little about him at first, only that he is a  veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. The film opens with Dick Cheney and other White House officials and staff responding to the September 11, 2001, attacks, a pivotal moment in modern times and Cheney’s career. The film then flashes back to Wyoming in 1963, where Cheney finds work as a lineman after his alcoholism led him to drop out of Yale University. After Cheney is stopped by a traffic cop for driving while intoxicated, his wife Lynne Cheney convinces him to clean up his life. The film flashes forward to 1969 when Cheney finds work as a White House intern during the Nixon Administration. Working under Nixon's economic adviser, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney becomes a savvy political operative as he juggles commitments to his wife and their daughters, Liz and Mary. Cheney overhears Henry Kissinger discussing the secret bombing of Cambodia with President Richard Nixon, revealing the true power of the executive branch to Cheney. Rumsfeld's abrasive attitude leads to him and Cheney being distanced from Nixon, which works in both men's favour when Nixon stepped down. After Nixon's resignation, Cheney rises to the position of White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford while Rumsfeld becomes Secretary of Defense. The media later dubs the sudden shake-up in the cabinet as the Halloween Massacre. During his tenure, a young Antonin Scalia introduces Cheney to the unitary executive theory – a theory of US constitutional law holding that the US president possesses the power to control the entire executive branch. The doctrine is rooted in Article Two of the United States Constitution, which vests the executive power of the United States in the President. After Ford is voted out of office, Cheney runs to be representative for Wyoming. After giving an awkward and uncharismatic campaign speech, Cheney suffers his first heart attack. While he recovers, Lynne campaigns on her husband's behalf, helping him to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. During the Reagan Administration, Cheney supported a raft of conservative, pro-business policies favoring the fossil fuel industries. He also supported the abolishment of the FCC fairness doctrine which led to the rise of Fox News, Conservative talk radio, and the rising level of party polarization in the United States. Cheney next serves as Secretary of Defense under President George Bush during the Gulf War. Outside of politics, Cheney and Lynne come to terms with their younger daughter, Mary, coming out as lesbian. Though Cheney develops ambitions to run for president, he decides to retire from public life to spare Mary from media scrutiny. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, Cheney becomes the CEO of Halliburton while his wife raises golden retrievers and writes books. A false epilogue claims that Cheney lived the rest of his life healthy and happy in the private sector and credits begin rolling, only for them to abruptly end as the film continues. It’s the nice future that could have been, had Cheney not been so selfishly power hungry. Cheney is invited to become running mate to George W. Bush during the 2000 United States presidential election. Recognizing that the younger Bush is more interested in pleasing his father than attaining power for himself, Cheney agrees on the condition that Bush delegates "mundane" executive responsibilities, such as energy and foreign policy, to him. As Vice President, Cheney works with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, legal counsel David Addington, Mary Matalin, and the Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, to exercise control of key foreign policy and defense decisions throughout Washington. The film returns to the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, as Cheney and Rumsfeld maneuver to initiate and then preside over the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in the killing of civilians and the torture of prisoners. As the War on Terror mounts, Cheney continues to struggle with persistent heart attacks. The film also covers various events from his vice presidency, including his endorsement of the unitary executive theory, the Plame affair, the accidental shooting of Harry Whittington, and tensions between the Cheney sisters over same-sex marriage. Cheney's actions are shown to lead to thousands of deaths and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq, resulting in him receiving record-low approval ratings by the end of the Bush administration. While narrating Cheney's tearful deathbed goodbye to his family after another hospitalization, Kurt the narrator is killed in a motor accident while jogging. In March 2012, his healthy heart is transplanted into Cheney. A few months later, Cheney acquiesces to his daughter Liz's saying she is opposed to same-sex marriage when she runs for a Senate seat in Wyoming, leaving Mary angry and upset. Liz later wins the election to her father's former Congressional position. At the end of the film, an irate Cheney breaks the fourth wall and delivers a monologue to the audience, stating that he has no regrets about anything he has done in his career. There is a wry mid-credits scene that depicts a focus group for film descending into chaos when a right-winger slams Vice as biased and attacks a liberal panelist, while two younger panelists discuss the next The Fast and the Furious movie. I think the film is more than fair and Cheney is fair game. No doubt anyone who has seen the 2013 ‘documentary’ The World According to Dick Cheney will agree and if you have right-wing tenancies and ask where the balance is, then watch both films, there’s your balance. Christian Bale is brilliant in his transformation and Amy Adams is great as Lynne Vincent Cheney. Strong support comes from Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush who are both superb. I was going to describe the film as great satire but in many respects it isn’t. Is it an assassination of character? Well, yes and no. It’s entirely factual apart from the character of Kurt, and all the despicable things that Cheney does in the film he did in real life. Whether or not you agree that his actions were despicable or not is a totally different matter. I thought the end credit scene was quite interesting, a piece of Adam McKay that he could help but throw in there. You could say it was a little frantic of him but I totally related to it. Kurt was an interesting choice of narrator too. While the identity of the person whose heart Cheney received is unknown, it seems fitting to suggest it could have been a solder, a person who gave their heart for their country, only to be manipulated and lied to at the risk of their lives by the leaders they respected. I think this was probably the only way you could do a biopic of someone like Cheney though. If Spielberg made a Lincoln-style biopic it just wouldn’t work, it’d be too serious and I’m not sure it would hold him to account for all of his actions. It’ll be seen as the work of the loony-left for sure and the protests of ‘there was no balance’ will ring on while the film still flies over the heads of those not concentrating on what is going on in the world. A great film about the terrible world we live in.

Alita: Battle Angel

Dir: Robert Rodriguez

2019

**

In an interview late in 2017, Robert Rodriguez said of his Alita collaboration with James Cameron, "This just doesn't happen. Guys like Quentin Tarantino and Jim Cameron only write scripts for themselves to direct. When Avatar became the biggest movie of all time, he told me that he's going to spend the rest of his career making Avatars, so I said, 'What happens to Battle Angel then?', because as a fan I was just interested! And he said, 'I don't think I'll ever get to do that. Hey, if you can figure out the script, you can shoot it!' So I took it home, spent all summer working on it, cut it down to 130, 125 pages, without cutting anything that he missed. It was a great gift. We had a blast; anytime I had a question I could just call him or email him and he would send back these hugely detailed answers that were so helpful. He just loves being the producer that he always wants. The guy's just so freakin' smart. Getting to learn from someone like that was the greatest internship ever." While I’m glad the two film makers got on and had a great time, I find it baffling that the director of El Mariachi, Desperado, From Duck till Dawn and Sin City sees himself as an intern. I’m not sure whether it’s humble or shows a complete lack of confidence. Sure, some of his recent films haven’t been that great, but they’ve been a hell of a lot of fun and his self-indulgence in his work, in the Machete films for example, are exactly the sort of projects he should be working on. He doesn’t need to be directing films that James Cameron never found the time to make. Cameron was fair-weather fan anyway, Battle Angel Alita was brought to his attention in 2000 by friend and fellow film maker Guillermo del Toro. I can’t help but think del Toro probably thought about the possibilities of adapting it but dismissed the idea for good reason – it’s not that great a story. I’m not a fan of the original MANGA but I have been aware of it since the early 90s. I read the first part of the Gunnm story and it didn’t grab me. I see the early 90s as the last golden age of comics, there were some brilliant stories being released, not just through MANGA and anime in general but across the board. There were far more interesting comics to spend my time with, as far as I was concerned, Battle Angel Alita was a poor mix of Rollerball, Frankenstein/Pinocchio and Pokemon. Obviously there was more to it than that but I really didn’t want to start something in the hope that it would get better. To give the film some credit, it has been around for a while and it has been a clear influence on other comics and films. Unfortunately, this means that the story feels less original than it really is, which ultimately left me cold, and a little bored. The film is set in 2563, 300 years after Earth is devastated by a catastrophic interplanetary war known as The Fall. We follow scientist Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) as he discovers a disembodied female cyborg in a pile of junk spat out by the floating Sky city above them. With some analysis, the Dr discovers a human brain inside the head unit, completely intact. Ido attaches a new cyborg body to the brain and names her Alita (played by a semi-CGI’ed Rosa Salazar) after his deceased daughter. Alita awakens with no memory of her past and tries to fit in as best she can with her surroundings. She meets a boy called Hugo who introduces her to Motorball, a battle royale racing sport played by cyborg gladiators. Hugo secretly robs cyborgs of their parts for Vector (Mahershala Ali) owner of the Motorball tournament. Stories circulate about a spell of murders around town and after becoming suspicious Alita follows Ido as he leaves the house in the middle of the night. They are soon ambushed by cyborg serial killers led by Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley). Ido is injured, and Alita instinctively fights using "Panzer Kunst" (a German expression, meaning "the art of the armor" literally "armor art"), a lost combat art for machine bodies. She kills two of the cyborgs and damages Grewishka, who retreats underground. Ido reveals that he is secretly a Hunter-Warrior. Grewishka goes to Dr. Chiren (Ido's estranged ex-wife played by Jennifer Connelly) for help, who is working for Vector. Despite Alita believing that fighting will help her rediscover her past, Ido discourages her from becoming a Hunter-Warrior. Later, Alita finds a highly advanced cyborg body in a crashed spaceship outside the city. Recognizing that the body is a Berserker — deadly shock troops of the enemy nation United Republics of Mars (URM) from the Great War — she asks Ido to install Alita in it but he refuses. Frustrated with Ido, Alita goes off by herself and registers as a Hunter-Warrior. At the Kansas Bar, she and Hugo are unable to recruit other Hunter-Warriors to her cause of taking down Grewishka. Zapan, a Hunter-Warrior, provokes Alita, and she severely beats him in a fight, triggering a chaotic bar brawl until Ido intervenes. An upgraded Grewishka arrives and challenges Alita to a duel, revealing that he has been sent by Zalem's technocrat overlord, Nova, to destroy her. Despite her courage and combat skills, Alita's body is sliced up by Grewishka's chain-bladed fingers, but Ido, Hugo and Hunter-Warrior McTeague arrive and force Grewishka to retreat. Ido apologizes and transplants Alita into the Berserker body. Having fallen in love with Hugo, Alita enters a Motorball tryout race for the prize money to send Hugo to Zalem. Hugo’s relationship with Alita leads him to decide to quit his secret job. He confronts Tanji, but Zapan appears, murdering Tanji and the cyborg and framing Hugo, though he escapes and calls Alita for help; she abandons the race and finds him just as Zapan does. Zapan mortally wounds Hugo but Dr. Chiren offers to save Hugo by attaching his severed head to Alita's life support system. When Zapan sees through the trick and attempts to stop Alita, the guard mech stops Zapan from stealing her claim on Hugo's bounty, and Alita seizes his prized Damascus blade and slices most of his face off. Ido transplants Hugo's head onto a cyborg body and tells Alita that Vector’s offer to help Hugo reach Zalem was a lie; as an exiled citizen of Zalem, Ido is certain that citizens of Iron City cannot enter Zalem unless becoming a motorball champion. Alita storms the factory and confronts Vector, who reveals that Chiren has been harvested for her organs. Vector summons Grewishka, but Alita’s new nanotechnological body allows her to easily destroy him. She forces Nova to speak to her through Vector. When Nova threatens to harm her friends, Alita fatally stabs Vector. Ido tells Alita that Hugo has fled to climb a cargo tube towards Zalem. Alita catches up to him and pleads with him to return with her. He agrees, but a serrated defense ring dropped by Nova shreds his body and throws him off the tube. Alita catches him but cannot pull him up, as his arm is breaking off. Hugo thanks Alita for saving him before falling to his death. Months later, Alita is the star of the Motorball tournament. Cheered on by the crowd, she pledges vengeance by pointing her sword toward Zalem, where Nova watches from above, smirking. I can’t see the appeal of being both a revolutionary and a sports star at the same time, it doesn’t really make sense to me. In the early 90s I was reading Zenith who was a pop star and a superhero, but it was a brilliant satire and there wasn’t any Rollerskating or cyborg nonsense. I read that it was Quentin Tarantino who suggested Christoph Waltz for the role of Dr. Dyson Ido, which is unsurprising but very lazy, given that he is essentially the same character he played in Tarantino’s Django. Rodriguez may have dabbled in the sickly world of CGI in the past but he really mastered it with Sin City. Sin City looks far better than Avatar in my opinion and I feel the Mexican director could be focusing his time and creativity on better, more personal projects. I like that they made Alita’s eyes bigger but overall nothing looks right. It doesn’t look like the original MANGA and it doesn’t even look anime. It’s a headache-inducing, projectile vomiting adventure in CGI, special effects over story with absolutely zero character development. I’m not apposed to ‘switching off and enjoying’ but it’s hard to enjoy watching something that treats one’s eyes with such aggression while treating one’s brain with complete contempt.

Cold Pursuit

Dir: Hans Petter Moland

2019

*****

For anyone wanting or expecting another Liam Neeson revenge action film, then this is the film for you, because this isn’t just another Liam Neeson revenge action film - it’s so much better. Indeed, Neeson himself has stated that this is his last action film and I think it’s a hell of a way to leave the genre. I knew nothing about the film before watching but I assumed it would be another film in the ilk of Unknown, Taken (preferably more like the first one and less like the third) and The Grey (if we were really lucky). At first I found the film to be clumsy, lacking in emotion and a bit of a mess. I wondered why a film maker would cast Liam Neeson and Laura Dern and not have them act. However, as the film progressed I realised all was not what it seemed. This was a black comedy, verging on satire, and about as quirky as quirky gets. I’m not a big fan of American remakes of ‘foreign’ films, but I do make exception when the remake is written and directed by the original director. I was unaware of Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland but he is definitely on my radar now and I will certainly catch up with his 2014 original In Order of Disappearance. This isn’t Fargo either, but I’m sure it will appeal to those that like The Coen Brothers. After being awarded "Citizen of the Year" by the ski resort of Kehoe, Colorado, snowplow driver Nels Coxman's (Neeson) quiet life is disrupted when his son (played by Neeson’s real life son Micheál Richardson) dies from a forced heroin overdose. Nels' wife Grace (Laura Dern) has a psychotic breakdown and leaves her husband in grief. He is about to commit suicide when he learns that his son was murdered by a Denver drug cartel. Instead of killing himself, he decides to seek vigilante justice, saws the end off of his rifle, and kills three members of the cartel, dumping their bodies in a nearby river. The cartel's leader, drug lord Trevor "Viking" Calcote (a wonderfully unhinged Tom Bateman), first suspects that these deaths are the work of his rival White Bull (Tom Jackson), an Ute with whom he has so far avoided conflict. Viking has one of Bull's gangsters murdered, not knowing it is Bull's only son. This drives Bull to seek revenge ("a son for a son"), and he orders his men to kidnap Viking's young son. Nels seeks advice from his brother Brock (William Forsythe), once a mob enforcer known as "Wingman", and learns about Viking. Brock tells Nels that killing Viking requires a hired assassin, and recommends a transplanted African American hitman known as "the Eskimo". The Eskimo agrees to kill Viking for $90,000, but decides he can get another $90,000 from Viking by informing him that "Coxman" has hired him for the hit. Viking doesn't appreciate the Eskimo's "lack of professional ethics" and kills him. He thinks the Eskimo meant Brock Coxman, and takes him for his "last ride". Since Brock is dying of cancer, he takes responsibility for the hits to protect his brother. Viking tries in vain to stop the gang war by using one of his own men as a scapegoat and sending White Bull the man's head. This is insufficient to placate Bull, who kills the messenger. Meanwhile, Nels kidnaps Viking's son from his prep school before Bull's men can, in order to draw Viking into an ambush. Nels treats the boy well and protects him from the violence to come, but his identity is revealed to Viking by a Janitor in the prep school. Both gangs arrive at Nels' workplace, and most of them are killed in the ensuing shootout; Viking is trapped when Nels drops a shorn tree on his car, and is shot in the chest by White Bull. He dies when found by Kehoe police detectives Kimberly Dash and Gip (Emmy Rossum and John Doman) who have been following the case, always three steps behind. As Nels leaves the property in his snowplow to continue his work, White Bull jumps into the cab and the two men drive away together. Bull's last remaining enforcer, who had set off on a paragliding flight from the ski resort hotel where the gang stayed the night before, accidentally flies into the snowplow and is killed. The story twists and turns as each character reveals themselves to me more than what they first appear and intense moments of violence are followed by laugh-out-loud moments of surreal oddness. Because the film is so unexpectedly kooky, the often stunning direction can be overlooked. It’s many things, but I would argue that it is one of the most visually pleasing films of 2019. Why it took two years to be released is a bit of a mystery but why it wasn’t as popular as it should have been is obvious and frustrating. During a press junket promoting the film, Neeson spoke of an incident in his past. Neeson explained his character's primal anger to the interviewer by recounting an experience he had many years ago. A woman close to him said she had been raped by a stranger, and Neeson asked what color skin the attacker had; after learning the attacker was black, Neeson said that for about a week, he "went up and down areas with a cosh ... hoping some 'black bastard' would come out of a pub and have a go" so that Neeson "could kill him". In the interview, Neeson also said he was "ashamed" to recount the experience and that it was "horrible" that he did what he did. "It's awful ... but I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, 'What the fuck are you doing?'” It was a very personal story to admit but the kids on twitter didn’t stop to think about what it was that Neeson was trying to say and so jerked their knees and labelled the actor a racist. The red carpet premiere of the film was promptly cancelled. Everyone remembers the comments he made but no one remembers what the film was he was there to promote and thanks to twitter all of Neeson’s films were heavily boycotted. Neeson later elaborated on his experience on TV. He denied being a racist, saying the incident occurred nearly 40 years ago, explaining that he asked for physical attributes of the rapist other than race, and that he would have done the same if the rapist was "a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian", that he had purposely gone into "black areas of the city", and that he "did seek help" from a priest after coming to his senses. Neeson said that the lesson of his experience was "to open up, to talk about these things", as there was still underlying "racism and bigotry" in both the United States and Northern Ireland. It amazes me that social media, a forum for discussion, has become almost the opposite. To miss his clear point for discussion and see his comments only as racist, shows the lack of thought process in our current society. It annoys me on many different levels, but regarding this film, it has nothing to do with it and so many people who worked hard on making a brilliant film, all lost out because people are too thick to understand a simple story of regret. I digress. It’s such a wonderfully strange film that I found it irresistible. It’s a real gem and one of the most pleasant of pleasant surprises in recent years.