Category: Biography

Legend (2011)

Tom Hardy plays with himself in Legend

Director: Brian Helgeland

Cast: Tom Hardy (Ronnie Kray/Reggie Kray), Emily Browning (Frances Shea), Christopher Eccleston (Superintendent Leonard “Nipper” Read), David Thewlis (Leslie Payne), Taron Egerton (Edward “Mad Teddy” Smith), Chazz Palminteri (Angelo Bruno), Paul Bettany (Charlie Richardson), Colin Morgan (Frankie Shea), Tara Fitzgerald (Mrs Shea), Paul Anderson (Albert Donoghue), Sam Spruell (Jack McVitie), John Sessions (Lord Boothby), Kevin McNally (Harold Wilson)

Tom Hardy is the sort of actor who, if you could find a role for him in your film, you certainly would. So how about getting the chance to cast him twice? That’s the happy situation Brian Helgeland was in here, with the chance for Hardy to play not one but both of the Kray twins. The buzz around Hardy taking on both roles was so strong that the film itself was almost completely forgotten in the crush. This was perhaps easy to do since the film is pretty mediocre at best, a confused mess that can’t decide if it wants to wallow in the undeserved glamour of the Krays or whether it wants to explore the darker currents below the surface.

The film covers most of the career of the Kray brothers – the seemingly more grounded, ambitious Reggie and then the more impulsive Ronnie, recently released from psychiatric prison. The Kray brothers balance competing demands: Ronnie is essentially happy where he is, king of a small pond, while Reggie has dreams of expanding a criminal empire across the Atlantic in partnership with the Mafia. Meanwhile, various gangland opponents and the police stalk the brothers, while Reggie’s relationship and later marriage to Frances Shea (Emily Browning) slowly collapses.

Helgeland’s film is a fairly bland piece of film-making that wants to have its cake and eat it. It wants to enjoy the criminal undertakings of the Krays, their clubland cool, charisma and charm. But it also wants to make clear that these are violent criminals who have very few moral qualms about anything they do. It’s a printing and an exploration of the legend, but the problem is that it never actually becomes particularly interesting, despite the best efforts of everyone involved. Perhaps everyone became too blinded by the pyrotechnics and undoubted skill of Hardy’s double performance that the overall film itself got a bit lost.

Hardy is superb, turning the brothers into two highly distinctive personalities who both seem like two halves of the same shattered personality, whose character traits slowly merge and even swap over the course of the film. Hardy also develops a key physicality and style for both characters that is very similar but also clearly different in both cases. So you get Ronnie, Churchill-bulldog like, with a muscular, growling heaviness that stinks of paranoia. And Reggie, smart-suited and slicked back, with a confident thrusting demeanour that falls apart over the film into a weasily fury.

Both these progressions make perfect sense, and Hardy is so skilled at playing both halves of many conversations that you forget while watching the film that you are looking at one actor playing two roles. Astonishingly – and perhaps the biggest trick he pulls – he turns this tour-de-force double role into something that feels so natural you don’t notice it happening. And the bond that ties the two brothers together into a descent into hell is so strong that even when beating the crap out of each other they still seem like two halves of one messed up personality.

Hardy is of course so brilliant, the rest of the skilled cast basically only get a few beats to sketch out various gangland figures and coppers. Excellent actors – Eccleston, Thewlis, Bettany, Anderson – are picked out to do this, but none make much of an impression. The thrust is always the strange dance of personality between the Krays, two brothers who effectively destroy each other with their actions, but are so closely bound together that the one cannot survive without the other.

It’s psychology like this that you wish the film could explore, especially as Hardy takes both brothers to dark and bitter places that makes both of them openly vile and terrifying to imagine meeting. Helgeland chooses to explore much of this – particularly Reggie’s darkness – through a rather tired voiceover led structure via Emily Browning’s Frances Shea. There is nothing wrong with Browning’s performance, but the predictable and rather traditional structure that this gives the story – not to mention the rather clumsy scripting – ends up dragging the film along.

Helgeland makes a decent job of directing this film, and it looks fine, but it is strangely underpowered and unengaging at every turn, a bland piece of gangland history that only really catches fire when both Hardys take the stage and this superstar actor lets rip. Away from him, there is a soft-focus nostalgia in its look back at the sixties, which confuses the attitude the film has towards the Krays, and a ticking off of historical events that gets in the way of creating a compelling narrative.

Hardy overshadows the film and he deserves to as he is more or less the only reason to watch it.

The Blind Side (2009)

Sandra Bullock sets her own rules, campaigning for a better life for a young black man in The Blind Side

Director: John Lee Hancock

Cast: Sandra Bullock (Leigh Anne Tuohy), Tim McGraw (Sean Tuohy), Quinton Aaron (Michael Oher Tuohy), Jae Head (SJ Tuohy), Lily Collins (Collins Tuohy), Ray McKinnon (Coach Cotton), Kathy Bates (Miss Sue), Kim Dickens (Mrs Boswell)

Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for this sweet but unchallenging film, the sort of thing you could have expected to see on TV in the 1990s as a “movie of the week”. She plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, a determined and driven woman who adopts and mentors Michael Oher (Quinton Aaaron), a gentle giant of a teenager who has grown up in foster care and who struggles with shyness. Michael has been accepted by his school for his potential skill, but the school can’t cater for his requirements for a less traditional teaching model (he struggles with reading and confidence). All that changes as Leigh Anne pushes for Michael to get the support he needs and encourages him to excel as a footballer.

This is the sort of naked crowd pleaser that will leave a smile on your face – and probably escape your mind after a few days. It’s devoid of challenge and ticks every single box you would expect this kind of rags-to-riches story to cover – the initial struggle, the growth in confidence, the setback, the rebound, the happy ending. It’s all there – and packaged very well by Hancock (heck the film won a surprise nomination for Best Picture).

It’s powered above all by a forceful, larger-than-life performance by Bullock, the sort of “personality” part that the actor has always excelled at (there is no doubt she’s a hugely engaging performer and always has been). Bullock grips the film by the horns and rips through the expected scenes. She’s a glamourous rich woman who isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with the local gangsters! She’s wealthy but she’s still in touch with her roots! She’s beautiful but she wears the trousers in the household! It’s everything you would probably expect, and Bullock can more or less play it standing on her head. She brings all her expert comic timing and exuberance to bear and mixes it with an emotional concern and empathy rarely called for in the romcoms that have made up much of her career. In a weak year (Carey Mulligan in An Education was her only plausible rival for the little gold man) she took the prize.

It’s probably the only thing that The Blind Side will be remembered for, however much most people will enjoy it when watching it. Its story of good triumphant and a disadvantaged young man getting the chance to come to peace with himself and turn his life around, are bound to put a smile on most faces. There are lots of funny lines, and Leigh Anne is such a powerhouse she makes a chalk-and-cheese partnership with anyone she shares a scene with. But it’s basically not got a lot more to it than just showing you a rags-to-riches tale, with a few slight notes of racial tension thrown in (and then barely even explored in any depth). A more interesting film might have taken more note of the differences between the Tuohy’s background and the poverty of Michael’s childhood neighbourhood and the fate of the rest of the people who grew up (none of whom had his advantages). But this is more interested in presenting an unlikely, balsy, champion of the underdog promote his life.

I suppose you could say that this film tells the story of the troubled background and eventual success of a young black man and not only filters all this through the experience of a family of wealthy white people, but also suggests that the chances of a black man achieving this without the support of a white family was practically impossible. But, then this isn’t a film with a political agenda. It’s just trying to tell a charming, uplifting story. Take it on those terms and it’s enjoyable. Try to delve into it any deeper and it will puff up and disappear in a burst of feelgood warmth. But the only reason it will be remembered – the only reason why it even remotely stands out – is as the film Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for.

American Hustle (2013)

Glamour and confidence tricks in David O. Russell’s flashy American Hustle

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Christian Bale (Irving Rosenfeld), Amy Adams (Sydney Prosser), Bradley Cooper (Richie DiMaso), Jennifer Lawrence (Rosalyn Rosenfeld), Jeremy Renner (Mayor Carmine Polito), Louis CK (Stoddard Thorsen), Jack Huston (Pete Musane), Michael Peña (Paco Hernandez/Sheik), Elisabeth Röhm (Dolly Polito), Shea Whigham (Carl Elway), Alessandro Nivola (Anthony Amada), Robert De Niro (Victor Tellegio)

In 2013, American Hustle was nominated for ten Oscars and won none of them. Somehow, being invited to the big party but not receiving any prizes was strangely fitting for a film about small time grifters forced into a big game way beyond their control. Russell’s film is like a celebration of his strengths and weaknesses as a director: it’s stuffed with some very good (if rather mannered) performances, offers lots of dynamic film making, but is still basically a rather cold and arch film that’s hard to really invest in – rather like a con game in itself.

In 1978, Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is a small-time grafter, running scams with his partner and lover Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who uses the identity of a young English aristocrat “Lady Edith Greenslly”. Rosenfeld longs to leave his unstable, selfish wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) for Sydney, but fears he will lose all his access to his adopted son. Rosenfeld and Prosser’s career of clever investment frauds is brought to an end when Prosser is caught red-handed by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso forces the pair into his entrapment operation, targeting New Jersey politicians with offers of bribes as part of a Fake Sheik investment. Initially it targets Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), but the operation quickly expands, as the ambitious and impulsive DiMaso constantly follows every connection and the operation expands to dangerous levels, taking in the mafia. Scared, Rosenfeld and Prosser desperately try to play both ends against the middle.

American Hustle is a decent film, which pulls together the sort of capers, turmoil and antics that you would expect from a film about a long con. It throws into the melting pot the vibes of several other films, from The Sting to Goodfellas, and asks us to admire the results. Russell encourages the actors to play it with an edgy verisimilitude that pretty much works as a metaphor for con men. Each performance is an effective display of high-wire character acting work laced with arch, studied tricks. But only rarely do you get a sense of something that’s real.

That’s part of a film that wants to have a cake and eat it as well. It’s striking in the entire story that the most sympathetic character is the initial target, Jeremy Renner’s well-meaning, passionate New Jersey politician, bamboozled into taking a bribe (money he mostly uses in the local community) because he is convinced it’s a crucial part of getting Arab investment. It’s even more striking that the most honest, subdued (and deadly) character is the Mafia kingpin Victor Tellegio, played with chilling menace by an unbilled Robert DeNiro. Nearly everyone else on the side of the entrapment operation is pretty much a selfish prick or verging on the unhinged.

But then that’s part of the point of the film, which throws two people who know what they are doing (Rosenfeld and Prosser) at the mercy of people playing with fire (Roselyn and in particular DiMaso, a permed, tightly-wound powderkeg). This is one hell of a performance from Bradley Cooper – and a sign again after Silver Linings Playbook that Russell and he have a natural understanding. Cooper is a force of nature, a bundle of terrible impulses combined with an utter lack of shame or self-control, who is quite happy to trample over everyone to get what he wants and has no regard whatsoever for the danger he puts himself and others into. Utterly unpredictable, he never sticks to a plan, veers between rage and hysterical laughter and, worst of all, is always convinced he’s right.

It’s DiMaso who spins the operation into dangerous waters with his vaulting ambition to land yet another big fish, recklessly peddling insubstantial, unprepared lies on top of each other – to the terror and horror of practised peddlar of bullshit Rosenfeld, whose whole successful schtick is based on saying “no” and having the mark do all the desperate work. DiMaso’s approach not only puts the operation at risk, it puts lives at risk – not that DiMaso cares, preoccupied as he is with his childish one-upmanship with his boss and a teenage sexual obsession with Prosser.

What chance do the (mostly) small-fish politicians and local figures have, whose lives are placed on the altar of DiMaso’s ambition? It’s no wonder that, late in the film, our conmen heroes start to feel guilt and remorse – none more so than Irving Rosenfeld. Played by Christian Bale with the sort of tricksy, Olivier-ish disguises that he so loves (in this case increased weight, a balding comb-over and a pair of tinged glasses he obsessively fiddles with), Rosenfeld is an operator happy with the level he is working at and incredibly wary of stepping up into the dangerous big leagues. Justifiably convinced of his own professionalism at fleecing money and winning trust, Rosenfeld has no problem with taking money from the selfish but every problem in the world with destroying the life of a fundamentally honest man. Bale’s performance, for all the tricks, manages to successfully build a picture of a selfish man who believes himself in his way to be honest in a way and is just trying to make his way.

That way also involves balancing between two very different women. Amy Adams does decent work as a blowsy fake-aristocrat, sporting a series of tops with neck lines that literally plunge down to her waist, although she is perhaps a little too “nice girl next door” to really convince as the love-em-to-manipulate-them Prosser. She’s not also helped by the script giving her an ill-defined arc of self-doubt linked to pretending to be someone else. Sweet as the genuine love can be her between her and Rosenfeld – and excellent as her chemistry is between Bale and Cooper – it’s the character who remains the least knowable in the film.

Also not helping is the fact that Jennifer Lawrence burns through the film as Rosalyn, the sort of electric, larger-than-life but still very real performance of arrogance, selfishness, dangerous stupidity and greed that marked her out as a major actress. Whether inadvertently putting Rosenfeld’s life at risk through blabbing details she’s half-overheard and half-understood, cleaning the kitchen while singing an aggressive rendition of Live and Let Die or nearly burning the house down because she won’t believe metal can’t go in “the science oven” (aka microwave), Lawrence is the film’s MVP.

Russell’s film showcases all these actors brilliantly, but his overall story remains a little cold and not as clever as it thinks. With a film about conmen you expect a final rugpull – and this film sort of manages one – but the story telling to take us there isn’t quite as articulate and clever as it needs to be in order to be really satisfying. Perhaps it’s the film’s ragged, hip, indie style of telling – or the air that the actors are making a lot of this stuff up as they go with edgy, semi-improvised performances – but the film never really engrosses or engages. For all that we see the inner worlds of Rosenfeld and Prosser, I can’t say I really, truly cared what happened to them. 

Instead Russell focuses on the marshalling of his resources, and cool, slick film-making. He uses expert camera work and editing, mixed with a superbly chosen soundtrack, overlaid with voiceover, sudden transitions, some narrative jumps and a vibrant sense of cool to make a story that finally feels a little too much like a style-over-substance trick – in fact a con game all of its very own, as enjoyable and entertaining as the rest of the film, but when it finishes you realise your pockets are empty.

Moneyball (2011)

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill take on maths and baseball (in that order) in Moneyball

Director: Bennett Miller

Cast: Brad Pitt (Billy Beane), Jonah Hill (Peter Brand), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Art Howe), Robin Wright (Sharon), Chris Pratt (Scott Hatteberg), Stephen Bishop (David Justice), Reed Diamond (Mark Shapiro), Brent Jennings (Ron Washington)

Chances are, if I tell you this is a film (a) about baseball and (b) also about sabermetric economics, I’ll lose a lot of you before a single second of the film has rolled. Which would be a shame in this case, as Moneyball is an entertaining, rather affecting yarn that manages to turn subjects that really feel like they should be impossibly dull into a sprightly against-the-odds drama.

In 2002, Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) has a problem. The As are struggling to pull together a competitive team for the new season, with their best players having been cherry picked away by the larger (and crucially richer) teams, and the money to buy replacements proving incredibly sparse. But after a chance meeting at the Cleveland Indians with young Harvard economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Beane stumbles across another way of building a team. Realising that if he tries to compete on finances with the bigger teams he will always lose, Beane is persuaded by Brand to research player statistics to unearth players undervalued by the big teams. By focusing on specific playing statistics – crucially their on-base percentage – rather than more showy skills, Beane starts to build a successful team, despite the push-back from the more conservative scouts and coaches at the club.

Yes it’s the backroom side of sports, the boardroom politics and business dealings, that come to the fore in this film. But rather than bore, it actually zings along very effectively due, in no small part, to some cracking trademark rat-a-tat dialogue from Aaron Sorkin (polishing a script by Steven Zallian), which elevates conversations about percentages and statistics into something so entertaining you don’t even notice you barely see any actual playing of baseball. 

But then the film comes into shape because who hasn’t wanted to be the visionary, to be the one who tells a stuffy room of old-timers that they are out of date and hell fire I don’t care what you say we’re going to do it the new way or be damned? Based on Michael Lewis’ book, written in heavy collaboration with Billy Beane, the film may well (as some have claimed) play up the conservative prejudices of the follow-your-gut scout and coaches (in particular its portrayal of coach Art Howe as some sort of lumbering dinosaur) but it does make for some damn fine scenes.

And there is a point in there that these coaches feel – perhaps slightly justifiably – that their experience is being disregarded in favour of burying your nose into an online almanac. Crucially, they are proved right (although the film plays it down) when they identify one of the Beane’s signings in advance as a party-hard troublemaker. The film also shows that, while numbers help recruit the players, what actually makes them perform is Beane’s reluctantly taking on the mantle of man-management: talking to the players, explaining what he is doing and motivating them personally. While it’s a film about pushing the boundaries, it also takes moments to show that we can’t junk everything that’s past to build our future.

Moneyball largely manages to make scenes like this dramatic, which is pretty damn good going

A lot of this comes out of Beane’s own personality. It’s a gift of a part for Brad Pitt, who is excellent, mining the deep vein of loneliness and isolation in Beane, whose past is littered with regrets and mistakes. His own baseball career flamed out after early promise, due to his inability to adapt to a higher level of play (Brand wins Beane’s trust by telling him that, based on statistics, he would have picked him very late in the draft not first). It’s an experience that gives Beane a ready-made scepticism for “gut instinct”, but also explains his own unwillingness to get to know the players who (if he needs to) he’ll need to trade in an instant for the good of the club.

Pitt gives Beane this inner sadness, but also a level of warmth fired by competitive zeal. He’s unable to watch the games (so driven is he to win) and he treats his negotiations with other teams and managers with the sort of no-holds barred testosterone that you’d expect he played with. He’s a passionate man who loses his temper and has no time for fools. But he has a deep love for his daughter (of course!), keeps on good terms with his ex-wife and understands deep down that making life decisions is based on a lot more than money.

This also adds a level of bravery to his decision to fly in the face of decades of baseball knowledge – get this wrong and his head will be on the block. This brings added tensions to heated discussions with scouts, frenzied phone calls to secure at the right price the most statistically advantageous players, and clashes with coaches about how to pick a team that has been selected for very specific skills. It adds a human element and guts to the drama.

With super dialogue, a fine performance from Brad Pitt and some good supporting work from Jonah Hill as the (semi-fictionalised) numbers-guy slowly building in confidence, Moneyball has more than enough to recommend it. Sure not much concession is made to baseball muggles, but there’s more than enough heart and drama here to overcome the lack of explanation of how baseball works and what these percentages actually mean – the fact is it works.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant excel in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Director: Marielle Heller

Cast: Melissa McCarthy (Lee Israel), Richard E. Grant (Jack Hock), Dolly Wells (Anna), Jane Curtin (Marjorie), Anna Deavere Smith (Elaine), Stephen Spinella (Paul), Ben Falcone (Alan Schmidt)

There is a certain pleasure in seeing the pretensions of the pompous being pricked. Is there anyone more pompous than the self-conscious exhibitionism of the literary collector? You know the sort – the kind who talk about how witty and true “dear Noël and Dorothy” were, and will pay a fortune in order to prominently display (show off) typewritten and signed epistles from their literary heroes, eager to be touching just a hint of the greatness of others. It’s a market failed writer Lee Israel managed to find herself immersed in – the difference being Israel was turning out brilliantly written pastiches, with forged signatures, that she was selling on to dealers.

Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) is a bad-tempered, difficult personality with a chip on her shoulder and a horror at the idea of letting anyone get too close to her. Struggling to make ends meet, she stumbles across some letters from Fanny Brice. Trying to sell them, she finds they sell for a lot more if she uses the blank space at the bottom of the letter to add a witty, more personal PS. From there she starts writing whole correspondences from scratch, covering authors as varied as Noël Coward, Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway, her dedicated research producing letters that feel real and genuine. She’s aided and abetted by her sole friend, a drunken, seedy British homosexual Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), who mixes genuine warmth and friendship with casual lies and betrayals. But how long can this criminal enterprise last?

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is an entertaining, well made part caper, part comedy, part sad little tragedy of a lonely woman struggling against the world. Lee Israel is blunt, rude, aggressive and speaks her mind and steadfastly refuses to live the kind of life required to get ahead in the literary world. She’s barely tolerated by her agent, and almost impossible to make friends with. Saying that, McCarthy’s trick is to make her far more of a Victor Meldrew character, railing against the petty rudeness and snobbery of the world, rather than an outright bully. It’s notable that the people she is most rude to are all cruel to her first.

All this helps you to invest in Israel, and feel sorry for a frightened, lonely woman who won’t let anyone into her life apart from her cat and feels only bitterness and frustration at where her career has taken her. Sure she may be difficult and even irritating to know personally, but Marielle Heller’s well-made film invests her with a great deal of empathy. Heller’s direction is shrewd, gentle and manages to turn a difficult woman into someone we end up feeling sorry for.

It also helps that this is a really warm, rather touching, relationship film that covers two best friends – and that it might well feature career best performances from the Oscar-nominated pair Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant. McCarthy (looking like a frumpy Annette Badland) is exceptional as Israel, vulnerable but defiant who makes more trouble for herself than she needs. Heller introduces a fictionalised semi-romantic interest from one of her literary dealers, a sensitive, kind would-be writer Anna (played well by Dolly Wells). It’s a relationship that shows Israel’s emotional frostiness, her instinctive defensiveness towards any personal interest – as well as hints of her guilt for essentially defrauding this woman. McCarthy’s performance – often caustically funny – is also deeply affecting for its fragility and desperation, too socially awkward to build relationships.

It also sparks brilliantly well off Grant’s superb performance as transient semi con-man Jack Hock. Grant channels elements of Withnail in the character’s bohemian alcoholism, but Jack is far more complicated than that. A wonderful contrast with Israel, Hock is immediately able to form bonds with people, patient, kind, gentle, an amusing raconteur and a man who takes pride in dressing up. Grant’s performance is humane, sensitive but also deeply funny with a long streak of selfishness and self-destructive compulsion. The relationship between these two is the heart of the film, an entertaining and endearing odd couple, with Hock getting closer than anyone to thawing Israel’s defences. Grant’s not only wildly funny, but also deeply moving – often in smaller moments, where he gently comforts Israel or (later) asks for forgiveness.

The warmth between the two friends is what makes the film work above anything else. It’s the heart of the movie – and the film is perhaps reliant on the excellence of the two actors and their chemistry. The story around them is, at times, rather slight and generally the film itself is so gentle to verge on being a little forgettable – but you never lose your focus because it has more than enough wit and those two brilliant lead performances to keep it going. Career best work in a well made film, makes this film more than worth catching.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

Albert Finney and Julia Roberts battle for justice in the caperish Erin Brockovich

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich), Albert Finney (Edward L Masry), Aaron Eckhart (George), Marg Helgenberger (Donna Jensen), Tracey Walter (Charles Embry), Peter Coyote (Kurt Potter), Cherry Jones (Pamela Duncan), Scarlett Pomers (Shanna Jensen), Conchata Ferrell (Brenda), Michael Harney (Pete Jensen)

When Steven Soderbergh was being celebrated as the Great White Hope of arty American movie making back in the late 80s, it would probably have amazed his fans if you’d told them that 10 years later he would be directing a Julia Roberts star vehicle. But that’s what he pulled off to great effect in Erin Brockovich. 

Telling the true story of Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), the film follows her life from 1993 when she is struggling to make ends meet while bringing up three small children. After losing a court case – largely due to her brassy foul-mouthedness – she pressures her lawyer Ed Masry (Albert Finney) to give her a clerical job at his law firm. There she finds herself engaged with a simple real estate case involving PG&E, a major gas and electric company. Discovering the company has been polluting the water of the town of Hinkley in California – and left many residents with crippling health problems – Brockovich works to uncover the truth and to gets Masry to agree to build a legal case. She also finds her mouthy down-to-earthness allows her to connect with the people of Hinkley, and she soon becomes determined to get them justice.

The big thing that Erin Brockovich was about when it was released was Julia Roberts. In 2000, it was hard for heads not to be turned by seeing America’s Sweetheart wearing clothing so revealing and provocative it made her Pretty Woman character look reserved. And she swears! Frequently! The film was a triumph for Roberts, turning her from a romantic comedy queen into a serious actress. Roberts won every single Best Actress award going, up to and including the Oscar. And Roberts is very good indeed in the role. Few films have used her effervescence and warmth as a performer so well. You can’t help but side with Julia Roberts when she is firing on all cylinders, no matter what the situation – whether she is a brassy, chippy working mother, a Hollywood actress or a New York City prostitute, you find yourself on her side. 

But, looking back at the film now, this role essentially plays to all of Robert’s strengths. While it looks on the surface like a radical departure for Roberts, the film is basically very much in her wheelhouse. In fact, the whole film is almost a writ-large version of that shop scene in Pretty Woman (still one of the best scenes of modern cinema) stretched over the course of a whole movie. Julia Roberts is treated badly by snobby people, she doesn’t let it get her down, and then she returns with a triumphant flourish that puts the snobs in their place. 

That’s the whole game from Roberts: this is very much the type of performance she gave in Pretty Woman, Notting Hill and My Best Friend’s Wedding repackaged and given a novel appearance by being placed in a drama rather than a comedy. But all the little acting touches that would be familiar to you from those movies are there. There is nothing wrong with any of this, but the film in fact reinforces rather than refutes the idea that Julia Roberts (like Cary Grant) is largely a personality actor. She has a very skilful and impressive collection of acting touches, but they are pretty consistently the same across films. She performs with brilliant, luminous presence here – and commits fully to the part – but it’s more like the ultimate expression of the roles she played in the 1990s. It’s not a surprise looking back that she’s not had a hit like it since.

The rest of the film is an enjoyable mix of comedy and touches of tragic sadness. Soderbergh packages the film as a very safe entertainment, and its’ entertaining. The real Erin Brockovich claims the film is 98% accurate to what happened to her – which perhaps just makes you think that the clichés of film hew closer to real life than you might expect. Soderbergh doesn’t really have much to say here beyond big corporations and snobbery being bad and to never judge books by their cover. But it doesn’t really matter as the whole thing is presented with a confident, brassy buzz as if it is channelling Brockovich straight into celluloid.

It works all the time because you care about Erin, and you enjoy her company. It touches on some issues around sexism in the work place – although Erin is looked down as much for her working class roots as her sex – but there are elements there showing she is clearly judged by her appearance, and even the big firm lawyer brought in help fund the case can’t resist saying when he sees her “I see what you mean about a secret weapon”. Not that Erin herself isn’t ashamed to use her assets – when Ed asks how she can get people to allow her access to such confidential papers, she deadpans “they’re called boobs, Ed”.

That gives you an idea of the general comedic tone of the movie. It’s matched with a fairly predictable domestic plot-line. I suspect Soderbergh was probably making a bit of a point by turning Aaron Eckhart’s (very good in a nothing role) gentle biker, next-door neighbour, childcare provider and boyfriend into the sort of pleading “Honey please come home for dinner” non-entity that the woman often plays in films like this while her husband crusades. The film does manage to mine a bit of quiet sexual agenda from its otherwise fairly bubbly surface. It also draws attention to the way the film basically sets up Erin’s primary romantic relationship being not with a boyfriend, but with herself as she discovers the sort of person she has the potential to be.

There’s that Pretty Woman parallel again. The film is basically a dreamy re-invention saga, presented with a cool flourish. Roberts is excellent in a role that has become a calling card. She’s also got quite the double act with Albert Finney, who is brilliant as the put-upon, slightly haggard, slightly twinkly Masry who finds his own passion for justice reignited. Finney tends to get overlooked in this film, but he is superb and gives the best pure performance in the film. Soderbergh directs with a professional glossiness, and supplies plenty of heart-tugging victims (Helgenberger is very good as the main victim we see) mixed with punch-in-the-air, she’s proving herself better than them moments from Julia Roberts. It’s a very fun film, and genuinely entertaining. But like Roberts’ performance, it’s presenting old tricks in a new way, not reinventing the show.

The Fifth Estate (2013)

Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl struggle through this turgid retelling of hacking derring-do in The Fifth Estate

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch (Julian Assange), Daniel Brühl (Daniel Domscheit-Berg), Alicia Vikander (Anke Domscheit-Berg), Anthony Mackie (Sam Coulson), David Thewlis (Nick Davies), Stanley Tucci (James Boswell), Laura Linney (Sarah Shaw), Moritz Bleibtrue (Marcus), Carice van Houten (Birgitta Jónsdóttir), Peter Capaldi (Alan Rusbridger), Dan Stevens (Ian Katz), Alexander Siddig (Dr Tarek Haliseh)

In 2010 the world was thrown into turmoil when a website called Wikileaks published a host of top-secret government documents that revealed a never-ending stream of Western wrong-doing during the war on terror. The leak was co-published by WikiLeaks and the Guardian and New York Times. However Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (played here by Benedict Cumberbatch) had other ideals – namely that the files should not be redacted in any way to protect serving US officials or informants in hostile countries. 

It should be a gripping story of the state failing to keep up with the speed of modern communications. But instead this is one hell of a turgid, dull info-dump of a film that turns this potentially explosive event into something about as gripping as watching a series of people type into a computer. On top of that, the film totally fails to develop any proper personality dynamics to engage your interest, and instead falls back into the usual crude filmic language of a star-struck protégé realising his mentor has feet of clay.

Bill Condon’s direction is totally incapable of making the entry of data into a computer dynamic or visual, and is completely unable to bring the world of computer hacking and data search to life. In fact, there is so much information given to the viewers (rather than drama) that the impression I was left with is that Condon doesn’t really understand what’s going on in the movie anyway. He certainly doesn’t manage to make it interesting or feel that important. 

Visually, the film is flat and falls back on superimposing text on the screen when people type or creating a sort of “mind palace” office to represent the inner workings of the Wikileaks server (which is basically just a big office space). In fact, the film gets less interesting as it progresses – which is a real shame after a nifty credits sequence that chronicles in images the development of the press from cave paintings, through the Rosetta stone, printing, television and the internet. 

Not to mention the lack of drama about this. Things are just happening – we never get any sense of the danger or the world-changing impact, or any reason why we should care. Poor Anthony Mackie, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci are wheeled out as a trio of American government big wigs who talk at each other at great length about what is going on and how it will endanger government assets – but it’s all show and not tell. The plight of a Tunisian informant – played with his usual skill by Alexander Siddig – is reduced to a few scenes, a human element that gets trimmed so much it carries little impact. 

The film also deals with the personality clashes Assange inspires, here interpreted as a borderline sociopathic monster, an egotist and liar interested only in his own legend. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a superbly detailed and richly observed impersonation of Assange, but the character has no depth. He’s merely a sort of phantom monster, who the film slowly reveals has no conscience. Compare it to the presentation of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (a film that is everything this clunking disaster is not). That film is also told from the prospective of a disillusioned former colleague, but there our view of the central character is shaded and given depth – and we are encouraged to recognise we are seeing one person’s perspective. Here the film swallows whole the side of the story presented by Daniel Berg.

Berg played with a disengaged flatness by Daniel Brühl, snoozing through a part shorn of any dynamism, whose views oscillate constantly until he finally settles for being a campaigner to keep sources safe. Alicia Vikander gets shockingly short shrift as a girlfriend – she even has the obligatory “stop working on the management of earth-shattering leaks and come to bed” scene. Berg allies himself with the traditional media, similarly portrayed with a clunking obviousness: David Thewlis is a standard shouty journalist, Peter Capaldi a chin-stroking concerned editor. 

The Fifth Elementis flat and unable to dramatise the world of computer coding. The dialogue is turgid and obvious (there is a terribly obvious metaphor of Assange constantly lying about the reason for his white hair – he can’t be trusted you see!) and the performances are either dull, clichéd or saddled with this terrible writing. At the end, as Cumberbatch plays Assange denouncing the entire film in a reconstruction of a talking head interview, you get a sense of the more interesting, fourth-wall-leaning film this might have been. But sadly the rest of the film reminds you what a flat, tedious, stumbling, confused, inexplicable misfire this really is.

I, Tonya (2017)

Margot Robbie triumphs as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya

Director:  Craig Gillespie

Cast: Margot Robbie (Tonya Harding), Sebastian Stan (Jeff Gillooly), Allison Janney (LaVona Golden), Julianne Nicholson (Diane Rawlinson), Bobby Carnavale (Martin Maddox), Paul Walter Hauser (Shawn Eckhardt), Caitlin Carver (Nancy Kerrigan), Bojana Novakovic (Dody Teachman)

In 1994, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) is the bad-girl of ice skating. From a working-class Portland background, with a domineering mother (Allison Janney), she struggles to be accepted in the upper-class world of ice skating. After some success, including becoming the first American ice skater to complete two triple axel jumps, she constantly finds success undermined by her own failings and indiscipline, and the influence of her wastrel, abusive husband Jeff (Sebastian Stan). When competing with rival Nancy Kerrigan for a place on the 1994 Winter Olympic team, Tonya encourages her husband to send Kerrigan threatening letters to put her off. What happens instead is an attack on Kerrigan that breaks her knee – and the fallout will have devastating consequences.

I,Tonya is much more than a film about an attack on a rival skater. Tonya (in the film) complains that the event (which she claims to have had so little to do with) has overshadowed her whole life, but that’s not a mistake the film makes. The film is instead a brilliant deconstruction of class and media in America. Tonya struggles in the world of ice skating because she comes from a working-class, trailer-trash background. This leads her to grow up with several chips on her shoulder, aggressively acting out against judges and fellow competitors, because she wants to belong but never feels she does. In a country that likes to pride itself that it doesn’t have the sort of class system the UK has, it’s a striking commentary on how Tonya completely fails to escape the impact of her poor, violent background – and uses it as a justification and excuse for everything that happens to her in the film.

Her background also makes it every easy for the media to cast Tonya as a villain, first as the difficult punk of ice skating, later as the Machiavellian arch schemer of a vile plot. The worst part of this is – like the reality stars of the 00s who would follow her – Tonya feels she needs to keep playing a role in order to “stay in the public eye”. In turn, the media – largely embodied here by Bobby Cannavale’s delighted media commentator, who gleefully recounts every key moment of the film in a smug series of talking head interviews – keeps the pressure on, puffing her up into whatever it requires her to be to fill a 24 hours news cycle. It’s surely no accident that the film ends with camera moving away from Jeff’s house, while news of OJ Simpson’s arrest plays on the television.

And why does Tonya fit herself into this role? Because, the film suggests, she is a victim who has confusingly absorbed her victim status into her personal relationships and self-value. Treated appallingly be her domineering mother, and hit constantly by her worthless husband, Tonya clearly believes that she is personally of very little worth. If she is so used to being an angry, raging punchbag at home, is it any wonder that she settles into that role publically? To the extent that, throughout, Tonya constantly sidelines or pushes away the more supportive people around her, like Julianne Nicholson’s (who is very good) dedicated coach.

The film handles this range of complex psychological and social themes with aplomb. In a neat touch, the film acknowledges that the events of its narrative are so controversial that everyone in it has a different view. The film is framed through a series of talking head interviews with the leading players (played by the actors) twenty years on. Each of them tells a contradictory version of the story and around the “incident”. The film, bravely, gives some weight to all these viewpoints. It’s brilliantly handled, as we see certain scenes from the perspectives of different characters, which makes them much easier to relate to. Gillespie also has a lot of fun with the film leaning on the fourth wall – frequently characters turn to the camera mid-scene for a few words of commentary, sometimes to stress a point, other times to deny the thing we have just watched ever happened. 

The eclectic and dynamic storytelling works an absolute treat, and Gillespie gets the tone absolutely right. While dealing with serious themes, the film is also blissfully funny. Much of the fourth wall humour is brilliant. While taking the characters seriously, the film is also written with a real dark wit. And (once you remind yourself that Kerrigan’s career was not seriously affected by the attack), the build up to the scheme itself, and the feeble cover up, is hilarious. Everyone in the chain of events is stupider than the person above them. Tonya is no genius, her weak husband is a clumsy fool, his friend Shawn an idiotic fantasist, the men hired to attack Kerrigan almost unbelievably stupid. The inevitable crumbling of the plot is hilarious in its disintegration.

It works as well because of the strength of the acting. Margot Robbie is superb as Tonya. She fills her performance with empathy for Tonya, but never lets her off the hook – Tonya never takes responsibility at any point for anything she does. Robbie gets the balance just right between the “little girl looking for love” vulnerability of Tonya, mixed with the bitterness and rage that always lurks just below the surface. She acutely understands the messed up psychology of someone who has been treated badly by everyone around her, and then finds it impossible to form a healthy relationship with the world.

On Oscar-winning form, Allison Janney rips into the sort of part that must have (rightly) looked like a total gift on the page. It’s a scene-stealing role: Harding’s mother is a foul-mouthed bully whose every other line is a zinging put down or resentment-filled burst of cruelty. Janney, however, keeps the part real: there is always a sense that somewhere in there, she genuinely feels she is doing what’s best for her daughter, even if her methods are completely misguided. Sebastian Stan is equally good as Tonya’s weak-willed, not-too-smart husband and Paul Walter Hauser is hilarious (as well as a remarkable physical match) as Shawn. 

I, Tonya is a very smart, very funny piece of social satire mixed with tragedy. While being very funny, it’s also sad and rather moving. It has some terrific acting in it and is directed with confident, but not overly flashy, aplomb by Gillespie. As a commentary on the media it’s well judged, and as a look at the impact of class at America it feels fresher than ever.

The Elephant Man (1980)

John Hurt is sublime as the tragic John Merrick in The Elephant Man

Director: David Lynch

Cast: John Hurt (John Merrick), Anthony Hopkins (Dr Frederick Treves), Anne Bancroft (Madge Kendal), John Gielgud (Francis Carr-Gomm), Wendy Huller (Mrs Mothershead), Freddie Jones (Bytes), Dexter Fletcher (Bytes’ boy), Michael Elphick (Jim the porter), Hannah Gordon (Ann Treves), Helen Ryan (Princess Alexandra), John Standing (Dr Fox)

In the late 19th century, society was swept up in the story of a circus show freak, Joseph Merrick (renamed John here, as per Frederick Treves’ memoirs), saved from a life as a circus exhibit by Treves (a doctor at the London Hospital). Treves introduced him into society and formed a close friendship with him. Merrick died young (27) but his life became a sort of byword for struggling for dignity. The Elephant Man follows this journey.

John Hurt plays Merrick, with Anthony Hopkins as Treves, and the film is a pretty accurate reconstruction of the major events of Merrick’s life. The Elephant Man must have seemed like a strange proposition at the time. Produced by Mel Brooks! Directed by bizarro director David Lynch! About a man grotesquely deformed by nature! But what emerges put those doubts to shame, because this is a beautiful and emotional piece of film-making, guaranteed to put a tear in your eye. It’s an extraordinary and moving film, it’s almost impossible not to love.

In a career made up of playing characters who undergo enormous suffering, it’s fitting that one of John Hurt’s most famous performance sees him utterly unrecognisable under a mountain of make-up. (Acting in this was no fun either – Hurt worked alternate days to deal with the discomfort and stress, telling his wife “They’ve finally found a way to make me hate acting”). But what Hurt does here is extraordinary: under this mountain of make-up, the humanity, sweetness and tenderness of Merrick sings out. He’s a character you feel a total empathy for, with Hurt making him almost a gentle child, an innocent who learns to value himself and his own humanity. It’s mesmeric stuff.

Lynch’s film is all about the place Merrick holds in the world – and it’s not sure shy of showing it is one of exploitation and display. Sure, the circus life for Merrick is horrible under Freddie Jones’ freak-masker (Jones is magnificent here, alternating between weaselly, conniving, vulnerable, self-pitying and loathsome). But he’s plucked from this lower-class hell not for reasons of charity or loving care, but (initially) so that Treves can display him at medical conferences.

Even after demonstrating his sensitivity and artistic richness, Merrick is still rammed into a different treadwheel of society curiosity. Paraded before the rich and famous, his freakish appearance combined with his gentle, otherworldly, politeness and kindness becomes a new show in itself – something Treves himself (in a wonderfully played scene of introspection from Hopkins) slowly comes to realise. Alongside this, Merrick is still seen as fair-game by Elphick’s brutish night porter: if the hoi polloi can watch the freak, why can’t he parade him in front of working class customers at night? All this is intensely moving.

Does Merrick even realise that he is (in some ways) still a freak show, even while he collects photos of his new friends? The film is deliberately unclear: although it is clear that the (eventual) genuine friendship of Treves does lead Merrick to value himself as something more. The famous anguished cry (simply brilliantly played by Hurt) of “I am not an animal. I am a human being” after Merrick is chased into a train station bathroom by a crowd of scared and disgusted passengers is goose-bump inducing in both its sadness and its newfound moral force. From this point on, Merrick makes decisions for himself (for good or ill).

Lynch’s film walks a delicate balance around Merrick’s character and how much his life was a question of being exploited. Although the film does at times shoot Merrick with the slow reveal coyness of a monster movie, it never fails to regard him (and almost demand we do the same) with the utmost sympathy. In many ways, it shoots Merrick the same way people first seem him – a sense of shock followed by a growing appreciation that there is much more to see there than you might first suspect. 

That’s what works so well about Lynch’s inspired direction here – this is a sensitive, haunting and poetic film that wrings untold levels of sadness from Merrick’s life. Lynch reins in his more arty leanings very effectively. In fact, once you get over the film’s bizarre opening of Merrick’s mother being attacked (sexually assaulted?) by an elephant, the film relaxes into a classical style mixed with Lynch’s chilling eeriness and his games with time and mood (the timeline is particularly hard to work out in this film), while his sensitive handling of the macabre is perfect for this film’s storyline. While it’s easy to see this as the least “authored” of Lynch’s film, it’s possibly one of his finest and sets the groundwork for some of his later works, exploring humanity in the bizarre.

He’s helped as well by Freddie Francis’ simply beautiful black-and-white photography which brilliantly captures both the grime and the shine of Victorian London, with an inky darkness. Francis also embraces some of Lynch’s expressionistic style, and shoots the film with a real atmospheric sensitivity. It’s about perfect – and Lynch brings the outsider’s view to London that sees the entire city with a brand new eye. 

There are some sublime performances. Anthony Hopkins’ Treves is a masterclass in contrasted desires. He’s the sort of guy who can grab Merrick like a collector, but still shed a tear when he first sees him. Watching him slowly realise that he has used Merrick just as Bytes has done – within the confines of his Victorian paternalism – and grow to love him as a father does his son (feelings of course never expressed in words) is extraordinary. In the less flashy role, Hopkins powers a lot of the feelings of sadness the audience feel. Alongside him, a host of British legends do brilliant work, particularly Gielgud and Hiller as authority figures who slowly reveal themselves to have huge depths of compassion and understanding.

And what you end up with is a marvellous film. Brilliantly made, wonderfully filmed and hugely emotional with powerful, heartfelt performances from Hurt and Hopkins among many others. It’s extremely beautiful, and stirs the emotions wonderfully. You would struggle to get to the end of the film and not feel overcome with the final few moments, its sadness and the sense of regret. It’s possibly the most heartfelt of Lynch’s films – and also the one I enjoy the most.

Concussion (2015)

Will Smith takes on the NFL in solid but uninspired true-life story Concussion

Director: Peter Landesman

Cast: Will Smith (Dr Bennet Omalu), Alec Baldwin (Dr Julian Bailes), Albert Brooks (Dr Cyril Wecht), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Prema Mutiso), David Morse (Mike Webster), Arliss Howard (Dr Joseph Maroon), Mike O’Malley (Daniel Sullivan), Eddie Marsan (Dr Steven T DeKosky), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Dave Duerson), Stephen Moyer (Dr Ron Hamilton), Richard T Jones (Andre Waters), Paul Reiser (Elliot Pellman), Luke Wilson (Roger Goodell)

In 2002, Pittsburgh pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) carried out an autopsy on deceased former Pittsburgh Steelers centre (and American Football legend) Mike Webster (David Morse). What he discovered – that the high speed impacts of American football massively increased the chances of players suffering serious brain damage and debilitating mental conditions – was to change his life, and lead to a six-year battle to get his research acknowledged by the NFL. This film dramatizes this story – with the obligatory inventions and dramatic changes (Landesman describes the film as “emotionally true” if not “factually true”).

Concussion is a fairly straight-forward, rather uninspired “one man’s struggle” kind of film. There isn’t much in it, to be honest, that is particularly unique or different from films of this type we’ve seen before. We’ve pretty much all seen the trope of a man pushing to get himself heard against the scorn, disbelief and anger of those who need to hear him the most. Does Concussionadd anything new to that? No not really.

Peter Landesman shoots the film with a methodical, workmanship that hits all the expected beats. The whole film plays like Michael Mann’s The Insider-lite: with the difference that the NFL never really convinces as an actual threat in the way Big Tobacco does in that film. The film falls over itself to repeatedly tell us how powerful the NFL is but never really shows us in the film how that power might work. When the FBI drum up charges against Omalu’s mentor, you never get the sense that this is being directed by the NFL themselves. They are simply never that dangerous an opponent.

Maybe because this is a film that doesn’t want to run the risk of saying America’s beloved sport is dangerous. It wants to blame bad eggs rather than an institutional failure – hence the repurposing of former player Dave Duerson as a sort of braggart bully. The characters playing the NFL heads are relegated to TV screens in the corner. It never wants to really look at the risks of this institution wilfully burying evidence their sport is dangerous, or question whether this sport is even a good idea. Throughout the world of sport, there are ungoing debates about the health risks of sport, from the danger of heart conditions to early onset dementia in football players from heading the ball. This film fails to really tap into any of this.

As such, there isn’t really any dramatic force behind the film: it doesn’t manage to suggest Omalu is in danger and it doesn’t want to turn the NFL into actual antagonists. It treads a weary middle ground. If the NFL was really positioned as a threat, then the pervasive presence of its stadium in Pittsburgh would be sinister. It isn’t for all Landesman tries to shoot it in that way.

Despite this though, Will Smith is very good as Omalu. The film’s version of the doctor seems a little different from the quirky, socially awkward real-life Omalu. But Smith nails the home-run scenes of Omalu raging at his research being disregarded. (In real life it was easy for the NFL to dismiss Omalu by using his Nigerian heritage (his ‘otherness’) quietly against him. The film doesn’t touch upon this by the way.) Smith has all the charisma the role needs and brings it a certain James-Stewartish moral decency.

The rest of the cast don’t get much else to play with. Alec Baldwin is pretty good as a former NFL doctor trying to ease his conscience (although his accent got some criticism). Gugu Mbatha-Raw has a fairly thankless role as the supportive wife, but does it well. Albert Brooks might be a bit too much at times as Cyril Wecht, but David Morse plays Mike Webster with sensitivity.

The film is not always that subtle. Shots of Webster haunting Omalu are a bit much. Omalu’s unhappiness and frustration are telegraphed using familiar clichés, from raging impotently at stony faced law officers, to trashing a room in his still-under-construction dream home in Pittsburgh (having read the source book it’s hard to believe the real Omalu ever did something like this). The timeline of the film isn’t always clear. There is a little too much lingering on funerals and tear-stained relatives for easy emotional hits.

The main issue is that Concussiondoes nothing special and doesn’t manage to make its familiar structure feel particularly fresh. It’s just a very, very familiar type of story told with no real unique imagination. Although Smith is very good, it’s not quite enough.