Judy

seen on 16 October 2019

Rupert Goold directs Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland, with Rufus Sewell as her third husband Sidney Luft, Finn Whittrock as her fifth husband Mickey Deans, and Jessica Buckley as Rosalyn Wilder, her PA during her final London tour in 1969.

The film deals with Judy's incipient deterioration during her 1969 performances at London's 'Talk of the Town' nightclub, one of her many attempts to overcome her financial difficulties, here made plain at the beginning of  the film when a Los Angeles hotel refuses to let her and her two children by Luft stay due to unpaid bills. There are also flashbacks to Judy's teenage years when she was under the oppressive 'guidance' of Louis B.Mayer and her ambitious and unsympathetic mother, plied with pills to control her appetite and to help her sleep at night.

The Consequences of Love

seen on 5 October 2019

This film from 2004 is part of Norton Street's Italian Film Festival (in Sydney); its original title is Le conseguenza dell'amore. It is directed by Paolo Sorrentino and features Toni Servillo as Titta de Girolamo and Olivia Magnani as Sofia.

Titta lives in a hotel in Lugano and appears completely withdrawn from life - his routine is unwavering and solitary, apart from regular card games with a once-wealthy aristocratic couple, and some desultory conversations with the hotel manager. He does not respond to greetings from the hotel staff, even the attractive Sofia who works at the bar and in whom he is apparently interested.

Yesterday

seen on 11 August 2019

Danny Boyle directs Himesh Patel as Jack Malik, a Suffolk musician, and Lily James as Ellie Appleton, his friend and initial manager, in a whimsical comedy (re-)written by Richard Curtis about a struggling musician who wakes up after an accident to discover that only he can remember the Beatles; he becomes a superstar by apparently composing the music and lyrics to many Beatles hits and winning the admiring support of Ed Sheeran (played by himself).

The premise is explored only for its comic potential - a mysterious 12-second world-wide blackout, during which Jack's accident occurred, apparently switched him into an alternative world where the Beatles have never sung together; or perhaps our world was unaccountably changed during Jack's unconsciousness. It is unimportant because the film is really about Jack's exposure to rock-star fame and his return to ordinary life with Ellie, who is of course the girl for him. There are comic scenes with mystified parents, an enthusiastic amateur recording engineer with a studio beside a train line, a predatory American manager (Kate McKinnon), and a bemused Ed Sheeran, and of course some hugely enjoyable covers of various Beatles hits. 

Occasionally Jack finds other things he took for granted missing from his new environment - for example Coca Cola (Pepsi has survived), and even cigarettes. This allows for a last comic possibility or temptation for Jack, which he wisely eschews in favour of domestic bliss.

It's all good fun, nicely played by the cast and engagingly shot in various Suffolk locations as well as diversions in Moscow, Los Angeles, Liverpool and Wembley.

Rocketman

seen on 3 June 2019

Dexter Fletcher directs Taron Egerton as Reginald Dwight, aka Elton John, with Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin and Richard Madden as John Reid in this biopic tracing John's rise to superstardom and his crash into rehabilitation (it does not go further than the early 1990s).

The film has both the drawbacks and the advantages of dealing with a subject who is still alive, and who has supported the project. Inevitably, one feels, there must be distortions due to external intervention; on the other hand, songs can be used, and interestingly, quite a few punches are not pulled. The family life of the young Reggie is by no means glamorised, and the resulting bitterness is at times painful to witness. Though much of this is presented from Reggie's point of view, and John's later grief (or possibly self-pity) when recounting it, the deployment of a song about the lack of love amongst all the characters, not just the boy, is surprisingly powerful and moving. Elsewhere, more upbeat songs prompt inventive and delirious 'movie musical' scenes to erupt into the more conventional narrative.

Elton John's increasingly extreme costumes are cleverly referenced in collage shots of concert appearances, though the idea of his turning up to his first therapy session in an outrageously gorgeous devil's costume is perhaps a gimmick too far (his appearance gradually tones down as the sessions and the film proceed). Everything here depends on Taron Egerton's portrayal, which is utterly engaging without being merely mimetic. He has the energy, the charm, the wry awkwardness and the developing arrogance to portray a complex man struggling with any number of demons, and he performs and sings the numbers with gusto. The supporting cast is also excellent, with a particularly affecting portrayal of the long-suffering lyricist Bernie Taupin from Jamie Bell.

Woman at War

seen on 20 May 2019

Benedikt Erlingsson directs Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir as Halla, a woman taking on international industrial giants as an eco-warrior in rural Iceland, while also managing a local choir and suddenly finding that a four-year-old application to adopt a child has finally been approved by the authorities. 

The tensions between her subversive actions, the beneficent life of the choir, and the impending responsibilities of parenthood are cleverly balanced so that no heavy-handed moralising upsets the general tone of serious but quirky attention to all the details of Halla's life. The scenes with the choir are delightful; the discussions with the sympathetic civil servant (also a choir member) hint at the awkward conflicts of loyalty swirling around direct action; Halla's forays into the countryside to sabotage power lines approach the excitement of a thriller or action movie but remain grounded in the realities of human frailty, exposed landscape, freezing glaciers and providential hot springs. Sveinbjörn (Jóhann Sigurðarson), a curmudgeonly farmer who may be related to Halla ('alleged cousin') provides timely support in an entirely plausible manner.

Tolkien

seen on 13 May 2019

Dome Karukoski directs Nicholas Hoult as J.R.R.Tolkien and Lily Collins as Edith Bratt in a film written by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford about Tolkien's boyhood, war experience and early academic life: the last word of the film is the fateful word 'hobbit', devised in the late 1920s and first reaching the public gaze in 1937. The younger Tolkien and Edith are played by Harry Gilby and Mimi Keene.

The film adheres broadly to the events in Tolkien's life, but is not strictly factual, and the chronology is misleading. (Tolkien did not in fact enlist soon after the declaration of war, as the film implies, but rather spent a whole further year completing his degree. Also it is implied that he and Edith were married after he was invalided out from the front line, whereas in fact they married before he was posted.) However, since it is not a documentary, this can hardly be a major criticism, as the salient factors in Tolkien's development - the love between himself and Edith, the importance of his school friendships (the 'T.C.B.S'), and his fascination and skill with languages - are all given their due; only his deep Catholic faith is not well imagined or adequately represented despite the necessary presence of his guardian Father Francis Morgan (Colm Meaney). There is a delightful cameo by Derek Jacobi as Professor Joseph Wright, the philologist who encouraged Tolkien as a student in Oxford once the undergraduate had lost his enthusiasm for Classics.

The White Crow

seen on 13 April 2019

Ralph Fiennes directs this film, written by David Hare and inspired by Julie Kavanagh's biography of Rudolf Nureyev. The  film concerns the young Rudolf Nureyev, played by Ukrainian dancer Oleg Ivenko, leading up to his defection from the Soviet Union in Paris in 1961. Fiennes also plays Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin, a ballet master who took an interest in the young student. Pushkin and his wife Xenia (Chulpan Khamatova) had Nureyev stay in their flat; in the film he and Xenia have an affair.

The Great Escape

seen on 24 March 2019

The escape on which this film is based took place on 24 March 1944, so, in honour of the RAF Benevolent Fund, a special 75th anniversary screening, preceded by live interviews with various people connected with the film and its memorabilia, or with the escape itself, was streamed from the Apollo Hammersmith and hosted by the TV history buff Dan Snow.

The film stars Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough, with other well-known and not so well-known actors, and presents a glamorised and not entirely accurate account of the escape of some 76 prisoners of war from Stalag Luft 3, a prisoner-of-war camp specially constructed to inhibit escapes (a project which was obviously not successful). Reprisals for the distractions the escape caused included the murder of fifty of the escapees (rather than their return to the camp), apparently a reduction from Hitler's incensed demand that all the prisoners be shot.

The film, made in 1963, holds up well in its depiction of escape as an adventure story, even for many of those concerned, with glancing references to the ethical problems of encouraging escape when the consequences of recapture could be dire (not that any of the men anticipated summary 'execution'), and attention paid to a number of personal issues such as incipient myopia, uncontrollable claustrophobia, and general psychological breakdown. The sheer physical difficulty of tunnel construction is apparent but not fully realised; the prisoners' clothes in particular remain on the whole presentable and not particularly dirty. Prolonged consignment to 'the cooler', a series of solitary confinement punishment cells, would have resulted in a far more filthy appearance than the glamorous Steve McQueen could ever countenance - there was no evidence of an ablutions block for such prisoners but the general tone of heroics overwhelmed gritty realism. Only the variety of ways by which many of the prisoners were detected and apprehended while on the run prepared for the more sober denouement, while the hints of the jockeying for influence of the various Nazi groups (principally Luftwaffe or Gestapo) in running the camp were only glancingly referred to, but with sufficient menace to cause some disquiet. The trope of officers of honour on both sides was well represented by the frosty respect between the senior RAF prisoner and the camp commander who is appalled at the fifty deaths and is ultimately relieved of his command.

Fascinating to see a Hollywood war movie from the unsophisticated days when military subjects could still be treated with respect rather than cynicism, even though it is slightly compromised by the daredevil stunts deemed necessary for entertainment,  and the inclusion of American prisoners of war when there were none in fact involved in that particular escape (to say nothing of employing James Coburn to attempt an unconvincing Australian accent).

Stan and Ollie

seen on 14 February 2019

Jon S. Baird directs Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy, with Shirley Henderson as Lucille Hardy, Nina Arianda as Ida Kitaeva Laurel and Rufus Jones as Bernard Delfont in an affectionate film about the comedy duo's 1953 tour of the UK and Ireland. 

After a brief prologue set in 1937, which raises the perennial issue of actors tied to the studio system that the terms of their contracts do not reflect their true worth, the rest of the film is set in 1953 when the two are working the provincial circuit in Britain before a hoped-for booking in London and the tantalising prospect of making a film about Robin Hood. Bernard Delfont is their British manager, clearly at first not expecting much from the ageing stars (they were by then in their early sixties, and Oliver Hardy not in the best of health), having booked them into second rate theatres which do not attract large audiences.

Roma

seen on 31 January 2019

Alfonso Cuarón directs his own screenplay of Roma which shows the life of a troubled middle-class Mexican family through the eyes of their devoted and much loved nanny Cleo, played by the novice actress Yalitza Aparicio.

Shot in widescreen format in black and white, the film depicts events entirely from Cleo's point of view - in fact in some scenes the camera is used to show exactly what Cleo would be seeing, as if she herself were filming it. Like many domestic servants, she is 'part of the family' - the children love her, and their mother relies on her - but she is by no means an equal. Sofia, the children's mother (Marina de Tavira), can be very sympathetic, but at times of personal anguish she can explode and issue peremptory demands. Cleo's private life seems to hold some promise at first, but when she falls pregnant her erstwhile boyfriend disappears. At the same time, Sofia's husband is also deserting his family, though for a considerable time the children are led to believe he is on an extended work assignment in Quebec.

Mary Poppins Returns

seen on 28 January 2019

Rob Marshall directs Emily Blunt as the eponymous nanny in a long-awaited - or long-delayed - sequel to the 1964 classic which starred Julie Andrews. There is sterling support from the likes of Lin-Manuel Miranda (Jack the lamplighter) Ben Whishaw (Michael Banks), Emily Mortimer (Jane Banks), Julie Walters (housekeeper Ellen - she seems to 'do' comic housekeepers in children's fantasies having taken an equivalent role in the Paddington movies), Colin Firth (bank manager) and Meryl Streep (Mary Poppins's cousin Topsy), and cameos from Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Chris O'Dowd (voicing an animated character) and Dick van Dyke, the latter being the only obvious front-of-camera participant from the original film, though he does not play the same part. (Several technicians and musicians from the first film are also credited on the sequel.) The new generation of Banks children is represented by the sensible Pixie Davies (Annabel), the practical Nathanael Saleh (John), and the angelic Joel Dawson (George).

The Favourite

seen on 7th January 2019

Yorgos Lanthimos directs Olivia Colean as Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz as Sarah Churchill (nee Jennings, now Duchess of Marlborough) and Emma Stone as Abigail Hill (later Masham) in an irreverent depiction of life at the Court of the last Stuart monarch, replete with personal jealousies and political machinations. Support is provided by Nicholas Hoult as Robert Harley, James Smith as Sidney Godolphin, Mark Gatiss as John Churchill (Duke of Marlborough) and Joe Alwyn as Samuel Masham, though the film concentrates on the personal relations between the three women and the menfolk are largely ancillary.

The three principals give excellent performances, providing some depth to what would otherwise be a very superficial story of sensationalist intrigue. Olivia Coleman's queen is petulant, moody, indulged, but also enduring the physical pain of gout and the emotional cost of numerous stillbirths and the loss of the few children who survived beyond the cradle. Rachel Weisz's Sarah Churchill shows a steely determination to dominate and to use her position to political advantage for her husband, though her command of the situation is by no means flawless as she inadvertently gives Abigail Hill access to the Court. Emma Stone's Abigail soon proceeds to establish her position, revealing herself to be as single-minded as she needs to be to succeed. The film looks very fine, too, with gorgeous early eighteenth-century costumes (and over-the-top male wigs) and luxurious great house surroundings in which to show them off - though I found the frequent deployment of a wide-angle lens to swoop around the rooms distracting and needlessly intrusive.