All the Money in the World

The story is well-known and rather macabre.  John Paul Getty III is kidnapped, aged 16 from Rome and held captive for six months in Calabria, during the course of which his ear is cut off and sent as a bargaining piece in the ransom negotiations.  The reason for the long-drawn out negotiations is that granddad, J P Getty I refuse to pay up despite being the richest man in the world.  Stuck in the middle, trying to get her son back is (Abi) Gail Getty, (excellent almost unrecognisable Michelle Williams) and the granddad’s negotiator and security man Chase (Mark Wahlberg, uninspiring).

This is not an elevating film.  It shows what happens to people blinded with money like the old man and to people who are blinded by other people’s money – the kidnappers, the mafia and anyone else who wanted a share of the huge ransom.  The police are pretty incompetent, the press are just after the smell of scandal and as this movie by Ridley Scott shows, there was little hurry to end this tragic story or to protect this dysfunctional family.  Money corrupts.  Christopher Plummer is credible in the title role and perhaps less cynical than Kevin Spacey would have been, the latter ceremoniously ditched after his #metoo scandal emerged.

Is it a good film?  Not in my opinion.  It drags quite noticeably in the first part and despite the good acting we never get to feel very much for the characters.  The photography and recreation of the era seems good but otherwise it seems like little more wasreally added here that could not be found in a good documentary.  Strictly average.

★★★

Paddington 2

Just the tonic after a hard week!  I adored the books as a kid and though the films are a vamped up version for the 2010’s, they still retain a lot of the great values of the written work.  The story this time is that of the robbery of a pop-up book which is a sort of treasure map.  Paddington is accused of this theft and ends up in prison which leads to an amazing series of challenges in itself like making a breakfast serving of marmalade sandwiches.  Meanwhile the real cad, an actor and showman called Phoenix (Hugh Grant in superb ham form) is off scot-free and well on his way to finding the treasure.  The Brown family on one side and Paddington’s new friends on the inside all combine to help him clear his name and track down the real culprit.

There is plenty of slapstick for the kids, quite a few verbal gags for older viewers and a really nice message about honesty and helping each other that the world needs right now.  Paddington is the star of course, adorable and well voiced by Ben Whishaw.  Sally Hawkins shows just why she is such a versatile star as Mrs Brown and Julie Walters is a sedate Mrs Bird.  Hugh Grant does very well as the villain and Joanna Lumley, Tom Conti, Jim Broadbent and Brendan Gleeson all have attractive supporting roles.

Yes, some of it is rather far-fetched but there is so much delight in the film and so much humanity, you come out of the theatre feeling totally cheered up and in this day and age that is a big plus.

★★★★+

Wonder Wheel

If Woody Allen was a racehorse, he would have been gracefully retired by now.  After all, at 82 with a film a year over about 6 decades and a fair number of classics, his legacy to American film is immense especially as a witty writer of lines and as a director of actresses.  Sadly his last great movie Blue Jasmine was a few years back now and the latest have been “blah” frankly.  Wonder Wheel starts well, set in Coney Island of the 50’s and involving a waitress, Ginny (Excellent Kate Winslet) who is twice married and disappointed with life, her husband, fair ride attendant Humpty (Jim Belushi) and the pyromaniac son of Ginny who is about ten and provides the comic relief in the film. Carolina, Humpty’s daughter comes back from a failed marriage to a mafia type and with hitmen chasing her.  Watching over all of this and seeking inspiration for his writing is student and summer lifeguard Mickey who embarks on an affair with Ginny and then starts dating Carolina.  Sadly, the plot doesn’t go much further than this so the first 40 minutes setting up the story are the best, bar a couple of late scenes. The dialogues are clichéd and lame, sometimes it plays more like a stage play and by the end, we have seen and heard enough to just want it to end fast.  Justin Timberlake as Mickey means well but has neither the charisma nor the acting chops to convince either as narrator or lover.

Two things save the film: Winslet’s credible Ginny with all her conflicting emotions bottled up inside and Vittorio Storaro’s golden photography making the place and time seem like a Golden era, which it plainly wasn’t.  The set and the way it is photographed manage to capture the glamour and the seediness all in one and that is a feat.  For the rest, it is best left unsaid.

★★

Maudie

A slow rather wistfully sad tale of naif artist Maud Lewis, who had a successful career from her shack in the countryside in Nova Scotia until 1970.  Even President Nixon commissioned a painting from her. Plagued by rheumatoid arthritis, she was badly treated by her own family and set out to be the housemaid for a gruff fish pedlar Everett Lewis.  This unlikely couple slowly get used to each other and eventually marry.  The film is largely about this relationship, her austere living conditions, the fairly cold reactions of the locals and her painting so not much happens, all very low-key but at the same time quite authentic.

Sally Hawkins gives another extraordinary performance as Maud, rich in personality and gestures.  Some did not like Ethan Hawke as Everett but I thought he played the part well, especially as they got older.  Beautiful photography of this bleak part of Nova Scotia from Guy Godfree. Not perhaps the most mood lifting movie but another sensitive portrait of an artist.

★★★+

The Cut

Another metaphoric movie, this time in the style of an epic.  Starting from the Armenian genocide when Nazaret is forcefully conscripted into the Turkish army and then left for dead we follow this man who has had his life saved but lost his vocal chords on an odyssey to find his wife and family who were rounded up later on and also ended up having a torturous life.  Nazaret manages to escape to Syria and then his search continues amazingly in Cuba and later in Minneapolis before finally locating his daughters in North Dakota.

In all his travels he sees great cruelty and also great generosity, showing so often how man goes out of his way to ignore fellow suffering and in fact put obstacles in the way of help.  As such it touches on themes that The Square also brings up this week.  And above all that, the geographical conditions depicted in the movie would kill most.

So far so good, a surprising and moving story.  The fact that German director Fatih Akin is of Turkish background adds spice but he does tend to skirt round the Turkish treatment of Armenians. But the actual pacing and flow of the movie is really rather slow to say the least.  By the end, well over two hours gone, we all feel tired and exhausted because there has been little real change of pace and tone.  We feel Nazaret’s gruelling search. A little of that can add authenticity to the movie but not too much and this had several drawn out scenes that needed editing.  The fact that the main character is mute for most of the film does not help, but this too is symbolic, together with a Charlie Chaplin film clip slotted in along the way.  Tahar Rahim does what he can with the role but is also handicapped by being a tad too young and is not convincingly aged during this whole ordeal that takes over 8 hard years.

Akin’s heart is in the right place and the movie has angles we haven’t seen but by the end, we are ready for it to finish.  Photography was perhaps the key technical feature.

★★★

The Square

Up until about half way I had my doubts about this film, a rather dark satire on an art gallery and its curator in Sweden, the PR campaigns to shock and sell its upcoming exhibition, the class divide between museum donors of a gentrified class and the homeless begging and sleeping outside. But then Ruben Ostlund throws in several key scenes that just send you into total disbelief and yet they work!  Gallery curator Christian (Claes Bang, excellent and hassled constantly) and an American journalist fight over a condom they used during a one night stand with Anne’s chimpanzee listening in the next room. Elizabeth Moss runs the gamut of strange faces in her supporting role. We have a young boy delivering a torrential rant at Christian in defence of his rights and we have the piece de resistance, a piece of performance art at the end of a dinner for museum supporters in which an actor playing a sort of Tarzan terrorizes diners and shows them up for their lack of solidarity.

This is not a film to forget easily and although it seems to ramble at times there is so much content to reflect on as it portrays aspects of our modern world, our fears and our failings.  As in Force Majeure, Ostlund aims to make us feel uncomfortable and does so very successfully raising all sorts of interesting questions on the way.  Sometimes his use of artifice to do so is seemingly obvious but clever (a press conference where instead of attacking the museum for showing a provocative video in bad taste some journalists actually criticise the museum for disowning it and taking it down.)

Indeed a novel and stimulating film well worth seeing again and while somewhat erratic in pace, it has a lot to say.

★★★★++

Suntan

This has to be one of the most uncomfortable movies I’ve seen in a long time.  Kostis is a 40-something doctor, unprepossessing, balding, overweight and hairy.  He has just been appointed to be the medic on Antiparos, an island of 800 in winter, bleak and cold.  Those months are hard but when summer comes it is like a hedonist summer camp.  Kostis is smitten by one of his patients, a nubile 21 year-old Ana (Elli Tringou) who, with her bunch of friends, thinks it’s fun to have Kostis tagging along with them by day at the nude beach and by night in the discos. Ana strings Kostis along and they even have sex but while for her it is a game and he is not only disposable but distinctly inferior to the young gods around her, Kostis drowns deeper and deeper in her spell to the point at which he not only makes a complete fool of himself but jeopardises his career.  This is an uncomfortable film about the failure to fit in socially and the inability to gauge one’s self image.  It is also about ageing and how for some things you are only young once.  Argyris Papadimitropoulos contrasts the gorgeous sunny setting and beautiful bodies with the dark descent into hell of his protagonist, excellently and frighteningly played by Makis Papadimitrou.  All rather sad and scary in the end.

★★★

Polina

A strange French production, this film looks at a young Russian girl who aims to become a dancer with the Bolshoi ballet.  At first we see her childhood in Russia and the sacrifices her family must make to get her in. Fast forward some years and Polina finds the restrictions of the school too tough.  With a boyfriend she goes to France to study contemporary dance in Provence with a teacher played by Juliette Binoche lending her name to the film. After an injury there she leaves her boyfriend and ends up as a barmaid in Antwerp where she meets a young dancer with whom she choreographs an exciting new dance.  The backstory continues with her father visiting and expressing his dismay at her not continuing in the Bolshoi. His particular sacrifice has to do with dealing with the mafia, as a mule I guess.  The film ends with the performance of the new work.

The merits of this film come principally from the dancing. Anastasia Shevstova is very good as is Jeremie Belingard, her Belgian partner. The choreography from co-director Angelin Preljocal (an Albanian on whom the story is based) is also superb.  The acting from the ballet leads is satisfactory and it is left to the Russians: parents Miglen Mirtchev and Ksenia Kutepova and teacher Aleksey Guskov to provide some more weight.

But it is a film that starts in one direction and ends in another which is fair enough considering that the main premise is to show Polina doing what she really wants to do.

★★★

Suburbicon

While it is quite watchable, there is a real mess at the centre of George Clooney’s latest film which does not really know what it is.  Set in an “idyllic” American new town in the late 50’s which has a deep and dark underside, it has a whole plotline based on racial discrimination which goes nowhere. Characters that are underdeveloped and a reason for existing that is not clear, apparently a fleshing out by Clooney of the Coen Brothers original story.  Literally next door to this is a murder mystery turned thriller featuring Matt Damon as a podgy financial executive, his son (Noah Jupe effective) and his wife and sister-in-law (both played by Julianne Moore – competent but nothing she hasn’t done better before).  By the time an insurance company man comes snooping around (Oscar Isaac breathing life into things), the tension starts to ratchet up.  The problem is that we don’t really care about either story and they seem artificially glued together to make some sort of political statement.   GC can do much better.

★★

Phantom Thread

A somewhat slow and cerebral movie of utter class, a psychological thriller and a look at how people manipulate others. A superb Daniel Day Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a fashion designer in the early 50’s in Britain.  His house serves the socialites and royalty of the era and he is a driven and temperamental man. His older sister Cyril (Lesley Manville, also strong) is his right hand and major domo, supporting her brother’s whims.

Reynolds does not have relationships in the traditional sense, he has muses, who he treats as objects of fascination for moments and nuisances when he is working.  One presumes there is sex but he is such a self-centred man there is no emotional support for the relationship and at the end of the day he is little but a baby. Until Alma comes along. Amazingly, newcomer Vicky Krieps matches Day-Lewis in his acting as a young woman who insists that she has an equal say in the relationship and that it is not all one-way traffic.  So, the film is basically a character study of three people in special circumstances but also reflects power struggles in all contexts.  By setting it in a fashion house we also have the creative aspect and the beauty of the gowns, the sweat and effort of the creative process.  Beautifully filmed by Paul Thomas Anderson, with a very good soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood, the movie engrosses as an excellent piece of film making.

★★★★++