Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhaan

Another Bollywood social conscience film.  Ayushmann Khurrana is making a habit of tackling taboo topics on the big screen and hopefully educating the public in the process.  

In this film he plays Kartik, who is travelling to a family wedding in Allahabad, to the family of his boyfriend Aman (Jitendra Kumar).  Of course, their hitherto secret relationship comes out and threatens to derail the entire wedding of the unmarriageable Goggle (Maanvi Gagno).  Most of the story revolves around Aman’s father’s reaction.  This scientist has developed a black cauliflower, (quite what this has to do with the story I don’t know and it could have been cut) and he is vehemently opposed to Aman’s liaison.  Wife Sunaina follows suit for the most part with some misgivings.  Gajraj Rao and Neena Gupta are very good as the parents. 

Being Bollywood, there is song and dance, farce and slapstick but the amazing thing is that quite serious issues relating to patriarchism, gender rights, etc are raised.  Sometimes these are woven into the plot, sometimes they are given in little speeches which can be overly didactic and obviously directed at the audience or they can actually work within the story.  So, kudos for tackling all these points in a genre that is not so easy to handle when discussing such taboo themes.  At times, things became somewhat clichéd but at least remained respectful.

The film is held together by the charismatic Khurrana who looks good, is a very competent actor and commands the screen whenever he is on.  Jitendra Kumar gives good support as the shyer Aman.

I laughed a few times and while I am not sure if the film completely worked for me I will give it credit for all the plus factors it showed.  Hitesh Kewalya was making his debut as a feature director so that is all the more meritorious.

3 stars

Parallel Mothers

What a pleasure it is to watch an Almodovar film!  Not only do you get great aesthetics but he is such a good storyteller, flowing quickly from one detail to another, adept at making ellipses in the storyline seem so natural. And the way he blends genres is also exemplary.  When I compare this film to many I’ve seen recently, it seems like a masterclass in cinema.

This story is partly about two women who give birth at the same time in Madrid and meet in the clinic.  Janis is a photographer nearing 40 and alone, Ana is a teenager who has got pregnant from a drunk night out.  After the births they remain friends comparing notes about motherhood and their daughters.  Then some events transpire to change the status quo and a suspected baby swap is revealed.  

Parallel to this Janis is campaigning to get a field near her home village excavated as the site is believed to be that of a mass grave from the Civil War.  The father of her child is Arturo, a married man who is a forensic anthropologist and expert in such excavations.  

Here Almodovar is taking us into a thorny political issue in Spain for the last few decades.  Once Franco, the dictator, died, there was a pact to brush over the past and it was only in 2007 under a socialist regime that funding became available to start to unearth the thousands of mass graves in the country.  Subsequent conservative governments shut this down again and only recently has funding restarted.

These themes run through the film.  The hidden truth (and Janis is not exempt from blame here) is one, the ignorance of the past (the worry that Spain’s shameful history will not be known by present and future generations) and what to do about the mistakes of today.

It is a film which is dominated by women and suggests the future lies with them.  Penelope Cruz is most convincing as Janis, a subtle natural performance that makes a lot of the biopic ´acting´ seem shallow.  Milena Smit as the young Ana is also very convincing.  

We get a lovely supporting performance by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón who, as Ana’s thespian mother represents women breaking out to do what they want in life.  

Nice also to see Rossy de Palma and Julieta Ortega in other roles and Israel Elejalde as Arturo.  

Décor, music and photography are as impeccable as always (there is always something to look at and here the colour schemes of green and red are one feature).

I´m not sure that Parallel Mothers is Pedro Almodovar at his very best but it is so satisfying that it can’t be far behind.

4 star two plusses! 

King Richard

Hollywood loves biopics and that may help explain why this film was made.  

The movie is centred on Richard Williams, tennis father of Venus and Serena and instrumental in achieving the miracle of getting his girls on the tennis circuit from a background like Compton, California, where the only courts they could play on were public courts surrounded by thugs and lowlife.

  We follow the path of his dream until Venus makes her first public appearance as a professional at the age of 14 at a local tournament.

Given that Venus, Serena and a sister are among the producers, there is a sense of this being a rather cosmetic version although Williams father has a reputation for being difficult and irascible.

So, the film is fairly chronological and straightforward, and it is interesting to see a different side of US life and the struggle of black urban lower middle-class to get ahead.  We get a lot of family scenes – usually happy and united, although rising friction with his wife Oracene is the most interesting dramatic feature of the film.

We also get to see how the tennis business works, the agents, coaches, clothing deals, etc and the pressure put on families to sign on the dotted line.

It is not really a film for tennis fans, we get a couple of rallies but mostly the tennis is illustrative.

On balance, as a movie I found it interesting to a degree, in need of an edit and a useful addition to movies about people aspiring to the American dream.  

What lifts it somewhat is the performance of Will Smith who completely inhabits the role of Richard Williams and treads a fine line between good and bad, inspirer and caricature.  

Aunjanue Ellis is a perfect support as his wife counterbalancing the excesses of her husband.  The actresses playing Venus, Serena and family are fine but I wouldn’t say they stand out.

3 stars plus

The Tender Bar

I liked this film.  It’s nothing wow and has its flaws but the mood it creates and the messages it promotes are very welcome in today´s climate.  Based on memoirs by a journalist and writer, the Tender Bar brings us the life of a young boy, JR (Daniel Rainieri),

who with his solo mother lives in his grandfather´s house.

  It is the 1980´s. His father is an abusive disc-jockey, who is absent from his life but leaves a big shadow over JR.  His main mentor is Uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck) who runs a bar but is actually very well-read.  

Charlie represents unconditional love that people usually expect from their parents but sometimes comes from other sources.  And much of JR´s time is spent in the bar learning about life.  The film shifts back and forth between JR  as a boy and his years as a student at Yale (Tye Sheridan). 

 What career is he going to follow? Lawyer, journalist, writer?  Will he get the girl he loves – Sidney (Brianna Middleton) who is from a higher economic class than JR?

A pleasant story evolves with its ups and downs and Affleck and the actors playing JR are especially effective.  

There are some nice scenes and some very smart dialogue.  George Clooney’s direction is somewhat loose and lacking in purpose or so it seems which may put some people off but it fits the mood conveyed.

A sort of pleasant nostalgia piece.

3 stars plus

Dark Money

This documentary by Kimberley Reed and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg is very low-key and measured in many aspects. 

 It discusses the illegal funding of political campaigning in the US and the way in which interest groups are removing the need to lobby by finding ways to get their people elected, whether it be to public political office or to courts and committees.

  Most of the examples are taken from Montana, a state which actually has quite strict campaign funding laws compared to many places and yet for over 120 years has seen big business try to influence politics.  

Focusing on an investigative journalist who now works outside the system to uncover such abuses and also mainly past office holders who experienced them we get to see the complex weave of influences that have grown up and the use of non-profit organisations, which fund candidates without disclosing where the money comes from or who makes up the organisations.

There is a lot of information to understand and digest and the director and her team work hard to make this clear and cogent.  

There is some repetition and a lot of faces to recognize but by the end of the film, we have a much clearer and fuller picture of this jigsaw puzzle.  

It is a sobering look at ordinary people dedicating their lives and times to safeguarding democracy in the times of trolls, social media excesses, etc.

Dark Money won’t set your world on fire but gives us plenty to consider and is very solidly constructed.

3 stars plus

Shadow in the Cloud

This relatively modest NZ/US film punches way above its weight and as it achieves very much what it set out to do I’m giving it solid praise and a good rating.  

Ostensibly, it is a movie about a fighter plane in 1943 leaving Auckland air base on a local non-combat mission.  But given it’s wartime we expect that combat will in fact take place and it does.  

However, by the end of the film it has also morphed into a mystery, a sci-fi horror film complete with Alien like beasties, a love story and a feminist tract.  On top of all that it’s racy and pacy and will keep you on your toes for 80 minutes.  

Chloe Grace Moretz plays Maude Garrett, a woman pilot who virtually stows away last minute on this plane (but has papers to validate her claim that she and her special cargo need to travel).  

A bunch of macho airmen don’t exactly welcome her and place her in the gun turret below the plane – a sort of bubble separate from the rest of the aircraft.  At least 40 minutes of the film are set in this space either looking at Grace’s face or at what she can see from this claustrophobic space.  And it is exciting!  Later, after a dramatic and completely unbelievable battle in mid-air outside the plane she manages to get back into the main fuselage and the action continues. 

It does not matter that some of the moments are highly implausible.  

The film is shot with such exuberance and moves along at such a speed that you get hooked.  I felt moments of genuine fear and shock and moments when I wanted to laugh out loud.  And all on a small budget.

A great second feature from Roseanne Liang and evidence that Moretz can virtually single-handedly carry an action film.

4 stars 

House of Gucci

It took me several bites to be able to digest this one.  Sure, it has a stellar cast and a famous director (Ridley Scott) but something about the film failed to hook me.  Reading the Wikipedia version of this famous fashion company I realise that the film takes quite a few liberties with reality, something that people involved with Gucci at the time have also stated.  Poetic licence is fine when it adds to the quality of the work but here we have a strange mix of biography, thriller and camp homage and it doesn’t work.  Moreover, none of the characters are especially likeable and apart from the tragic murder of Maurizio towards the end of the film, the narrative seems to peter out, at least from a dramatic point of view.  So, these were some of the points for my rejecting the film.  Nonetheless, there are some elements to salvage.

Lady Gaga is very good as Patrizia Gucci, the office-girl who marries one of the heirs to the company and ends up being more of a tigress defending the company than the family itself.  

Gaga has magnetic presence and gives depth to the character even though she, like many of the cast, find the accent hard to sustain.

  Adam Driver plays nerdy Maurizio and at first, I thought it was a mistake. Nevertheless, he is such a skilled actor that he manages to convince the audience of his character as the grey lawyer sucked into the world of high fashion and seduced by the luxuries all the while maintaining a low-key ´who me?´ attitude.  

And Al Pacino fits right in here, basically playing a version of his slightly dubious Italian uncle roles.  When we see these three on screen, things move.  

Salma Hayek as a fortune teller is adequate and is ironically married to one of the current owners of the brand.

Jeremy Irons has scary make-up and an even scarier accent sliding all over the place and along with Jared Leto as nephew Paolo, they represent the high camp end of the scale with Gaga in a more acceptable low-camp position.  

Leto has prosthetics to transform his face and body and does construct a memorable personality but it just grates and comes across as overacting with a silly voice that makes him seem more Monty Python than anything else.

Nice photography, acceptable music but the whole thing needed a strict edit and a beefier script.  It all ends up as being a film made from a script someone has been able to pitch to the studios very well but lacks purpose.  Why are we being shown all this (family greed and revenge antics)?  Does it really edify us?  My rating reflects the good features of the movie but for me it didn’t really work.

3 stars

Euphoria (series 2)

Can’t believe that it is over two years since I watched the first series and this popular series is back.  I had my reservations about series one and episode one of the new dose pretty much confirmed my fears.  

Basically, we begin with a character Fezco, who was brought up by a drug dealing mafia boss of a grandmother (fearsome performance by Kathrin Narducci), moves on to a sordid drug deal involving Rue, Cassie and other members of the task and ends up at a New Year’s party where almost everyone is high on some substance or other.  

At this party we have the usual soulless sex and a particularly nasty piece of violence.  Talk about the dark side.  Some full frontals seem to be the latest addition to push the ratings up.  Which I guess answers the question “What’s the point?”  

The characters all look like they’ve aged about ten years since the last series which technically is a follow on chronologically from series one – weeks or at most months after the previous batch of episodes.  So, I ask again, what is America watching this for and what are they identifying with?

Well, the increase in genital shots, the frequent bouts of madness, a society that is deeply, deeply unhappy and taking all sorts of substances while some shadowy characters watch on rather disaffectedly is a start.  Then there are the fights and violence, the drunken driving ….a society in the process of suicide.

What I have liked about series 2 is the backstory to Nate’s dad Cal, whose coming out in episode 4 is memorable and moving despite his being such an unpleasant person. We also have the use of music and the technical prowess, the visual references which are often like the music just placed as a commentary but add depth if you can pick them out.

And there’s no denying the series has a certain style.  Shame about the content.

Zendaya is the star of the show as drug addict Rue Bennett.  Now, addicts are a gift to actors and have led to some great performances in the history of film and surely Rue’s sad story will stand among Zendaya’s best characterisations.  She manages to convince without overdoing and to navigate any absurdities of script effectively.  Her melt down in episode 5 is compelling viewing.  

Lexi was given a boost at the end with two episodes focusing on the play she wrote about her life and the people around her, namely most of the cast.  An interesting ploy to do a play within a film and it had its moments especially in episode 8 as Cassie and Maddy go at it on stage but at other times it seemed unfocused and dark.

The writers justify the play as Lexi’s way of dealing with her shit but she is probably the most together person around and I’m not sure that she would really prepare something so dark and elaborate. 

It is also notable how virtually all the adults are absent or failures and the repeated sense is that the younger generations have to figure out the big bad world alone without any protection or guidance.  I’m not sure that life is quite like this and thus so terrifying but for some reasons this is the angle the directors and producers wanted.

So, lots of interesting ideas, rather exhausting to binge watch so let each episode decant, some very good technical work and some scenes that are either too violent to watch or just don’t work.  A sort of compelling unevenness that I can forgive to a degree.  Nonetheless I wanted something less bleak and this was darker than a Scandinavian crime series. And the original idea was Israeli.  Some kudos to Sam Levinson for bringing this to the screen here and to the actors who generally do well in their unlikeableness.  

Zendaya, yes, is a star and a very nuanced and complete actress already.  Hope the next series is a long way off.

3 stars plus

Love Sarah

Very definitely a solid new arrival in the category of food porn with delicious cakes and desserts made by Yotam Ottolenghi, a famed British chef.  As a film it is nothing more than a light soufflé for a wet afternoon.

Set in Notting Hill, which it presents in the cleanest possible light, Love Sarah is about three women who open a bakery in the name of the deceased Sarah, honouring her dream.  

In the process they learn that love and companionship eases the pain of loss and solitude.

  Isabella (Shelley Conn) is her best friend, Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet), her daughter and an aspiring dancer

and then there is Mimi (Celia Imrie) her mother from whom she was estranged and who is a former trapeze artist. Yes, go figure!  Helping them out is Matthew (Rupert Penry- Jones), a former flame of Sarah’s from cookery school who appears on the scene to help them out in the new venture.  Finally, Mimi has a potential love interest in Felix (Bill Patterson), a local inventor.

In short, the film is watchable but totally untaxing.  

The photography is gorgeous and the acting is quite fair given the very predictable script.  I felt there was a lot of wasted time in the movie, scenes that added little or nothing to the story such as Clarissa dancing or Mimi wandering the streets and that time could have been used in character development which is rather uneven or in making some of the plot developments less artificial and more authentic.  

I guess when everything seems to take second place to the cakes….  But really the film showed very little in the way of creativity or depth right down to the mawkish song over the closing credits.  Eliza Schroeder has made a pretty looking first movie but it replicates all the usual clichés about London and apart from watching the glorious Imrie adds very little to British cinema.

2 stars

Escape from Pretoria

This film is much redeemed by the last half an hour which features the actual escape.

The story of a prison escape in South Africa by white ANC activists Tim Jenkin and Steven Lee plus one of their prison mates, the event spurred the biggest manhunt in the country at that point (1979) but the escapees managed to get out through Mozambique and Tanzania to London.  

The film starts with a brief background to the imprisonment of the protagonists who were found guilty of planting letter bombs in Johannesburg.  Then, we have a long section in which we see the planning and rehearsal for the escape in the prison.

  Jenkin was the mastermind behind designing keys that would open all the main doors in the prison, a process that took months and seems long and drawn out on the screen.  

There are some exchanges with Denis (Ian Hart), an older political prisoner that supports them and also Leo a Frenchman that joins their escape.  I have to admit though that the mechanical nature of this part and the lack of much characterization made me struggle to watch this.

However, when the actual escape at Christmas time took place, the tension started to make itself felt and while I wouldn’t call it exciting, the scenes involving the escape and the first moments in freedom were indeed much more satisfactory.

Daniel Radcliffe is sound as the nerdish Jenkin, Daniel Webber has little to do as Lee and the jailers are treated as buffoons or sadists.

  Filmed in South Australia, it does seem to recreate the period well.

2 stars plus