The Good Nurse

This film is watchable enough but I must admit to having a few reservations.  The story of a nurse who twigs to the fact that a colleague and friend is in fact a serial killer and then has to report him and take part in his capture and interrogation despite him being one of her few supportive friends is based on a real story.  Charles Cullen has been jumping from hospital to hospital (in the early 2000s) and seems like a gift: competent, willing to do night shift, etc.  For some never explained reasons he also kills patients by putting other drugs in their drip solutions while they are in intensive care.  

Amy Loughren, his colleague is struggling to complete a year’s tenure at one hospital so she can become eligible to claim health insurance and get a heart operation.  She is battling health episodes and bringing up two little girls.  

Jessica Chastain is her usual fine self as Amy, credible and always interesting to watch as she tends to rely on minimal gestures and voice tone to convey her character.  

Eddie Redmayne also underplays Charles for much of the film – an almost nothing character – bland, helpful and only at the end shows a pent-up violent streak though he never explains why he killed possibly up to 400 people.  Almost more interesting is the clash between the investigating detectives and the stonewalling hospital administrators and lawyers who do everything they can to put obstacles in the way of helping the investigation.  Cullen was employed at 9 different hospitals in the area and never properly supervised or investigated.  

The shortcomings of the hospital system in which we put our trust and the shortcomings of the health system denying a hard-working nurse coverage for a serious condition show up the appalling healthcare set up in the US at least in those days and this almost peripheral material fleshes out a fairly dull lead plot.  Tobias Lindholm chooses to film in dark night scenes or grey winter shades which also make the film somewhat less attractive to follow.  

Finally, I asked myself quite what the motivation was to make the film.  There have been far better serial killer films around and the tension here is quite low-key.  The medical mismanagement adds to the story but is left undeveloped as it was in real life.  We are left with the dilemma about ratting on a friend or not and this seems a logical choice here.  At least Amy got a happy ending in life.

3 stars

She Said

Every couple of years a film involving persistent and plucky investigators comes out of Hollywood.  We had Spotlight against the abuse in the Catholic Church, Blackwater against the contamination of private land in the South, The Post and it’s take on Watergate.

This year the target is close to Tinseltown’s heart in the form of Harvey Weinstein and his serial abuse of employees and actors as head of Miramax for 30 years.  We follow the two New York times reporters who convinced a number of scared women to finally speak out later leading to 82 women accusing Weinstein of abuse.  He is now serving a 23-year sentence. German director Maria Schrader leads a largely female team recreating the steps Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor took to break the story.

Carey Mulligan who is turning into a really interesting actress as she matures ably depicts Megan, the new mother complete with post-partum depression and Zoe Kazan has so much compassion in her look as Kantor. 

 We also get the great Patricia Clarkson as a NYT editor and André Braugher as the editor-in-chief.  Ashley Judd reprises an episode from her own life in this and there are some excellent cameos from Weinstein victims played by Jennifer Ehle and especially Samantha Morton whose one scene is dynamite.

The story is largely chronological with a few brief flashbacks and there is a sense of matter-of-factness about the film.  Although Nicholas Britell’s music has its moments of grandeur the overall effect is more like a documentary than a dramatic movie.

As one of the triggers for the rise of the #Me too movement this is an important and well-made movie especially in these days when abuses of power are being revealed and questioned the world over.

4 stars plus

It’s in us all

Irish debut by actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes who also acts in a minor role here.  All told something of a strange moody independent film which has its moments.  Set in Donegal, it features Cosmo Jarvis as Hamish Considine, a young English businessman who has been bequeathed a house by his aunt – his mother’s sister.  He decides to visit it before it gets sold and we see him hiring a car at a local airport and driving to the coastal site where the house is.  En route, his car has a head-on crash with another car and Hamish wakes up in hospital with a couple of broken bones.  

He decides to stay on a bit to recover and is befriended by none other than a teenage boy who was driving the other car – Evan.  

Evan’s friend Cullum was killed in the accident but Evan seems blithely unconcerned.  Why does he want to spend time with Hamish: is he curious, does he want revenge?  He drives Hamish places such as the local shop or to see a sightseeing place but almost always ends up leaving Hamish to walk home alone in his poor state.  

Meanwhile Hamish discovers more about his dead mother and her relationship to this place, information that he did not get from his father who considers the whole issue a closed book.  In his shock and grief, Hamish starts grieving his mother and is angry with his father for the way she was treated.  And Evan keeps provoking him too in some ways.  Scenes of violence start to occur….

This is not a very straightforward film as it deals with repressed emotions in men and the indirect ways they try to handle these.  There is some talk of a gay attraction between Evan and Hamish but nothing is ever really confirmed and like the ending it seems that the director prefers to leave different clues about possible but not necessarily certain motives for action.

The landscape is attractive in a desolate way and the acting adequate.  Cosmo Jarvis has a difficult role and he only convinced me some of the way.  Rhys Mannion is suitably ambiguous as the boy.  A fair tale with some moody music but that’s about it.

2 stars plus

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris

There is something quintessentially English about this film, a fantasy in the line of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Paddington and even the Bond movies.  Written by Paul Gallico this story set in 1957 tells the implausible story of a war widow and housemaid who learns that her husband is dead 14 years after the war and decides to pursue her dream.  That dream is the purchase of a haute couture gown like one she sees in the wardrobe of one of her employers.  

With some scrimping and a lot of luck in depressed London she gets to go to Paris and ends up via one accident after another in the House of Dior.  

She has the money to pay for one dress but this means staying in Paris for several days for the fitting.

What ensues is a sort of olden-day Emily in Paris a l’anglaise as Ada Harris experiences French life and culture and brings some of her down-to-earth common sense to issues that the Parisians she meets have.

She gets her dress and returns to London only for tragedy to befall it but then another chain of events turns the ill-fated event around.

Gallico has written a sort of morality tale about being a good person and treating others well despite your circumstances but it is also embued with class and cultural stereotypes of the period. 

 I found it all a little too pat, entertaining up to a point but also predictable and leaning towards caricature in parts.  Lots of good actors led by Lesley Manville who plays Ada very well, even though I found her rather too clichéd for words with her “ducks” and “cor blimeys”.  

Isabelle Huppert, Lambert Wilson and Lucas Bravo have pretty easy tasks as the main French cast members with Alba Baptista a pleasant find as one of the models.  

Nice recreation of the period but that is about it.

3 stars

The Swimmers

This is a sort of biopic that almost views as a documentary tracing the life story of the Mardini sisters who escaped from war-torn Syria through Turkey and small boat to Lesbos

and then walked to Germany via Serbia and Hungary, with the German government bussing them the last part after the huge influx of migrants into Hungary became too much to manage.  

Yusra and Sara Mardini are swimmers and were preparing to represent their country in the Olympics when civil war forced them to flee.  

Once in Germany Yusra continued to train and ended up representing the Refugee Olympic Team in the Rio Olympics and at Tokyo.

So, you have an escape movie and a sports movie all in one here directed by Sally El Hosaini, a British Arabic director.

It is a pretty faithful depiction of what the girls had to go through and gives us a personal view of what being a refugee is like.

Nonetheless, I found that as the movie meandered along I was not being excited or thrilled by their story.  

The film is a little overlong and predictable in parts and while there are some nice exchanges with their cousin and other fellow travelers it somehow feels a bit flat for what is quite a momentous story.

  Real life sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa play the Mardinis with Ahmed Malik as the cousin and Matthias Schweighofer as Sven, the German swimming coach.

  They are all fine in their roles but their lacks a little spice or polish to turn this into anything more than a biopic that is competently made.

3 stars

Panibugho

Very new Filipino movie that blends a serious melodramatic story about three sisters living together in a dusty old mansion in the country following the death of their father, a land dispute holding up the succession and the arrival of an injured young man who may be a rebel or simply a traveler.  

We quickly learn that the Paraiso sisters can’t live with each other or without each other hence the title which means jealousy.  As the young man, Felipe (Kiko Estrada) gets better he is bedded by second sister Ester and falls in love with the baby Lea.  Older sister Sonya (Angela Morena) meanwhile is bedding a local army captain (Benz Sangalang) who is hunting down rebels.  

The fact that the three sisters are also real-life sisters makes it hard to distinguish between them and the kinkiness of Felipe, who is not really Felipe sleeping with at least two is a bit over the top.  

Suffice to say there are many sex scenes and especially topless ones of the girls.  The two men do get nude but generally at a distance.

It’s not the worst film I’ve seen at all for all its limitations, but there are many continuity issues and other goofs.  Its set in the 90’s and the characters have cellphones (albeit old but was there an internet service in the back of beyond?).

The red herring antics of Felipe are not very credible and the whole last twenty minutes with its plot twists seems to try and make this a Shakespearean tragedy, when it patently isn’t.  I guess though that it’s the sort of movie that goes down well in the Philippines and that’s good to be reminded of from time to time.

1 star plus

Joyride

Irish road movie featuring a middle-aged woman, lawyer and new mother who ends up ´kidnapped´ by a 12 year-old driving a taxi! 

 The woman, Joy, is planning to hand over her baby daughter to her sister and head off to Lanzarote as she does not plan to bring up the child.  The boy has just lost his mother who was a singer and we meet him at a fundraising event in a pub where locals donate a lot of money for his future. His wide-boy father wants to keep the money to pay off his own debts, so Mulli steals the money and heads out of town.  

On this road trip this odd couple start off fighting but then learn to accommodate themselves to each other.  Mulli, who is wise beyond his years teaches Joy how to breastfeed (!), and slowly during a journey full of accidents they start to consider their future options.  

This film by Emer Reynolds is not that good but is watchable.  We get to see some nice countryside around County Kerry.  The story however is pretty far-fetched and tries to be feelgood, comic and a little transgressive as well.  

What saves it is the great Olivia Colman who manages to create a plausible character as Joy and shows her tremendous vulnerability.  Charlie Reid does a good job matching her most of the way as the young Mulli. A pleasant enough watch but little more.

2 stars

The White Lotus (series 1)

Very well received series from 2022 set in a resort hotel in Maui.  In a way it is a perfect bridge from Triangle of Sadness in that it shows the rich at play with all their flaws creating havoc where they go.

Directed and written by Mike White who was responsible for the hilarious Enlightened some years ago that brought Laura Dern back into the main stream this series contains the same blend of humour, social commentary and mystery.

It has also made stars of a number of actors. Murray Bartlett, the resort manager is Australian, addicted and gay and slowly goes off the rails in a hilarious way during the series,

Jennifer Coolidge known for Legally Blonde et al is excellent as an unhappy overweight neurotic woman grieving her mother.  Another ‘name’ – Steve Zahn grows as the series proceeds from being a hen-picked husband and ridiculous father to someone far happier and

Jake Lacy as the spoilt and rather nasty honeymooner with his trophy wife Rachel (Alexandra Daddario)

who has other plans all delight us with their scenes.  

In amongst the almost farcical scenes (a romantic dinner interrupted by casting of ashes into the sea or a new employee giving birth in the office on her first day),

we also get some really well-acted and scripted scenes that are poignant and recognizable.  Some of them involve the generation gaps.  

Parents Nicole and Mark (Zahn) struggle to understand the motivations of their children and their friends who are not always so congruent in their words and acts.

Definitely a recommendable contemporary show and a look at the world of the wealthy. A shout out to the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer for his excellent music.

4 stars

2022 Best Film

Nominees:

Athena (France 22)

Drive My Car (Japan 21)

Everything Everywhere All at Once(US 22)

High Ground (Australia 20)

Mass (US 21)

Memoria (Colombia/Thailand/France/Germany/Mexico/Qatar/UK/China /Switzerland 21)

Nitram (Australia 21)

Parallel Mothers (Spain/France 21)

The Power of the Dog (UK/Canada/Australia/NZ/US 21)

Tehran Taboo (Germany/Austria 17)

Triangle of Sadness (Sweden/France/UK/Germany/Turkey/Greece/US/Denmark/Switzerland/Mexico 22)

The Worst Person in the World (Norway/France/Sweden/Denmark 21)

Winner

Nitram

Prizes: Nitram with 6 awards followed by The Worst Person in the World with 4, Mass with 3 and Everything Everywhere All at Once and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, each with 2.

2022 Best Actor

Nominees:

Austin Butler (Elvis)

Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)

Willem Dafoe (Tommaso)

Matt Damon (Stillwater)

Anders Danielsen Lie (The Worst Person in the World)

Jason Isaacs (Mass)

Caleb Landry-Jones (Nitram)

Tim Roth (Sundown)

Will Smith (King Richard)

Winner

Caleb Landry-Jones