Luz

This independent drama is a sensitive well-constructed piece on a limited budget by indie filmmaker Jon Garcia.  The first half is set in a prison as Ruben and Carlos share a cell.  

Ruben (Ernesto Reyes) is in jail for DUI causing the death of a passenger and he has left a daughter and girlfriend outside.  As he was a driver and not involved in criminal activities it is all a big shock to him and although Carlos (Jesse Tayeh) initially treats him badly, the two eventually become friends and lovers.  

Fast forward to three years later.  Carlos is out, living with his mother (Alma Gloria Garcia) and apparently seeing a young woman.  Ruben goes off in search of him and the next part of the movie relates to them deciding where they stand in relation to each other.  

A final part involves Ruben heading off to find his daughter and bringing him to live with him.

Given the budget, this film is a simple one but nicely photographed and set in Oregon. The soundtrack by Jim Brunberg and Benjamin Landsverk is good but perhaps overly intrusive as the film does not always need such obvious signposting.  Acting is good even though the leads are asked sometimes to bare many deep emotions and the film also involves some fairly frank sex scenes.

I felt that the director achieved what he set out to do, tell a gay love story involving convicts in a sensitive and respectful way.

3 stars

French Exit

Lucas Hedges accompanied Meryl Streep on a transatlantic crossing earlier this year in the role of nephew.  

This time he sails with his mother Michelle Pfeiffer as they leave bankruptcy behind to start anew in Paris.

He looks a lot less happy this time, graced with a thanklessly wet role as Malcolm, nerdish son of the formidable and yet somewhat vacuous Frances Price, who has some skeletons in her cupboard but is most dedicated to spending her inheritance from her dead husband in the most bored manner possible. When debts in NY get too much she and her son decamp to a friend’s flat in Paris. There, she gets rid of what cash she has left and gathers together a ragbag of weird hangers on:

A Mme Renard, an American widow acquaintance, played by Valerie Mahaffey and perhaps the most amusing of the lot, a young psychic, a private detective, the owner of the flat who is another dull friend, the damp squib (ex?) -girlfriend of Malcolm, called Susan, Tom, her current or ex, etc, etc. In the centre of it all is Little Frank, a black cat who Frances believes is an encarnation of her dead husband.

As if all this rather forced storyline wasn’t enough, the play is shot and the lines are delivered in a monotonously deliberate and slow pace with very little variation.  Some speeches rise above the rest but the first 40 minutes, in particular, dragged.  

With Pfeiffer aboard it is not a complete disaster but she really needed to ham it up like Isabelle Huppert would have and most of the rest of the cast seem irrelevant.  I don’t think the attempt at something vaguely magic realism irritated me as much as the fact that it is all quite badly and boringly filmed.  Best avoided.

1 star plus

The Dig

This recent British film surprises somewhat given its rather unexciting material.  The Dig is about the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon burial ship in Suffolk just prior to the outbreak of War World II.

  It is found on the property of one Edith Pretty, widow, who has these mounds on her land. She hires a local excavator Basil Brown to start digging and once he unearths the form of the ship local and national museums come running.  

Pretty tries to protect the work of Brown as a mark of simple human respect while the “professionals” are all trying to figure in the spotlight.  Eventually, the ship, after being “hidden” for the duration of the war ends up at the British Museum.

The human side of the story puts the flesh on the film.  Edith has a young son Robert (Archie Barnes) she is looking after but she herself had rheumatic fever as a child and is ailing badly.  

She does get her cousin Rory (Johnny Flynn) to come help on the dig but he is about to sign up for the RAF.  Basil is married but his wife lives at a distance and in his own quiet way he becomes friendly with Edith and the boy.

The second half of the film focuses more on the relationship of a young married couple of archaeologists, Stuart (Ben Chaplin) and Margaret (Lily James).

Their relationship is not going well and she feels an attraction to Rory. As we near the end of the film, the war is on us and blackouts arrive. 

The acting is good with Carey Mulligan, very different to her recent role in Promising Young Woman and Fiennes playing a lower class, less formerly educated man very well indeed.

Lily James is also suitably restrained as Margaret.  What raises this film above the level is the script by Moira Buffini, the beautiful Terence Malick like photography of Mike Eley and Stefan Gregory´s quietly pulsing bucolic soundtrack. 

 Good work by young director Simon Stone to pull this all together. Satisfying all round.

4 stars plus

Novitiate

A 2017 debut feature from Maggie Betts following the life of a young girl who decides to become a nun in the 1960’s in the US.

Cathleen (Margaret Qualley, daughter of Andie McDowell) comes from a broken but unreligious family and her mother Nora (Julianne Nicholson) is somewhat shocked when Cathleen decides to enter the convent.

  She is a shy girl who seems too ethereal for the world and is easily convinced by the idea that becoming perfect for God is a good mission. We follow her and her colleagues as they first serve as postulants and then novitiates and finally only a few are found to have the stuff to become brides of Christ.

  The convent is an austere one with old practices including the use of a whip for discipline.  

The Reverend Mother, played by Melissa Leo with great gusto, runs a tight ship and rules are strictly enforced, which suits some.

But concurrent with the girls’ training is the release of the Vatican 2 committee work which virtually forbid some of the extreme disciplinary practices and in some way downgrade the status of the nuns within the church, which we later learn triggers a huge exodus of nuns from the orders.

A slow moving, intelligent and observant film.  It handles the religious issues and questions sensitively and does give an idea of the ordeals which some novitiates had to endure. Qualley is suitably smart but innocent in the lead role and Leo shines as the Reverend Mother, very much a believer in rigour and a person with much anger and pride built up inside despite her preaching the reverse.

  I also liked Nicholson’s performance as the blowsy mother.  There are some very good awkward scenes in the film highlighting the dilemma’s the church faces as it tries to remain relevant in society.

4 stars

On the Rocks

When a film gets 42 nominations for awards in IMDB but only one prize it already tells you something.  This is Sofia Coppola’s latest, set largely in New York city and featuring Rachida Jones

(daughter of Quincy and Mod Squadder Peggy Lipton) as Laura, a mom of two young daughters, a writer with writer’s block and the wife of a start up whiz Dean (Marlon Wayans) who spends a lot of time travelling for work with his attractive young team member Fiona.

Enter stage left, Felix, Laura’s father played by Bill Murray, a Coppola stalwart.  Felix is a bon vivant, sometime art dealer and serial ladies’ man. Most women actually seem to steer well clear of him or flirt from the first moment.  

Felix plants the idea in Laura’s head that Dean is having an affair and most of the film involves the two of them stalking Dean or checking his messages to see what is going on. 

 By the end of the film it transpires that Felix really wanted more to spend time with his daughter and philosophize about life than anything else.

So, wafer-thin plot, lots of pleasant rambling talks with an observant and intelligent screenplay by Sofia herself but not much else unless you want to see inside iconic NY bars and restaurants.

Of course, Murray, with his clown-like face is a joy to watch and Jones holds her own (plus a delight to see Barbara Bain, the Mission Impossible star from the 60’s in a small part at the ripe old age of 90),

but the end result is all rather underwhelming.  Pleasant camerawork and music but I felt this could have been so much more.  As someone said, Woody Allen’s leftovers, but maybe not even that.

2 stars

Beyond the Clouds

This is something of a throwback. Directed by Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi in his first work for some years, it is filmed in Mumbai.  

On the one hand, the film is about a poor orphaned young man, Amir, who acts as a drug runner for a mafia type. A series of events brings him back into contact with his sister Tara but their unity is short lived.

  A man tries to rape her and in self-defence she hits him and sends him unconscious to hospital.  She is arrested and sent to jail.  In jail, she shares a cell with a dying mother and the young son of this woman, called Chotu.  Tara becomes his babysitter.

Meanwhile Amir, realises that he has to keep Akshi, the rapist alive because if he dies, Tara will remain in prison accused of murder.  So, he buys his medicines and spends time in hospital with him.  Akshi’s mother, and two very young daughters arrive from the South of India and Amir, who by now is living in his sister’s flat, is obliged to take them in.  The film putters along in this way with occasional melodramatic scenes as brother and sister try to keep it all together.

Majidi is apparently trying to tell a story of redemption as Amir, who has never been shown any love and can be a pretty wild street kid, begins to learn the responsibilities of running a Does it work?  Only in part.  Despite the somewhat authentic scenes of poverty, the dilapidated hospital and prison, etc, there is a sense that everything develops in a rather pat way, in order to convey the messages of the director.

Ishaan Khatter debuts as Amir and does a very good job in the lead.  

Malavika Mohanan has little to do with her underwritten role as Tara and Sharada as the granny and Goutam Ghose as Akshi convince.  Sadly, and despite the attractive photography of Anil Mehta, the total effect is not the most convincing.  

Interesting but all a bit forced.

2 stars plus

Sorjonen (series) (aka Bordertown)

Have just finished the 11-episode season 1 of this Finnish detective series. Well-made, with good direction and script and a series of characters with plenty of depth to them.  The setting, in a city 30 kms from the Russian border allows for all sorts of no good.

Ville Virtanen as Kari Sorjonen, the off-beat cop with some sort of psychic powers and retentive memory is a very well-concocted character as he arrives in the hometown of his wife in a search for a quieter life outside the “murder capital” Helsinki. He soon discovers that Lappeenranta is full of illegal activity and underworld violence.  

Meanwhile his wife, played by Matleena Kuusniemi is recovering from a brain tumour and is looking to go back to work, which may be with her childhood boyfriend.  There’s plenty of smalltown gossip here.

  The most interesting character is Lena, a former cop for the Russians who is a single mother and a hardened almost solitary woman who will do what it takes to get an answer. Anu Sinisalo shines in this physical role.

Apart from that the series reflects contemporary life in Finland and shows that even there greed, corruption and the more base human feelings are indeed still very present.

  I intend to catch up with the other two series but after a break from the Nordic gloom and violence.

4 stars

A Bread Factory Part 2

Saw the first part a couple of months ago and now like an old friend I get to part two.  This is the somewhat unorthodox tale of an arts centre in upstate New York trying to survive new trends and competition from avant-garde froth.

The factory is doing a version of the Greek classic Hecuba and while it is very good, no one wants to come and see it.  

Patrick Wang surprises us at many steps in this and yet it is a much more sedate affair than part 1.  

There are some scenes of the rehearsals for Hecuba and opening night and Elisabeth Henry and Jessica Pimentel shine at this. 

 Young Max (Zachary Sale) has taken over the newspaper after Jan, the previous editor disappears and suddenly he has a platoon of cub reporters.  

The oldies reminisce with soliloquies from Chekhov and the like which are well done but apart from that we see a band of singing and dancing tourists, some singing real estate agents and a couple of scenes where diners at the café break into tap dance.  

Even the Chinese duo of May and Ray who have established a competitive arts centre are not who they seem.  Finally, Dorothea (Tyne Daly) holds it all together and her scenes with Greta (Elisabeth Henry) are touching.  I admire Director and writer Patrick Wangs determination to make his own type of film with moments of classicism and moments of the absurd.  Not everything has to be so literal in life!

3 stars plus

The Boys in the Band

Quite a number of recent films are adaptations of stage plays, perhaps an option easy to film in Covid times but since most were sorted before the pandemic that can’t be the reason.

  The Boys in the Band was a play in 1968 and is the first real all-gay work discussing the issues of being a gay man in US society (specifically Greenwich village, NY).

Two years later it became a film and now 50 years later it was revived on Broadway in 2018 and refilmed with the stage cast in 2020. 

As a play it is well structured, crackles with sharp retorts typical of many gay men together and also full of the insecurities and self doubts of the community.

  Though dated compared to today with the AIDS epidemic and much more visibility in the LGBTQ communities, it still rings true in many aspects as well as being a poignant look back at a time in our history.

Of the modern cast, Jim Parsons as the waspish but insecure Michael and Zachary Quinto as a spacy but very smart Jewish boy stand out in a solid cast.

  Joe Mantello does a decent enough job converting this to celluloid even though the majority of the action takes place in Michael’s flat. There are a few flashbacks and bookend scenes that keep the mood of the story.

Interesting to watch but something of a museum piece.

3 stars

Dark Waters

Much in the line of Erin Brockovich but darker, this film by Todd Haynes is all about the Du Pont scandal in which thousands of citizens around Parkersburg sued the huge company for poisoning and contamination.  The offending element C8 is present in Teflon and other products and supposedly in 99% of human beings.  Du Pont who basically thought they were unreachable did everything they could to avoid being responsible but ended up having to pay 670 million dollars in court cases.

Enter Rob Dilott, a corporate lawyer from Ohio who was actually working defending oil companies.  

He is approached by a farmer who knows his family and who is suffering all sorts of illnesses and aberrations in his farm.  He thinks that water seeping from his neighbour’s land where Du Pont buried waste is causing the contamination to his farm, livestock and himself. Dilott files for discovery of all the research and tests that Du Pont did and is given a warehouse full of papers which he has to sort through.  

After a big effort, he and his law firm manage to get an independent scientific panel to evaluate all the research.  More years pass by and finally the panel declare that the claimants are right: there is a case for compensation.  Du Pont reneges on a promise to compensate so they get taken to court with the results coming 20 years after the initial complaint.

As a movie, this is a fairly straightforward tale of the David struggle of an individual lawyer taking on the mighty Goliath of US business with all its protection from government and with all the risk of losing jobs in a poorish industrial area.  We get to see a little how slowly the wheels of justice work as well even as hundreds of people are falling ill and dying.  On the other hand it is inspiring to see the little guy take on the world and for the courts eventually to back the truth.

Mark Ruffalo plays Dilott and carries the film on his shoulders, a slumped shouldered weary man whose own health suffered from his years of battling away on this case. It is a low-key but convincing performance.

Anne Hathaway and Tim Robbins are great in support despite fairly underwritten roles.  Both get a good speech out of it!  

Mare Winningham, Bill Pullman and others give depth to the cast.

Not a film I’d care to watch again soon but in terms of environmental consciousness and social justice it is an important work.  Unusually straight for director Todd Haynes.

4 stars