Second round of a teen series from the States adapted from a feature film called Love, Simon.
Michael Cimino plays Victor, a high school basketballer in Atlanta who decides to come out.
This decision has an impact on his family and all those around him.
Series two is more tightly written than series 1 and explores the issues of family expectations, acceptance, miscommunication as well as more specific topics like losing one’s virginity.
In Victor’s family his parents have separated adding further tension and most of the other families have parental issues too.
All of it is smartly scripted and doesn’t always take the easy way out.
Humour is used to considerable advantage as well. Some characters deliver less than others. I find Mia, Victor’s ex rather less than interesting despite her story and Benji the new boyfriend seems rather overly hot and cold.
Rahim, Victor’s new gay friend and potential love interest is much more fun.
If there is one criticism it is that some of the actors, eg., Andrew seems way too old for their parts.
But the ten 30-minute episodes do fly past and are a positive contribution to making gay teen relationships a totally normal and acceptable way of life.
This series based on the diaries of Miss Anne Lister takes place in the early 1830’s in Halifax, Yorkshire and tells the story of an amazing woman who inherits a property called Shibden Hall and then proceeds to run the estate herself defying the sexist mores of the time.
She considers herself equal to any man and ends up driving hard bargains and in some cases raising the ire of local businessmen.
Anne is also a confirmed lesbian determined to find a woman to love and settle down with. She dresses in a masculine way and is uncomfortable with the traditional roles assigned to females in society.
She also spends much of her time travelling abroad, sometimes alone, which is much frowned upon for a woman at this time. Returning to Shibden to put things in order, she expects to be off again only to discover that a neighbour, Miss Ann Walker is in fact an attractive proposition.
The two embark on an affair and this first series is largely about the comings and goings between them and the challenges facing two women who want to settle down together in society.
Sally Wainwright is the mastermind behind this production, directing and writing the series set in her beloved Yorkshire. Wainwright is the creator of Last Tango in Halifax as well.
Suranne Jones plays Lister and establishes just the right blend of bravado, gusto and vulnerability.
Sophie Rundle also manages to tread a fine line as Ann Walker, mixing weak and submissive with a taste for transgression. There is a large cast of supporting actors as you would expect from a BBC production with veterans like Gemma Jones, Timothy West and Stephanie Cole appearing throughout.
Even veteran star Sylvia Sims steals a couple of scenes she is in. A host of younger actors with excellent pedigrees especially in shows set in the Northern part of England make this a thoroughly satisfying work from the acting perspective and sets and costumes seem well fitting for the time.
So, how good is it? It is an amusing and pacy series, perhaps a little superficial on some questions related to the contrast between society and Lister at this time but Wainwright clearly values the importance of a show being entertaining as well as educative. Purists may object to Lister addressing the screen at times but for me it works as a dramatic device.
I enjoyed the series a lot and look forward to the second series promised for this year. It may not be series of the year but it has the hallmarks of a quality English production and that makes it highly rated indeed.
With the same name as a David Hockney painting but a different subject is this film by Luca Guadagnino, director of Call me by your name. Filmed in 2015 it is a remake of a French film from 1969 starring Romy Schneider, transferred here to the desert island of Pantelleria, situated south of Italy near the Tunisian coast. Marianne Lane, famous rock star is recovering from a throat operation in an isolated villa with great views and a lovely pool.
She is accompanied by her boyfriend Paul, a photographer. The two are seen sunbathing nude or covering themselves in clay at a local beach.
It is a strange island with some tourism, refugees from North Africa passing through and the conservative locals. Into all this comes Harry, Marianne’s ex-manager and lover inviting himself to stay.
He comes with his daughter Penelope, who he has only recently come to know. He says she is 22. He has also invited friends over for lunch and pool days so Marianne and Paul feel very much invaded. Although it is over 6 years since Harry was with Marianne, he clearly still holds a flame for her. And Penelope takes a shine to Paul.
Well about half the film is setting up the drama to come and ends up being somewhat meandering. The appearance of refugees and the visit by the lady friends don’t seem to add very much. Who dominates everything is Ralph Fiennes as the hyper Harry, motormouth, enthusiast and quickly exhausting.
We see him leading the group down to a San Gaetano festival in the town and commanding the only karaoke in town. Someone you’d want in small doses.
The second half of the film sees Penelope luring Paul off for a long hike and Harry and Marianne alone and this brings the underline tensions to a head. The last part does seem rather unreal but at the same time is rich in meaning.
For a film about the rich and famous behaving badly, A Bigger Splash has a lot to like about it. My complaints would focus mostly on some uneven pacing and some unexplained elements or people but apart from that there is plenty to enjoy.
Yorick le Saux’s photography is excellent and explores many different angles and lights as well as the island’s peculiar windy, dusty, misty climate. The use of music is also intriguing, perhaps not always appropriate but interesting all the same. And then we have the acting. Fiennes as I have said is superb and quite against character.
Tilda Swinton does another excellent job relying on gesture and facial expressions for the most part. Matthias Schoenaerts has a quieter role but performs well and Dakota Johnson becomes stronger as the film goes on.
A welcome return from Bruce Beresford, now aged 80 and still filming. I remember him from the days of Breaker Morant and have seen about 14 of his movies, one of the last being the rather unsatisfactory Mao’s Dancer. Happily, this new work based on the book of a friend and on a musical is a much more complete work, a comedy and romance from 1959 set in a department store.
We follow the summer of 4 women: Fay who is unlucky in love, Patty who has an unresponsive husband, Lisa aka Lesley, a schoolgirl temp who starts off as the ugly duckling and grows into something else and Magda, Slovenian refugee with certain ideas about class and style who runs the model gowns section.
There are plenty of minor characters too – family, friends and other staff who fit into this world where immigrants are starting to challenge a certain old-fashioned view of life and society. Sydney is one of the few cosmopolitan centres thanks to the immigrants running restaurants and cafés or supporting art cinema. So, as a slice of Sydney life it is very carefully done.
As regards the story there is nothing particularly novel or deep about it all, simply an opening up to new cultures. It is perhaps the acting that gives most pleasure here.
Angourie Rice as young Lisa is very effective indeed and hints at a top career in the making. Julia Ormond returns after some years of absence to steal every scene as the difficult, blowsy but wise Magda and she has some of the best lines, in the company of her househusband (Vincent Perez).
Magda is everything we have ever heard or seen of continentals without being clichéd and normally I do not like English actors putting on foreign accents.
Rachael Taylor is fetching as Fay and there are gems in bit parts from Susie Porter and Shane Jacobsen
as Lisa’s parents and Noni Hazelhurst, an Australian acting stalwart cum legend as Miss Cartwright, the shop’s main supervisor.
This is a sunny film perfect for the weekend. It does have plenty to say but with a lightness of touch and it recreates an era that was emerging from the darkness of war and depression and heading towards a bright future.
Widely praised at Sundance and after as a feel good movie in the year of BLM, this rather bittersweet film left me somewhat underwhelmed despite some good aspects.
The film is set in Fort Worth, Texas where they have an annual festival to commemorate the emancipation of Negroes from slavery. There are parades, special feasts and a beauty competition for 15 year-old Afro-American girls with the prize of a scholarship to a black women’s university.
Turquoise Jones won the contest 15 years ago but could never take up the opportunities because she became a teenage mum and had to start working to support herself. Now that her daughter Kai is about to turn 15, she is determined that her daughter will compete, win and make her way out of the poor living conditions she has suffered. Said daughter is not so keen on the idea.
So, what did I like about the movie? It gives us an insight into the lives of the poorer and often coloured people in places like Texas today. It informs us about the Juneteenth celebrations.
We get to see how difficult it can be to get head when you are surrounded by no-hopers or people that seem to create bad luck wherever they go (the grandmother and the husband)
and how hard it can be to rise above these people. The acting is generally fine and kudos to director Channing Godfrey Peoples and crew for a professional looking film.
What left me less satisfied was a fairly slow and monotonous pacing, something of an over spelling out of the main points and the fact that Turquoise seems so blind to the fact that her daughter does not want to enter the competition.
The main character is smart in other ways but has this massive blind spot that is not completely explained convincingly. Nicole Beharie is competent in the lead role but I did find her to be rather anonymous and less interesting than some of the minor characters.
Finally, what is all the fuss about Miss Juneteenth, the beauty competition? If there was anything trying to turn young black girls white, it is this. Schooled in snobby etiquette and prepared like debutantes for society it seems so anachronistic. I definitely ended the film thinking what was the point of all that. Competent enough and that’s all.
This Australian movie is actually 15 years old but I missed it at the time. The third and to date latest film by director Ray Lawrence, it follows Bliss in 1985 and the superb Lantana (2001). Jindabyne is built upon a short story by Raymond Carver, adapted to Australia and set in the Snowy Mountains, being centred on the small town of Jindabyne. The town itself acts as a symbol for the movie. It is a new town relocated when the original was covered by a lake formed when a hydroelectric dam was built.
The townspeople have plenty of things hidden under the surface. Most of them have personal issues: dead children, failed relationships or careers and then there is the question of white-aboriginal relationships which are not clear or properly discussed, a microcosm of the same issue at a national level.
In the film four men go on a fishing trip, discover the body of a young woman killed by a local serial murderer but instead of reporting it immediately they tie it to a branch in the river and continue their weekend.
When news gets out about it they are hounded by the media and their community for their behaviour and in particular, the central marriage of Claire (Laura Linney)
and Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) is shocked into an even deeper crisis. The gestures of white guilt and blame are often contradictory and hypocritical but come across as plausible in a society where certain social mores are expected to be paid lip service, even though many people do other things.
Apart from the social and racial issues raised in this observation of human behaviour in relation to the truth, Lawrence adds aspects of a thriller with several scenes seemingly foreshadowing some doom and there are even young children with seemingly psychic powers.
I was surprised that many critics found fault with this movie, comparing it unfavourably to the short story or suggesting that it amounted to very little. The problem may be that plotwise not so many big things happen after the initial murder but the film is exceedingly rich in detail regarding people’s motives and behaviours and the minefield of communication is shown to us constantly.
Apart from the central couple, the character of Deborra Lee Furness is particularly interesting in her relationship with Claire. The conclusion brings us some hope of reconciliation with the aborigine culture at the very least in recognition of the power of ritual for healing.
Linney and Byrne do very good work in their roles.
With Paul Kelly’s music and David Williamson’s photography, this is another important film for Australia and its people. It just takes a bit of work.
Quick mention of a documentary recording the building of a museum to Lego constructed in Billund, Denmark.
More of a promotional video than anything else, Lego House follows the process of dreaming up the house, imagining its content
and then bringing it all to life in a way that respects the original Lego brick form but also includes all the wonderful creations the “toy” has spawned over the years.
As a film, there is nothing very novel or deep here but we do get a good sense of how some people find this medium of building blocks, a perfect way to express their creativity
and we do see how the ex-CEO and grandson of the original founder Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen may be a 73-year-old but is a child at heart.
Much emphasis is put on the strict standards of the company in terms of innovation and as an ode to the ability of people to imagine ideas and bring them to life it is quite inspiring.
I just think I would prefer to visit the museum in person.
This South African movie is one of the better offerings so far this year. In some ways it seems like a small film but it is packed full of emotions and observations.
Set in 1981, when compulsory military service reigned in South Africa, it tells the story of Nick, fresh out of school and sent away to two years’ military training plus a stint of border duty with Angola.
Nick (an excellently contained portrayal by Kai Luke Brummer) has a lot of growing up to do and a secret. He is gay and this is the worst crime for the army, they constantly rant against gays and smoke out any conscripts who are suspected of being so.
This storyline flows like an undercurrent in the whole movie and surfaces when Nick has an attraction to a troop mate, Dylan Stassen (Ryan de Villiers) after they spend a night in the freezing cold digging a trench.
Stassen is later sent elsewhere and we get to feel Nick’s sense of loss even though the relationship is so discreetly sketched.
The other main story is the indoctrination of the young men via constant racist attacks on the blacks, once physically and otherwise by name and the linking of blacks with communism and everything that is a threat to the South African state.
Hilton Pelser as Brand does a memorable job as the evil sergeant major. Watching from now at how one “version” of the way the world works is the only valid one, promoted and pushed by bigoted white men, shows how policies like apartheid take root and survive so long. No inclusion necessary, you accept the game or shut up.
Oliver Hermanus is a young very promising director who does a great job with this movie and is co-screenwriter adapting it from a semi-autobiographical book.
Jamie Ramsay’s photography is excellent, lots of close ups and hand-held camerawork plus some stunning uses of light. First class. Finally, Braam du Toit gives us a soundtrack of tremendous variety which keeps us on our toes. Very often the music is a counterplay to the action and a violent scene may have classical music or opera, there is a sunny sweet version of Summer Breeze behind a more sinister scene at a summer swimming pool, at other moments the music is rasping and almost menacing.
I’m not sure that every piece worked but to hear a director of music deliberately seeking a contrary effect is indeed unusual and to be admired.
Finally, as a portrait from one side of the divided nation in 1981, this is a worthy piece of art depicting South African history.
Much the same as Tina Turner, Linda produces a documentary narrated by her which basically sums up her career in music which started in the 1960’s until her retirement in 2009 due to Parkinson’s.
As a film record it is a polished, thoughtful work which covers all her different mutations and gives us an insight into a very successful artist, who nevertheless kept away from much of the limelight (and this is despite dating Governor Jerry Brown and being a stadium sellout).
We get all the best music from the beginnings of Different Drum with the Stone Poneys to the pop and country periods,
to the rock era,
Gilbert and Sullivan, mariachis, the trio with Dolly Parton and Emmy Lou Harris and ballads with Aaron Neville. The only thing missing is her superb Latin bolero record Frenesí.
We get to see that Linda is a perfectionist, a good friend, especially to women, a determined artist clear about how she wants to work and strong enough to walk away from a winning formula and try something new.
Dolly, Emmy Lou, Bonnie Raitt,
Don Henley, J D Souther and many many others give their testimony to a brilliant career sadly ending early through illness.
At least, as one says, we have all her recorded music and the evidence that talent and versatility are a rare and excellent combination.
Although this film is not so serious in itself I was overwhelmed with a feeling of sadness almost all the way through. Rocks is the nickname of a 15 year-old girl who lives in London and is the daughter of a woman of Nigerian ethnicity and a man who has long disappeared off the scene.
Rocks has a younger brother called Emmanuel and we meet them in their daily life, going to school, hanging out with friends and having breakfast. One day, the mother who has a history of mental illness, does a runner leaving Rocks in charge of her brother and with precious little money.
She tries to keep things going normally but the pursuit of them by welfare officers leads Rocks to spend nights at friend’s houses or even in cheap hotels. Rocks tries stubbornly to refuse help and keep things quiet, fearing of course that the family will be broken up, until eventually the authorities do get wind of her situation and the two are put into foster care.
Sarah Gavron directs this film in a very natural way making full use of teen talk and the types of relationships Rocks has with her friends.
Helene Louvart films the movie with the eyes of an eavesdropper and we follow our protagonist and her brother around privy to their secrets. This gives it an intimate feel despite the somewhat alienating fate of the two. But mostly, it is the excellent acting of Bukky Bakray as Rocks
, D’angelou Osei Kissiedu as Emmanuel and Kosar Ali as Sumaya the friend which give this film great value.
It is a small but very moving film honestly and naturally made.
passionfilm 