Black Bear review

BLACK BEAR (2020)

Director: Lawrence Michael Levine

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Sarah Gadon, Christopher Abbot

Runtime: 104min

 

 

Black Bear is a tricksy little film, a darling of Sundance that delivers several surprises and serves up a tantalising dose of ambiguity. It runs on a career best performance from Aubrey Plaza, whose own trademark ambiguity is both referenced and used to great effect.

It's hard to know what exactly to reveal about the plot, as there is a reversal about half an hour in which requires rethinking everything that has happened up until then. But basically, Plaza is an actor/director come to stay with Gadon and Abbot's husband and wife at their rural retreat in order to get some writing done. They are a waspish passive aggressive couple, expecting a child, who bitch at each other constantly. Things slowly descend into arguments and recrimination as the first evening progresses.

Or do they? There is something a little off about the chronology and indeed everything changes, revealing a film about making a film, that explores artistic creation and the emotional and physical stimuluses required to achieve a performance. Or perhaps not required. When does emotional manipulation of an actor cross the line into abuse?

It's impressive, involving stuff, Plaza letting it all hang out and getting great support from Gadon and Abbot (he had the lead in the recent TV adaptation of Catch 22) as well as quite a large cast playing various film crew members, with a little running comedy amongst the ensemble to balance the hardcore emotional excavation. Director Levine also wrote the film and has a great eye for small details; it is a pleasure to see so many well-developed three-dimensional characters.

And the fine line that the film walks works. The journey is captivating, with much to ponder along the way. Ambiguity can sometimes do little more than frustrate but here it allows for a very satisfying experience. Oh, and yes, there really is a bear. 

FILM REVIEW INDEX

BEGINNING OF DECEMBER...

I thought it might be a good idea to have an index of film reviews so you can find what's here. At the beginning of each month I'll post an updated one - that way it should be visible on the front page at all times in case anyone wants to delve into the archives. 

I feel there should be some easier way to do this but since I'm relatively new and know crap about how blogging here works, this is the best I can think of. PLEASE someone, tell me if there's a better way!

A

Ava

B

Bill & Ted Face The Music

C 

Coma (Koma)

D

The Dead Ones

The Devil All The Time 

The Doorman

G

Greenland

H

His House

Hosts

I

I'm Think Of Ending Things

L

Little Joe

M

Mank

Mulan

N

The Nest

O

On The Rocks

The Owners

P

Peninsula

Possessor

Project Power 

Q

The Quarry

R

Rebecca

The Rental

S

Sea Fever

Spontaneous

Sputnik

T

Tenet

The Trial Of The Chicago 7

W

Waiting For The Barbarians

The Wolf Of Snow Hollow

 

Mank review

MANK (2020)

Director: Davide Fincher

Starring: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Lily Collins

Runtime: 131min

 

 

People often say "they don't make them like that any more" and if they say that about Mank for a change it will be accurate. For the film is a thing of wonder and beauty, not only recreating a vision of Golden Era Hollywood but creating it in as close to the style of that era as can be attained. It is also dense and complex, crammed with brief glimpses of famous '30s faces and as the only other person in the cinema with me agreed afterwards, it's not going to make any money.

I know that's a kinda crass way to look at it. It feels like that scene in Inside Llewyn Davis where Llewyn plays a song for F Murray Abraham's music promoter - a beautiful haunting tune that could rip your heart out - and a stone-faced Abraham just says: "I don't see a lot of money here." That was a Coen Brothers film and the last time I had the same feeling was another film of theirs, Hail Caesar!. It finished and I thought "Damn, that was wonderful! No one's going to watch it."

But let's leave all that aside. Predicting failure seems cruel, especially when the object of the prediction is as extraordinary as Mank. As a devotee of Orson Welles with a fascination for the machinations of that Hollywood period I was happier than a monkey in a monkey tree. There is pretty much nothing that I didn't absolutely love about this film: it has remarkable cinematography, music, editing, acting, costumes, sets, and a great witty script from director David Fincher's late father, Jack.

But many of those things will be actively off-putting I would guess for a general audience...

The film's look is very low-contrast black and white. David Fincher said in a New Yorker interview that they shot in high resolution and then "took most everything and softened it to an absurd extent to try to match the look of the era. We probably lost two-thirds of the resolution in order to make it have the same feel, and then we put in little scratches and digs and cigarette burns." Don't think that this looks something like Tarantino's Grindhouse experiment, but it is an extraordinarily "soft" black and white image. This still shows the unusual look very accurately:

Arliss Howard / LB Meyer   Charles Dance / WR Hearst

And the soundtrack is mono. No flashy super-surround effects here, but warm, slightly distorted mono with an analogue feel to it. 

So on to the story. This is the tale of Herman Mankiewicz and his writing of Citizen Kane. It starts with him heading to a secluded ranch where he has been sent by Orson Welles with a secretary (Lily Collins - very good) and nurse, him to write, them to try and keep him off the booze. The film then spirals in many directions, much like Citizen Kane itself, confidently moving between flashbacks to explore Mank's relationship with the studio, his wife and friends, and the political climate. 

There is just so much to enjoy, from testy sparring with Louis B Meyer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg, to his growing friendship with Marion Davis whom Seyfried's mercurial performance does a lot to rehabilitate, and of course William Randolf Hearst himself whom Charles Dance holds back from making a monster: it is a finely judged portrait, more three dimensional that one might have expected. There's also the relationship with his wife (Tuppence Middleton), carers and brother (the famous Joseph Mankievicz, a solid Tom Pelphry) to take in.

Where the film might lose people is the politics of the era, the rising "communist/socialist" menace and the studios' pushback against it. It seems a diversion, even if it contribtutes to Mank's increasingly fractious relationship with his studio masters. 

Along the way there are more than a few delightful Citizen Kane homages, in the set-ups and lighting, all lovely little touches that are totally integrated. And playing Spot The Star is fun as famous names and faces pop into view, from John Houseman (Sam Troughton) to David O Selznick (Toby Leonard Moore), Josef Von Sternberg (Paul Fox) to Norma Shearer (Jessie Cohen). And of course there's Orson himself, very much just a walk-on but perfectly embodied by Tom Burke (actually I though he should have been taller but, otherwise, perfect). This is a film that will merit many many repeat viewings to spot all the subtleties.

Tom Burke / Orson Welles

Gary Oldman strolls through everything with drunken aplomb. His Mankiewicz gets to be a continual witticism machine, every utterance a gem of observation, insight or sarcasm, often all three. And he's really good, as good as I've seen him. There are beautiful subtle moments of stillness to balance the grandstanding; Oscar nomination no doubt on its way, and well-deserved too. 

For all that, perhaps the ultimate criticism is that you never really get inside, never get to know Mank. He remains as much of an enigma at the end as at the beginning. But perhaps that's fitting. That was a criticism people made about Citizen Kane but it seemed to be missing the point: Citizen Kane deliberately questioned how well you could really know anyone from snippets of their life. Mank doesn't do that as explicitly but the underlying principle remains.  

The Nest review

THE NEST (2020)

Director: Sean Durkin

Starring: Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Oona Roche, Charlie Shotwell

Runtime: 107mins

 

The Nest has been anticipated with great excitement since director Sean Durkin's first film, the striking Martha, Marcy May Marlene, now ten years old, is highly regarded as a work of great subtlety and precision. That same precision carries on here. There is clearly not an accidental shot in the film. Everything is exact and exacting. That doesn't, however, make it much fun.

Of course not every film is meant to be fun. And since this is a film about a marriage crisis, fun is definitely not on the agenda. At all.

Law is a wide-boy financial trader, Coon is his horse trainer wife. They have a couple of kids, one hers, one theirs. But Jude's work life seems to be going less than well in America so he drags the family back to England to "start again". He reckons he can get really rich there and immediately buys a country mansion, sends the kids to the best schools and generally tears through money to bolster his perceived status. 

It's no surprise that when his one big deal falls apart - he does seem to bank his entire fortune on one long-shot idea which seems less than sensible or realistic - things in the marriage get strained. Simultaneously bad things happen to her favourite horse, leading to a slow-motion emotional train crash. Meanwhile the daughter has turned all snarky and the young boy seems so fragile that you seriously doubt for his safety. It's often the innocent who suffer in films such as this - think The Ice Storm or many others - allowing for parental redemption...

Good points: the film is directed like a horror film. Spooky music, spooky camera, strange things bumping in the night (what did happen to that horse?). This is an interesting approach. Especially with the big slightly threatening house it keeps you expecting something supernatural or genuinely horrible. On the downside, there is a slight feeling of disappointment when nothing of that sort actually occurs.

Also very good is the music which presents variations of jazz and is continually unsettling.

Also very good is the acting. All the actors are very subtle and serious. Jude is his usual slightly irritating self but as the status and money obsessed husband I guess that's intentional. The kids are good. 

In fact it's all good. From the camerawork to the music to the script to the cast it's all top notch. It's also very steadily paced and not much happens. Many descriptions call this a thriller. Nope. It's a slow very serious drama. It's a minutely-observed, unflinching study of a marriage falling apart. Make sure you're in the right mood before you start.

Greenland review

GREENLAND (2020) 

Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Stars: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccerin, Roger Dale Floyd

Runtime: 119mins

 

 

It's the end of the world as we know it. Only slightly cheaper than some previous ends of the world. We've seen this many times now and it's really only the variations on previous efforts that are interesting. 

 

The two most obvious references here are 2012 and War Of The Worlds (the Tom Cruise one). So we have a ground eye view of the coming disaster and a family striving to get to the last safe place on earth as civilisation crashes around them and other people behave badly. 

 

The threat to the earth this time is a comet passing close enough for bits to fall off. This leads to some pretty impressive scenes of flaming meteors crashing into things and blowing up. Not into famous things. No instantly-recognisable monuments are initially downed. But the flaming bits keep getting bigger and don'tcha know it there's going to be one so big it will lead to an "extinction level event". 

 

So Gerard, along with wife and kid, push everyone else out of their way because they've been chosen to go into one of the special bunkers that have been built in Greenland to save a few privileged people in the face of just such an event. Why the family qualify is never explained or questioned. Nor why you'd build these bunkers in Greenland. Can it be just a coincidence that Donald Trump tried to buy the country? Perhaps he saw an advance copy of this film and wanted to get in early...

 

Actually, the family being chosen was one of the neater touches: Gerard and family receiving word that they are to be saved while their friends won't be. But it's glossed over in seconds. What the hell, they ditch all their mates swiftly enough, kicking them to the curb while they quickly drive off, and then spend the rest of the film insisting that they deserve saving at the expense of everyone else. 

 

Franky I'd have left them to burn. Perhaps this is a subtle metaphor for white privilege, but if so the message is grab it with both hands, screw everyone else. 

 

Along the way there is increasing destruction, though nothing of the budget and scale of 2012, and the family meet the expected crazies a la War Of The Worlds. Of course it all becomes increasingly silly and the more it goes on the more you keep asking - why? What sort of world will be left anyway? Why should these people be saved? Why not just have a nice cup of tea and wait for the inevitable?

 

 

Sea Fever review

SEA FEVER (2019)

Director: Neasa Hardiman

Stars: Hermione Coerfield, Dougray Scott, Connie Nielsen

Runtime: 95min

 

I missed this when it came out late last year but films crop up all over the place these days and the other day it did for me. Essentially what you've got here is something heavily reminiscent of The Thing, with perhaps a touch of Alien, but set on a small fishing boat off the Irish coast. It's not going to change the world but it's a taught and engaging, if derivative little ride.

This is the very definition of "B-Movie", which isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. Scott and Nielsen are the "old-timers" on hand to run the ship and make selfish financial decisions that put everyone in danger, but the whole thing is anchored by the remarkably grounded performance of Hermione Coerfield as the new scientist on the boat. She is very low-key and her determination and solidly logical approach really gives the movie a believable central core.

Essentially a bunch of regular character types are on the fishing trawler when they get stuck to something in the sea. A creature? They free themselves but the bigger problem is some bright blue goo that is seeping through the hull and into the boat's water supply. And into the crew...

Soon bad craziness is occurring and they're devising tests - a la The Thing - to see who's infected. It is tense and claustrophobic and, thankfully, nobody does anything uncharacteristically stupid to drive the plot. It's a small scale but well-handled feature, breaking no new ground and slightly disappointing when it comes to the finale, but it does get an extra star for being Irish, which gives Sea Fever a slight but distinctively different feel to the many other outings in this genre.

I would suggest that if you're looking for sea-bound thrills in the Alien vein you might also want to go further underwater and try exactly that - Underwater with Kirsten Stewart, which has a considerably bigger budget and really is worthwhile. I found that one to be a lot of fun despite low expectations going in. It was easily good enough to meet them and keep me well amused on a wet afternoon, with both enjoyable character interplay and inventive creature work: the Big Bad was ultimately 1000 times better than in Sea Fever.     

 

His House reivew

HIS HOUSE (2020)

Director; Remi Weekes

Stars: Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Matt Smith

Runtime: 93min

 

His House is the feature debut of director Remi Weekes and marks him out as someone to watch. There is a calm assurance about the direction which means that even as events in the film spiral out of the protagonists' control the story is still clear and controlled. This is a very impressive piece of work.

The story centres on a Sudanese refugee couple Rial and Bol who are given asylum in Britain. They are still effectively on "bail" so have strict conditions including not working and not leaving the house which is assigned to them. There are tensions from the unfriendly reaction of locals. A group of black street kids tell her to "go back to Africa".

Even before the couple move into their house your heart has been broken by their situation, making the slow reveals that the film springs on you even more potent. 

We have already learnt from the incredibly concise and well-handled opening that they have a dead daughter. Both seem to be suffering PTSD from the terrible conditions in their homeland and the brutal journey. And the couple seems to have brought something with them on their travels as the two are tormented inside the run-down house by ghosts and apparitions who live in the walls but can inflict real physical harm.

Using elements of Sudanese myth the couple are haunted by an ‘apeth’ or ‘night witch’ who has risen from the ocean and wants them to atone for their sins. Or is it their imagination? There is a twist and there is a real examination of guilt going on as the film keeps its delicate balance between the internal and external, the real and the supernatural.  

There is so much to admire here. The cinematography is subtle and outstanding; the direction, the blocking, the sparse yet potent dialogue, are all spot on. Even the colour schemes add to the effect, with a brief shopping centre trip being as unnerving with its white sterile strangeness as an early Cronenberg film.

Bottom line: excellent stuff. From a pure horror perspective it may not shock and scare the way a film like Hereditary did but this is little gem of a story. I can't wait to see what Remi Weekes does next.

Rebecca review

REBECCA (2020)

Director: Ben Wheatley

Stars: Armie Hammer, Lily James, Kristen Scott Thomas

Runtime: 121 min

 

"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again". Again.

I was excited when I heard that Ben Wheatley was going to direct a remake of Rebecca. His last film, High-Rise showed that he has at least an unusual approach to adaptation, even if that film was ultimately a bit of a mess.

The question is which Ben Wheatley would show up? The one of early spooky ambiguity Kill List? Or the mushroom-popping psychedelic weirdness of A Field In England? Or who made the low-key blackly funny The Sightseers? Or the completely over-the-top shoot-'em-up Free Fire?

Well, none of those really. What is most striking about this new take on the Hitchcock classic is how relatively straight and safe it is. 

The story is of a naive young woman who meets and marries and older dominating man and upon being taken back to his extravagent ancestral home, Manderley, finds he is still mourning for his dead first wife (the titular Rebecca) and there is a very creepy housekeeper determined to make her life miserable and even drive her to suicide.   

This production is certainly lavish but by stripping back a lot of the exaggerated melodrama of the Hitchcock film the result here comes across rather like a slightly flat TV movie.

It doesn't help that both Armie Hammer and Lily James seem to lack whatever it takes to make their characters interesting. He is Maxim De Winter, just as brusque and dominating as Olivier was in the original but here it comes across as brooding boorishness. He also, to my eyes, never actually comes across as English, which is something Englishman Wheatley must have been on the lookout for. Was his casting more than a commercial decision?

As to James' unnamed narrator, she starts the film suitably simpering and uncertain but as she becomes more active (this film gives her more to do when she learns Maxim's secret) the development in her character is poorly flagged and gets lost in the drama. 

Kirsten Scott Thomas on the other hand is very English as the evil housekeeper Mrs Danvers, though her convincing take is less unsettling than the weird supernatural stillness that Judith Anderson previously brought to the role.

I found this unsatisfying in many ways. The major change – reflecting the book – is actually relatively unimportant in the great scheme of things and there seems little emphasis placed on the dubious nature of Maxim's character. To get the mix of danger and appeal required for Maxim is a hard balance and one not found here. Meanwhile, a tacked-on ending for Mrs Danvers just adds an extra scene without bringing any extra tension.

Actually, I might watch this again because I feel I must have missed something. There should be something more, something better, lurking in this film. Or was Ben Wheatley just acting as director for hire? I see his upcoming slate of movies includes Tomb Raider 2 and Meg 2: The Trench, something of a change from his strikingly original early English films.

(I actually watched the Hitchcock original again afterwards. It is clearly the least "Hitchcock" of all his films, owing more to producer David Selznick's influence, but it's still - despite being clearly an artifact of its time, particularly in its attitude towards women - a whole lot more fun than the remake. It has a class and poise about it that rises above the innate silliness and still engages. (And the dresses are much better in the original!)

On The Rocks review

ON THE ROCKS (2020)

Director: Sofia Coppola

Stars: Bill Murray, Rashida Jones, Marlon Wayans

Runtime: 96mins 

 

On the rocks is a sweet little movie which has two distinct attractions.

The first is the general sensitivity and intelligence with which director Sofia Coppola examines this low-key tale of infidelity and fears of infidelity in what initially seems like a settled happy marriage. The second is Bill Murray, who gets to go full Bill Murray.

Jones is Laura and Wayans is Dean. They are a happily married couple with two kids. She is a writer but has become blocked after becoming obsessed by the idea that he has cheated on her. He may have. He is a workaholic and has at least one very attractive and vivacious female work colleague.

Bill Murray is her irresponsible unrepentant father, the life of every party, always hitting on an inappropriately younger woman with a drink in his hand and a bucketload of charm. Their relationship is a tad strained, particularly from the fallout of his carefree past.

But together they rather bunglingly follow Dean around Manhattan and later have a brief sojourn at a resort. If you ever doubted Bill Murray's compulsive charisma, watch him talking his way out of a police ticket after being pulled over, but then also persuading the cop and his partner to help Laura and him start his car.

This is the sort of low-key gem that people say doesn't get made any more: sharply observed, of its time, and generous and humane towards its characters. Great stuff. It's a small film, not too long, a lovely little miniature; for a change you may well be left wanting a little more.

Oh, and give Bill Murray some awards. Anything really. It seems like these days he can do this sort of shtick in his sleep but, as in those early Hugh Grant comedies, it's worth remembering that projecting effortless charm and good humour is harder than it looks... 

                    

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 review

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (2020)

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Alex Sharp, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch

Running Time: 129 mins

 

This is the fourth filmed version of the sensational trial where Richard Nixon and his corrupt Attorney General John  Mitchell (later found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison) tried to punish anti-Nixon activists for causing a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention, a case that the previous President's department of Justice had investigated and found groundless.

1968 was a turbulent year, seeing both the assassination of Martin Luther King and murder of Bobby Kennedy as he stood for the Democratic party during the Presidential primaries. The convention turned into a series of violent riots, mainly it is now agreed caused by and exacerbated by the brutal police response.

So the trial featured a grab-bag of protest leaders, from pacifist leader David Dellinger (Lynch) to Tom Hayden (Redmane), one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (and later a Senator), the notorious Yippies activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a leader of the Black Panther Party.

And Sorkin, who also wrote the script of course, as assembled a fine cast to play these legendary figures, the highpoints being Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman and an unrecognisable Jeremy Strong - eldest son Kendal in TV's Succession - as the joker of the pack Jerry Rubin. Add in Frank Langella as the jaw-droppingly biased judge, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the conflicted chief prosecutor and most importantly Mark Rylance, brilliant as defense lawyer William Kunstler, and you have quite a cast. Oh yes, and Michael Keaton shows up late on...

But how does this all play? Well it plays very well because this is Aaron Sorkin writing the dialogue. It's very zingy, quotable one-liners at every turn. Think West Wing or any other Sorkin drama. Fast, smart, dialogue. 

But in a way, that's a problem. There were so many almost unbelievable occurrences at the trial that you don't really need made up dialogue to dramatise them. Where Sorkin is particularly good is in delineating the different defendants' philosophies and approaches to their defense. The straight Tom Hayden clashing with Abbie Hoffman. But there are also court scenes that seem contrived when they really aren't. 

The treatment of Black Panther Bobby Seale is front and centre here. It seems unbelievable but is true to life - how to convey this when other details have been changed for dramatic purposes? The worst of this is the ending, as the defendants' closing statements are engulfed in applause and celebration, the joyous "uplifting" finale that presumably the drama required.

There is so much that is so good here that I'd recommend anyone with an interest to watch it. There are - obviously - modern resonances. But there are also the regular things that make you grate your teeth at Sorkin productions, and that ending is just awful.     

Hoffman / Cohen / Rubin / Strong

Spontaneous review

SPONTANEOUS (2020) 

Directors: Brian Duffield

Starring: Katherine Langford, Charlie Plummer, Haley Law

Runtime: 101 min

 

Spontaneous is a high school rites of passage story as Mara and Dylan fall in love during their final school term. Of course it is a modern love story so there is much absurdly precocious dialogue, getting high and breaking of the fourth wall. It's all very smart-assed teen cool.

But there is a twist. Students in their school year are randomly spontaoneously combusting. In a bursting-like-a-balloon, blood everywhere sort of way. As you might expect this lends a certain uncertainty to day to day life. Knowing one might explosively pop at any moment does tend to focus the mind.

That leaves our central couple with the desire to live in the present and a lot of the charm here comes from the very quirky yet believable relationship they develop. Charlie Plummer (the kidnapped hier in All The Money In The World) is an unusual presence, perhaps a male equivalent of the now-cliched "pixie dream girl", and makes a good match with Langford's cynically-shelled Mara.

But this all happens fairly early. Can such a premise really stretch to 100 minutes? On the evidence here I'll say yes. While the blowing up at first seems like a blackly comic gimmick, the second act doubles down on both the real and the metaphorical and its really hard not to draw parallels with the current pandemic. But since this was filmed in 2018 that's clearly coincidental but it is striking. Perhaps the allegory is for school shootings? 

But by halfway through I had no idea quite where we were heading, and the film blindsided me again at the hour mark. 

Many things help make Spontaneous stand out, one being the treatment of adult characters who are actually allowed to be three dimensional. Particularly impressive are Mara's parents, Yvonne Orji as the rather ineffectual FBI agent and Laura Di Cicco who has a mere single scene as Dylan's mother and is simply sensational. 

You could criticise the ending for being a bit contrived but there is so much to like about this film that by that slight disappointment you'll probably be willing to forgive it. Good stuff.