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by James Turrell

Long Shot

Writers: Liz Hannah & Dan Sterling 

Director: Jonathan Levine 

Long Shot is a film that switches from feeling like an idiosyncratic rom-com to plodding one – often from scene to scene. While it contains some interesting satire about U.S. political discourse and the representation of female politicians in the media, which makes it distinctive from many rom-coms, its rudimentary plotting leaves it feeling rather tame.  

The film concerns Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) a Secretary of State about to begin a world tour before announcing a run for the Presidency. Her love interest is Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) a stoner journalist, who quits his job at a newspaper after it’s bought by a Fox News-like company and is hired by Field as a speech writer. They knew it each from childhood and their relationship follows the usual, somewhat tedious path of the rom-com: embarrassing first meeting creates intimacy, the schluby dude teaches the pristine woman some kind of ‘truth’ that forces her to perceive him differently, a kiss after something intense happens, a break-up followed by ‘I Love You’ less than 24 hours later.  

Both Theron and Rogan are good in their respective roles, although are they are playing very much to type. June Diane Raphael is excellent as Field’s Chief of Staff Maggie Millikin, a character with cleverness and a caustic wit. Bob Odenkirk is great as a TV star turned President, who delivers perhaps the film’s funniest line, ‘No, I will not nuke a tsunami.’ Where the film struggles is when writers Liz Hannah and Dan Sterling get confused as to what constitutes radical in a rom-com context. The brilliant and often hilarious satire of the sexualisation of female politicians in the media is radical, watching a relatively straight politician taking MDMA isn’t. It’s a scene and idea we have seen played a 1000 times. And that is where the film falters, when it struggles to raise itself from the clichés of cinematic comedy; whether it be drug taking or falling out of windows or an unfortunate masturbation experience.  

Long Shot is a somewhat interesting but mostly unremarkable rom-com. It is no sense a bad film, but the beats of the story have been written for decades, and that is the film’s central fault; what could have been a radical, genre-bending film instead feels sweet but inconsequential.  

7/10 

by James Turrell

Tolkien

Writer: David Gleeson & Stephen Beresford.  

Director: Dome Karukoski 

Critics have to walk along the thin, often spiked tightrope between subjective and objective judgements. Whether you like or dislike a film is subjective, but you try your best to use objective reasoning as to why that is. While watching Tolkien, I saw more than a few things wrong with it; cliched score, monotone direction, by-numbers plotting, which on any other day may have made me hate it. But on this day, I just watched and smiled at a sweet film about a sweet man falling in love with a sweet girl. 

Tolkien, as you would expect, follows the early life of J.R.R. Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) who would go onto write The Lord of the Rings, told mainly from his perspective of him thinking over his life in the trenches during the Battle of the Somme. Ronald, as Tolkien is known in the film, is raised as an orphan in a pre-war England presented with lush, saturated colours by director Dome Karukoski. After moving to Birmingham to live in an orphan boarding house, Tolkien attends a private school, where he forms the T.C.B.S. literary society with his friends Robert, Christopher and Geoffrey. There’s is a life of privilege, but one ultimately weighed down by the iron-clad fist of upper-class British social rules. Also at the boarding house is Edith Bratt (Lilly Collins), a fellow orphan and keen piano player. Her character is under-developed, and we learn little about her life previous to meeting Tolkien, but Collins is excellent at portraying her rage at the gendered codification of her existence, which falls well short of dreams of being a great pianist rather than a wife.  

Hoult and Collins are good in their respective roles and bring a real sense of warmth to the romantic arc of their characters. The film is also excellent in showing the insane levels of reservation people had to show during budding romances, the tightness of the corsets and waistcoats reflecting the social mores of the time. The film struggles by virtue of its cumbersome plot, which moves slowly and predictably – with the narrative framing of Tolkien in the trenches looking back never quite working, as there seems to be no link between him in battle and the past memory the film switches to. The scenes of trench warfare, while nicely executed, seem rather timid and hollow compared to Peter Jackson’s WWI documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which I think at some level has destroyed the WWI biopic, as nothing could ever compare to seeing the real thing in brutal wide-screen colour.  

Tolkien has received rather negative reviews and I can understand why – it’s often understated to the point of non-existence and does the usual bad biopic mistake of forcing the main character to say something that defines their later life, in this case having Tolkien say the word ‘fellowship’ during a self-important close-up. But I just found it charming, I liked the two main characters and the whole film was obviously made with great deal of warmth for Tolkien’s life. When Tolkien leaves for France and war, Edith says to him ‘stay alive and come back to me!’ It could be cliched and cloying, the sort of line to raise to bile to throat but it just made me break out in a big grin.  

7/10 

by James Turrell

Fight Club

Writer: Jim Uhls 

Director: David Fincher 

Released at the fag-end of the 20th Century to critical indifference and a box office mauling worthy of the film itself, Fight Club has since gone onto achieve pre-eminence in the film canon and was even proclaimed the 10th best film of all time by Empire in 2011. Its hyper-violent, nihilistic critique of modern consumer culture seems more relevant by the second. And its portrayal of masculinity, while in some sense problematic, pre-figured much of the modern-day discussions about the notion of toxicity and fragile male-ego.  

Directed by David Fincher and adapted by Jim Uhls from the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club is the story of the unnamed narrator’s (Edward Norton) journey from office-bound lackey to God-like cult leader. He begins the film as a white-collar smudge, a nothing person who spends their time slavishly buying the entire Ikea catalogue. As Norton walks through his apartment it ingeniously becomes a catalogue, prices and all. The film has a fluid post-modernity and Norton’s character narrates from voice-over to inside the film itself, at one point he literally stops a scene and moves the film on to another one. Norton’s narrator is an insomniac and find a deliciously black comic cure in attending support groups for people with terminal illnesses. But this only last so long before the neurotic, funeral-clad Marla Singer (Helena Bonham-Carter), a fellow faker, shows up and sends him spiralling back down to zero sleep. The film’s opening section hammers home that he is adrift; emotionally, intellectually and perhaps most of all spiritually, lost in the fug of a pointless life.  

Enter Brad Pitt’s sexy, dangerous and stylish Tyler Durden – a character at ease in a way Norton’s could only dream to be. After meeting on a plane (and recognising they have the same briefcase, which offers a neat clue to their true relationship) Norton’s narrator ends up living with Tyler after discovering his condo has burnt down. Their first fight is played for laughs, as Norton almost pathetically punches the ear of Durden (improvised by Norton and Fincher in the moment). But the pair soon discover that ritualised fighting is something that is deeply embedded in the male psyche, as men from all sections of society que in a darkened basement to batter each other’s bodies.  

When Tyler begins a relationship with Marla, the cracks in his friendship with the Narrator begin to show. The performances from the main cast are all excellent; Norton is exquisite as the everyday loser composing his own personal revolution, you feel the savagery of his unspoken rage. Pitt by contrast is the epitome of coo; a kind of underground philosopher complete with sardonic self-help phrases; ‘It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything,’ ‘You are the all-singing all-dancing crap of the world’. He seems to represent both the revolutionary destruction of capitalism and the collapse of a society based on gender domination. One of his most telling quotes is ‘We are generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is the answer.’ Fight Club is at some level about the collapse of masculinity but rather alarmingly it seems to think that to resurrect it, we need to create communities solely of men. Helena Bonham Carter, who plays the only female character in the film to get more than one line, is again wonderful as the damaged Marla. With a pitch perfect accent, Carter brings real depth to a character struggling at all level with life. If Tyler and the Narrator allowed themselves as much vulnerability as Marla does, perhaps their lives would develop some genuine meaning. David Fincher’s direction is first class, and the film codified his break-neck style. The camera is constantly moving, creating a free-flowing but totally lucid dynamic. The film feels artificial, as all post-modern works do, but very much alive. There is a breathlessness, a sense that each frame will bring something new.  

There is a tragedy at the heart of Fight Club, the men of the film who join Tyler’s Project Mayhem, which grows out of the club they begin with, feel spiritually lost. Modern consumer society has created an endless parade of nameless, faceless hegemonic people devoid of any genuine agency. They follow Tyler because he recognises and sees fit to bring it down to a crumbling nothing. But, by joining Tyler’s army, they become exactly the same thing they left behind. Literally nameless, they wear the same uniform like the people who buy the same clothes from the same store. And their agency is once again gone, as they follow the orders of a mad nihilist without question. They think they have found meaning but they have simply replaced the false freedom of consumerism with a fake liberation that is just another form of control.  

Fight Club is a magnificent work; furious and funny and stunningly crafted. It’s discussions on masculinity are not working at the same level as its thoughts on consumerism and that make some of the violence very uncomfortable. It has perhaps the best ending to a film ever, as the glorious guitar of ‘Where is my Mind?’’ plays over collapsing buildings, the very last moment of the film is pure romance and is cinema at its most exhilarating.  

9.5/10  

by James Turrell

Avengers: Endgame

Writers: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFreely 

Directors: Anthony & Joe Russo 

The previous Avengers film, 2018’s Infinity War, was like a Doctor Who anniversary special on an intravenous crystal meth high. It was truly mammoth in scale; from the amount of characters to the number of planets to the sheer untold numbers of deaths. But given the sheer spectacle, the end-of-days gargantuan nature of it, there was no getting away from the fact that Infinity War had a very much standard ‘collect the gems’ plot, much used by role playing video games for decades. Endgame, directed by the Russo brother and written once again by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFreely, suffers slightly from the same problem, as the narrative pieces of Infinity War are re-staged via time-travel.  

The opening sequence is perhaps the greatest of any Marvel film. Set apart from the usual brash fighting that most superhero films begin with, this sees Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) teaching his daughter archery as they prepare for a cosy, outdoor family meal. And then suddenly they disappear with the whip of a strong wind. It is an intimate, brutal start.  

From then the remaining Avengers, Guardians and other assorted heroes are scattered across a unversed reeling from Thanos’s use of WMUD. Iron Man and Nebula are stuck on space ship losing oxygen and appear to be on the verge of death, only for them to be saved by the ever-intriguing Captain Marvel. She flies them all the way back to Earth and the gang set about trying to work out how to fix the mess of trillions of dead people. They source Thanos on a gorgeous looking planet, making stew and they charge in and attempt to steal the Infinity Stones and bring everybody back, simple? Wrong! The Stones are gone and with slash of Thor’s hammer, so is Thanos’s head.  

From there the film jumps five years later and codifies into a traditional three-act structure. This first act is perhaps a Marvel film at its most radical and interesting. Aside from a scene in which Hawkeye, with new scary tattoos and a cool haircut, beats up some Chinese gangsters, there is no action sequences whatsoever. Instead, the film attempts, as best a film of this size can, to deal with intense grief that follows the death of loved ones. Captain America is running a support group, Thor has collapsed into alcoholism and Black Widow has thrown herself into work to mask her emotional breakdown. It is extremely melancholic but also mature, and the stunning shots of empty New York streets add a genuine level of despair to what is the usual inconsequential superhero destruction.   

The sudden return of Ant-Man (by the stunning fortune of a wandering mouse) sets Endgame’s narrative wheels into full motion. The group discover the quantum realm in which Thanos has banished most of the universe allows for the possibility of time-travel, and so they set about trying to build a time machine using Ant-Man’s quantum truck. But for this they need Iron Man, who is off playing happy families with his daughter and sadly did not die when Thanos clicked his fingers. This leads to the various Avengers/Guardians to zip around previous Marvel films and retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos claimed them for his chubby purple self. This is pure, unashamed fan-service and – fair enough. But it is not the most elegant or sophisticated way of solving the immense puzzle they created for themselves in Infinity War, and for all the complexity of planets and time-zones and characters, the plot once again is slightly disappointing in its simplicity.  

The films heads inexorably towards a huge, climatic battle in the film’s final third, as our lost heroes are returned to fight Thanos’s army once more. The battle is less visually appealing than in Infinity War, feeling more static and predictable. Although, I think that maybe due to it taking place in a location that is less interesting than lush greens of Wakanda. There is of course the much-discussed sequence in which all the female characters come to together in order to aid Captain Marvel has she attempts to keep the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos. This scene, while a clear and clunky bit of virtue signalling, would surely have meant a lot to a 10-year-old girl used to seeing mainly men on the Marvel screen. And that is more important than what Twitter thinks.  

The films end with the death of several major characters and the clear completion of what is now being called the Infinity Saga. On first viewing I was amazed by Endgame, swept up in the insane sugar-rush it creates. On second viewing, the films flaws were much more on show, it’s clunky plot and extended running time. But to make a film this big, with this much action and planets and characters is insanely difficult; and the creative team of the Russos and Markus and McFreely do a phenomenal job. The final shot, of Captain America and Peggy, dancing in their room is so obviously cliched but it works; you can’t help but smile at a character who sacrificed so much getting to live happily ever after. Endgame is a fine end to a sequence of movies that has redefined the blockbuster, and may be seen in years to come as its dramatic peak.  

9/10 

by James Turrell

Green Book

Green Book 

Writers: Peter Farrelly, Brian Currie and Nick Vallelonga 

Director: Peter Farrelly 

There is a restaurant in Amsterdam that serves Battered Oreo, with chocolate ice-cream and bits of normal Oreo on the side. To the uninitiated, ‘Battered’ refers to something being coated in batter and then deep fried, you may have heard the hackiest of stand-ups use the idea of Battered Mars Bars as a shortcut to discussing Scottish culture. I have eaten this dessert twice, and both times have left me with a similar feeling of sweet satisfaction and stomach contorting queasiness. While watching Green Book, the surprise and controversial Academy Award winner, I felt a similar thing as I gazed sometimes in horror, but sometimes with a genuine smile, at this baffling buddy-cop(ish)/racial history mash-up of a film.  

Directed by Peter Farrelly, of Dumb and Dumber fame, with a screenplay co-written by himself, Brian Currie and Nick Vallelonga, Green Book is the story of renowned pianist Don Shirley’s (Mahershala Ali) 1962 tour of the American South. Given the awkward fact that Don is black, and the American South at the time was a bit like being a Turkey at Christmas, only a thousand times worse for people of colour, he is going to need some help along way. In steps Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga (Vigo Mortenson), a recently unemployed New York bodyguard who is hired by Don as a driver and protective muscle.  

Tony is either a pathological racist or a loveable unreconstructed un-PC Alf Garnett figure. The film, particularly in the first act, can’t decide which one he is. In the opening sequences, we see Tony throw away cups used by two black workmen labouring in his house, and Farrelly uses this an early characterization of Tony. He is a man so unequivocally opposed to people of colour, he will not use the same utensils as them. Which makes it all the stranger when he goes for a job interview in which he would be the driver for the purple blooded, aristocratic Don and doesn’t walk out in disgust. Would a man so intuitively revolted by black people, really agree so readily to be Don’s subordinate?  

As Green Book is unashamedly presented as a feel-good film, Tony’s genuine racism cannot last for long and instead morphs into racial insensitivity. So we see scenes in which Tony teaches Don how to eat fried chicken or explain what jazz music is. This is presented with a sitcom flair, but it falls rather flat, with the jazz music scene in particular, Farrelly is presenting the audience with cultural appropriation in real time. Tony presents jazz music, a black music especially in America during that period, to Don which he has never heard of, and then uses his knowledge of it to suggest he is more in tune with ‘black culture’ than Don is. Not only is Don’s experience of jazz music now filtered through a white person, that white person has now used his experience to downgrade Don’s experience, and renders himself more authentically ‘black.’ And the film presents these scenes as comic set-pieces, where the characters bond and their relationship is forged. The lack of self-awareness is simply staggering.   

As the tour commences, Don inevitably runs into a truckload of bile and prejudice at the hands of the people who have hired him and the society at large. Whether being forced to eat separately to the white people who have paid to see him play, or not being allowed to try on a suit for fear a white man will try it on next. The American South is presented, largely, as a black hole of bigoted cruelty. The point of the film is, to a certain extent, that because Tony is experiencing these prejudicial encounters with Don, that they slowly chip away at his conditioned hostility and he begins to view people of colour as something approaching equal. At one point, a police officer pulls over their car and seems intent on humiliating both Tony and Don, and calls Tony ‘half a nigger.’ To which Tony responds in the only way he knows with a swift one to the jaw. This is presented as pivotal by Farrelly, a Damascus moment where Tony experiences life as a member of the oppressed. But in actuality, Farrelly is showcasing a kind of inverse Uplift Suasion, where instead of a high achieving person of colour changing a racist mind via the sheer will of their achievement, a white person literally has to be called a ‘nigger’ before they begin to contemplate racial equality.  

All this points to a rather monstrous film, a reverse Driving Mrs. Daisy without the benefit of it being 1989 and a ‘different time’. However, the performances of both Mortenson and Ali and wonderful, filled with empathy and nuance, even when the material is lacking. Ali is all regality and vulnerability masquerading as high-minded snobbery. You can feel his desperation and loneliness, a man with an Elephant tusk in his living room but without two friends to rub into a third. His pomposity is infectious because we know it masks a very intense sense of isolation. Mortenson is also in inspired form, taking a character that you could dislike and recontextualizes him as human and flawed. Who could help but smile at a man in his boxers picking up a whole pizza, folding it in half and then eating it practically whole? These are towering performances in a film that perhaps doesn’t deserve them.  

Green Book is a film in which you watch with a grimace and a queasy stomach, a feeling of something not quite right. There’s a scene in which their car breaks down, and Tony and Don get out to fix it. They happen to break down next a field in which black men, in barely-there matching cotton uniforms, are tilling. They stop to look at Don in his impeccable (and most likely expensive) suit and look in over in what might be shock, or perhaps envy. Don looks back at them, a wistful but sorrowful look in his eye. It feels insanely uncomfortable and that’s because it is. It’s a scene that either demonstrates that Don should be happy with his lot and be thankful he isn’t working the field or to create a synergy between them, that Don and the field workers are still experiencing the same endemically racist America. In whichever direction it doesn’t work, it is a horrific misjudgment and is in essence the film in microcosm; something that appears to come from a empathetic place but in reality misses its point by a million miles to become insanely insensitve. 

5/10 

by James Turrell

Gloria Bell

Writer & Director:  Sebastián Lelio 

Following on from last year’s excellent Disobedience, Sebastián Lelio has taken on what must be one of the more bizarre directorial experiences, the English language shot-for-shot remake. In this case, Gloria Bell is a remake of his own Spanish language film Gloria originally released in 2013. In this version, the ever-wonderful Julianne Moore stars as the titular Gloria, a 50-something divorcee who has flung herself without anxiety into a world of dating, dancing and secret smoking.  

Gloria Bell’s narrative essentially follows her relationship with supposedly recently divorced Arnold, played by the icy John Tuturro, and the frequent and rib-jolting bumps their relationship takes. The opening sequence is the film in microcosm; as the camera pans down, we see room full of middle-aged love seekers awkwardly dancing to an 80’s DJ set, the soundtrack to their original youth into which they are now having to re-enter. From the first shot of her as Gloria, Julianne Moore is sublime; it’s a deeply felt, intimate portrait of a woman, while at some level lonely, thoroughly enjoying her life.  

Gloria’s life is very much defined by activity. She goes dancing, to yoga, to some kind of hipster laughing class and to dating evenings. Lelio’s depiction of middle-age is one in which spontaneity has dispersed, to be replaced with by-the-hour fun. But these activities, repeated throughout the film, take on profound meaning. As the film progresses Gloria’s interaction with these activities begins to reflect her emotional state. Her dancing, which first represented her romantic and sexual desire, by the end reflects her freedom. This is also reflected in Lelio’s direction, as we see repeated mirror frame shots of certain aspects of Gloria’s life, like singing in the car, and these repeated shots allow us to see Gloria’s emotional progression throughout the film.  

Gloria and Arnold’s relationship is strange, mainly due to Arnold’s emotional instability. He refuses to introduce Gloria to his daughters and seems determined to keep their relationship removed from all other aspects of his life. The reasons for this become apparent during the film’s climax. He is also prone to engaging in emotionally noxious behavior, such as calling her every five minutes during a break-up. Their sexual relationship is presented starkly by Lelio and there is a certain empowerment to seeing a clearly defined 50-something woman enjoying a fulsome sex life. But there is one shot, in which Arnold and Gloria are in bed talking, and Julianne Moore’s breasts are exposed. It is obviously there to show the intimacy between the two characters, but it struck me as unnecessary and overly gazey.  

But overall, Gloria Bell is another excellent addition to Lelio’s already impressive oeuvre. He has knack for representing experiences that are not his own with a tender and realistic touch. Julianne Moore’s fantastic Gloria is a wonderfully drawn character, filled with joy and sadness and desperation and hope. The film’s final sequence is glorious, as Gloria tells Arnold to do one in an act of brutal but hilarious revenge.Gloria Bell is a heartfelt but unsentimental surprisingly sensual look at middle-aged life.  

8.5/10 

by James Turrell

If Beale Street Could Talk

If Beale Street Could Talk 

Writer & Director: Barry Jenkins 

Moonlight winning the Best Picture Oscar in 2017 was supposed to be a watershed moment in which the dusty Academy threw off its white, middle-aged shackles and begin to acknowledge and reward the wonderous diversity that is much of modern cinema. And that idea was proved right and now we can no longer imagine a time in which a person of colour or a woman will not win the major awards.  

HA! Just kidding! You can use your Green Book to guide you all the way down Reductive Avenue. Green Book’s win was an inevitable, insipid choice made all the more galling by the admission of Barry Jenkin’s latest film, If Beale Street Could Talk from the nominations. Based on the novel of the same name by James Baldwin, Beale Street is a heart-breaking romance set amongst a racially charged 1970s time period. We follow the lives of Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) as they come to terms with becoming expectant parents as Fonny languishes in prison for a crime he did not commit.  

The narrative is non-linear, switching between now and then with graceful deft, as we sweep between the present of the Tish’s pregnancy and the past of their blossoming love. Jenkins is shaping up to be a master storyteller; someone who weaves intense, serious political ideas through the lives perfectly crafted characters. Fonny is imprisoned after being accused of the rape of Victoria (Emily Rios), he is falsely accused and framed by a racist police officer who had a previous vendetta against him. This is perhaps Beale Street’s greatest accomplishment; we know from the outset that Fonny has been falsely accused and the films’ narrative is funneled through Tish and her family’s attempt to clear his name. But it never, for a single frame, lessens or trivializes the crime against Victoria. Her pain, the gaping schism caused by the attack is portrayed with frank sensitivity. When Tish’s mother Sharon, played to stunning perfection by Regina King, goes to visit Victoria in attempt for her to convince that it was not Fonny who committed the crime, she tells her with a brutal, understated knowing; ‘I’m a woman and I know what women know.’ The film delicately portrays both the endemic sexual violence against women and the institutional bigotry that causes black men to be imprisoned at astonishing rates.  

The love story between Tish and Fonny is gorgeous. It’s pure, sun-drenched cinema love and the glowing, often woozy lighting created by Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton embody the sensuous connection between the two characters. Jenkins’s visual style also reflects the intensity of the relationship, as the camera seems to always linger on the face of the person not talking in a conversation, and we occupy the position of a besotted lover. The performances from Layne and James are wonderful, they each portray the love and desperation that defines their characters, as their relationship begins to stretch and ultimately nearly crack as the vicious society in which they live becomes ever more tethered to them. Regina King has rightly won plaudits for her performance, as the dignified but grieving Sharon and for those of us who grey watching The Big Bang Theory, it’s all the more remarkable. Nicholas Britel’s score is equally remarkable, a swooning, string laden that shifts, like the film, with ease from romantic to frenzied anger.  

If there was any doubt, with Moonlight and now Beale Street, Barry Jenkins has cemented his place as cinema’s premier storyteller. His unique visual style with its super saturated but not sickly colours and the way he manages to entwine bracing political statements with nuanced character driven stories should leave everybody’s jaws somewhere close to their shoes. The film is tragic, and the ending is a stark reminder that when the American state becomes involved in the lives of black citizens, it will often end with spilt blood or years lost behind metal. If Beale Street Could Talk is glorious nonetheless and two hours spent in the company of Tish and Fonny’s relationship is proof that, in the right hands, romance can be portrayed with a visceral intensity that feels fantastical but utterly human.

10/10

by James Turrell

Captain Marvel

Writers: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck & Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Screenplay) Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck,  Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Nicole Pearlman Meg LaFauve (Story)

Directors: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Much of the press leading up to the latest film in the MCU has been centered upon the gender of the titular Captain Marvel. This is understandable considering that after 21 films, while there have been female characters fundamental to the Marvel Universe, Brie Larson’s Marvel is the first female fronted (and perhaps more importantly, first female director) superhero film Marvel have produced. Given we are 11 years into the Marvel franchise, that is deplorable, and this has given way to a multitude of think pieces from The Guardian to The Hollywood Reporter and has also given rise to a series of negative review bombing campaigns, adding further proof that the well of obnoxious toxicity that fuels the internet seems infinite.

The problem with the focus on Captain Marvel’s gender is two-fold; firstly, if the film is rubbish it is used by sexist fans, simple critics and idiotic studio-execs that the reason is because it was female fronted, and we get treated to headlines such as; ‘WOMEN ARE TERRIBLE AND RUIN ALL PHYSICAL SPACE.’[1] And this will make studios even more reluctant to back female fronted or directed films. This criticism does not work the other way; when The Expendables is released and it is a worse affront to humanity than the Partition of India, the reason is not due to the gender of the cast. Secondly, the focus on gender and its importance in terms of glass ceilings (which is indisputable) allow for films to seem revolutionary when they are not necessarily (see: Wonder Woman). Ultimately, something is either good or isn’t and this focus on gender, both justified and abusive, makes watching the film more political that it perhaps should be.

Anyway, Captain Marvel is, mostly, awesome. Directed by Mississippi Grind’s Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Captain Marvel is the story of Brie Larson’s Vers, a warrior from the planet Kree, who are in a seemingly perpetual war with the Skrulls. The Skrulls are shape shifting lizard-like aliens who engage in endless terrorist attacks against the Kree. Vers is under the tutelage of Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg, a military veteran and leader of Vers’s command. Vers is an extremely powerful fighter, who has the ability shoot deadly magnetic energy from her clenched fists, but according to Yon-Rogg, Vers has no control over her emotions and is therefore a flawed fighter.

Like many Marvel films, especially the origin stories, the first act is laborious. This is partly due to the Memento-like fact that Vers is missing a lot of memories, and is unsure of her past identity. But it is mainly down to the fact we start on an alien planet, which has some kind of AI overlord called the Supreme Intelligence (who manifests as Annette Benning for Vers) but the script does not work well enough for us to understand the planet with any depth. In particular, given the vast array of colours and body-types the aliens that occupy The Guardians of the Galaxy have, why are the Kree so boringly humanoid and white?

While on a mission, Vers’s Kree ship is attacked by some Skrulls and she ends plunging towards a planet called C-53. This is Earth to me and you and Badgertopia to your weird cousin who worships badgers. Vers crash lands into a Blockbuster video store (ask your parents), an extremely funny way establishing the 90s time period. From here the film begins to fly and Vers comes into contact with S.H.I.E.L.D agent Nick Fury, played by a de-aged Samuel L. Jackson. The Skrulls, led by the excellent Ben Mendhelsohn as Talos, are set on infiltrating Earth and it is up to Fury and Vers to stop them. This sets up the film’s central relationship and the buddy cop chemistry of Larson and Jackson is charming and often hilarious. It’s nice to see Jackson and Fury’s character given some depth and nuance, and for perhaps the first time in a Marvel film, Jackson actually gets to properly act and not just walk into rooms telling Iron Man to calm down.

As the mystery surrounding Vers’s identity unravels, the film becomes more and more confident. Larson is excellent as Vers, she is not just tough but has a genuine humour and non-stereotypical sass to her. When she initially lands on Earth, she regards the whole place with a bemused superiority, which is actually funny rather than annoying like Tony Stark’s endless capacity for arrogance. As Vers discovers her identity and the truth about the wars between the Kree and the Skrulls, Captain Marvel’s feminist core is codified. It is not simply the fact that Vers shoots an engine that contains hyper-speed stuff that explodes which she absorbs that causes her to become the most powerful figure in the universe. Rather, her acceptance of her true identity, her ability to see the truth of the Kree is fundamental to her gaining real agency over her life. She can only truly access her powers once she gains agency and fully expresses her emotions, rather than repress them. This is a deeply emotional moment and Larson’s performance as she becomes Carol Danvers and then Captain Marvel is stunning. The deft mixture of confidence and vulnerability is played to perfection and is proof that Boden and Fleck have created a real person, and not a punching meme.

Captain Marvel is certainly one of the best films from the MCU. It’s a period piece certainly, there are not many mega-blockbuster’s that contain a fighting sequence set to ‘Just a Girl’. Larson and Jackson are excellent together, and the VFX for the de-ageing process is staggering. Boden and Fleck, despite the flawed first third, do well to create both alien worlds and a fully realized 90s time period. But most importantly, and perhaps also most stupidly given it needs saying, it has fully destroyed the idea the female superheroes are not captivating enough to hold their own feature. Captain Marvel is fun, propulsive and an excellent feminist hero for the girls and boys who need her.

8/10

[1]  Actual Daily Mail headline. Honestly.

by James Turrell

The Favourite

Writer: Debora Davis & Tony McNamara

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

The Favourite has to be weirdest ‘hit’ in several years. Somehow, the re-telling of little-known Queen Anne’s life as a lesbian love-triangle, complete with experimental camera techniques sends people bounding like rabbits to the cinema. The film, by cinema’s new premier existentialist Yorgos Lanthimos, is a bizarre tale of power, both symbolic and real, and the way in which gender interacted within the hallowed halls of the pre-democracy Crown.

The story is ostensibly about the Privy Council members that advised Queen Anne Stewart (Olivia Coleman) during the war with France in the early 18th Century. Sarah Churchwell (Rachel Weisz) is Queen Anne’s closest advisor and secret lover, who holds enormous sway over the Queen and is in some sense, the defacto Queen of England. The arrival of Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) as her maid is the narrative driver, as the two do battle using political subterfuge and sexual fluidity to become the Queen’s titular anointed one. The historical realism should be taken with the biggest pinch of salt you can find.

Coleman’s Queen Anne is a kindly, frail character, whose infinite grief at the loss of 17 children casts her in a perpetual shadow. She is confined by a string of endless physical ailments, most notably gout, to her palace and these illnesses are what allow Sarah to dictate her policies. Coleman is exquisite as Anne, managing to find joyous warmth among the loss central to her character. She’s rightly on course for an Oscar, and will no doubt offer thanks to her mentor Super Hans as she grasps the gold. The Favourite is crammed with great acting; from the brilliant dueling of Weisz and Stone, to the just-the-right-side of panto Nicholas Hoult as opposition leader Harley. Hoult is given perhaps the best line of dialogue you’ll hear this year, describing another character’s romantic attachment as ‘cunt struck.’

Debora Davis and Tony McNamara’s episodic script is frothing, its dialogue propelled by Iannucci -style inventive language and swearing. The world they have created feels both real and alien; the period setting clashing furiously with the upended gender norms and sexual rigidity associated with the time period. This feeling is intensified by the circular framing created by Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan, our curved view of the world is just as bizarre as it feels. The film mostly takes place inside the same house, and this twisting visual style allows the same corridors and rooms to be re-invented with every scene.

The men of The Favourite hold much of the practical power; they command the Army and choose battle strategies, they fund the war itself. But they are reduced to desperate sideshows, trying and failing to genuinely affect the political maneuverings of the Sarah and Abigail. Queen Anne’s word may be final but the sentences are scripted by someone else, and those writing the sentences wield the largest axe. But they also have the furthest to fall, as Sarah grimly decrees; ‘there is always a price to pay and I am prepared to pay it.’

These shifting dynamics combine for an exhilarating film, one infused with a piercing subversion in both story and visual terms. Weisz and Stone’s characters never feel like forced creations or like the writers have created them to show how woman can occupy roles most commonly done so by men. They own their lives and the power that comes from them is a by-product.

This sense of anarchy does seem to slip in the last third of the film. As Queen Anne becomes sicker and loses much of her physical body to illness, and as one winner emerges from the political games of Abigail and Sarah, the film becomes more reserved and even mournful. The light drains from the screen and the camera reverts back to traditional framing, Queen Anne’s physical demise seems to straighten the world out. It makes for a weirdly jarring final twenty minutes, in which the more normal the film becomes, the stranger it feels.

The Favourite is a unique film and surreal story told boldly by Lanthimos. It features wonderful acting and fizzing dialogue, and captures the stakes that follow when personal lives and politics become enmeshed. The film’s final third is odd, and as the subversion dims so too does a certain spark. But the excitement that comes from watching such an oddly shaped but brilliantly realized world is rare.

9/10

by James Turrell

The Graduate

Writers: Calder Willingham & Buck Henry 

Director: Mike Nichols 

I first saw The Graduate when I was 21 and before sitting down to watch it, I had no idea what is going to be about. I knew the name, it’s difficult not too given its exultant place within the canon, and I knew Dustin Hoffman starred. It never occurred to me that it was literally about a college graduate. I thought it was going to be a gangster film. No wonder I never get paid for writing these reviews.  

Since its release in 1967 The Graduate has certainly managed to acquire ‘classic’ status, insomuch as when it appears in TV listings the word ‘classic’ will appear in the description. The film follows a summer in the life of Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock after he GRADUATES (such a fool I am) from college and begins an affair with Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson. This affair continues for a few months before Ben ends up falling in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine. Bancroft and Hoffman are both excellent in their roles; Hoffman excels as the odd, insular but sweet Benjamin, and Bancroft brings a magisterial sadness to the lonely Mrs. Robinson.  

The film’s opening sequence is staggering. A glorious tracking shot as Benjamin stands on an airport walkway, set against the wonderfully drab grey background. Fifty-odd years later this scene is still raising hairs for its simplistic beauty, it is a shot that completely defines Benjamin as a character. He is very much an insular figure, as we track him, he barely seems to register that other humans exist, he resides only inside his own head. It’s a work of directorial genius by Mike Nichols. And of course, over the top plays Simon & Garfunkel’s’ ‘The Sound of Silence’, one of basically three recurring songs over the film. The song was not written for the film, it was not based on Simon seeing any footage, but the song and film are now inexorably linked. When you hear that gorgeous guitar line, you can only see Hoffman’s face.  

The Graduate handles the relationship between Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin sensitively, initially at least. We never really learn anything about either character across whole film, we never even learn what subject Benjamin graduates from. We know that Mrs. Robinson is lonely, trapped in a loveless, shotgun marriage and drinking excessively. But we never learn anything about their past, we only learn what they say in the moments between the sex. It is difficult to describe their relationship as anything other than oedipal. Willingham and Henry’s script during the beginning of their relationship is very funny, and Hoffman has great comic timing as the ever-awkward Benjamin. In the film’s opening two acts, Mrs. Robinson controls the relationship, dictating how they meet, when they meet and dominating their sexual activity. As their relationship evolves, Benjamin does become more confident, but it is not until the arrival of Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine that Benjamin rejects her authority.  

Unfortunately, the arrival of Elaine (Katharine Ross) in the third act brings about the total collapse of the film. After one date, which goes reasonably well but not great, Benjamin falls head over heels in love with Elaine. After he reveals that he has been having an affair with her mother, she is inevitably mortified and returns to college in Boston. From here, Benjamin morphs from an awkward, introverted but good-natured oddball to an unbridled stalker. His insular nature turns to terrifyingly obsessional. He follows Elaine to Boston; stalks her and decides he is going to marry her. This is all presented by director Nichols as the harmless, intense romance of a man in love. But there is no getting away from the fact that his actions are well beyond the normal romantic obsession any of us may feel, it feels criminal the actions Benjamin undertakes. And of it course it eventually works, as it always does in films from this period of history, and unfortunately many in the modern day.  

There are certainly arguments to be made that the relationship that Benjamin has with Mrs. Robinson engenders his later behavior towards Elaine. She enters into a relationship with a young, emotionally immature male, his first sexual relationship, and he is not ready for it. His first romantic relationship is based around subterfuge and deceit, and it is Mrs. Robinson who teaches him how to do it. Her part in Elaine’s story is equally complicit and her decision to allow Elaine to get married in similar circumstances as she did, with the same potential for unhappiness, speaks volumes about the society in which they reside.  

However, Benjamin’s actions are his own and Willingham and Bucky’s script is much too lenient in glossing over aggressive and dangerous behaviour. The Graduate contains many moments of wonder, exquisite direction and glorious music. But the film’s collapse in the final third is a catastrophe, Benjamin’s behaviour is beneath contemptible and Nichols & co. present it not only as acceptable, but as the perfect way to a woman’s heart. 

6/10