Jonathan Glazer directs Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller and Ralph Herforth in this Holocaust art film observing the complicit family who live next to and profit from the Auschwitz Death Camp.
At first I thought it was going to be a coy game of spot the genocide. All middle as we know the beginning and the end. Mica Levi’s soundscape makes you feel nauseous from the off. I’m not sure what the point is but it is impeccably made. I score films based on how much I’d want to rewatch them. This?
Floyd Mutrux directs Tim McIntire, Fran Drescher and Jay Leno in this musical biopic of Alan Freed, the DJ who popularised Rock N Roll but became in embroiled in the PAYOLA scandal.
‘Biopic’ probably isn’t the correct word. We follow Freed through a fictionalised week at the peak of his fame. He is trying to organise a massive concert. He is pulled at from all sides. Fans want to meet him. Hopefuls want to audition in front of him. Promo and A&R men seek his favour. The authorities want to destroy him. And how they will is slowly drip fed to us as he makes his way from performance to business meeting to broadcasting booth. A closed off man, a near silent man. There’s an obvious sadness to him. It is a deep, patient central acting turn by Tim McIntire. We get the feeling we are experiencing exactly what it is like to be the calm centre of the counter cultural storm. His clothes are loud, his passion for music and youth are blatant yet he is just present. He makes a point of listening to the music he plays on the airwaves. He knows the kids can tell. Around him is an American Graffiti / I Wanna Hold Your Hand / Dazed and Confused of kids on the scene. Dreamers, songwriters, fans, the warring co-workers underneath him. Nobody’s story moves forward so much as happens. Swirls around him. Then the final act is that showstopping concert featuring Screamin’ Jaw Hawkins. The squares stoke a riot, Freed knows this is his swansong. The pressure piles on… the stakes are our future. Never available on any form of physical media this is a bit of a white whale for youth movie fans.
Gerald Thomas directs Sid James, Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey in this British comedy where four incompetent new recruits fight crime in the suburbs.
Even my nostalgia for this comedy team can’t save the stiff, staid early ones. A series of saucy postcards come to life with very little guile and no colour. The core characters are starting to form at least but there’s no vibe just yet. It is dumb and wholesome rather than dumb and sleazy, and I kinda prefer them sleazy. All of Hawtrey’s bits are good as he’s the more seasoned performer. The dolly birds include Goldfinger’s Shirley Eaton, who looks lovely. Filmed around West Ealing and Hanwell where I grew up but largely unrecognisable.
Norman Jewison directs Marisa Tomei, Robert Downey Jr and Bonnie Hunt in this romantic comedy where a soon-to-be-wed dreamer elopes to Italy in the hope of finding the man she believes to be her destiny… with only a name to go on.
Trite and contrived, babyfaced Downey Jnr is absent for an hour and then looks distracted for the remainder.
Daniel Goldhaber directs Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth and Lukas Gage in this climate change thriller where a group of appositely motivated young strangers commit a terrorist act.
After this and Cam, Goldhaber is fast becoming a director of note. Turning non-fiction works into Gen Z fantasies. This takes a direct action agitprop book and refilters the content into a Michael Mann-esque process thriller. Successfully. The small t twist wrap-up escapes reality a little but otherwise this has enough grip and grit to be very rewatchable. Previous attempts to cinefy these groups by more established directors (The East, Night Moves) have come nowhere near to achieving anything as rounded and as hopeful as How To Blow Up a Pipeline. Synth score.
Olivier Assayas directs Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier and Juliette Binoche in this French drama where three well-to-do siblings must deal with their mother’s idyllic estate, filled with art, after she passes.
On paper, not my bag. Rich people with rich people’s problems. Yet it explores its prescient themes with an accessible rigour. Art, legacy, globalisation, fractured families. Value. What has value? This is probably Assayas’ straightest project and yet I really engaged with it. Appreciated its ambitions and pure hearted craft. Could have used a little more Binoche but…. C’est la vie.
Rich Moore directs John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman and Alan Tudyk in this Disney animated adventure where characters from arcade games swap cabinets after hours.
Toy Story for gamers. Aside from the product placement Easter Egg overkill, this is daft but slightly forgettable.
6
Perfect Double Bill:Ralph Breaks The Internet (2019)
Kathryn Bigelow directs Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Silver and Clancy Brown in this female cop thriller where a rookie is stalked by a psycho stock broker who has stolen her gun.
Illogical and tonally wobbly as fuck. Blue Steel actually struggles to work as pulp. Feels a bit too indebted to Michael Mann’s Manhunter (I know that should be a positive). Androgynous Jamie Lee is awesome though. And the movie loves the gun. Fetishises it. There are some cracking tension crankers here – the supermarket robbery, the best friend’s ultra gory death, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”. Shame the story pumped in around them is so haphazard.
William A. Wellman directs Carole Lombard, Fredric March and Charles Winninger in this early Technicolor screwball comedy.
Glamorous comedy actress Lombard is grand here as the small town gal who fakes terminal radium poisoning to win a trip to New York. March less so as the journalist whose career relies on him finding a Real McCoy after a series of phonies… only to fall for his latest fake cause célèbre. There’s a tsunami of jokes here but none of them really find land in this dated package.
Fred Cavayé directs Vincent Lindon, Diane Kruger and Lancelot Roch in this French thriller where a mild mannered school teacher must break his wife out of prison when she is sentenced for a murder she did not commit.
Straight faced and with an unfashionable emphasis on suspense, Pour Elle plays out just as well on a second watch as it did when it was released. There are two aces in the hole here. 1) Diane Kruger is so uncommonly beautiful that all of Lindon’s brinkmanship and self destruction to spring her makes sense. 2) The abrupt start of the nightmare over a seemingly everyday breakfast plays out particularly strongly. The Hollywood remake with Russell Crowe is equally as watchable and that hook presents a hell of a “what if” for married date nights. ‘Even if she were guilty’ would be my answer. This is white knight fantasy for husbands and wives to play out together, and even if the narrow escapes and the unsuccessful gambles do stretch credulity, Lindon’s everyman remains totally convincing throughout.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 