Spencer

Talented Chilean director Pablo Larraín takes on a sacred cow of British royalty following on from his movie on Jackie Kennedy a few years back.  I remember liking some things about that movie but by no means all of it and the same sensation comes with this latest effort. The screenplay is written by Steven Knight and is an irreverent take on Diana’s relationship with the royal family.  Based on real events but very much a fable of poetic licence, it features a three-day visit to Sandringham, the royal palace where the family celebrates Christmas.  Supposedly this is 1991.  

What we get are broad-brush strokes amplifying the obvious points of friction at that time.  Diana is clearly going off the edge and is seeing ghosts (Anne Boleyn), ignoring the protocol, trying to have a sane relationship with her boys, frostily distanced from Charles and vomiting up all her food at regular intervals.  

The Queen has little time for her and the staff are mixed.  

Major Gregory (Timothy Spall) is all eyes and ears trying to keep her in line and being rather threatening in the process while the head chef and Maggie, one of her dressers are trying to keep Diana on the rails.

Most of the other members of the royal family are either eating or shooting and the film shows up the lavish banquets they were served and the pointless pheasant shooting raids that William does not want to be part of.  Many critics have called this a fairly one-note film and I tend to agree.  There is no real dramatic tension, simply a depiction of a woman going out of her mind in a context that would drive most people mad (the strictures of living inside the Royal Court).

We do see Diana in more human and saner moments when with her sons or with Maggie but the rest of the time she is stalking the corridors like a wild beast cornered and pursued. 

Kristen Stewart has been nominated for an Oscar for this and her performance is clearly the high point of the movie and how she manages to tread a fine line between respecting the original Diana and giving us this side of her.  

We never get to see the Diana of public service here.  Sally Hawkins steals every scene she is in as Maggie and displays why she is such a talent.

The music by Jonny Greenwood which blends classical and jazz music in quite disturbing tones adds to the mood.

At the end of the day, I can’t say the film moved me very much.  It is a clever angle on the well-known story but it did not move me emotionally or excite me cinematographically.

3 stars

Old

M Night Shyamalan’s latest which has received its share of acclaim and criticism with the balance perhaps tipping toward the latter.

Adapted from a graphic novel called Sandcastle, it is the story of a group of tourists who find themselves on a beautiful beach near a tropical hotel resort.  We have two families and two couples who soon after arriving begin to discover strange things happening – the principle among them being that they are suddenly aging years in a matter of hours. 

Illnesses come and go quickly, kids turn into teenagers and then adults, people lose their sight and go mad.  It’s like a tremendous fast forward of one’s life.  

And there seems to be no escape.  Those who try just don’t succeed.

On the one hand the film is very much a thriller laying on one scare after another and obliging the characters to absorb their new reality very quickly.

On the other there is a psychological debate, mainly in the minds of the viewer about what they would do in such circumstances and how we value life and look upon the process of aging.  As the film proceeds events speed up and the lead to a denouement which purports to explain what has really happened. 

 I found it plausible enough to suspend my disbelief in parts to enjoy the premise and the story but some may think otherwise.  Some plot developments are a little far-fetched but I guess that’s the point.  Finally, the ending opens up another area of ethical debate which probably needs more research and information for us to argue fully.

Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicki Krieps and Rufus Sewell are among the actors doing their best in this Agatha Christie like scenario.

Frankly, characterization is not the priority here.  What I would have liked is a less clichéd and obvious script.  At times, the platitudes and simple observations coming out of the mouths of the cast suggest a laziness in scripting.  

Photography in the Dominican Republic is great.  All told a watchable enough film that offers food for thought.  Not the disaster some critics suggest but it does fall short of what it could have been in other hands.

3 stars

Worth

Could have been called Worthy in that it is a series film carefully done.  Worth asks how much a life is worth in the context of the 9/11.  The story involves a government committee set up to administer a compensation fund for victims.  Taking existing life insurance payouts as a base, they soon discover that being based on salaries, there are great discrepancies with rich people likely to get much higher payouts than the poor.  What’s more, lawyers for CEOs and other executives are clamouring for a much higher ceiling.

  The risk is that if not enough of the victims accept the fund payments, it will all go back to Congress, and risk turning into a war of litigation which is precisely what the government wanted to avoid.  All this is very interesting and well explained in a more documentary style than feature film.  The human drama revolves around the testimony of family members and witnesses involved in the event.  

We get to experience it from the leader of the fund, a lawyer called  Ken Feinberg who, like his staff, is very affected by the human stories and wants to find a way to do right without giving into the lawyers and politicians who want to distort or limit the awards.

  Michael Keaton shows he can portray quite a boring man and still get our attention in this role and

Amy Ryan as his deputy Camille and Shunori Ramanathan as a recent law graduate get some good scenes.  But the meatiest part and quite the most compelling character is Charles Wolf, played by Stanley Tucci as the leader of a victim’s organization pressing for fairer deals.

Sara Colangelo is correct in her direction but the pace is sedate, the photography dark and the characterization fairly thin so you need to be interested in the topic to keep your attention throughout. I thought the film was all right but it lacked something to make it really attractive.

3 stars

How can you mend a broken heart?

A recent documentary on the band the Bee Gees which is not the first but presumably seeks to be one of the more definitive.  

Frank Marshall takes us on a pretty linear ride through their career from young boys in Australia, to near contemporaries of the Beatles in the UK, from the early hits like Massachusetts to the disco era and beyond.  

Much is made of the brotherly bonds and fissures and of the music with band members and famous stars chiming in. Less is made of the tragic side of their life and the premature death of brother Andy and the illnesses and deaths of Maurice and Robin are dealt with very briefly.  Little is said of their love lives, though a couple of widows appear. 

The music is great as is to be expected and we learn something of how it was made.  Their legacy to popular music is clearly laid out. Other than that, there is little really new aside from Barry’s rather poignant memories and regrets as the last survivor.  

It sometimes shows that young stars end up being shooting stars which burn out and the fame they had as young men was indeed stratospheric.  The backlash against disco music is an interesting point.  

Worth watching to get a good picture of the band.  As a documentary it does the trick without being anything stunningly different.

3 stars plus

Under the Vines (series)

Of the various Kiwi series I’ve seen in the last year or so, this has been much the most satisfying.  I was not entirely convinced in episode 1 that the comic touches to this story were going to work nor that anything much new could be brought to the concept of an odd couple of city slickers being forced into a new venture on the land but as the first series went on, the show grew on me.

Set near Queenstown in Central Otago, Daisy, a Sydney socialite down on her luck and Louis, a recently disbarred London barrister are named heirs to a vineyard called Oakley. When they arrive to claim their inheritance, the idea is to sell up as quickly as possible and return to their normal lives but Daisy, in particular realises that maybe the vineyard could be made a going concern and that her Sydney life is not such a magnet after all and so they take up the challenge and settle down to country life.  

Tippy, a young local vintner and Gus are employees of the vineyard and they stay on to help and various other friends get involved over the next few programmes.

  Then, we have the rival vineyard, Shimmering Lakes run by Don and the formidable Marissa (Sarah Peirse), whose grown-up son Ben (Matt Whelan) takes a shine to Daisy. And so life starts getting complicated.

The series, developed by Erin White, moves along at a smart pace. The scripting is actually wittier than seen in many series of this ilk and is also helped by the talent of Rebecca Gibney and Charles Edwards in the lead roles who each bring shades of nuance to their somewhat caricatured roles.

  Trae Te Wiki as Tippy and Simon Mead as Gus do well

and during the series it is a pleasure to see actors like Dean O’Gorman, Catherine Wilkin, John Bach and Sara Wiseman contribute.

One of the things that makes the difference in this series is that the writer and directors try to show genuine love for their characters, even when they are being stupid or mean and there are spiritually positive messages woven into the story.  

I found myself developing a feeling of tenderness towards the film and even though there is plenty of poetic licence and something of the utopian about it, the good nature of this project carries it a long way.

4 stars

Being the Ricardos

This Aaron Sorkin written and directed film takes a look at a week in the life of comedian Lucille Ball at a moment when she was accused of being a Communist and when she too was having doubts about the fidelity of her co-star and husband Desi Arnaz.  

The film has a sort of Trumbo and Mank sense to it, a rather overly obvious re-creation of a historic moment in Hollywood tinged by McCarthyism.   From this week,  the film shifts back and forth in time showing plenty of behind-the-scenes action and giving us a taste of the comedy Americans lapped up on a weekly basis.

Making a film on Lucille Ball was always going to be a challenge as she is such an iconic figure and I suppose Nicole Kidman does a sound job.  

At times she is uncannily like the original and at times seems very different but she is playing the Lucille we didn’t see on stage.  Javier Bardem is physically quite unlike Desi but apparently captures his spirit.  

J K Simmons and Nina Arianda surprise with very effective performances as co-stars in the sitcom.  

Most of the film is set indoors but the mood and décor of the time seem well gauged.

And as one would expect from Aaron Sorkin, there are some scenes with cracking dialogue.

Nevertheless, I found the movie uneven and there was a whole chunk in the first half when I got quite bored and distracted.  I think I wanted more of the Lucille Ball magic and less of the potential darkness however authentic this may have been.  I am also not convinced that its nominations for the Academy Awards are necessarily representative of the best of the year – nonetheless Hollywood can be forgiven for wanting to honour its own.

3 stars

His House

Horror is not really my genre but every year or so I manage to pick up one of the latest.  This British film by debut director Remi Weekes is a strange mixture of scary and social commentary.  

Two South Sudanese refugees are allotted a house in an unnamed British city.  It is in a run-down depressing part of town.

Almost immediately upon moving the couple become aware that the house is haunted and what is more by ghosts or spirits that seem to have followed their life journey and know all about them.

Later in the film we get a couple of scenes about their departure from Africa.  

As they “adapt” to the house and seek an alternative we also get to see how British bureaucracy and society treat them. The bureaucracy is arrogant and threatening and the locals racist even if they themselves are black.  Meanwhile scary night scenes occur as creatures emerge from the walls….

In parts there are genuine thrills. In parts some very interesting psychological themes regarding the refugee. Whether it all quite works, I’m not sure but overall it is a different and very promising feature debut.

Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku are competent leads and Matt Smith as the local refugee officer provides a pertinent support.

3 stars plus

Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui

Time for a bit of Bollywood.  Its probably every two or three years at most that I watch something that is from the Bollywood industry of Indian film as opposed to more independent works.  

This recent film intrigued me because it is the first mainstream Indian movie to tackle the idea of a trans person getting together with a cis person in an acceptable social relationship.  Manu is a bodybuilder and a bit of a slow sandwich.  His one and only interest in life seems to be winning a local Ironman competition.  He co-owns a gym and a new staff member is Maanvi, a Zumba teacher.  

Played by Vaani Kapoor, she is fit and gorgeous and very quickly sparks flow between them much to the delight of Manu’s family who have despaired at marrying off the oldest son.  So far so good, until Maanvi reveals to Manu that she wasn’t actually born a girl, though she has had the gender-reassignment operation.  Manu finds it very hard to take in and then flips rejecting her in a very unpleasant way.  Manu’s sisters, friends and even gym rivals get wind of the situation and Maanvi is slaughtered on social media.  But Manu can’t get her out of his head and events conspire for them to get close again and recommence their relationship.

All this with a few of the typical song and dance numbers!

The other big star in the film is the city of Chandigarh, which I did not know but gets good coverage with scenes in the local parks, etc.  Seems like an attractive city in the north of the country.

Ayushmann Khurrana plays Manu.  He is apparently an a-list star in India and his willingness to tackle taboo subjects, especially when he comes across as your somewhat butch macho type is apparently changing what is possible in Indian cinema.  

He was good in the film but I found Vaani Kapoor to be more compelling.  Attractive and fresh, my only reservation of course is that the role should probably have gone to a trans actor.  Nonetheless she does a good job representing this long ignored group of people.

Abhishek Kapoor gives us a polished product, fun but meaningful at the same time.  Maybe there is no great originality in the story (and a fair few clichés in the supporting parts)

but just to get this topic into Indian multiplexes is surely a great step.

4 stars

Prelude

Follow your dream meets obsessive personality genre from Germany.  I watched this as it stars two of the most successful young German actors today: Louis Hofmann and Liv Lisa Fries.

David (Hofmann) is a 19 year-old who is entering a music conservatory as a pianist.  The first part of the film features his struggles to reach the standards required of his teacher (Ursina Lardi).  

Then we have a bit of light relief as he befriends Walter (Johannes Nussbaum) and the latter´s girlfriend Marie (Liv Lisa Fries).

As time moves on David is in the running for a scholarship to Juilliard which sends him rather off the rails.

This is a first feature written and directed by Sabrina Sarabi.  I was not convinced by either of her performances.  The direction is rather derivative of other madness movies and wastes many opportunities to get to know the characters better.  David is perhaps slightly better drawn than the others but there is not enough build up to the finale here.  

Hofmann and Fries are competent but with more dialogues so much more could have been milked from this.  

I quite liked Lardi as the music teacher but the rest required playing on fast speed as many scenes dragged or did not add to the narrative.

Not bad, just oversimple and under-baked.

2 stars