New Reviews

OUTSIDE THE WIRE (2021) FILM REVIEW

1/19/2021

**

15, 115 Mins

Self-serious Sci-Fi actioner cries out for a flash of humour and *wink wink* absurdity.

Given the title, you could be forgiven for expecting ‘Outside the Wire’ (2021) to be a documentary about the making of David Simon’s landmark HBO TV series. But no. Mikael Hafstrom’s film is a slightly self-serious actioner about an android who teams up with a drone pilot to stop a nuclear attack. Anthony Mackie and Damson Idris have serviceable hot n’ cold chemistry and Emily Beecham is a sizzlin’ hot supervillainess, but this stupendously silly Sci-Fi really cries out for a flash of humour and *wink wink* absurdity.

The year is 2036 and a Ukrainian civil war leads the US to deploy peacekeeping forces in the region. During one of the operations, a team of US Marines and robotic soldiers known as “Gumps” are ambushed. After disobeying a direct order, drone pilot Harp (Damson Idris) unleashes a Hellfire missile during a drone strike against a suspect enemy launcher; killing two Marines, but saving the other 38. As a consequence of his actions, Harp, having never served in a war zone before, is sent to the US base of operations in Ukraine where he is assigned to the eccentric Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie). Secretly, Leo is a hugely advanced and experimental android super-soldier pretending to be a gruff army officer.

Harp and Leo are sent on a mission to prevent a pro-Russian terrorist with the Putinesque name of Victor Koval (‘Borgen’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ Pilou Asbaek) from controlling a Cold War-era network of nuclear missile silos while pretending to be delivering vaccines to a refugee camp…

The concept of artificial intelligence officers and super-soldiers has dominated Sci-Fi for decades, right from the days of Isaac Asimov’s ‘I, Robot’ (1950) in literature and right down to 80s action movies like the ‘Terminator’ (1984-) and ‘Robocop’ (1987-) franchises. The genre has constantly toyed with the dangers of technological advancements and the idea that we are investing too much faith in the high-tech, only for them to turn on us one day.

‘Outside the Wire’ therefore has a potentially philosophical and highly intriguing premise. Unfortunately the movie squanders it in its setup which pitches Mackie’s android as little more than a shooting buddy to Idris’ drone pilot. Just think about that premise - an android pretending to be human teams up with a drone pilot to stop a nuclear attack and see if you don’t laugh-out-loud at its preposterousness.

‘Outside the Wire’ might have worked better had it acknowledged how silly it is and made a running gag or ironic aside about the absurdity of the premise. But no. Director Hafstrom seems determined to take this movie 1 million percent seriously and I just didn’t.

There is perhaps some humour to be had in the ying-yang bromance between Idris and Mackie. It’s a very brotherly bond they have and the best scenes are when they are driving (which they do constantly) and exchanging dialogue about the differences between human and android. This adds an interesting fish out of water-style dynamic to the central pairing.

The show is easily stolen, however, by Brit redhead on the block Emily Beecham who flashes her legs as a super-sexy supervillainess. This is a very different role to previously for the Emma Stone lookalike from her quasi-shaved head turn in the snorefest ‘Little Joe’ (2020) or as the slightly pointless girlfriend of ‘Sulphur and White’ (2020).

Beecham plays Sofiya - a resistance leader-turned-bad and she has a great kick-ass scene where she beats up a gang of brutes with her thighs. It’s great to see a really good female baddie in a mainstream motion picture in the wake of Kristen Wiig’s fabulous turn as Cheetah in ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ (2020).

Beecham perhaps brings the movie that inchling of fun it needs to be even half-successful as a Netflix-of-the-week action movie. But the jokes are missing elsewhere and the whole thing just reeks of self-seriousness.

There was so much room here for interesting Sci-Fi ideas about modern warfare and technological overload. This movie just needed to be a little funnier, quirkier and weirder to pull it off…

‘Outside the Wire’ is on Netflix now.

A version of this article appears in LeftLion and can be found at:
https://www.leftlion.co.uk/read/2021/january/outside-the-wire-review/

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PIECES OF A WOMAN (2020) FILM REVIEW

1/16/2021

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***

15, 122 Mins

Vanessa Kirby gives birth in this moving, but meandering drama.

What’s the best movie birth scene? Poor Emily Blunt had to give birth in a tub in silence in ‘A Quiet Place’ (2018). Meanwhile the birth of satan’s child was pleasingly off-screen in ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968). Even non-human entities have had birth scenes on film if you want to look or look away from the chest-burster scene in ‘Alien’ (1979).

‘Pieces of a Woman’ (2021) - the English-language debut of Hungarian film-maker Kornel Mundruczo - sets new records for birth scenes and ‘One Born Every Minute’ grossness as it features a whopping, 22-minute birth scene designed to look like it was shot in one take. All I can say is that must have been painful to film!

‘Pieces of a Woman’ is the story of Boston couple Sean (Shia LaBeouf) and Martha (Vanessa Kirby). Sean is a long-suffering construction worker while Martha works as an executive. They are expecting their first child together any day now and hope to have a home birth as this is Martha’s greatest wish.

Martha goes into labour one evening and the couple phone up their midwife, but she is unavailable and so sends another midwife named Eva (Molly Parker) in her place. After a long period of pushing, Eva manages to successfully deliver Martha’s baby, but is concerned when the newborn turns blue. Very quickly, the baby goes into cardiac arrest and dies.

Martha and Sean attend the coroner, having been pressured by Martha’s mum Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) that Eva was responsible for their baby’s death. They begin legal proceedings against Eva while the couple grapple hopelessly with the sudden and quick loss of their child…

‘Pieces of a Woman’ sets new records for graphic birth scenes. Its depiction of childbirth is realistic and gruelling and clearly well-researched. From the cold fluid placed on Martha’s stomach by Eva for an ultrasound to the animalistic noises made by Martha when in labour to even words of encouragement like “that’s it, girl”, this birth scene could easily substitute for any educational video about this very painful process of procreation.

Vanessa Kirby, who has already wowed audiences as Princess Margaret in ‘The Crown’ (2016-), commits herself superbly to the tough ordeal. Her screams, grunts and growls really made me believe she was going through the most painful thing a woman can ever go through. I also found a scene where she lactates through her shirt when she sees a little girl in a shop particularly moving. It’s a strong suggestion of the emotional and psychological toll the aftermath of childbirth can leave on the mother.

Shia LaBeouf is very fine too as long-suffering husband Sean. He was always so supportive and comforting during the birth and is equally heartfelt in the aftermath. Scenes of him breaking down in tears while swinging on a pole next to the Charles River really encapsulate that it is not just the mother who bears the brunt of losing the child, but the dad too. A moving watch.

The theme of grief is a strong one throughout this film and Martha and Sean each have different ways of dealing with it. Sean tries to engage Martha in sex, but she is turned off and cannot get excited the way he does. There’s a suggestion that Sean uses sex as an escape from the trauma of child loss along with returning to snorting cocaine.

The grief scenes are the movie’s strongest and therefore it’s a shame the central courtroom coroner’s case that leads the movie is underwritten. I really didn’t care about Eva the midwife and couldn’t give a monkey’s about whether or not she was responsible for the baby’s death. This court case should have been the beating heart of the drama, but feels very tacked-on and builds to a rather hackneyed and sentimental resolution.

That being said, there’s a strong supporting performance from Ellen Burstyn as the ultra-conservative mother of Martha who lays the blame at Eva’s feet.

I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that the movie had no idea what to do with itself after that suitably horrific birth scene. It felt like all Director Mundruczo’s energy was drained on birthing a child and then didn’t have a clue where to go next for the next 1 hour 40 mins.

Vanessa Kirby deserves Academy award attention for her performance as Martha and maybe LaBeouf does too. But this moving, but meandering drama was too often a case of great performances, shame about the rest of the movie…

‘Pieces of a Woman’ is on Netflix now.

A version of this article appears on themoviebuff.net and can be found at:
https://www.themoviebuff.net/2021/01/review-pieces-of-a-woman-vanessa-kirby-gives-birth-in-this-moving-but-meandering-drama/

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IS JACINDA THE NEW BIRGITTE?

1/14/2021

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An "image of hope" - New Zealand's "people's Prime Minister" Jacinda Ardern.

New Zealand’s people’s Prime Minister is a real-life successor to ‘Borgen’s Birgitte Nyborg. Confident, charismatic and compassionate, Boris should take advice from her…

Right-wing populism has been on the rise ever since the 2015 European migrant crisis. Whenever there is a mass immigration movement, there is always an anti-immigration sentiment and countries across Europe and the Western world have been turning to right-wing populist leaders in search of a quick fix to the often racist questions of “why are people stealing our jobs?”.

It all started on June 23rd, 2016 when the UK voted to leave the European Union. This Euroscepticism has been around ever since the end of World War II, but was skyrocketed to the forefront of British politics thanks to the campaigns of UKIP and their toad-like leader Nigel Farage. In America, the population elected a madman - a racist, misogynistic creature named Donald Trump who wasn’t even a politician to begin with, but a billion-dollar businessman promising to “build a wall” between the USA and Mexico and “make America great again”.

Even Scandinavia, the most progressive and liberal sub-continent in the world, swung right. In the 2015 General Election, Denmark’s anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (DPP) became the country’s 2nd largest party. In 2018, Sweden’s Swedish Democrats - a party with fascist and white nationalist roots - won 62 seats and became the 3rd largest party. And, in Holland - another former hotspot of progressive liberalism - Geert Wilders’ anti-islamic Party of Freedom (PVV) only narrowly avoided becoming the largest party with 20 seats against Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) with 33 seats.

The good news is that the surge in right-wing populism is now on the decrease. The decline of this very extremist form of conservative politics was fast-forwarded by Donald Trump losing the 2020 US Presidential Election to Joe Biden. Thank goodness Donald is conceding now and on his way out albeit kicking and screaming!

Meanwhile, in the UK, UKIP currently has not one single seat in the House of Commons. I wonder how much of this is down to a general belief that the party had its moment in the sun in the run-up to Brexit and achieved its biggest goal, but now has little function given the deed is done and Britain is out of the E.U.

I’d also put down the decline in right-wing populism to an overall, shared desire for a strong state in the current Covid crisis. In a world with a 1.97 million death toll and Covid infection rates showing no sign of slowing down, people are in desperate desire for equality and unity and want a government that’s always ready to step in and lend a hand. This is a central idea of left-wing politics where the role of a big state is always promoted.

You’ll probably hate me for saying this, but I voted Tory at the last election. Not because I passionately support their policies, but because I always see them as a “safe pair of hands” and certainly much better fit for leading government than the crypto-communism preached by Jeremy Corbyn. It’s not that I wouldn’t love to vote Labour either. I certainly would have done so had I been old enough to vote during the Blair years. His promises of a Third Way between the Left and the Right always appealed to me and the fallout of the Brown-Blair deal and return to the more hardline left-wing practices of Labour’s early days has left the party limping on ever since.

What Labour really needs is a leader like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. Whereas the rest of the world has swung right in the late 2010s, New Zealand has always been a progressive, liberal capital. The country has had three female Governor Generals in Dame Catherine Tizard, Dame Silvia Cartwright and Dame Patsy Reddy. Current Prime Minister Ardern is also NZ’s third female Prime Minister after Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark. And, recently, Ardern appointed New Zealand Maori Nanaia Mahuta as the country’s first-ever indigenous female Foreign Minister.

The 2020 NZ General Election saw the election of “the most diverse parliament we have ever had in terms of gender and minority ethnic and indigenous representation”. Ardern’s Labour Party has 16 Maori MPs (an expanded group who have Pacific islands heritage), the first MP of African origin, Ibrahim Omar, and Sri Lankan origin MP Vanushi Walters.

10% of the MPs in the elected, 120-seat House of Representatives identify as LGBTQ+ including Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson who is the first openly gay man to hold the latter office. Simultaneously the Green Party won as much as 10 seats in parliament and the majority of them are women, indigenous politicians and LGBTQ+. The majority of MPs elected into parliament are also significantly younger than previously and many of them are millennials.

At the centre of it all is Jacinda Ardern who became the world’s youngest female head of Government at the age of 37 in 2017. She describes herself as a social democrat, a progressive, a republican and a feminist. But I, being a Film and TV buff, prefer to see her as a real-life successor to ‘Borgen’s Birgitte Nyborg.

In Adam Price’s excellent Danish political drama series, Sidse Babett-Knudsen starred as Nyborg - the centre-left leader of Denmark’s Moderate Party; hoping to pave a path between terms like “Socialism” and “Liberalism” that her political opponents wave around so insignificantly.

Like Birgitte, Ardern sits in the middle of the Left-Right spectrum - the so-called “Third Way” that catapulted Tony Blair to a landslide victory in the 1997 UK General Election. It’s interesting too that Jacinda once worked within Blair’s cabinet office.

Ardern certainly boasts progressive policies. She says “New Zealand is likely to become a republic in my lifetime” and campaigned on a promise of a referendum on weed legalisation. But she also advocates a lower rate of immigration with a suggestion of a drop of around 20,000-30,000 and describing it as an “infrastructure issue”. She claims “there hasn’t been enough planning about population growth, we haven’t necessarily targeted our skill shortages properly”. She does, however, want to increase the intake of refugees.

I’ve always sat more on the centre-right of the political spectrum; generally favouring a light regulation of the free market and lower taxes. However, anyone from any side of the political divide should support Jacinda Ardern’s intention to halve New Zealand child poverty within a decade. In July 2018, she announced the beginning of her government’s flagship families package. Among other provisions, the package gradually increased paid parental leave to 26 weeks and also paid $60-a-week to families of low and middle income with young children. In 2019, the government simultaneously began rolling out a school lunches programme with the aim of assisting in reducing child poverty numbers. It has also made other efforts to reduce poverty such as an increase in main welfare benefits, expanding free doctors’ visits, providing free menstrual hygiene products in schools and making additions to state housing stock.

The best world leaders, in my opinion, are always the ones that think with their hearts as much as their heads. Tony Blair did this to the controversy of many - I maintain the belief that he genuinely thought he was doing the right thing when invading Iraq. Ardern, meanwhile, became a symbol of compassion thanks to her loving response to the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings where 51 people were fatally shot and 49 injured in two mosques in Christchurch.

Ardern visited members of the Muslim community at the Philipstown Community Centre on March 16th, 2019. A photo of her wearing a headscarf - filmed through a glass window - was widely shared and described by The Guardian as an “image of hope”.

That’s not to say Jacinda doesn’t have a backbone to all her beauty and benevolence. Just look at the way she rebuffed a sexist question on the AM Show about her baby plans. She claimed AM Show host Mark Richardson was “totally unacceptable” when suggesting women should have to reveal their pregnancy plans to employers and called out the systematic prejudice exercised by employers deciding whether or not to hire women based on their plans to start a family.

And just look at the brilliant way Jacinda has handled the Covid crisis. Boris Johnson, take note - back in June, New Zealand eliminated Covid-19. This was a result of tremendous effort on Ardern’s part to control the spread of the virus. On March 14th, she announced the government would require anyone entering the country from midnight on the 15th to isolate for 14 days. She stated that the new rules mean New Zealand has “the widest ranging and toughest border restrictions of any country in the world”. She later, on March 19th, announced that New Zealand’s borders would be closed to non-citizens and non-permanent residents before declaring a nationwide lockdown on the 25th. You’ve got to be pretty tough to pull that off and Ardern did so in style!

She did all this and gave birth to a baby! On June 21st, 2018, Ardern became only the second elected head of government to give birth while in office - the first was Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 1988. And Jacinda was the first female head of government to attend the UN General Assembly with her infant present.

Ardern’s division between her roles and responsibilities as a mother and a politician is very ‘Borgen’. In that series, Birgitte Nyborg divided her time running Denmark with looking after her two young children and faced a barrage of sexism which Ardern is more than used to, especially when a creepy Australian journalist named Charles Wooley branded her “attractive” and questioned her and hubby Clarke Gayford on the conception of their child.

Most of all, though, she walks the fine, delicate line in the middle of Left and Right. Perhaps the meanings of “L” and “R” are becoming indistinguishable from one another as her compassionate, people’s based approach to politics has appealed to both sides of the political spectrum. She is a true people’s Prime Minister and the 21st century exponent of Blair’s Third Way.

With her in charge, I have hope for the future of politics in the 2020s. Boris Johnson should take note…

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EMILY IN PARIS (2020) TV SERIES REVIEW

1/12/2021

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*

1 Season, 10 Episodes

Xenophobic, grotesquely stereotypical and seriously sexist.

The best thing I can say about ‘Emily in Paris’ (2020) is that I didn’t hate Darren Star’s latest TV show as much as his ‘Sex and the City’ (1998-2004). That - the movies, at least - was a racist, misogynistic mess with an awful scene in the 2nd film where the girls visit Abu Dhabi and these burqa-clad women pull up their niqabs to reveal they’re wearing Louis Vuitton underneath. A good way of promoting the idea that the Middle Easterners are as empty and vacuous as we are!

‘Emily in Paris’ (2020) is xenophobic, grotesquely stereotypical and seriously sexist, but it does feature the likeable Lily Collins who’s far less vile than Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. Lily is Phil Collins’ daughter and so anything from the Collins clan is going to be fairly likeable. But this show does share ‘Sex and the City 2’s basic idea of a rich, spoilt American woman travelling to a foreign country, behaving like a complete bimbo and being completely oblivious and disrespectful to the country’s traditions, culture and social norms.

The story is that Lily Collins is Emily Cooper - a driven, twentysomething American woman who gets sent to Paris with the aim of providing an American point of view to a French marketing firm. Here, in Paris, she finds herself struggling to adjust to the culture clash between the French lifestyle and her way of life as a, as she puts it, “boring” and mundane Midwestern girl, while simultaneously finding love on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was really interesting watching ‘Emily in Paris’ a few months after watching ‘Les Miserables’ (2020) - not the musical ‘Les Miserables’ nor Victor Hugo’s book. No. I’m talking about Ladj Ly’s 2020 film about Paris police brutality and racism which actually owed a great debt to ‘La Haine’ - Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 French classic about similar subjects of Paris deprivation, police brutality and racism which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year.

I loved ‘La Haine’ and liked ‘Les Miserables’ in places. What I liked most about them was that they shone a powerful and thought-provoking light on a different side to the French capital. We’re used to seeing Paris portrayed as a romantic, glossy city with monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe, Elysee Palace and the Eiffel Tower. We don’t tend to hear about the underbelly to all the romanticism and the gloss because every city, even the most beautiful in the world such as Paris, has an underbelly.

Until ‘La Haine’, we didn’t hear about Paris’ notoriety for racism, for example. After watching that film and ‘Les Miserables’ shine light on the darkness behind, as Emily in this show puts it, “the most romantic city in the world”, it was shocking to see a series like ‘Emily in Paris’ present such an awkward and unrealistic opposite to those films’ down-to-Earth depiction of the Paris banlieues.

‘Emily in Paris’ is grotesquely stereotyped and has every Paris cliche in the textbook going for it. At one point, Emily fancies a pan au chocolat so she goes into a patisserie, buys a pan au chocolat, bites into it and exclaims in a really phoney-sounding American accent “PAAN OWW CHAACOLAAA!”.

At another moment, she sees a nude male statue, takes a photo of it and posts a snapchat saying “chiselled abs”. At another point, she grabs some flowers and posts a pic of her in a florist on social media. She goes to the Eiffel Tower and takes pics and puts them on Snapchat. She goes to Elysee Palace and takes pics and puts them on Snapchat. You get the picture...This girl loves taking pics of herself next to famous landmarks and posting them on Snapchat.

Of course, because we’re in France, there’s a bloody scene of Emily wearing a beret. She complains that French people speak to her in French when she can’t speak the language herself. Well, you are in France, darling, so you should probably get going on learning the language. Emily, of course, eats baguettes too and has sex with a hunky French chef named Gabriel (played by Lucas Bravo) who is actually and obviously far sexier than her American boyfriend Doug (Roe Hartrampf).

In fact, Emily spends most of the show flirting and having sex with a variety of French men because she’s so upset that her boyfriend broke up with her. This is despite the fact that she chose to move to France and leave him behind. She shouldn’t be complaining.

As for Lily Collins, she’s certainly very sweet and has done good work before. I really liked her in the anorexia drama ‘To the Bone’ (2017), for example, and she’s very good at the moment in ‘Mank’ (2020) where she plays Herman J. Mankiewicz’s secretary and inspiration for Susan Alexander Kane - Rita Alexander (with a Transatlantic accent that sounds like Vivien Leigh as most people in old movies speak in!).

I’m pleased the show cast someone as lovely and likeable as Lily Collins in the lead role. I’d probably have hated ‘Emily in Paris’ even more if it had someone like Sarah Jessica Parker. Emily Cooper is certainly less nasty than Carrie Bradshaw, but I don’t think that excuses how openly and explicitly sexualised Collins is by the camera. There’s not a single scene where Emily isn’t wearing a colourful short skirt which the camera pervily follows and ogles at from behind at every opportunity. It’s interesting that it’s Emily who makes a point about female objectification; branding an ad which zooms in on a naked woman’s bare buttocks as “sexist” rather than “sexy”. This is when Emily is just about the most objectified character by the whole show. I’m sure her entire role in this show is to flirt and sleep with sexy French men, but Darren Star seems perfectly ok with this. I’m sure he thinks this is a perfectly decent portrait of a woman.

Watching ‘Emily in Paris’ is a bit like being on an aeroplane and being played an American airline promotional video of Paris - xenophobic and ticking every box for covering every French stereotype in the book. It’s a wonder there isn’t a scene of someone eating snails… “Escargot, anyone?”...

I dread to think Star will make another season where Emily goes to China. Could you imagine how much more offended the Chinese would be to see their country mocked than the French? Imagine Emily saying “ni hao”...

‘Emily in Paris’ and ‘Sex and the City 2’ populate a very American kind of imperialism. An idea that you belong to the most powerful country in the world and so feel entitled to behave however you like with no regard for who you might offend.

And yet, back in October, ‘Emily in Paris’ topped the TV Times chart for the week ending October 4th as the “most binged” show for that week with a 4.92% share of binges. That’s pretty worrying, but, then again, there is a market for this kind of show in this day and age.

In the same way as there was always a market for ‘Sex and the City’ amongst the over 35 year old, divorced female audience, I’m sure loads of teenage and twentysomething women will and are absolutely loving ‘Emily in Paris’. It taps into their interests such as romantic cities, colourful fashion and hunky foreign men. I just think it’s a very shallow and lacklustre portrait of womanhood and the French lifestyle...And I say that as a bloke…

‘Emily in Paris’ is on Netflix now.

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FILM DIARY: JANUARY 2021

1/4/2021

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A special New Year’s edition of Film Diary!

Happy New Year! I hope you’re enjoying it as best as you can in these troublesome times. What a hectic 12 months it has been with a 1.84 million death toll and Covid infection rates continuing to spike. Nottingham is now in Tier 4, meaning non-essential shops and entertainment venues have to close, but schools and colleges stay open (for now!), although they will be returning after the Christmas break a week late on January 18th.

Still, there is hope on the horizon. Several vaccines are on the roll-out, the UK is out of the E.U and Trump is on his way out of the White House this month. And 2021 has the potential to be a mammoth year for the blockbuster with big-budget leftovers from 2020 lining up to be released. If those pesky cinemas stay open, we could be seeing ‘No Time to Die’, ‘Black Widow’, ‘A Quiet Place: Part II’ and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ hitting the pictures practically every week. I seriously hope Hollywood can regain its losses made in 2020, certainly with a return to some degree of cinematic normalcy and hope that cinemas survive this pandemic once everyone is safely vaccinated.

Anyway, a new month and new year means new movie news and I thought I’d make a new contribution to my monthly film-related gossip column ‘Film Diary’ specially for the beginning of 2021. I’ve rounded up a selection of the biggest and juiciest news from the last two months of 2020 for your reading pleasure…

Nolan vs. Warner Bros.

Christopher Nolan has hit out at Warner Bros’ decision to simultaneously release their entire 2021 movie slate on HBO Max. This release slate includes ‘Dune’, ‘In the Heights’ and ‘The Matrix 4’ which will all be coming home early to the much-famed streaming service.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Nolan branded the decision as “very, very, very, very messy” and branded HBO Max “the worst streaming service”.

When asked what his feelings were on the matter, he stated “oh, I mean, disbelief. Especially the way in which they did...There’s such controversy around it, because they didn’t tell anyone. In 2021, they’ve got some of the top film-makers in the world, they’ve got some of the biggest stars in the world who worked for years in some cases on these projects very close to their hearts that are meant to be big-screen experiences. They’re meant to be out there for the widest possible audiences...And now they’re being used as a loss-leader for the streaming service - for the fledgling streaming service - without any consultation”.

Nolan’s latest film ‘Tenet’ (2020) was delayed three times due to the pandemic before its release in August. Him and Warner Bros. were determined that the movie get a big screen release. Therefore it’s no wonder that the great film-maker feels a great sense of betrayal in the studio who are now fast-forwarding and skyrocketing the rise of streaming services which are putting cinemas in very real danger of having their work cut out for them.

Nolan has always been a champion of the big screen experience and I do worry that his fallout with Warner Bros. over releasing their 2021 slate on HBO Max might just have cost the studio their best asset. He’s the only “mainstream” film-maker spending millions of dollars on original tentpole movies. Warner Bros. would do well to keep him on board…

Cruise’s Covid Rant

Everyone’s favourite pint-sized scientologist and bankable movie star Tom Cruise exploded into a serious rage on the set of ‘Mission Impossible 7’ (2021).

Speaking at Warner Bros. studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, the 58 year old actor tore into workers for breaking Covid rules on set. “If I see you do it again, you’re f**king gone. And if anyone in this crew does it, that’s it - and you too and you too. And you, don’t you ever f**king do it again!”. This was in response to two of the crew standing less than a metre apart from each other at a computer screen.

Frankly I think Mr. Cruise has every right to be angry at people not following health and safety procedures. He continued “they’re back in Hollywood making movies right now because of us. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherf**kers...That’s it. No apologies. You can tell it to the people that are losing their f**king homes because our industry is shut down”.

‘Mission Impossible 7’ - due for release this November - has already been struck down by Covid-related issues. In October, Cruise held crisis talks with Director Christopher McQuarrie shortly after 12 people on the movie’s set in Italy tested positive for Covid-19.

I certainly enjoyed listening to Tom go off on one. He almost did it as well as when Christian Bale exploded into anger on the set of ‘Terminator: Salvation’ (2009). Hilarious stuff.

No Depp for Grindelwald

Johnny Depp has resigned from the role of Gellert Grindelwald in the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ franchise. The 57 year old movie star announced his resignation on Instagram; thanking fans for their “support and loyalty” before stating that Warner Bros. had asked for his resignation.

Depp’s decision comes just the same week as he lost his libel case against The Sun who branded him a “wife-beater” in 2018. The trial followed in the wake of a series of domestic abuse allegations made against the actor by his ex-wife Amber Heard.

Frankly, I think Depp has been cast a hard hand by Warner Bros. Sure, if these allegations against him are true, the studio don’t want to be seen backing a perpetrator of domestic violence. But I still think there needs to be a distinct separation between the artist and the person and, removing Depp from the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ franchise, Warner Bros. may have just lost one of Hollywood’s most bankable movie stars.

I also think it’s wrong that Depp is the only one suffering repercussions for his actions. Let’s remember that he did also allege that Heard tried to severe his finger. If Depp is being removed from upcoming projects due to accusations of domestic violence, Heard surely should be too considering she has allegations against her. If this is the way the studio works and Depp has been removed from ‘Fantastic Beasts’, she should be removed from the upcoming ‘Aquaman 2’ (2022).

Emma out, Margot in

Margot Robbie will replace Emma Stone in the leading role opposite Brad Pitt in Director Damien Chazelle’s latest movie ‘Babylon’ (2021). An R-rated drama set during the transition between Silent Hollywood and the “Talkies” and mixing real people with fictional characters, the film was set to reunite Stone with the director of ‘La La Land’ (2017) which won Stone her first Oscar.

‘Babylon’ is set for a limited awards run in America this Christmas before a wide release on January 7th next year. That is assuming it films on schedule given it’s looking to shoot in LA which is still a Covid hotspot even while productions resume.

Stone cites “scheduling issues” as the reason for her departure although the rumour mill is going into overdrive on two counts. One that she dropped out because she’s pregnant or that she’s about to return to the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise in the role of Gwen Stacy in this year’s ‘Spider-Man 3’. The latter rumour of which makes me very excited!

Either way, her departure from ‘Babylon’ means Margot Robbie will be reuniting with Brad Pitt once again after they starred together in ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’ (2019).

A New House of Thrones

A bit of TV news for you now. Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy have officially been cast for the leading roles in HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel series ‘House of the Dragon’ (2022). They will be joining Paddy Considine who was previously announced as part of the cast.

Former ‘Doctor Who’ Smith will be playing Prince Daemon Targaryen - the younger brother of King Viserys (played by Considine). D’Arcy from ‘Truth Seekers’ (2020) will be portraying Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen - the first-born child of the King, pure Valyrian blood and a dragon rider. Meanwhile Olivia Cooke, who was so likeable and funny recently in ‘Pixie’ (2020), is Alicent Hightower - daughter of Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King, and the most comely woman in the Seven Kingdoms.

I’m a big Olivia Cooke fan so this is music to the ears to me that she will be starring in this new prequel. I’m less of a fan of Matt Smith whose Eleventh Doctor was more like an eccentric history teacher than a bonkers, tortured Time Lord. I just hope his performance here isn’t like he was in a PSHE video I watched at school where he was officially the worst “chav” ever. “I will shank you, innit!” (in pompous RP pronunciations!).

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SOUL (2020) FILM REVIEW

1/3/2021

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*****

PG, 97 Mins

A lovely, jazzy look at life, death and the afterlife.

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WHAT TO WATCH IN 2021

1/3/2021

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My recommendations for the biggest new releases of the 2021 calendar…

Happy New Year! With any new year comes new films. Except it’s difficult to predict 2021’s biggest releases as the release schedule keeps shifting and cinemas remain closed. Either way, I’ve had a look at the current release schedule and listed my picks for what film titles take my fancy...should they be released this year…

Awards, Awards, Awards

Who knows if we’ll even have any awards ceremonies this year? There certainly won’t be any contenders if there are no cinemas open to show them. Either way, this year’s Golden Globes are pencilled in for February 28th with the delayed BAFTAs on April 11th and the Oscars on April 25th. And, unbelievably, there’s a couple of movies that are currently generating awards buzz…

Pieces of a Woman (out now in cinemas) (out Jan. 7th on Netflix)

Vanessa Kirby looks set to be the rising star of 2021. She’s already wowed audiences on TV as Princess Margaret in ‘The Crown’ (2016-2017) and now is shaping up as a major Oscar favourite for her performance here in ‘Pieces of a Woman’ (2021) as an ex-pregnant woman who takes her midwife (Ellen Burstyn) to court on grounds of criminal negligence. Shia LaBeouf co-stars as her long-suffering husband and the film features a whopping 22-minute, one-shot birth scene. Yikes!

The Father (out Jan. 8th) (in cinemas)

What with ‘The Roads Not Taken’ (2020), ‘Relic’ (2020) and ‘Falling’ (2020), the subject of dementia and ageing has been in the movies a lot recently. Pundits are tipping Anthony Hopkins to get nominated for his performance as an ageing Welshman who must deal with the fallout of his dementia. Olivia Colman co-stars as his daughter who moves into a flat with him and will surely be getting awards attention too.

News of the World (TBC) (on Netflix)

12 year old breakout star of German child drama ‘System Crasher’ (2020), Helena Zengel, stars opposite Tom Hanks in Paul Greengrass’ American Civil War drama. Based on Paulette Jiles’ 2016 novel of the same name, Hanks is the American Civil War veteran who has to return a young girl (Zengel), stolen by natives as an infant, to her last remaining family. Expect this one to be moving and to get Hanks a nomination.

Sound of Metal (out Jan. 29th) (in cinemas)

Riz Ahmed seems to have made a late-career habit of playing musicians with illnesses which is perhaps unsurprising considering he is a rapper himself. Last year, he played a rapper with a debilitating degenerative disease in ‘Mogul Mowgli’ (2020) and now he plays a drummer who begins to lose his hearing. The likeable Olivia Cooke co-stars and people are predicting a nomination for Riz.

Nomadland (out Feb. 19th) (in cinemas)

Will Frances McDormand win her third Oscar? It certainly helps that she produced this American drama from ‘The Rider’ director Chloe Zhao about a woman who leaves her small town to travel the American West. Winning both the Golden Lion at Venice and the People’s Choice Award at Toronto, this one’s been taking the festival circuit by storm.

Blockbuster Galore

Provided the cinemas stay open, 2021 will see a flood of blockbusters with big-budget leftovers from 2020 lining up to be released practically every week. That’s if (and it’s a big IF) the cinemas stay open and studios don’t keep delaying their tentpoles or decide to dump them on streaming services. Fingers crossed…

No Time to Die (out Apr. 2nd) (in cinemas)

The delay of this latest James Bond film until April this year (a whole year since it was originally scheduled to come out) was responsible for the closure of the UK’s biggest cinema chain - Cineworld. With fingers crossed, 007 should be back on the big screen this Easter with Daniel Craig bowing out of the tux and Aston Martin, Lashana Lynch as a kick-ass female “OO” and Rami Malek chewing up the scenery as the villain Safin. Hopefully…

A Quiet Place: Part II (out Apr. 23rd) (in cinemas)

Another movie that was scheduled for release over a year ago is John Krasinski’s much-anticipated sequel to his 2018 silent horror hit. Emily Blunt is the new mum with a baby and two kids attempting to survive in a world where creatures “hear you, they hunt you”. Should be good and scary…

Black Widow (out May 7th) (in cinemas)

The success of ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ (2020) in North America is proof that a post-pandemic audience still have the appetite for a female-led superhero movie. Marvel will be hoping to pull off the trick again this summer with an origins story about Scarlett Johansson’s leather-clad, arse-kicking Black Widow. The ridiculously talented Florence Pugh is her fellow arse-kicking sister.

Top Gun: Maverick (out Jul. 1st) (in cinemas)

Ok, it might be crap, but it might be good. I love seeing Tom Cruise in pilot’s wear and he’s back as “Maverick” Mitchell in this sequel to Tony Scott’s 1986 action classic. Miles Teller is “Rooster” Bradshaw - son of Anthony Edwards’ “Goose” Bradshaw from the first film. Expect lots of aerial action!

Dune (TBC) (in cinemas)

Denis Villeneuve directs a new adaptation of Frank Hubert’s 1965 Sci-Fi classic - the first in a two-part adaptation. This stars a HUGE ensemble cast including Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard and Dave Bautista among countless others. Expect this to be the thinking man’s blockbuster of the year. I just hope it doesn’t bomb like the 1984 Lynch version…

American Beauties

If 2020 did anything at all, it was skyrocket and fast-forward the rise of streaming services. Thanks to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Curzon Home Cinema and countless others, American indie films have found a platform for mainstream success. I hope they continue to get more attention in 2021. Here’s just some of them that I thought looked interesting…

Passing (out at Sundance Jan. 30th) (in cinemas)

Rebecca Hall makes her directorial debut with this adaptation of Nella Larsen’s novel of the same name. It’s the story of mixed race childhood friends who are reunited in adulthood and become obsessed with each other’s lives. Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, Andre Holland, Alexander Skarsgard and Bill Camp lead an ensemble cast that premieres at Sundance.

Mayday (out at Sundance Jan. 31st) (in cinemas)

The talented Grace Van Patten stars as a young woman who is transported to a dream-like world where she joins an army of girls in a never-ending war at a rugged coastline. Mia Goth and Juliette Lewis co-star, but this looks set to be Van Patten’s show.

Promising Young Woman (out Feb. 12th) (in cinemas)

Expect Carey Mulligan to be getting awards attention for her performance in Emerald Fennell’s dark directorial debut. She stars as a young woman who sets out to take revenge on the men who have wronged for. Expect an empowering feminist message and lots of violence.

Minamata (out Feb. 12th) (in cinemas)

Can people even watch Johnny Depp anymore? Especially considering his accusations of Domestic Violence. This film will be the test to see if the public can forgive him. He plays famed war photographer W. Eugene Smith who travels back to Japan where he captures the effects of Mercury poisoning in coastal communities (also known as Minamata disease). One for controversy.

Minari (out Mar. 19th) (in cinemas)

Lee Isaac Chung directs this bilingual, semi-autobiographical story of his own childhood. It follows a family of South Korean immigrants trying to make it big in 1980s rural America. Has been generating buzz ever since it debuted at Sundance last year, winning both the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the US Dramatic Audience Award.

The Brits Are Coming!

British cinema had something of a golden year in 2020, despite the cinemas being shut. Streaming services, once again, offered it a platform for mainstream success and there were so many great Brit pics that need BAFTA attention this April. Here’s just some of the new ones for 2021...

Blithe Spirit (out Jan. 15th) (in cinemas and on Sky Cinema)

English theatre director Edward Hall directs a new version of Noel Coward’s 1941 theatrical comedy classic. Dan Stevens and Isla Fisher are Charles and Ruth Condomine, Judi Dench is Madame Arcati and Leslie Mann is Elvira Condomine. Good cast, but will it match the 1945 David Lean version with Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond and Margaret Rutherford? Who knows!

The Mauritanian (out Feb. 26th) (in cinemas)

Kevin Macdonald directs a British-American legal thriller - the true story of Mauritanian Mohamedou Ould Salahi who was captured by the US Government and kept at Guantanamo Bay without charge or trial for 14 years between 2002 and 2016. Tahar Rahim is Salahi while Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley are the defence attorney and associate defending him in court. Benedict Cumberbatch is the military prosecutor who uncovers evidence of a shocking and far-reaching conspiracy. Should be polemical stuff…

Supernova (out Mar. 5th) (in cinemas)

Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci are a gay couple coping with the fallout of the latter’s dementia in the directorial debut of ‘EastEnders’ star Harry MacQueen. This is set in the Lake District, has lovely chemistry between Firth and Tucci and some stunning scenery. One for tissues.

Last Night in Soho (out Apr. 23rd) (in cinemas)

Edgar Wright’s latest film sees Anya Taylor-Joy as a young wannabe fashion designer who enters the 1960s and encounters her idol - a glamorous wannabe singer (Thomasin Harcourt MacKenzie). Matt Smith co-stars and the film marks the final film appearances for Diana Rigg and Margaret Nolan, who died in September and October last year. Expect two things from Wright - it will be scary and have lots of pop culture references.

Death on the Nile (out Sept. 17th) (in cinemas)

Kenneth Branagh is back; directing and starring as the fabulously moustached Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in a new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1937 classic. It’s a sequel to his 2017 ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and has Poirot searching for the murderer on a tourist boat on the Nile. A gleaming guest list includes Gal Gadot, Annette Benning, Russell Brand, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Rose Leslie, Armie Hammer...the list goes on.

Around the World in 365 Days

World Cinema really came into its own or, should I say, came of age in 2020. Because the majority of big-budget blockbusters from America were being postponed, a bunch of foreign-language films started showing up on the release schedules in multiplexes. I guess, in other parts of the world, cinemas are now open; meaning more movies that could get mainstream recognition in the West. Here’s a couple of the big ones from around the globe to watch out for in 2021…

Quo Vadis, Aida? (out Jan. 22nd) (in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema)

This internationally co-produced Bosnian drama showed at the 2020 Venice International Film Festival and was selected as Bosnia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2021 Oscars. It’s the story of a UN translator named Aida (Jasna Duricic) attempting to protect her family when the Bosnian Serb Army takes over the city of Srebrenica and begins the ethnic cleansing of the Bosniak population. Expect it to be hard-hitting and disturbing.

Never Gonna Snow Again (TBC)

Poland’s Best International Feature Film entry for the 2021 Oscars stars Alec Utgoff as a Russian-speaking immigrant from the East who builds an unexpected cult following. Expect comedy and drama to ensue.

Night of the Kings (TBC)

Ivory Coast’s Best International Feature Film, 2021 Oscar entry is from Director Philippe Lacote. It stars Bakary Kone as a young pickpocket sent to prison in Abidjan who survives prison life by telling stories to other prisoners. This has been getting awards attention ever since it debuted at Venice and Toronto.

The Disciple (TBC)

Chaitanya Tamhane’s Indian Marathi drama made history by becoming the first Indian film since Mira Nair’s ‘Monsoon Wedding’ (2001) to play at Venice. It’s the story of an Indian classical music vocalist who starts to wonder whether it’s really possible to achieve the excellence he’s striving for. Hopefully this will get a UK release this year.

Amants (TBC)

Gorgeous, bilingual English-French star Stacy Martin is the heart of this love triangle thriller from France which debuted at Venice in September. Here, a pair of young lovers (Martin and Pierre Niney) are forced to break up when one of the latter’s clients (Benoit Magimel) overdoses. Sounds very intriguing...

Other Highlights

A couple of other 2021 movies that take my fancy…

The Many Saints of Newark (out Mar. 12th) (in cinemas)

David Chase’s movie prequel to his landmark gangster TV series ‘The Sopranos’ (1999-2007) finally gets its UK cinema release date (hopefully!) along with a simultaneous release on HBO Max. Alessandro Nivola is Dickie Moltisanti, father of Christopher, and Jon Bernthal is “Johnny Boy” Soprano, father of Tony. Set in 1960s and 70s Newark, New Jersey, the film uses the backdrop of the 1967 Newark riots for tension between the Italian American and African American communities.

Cruella (out May 28th) (in cinemas)

Emma Stone dons the dogskin coat as everyone’s favourite, scary-haired fashion designer-cum-supervillainess. This is a 70s-set origins story with Cruella as a punk rock icon. Emma Thompson, Mark Strong and Paul Walter Hauser also star, but expect this to be the wildest and wackiest role of Stone’s career.

Halloween Kills (out Oct. 15th) (in cinemas)

I missed 2018’s ‘Halloween’ which was a direct sequel to the 1978 slasher classic and effectively a retcon of the 10 previous sequels. Director David Gordon Green is back behind the camera for this sequel which sees Jamie-Lee Curtis back as Laurie Strode - the only survivor of Michael Myers’ 1978 killing spree. James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle are in the double role of serial killer Myers as Laurie and her family make a stand against him when he returns to Haddonfield. Perfect for Halloween.

The Last Duel (out Oct. 15th) (in cinemas)

No one does a historical epic better than Ridley Scott and he steps behind the camera for this adaptation of Eric Jager’s ‘The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France’. Matt Damon and Adam Driver star as 14th century knights - Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris - who are ordered to fight to the death after the former accuses the latter of raping his wife. ‘Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer also stars and Ben Affleck is King Charles VI.

West Side Story (out Dec. 10th) (in cinemas)

Steven Spielberg directs a new version of everyone’s favourite 1957 Broadway musical and loose adaptation of ‘Romeo + Juliet’. This remake is closer to the stage show than the 1961 film adaptation. Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler are teenagers Tony and Maria who fall in love despite belonging to rival street gangs - the Jets and the Sharks - in 1950s NYC. This will be Christmas 2021’s annual holiday movie.

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TOP 10 WORST FILMS OF 2020

1/1/2021

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The turkeys of 2020!

Dishonorable Mentions

Bloodshot
The Big Ugly
A Rainy Day in New York
The Grudge
Dolittle

Top 10 Worst Films of 2020

10. Love Sarah

Purple lipstick-loving ‘Great British Bake-off’ winner Candice Brown has a cameo in this soggy-bottomed baking drama. Or, should I say, a bit part as she dies in the opening credits and her absence hangs miserably over the final film. This is one of those rom-coms that appears to have been baked in anti-Richard Curtis clorox and features a whitewashed, completely unrealistic, happy n’ smiley version of London. Celia Imerie is waxily disinterested as the estranged mother of Candice who, with her teenage daughter Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet), sets up a bakery in honour of Candice. 29 year old Shannon Tarbet (too old to be playing a teenager) seems lovely, but can’t act for s**t and the whole movie is just so joyless despite the tweeness of its premise.

9. Irresistible

I was late to watching Jon Stewart’s dreadful political satire ‘Irresistible’, but, when I finally watched it, I wondered why I bothered. The set-up is Steve Carrell is a Democrat campaign consultant who travels to a small town in Wisconsin to encourage a gung-ho local farmer to run for Governor. He has to square off with Rose Byrne’s face-licking Republican consultant. This movie failed to get even a single laugh out of me and its satirical sensibility is about as sharp as MacKenzie Davis sticking her arm up a cow’s bottom (really!).

8. Downhill

Whoever thought remaking Ruben Ostlund’s ‘Force Majeure’ (2015) was a good idea? Answer - Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. They star here as a married couple who go through a rough patch after a near-death skiing accident. The original Swedish movie was deadpan and disturbing. This remake is just a typical Will Ferrell-being a-buffoon comedy. He is about as funny as Cancer.

7. Joan of Arc

I love a good historical drama, but Bruno Dumont’s latest take on the story of Joan of Arc is such a bore. It’s proof that it’s not just mainstream Hollywood films that are terrible - this is in French! The little girl who plays Joan of Arc here can’t act to save her life and there’s literally a 10 minute sequence I’m sure of her just standing at a pole with some dreary bardcore song playing in the background. One to put you to sleep.

6. Cuck

This is a horrible, nasty little film. The title says it all - it’s basically an awful word used by alt-right internet morons to describe unmanly men. It’s the kind of word used by people who say “Femi-Nazi”. The plot sees Zachary Ray Sherman as a military-idolizing loner who gradually becomes more and more extremist when posting alt-right youtube videos. This desperately wants to be the new ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) except Sherman isn’t as sexy nor as sympathetic as Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle. The central character has no redeeming qualities which makes him impossible to watch.

5. The Turning

A contemporary update of ‘The Turn of the Screw’? What could go wrong? Answer - pretty much everything. MacKenzie Davis is the attractive young woman who is sent to nanny a little girl and her lech of a brother who spends his time perving on MacKenzie in her undies. The movie is not just not scary and relies too much on jump scares, but the ending is unforgivable. It’s like they forgot to even have one. Bad stuff.

4. After We Collided

Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Tessa and Hardin (YES! THAT’S HIS NAME!) have less chemistry than two Christmas trees humping for 2 hours. And yet I saw this in a screening packed with teenage girls who were really lapping it up. This is dreary, dirgey emo porn with pathetic songs and the least titilating sex scenes I’ve seen in 23 years. I guess sex sells, though…

3. The Witches

Where to begin with Robert Zemickis’s ‘The Witches’? Other than it ruins a children’s classic and fails to cut to the darkness of the original source material which was genuinely creepy and involved children being turned into rats. The rat special-effects here are terrible and most of the blame for this film’s failure lies with Robert Zemeckis who has become too obsessed with computer-generated, motion capture technology for his own good. Someone needs to take his computer away from him. However I must give some special raspberry recognition to Anne Hathaway who is officially the worst witch ever…

2. The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie’s ‘The Gentlemen’ is his nastiest film in an already pretty nasty career. I really wish he’d stop doing all this Mockney geezah crap. More specifically I wish he’d lay off the racist and misogynistic humour. The film’s only female character is threatened with rape and there’s literally a line where Colin Farrell tells a boxer why it’s ok that someone called him a “black c**t”. Oh dear…

1. The Ringmaster

To be honest, for most of the year, I didn’t think anything could top or bottom ‘The Gentlemen’, but, in the 11th month of the year, Denmark snuck in a late contender for the worst film of the year. The story of ‘The Ringmaster’ is that two blonde gas station attendants get kidnapped and subjected to a series of sexual tortures by a mysterious, titular “ringmaster” who looks like Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. The sexual violence is offensive and disrespectful (there’s a bloody scene where one of the girls has to stick a pin in her friend’s boob) and it just isn’t scary. Just sexist and misogynistic.

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2020: A YEAR IN FILM REVIEW

1/1/2021

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Covid closes the cinemas and the future looks online.

Well, wasn’t 2020 the worst year since America dropped the Atom bomb? Not just because of Covid-19 which has a 1.81 million death toll, but also because of the killing of George Floyd and the numerous celebrity deaths - we lost Sean Connery, Caroline Flack and Barbara Windsor this year among countless others.

It’s hard to believe that 2020 all started out so well. Certainly for the film industry when Bong Joon-Ho’s ‘Parasite’ (2020) scooped up the Best Picture Oscar. After decades of snobbery and celebrating mainstream prestige, the Academy finally opened their eyes to the beauty of foreign-language film-making.

‘Parasite’ was a remarkable film - I don’t think there’s been a better Best Picture winner in recent years. It could very easily and would definitely have made the No.1 spot in my list of the ‘best films of 2020’. Except the majority of people saw it in 2019, starting with when it first played at Cannes in May last year. It was talked about so much in 2019’s yearly round-ups and in the run-up to 2020’s Oscars that I really think we’ve just about had enough of it for one year. And that’s why it doesn’t feature in this year’s list, but neither does any film released before February 10th which is when the Oscars were held.

From then on, it was all downhill. The infection rates spiked and the death toll peaked and most of the world went into lockdown. As they did so, for the first time since World War II, cinemas across the world were forced to close. How could there be any movies with no cinemas to show them?

If the Covid-19 pandemic did anything at all, it was skyrocket and fast-forward the rise of streaming services. In September this year, TV streaming statistics reported that 6.7 million (24%) households signed up to 2 services or more. Cinemas have long been at risk from the emergence of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Curzon Home Cinema or whatever, but this pandemic put out the possibility that they just might not survive come the New Year.

Studios delayed their biggest budget tentpole blockbusters in hungry desire for good-value cinema money when the pandemic is over. The delay of the latest James Bond film ‘No Time to Die’ (2020) - which was expected to draw back the crowds to the auditorium seats in November - was responsible for the closure of the UK’s biggest cinema chain - Cineworld which closed all 600 of its theatres both sides of the Atlantic.

Traditional cinema-goers were faced with an option. Do they endanger themselves in a pandemic world by going to the cinema and risk getting Covid? Or do they stay at home, download the new movie from Spike Lee on Curzon and have a family evening in for half the price of a £30 family cinema bill?

It’s certainly the case that people’s homes don’t smell of popcorn or hot dogs and taking a bathroom break is pretty easy when you’re sitting on your sofa - you just have to press pause. Unlike, at the pictures, where you have to sneak out halfway through the latest Christopher Nolan blockbuster.

Is it a wonder that Disney dumped two of 2020’s biggest releases - ‘Mulan’ and ‘Soul’ - on their own streaming service Disney Plus?

To be honest, I think studios need to “man up” a little and just accept the fact that they aren’t going to make as much money as they would in non-Covid times. If the vaccine prevails and the infection rates go down, 2021 could see a flood of blockbusters with big-budget leftovers from 2020 hitting the cinema every week. I just worry that, if this goes on for too long, there might not be any cinemas left to even show ‘Black Widow’, ‘A Quiet Place: Part II’, ‘Dune’ and countless others.

Still, hope is on the horizon. Several vaccines have been approved, Trump is on his way out of the White House and a Brexit deal has been reached. It’s now all on 2021 to see if we can come out of this any stronger…

Here’s a selection of my 2020 highlights. Please note. I’ve included many titles that didn’t get a cinema release. A sign of the future of movie watching?

Blockbusters

No big screen medium has suffered more in 2020 than the blockbuster. Gone were the days of a summer stuffed with studio tentpoles competing for the big bucks at the local multiplex. I wonder whether this whole tentpole culture will have to change and we can no longer depend on one big movie to hold up a cinema for a month.

Warner Bros. took a major gamble putting ‘Tenet’ (2020) - Christopher Nolan’s latest head-scrambler - at the newly-reopened pictures back in August. I can’t say it was a gamble that paid off. ‘Tenet’ was predicted to kickstart the post-pandemic cinema industry, but it barely scraped $200 million against its $200 million budget; rounding up with a very miniscule $362.6 million.

I guess there is some hope that ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ (2020) scooped up the biggest post-pandemic, face mask-wearing Box Office numbers with an estimated $16.7 million in North America over Christmas weekend. That is despite the film being released simultaneously on HBO Max.

Is this proof that movie-goers still have the appetite for the big screen? Perhaps. Only time will tell. I just think it’s terrific that a female-led blockbuster is doing as well as it is.

American Indie Cinema

Oddly enough, independent cinemas are doing better than they have in years; reporting solid numbers with sold-out screenings and encouraging blockbuster fans to give arthouse films a try.

I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve tried to book tickets at Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema only to find shows are sold out. I guess cinemas like Broadway don’t depend on big-budget tentpoles (most of which are being delayed) for their revenue and I sincerely hope this new rise in independent cinemas gives low-budget films a platform for mainstream success.

The rise of streaming has certainly benefited American indie films. I’ve seen several of my favourite films of the year on streaming services such as Eliza Hittman’s brilliant abortion drama ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ which skipped cinemas and was available on multiple platforms.

My favourite American indie of the year, though, was ‘Clemency’ - a stirring, tough, but ethereal drama about Death Row with Oscar-worthy performances from Alfre Woodard, Aldis Hodge and Wendell Pierce. I watched that on Curzon over the summer.

Streaming has certainly given independent cinema a platform that appeals to more than just the niche, arthouse market. Expect to see David Fincher’s ‘Mank’ and Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ featuring heavily at next year’s Oscars (if there are any). I just hope smaller films get the recognition they deserve.

British Cinema

What a brilliant year it has been for British Film. There have been so many outstanding titles from a wide range of BFI-funded productions.

I loved ‘Lynn + Lucy’, for example, from acclaimed British shorts director Fyzal Boulifa which is a really bleak and brilliant look at how tragedy can rip apart a friendship.

In Ireland, but directed by a Brit was ‘Calm with Horses’ - a terrifically tense gangster drama with doses of equine therapy and two outstanding performances from Cosmo Jarvis and Niamh Algar.

Even away from the cinema, the distinction between TV and Film continued to be blurred by Steve McQueen’s immaculate ‘Small Axe’ series. The opening film in that - ‘Mangrove’ about the Mangrove Nine - opened the London Film Festival. I saw it on a big screen at Broadway and so it features in my top 10 of the year.

The best Brit film of the year, though, was ‘Rocks’ which really put Director Sarah Gavron on the map as the mistress of British feelgood realism. It had a genuine sense of light and dark which any film about childhood and adolescence needs.

World Cinema

For all the troubles going on on the globe, world cinema really came into its own or, should I say, came of age in 2020. With most American blockbusters delayed or dumped on streaming services, cinemas across the globe began showing local fare that didn’t rely on the States for the big bucks. As a result, we saw an influx of foreign-language films showing up on multiplex schedules.

Of course, the year’s success for World Film was skyrocketed by South Korea’s ‘Parasite’ taking home Best Picture. It was a fantastic movie - the most close to perfect I’ve seen in a decade. But, again, most people saw it last year and the Oscar it won was recognising last year’s movies. And so I class it as last year’s movie…

What was definitely this year’s movie was Celine Sciamma’s ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ from France which I saw at Broadway back in March. What a wonderful film that was - classical yet sexy and costume-heavy, but cinematic. It was certainly the sexiest movie of the year with the scariest singing sequence of the year.

World Cinema really benefited from the rise of streaming too. I can’t tell you the amount of foreign-language movies I watched on Curzon and BFI Player over lockdown. ‘System Crasher’ from Germany, ‘Bacurau’ from Brazil, ‘The Orphanage’ from Afghanistan, ‘And Then We Danced’ from Georgia...The list goes on, I tell you. But my favourite was ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’.

Turkeys

There’s always a turkey in every year and, to be honest, 2020 was one big Turkey of a year. As I said, the s**test year since America dropped the Atom bomb.

The bad movies kept coming at the start. I nearly tore the cinema screen to pieces when watching the dreadful horror film ‘The Turning’. There were some really bad horror films this year - ‘The Grudge’, ‘Fantasy Island’, ‘Brahms: The Boy II’ just to name a few.

The worst was ‘The Ringmaster’, though - a disgusting and disrespectful slice of torture porn from Denmark. It made me feel sick to be human. More sick than watching Guy Ritchie’s Mockney claptrap ‘The Gentlemen’ which was a misogynistic, racist mess. If so many bad things happened in 2020, they somehow felt ok and bearable compared to watching ‘The Ringmaster’.

Honourable Mentions

Like I said, I’ve stuck to movies released in the UK in 2020 for my final ‘best of the year’ list. Although I’ve bent my rules of only allowing films that have played at the cinema (there’s even one film on this list that played on TV!).

And ‘Parasite’ would definitely have made my No.1 spot had it not featured so heavily in the run-up to 2020’s awards and on critics’ ‘end of year’ lists last year. Either way, here are a couple of movies that didn’t quite make the final list:

Lynn + Lucy
Mank
Eternal Beauty
Selah and the Spades
Saint Frances

Top 10 Best Films of 2020

10. Soul

This was the last film I saw in 2020 and what a poetic end it made for. It’s Pixar’s best film since ‘Inside Out’ (2015) and a lovely, jazzy fable about life, death and the afterlife. The story of a failing jazz artist who finds himself literally caught between heaven and hell in the last few seconds of his life, this drew wholly invited comparisons with ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ (1946) and I don’t say that lightly! Beautifully animated and made me shed a few tears.

9. Saint Maud

Morfydd Clark has a horror face to shiver your timbers and make you wet your bed. Rose Glass’s sexuo-religious horror forgoes cheap genre tricks like jump scares for ideas about sexual jealousy, escapism and liberation. Genuinely scary and intelligent.

8. Calm with Horses

A moody, atmospheric crime drama about a former Irish county boxer torn between his life working as a hitman for a criminal family and his love for his autistic son. Cosmo Jarvis and Niamh Algar are astonishing as the couple split by divided loyalties and Jarvis’s county boxer Arm finds solace in equine therapy - hence the title. Also features the best soundtrack of the year by Blanck Mass.

7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Wherever you stand on abortion, you have no excuse not to fall in love with the documentarian authenticity and adolescent accessibility of this thermonuclear road movie. The story of a pregnant 17 year old and her best friend who travel across state lines in search of an abortion, this is a winning tale of sisterhood and friendship that just happens to have reproductive rights raging in its belly.

6. David Byrne’s American Utopia

The most singularly pleasurable and uplifting experience of this year’s LFF, I saw this on a big screen at Broadway. It’s the filmed version of David Byrne’s 2018 Broadway stage show ‘American Utopia’. I know nothing about David Byrne and couldn’t give a toss about music, but I loved this movie and you will too. Cinematic and accessible to all demographics.

5. Mangrove

Many people will question if this is even a film at all as, the first part in Steve McQueen’s brilliant ‘Small Axe’ TV series, it played on BBC1 in November. I saw it on the big screen at Broadway when it opened the London Film Festival, though, and was so blown away by it. It’s a biopic about the trial of the Mangrove Nine which became the first judicial acknowledgement of racial hatred in the Metropolitan Police. The story couldn’t feel more contemporary than it does in this #BlackLivesMatter year and, despite being made for TV, it looks more cinematic than most big-budget motion pictures.

4. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Classical costume tropes got a rock n’ roll makeover back in March in Celine Sciamma’s spellbinding period romance. It’s the tale of a painter who falls for her subject and is an ecstatic expression of passion through art, a coolly contemporary musing on beauty from the eye of the beholder and a saucy manifesto on the female gaze. Contains some of the sexiest scenes of the year and the scariest singing sequence in living memory.

3. Rocks

Sarah Gavron truly established herself as the mistress of British feelgood realism with this warm, witty, wonderful coming-of-age drama about a group of teenage girls scrabbling to survive in the East End of London. This movie really captures all the glories and grotesqueries of growing up, has a genuine sense of light and dark and terrific breakthrough performances from Bukky Bakray and Nottingham’s own Shaneigha-Monik Greyson. Brilliant stuff.

2. Clemency

Chinonye Chukwu’s Death Row drama isn’t an easy watch - it’s the story of a veteran death row warden who develops an attachment to a convicted killer awaiting execution and features several horrific lethal injection scenes. It’s extremely well-researched, though, and, beyond its death row trappings, is a universal story of what it means to stare into an abyss only for the abyss to stare back at you. Alfre Woodard gives a career-defining performance as the tortured warden, but special praise must also go to Aldis Hodge as the convicted killer and Wendell Pierce as Woodard’s long-suffering husband.

1. Tenet

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster with brains was expected to bring the crowds back to the cinema seats back in August. Sadly it didn’t do that; scraping just $362.6 million against its $200 million budget. I just remember seeing it on a big, juicy IMAX screen and being utterly immersed by so many great moments - the inverted fistfights, the plane crash, the backwards car chase. This is what blockbuster cinema should be - immersive and intelligent. If you can spend millions of dollars making movies that are this complex and this clever, why would you not? I hope ‘Tenet’ wins big at the Oscars! It’s one of my favourite cinematic experiences.

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HAPPIEST SEASON (2020) FILM REVIEW

12/30/2020

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***

12A, 101 Mins

Kristen Stewart and MacKenzie Davis have lovely chemistry in this nice Christmas LGBT rom-com.

Here’s a late festive treat for you. ‘Happiest Season’ (2020) boasts lovely performances and chemistry from Kristen Stewart and MacKenzie Davis as a lesbian couple trying to hide their relationship from the latter’s parents at Christmas. This movie is one to uplift the soul and hit home that watching ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ (1946) can really change your life.

Abby (Stewart) and Harper (Davis) have been dating for nearly a year. Abby is the butch side to the relationship with punk rock, peroxide blonde hair while Harper is tall, lanky and the femme of the couple. Abby has always disliked Christmas since her parents passed away so Harper sees this as the perfect opportunity to introduce Abby to her conservative parents (Victor Garber and Mary Steenburgen) at her hometown.

Abby hopes to propose to Harper on Christmas morning. However, on the way to Harper’s Caldwell family’s house, Harper lets out that she lied to Abby about coming out to her parents under the fear that it would interfere with her father Ted (Garber) running for Mayor. Harper doesn’t want to come out to her family until after Christmas and asks Abby to play the role of her straight roommate for the holidays. Abby reluctantly agrees…

Kristen Stewart is really good as the butch, punky Abby. I’ve had a bit of a troubled history when it comes to my relationship with this actress. I hated the ‘Twilight’ movies (2008-2012), for example, and always found Kristen has a really annoying habit of biting her bottom lip and looking miserable. She doesn’t do much lip-biting here, but interestingly her moody, miserable persona is put to good effect when playing up the butch side of the relationship.

Meanwhile MacKenzie Davis, who was last seen sticking her arm up a Cow’s arse in the awful political satire ‘Irresistible’ (2020) and was pretty badass in the otherwise empty ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ (2019), is pretty and cute in the femme role of the relationship. Davis and Stewart have two lovely scenes together. One when they exchange foreplay (though no sex!) and the other when they smile at each other while watching ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ (1946) at the cinema.

This film really taps into the anxiety shared by gay people over hiding their sexuality from their parents. There’s a moving scene where Harper confesses how hard it is to hide their relationship to Abby and the conversation that follows includes the lines: “you not telling your parents is a choice that you made”, “do you know how painful it is to watch the person that I love choose to hide me?”, “I’m not hiding you. I’m hiding me”, “they’re my parents and I’m scared that if I tell them who I really am, I will lose you” and “I don’t want to lose you”.

It’s a shame the roles of the conservative parents are underwritten. The film criminally wastes the immense talent of Victor Garber as dad Ted. Garber is such a fabulously crinkly-eyed and nosed presence and it’s great to see Mr. Andrews from ‘Titanic’ (1997) back on screen, even in a small role.

I watched ‘Happiest Season’ nearly a week after watching Viggo Mortensen’s ‘Falling’ (2020). That was another drama about the relationship between conservative parents and their gay children. In that film, Lance Henriksen’s gung-ho dad spent his lifetime rejecting the fact that his son was gay. Harper’s parents’ reaction to their daughter coming out here is a much more positive experience and I confess to having shed a few tears when the truth was finally revealed in the living room.

The movie ends with Harper, Abby and the united family sitting in a cinema at Christmas watching ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’. This film really proves that film’s power to uplift the soul and put you in the Christmas spirit. I certainly felt more Christmassy watching both ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ and ‘Happiest Season’ this festive season.

‘Happiest Season’ is on multiple platforms now.

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**

15, 115 Mins

***

15, 122 Mins

*

1 Season, 10 Episodes

*****

PG, 97 Mins

​Pieces of a Woman (out now in cinemas) (out Jan. 7th on Netflix)

​The Father (out Jan. 8th) (in cinemas)

​News of the World (TBC) (on Netflix)

​Sound of Metal (out Jan. 29th) (in cinemas)

​​Nomadland (out Feb. 19th) (in cinemas)

​No Time to Die (out Apr. 2nd) (in cinemas)

A Quiet Place: Part II (out Apr. 23rd) (in cinemas)

Black Widow (out May 7th) (in cinemas)

​Top Gun: Maverick (out Jul. 1st) (in cinemas)

​Dune (TBC) (in cinemas)

Passing (out at Sundance Jan. 30th) (in cinemas)

Mayday (out at Sundance Jan. 31st) (in cinemas)

​Promising Young Woman (out Feb. 12th) (in cinemas)

Minamata (out Feb. 12th) (in cinemas)

​Minari (out Mar. 19th) (in cinemas)

​Blithe Spirit (out Jan. 15th) (in cinemas and on Sky Cinema)

​The Mauritanian (out Feb. 26th) (in cinemas)

​Supernova (out Mar. 5th) (in cinemas)

​​Last Night in Soho (out Apr. 23rd) (in cinemas)

​Death on the Nile (out Sept. 17th) (in cinemas)

Quo Vadis, Aida? (out Jan. 22nd) (in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema)

Never Gonna Snow Again (TBC)

Night of the Kings (TBC)

The Disciple (TBC)

​Amants (TBC)

​The Many Saints of Newark (out Mar. 12th) (in cinemas)

​Cruella (out May 28th) (in cinemas)

Halloween Kills (out Oct. 15th) (in cinemas)

The Last Duel (out Oct. 15th) (in cinemas) ​

​West Side Story (out Dec. 10th) (in cinemas)

Top 10 Worst Films of 2020

10. Love Sarah

​​9. Irresistible

​​8. Downhill

​7. Joan of Arc

6. Cuck

​5. The Turning

​4. After We Collided

3. The Witches

​2. The Gentlemen

1. The Ringmaster

Top 10 Best Films of 2020​

​10. Soul

​9. Saint Maud

​8. Calm with Horses

​7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

​​6. David Byrne’s American Utopia

5. Mangrove

​4. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

​3. Rocks

2. Clemency

1. Tenet

***

12A, 101 Mins

Meet Roshan Chandy

Roshan's Top 10 Best Films of 2020

Follow Me on Twitter​

Rating System

***** 2 Thumbs Up**** Thumb Up*** Waving Thumbs** Thumb Down* 2 Thumbs Down​

Archives

FILM OF THE WEEK​

Soul​(PG, 97 Mins)

DVD OF THE WEEK​

Looted (DVD)(15, 89 Mins)

TV MOVIE OF THE WEEK​

Slumdog Millionaire (2009)(15, 120 Mins) Weds 20th Jan., 11.20pm, Film4

Pieces of a Woman (out now in cinemas) (out Jan. 7th on Netflix)

The Father (out Jan. 8th) (in cinemas)

News of the World (TBC) (on Netflix)

Sound of Metal (out Jan. 29th) (in cinemas)

Nomadland (out Feb. 19th) (in cinemas)

No Time to Die (out Apr. 2nd) (in cinemas)

Top Gun: Maverick (out Jul. 1st) (in cinemas)

Dune (TBC) (in cinemas)

Promising Young Woman (out Feb. 12th) (in cinemas)

Minari (out Mar. 19th) (in cinemas)

Blithe Spirit (out Jan. 15th) (in cinemas and on Sky Cinema)

The Mauritanian (out Feb. 26th) (in cinemas)

Supernova (out Mar. 5th) (in cinemas)

Last Night in Soho (out Apr. 23rd) (in cinemas)

Death on the Nile (out Sept. 17th) (in cinemas)

Amants (TBC)

The Many Saints of Newark (out Mar. 12th) (in cinemas)

Cruella (out May 28th) (in cinemas)

The Last Duel (out Oct. 15th) (in cinemas)

West Side Story (out Dec. 10th) (in cinemas)

9. Irresistible

8. Downhill

7. Joan of Arc

5. The Turning

4. After We Collided

2. The Gentlemen

Top 10 Best Films of 2020

10. Soul

9. Saint Maud

8. Calm with Horses

7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

6. David Byrne’s American Utopia

4. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

3. Rocks

Follow Me on Twitter

*** 2 Thumbs Up
Thumb Up
* Waving Thumbs
** Thumb Down
* 2 Thumbs Down

FILM OF THE WEEK

Soul
(PG, 97 Mins)

DVD OF THE WEEK

Looted (DVD)
(15, 89 Mins)

TV MOVIE OF THE WEEK

Slumdog Millionaire (2009)
(15, 120 Mins)
Weds 20th Jan., 11.20pm, Film4