Category: Family drama

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

We Are Not Alone in Spielberg’s optimistic sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Richard Dreyfuss (Roy Neary), François Truffaut (Claude Lacombe), Teri Garr (Ronnie Neary), Melinda Dillon (Jillian Guiler), Bob Balaban (David Laughlin), J. Patrick MacNamara (Project Leader), Josef Summer (Larry Butler), Robert Blossom (Farmer), Lance Henriksen (Robert)

If you had any doubt that Spielberg in his prime was a fundamentally optimistic filmmaker, then sit down and check out this warm, extremely personal, tale of mankind encountering aliens. It’s one of the very few films that Spielberg also wrote the script for, and every frame is full of his trademark yearning love of the unknown and the childish sense of adventure in us all. In an era where you couldn’t move for depressingly grey films about the corruption of America, Close Encounters is all about dreams and hope.

Throughout mid-West America in the present day, strange crafts covered in lights are seen in the skies by ordinary people like repairman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss). The American Government is very aware of the presence of aliens – recently in the Mojave desert, plans and ships missing since the 1940s have recently reappeared in perfect condition. Led by their UFO expert Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut), the government does its best to control access to, and knowledge of, the aliens. However, Roy Neary and hundreds like him are unable to shake obsessive visions of a strange landmark they seem drawn to create in art. While Neary’s wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) is unable to understand his obsessions, Neary finds a kindred spirit in Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon), whose young son has been taken by the aliens.

Spielberg has spoken about how, if he could take one image from one of his films to summarise his career, he would choose the one of young Barry Guiler opening the door to reveal an outside flooded with alien light. This also perfectly sums up the movie – a young, optimistic, innocent and instinctive reaction to something unknown but strangely wonderful. If that’s not Spielberg’s reaction – particularly at the start of his career – to the new and unusual I don’t know what is. The shot captures all these feelings, as well as being incredibly arresting and beautiful in itself. It places the viewer at the doorway (if you’ll excuse the pun) of hope and new possibilities in the future.

But then that is the whole film, a gentle exploration of what it might mean to discover we were not alone, especially if our alien visitors were unknowable but essentially benign. Plot-wise, very little happens. The aliens come, we puzzle out their message, the aliens come back. The last 30 minutes of the film are effectively an awe-inspiring light display as the aliens arrive. We learn nothing at all about what they want, what they are doing or what they wish to tell us. Instead it’s left entirely up to our own imaginations, and the magic is in finding our horizons broadened. Like Spielberg, the film is staring up at the sky and dreaming about the future.

And this all works extremely well. The cynicism of the modern age makes you want to knock Close Encounters, more than any other film in Spielberg’s cannon. You want to look at it like a cynical grown-up, to point out its romantic optimism and its gentle humanitarianism. You want to say that it’s unlikely that a government official with such control as Lacombe would be such a warm and wryly amused figure. You want to say that the army would probably be much more defensive in its attitude to the aliens. But the film is so swept up in its joyful discovery that you don’t mind.

Spielberg’s brilliance as a visual stylist here also works massively in the film’s favour. The striking images of the aliens travelling through the countryside or soaring through the skies are mixed with Spielberg’s mastery of the small scale and personal. He’ll compare the simple and homespun with moments of pure wonder and majesty. 

He can also brilliantly mix tension, wonder and fear. The scenes with the aliens intruding in the Guiler home, and later trying seemingly every entrance to the house to try and take Barry with them, are only a few degrees away from genuine horror. Watching the awe-inspiring arrival of the aliens, and their light show around a government facility in the wilderness, it’s hard know not to see how close this is in style, filming and design to the horrifying face-melting conclusion of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

All this optimism and yearning finds its expression in Richard Dreyfuss’ lead performance as Roy Neary. A deliberately average working man, with no desire to rock the boat, Neary is clearly a dreamer turned conformer, a man who still has a childish fascination with models, toy trains and Disney films. Perhaps this is why the aliens have a bigger effect on him than anyone else – it’s a chance for him to discover the sense of wonder and adventure you think he has probably left behind in adulthood. Dreyfuss sells playing a character who is essentially obsessive, manically building a model of the alien landing site, which involves trashing his house and scaring away his wife and kids.

Ah yes the wife and kids. If there is a problem with the film (and even Spielberg has acknowledged this) it’s that it’s very much a young man’s film. Neary’s wife and children are an encumbrance. Teri Garr, in a thankless role, is a nagging shrew who wants her husband (reasonably enough) to grow up and focus on supporting his family. His kids lack understanding or interest in their father. When they leave Neary, he seems (to be honest) not really that concerned – and their absence never troubles him again from that point. While I get Spielberg is focusing on the dreamer as a grown man, casting wife and children as problems that need to be overcome rather than people for whom he has considerable responsibility is something it’s harder to forgive the older you get. It’s easy to see Neary as more than a bit selfish.

Spielberg’s more conservative view of women and especially mother’s comes out in Jillian Guiler’s fierce maternal love for her child – needless to say she’s not fussed about the aliens, only in finding Barry. The kidnapping of Barry – harmless as it might be – is a sort of child-loss horror that feels even more unsettling today with our fears of what might happen to our children. But Dillon gives a good performance as the film’s mother figure, and does at least have the most emotionally true plotline, even if the film doesn’t want to touch the dark implications of her son’s kidnapping.

But this is a film about hope and dreaming, and when it focuses on that it does extraordinarily well. It’s a marvellous and visionary film, full of arresting and beautiful images. Truffaut, very good as the French UFO expert, I’m sure would have loved the film’s magical, old-school, hopeful Hollywood style. Spielberg is a clever and skilled director, with plenty of heart – even if he still at this point didn’t perhaps understand parenthood (something he himself has acknowledged) – and he crafted in Close Encounters a very personal film of an adult who still clings to childhood, who wants to look up at the skies and dream.

Parenthood (1989)

Steve Martin struggles with the demands of fatherhood, in the rather sweet Parenthood

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Steve Martin (Gil Buckman), Tom Hulce (Larry Buckman), Harley Kozak (Susan Huffner), Jason Robards (Frank Buckman), Rick Moranis (Nathan Huffner), Martha Plimpton (Julie Buckman), Keanu Reeves (Tod Higgins), Eileen Ryan (Marilyn Buckman), Helen Shaw (Grandma), Mary Steenburgen (Karen Buckman), Dianne Wiest (Helen Buckman), Joaquin Phoenix (Garry Buckman-Lampkin)

If there is one thing everyone knows, it’s that families can be complex. That’s why good films about family life resonate so well – everyone (and I mean everyone) can find something in it that echoes with their own experiences. Parenthood is very good at this sort of thing, an entertaining but also tender and rather sweet comedy-drama about an expansive family and their many triumphs and problems.

Frank Buckman (Jason Robards) is the patriarch, a distant father with four children all now raising families of their own. Gil (Steve Martin), married to Karen (Mary Steenburgen), desperately wants to be the perfect dad he feels his own never was, but is struggling with the increasingly apparent emotional problems in his oldest son, 12-year-old Kevin. Helen (Dianne Wiest) is divorced, her ex-husband wants nothing to do with their children. Her son Garry (Joaquin Phoenix) is a socially withdrawn teenager, while her elder daughter Julie (Martha Plimpton) isn’t interested in education only in her relationship with gentle but useless Tod (Keanu Reeves). Susan (Harley Kozak) is married to Nathan (Rick Moranis) who is obsessed with turning their young daughter into a child prodigy. Frank’s favourite son is the feckless Larry (Tom Hulce), a wastrel sponger who turns up after years with an unexpected young son, Cool, in tow, in whom he shows little interest.

You can see just in that quick summary you’ve got a huge array of issues for the film to tackle, all of which it manages to do with sweetness, humour and also a certain amount of emotional truth. The film manages the ups and downs, the flat-out comedy and the heartbreak with real confidence, meaning you are moved smoothly from broad laughs to genuine “ahs” of sweetness. 

With the exception of the shallow and selfish Larry (every family has that black sheep), each of the characters has moments to demonstrate their depth and truth, showing sides of themselves you wouldn’t expect. In a large-cast film that delivers in a tight, well-structured two hours, that’s quite an accomplishment to be honest.

Ron Howard directs all this with fabulous control, a reminder that he’s actually quite a skilled director of comedy, with a good sense of timing and pacing. He’s also a superb director of actors, and there isn’t a weak link in the whole cast, from the youngest child actor to the most experienced Broadway veteran. 

Steve Martin is fabulous as the centre of the family saga, the dad desperate to be the best dad he can be, but who overly worries and obsesses about every detail to try and be as perfect as possible. Martin is ace at this sort of stuff, this gentle comedy grounded in reality, and totally understands how to make a character feel real and grounded. Combine that with his natural comic chops and willingness to embrace the absurd at moments – showcased here in a sequence where he desperately has to cover for a missing entertainer at his son’s birthday party – and he supplies many of the film’s stand out moments. 

Dianne Wiest (Oscar nominated) also manages a difficult balancing act in perhaps the film’s most interesting set of plotlines. Helen’s family covers the full range of teenage trauma, from a loving son who seems to turn overnight into a monosyllabic stranger to a daughter who rejects all her mother’s hopes for the future in order to spend time with a boy she doesn’t approve of. Wiest is not only extremely funny in some of her responses to these problems, but also heartrendingly real in her pain, confusion and frustration at not being able to help her children (or herself) as much as she wants, as well as the clear feeling that her life is somehow a failure compared to her two elder siblings. 

What’s also beautiful about the film is that none of these events or storylines work themselves out quite as you might expect. Young Garry (played excellently by an impossibly young Joaquin Phoenix, here billed as Leaf) has clear reasons for his feelings and is dealing with complete lack of interest his father shows in his life. Julie (Martha Plimpton, very good) isn’t the layabout teen you might expect, and has genuine feelings for Tod – who, under Keanu Reeves’ sweet, slacker style, is a man of far greater emotional depth than might be expected.

The other plotlines of the film are secondary to these, but are still wonderfully played and put together. The Moranis/Kozak plotline of “I’m an ignored wife who wants another baby” v “I’m trying to turn our daughter into a genius” is a bit more played for laughs, but the two actors know their stuff and deliver. Tom Hulce channels Mozart as the irredeemable Larry, but works very well with Jason Robards, who expertly portrays a man aware he was not the perfect dad. Again these scenes develop in ways you might not expect – particularly as regards Robard’s character.

The final sequence of the film, showing how the events and lessons of the film have changed the family but brought them together in different ways, and how they have changed and learned, should feel manipulative and pat, but because the whole film is done with generosity and warmth it actually brings a small tear to the eye with its sweetness and warmth. Parenthood isn’t perhaps remembered quite as well as it should be – but it’s a film that never fails to deliver and always leaves you feeling better about yourself. And you can’t ask more than that.

All That Jazz (1979)

Roy Scheider plays the director Bob Fosse in a barely-veiled-at-all autobiographical film All That Jazz

Director: Bob Fosse

Cast: Roy Scheider (Joe Gideon), Jessica Lange (Angelique), Leland Palmer (Audrey Paris), Ann Reinking (Katie Jagger), Cliff Gorman (Davis Newman), Ben Vereen (O’Connor Flood), Erzsebet Foldi (Michelle Gideon), David Marguiles (Larry Goldie), Michael Tolan (Dr Ballinger), Max Wright (Joshua Penn), William LeMassena (Jonesy Hecht), Deborah Geffner (Victoria Porter), John Lithgow (Lucas Sergeant)

It’s revealing when a director makes an autobiographical film. There are insights to be found about the sort of person they are – and the sort of person they want to present themselves as to the world. And All That Jazz is possibly the most striking autobiographical film ever made. You have to have a towering amount of ego to make a film showing yourself as a deliriously talented polymath, generally liked by everyone. And then you have to have a giddy self-awareness to give your semi-fictional doppelganger all your titanic faults, selfishness, cruelty and flaws. Let’s not even get into the psychology of turning your own death into a musical number, eight years before it happened.

Just like Bob Fosse, Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is a hugely influential choreographer and director who has changed the face of Broadway musicals before going on to become the Oscar-winning director of a string of critically acclaimed films. He is also a workaholic, addicted to a string of prescription drugs, a never-ending smoker, with a strong of failed marriages and affairs behind him. Just like Bob Fosse, in 1975 Gideon is staging his ground-breaking original production of a musical (Fosse was directing Chicago which clearly inspired the unnamed musical here), starring his ex-wife (and mother of his daughter) Audrey Paris (Leland Palmer, a frequent Fosse collaborator), living with his girlfriend Kate Jagger (played by Ann Reinking, who was Fosse’s real life girlfriend at the time). At nights and weekends he is editing The Stand-Up (a version of Fosse’s film about stand-up Lenny Bruce titled Lenny starring Dustin Hoffman). When he has a near fatal heart attack part way through this, Gideon starts to sink. Fosse on the other hand used the experience to write this movie. 

All That Jazz is an electric piece of film-making, full of Fosse’s dynamism. It’s not only crammed with fabulous song and dance numbers (some of the best Fosse work you’ll see) but it’s beautifully edited and paced. Fosse holds it all together so brilliantly you never feel the thing teeter on the tightrope like Gideon does (the first image of the film is appropriately Gideon walking a tightrope). It perfectly captures the high intensity, killer pressure of maintaining this constant state of activity, and suggests how much Fosse (clearly) believed his own life was a performance, every moment constructed and staged for maximum impact. 

And that’s what you wonder about the film. Does Fosse hate himself, love himself or some combination of both? It’s something the film just teases, with Gideon indulged in a series of fantasy-tinged cryptic conversations with Jessica Lange (another Fosse conquest allegedly) as some sort of angel dressed in white. Here Gideon of course flirts and charms as only he can, while answering with ambiguous amounts of truthfulness a series of questions about love, his background, his wishes and dreams. But even when he says these things, there is the half smile that suggests it’s only part of the story. Or maybe Gideon himself doesn’t even know where life ends and the story begins.

Fosse’s film is just about perfectly structured. Repeatedly we see Gideon going through the same daily ritual when he wakes up: Vivaldi, shower, cocktail of prescription drugs, eye drops, slap hands, “It’s a show time!” (with an ever increasing struggle to keep the energy up). As the tempo of this repeated introduction changes through the film, you get a perfect idea of the state of Gideon’s mind and mood – and his relentless attempt to turn his own life into a perfect performance.

In among all this, perhaps no film has ever showed a better understanding of the pressures of creating a Broadway musical. The opening sequence follows a series of exhausting auditions from literally hundreds of dancers desperate for a role in Gideon’s show, slowly being whittled down to the chosen few. The rehearsals are a punishing series of deconstructions as the dancers strive to match Gideon’s perfectionism. Rehearsal rooms are crammed, sweaty and uncomfortable. The money men hover over every scene, with an eye on protecting their investment. And then, we see the results suddenly of Gideon’s work with a Chicago-ish dance routine so sexually charged it is positively indecent. It’s genius on at least three levels.

The film revolves around Gideon, and the amount of time squeezed out of his personal life by his never-ending, passionate work commitments. Leland Palmer is excellent as his loving but deeply frustrated wife, supportive but all too aware of Gideon’s selfishness. The bond between them feels strong, real and above conventional marriage. Ann Reinking is equally marvellous as his lover, protégé, partner and you name it. Between these three characters there is a hugely warm performance from Erzsebet Foldi as Gideon’s shrewd but loving daughter. Fosse isn’t afraid to sprinkle real moments of family warmth in, as if trying to show Gideon all the things he is missing out on – one particularly outstanding moment is a song-and-dance routine Reinking and Foldi perform for Gideon after the premiere of his film The Stand-Up, as entertaining as it is charming.

But the film’s secondary motor, after Fosse’s directing brilliance (seriously, there are few Hollywood directors so undervalued, the man is a genius) is Roy Scheider as Gideon. I can’t really imagine a more bizarre sounding bit of casting: Jaws Chief Brody as a song-and-dance man, the world’s greatest (even slightly camp) choreographer. But Scheider is simply sublime in this role. It’s a towering, landmark performance of total commitment. He’s achingly human, supremely sad but also overflowing with warmth, humanity and humour while also being repeatedly selfish, difficult and demanding. It’s a performance of total absorption.

By time of the finale number (a truly bizarre version of Bye Bye Love, renamed Bye Bye Life, in which Gideon lives his final moments in a fantasy world, singing and dancing his way towards death in front of an audience of faces from past and present) the whole thing is so wonderfully overblown it doesn’t really matter. The film’s passage into the surreal and fantasy as Gideon gets increasingly ill (while showing less and less regard for his own health) will be a bit much for some, but I was honestly so into it that I didn’t care. 

Because the film is about this acute piece of self-analysis from the director, a Fellini-inspired sort of musical 8½, in which the understanding (or lack thereof) we get of Gideon, and which he gains about himself, is most important. His conversations with Lange’s angel of death are intriguing and as informative about the man he really is as the man he wants to be. 

Fosse’s film is simply supremely well directed (Kubrick called it one of the best films he ever saw). Fosse’s editor (playing himself in the film as the editor of The Stand-Up) said if Fosse had actually died during the making of the film, he would have made sure his death was filmed and edited into the movie. I can believe it. The only musical you’ll ever see which doubles as a confession and a condemnation, which turns death and surgical procedures into wham bam musical numbers, and which never becomes maudlin or sentimental about the self-inflicted disaster the director is putting on himself – it’s brilliant.

Beginners (2010)

Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor are a father and son building a bond in quirky fable Beginners

Director: Mike Mills

Cast: Ewan McGregor (Oliver Fields), Christopher Plummer (Hal Fields), Mélanie Laurent (Anna Wallace), Goran Višnjić(Andy), Mary Page Keller (Georgia Fields), Kai Lennox (Elliot), China Shavers (Shauna)

Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor) is a reserved man who has struggled to hold a relationship down because of his own emotional distance. His world is shaken when his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) comes out at the age of 75, after the death of his mother, and proceeds to lead an active life in the gay scene of LA, including taking on a boyfriend, Andy (Goran Višnjić). After his father’s death, reflecting on Hal’s love of life and increasing emotional honesty makes Oliver consider his own life and start to tentatively consider a relationship with a French actress, Anna (Mélanie Laurent).

This heavily auto-biographical film was based on the life and experiences of writer-director Mike Mills. It has moments of genuine sweetness and light, occasionally undermined by the slightly smug quirkiness that creeps into the story at several points. Mills sometimes tries a little too hard as a director, using montages of stock footage to place years into context and to add a quirky sheen to the drama.

In fact it’s that quirk that often gets in the way of the drama in the film, Mills relying too often on meet-cutes, a dialogue Oliver has (in subtitles) with his dog, jolly picture montages, the cartoons Oliver draws on themes like “The History of Sadness”, the achingly clever-clever graffiti Oliver sprays on walls etc. etc. Maybe I am just cold of heart but this sort of stuff gets on my nerves rather than awakening my warmer feelings. Clearly I’m getting old.

Someone who isn’t getting old is Hal. Played with Oscar-winning bravado and joie de vivre by Christopher Plummer, the film gets most (if not all) its emotional mileage out of Hal’s embracing of life and his equally profound regret at the years of concealment and emotional distance he inflicted on others. One tearful moment sees the extremely sick Hal holding Oliver’s hand on a bed, sadly reflecting he wanted to do this throughout Oliver’s childhood but didn’t feel he could. 

The film carefully positions Hal’s late acceptance of his personality and explosion of embracing life as an inspiration, and contrasts it with Oliver’s buttoned up repression. To be honest, someone as repressed and traditional as Oliver might well have taken slightly longer (you suspect) to deal with the fact that his dad comes out after the death of his mother – but then this is basically a father-son romance, so you can’t blame Mills for trimming down this expected drama. 

Instead the story focuses largely on Oliver learning to open his heart to a relationship with Melanie Laurent’s French actress (a relationship by the way so impossibly quirky the two of them meet at a fancy dress party – he’s dressed as Freud, she can only communicate through writing notes because she has laryngitis. To be fair it’s marginally less irritating than it sounds). This story is cross-cut with flashbacks to Hal’s last few years that illustrate different lessons Oliver learned from his dad.

This is all rather artfully and gently done, but very traditionally structured. The flashback material with Hal is far stronger and Christopher Plummer’s mix of playfully raging against the dying of the light and gentle emotion and sadness overwhelms the modern plotline. It’s hard to get wrapped up in Oliver’s stumbling shoot-yourself-in-the-foot courtship of Anna, when you have Plummer ripping through a beautiful monologue on how he was desperate not to be as distant as his own father. Even the jokes get overwhelmed – nothing in Oliver’s storyline is as amusing as Hal raving over garage music.

The real interest to be honest is in the relationship between Hal and Oliver, and the late blooming of emotional honesty and love between them (Oliver claims he can barely remember Hal from his childhood, and flashbacks confirm this). Even this however could have had more impact if the film had allowed more of this distance to be seen in the film, as we then lose the impact of the two characters starting to bond. 

In fact I’d love to have seen more of Hal and Oliver together, perhaps more intercut with flash-forwards about Oliver learning to accept love and joy into his life in the same way Hal did in his final years. Reversing the format, effectively. The warmest bond in the story is between Hal and Oliver and this seems a little lost. Ewan McGregor does his best, but he feels slightly constrained by the role, as if aware that he had the pressure of playing the director’s own life story. Melanie Laurent is adorable as Anna, but she feels like the sort of character one only meets in movies – beautiful, sexy, cute, showing the sort of incredible patience for the timid, confused, difficult Oliver that never happens in real life (in my experience).

Such a format change would also mean more Christopher Plummer, which is never a bad thing – and certainly wouldn’t be here, in one of Plummer’s finest performances: fun, witty, warm, kind, sad and gentle with a very touching relationship with his much younger lover (played very well by a sweetly naïve Goran Višnjić). It’s Plummer’s film and he rides above a story that often seems a little too unoriginal and quirky than you might have expected.

Black Panther (2018)

Chadwick Boseman is the legendary Black Panther in Marvel’s solid comic book outing

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa/Black Panther), Michael B. Jordan (N’Jadaka/Erik Kilmonger Stevens), Lupita Nyong’o (Nakia), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Martin Freeman (Everett K Ross), Daniel Kaluuya (W’Kabi), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Winston Duke (M’Baku), Angela Bassett (Ramonda), Forest Whitaker (Zuri), Andy Serkis (Ulysses Klaue), John Kani (T’Chaka)

Marvel’s comic book world is now so stuffed with characters, worlds and dimensions that it is remarkable how many of its heroes are white and male. Black Panther does something completely different, giving us a set of African heroes and placing the common framework of a Marvel film within a very proud, and distinct, African heritage. So you can pretty much guarantee you ain’t seen a comic book film quite like this one.

After the death of his father (in Captain America: Civil War), T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) becomes king of the secretive nation of Wakanda. Camouflaging itself as a poor and unadvanced nation in order to avoid interaction with the rest of the world, Wakanda has in fact for centuries been mining a remarkable metal, vibranium, that has helped the nation become hugely technologically advanced. Its king also bears the responsibility of being the “Black Panther”, ingesting a vibranium-infused herb to gain superhuman speed and strength. However, others have their eye on the throne, not least Erik “Kilmonger” Stevens (Michael B Jordan), who wants to turn Wakanda into a force that could protect the black people of the world from their historical oppressors and avenge centuries of slavery.

Black Panther never fails to be entertaining. The film is shot with a genuinely vibrant excitement, and I love the way it proudly embraces a comic book twist on African tribal heritage. In fact the film’s depiction of an African nation which is secretly the most powerful and advanced nation in the world is really quite an impressive political statement.

Ryan Coogler directs the film with flashy brilliance and comes up with a few ways of presenting what are (essentially) action sequences we’ve seen many times before in unique new ways. The stand-out is an early action scene in a Korean bar, filmed to appear as an immersive single take around a large set, the camera dipping and zooming from character to character. Coogler also brings a fair amount of visual wit to the fights while not losing the emotional and character depth the story is aiming for.

The film also has some fine performances, with Boseman dripping dignity, nobility and decency as T’Challa. Regular Coogler collaborator Michael B. Jordan gives a great contrast as bitter LA slums kid turned misguided would-be dictator Kilmonger. Danai Gurira stands out as proud general Okoye, torn between duty and personal loyalties. Hell even Forest Whitaker – clearly loving every moment of this OTT Marvel world – gets some weight and dignity out of his typical grandstanding style.

It’s another mark for the film that the world of Wakanda is so effectively gender neutral. Kings of Wakanda have a Praetorian Guard of female warriors, most of the leading voices on its council are women, and its technical genius is T’Challa’s sister Shuri (played by Letitia Wright in a charming, star-making performance). Sure it doesn’t feel like the role of Black Panther himself is up for grabs for anyone lacking a penis, but this is a world where women are equal, if not leading, partners in the action.

The film also addresses issues of post-colonial struggle, not least attitudes towards slavery and oppression handed out to Africa over centuries. Kilmonger’s fiendish plot is, in many ways, actually quite sympathetic – he wants to use Wakanda’s resources to protect those of African descent across the world. Jordan gets some good moments from his speeches laced with anger at the historical treatment of Afro-Caribbeans and, to be honest, it’s hard not to see his point. So hard in fact that the film has to drop hints that Kilmonger is a potential tyrant to stop him from seeing too reasonable. 

This is where the film’s plot starts to get slightly hazy. The character arc of T’Challa himself is pretty unclear. Traditionally in these films, the character must embrace his destiny. Problem is, a lot of this arc was covered in Captain America: Civil War. The writers are unable to give him a truly compelling replacement arc here. T’Challa drops a few references early on to not feeling ready – but basically swiftly embraces it. He never outlines a real alternative agenda to Kilmonger – there are characters in the film who argue “Wakanda doesn’t get involved in the world”, but he isn’t one of them, so there is no journey towards engagement with the outside world (on far more humanitarian terms than Kilmonger advocates). 

Frankly, Okoye is given a better character arc than T’Challa, beginning by advocating “we must serve the throne and respect our traditions even if we doubt them”, and learning later to follow her own conscience. T’Challa, in contrast, is no discernibly different at the end of the film to how he was at the beginning. 

T’Challa’s journey is basically getting something, losing it and then getting it back. Strip away Boseman’s performance and the character is basically pretty dull. He partly suffers, as does the rest of the film, from an overstuffed cast spreading the focus of the film far too thinly and leading to character arcs and interconnections feeling rushed. Kilmonger’s connection with T’Challa is forced – they only know each other for at best two days! – and there is a superfluity of villains. There’s not only decoy antagonist Klaue (and his gang) hanging about for a good chunk of the film, but also Daniel Kaluuya’s ill-defined best friend turned opponent, W’Kabi. Combining Kilmonger and W’Kabi would have helped no end, allowing two different, divergent agendas to develop and cause a relationship rift between two friends (Kaluuya is instead totally wasted in a nothing part, whose allegiances change depending on the demands of the plot). 

The good guys fare no better: Lupita Nyong’o is completely wasted as a love interest who feels stuffed into the movie because, y’know, these films gotta have one. She does nothing in the film that could not be easily done by another character, and nearly all of T’Challa’s emotional scenes – and personal motivation – are tied into his sister rather than this are-they-aren’t-they-a-couple. 

It’s all part of the traditionalism that underlies the film. Its structure is familiar and, like many Marvel origin films, the villain is a dark reflection of the hero with similar skills. The final battle is traditional and a little dull (and feels very similar to Avengers: Infinity War). The film avoids showing T’Challa torn between isolation and intervention – he in fact advocates both in the first 15 minutes – and doesn’t really make much of the prospect of a hero changing his mind or developing his views to embrace a wider world.

But it stands out because it is different. And it deserves no end of praise for making such a film so full of love and respect for its heritage. It walks a very difficult line between enjoying the bright exotic colours while not making the film patronising or overly “other-worldly”. How many other Hollywood films have, at best, two white characters (well played in both cases by Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis)? How many others would dare have the villain make a defiant, sizzling and emotionally inspirational speech about racial oppression and the hypocrisy of the West (though the film goes easy on America, with the speech taking place at the hilarious “Museum of Great Britain”. Where is this place – please get my tickets!).

That it slightly dodges and fudges the implication of these themes in its plotting and the conception of its hero – who is basically a dull character played by a charismatic actor – doesn’t reduce its pleasure at doing something different. I’m not sure it will stand up to repeated viewings – look past the setting and it does little new – but it’s a worthy entrance in a crowded universe.

About Schmidt (2002)

Jack Nicholson is superb as beaten down Warren Schmidt in About Schmidt

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: Jack Nicholson (Warren R Schmidt), Kathy Bates (Roberta Hertzel), Hope Davis (Jeannie Schmidt), Dermot Mulroney (Randall Hertzel), June Squibb (Helen Schmidt), Howard Hesseman (Larry Hertzel), Len Cariou (Ray Nichols)

When you think about About Schmidt, it’s almost impossible not to think about Jack Nicholson. For so long Nicholson has been JACK, a personality so large, so present in the public conscious as the ultimate raging lothario, that most of his performances have been unable to escape it. He has blasted through so many films as a force of nature that what’s almost most surprising about About Schmidt is that Nicholson is so feeble, worn-out, uncharismatic and beaten down in the lead role. Did I also mention he was brilliant?

Nicholson is Warren R Schmidt, a recently retired actuary with an Insurance company in Omaha. As a young man he dreamed of a golden future, but his life has been one of crushing mundanity and boredom (albeit, I will say, clearly very well paid!). Schmidt has become a cowed, average, hollow man – the sort of man who urinates sitting down because his wife insists he does so and whose idea of defiance is to pop out for a milkshake. After his wife (June Squibb) suddenly dies, he is forced to deal with the fact that he is actually largely estranged from his idealised daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) and that he despises her decent-but-no-hoper fiancée Randall (Dermot Mulroney). Can he make her abandon the wedding?

Alexander Payne has excelled in this style of film: a slightly off-centre social comedy with a mix of a lemony sharpness, satirical wit and genuine warmth for its characters. He perfectly captures the hopes and dreams of small-town America and the trap of mediocrity and disappointment that these sort of suburban, unremarkable lives can have. About Schmidt does this brilliantly, by counterpoising the Schmidt’s feelings of depression and being trapped with the clearly empty dreams of his daughter’s would-be husband. Not to mention taking shots at the overbearing try-too-hard irritability of Randall’s bohemian family (who seem to celebrate the very failures Warren believes his life has been made of).

Payne works in perfect synchronicity with Nicholson, keeping all the actor’s OTT gestures and mannerisms well in check and pushing him to create a quiet, timid, worn-out man who is beginning to reflect (with some bitterness) on what his life has been and been to suspect (with some dread) what it might be for his daughter. Nicholson’s comic timing and his sense of empathetic sadness are both absolutely perfect. The film uses a brilliant device to let us hear Schmidt’s inner monologue via his writing a series of letters to the African child Ndugo he is sponsoring (hilarious in that he unleashes on this no doubt uncomprehending young boy a series of bitter, reflective and sad cries from the heart).

The film is about the disappointments of life, but each point is told with a dark or wry humour. From Schmidt’s retirement party (an event that everyone seems to attend only out of duty) to the death of his wife (who collapses mid hoovering) there is a dark sense of humour throughout. Nicholson plays these moments with a world-weary sadness that keeps the character grounded. At other moments, he can let rip with a more overt comic touch as he struggles with the distaste and alarm he is far too polite to show as he stays with Randall’s bohemian family (Kathy Bates is very good as the matriarch of this clan, a woman whose laissez-faire attitude is a front for her tyranny).

The film’s plot is brilliantly simple, and is fundamentally about how far Schmidt can go in re-evaluating and re-claiming his life, giving his final years (with his actuary head on he believes he has between 10-12 years left) some sense of individuality. These attempts rotate from sad starry-night imagined conversations with his late wife to awkwardly comedic encounters with a nice couple at a camping site, whose signals he completely misreads. Schmidt is angry – and those moments when it bursts out to Ndugo are hilarious – but as much with himself as anyone else. After all, who do we have to blame more than ourselves? 

Schmidt isn’t even a bad guy. He’s spot on about Randall, a decent enough guy but a hopeless businessman and incompetent chancer. A large chunk of the film’s final act hinges on us knowing that Schmidt is right, knowing that is daughter is making a huge mistake, but also knowing that we’d be as powerless about it as Schmidt is. Because the film, in its darkly comic way, is saying that nearly all of us are on this treadmill – and that nearly all of us can see that others are as well – but we can’t do anything about it or help them get off. We can only watch the gears shifting on.

It’s a brilliant, thought-provoking film, very funny in places – and Jack Nicholson gets to remind us all that he a marvellous, clever and subtle actor, in one of his finest performances since the 1970s. Nicholson’s control and likeability are vital to making Schmidt someone whom we warm to and pity, even while he frustrates. And Payne’s wonderfully directed, empathetic story illustrates a life of tragedy without meaning and dreams, but never scoffs at those who lead them – instead it’s only wistfully sad for what might have been.

Rain Man (1988)

Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman go on a road journey of personal discovery in Rain Man

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Dustin Hoffman (Raymond Babbitt), Tom Cruise (Charlie Babbitt), Valeria Golino (Susanna). Jerry Molen (Dr Bruner), Ralph Seymour (Lenny), Michael D Roberts (Vern), Bonnie Hunt (Sally Dibbs)

Rain Man poster1988 wasn’t a vintage year at the Oscars, so perhaps that explains why this functional film ended up scooping several major awards (Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay). Rain Man is by no means a bad film, just an average one that, for all its moments of subtlety and its avoidance of obvious answers, still wallows in clichés.

Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) is a cocksure car dealer (he’s Cruise to the max) whose latest deal is spiralling down the toilet when he hears his father has died. Charlie had long since cut all links to his father, so he’s not surprised to be left only a car. But he is intrigued the money has been placed into a trust – and is shocked and furious to discover he has an autistic brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) he never knew about. After essentially kidnapping Raymond in order to claim his share of his father’s fortune, the two end up in a cross country road trip where Charlie slowly learns more about Raymond and their shared past and begins to soften in his view of his brother.

Rain Man is basically the sort of movie where two characters go on a road trip and have a personal journey of discovery, offering the sort of twists and character developments that are only really going to be surprising to someone who has never seen a movie before. But despite that, it does do something interesting, avoiding the standard Hollywood cliché of Raymond discovering depths or learning to overcome part of his condition: he is basically the same at the end of the film as at the beginning.

Instead all the change and journey is in Charlie Babbitt. The film carefully and unobtrusively develops Charlie over the course of the film so that he evolves away from the selfish, greedy yuppie we first encounter, who seems incapable of building emotional links with the people around him. Instead, as he learns to care (in every way) for another person, he also discovers reserves of love and a yearning for connection in himself that he never knew he had before. 

This all sparks off his interaction with Raymond – and his growing acceptance of Raymond for who he actually is, rather than who he wants him to be. This happens slowly – and Charlie can intermix tenderly teaching Raymond to dance with using him to count cards in Las Vegas – but you can plainly see the difference in his character from his reactions when he says hello to his girlfriend earlier (flirtatious but distant) with how he greets her when they reunite later in the film (warm, loving and open). It’s a gradual but very natural development shift that is the real heart of the film.

This works due to a terrific performance from Tom Cruise. Cruise has possibly never been better than he is here. His role is not about glamour or flash, but about carrying the narrative and emotion of the story. Cruise is sensational, quietly carving out a gradual and intelligent character development over a period of time that avoids all the flashy tricks and obvious “emotional” moments you expect. Cruise isn’t afraid to be unlikeable either at points in the story.

That’s what the real emotional connection with the viewer is in this story, and that’s the real arc that the film captures. However it’s Dustin Hoffman who attracted the real plaudits for his performance as the autistic Raymond. Interestingly Hoffman was initially tapped for the role of Charlie, but quickly worked out Raymond was the flashier part. 

Hoffman’s performance is a masterpiece of virtuoso transformation, and his capturing of the quirks and mannerisms of an autistic man are perfectly done. He convinces utterly. But, by the nature of the character, there is no real emotional or character work here. The performance is one that is largely a collection of extremely successful mannerisms. It’s rather like watching an expert juggler successfully juggle twenty things for over two hours. Hoffman doesn’t drop a single thing, but it’s a series of actor tricks rather than a complex acting performance of emotion and character. 

Rain Man did give an insight into autism for many in the 1980s for the first time. Its influence may perhaps have been too great – it’s now become almost standard for an autistic savant in movies to be a maths genius with amazing memory – but in the film, it’s carefully structured to serve as a starting point for Charlie to begin to see Raymond as a human being rather than an object. The film itself sets out a similar stall, encouraging the viewers to see those with autism as people with their own feelings – however much they struggle to understand or express these, as Raymond does. 

What it does very well is to subtly and sensitively explore Raymond’s situation. The medical professionals in the film are never demonised (as they so easily could have been) but are as concerned about Raymond as Charlie becomes. Raymond and Charlie discover they have a closer bond that both seem barely able to express – even Raymond seems to become, at least, used to Charlie’s presence enough to let him touch him. The film shows Raymond however can only progress so far – there is no miracle cure, and no out of character outburst of empathy. 

Rain Man works best when it focuses on subtlety – and has an outstanding performance from Tom Cruise – and it has a well filmed simplicity to it. But it is a slight tale, directed with a functional professionalism by Barry Levinson that never really manages to stand out from several other movies very similar to it. It has a certain warmth and emotionality to it, but deep down it’s nothing really that special – just a more subtle version of a story we have seen several times before.

Suite Française (2015)

Matthias Schoenaerts and Michelle Williams love across the divide in this disappointing French Occupation epic

Director: Saul Dibb

Cast: Michelle Williams (Lucile Angellier), Kristin Scott Thomas (Madame Angellier), Matthias Schoenaerts (Oberleutnant Bruno van Falk), Sam Riley (Benoit), Ruth Wilson (Madeleine), Margot Robbie (Celine), Lambert Wilson (Viscount de Montmort), Harriet Walter (Viscountess de Montmort), Clare Holman (Marthe), Alexandra Maria Lara (Leah), Tom Schilling (Oberleutnant Kurt Bonnet), Eric Godon (Monsieur Joseph), Deborah Findlay (Madame Joseph)

The story behind the writing of Suite Française is compelling. Living in Nazi-occupied France, Irène Némirovsky began work on a five-novel series, Suite Française, which she intended to depict life in her homeland under German rule. She had only written two of the five books when she was arrested by the Gestapo as a Jew, and tragically died in Auschwitz. The books were written in a small notebook and kept by Némirovsky’s daughter while she moved from hiding place to hiding place evading the Nazis. Sixty years later, donating her mother’s papers to an archive, she deciphered the notebook and discovered the novels. They were published as a single volume to great success in 2004, regarded as an accomplished piece of literary fiction and a remarkable work of contemporary witness. 

The short summary of the novel’s richness and complexity provided by this film can’t really compete. Based on the second of the two novels, the story takes place in a small French village in 1940. Following the arrival of the Germans, officers are billeted in people’s homes: Lucile Angellier (Michelle Williams) and her mother-in-law (Kristin Scott-Thomas) are assigned sensitive musician Bruno van Falk (Matthias Schoenaerts), while their neighbours, farmers Benoit and Madeleine (Sam Riley and Ruth Wilson), are forced to accommodate bullying officer Kurt Bonnet (Tom Schilling). As hostilities between the French residents and the German occupiers grow, so does the attraction between Lucile and Bruno, but Bonnet’s pursuit of Madeleine threatens to ignite the simmering tensions in the community.

Suite Française manages to turn its promising material into a conventional, chocolate box wartime romance – you can’t help but think that it does a great deal of disservice to the original novel. It’s filmed in an unremarkable style (there are at best 1-2 imaginatively done shots and sequences) and poorly paced. With its short runtime (barely more than an hour and a half), it constantly feels rushed. Quite simply it’s a story about simmering tensions in a confined environment – it needed more time for us to get a sense of the drama building, of the resentments between the Germans and the French growing. Because the film is so short we don’t get that at all.

Most notably, in a film about a romance between a French woman and a German officer, there is no sense at all of the risks that French women who started relationships with German officers were running. Besides a few small throw away lines, there is no sense of the physical danger and the social stigma that would be applied to these women. Instead, the tension of Lucile falling for Bruno seems to be based more on whether her mother-in-law will discover that she’s considering cheating on her (absent, unfaithful) husband. Even Celine the promiscuous farmgirl (a wasted Margot Robbie in a terrible wig) doesn’t seem to be running any risks of reprisals from the villagers when she’s banging a German officer in the woods.

This, however, is where the film’s rushing undermines it. If it had allowed us to develop a sense of the resentment, shame and loathing the occupied French felt for their German oppressors, a feeling of the whole town being willing to close doors on anyone they perceive as being too close to the  Germans, we could have felt a real danger for Lucile in flirting with a dalliance with Bruno. As well as giving the situation a bit of stakes, it would have made it a lot more emotionally engaging too. We could have witnessed her inner conflict at considering a romance with the enemy, and the emerging feelings between them would have had the conflict of a forbidden love. Instead the film rushes us as quickly as it can towards getting Bruno and Lucile into a passionate clinch, at times taking giant unsupported leaps forward in their relationship, so when it arrives it packs no punch.

This passionate clinch undermines the film. If it wasn’t going to take the time to really build the relationship through lingering glances and brief moments, convincingly charting the journey from hostility and suspicion to a forbidden attraction, it should have cut the relationship down to being something that tempts them both but which they cannot express. Have these two recognise a deep bond between them, a bond that in another time would have brought them together but cannot in the time of war. It’s a film where the only physical contact between them should feel like a window on what might have been – not a passionate locking of lips and sexy fondle or two. Think how much more affecting that might have been.

It would also have fit the structure of the film far better. As Lucile finally finds herself having to choose a side – deciding whether to help a renegade hunted by the Germans or not – her decision to sacrifice her chance of love with Bruno might have worked much better. Similarly, Bruno having to revert to the soldier taking responsibility for the growing persecution of the villagers would have been more affecting. (It further doesn’t help that the film doesn’t give time for Williams and Schoenaerts to build up an effective chemistry.) By chucking them into a clinch as soon as it can, the film undermines its message and also manages to make itself feel more like “Mills and Boon in Occupied France” than the serious tragedy it could have been.

When the film finally focuses on the battles between the French and Germans in its final third, it’s much more interesting than the slightly tired romance. Here we get tensions, stakes, drama – and finally a sense of the danger that being in this situation could have. After the rather soft focus romance that comes before, it really seizes the attention.

Williams does a decent job as Lucile, Scott Thomas could play her austere mother-in-law with hidden depths standing on her head (the film fumbles the unexpected alliance between these characters late on). Schoenaerts is a bit wasted in an underwritten role but does good work. The best performances largely come from the second tier: Lambert Wilson is excellent as the local Viscount who wants to try and work with the Germans but quickly finds himself out of his depth. Harriet Walter is similarly strong as his wife, as is Ruth Wilson.

But Suite Française could have been so much better than the movie that it actually becomes. A film that focused on the dangers of occupation and the tensions of a small community would have been great. A film that rushes through a Romeo and Juliet style romance, without building the sense of forbidden love, is a film that just doesn’t work.

Ordinary People (1980)


Mary Taylor Moore, Timothy Hutton and Donald Sutherland pose for an awkward picture in family troubles drama Ordinary People

Director: Robert Redford

Cast: Donald Sutherland (Calvin Jarrett), Mary Taylor Moore (Beth Jarrett), Timothy Hutton (Conrad Jarrett), Judd Hirsch (Dr Tyrone Berger), Elizabeth McGovern (Jeannine Pratt), M. Emmet Walsh (Coash Salan), Dinah Manoff (Karen Aldrich), Fredric Lehne (Joe Lazenby), James B Sikking (Roy Hanley)

In 1980, Robert Redford became the first big Hollywood stars to parlay acting success into producing and directing small scale, independent films that otherwise might never have been made. Ordinary People was the first of these – with Redford focusing on staying behind the camera – and it was a big success. It even won four Oscars – best picture, screenplay, supporting actor for Timothy Hutton (despite the fact Hutton is really the lead) and best director for Redford himself (beating out David Lynch for The Elephant Man and Martin Scorsese for Raging Bull). It was a great story for 1980 – the matinee idol turned artist. But is Ordinary People that great a film?

The film covers the emotional collapse of a wealthy middle-class American family after the eldest son Bucky is killed in a boating accident. Younger son Conrad (Timothy Hutton) has had trouble coming to terms with the accident, which he survived, and has only just left an institution after a suicide attempt. His father Calvin (Donald Sutherland) is desperate to try and relate to his son again, while his mother Beth (Mary Taylor Moore) remains emotionally distant attempting to put the accident behind them. Conrad starts seeing psychiatrist Dr Berger (Judd Hirsch), to adjust – but the after effects of Bucky’s death continue to tear the family apart.

Nobody really talks about Ordinary People any more do they? Out of all the 1980s Best Picture winners it’s perhaps the most easy to overlook (except maybe for Terms of Endearment). Why is this? Well truth be told it’s just a pretty ordinary picture. There really isn’t much to it. The story it tells of a wealthy family (only a millionaire like Redford could consider these loaded people ordinary) suffering emotional trauma and psychiatry finding the answer has been told so many times before, and since, that there isn’t anything particularly unique or interesting about it. 

In fact Ordinary People is exactly the sort of small-scale, quiet, middle-brow independent film that awards ceremonies slather over and a few years later (never mind over 30!) people struggle to see what the fuss was about. Redford directs the film with a quiet professionalism – the sort of competent craftsmanship and skill with actors that dozens of other directors could have done just as well. His Oscar for best director is especially galling when you consider the artistry and imagination of Scorsese’s direction of Raging Bull, or the unbearable sadness and tragedy Lynch gave The Elephant Man. It’s the sort of direction a non-famous director wouldn’t even have been nominated for.

This film uses shot-reverse-shot like it’s going out of fashion, most of the scenes are conversations across tables that are weighted down so heavily with meaning you start to lose interest in them. The score uses Pachelbel’s music in such an overwhelming style, it makes that sound as anodyne as much of the rest of the movie. Maybe it’s just because this is such well-trodden ground, but the revelations towards the end of the movie are so blindingly obvious you wonder why it takes so long to get to them (the son blames himself, the mother blames the son and doesn’t love him as much as the dead son, the father wants the two to kiss and make-up). 

This rotates around a series of psychiatrist scenes which at least have the feeling of actual sessions, even if Judd Hirsch (good as he is here) basically plays the sort of revelation inspiring psychiatrist that only appears in movies. The film has a touching faith in the power of analysis being able to solve all problems, and spends so long luxuriating in scenes like this it virtually forgets to put actual living, breathing characters in the middle of them. With the possible exception of the father, none of these characters feel particularly real – they are just mouthpieces for the plot.

Not that it’s badly acted at all. Timothy Hutton made his film debut here and he brings a real fire and passion to the role, as well as a moving emotional vulnerability and anger directed only at himself. The supporting actor Oscar feels a bit of a cheat, as he’s clearly the lead, but he’s very good here as Conrad, struggling to express himself, bottling up his feelings and lashing out at those around him. It’s a part that feels drawn together from bits and pieces of plot requirement, but Hutton plays it to the hilt – it just doesn’t feel like a really real person, more a collection of sad traits.

Mary Taylor Moore is in a similar situation as a mother so cold and distant from her son, so repressed and controlling her distance starts damaging the entire family. She’s unable to process what has happened so almost wants to pretend nothing has (and blames her son for not doing that same), that it again feels like something from a psychiatric case-study rather than real person. Moore gained particular attention at the time as she was best known for comedy (much like Judd Hirsch, famous for the sitcom Taxi) – so the performance at the time might have looked stronger than it actually was.

The best performance might well come from Donald Sutherland in the least flashy role as the father trying to puzzle out what is going on – and trying to work out his own feelings. It’s the only character that feels less like a construct and more a genuine person, whose answers aren’t easily worked out by a bit of psychology study. Sutherland is low-key, tender, gentle and carries all his emotion on the inside – it’s a subtle and excellent performance, overlooked way too much. 

Redford essentially directed an actor’s film here (it’s all about the big moments of acting) so it’s not a surprise that it seized the attention of the Academy (largely made-up of actors) but really it’s not that far away from a well-made “movie of the week”,  with its obvious beats and not particularly surprising revelations. Perhaps it’s the point that the family’s problems seem a lot more apparent to the viewer than they do to the characters – and there is some interesting development of perceptions, not least from Sutherland’s father who starts to come to profound realisations about his wife and son. 

But Ordinary Peopleis an uninspiring and even rather tame drama, that today looks even more low-key and insubstantial. While it tries to break free from the confines of “social drama” it actually wants to tie everything up with a neat bow psychologically – and despite the fact it has an ending that suggests not everything is perfect, it really concludes with a safe full stop. There is a reason why it’s surely one of the best pictures which has been most forgotten about.