Who you think I am

This French thriller deals with a divorced woman in her fifties, sharing custody of two kids with her ex, who drifts into an online affair with a much younger man, hiding behind a photo of someone else. But as the affair intensifies, and her longing for connection gets deeper, it becomes increasingly clear that, as she mentions at one point, “Social Media is both the shipwreck and the liferaft”.

Juliette Binoche is stunning in the lead role – frequently onscreen alone, typing and reacting to the words typed to her, we’re drawn into her obsession. There’s quite a lot of twists in the telling but none of them feel gratuitous or forced – simply a necessary next step on the path the characters have already been travelling. A deep look at how the simple human desire to connect can be twisted into pain and misery, this is polished, engrossing and heartbreaking.

The White Crow

This look at the ballet superstar, Rudolf Nureyev, concentrates on his visit at 22 to Paris as part of the Kirov ballet, culminating in a dramatic defection at the airport. And the sequence which actually shows this defection is quite gripping. But it’s a ten-fifteen minute climax to a film that is otherwise pretty unfocused. The ballet performed here is skilled, certainly, but it’s not electric, magnetic, and while the biographical details are all here (if jumbled in a weird mess of flashbacks and sideplots), it only briefly builds up much momentum. Raiph Finnes plays Nureyev’s mentor in a quiet reserved manner and that unfortunately applies to a lot of his directing as well. It’s a film that needed fire and passion, and instead it’s largely damp and remote. A disappointment.

Booksmart

Two teens chase after a night out at a good party. This is in no way an original premise. But what is unusual is the quality of the performers, the script and the dedication and insight into how friendships, relationships and future plans feel constantly in flux during the late teen years. Beenie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever play two high academic achievers who realise just before graduation that they missed out on a social life while everyone around them was both living the high life AND getting into the college of their choice – and determine to make it to one last bash before they graduate. Of course there are distractions and scene stealing cameos, of course they learn a couple of life lessons along the way, and of course the things they sought are not necessarily the things they come away with. But a combination of emotional truth and high farce, of gross-outs and heart, ensures that this works better than it has any right to. There is probably one minor subplot too many that hasn’t been fully thought through, but there’s mostly enough charm and laughs in here to make sure this is an enjoyable experience.

Crawl

When her sister asks her to check on their dad, living alone in a small Florida town on the eve of a hurricane, Hayley pops in the van to head to his house. But with the house apparently empty, and the rains increasing, her worries begin to increase. And when she finds him under the house in the crawl space, injured after an encounter with an alligator (who is still down there, and is joined by a few more throughout the film), the battle for survival against both the Gators and the rising waters commences.

This is a back to basics thriller-horror movie, with most of the emphasis on two actors (Kaya Scholedario as the daughter, Barry Pepper as the dad) and the gators battling through various encounters in one increasingly damp house. There are a couple of extras who largely exist to get eaten along the way, but the weight is on these two performers (who have both had unfortunate experiences in big budget films after coming to public attention strongly – Scoledario was fake-Kiera-Knightley in the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean after launching in the second generation of “Skins”, Pepper launched strongly in “Saving Private Ryan” before the career-wrecking “Battlefield Earth”). Both hold the screen strongly in a tense, thrilling adventure. At the end of the day, this is still a movie about people in Florida being threatened by alligators, and that’s not necessarily a film for everyone. But this is a very strong execution of that premise.

Hail Satan?

The Satanic Temple is part-religion, part-political protest movement, and like both of these, it’s a complex multi-headed beast, with a mix of showmanship, activism, community work and performance art. Penny Lane’s documentary about the movement is, inevitably, somewhat of a promotion-effort (all the talking heads interviews are with members, although one of them has become disassociated with the Temple).  And there really isn’t a lot of interrogation about how effective they’ve been by being, basically, as deliberately disruptive as the Christian right is, just from the opposite direction. And given that the main political action it covers (protests against the 10 commandments monolith at the state house in Alabama) is still ongoing, there isn’t really the satisfying resolution you may be looking for. Still, this is a look at how a radical movement becomes part of the political discourse, how the use of extreme imagery can work to unite people, and it also has a lot of shots of naked men. It’s an interesting take on a provocative part of modern political discourse.

Stuber

This is a case of a film that is probably never going to be considered in the best work of anybody who works on it, but never the less it has a couple of minor pleasures. A bit of a throwback buddy comedy (one’s a cop who’s temporarily blinded due to Lasik surgery, one’s an uber driver whose obsession with his 5 star rating is inevitably challenged by the things the cop puts him through), with a combination of violent action and snarky comedy. This is stacked with a reasonably strong cast, though none of them are used at their best – Dave Bautista has shown elsewhere he has a reasonable amount of range and isn’t just your standard issue thug (particularly in Blade Runner 2049), but here he’s standard-issue cop with a dead partner and distant family life. Kamail Nanjiani similarly showed a lot of space to manoeuvre in “The Big Sick” but here he’s largely stuck at whiney passive aggressiveness for most of the film. Natalie Morales, Betty Gilpin, Mira Sorvino and Iko Uwais are all similarly flatly used. Yet there’s a couple of entertaining moments, including one fight in a sporting goods store, that mean that, if this is a timewaster, it’s at least an enjoyable timewaster. No, it absolutely doesn’t get beyond a grossly extended product placement for Uber, and there’s not a lot that’s particularly inventive about the construction of the film. But everybody sets their clichés just on the bearable side of likeable, to get this to the level of passable.

High Life

This is Claire Denis’ English language debut, and it very much suffers from being made in English by a director whose first language is not English. It’s a very measured, slowly paced space saga as the sole survivors in a prison ship, a man and his daughter, head slowly towards a black hole – and remember the circumstances that led them to becoming the sole survivors. There are certainly elements here which could, in other hands, be interesting – power games between desperate people, and the unexpected bonds that form in those circumstances – but this never really gets there. The non-sequential narrative, rather than building intrigue in what’s been skipped over, instead just feels like scenes have been jumbled. Juliet Binoche seems somewhat lost in in a role that plays to none of her strengths. Robert Pattinson as the lead has some decent moments here and there (and he gets a chance to sing over the closing credits, which is strangely touching), but all in all this is not a film I enjoyed or was particularly interested in.

Spiderman Far From Home

Despite being the second major reboot of the character in the last decade, plus having recently shown up in the highest grossing films of 2018 and 2019, Tom Holland’s Spiderman still is a delightful presence to have on screen. Yes, we should probably all have gotten over superheroes by now and have moved onto something far more culturally enriching, but there’s an obvious appeal to your typical awkward teenager given great power and equally great responsibilities, particularly in the wake of the events of “Endgame” where even more responsibility seems to fall on him, just as he’s got a school trip to Europe planned where he might finally be able to ask out MJ, that girl at school who’s been capturing his attention. But inevitably Nick Fury shows up to interrupt with a new challenge, and a new ally. Can Peter manage his normal life AND his superheroic life without both imploding?

The combo of high-school drama and superheroics could be a disaster, but somehow these manage to work in wonderful concert. No, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense that a mid-range public school is able to send its students off on a fancy European vacation to whichever countries happen to have the best tax-relief for location shooting (apart from the chance to refresh the visuals so we aren’t just blowing up New York again), but there’s a light breeziness to this, with just enough roots in genuine angst and personal drama to mean this doesn’t entirely drift off into the ridiculous. The longer-established actors, Samuel L Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal, get to play various ranges of mentor to Spidey, there’s a couple of nice visual surprises, and both Holland and Zendaya get to play actual human beings in the middle of all the usual world-defending action. This is a case where everything fires on all cylinders, from the big action stuff to the small personal stuff, and it’s delightful.

Annabelle Comes Home

The Conjuring-verse is a weird set of films – based on the various contemporary folk-myths told by Ed and Lorraine Warren of the various demonic entities they’ve encountered, the main two films have an integrity that the spinoffs haven’t quite been able to recapture – partially, perhaps, it’s that James Wan is a master of the horror form and Patrick Wilson and Vera Famiglia are deeply endearing performers who get us invested in the whole mystical flim-flammery about ghostly possessions, while the related films lean a bit more towards the cardboard-cutouts and to springing up random jump scares whenever the pace flags a bit. “Anabelle Comes Home” attempts to bring this back to basics, with much of the action taking place in the Warren’s home as their daughter, her babysitter and her friend are menaced by the various haunted totems that occupy their room of mystical objects, including the titular doll. But with both Warren’s away for most of the movie, the replacement trio are never quite as fascinating as they might be – yes, the 70’s décor of the house is a nicely cheezy location to explore, and McKenna Grace as the daughter has a decent sense of solemnity to her, but there just isn’t very much to this tale – it’s very much a conventional runaround that never really comes up with any new bits or variations on the formula. It’s a very soft-edged horror movie, too, with few outright scary sequences – it’s maybe trying for creeping dread but it never really gets out of first gear. Maybe suitable for someone who wants to see a horror movie that doesn’t scare them very much, but why bother?

Parasite

An impoverished family scrapes to survive in a small apartment. But when one family member gets the chance to tutor the daughter of a wealthy family, they begin to see options opening up for them… This is a twisty-turny thriller about class, family loyalties and control, told with beauty and care by a master of cinema. Bong Joon-ho’s previous films, “The Host”, “Snowpiercer” and “Okja” all had strong sci-fi elements, while this is set in a somewhat more realistic world, but there’s a careful heightened style that gives this a real edge. There’s a sure visual sense here, using the spaces the character’s occupy to tell a lot of the details about them, and it’s a film that knows exactly how to grab an audience and not let them go until it’s over. Shockingly effective, this is simply one of the finest films of recent years, strongly performed, urgently relevant, shocking, clever and intriguing. Absolutely a must see.

Yesterday

This wedding of two UK filmmaking talents bouncing off the theme of one of the UK’s best known cultural institutions is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Danny Boyle as director gets a few flashy moments and some gentle character interplay, but Richard Curtis’ script suffers from a slightly underpowered love story where the main impediment to future happiness is that, for no particularly good reason, nobody will actually say how they feel for vast amounts of time (it also suffers from Curtis having moved over the last two decades from a guy who could write great jokes to a guy who just kinda writes gentle warm vibes instead). Himesh Patel gets a nice star launching lead as the failed musician who wakes up to discover he’s the only person who knows the Beatles catalogue, and the story of his rise, in its early stages, is reasonably charming and sweet. Lily James as the love interest suffers from a character who really only exists to do a lot of not-quite-expressed yearning. And a lot of the steps along the way are pretty reasonable – the songs are performed well, there’s a goofy cameo from Ed Sheeran, and one late-in-film cameo that comes close to justifying the entire endeavor. But in the end the decision to emphasise the not-very-well-thought-out love story over anything else makes this fall a bit flatter than it probably should.

Under the Silver Lake

The followup film to a sudden indie-success can be a moment of truth. Is a director going to double down on the themes of the first film? Cash in and work on a more commercial project? Or are they going to go for broke and get their dream project made, never mind how comprehensible anybody else finds it? “Under the Silver Lake” is a case of the third option, a LA Noir story of conspiracies, missing women, secrets, failure and discovery, and it’s a case where clearly the director is indulging himself rather a lot. But as indulgences go, this is a fairly intriguing one. I don’t think it holds together as a whole narrative – there’s too many shaggy dog elements here that never really add up to a whole picture – but scene-to-scene this is pretty enjoyable. The general criticism I’ve seen of this is as film that’s gone “full Southland Tales” – but for me, that was a film that actively set up much of its cast to embarrass themselves. This one enjoys itself while disappearing up its own obscurantist fundament. And I enjoyed a reasonable amount of it too, while not entirely being sure this is a film I can easily recommend to a lot of people – it’s self-indulgent but in the right mood, it’s interesting self-indulgence.

Never Look Away

This saga covers around 20 years in the lives of several Germans, from just before World War II to the mid 60s, as the country moves from Nazi rule to a nation divided between socialism and capitalism, and about a young artist as he develops his skills, finds a lover and finally makes his place in the world. This does have the feel of an old-fashioned romantic epic (in particular in the phases of the young lovers), with a running time over three hours, while also asking bigger questions about Germany’s political past and the way secrets were covered up. The last third, where the art questions come to the surface, suffers a bit in that there’s a meandering montage of modern art that doesn’t entirely take the work seriously and seems like a distraction from the main themes of the film, before those plot elements re-emerge. There’s some strong performances in here, particularly Sebastian Koch as the most malign character in the film. It does share some themes with “Cold War” which showed earlier in the year, including jumping over years, but I found the characters in this one less arbitrarily leaping from moment to moment and with greater depth. It’s certainly a dense film and while it’s not always entirely successful, it’s got enough value to be worth immersing yourself in.

Child's Play

Kicking away the accumulated details of six films and going back to basics for the remake, this brings back the story of a lonely kid and the doll with homicidal tendencies that bonds with him and then tries to kill him too. Discarding the voodoo supernatural stuff for not-all-that-more-believable cyber-shenanigans, this plays into the gore-and-splatter end of the genre (an early scene where Andy and his fellow-teen-friends watch “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” is an indication of the level we’re going for). And along the way, as an isolated kid becomes more and more paranoid about the doll who he just knows is up to something, and nobody believes him, there’s a nicely building mood. The ending indulges in just the right amount of over-the-topness and, while this isn’t something that reinvents the form, it does at least play the familiar notes well. Of the cast, Mark Hammill’s Chucky enjoys an opportunity go suitably over the top bonkers, although neither Aubrey Plaza as the kid’s mum nor Brian Tyrese Henry as an investigating detective are really used to their full abilities (neither are bad, it’s just that they’re in generic roles that they can’t do much with).  But if you’re looking for gory fun this is reasonable at doing the job.

Men In Black International

At this point, the “Men in Black” franchise stands as a demonstration that some ideas that make a highly successful first film cannot really carry a whole bunch of sequels. None of the follow up films have really recaptured the charming strangeness of Barry Sonnenfield’s first film – they’ve all fallen into farfetched sequel shenanigans, negating the end of previous films and, in this case, recasting to see whether it plays any better if you strip off most the backstory. And … it doesn’t, really. The plot is no great shakes – it’s the usual “someone wants a superweapon, two heroes from a secret agency want to stop them” shenanigans. This time the main duo are Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth – Thompson fares slightly better in having an actual character to play beyond “physically attractive”, but neither are really being used at their best. It also doesn’t have much of an idea what to do with Liam Neeson, Rory Kinnear or Emma Thompson (Emma and Tessa have one scene where they have amusing byplay, but it’s forgotten pretty quickly). Oh, there’s creatures, there’s exotic locales, there’s gadgetry all over the place … but there’s no whimsy, no strangeness, no fun. This is a film going through the motions, and it’s dull.

Wild Rose

This plays in the field of “feel good clichés about artists rising above their circumstances” while at the same time being a tad more realistic about exactly how oppressive those circumstances may be. The main strength of the film is Jessie Buckley in the title role as Rose-Lynn Harlan, a mother of two, recently released from prison, who has dreams of becoming a country music star, but feels trapped in her cycle of work and parenting in Glasgow. Her struggles have a reality to them and we’re drawn in even as she makes decisions that are not necessarily the best for herself or for her kids – she’s a shambles but a likeably naive one, and her ambition, flawed and unbased in reality as it might be, shines through.

Julie Waters as her mum has the challenge of bring realism back into the mix, and it’s a tribute to her skills that, despite her familiarity, she actually manages to make her points reasonably well. Sophie Okenedo as the employer who bonds with Rose-Lynn and tries to help her on her way despite not really understanding her circumstances brings a gentle rhythm to it. The scripting does tend to fall between two stools a little – it simultaneously wants to play in reality but it can’t quite resist the uplift of Rose-Lynn’s hopes and dreams – and while it does make the point that at some point she’s going to have to do hard work to get herself skilled, in the end it largely leaves that off screen in favour of a one-year-later-concert-ending. It’s also not quite willing to give the kids enough individual characterisations to make them more than unfortunate obstacles. Which ends up making this an interesting but not entirely successful film.