Maestro

Another year, another biopic on a world-famous conductor.  This time it’s real though some say Tár was developed as the female version of Bernstein and others of the ilk. The maestro here is Leonard Bernstein, thrust to fame at 25, composer, conductor, pianist and the first really big-name American conductor.  His musical West Side Story is iconic and represented the new breed of musicals, different from the idealistic Rodgers and Hammerstein ones for example.  He also composed religious music.

Bradley Cooper acts, co-writes and directs this film as if the remake of A Star is Born wasn’t enough.  Apparently, Spielberg was on board for this and willingly handed it over, doing a jazz up of West Side Story a couple of years back.

And what we get here is largely a look at Bernstein with a focus on his marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) from when they met to after her death at 58.  Felicia understood that being married to a great man (ego) meant putting up with a lot: the work, constant travel and constant affairs with both women and principally men.

Although she returned to her career later in life, there was no way out of the fact that she was living, as she put it, with a person who was draining.

The whole film has a superficiality to it which ends up leaving us left satisfied than we might have expected.  By superficial, I don’t mean shallow. It advances quickly from one moment or phase in Bernstein’s career to another and does include several scenes with sublime music, particularly in Ely Cathedral.  But the crises and turning points in the marriage seem disconnected from daily life and merely peaks that the film chooses to focus on.

Cooper is undeniably strong in the lead role and captures something of the personality of the man and his undoubted charisma.  

But it is Mulligan who really shines here, creating a complex personality from relatively little and demonstrating great nuances in her reactions to the man and his activities. She will surely garner awards for this.  

The rest of the cast are largely bit players with Maya Hawke attractive as the eldest daughter Jamie. Sarah Silverman and Matt Bomer are adequate as sister and lover respectively.  Photography by Matthew Libatique captures the mood of the periods well, beginning in black and white and graduating to a more washed-out colour later on.

In the end, it is a solid film but it could have given us a lot more – his impact on the US public for starters and why he was regarded so reverently. Compared to the fictional Tár, this film seems to skim over the surface and not engage with the real meat.

3 stars

Heartstopper (Series 2)

This British YA series does a couple of things really well.  It presents a raft of LGBTQ teenage characters with different aspects and challenges in their Year 11 lives in a South England school and it gives models of what real support and love is for people who fall outside the mainstream description of normality.  It shows that our understanding of normality is opening up to embrace all sorts of alternative ways of living.

Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor)

are now an item but Nick is somewhat concerned about coming out.  As the series goes on he finally manages to do so, sometimes rather accidentally and becomes a support for Charlie who is going through his own issues. Tao (William Gao) is finally admitting his love for the trans Elle (Yasmin Finney) and is scared of losing her as she seems destined to go to an LGBTQ orientated arts school.

Some other minor characters have their stories too, none more so than Isaac (Tobie Donovan) who discovers that he may be asexual.  

We also get a gay romance on the staff for good measure.

The show is snappy enough with 3 episodes devoted to a school trip to Paris during which much is learned and revealed.  

Locke and Connor are the main protagonists but Finney is so magnetic as Elle that she almost steals the show and Gao manages to create a memorable character in Tao.  I love Charlie’s sister Tori (Jenny Walser) who appears in the background as gothic provider of moral principles and Nick’s mother (Olivia Colman) who always says the right thing.

Bravo for this type of programme which is closer to Skam than anything we’ve seen from the US but has that special bias towards teenagers that usually have a tough time.  Alice Oseman the creative mind behind it and Euros Lyn have made a show that has raised the standard for its subject matter in mainstream television.

4 stars

Down Low

I don’t have an awful lot to say on this one.  It is a first film and has a bit of a Jordan Peele “Get Out” vibe but is less complete than that film.  Gary (Zachary Quinto) is a repressed gay man who has recently come out to his wife and children who have moved off elsewhere.  Gary also has a looming health issue of the terminal kind.  

He hires a masseur, Cameron (Lukas Gage), specializing in happy endings for some relief.  

On meeting Gary, Cameron decides he needs to be liberated even more and this leads to a crazy night involving other hookups, a weird neighbour who gets involved and a necrophiliac (Simon Rex).  A coda introduces us to Gary’s family.

The film has some amusing moments of slapstick but lacks consistency.  It is perhaps most relevant on the topic of being a gay man today.  Lukas Gage co-scripted the film with Phoebe Fisher and he has some very sharp observations.

This is a debut for Rightor Doyle and while there are positive points about it, the overall effect is that of a film best set aside quickly.

2 stars

The Holdovers

Alexander Payne returns to form with a warm feelgood Christmas movie. Basically,

 It is about three people who have to stay over at a private upmarket boarding college during the Christmas break in 1970-1.  

One is Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a curmudgeonly Ancient Civilisations teacher with goggle eyes going in different directions and a reputation for meanness as a teacher.  

The second is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), an intelligent but difficult 18 year-old who is struggling to graduate despite his intelligence and in part due to his broken home life.  

Finally, there is Mary Lamb (Da’vine Joy Randolph), head cook and recently bereaved of her only son in Vietnam.

Despite the three not being naturally drawn to each other, the time they spend together allows them to access something of each other’s worlds and grow in understanding and tolerance towards each other to the point where three near strangers form an alternative family.

The concept is quite simple but seamlessly presented by Payne with plenty of humour, jokes and music from the time period and three excellent performances.  

Giamatti is perfect as the cranky Hunham, who is not quite the fool he looks.  

Sessa, who was found for this part – his first – is a natural and completely believable and Randolph gets a chance at a more mature and serious role, being the glue that keeps this ‘family’ together.

I have little more to say.  It won’t be film of the year but it is a good satisfying and human movie.

4 stars plus

Punch

A recent NZ film for our consideration.  Welby Ings writes and directs this tale of a young boxer, Jim, training up for his first major fight in a small town.  He is being coached by his father (Tim Roth). Then things start to happen.  His alcoholic father is hiding issues at work and with his health, some local “gangsters” want to get in on the fight for betting purposes and basically take over Jim’s preparation and Jim himself becomes attracted to Whetu, a young Maori gay guy who is basically living in a hut on the beach and dreaming of leaving for Australia.  

Many issues are covered and some are dealt with rather too superficially with lapses in continuity and sense.

Overall, it is a well-meaning film about coming-of-age in a context of small-town prejudice.  It has some odd anachronistic touches with modern video editing equipment suggesting that the film is set today but with décor, cars and a mood of the 1960’s.  Some of that works.  The Maori element is present in the form of Whetu but not explored and we see neither his family nor any other Maori in the film. Mood is also very changeable with some rather unsavoury violence blended with dreamy beach scenes.  

I think the director has a future but this film suffers perhaps from his lack of experience.  And dialogue tends to be overly full of repeated expletives.

Jordan Oosterhof is an adequate Jim, a sort of Everyman/sports jock/teenager suddenly growing up, but the real star is Conan Hayes who creates a unique and intriguing character in Whetu, mature and immature at the same time.  Will be interested to watch his career.  Tim Roth is underused.

The scenery of West Coast Auckland is also a big feature as usual with Matt Henley’s photography capturing it well.

2 stars plus 

Tehran: City of Love

This Iranian film turns out to be a surprise, competent and observant but perhaps not the comedy it was billed to be.  What it does give us is a look at modern Tehran and the activities of its citizens, very similar to much of the world but with the heavy influence of this theocracy.

Mina (Forough Ghajabagli) is overweight, swathed in clothes and receptionist for a plastic surgeon which means she sees all sorts.  Tehran is apparently a major centre for plastic surgery, their bodies being something locals want some control over.  Mina catfishes male clients by sending them messages and sexy photos as Sara but then observing their arrival at a café for the rendez-vous without responding to her phone.  Her mother wants her married off but she hates the local pizza man mother has lined up. When she does meet more suitable men, they turn out to be married or unavailable and frankly she is not such a catch.  

Vahid (Mehdi Saki) is a funeral singer, lugubrious and disheveled, more so after a fiancée rejects him. 

 He tries his hand at wedding singing but that seems to be out because he is tied to the church and they don’t approve.  Vahid is a sad 40-something under the thumb of his father and his priest who want to keep him in the religious straitjacket.  

He does meet an attractive photographer Niloufar (Behnaz Jafari) but she is about to migrate and is far too sophisticated for him.  Finally, we have Hessam (Amir Hessam Bakhtiari), a former champion bodybuilder who is a personal trainer these days, trying to get into movies.  

He takes on a young man Arshia (Amir Reza Alizadeh) and we sense that Hessam is attracted to this young man and perceives that the feeling is reciprocated. For whatever reason, this potential love goes the way of others, probably Arshia unwilling to risk such a liaison in this society.

Ali Jaberansari directs this film sensitively with some humour and much subtle detail.  He and co-screenwriter Maryam Najafi convey plenty about the restrictions and apparent freedoms put on locals born in this place in this time with these conditions.  

Even removing our mask as Western free onlookers we can see that psychologically things are not 100% in Iran, that people are doing what they can to live their best life and a life like anyone else in a modern city.  The irony also is that these characters could exist in New York or anywhere else but watching this film you sense that their chances are fewer.

It is a small but well constructed and acted film.  Bekhtiari has a wonderful hangdog face.

3 stars

NYAD

These stories of human endurance and sacrifice often come around at the time of the Academy Awards and this year we get the story of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad’s attempts to swim from Cuba to Key West, Florida – 100 miles.  

It is a faithful and effective movie in this respect with no great frills despite Claudio Miranda behind the camera and Alexandre Desplat on music. We also get rather ‘watered down’ versions of the abuse Nyad suffered as a teenage swimmer, something of her motivational speaker work especially over the closing credits and little about the ‘issues’ which led to her final successful swim not being officially recognized.

You would go to see the film for the performances of two great actresses.  Annette Bening as Nyad who conveys a prickly self-centred character that you can’t help but admire in her stubbornness and Jodie Foster as her sidekick and friend Bonnie who acts as her coach.  

These two set the screen alight with their professionalism and experience.  It’s a delight to see them in action: credible at all moments and able with the subtlest gestures and looks to convey meaning that you don’t even think the writer imagined could be contained in the lie.  

Bening too shows her 65 year-old body as is, wrinkles and all and with all the makeup for sunburn, jellyfish stings and the like.  Rhys Ifans as the boat`s skipper is the only other character that really comes across here and to see him play a crusty Caribbean fishing boat captain is a nice stretch.

The film is largely predictable and drags a bit towards the end but you watch it to see great divas at work with their talent.  Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi come to this from documentaries and do a fair job.

3 stars plus

High Fidelity (series)

Based on the novel by Nick Hornby, this US series from 2019 was set in a record store in Brooklyn, New York.  Basically a combo of love and music, the characters tend to judge the world through musical tastes.  

Rob (Zoe Kravitz) is the central figure, a dimunitive 30 year-old who has been lamenting her break up with Mac (Kingsley Ben-Adir).  

She works with Simon (David H Holmes) an ex-boyfriend now batting for the other side and Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) an exuberant and frustrated artist.

Other regulars include Clyde (Jake Lacy) who is a potential new love for Rob, Rainbow Sun Francks is also there as brother Cam.

It is a strange series as it has some elements of a sitcom (repeating stories and lines) but is more like a drama series without the canned laughter.  The musical references are for aficionados as mostly we only get short snippets of some of the songs.

The first four episodes spend too much time in my opinion on Rob and her not so interesting love life.  As a character she is also quite dull and lacks any special charm. Some critics panned Kravitz’s acting.  She gets better as the series progresses but a great actress she is not.

Cherise tends to have a one note role and Simon is the most interesting of the 3 but when it comes to episode 8 and his backstory, insufficient is made of it.

The three middle episodes 5, 6 and 7 and possibly 9 are the best because they break out into other topics and in episode 5, the encounter with a rich artist and bitter wife played by Parker Posey is quite the highlight as an episode.  It is also when more space is given to Clyde (Jake Lacy) who never disappoints either.

All told it is little surprise that the show was canned after one season.  The idea is great but there were too many loose storylines that went nowhere (the young musicians who borrowed records?).  I felt that there was probably too much straitjacketing from the original and that also let it down.

2 stars plus

Çilingir Sofrasi

A good start to the new year with this 60-minute lesson on how to write and direct a feature film that says everything it needs to in one hour.

Two men meet in an Istanbul café after 17 years.  They were friends as school kids and the relationship went further.  

One, Emir (Baris Gonenen) is openly gay, the other Yusuf (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) is married with a new baby.

Structured in four parts the film covers their conversation during this night – the formal more awkward beginning quickly becoming more intimate and then as the night wears on with a colleague of Emir’s stopping by to greet them and an imperious torch singer demanding that Yusuf buy a rose for Emir, we reach the denouement.  Can the men reveal their real feelings for each other?

This is a very natural and credible story with very natural dialogue and a relationship created by the two actors that really convinces.

Ali Kemal Guven knows exactly what he wants to say and provides it here in this small and human film on gay love and the societal structures that tend to repress it.

A minor gem.

4 stars

2023 Best Film

Nominees: 

Barbie (US/UK 23)

Clemency (US 19)

Holy Spider (Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Jordan/Italy 22)

Joyland (Pakistan/UK 22)

RRR (India 22)

Tár (US 22)

The Blue Caftan (France/Morocco/Belgium/Denmark 22)

The Painted Bird (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Ukraine 19)

Till (US 22)

Winner

RRR

Prizes: RRR with 4 awards followed by The Painted Bird, Clemency and Till with 3, Tár and Colectiv with 2.