Category: Films about addiction

The Smashing Machine (2025)

Johnson goes for Oscar in a mediocre film that arguably shows his limits as an actor not his depth

Director: Ben Safdie

Cast: Dwayne Johnson (Mark Kerr), Emily Blunt (Dawn Staples), Ryan Bader (Mark Coleman), Bas Rutten (Himself), Oleksandr Usyk (Igor Vovchanchyn), Lyndsey Gavin (Elizabeth Coleman), Satoshi Ishii (Enson Inoue), James Moontasti (Akira Shoji)

Mixed Martial Arts is big business today. The Smashing Machine makes a point of stating its stars are internationally known, earning millions of dollars. Making them not too dissimilar from The Smashing Machine’s star (and guiding light) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who achieved both these in MMA’s ‘scripted’ sibling Professional Wrestling. It’s a knowledge the film is banking on, as Johnson plays Mark Kerr a leading MMA fighter from that period in the late 90s when men were willing to have several layers of shit kicked-and-punched out of them for a few thousand dollars and a dream.

Kerr is one of the big draws of MMA, an affable six-foot mountain of muscle who (when not brutally beating others in the ring) is a hulk of likeability. But he’s got problems – for starters a growing reliance on opioid painkillers and a relationship that’s two thirds self-destructive to one-third mutually dependent with girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt). The Smashing Machine covers Kerr’s getting clean, the break-up and return of his volatile relationship and his shot at 2000 MMA title in Japan in 2000 that could land him $200k.

The Smashing Machine covers all this in a deliberately distanced, low-key style. It nominally follows sports film structure (triumph, failure, re-build, some level of success), trudging along the Rocky template. But Safdie avoids exploiting the genre’s strengths (the highs and joys and it’s emotional release) in a way that is both admirable and makes The Smashing Machine a less engaging or interesting film than you keep expecting it to be. It’s almost a point-of-pride that the film avoids the obvious, but instead languidly leaves things unsaid, or skims lightly over key plot developments, as it spools out accompanied by an incessant jazz soundtrack. But it’s not always a strength.

What it fails to do is find something sufficiently interesting or compelling to take their place. It has all the surface appearance of raw, true-life drama: the jerky camera-work, jazzy score, muted colours, roughed-up actors – but is constantly too distanced and cautious to be truly raw. It (perhaps admirably) doesn’t want to be seen to exploit Kerr, but by playing down his struggles (or rather, boiling them down into neat little scenes ripe for “For your consideration” Oscar clips), it also makes them frequently feel like not that much of a deal. On top of this, the underlying desperation that could have been there in a film where people submit themselves (effectively) to ruleless cage fights like wage-slave gladiators never gets an airing.

It doesn’t even really explore the dark nature of the ‘romance’ at its heart, a relationship which seems categorically a ‘bad thing’ for both people (a coda reveals they married shortly after reuniting after the ballistic, emotion-packed row that is their final moments here – and separated within six years). This is a relationship where the two are never on an equinox. When Mark is in the depth of addiction, Dawn is both afraid of his drugged-out distance and enjoys his small-boy-like need for her affection. When he’s clean, Mark sermonises sanctimoniously while Dawn doubles down on drinking and pill-popping in front of him (“that’s not nice” Mark chides her, sounding like a disappointed child).

But, despite the disapproval hinted out from all the other characters in the film, The Smashing Machine shies away from really addressing this dangerous relationship, making it feel more like a formulaic awkward-love-story, rather than being braver with a harsh truth. In fact, that passionate heated romance, ends up feeling like somewhere between a rather forced series of contrived, manipulative moments (that have no real pay-off) and a firey acting exercise between two performers who trust each other.

Lack of bravery soaks through the whole film, a muted awkward affair where you feel different hands pulling in different directions (an on-the-nose commentator explains all the MMA action to us, as if a producer watching a late-cut was worried it would otherwise make no sense). It’s part a quiet, off-the-wall, yanging-when-it-could-ying serious character study (the Safdie side perhaps), part an Oscar bait slice of true-life heroism (the Johnson side).

Ah yes, the Oscar bait. Much play was made of how far Johnson was willing to move out of his comfort zone and cast aside the action that made him a star. However, for me, what The Smashing Machine reveals is the limits Johnson is willing to go too as an actor. The Rock doesn’t do vulnerability even when playing a beaten-up drug-addict in a borderline-mutually-abusive relationship (all the head-in-his-hands scenes weeping can’t change this, and Johnson delivers these moments like acting assignments rather than with true emotion). Johnson won’t sacrifice his strength of character to play a truly weak man: Johnson might punch a door apart, he never feels comfortable embodying a man who was at time selfish, self-destructive or foolish. Johnson prefers a Kerr who is always, in some degree, strong (even when whining at a loss, he does it with real commitment).

His partnership with Emily Blunt doesn’t help him: Blunt is far more skilled at creating a nuanced character, someone who weeps with pain at Kerr’s drug use and then later performatively rages at him for being boring when he’s clean. She’s not afraid to explore the darker, less flattering areas in the way Johnson doesn’t want to. Johnson makes the mistake of many in thinking real acting is starring soulfully and having a cry. What he doesn’t do is really commit to transforming his soul and persona: for all the wig, this always feel like a performance as in-control and carefully studied as Johnson himself is. The Smashing Machine shows that even a piece of against-type Oscar-bait is still fundamentally part of the same Johnson-branding exercise, another brick in the persona wall of a determined, charming high-achiever.

You can’t say as much for the film. An average film, lacking spark, energy or interest that can’t make up its mind about whether it wants to be low-key tragedy or a heroic tale of redemption. It says a lot that its most powerful and affecting moments are its closing ones, as we watch the real Kerr shopping in 2025, utterly anonymous, chatting pleasantly with staff who don’t know who he is before he breaks the fourth wall to wave us goodbye. In these minutes, the film clicks with a force nothing else in it manages. Shame you need to wait two hours for it.

A Star is Born (1937)

One of the first iterations of the tale, and with two winning performances one of the best

Director: William A Wellman

Cast: Janet Gaynor (Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester), Fredric March (Norman Maine), Adolphe Menjou (Oliver Niles), May Robson (Lettie Blodgett), Andy Devine (Danny McGuire), Lionel Stander (Matt Libby), Owen Moore (Casey Burke), Peggy Wood (Miss Phillips), Elizabeth Jenns (Anita Regis), Edgar Kennedy (Pop Randall)

A Star is Born wasn’t the first time this story was told and it certainly wasn’t the last. Each generation in Hollywood has produced its own version of the story, not to mention a gallery of other culture creating their own unofficial and otherwise remakes. What Price Hollywood had even effectively told the same story five years earlier, and the entire concept has the air of a medieval ‘fortune’s wheel’ – two souls bound together, one goes up as the other goes down. There may in fact not be nothing new about A Star is Born at all but gave such a bright new polish to the familiar, that we’ve been inspired to come back to it again and again.

In the farmyard sticks, Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) has a dream: to become one of those stars of Hollywood’s silver screen. With grandma’s (May Robson) money in her pocket (‘What have I got to spend it on?’) she heads to Los Angeles, only to find the city is awash with similarly starry-eyed dreamers desperate for a big break. Esther gets hers in an unusual manner: serving drinks at a Hollywood party she strikes up conversation with famous star Norman Maine (Fredric March). Norman is very taken with Esther – in fact he’s almost immediately in love with her – and arranges a screen test. Soon Esther has a new career, a new name – Vicki Lester – and a new marriage to Norman. Problem is, as her star rises and she becomes the next big thing, Norman stops letting “his acting get in the way of his drinking” and his career slides into oblivion.

It’s high romance, very effectively filmed by Wellman, that requires – and gets – two very strong, highly relatable performances from its leads. Wellman’s film carefully gives both of them the space to grow a relationship that begins shyly and becomes deep and tender. Gaynor is bright, naïve and gentle with just enough ambition and determination to impress. She’s eager to please, but also firm and knows her own mind, far from a pushover in this town of press releases and media spin. Gaynor never lets us forget that under ‘Vicki Lester’ there’s that ordinary Esther Blodgett (could there be a more grounded, less starry name than Blodgett?), a woman with principles in a world of fakes.

Perhaps even better though is Fredric March (it’s the first indication, borne out by nearly all the remakes, that Norman is the better part). March is charismatic, engaging, funny, down-to-earth and everything you would want from a star – while also being a mean drunk with anger management issues. He’s introduced getting into a drunken scuffle at the Hollywood Bowl, and his love of booze makes him just as likely to laugh and flirt with Esther as it can make him take a slug at a guy who looks at him the wrong way. March’s drunk acting is very effectively restrained and he captures extremely well the self-disgust behind Norman at his weakness. March makes him a star who burns away his career through appalling choices, who fervently believes he can stay on the wagon until he can’t. In his hands it becomes a classic tragic piece, a Greek hero destroyed by his fatal flaw, his inability to escape the bottle.

This rich romantic tragedy builds wonderfully, Wellman keeping us deeply invested in this couple. The good times are really endearing: it’s hard not to grin along as they laugh and joke in a camper van after their elopement, or as they cover each other with encouragement and support for their careers. It makes the bad times unbearably painful: Norman’s drunken crashing of Esther’s Oscar win, a shambling monologue of self-pity and resentment, both heartbreaking and excruciatingly embarrassing. Norman’s fateful final decision is full of romantic imagery, as he smiling walks towards a sun-kissed beach, a beautifully staged inversion of a romantic ending.

A Star is Born’s other most interesting feature is its inside glimpse at Hollywood: or at least the version Hollywood was willing to present of itself to people. It even has a meta-theatrical element to it, the film book-marked by images of the shooting script describing the action immediately following or preceding it. Here Hollywood is a ruthless machine, chewing up the dreams of wannabes. An agent bluntly shows Esther the vast numbers of phone calls of wannabe extras they receive every day. Esther struggles just as much as assistant director Danny (Andy Devine) to find regular work. Careers are made and broken by chance, whims or the reaction of the audience to your face on screen. Names in lights one month and being pasted over the next.

Hollywood loves to be cynical about itself. A Star is Born delightedly shows its spin operation as ruthless, cut throat and controlling, planting stories about stars, covering up their misdemeanours (a regular requirement for the drunken Norman) and repackaging their lives into saleable commodities. Lionel Stander, as a heartlessly controlling press agent, is the heart of this, and the film doesn’t hold back on showing the dark powers of these studio fixers in action. But this is just a version of Hollywood: its telling that in A Star is Born while the middle management are condemned, the studio heads are absolved completely. Adolphe Menjou’s Selznick-like producer is an avuncular, uncle-like figure, endlessly caring and supportive of his stars who wouldn’t dream of any funny games to earn some money. This is a portrait of Hollywood where the top man is an affectionate saint – exposure only goes so far.

A Star is Born is also an interesting time capsule. Esther stares in admiration at a host of Hollywood Avenue stars of people must of the viewing public today would struggle to name (Norman Cantor anyone?). Seeking to impress while serving at a dinner party she’ll do impersonations of Garbo, Hepburn, Crawford and Mae West (the last even named). It’s a world where the continual production of content is even more on-going than on Netflix and the studios can start or end careers instantly. It’s a fascinating extra piece of interest in a highly effective, well-staged film. Even with its slightly murky early colour photography (it looks like a colourised black and white film), it’s a well-staged, effective romance with two very winning performances from its leads. Possibly one of the best versions of the story.

The King of Comedy (1983)

Scorsese’s dark satire on the obsessive love of fame was miles ahead of its time

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro (Rupert Pupkin), Jerry Lewis (Jerry Langford), Sandra Bernhard (Masha), Diahnne Abbott (Rita Keene), Shelley Hack (Cathy Long), Frederick De Cordova (Bert Thomas)

Like moths to a flame, celebrity attracts obsessives, weirdos and those desperate to grab their slice of fame’s limited cake. In our world of influencers and social media, the sharp, uncomfortable and acidic King of Comedy has become a classic after flopping on release. The world seems full of Rupert Pupkin’s today, people who feel their mission in life is to share their gifts for entertaining with the world and feel ownership over their famous idols.

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) feels like this about TV chat-show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). Pupkin sees himself as a polite, affable comedy-star-in-the-waiting and only the fact that he and Langford have never met is preventing them from forming a deep and lasting friendship. In actuality, Pupkin is a fantasist with an elaborate fantasy-world he struggles to differentiate from reality. Believing Jerry wants to give him his big break, his stalkerish attempts to become the star’s protégé lead to inevitable rejection. Desperate, he allies with Jerry’s even-more-openly obsessive stalker Masha (Sandra Bernhard) to take desperate measures to break into the spotlight.

The King of Comedy gets, in a way few other films have done before or since, the dark outer-reaches of the allure of fame. It’s a film about people desperate, in different ways, to have a part of the glamourous exciting world are pressed up against the screen watching. It’s about the darkly-comic – and, in their way, terrifying – lengths people will go to feel special and noticed. To land a quiet moment with a distant superstar or (even better) to become the celebrity themselves.

There’s a little bit of Rupert Pupkin in all of us. Perhaps that’s why we find De Niro’s exquisite performance both hilarious, mortifying to watch but also strangely endearing. Who hasn’t spun in their head elaborate fantasies full of warm conversations with those we admire, where they fall over themselves to tell us how amazing we are? Or imagined a critical teacher going on television to tell the world how wrong they were? Or dreamed of impressing the person we fancied at school with tales of our high-flying success among the hoi-polloi?

What we perhaps don’t do, is build a replica TV studio in our apartment, staffed with life-size cardboard cut-outs of our heroes. Or act out, long into the night, the conversations we wished we had. We probably don’t try to force up fantasies weekend retreats with superstars into reality by turning up at their houses unannounced with a date we want to impress in tow. We might enjoy flirting with a little fantasy life, we’ve probably not started to believe it or started to resent the celebrities for not performing in real life the affection they show us in our mind.

But Rupert does. Superbly played by De Niro – this might just be his finest performance, hilariously over-eager, pathetic but with just the possibility of Bickle-like danger under the surface – Pupkin lives half in this world, half in his own. He doesn’t even seem to realise how socially awkward or desperate he is, approaching every conversation with an air of polite, calm decency. The sort of guy who hands over his own autograph to the girl he’s trying to impress, telling her it will be worth a fortune one day. Who, when he finally gets the chance to talk to his idol after ’rescuing’ him from a deranged fan (something we quickly realise is a set-up – and an indicator of the ends Pupkin will go to), seems literally unable to let the conversation end, utterly unaware each additional word that passes his lips makes it less-and-less likely Jerry will ever speak to him again.

Pupkin only looks normal when he’s compared to his partner in Jerry-obsession Masha, a superbly grating performance of unhinged monomania from Sandra Bernhard. Masha and Rupert – the sparky, bickering interplay between De Niro and Bernhard is electric, the two sounding like children feuding over the last cookie in the jar – are two halves of the same personality: Rupert the more polite, more capable of affecting normality part who longs for a celebrity to recognise him as one of their own; Masha is the possessive id, who wants to grasp her object of affection tight and never let them go, focused on celebrities because they are easier to follow than regular people.

But we’ve all been desperate to take a chance to get close to something we want haven’t we? When presenting himself at Jerry’s office with his demo tape, Pupkin politely but firmly refuses to read any social cues from the staff that they want him to leave. De Niro’s permagrin is a superpower, rejection bouncing off him unscathed. De Niro manages, under the smile and unassuming manner, to always demonstrate Pupkin’s belief fame is his due. The King of Comedy really understands the belief many feel that all which separates them from success is luck. Pupkin rejects hard work and honing his act, genuinely not understanding why he can’t graduate straight to prime-time TV. He’s a millennial ahead of his time, someone who believes if he really, really wants something he should get it.

What’s fascinating about Scorsese’s film is it encourages us to share Pupkin’s delusional perspective. Jerry Langford – a superb performance of bitter, dark self-parody by Jerry Lewis – is all smiles on TV but, as far as we can see, a surly bully in reality, frequently abrupt and rude. But think about it: we only really see him from the perspective of the invasive Pupkin and the frankly terrifyingly Masha. Would you cut these guys any slack? In brief moments where King of Comedy puts us in Jerry’s shoes, it’s clear his world isn’t always pleasant: the woman who responds to his polite refusal to talk to her son on the phone screams “You should die of cancer” at him and he’s obvious genuinely scared of Masha. Is it a surprise he clutches a golf club throughout his confrontation when Pupkin arrives at his home? He chooses his words carefully because too much interaction can be as dangerous as none-at-all.

What’s also quietly clever about King of Comedy is that Pupkin isn’t talentless as such. His problem is all his material is as derivative and carefully studied as his attempt to act normal is. When we see his act, some of the jokes land – but they land like with the carefully planned poise of an obsessive who has copied the tics of those with genuine talent. Pupkin is witty, but it’s outweighed by his obsessive desire for immediate fame. Everything about him is carefully crafted, his entire persona constructed to cope with the world. That’s why he retreats so often in fantasy, where everything is easier.

And maybe King of Comedy heads into fantasy, much as Taxi Driver perhaps does. Don’t trust a Scorsese-De Niro film where someone who we’ve seen as maladjusted, unaware and self-deceiving as Pupkin gets what he wants at the end. King of Comedy shares huge amounts of DNA with Taxi Driver – history repeating itself as farce – even if Pupkin is too childish and incompetent to be as much of a danger as Bickle is.

King of Comedy captures all this with a brilliant understanding of the addictive qualities of fame and celebrity. Sure we sort of like Pupkin sometimes, but we also understand why Jerry finds him so unbearable and unsettling – and also clear just how short a distance he would need to travel to become Masha. King of Comedy delivers all this with an unflashy skill and hosts a truly superb performance from De Niro, a pitch-perfect study in weakness, longing, delusion, repressed desperation and strange vulnerability. It speaks to feelings we’ve all had, but it also reveals the horrific end results of those longings.

Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

Visconti’s realistic family epic simmers with the dangers of split loyalties, but is mixed on gender politics

Director: Luchino Visconti

Cast: Alain Delon (Rocco Parondi), Annie Girardot (Nadia), Renato Salvatori (Simone Parondi), Katina Paxinou (Rosaria Parondi), Roger Hanin (Duilio Morini), Spiros Focas (Vincenzo Parondi), Claudia Cardinale (Ginetta), Paolo Stoppa (Tonino Cerri), Max Cartier (Ciro Parondi), Rocco Vidolazzi (Luca Parondi, Alessandro Panaro (Franca), Suzy Delair (Luisa), Claudia Mori (Raddaella)

Visconti was born into a noble Milanese family: perhaps this left him with a foot in two camps. He could understand the progress and achievement of northern Italy in the post-war years, those booming industry towns which placed a premium on hard work, opportunity and social improvement. But he also felt great affinity with more traditional Italian bonds: loyalty to family, the self-sacrificing interdependency of those links, and the idea that any outsider is always a secondary consideration, no matter what. It’s those split loyalties that power Rocco and His Brothers.

Rocco (Alain Delon) is one of five brothers, arriving in Milan from the foot of Italy looking for work with his mother Rosaria (Katina Paxinou). The hope of the family is second brother Simone (Renato Salvatori), a sparky pugilist destined for a career as a boxing great. But Simone can’t settle in Milan, too tempted by the opportunities he finds for larceny and alcohol. He falls in love with a prostitute, Nadia (Annie Girardot), until she rejects him and then he drifts ever downwards. Rocco, always putting family first, inherits his place first as a boxer than as Nadia’s lover. Problem is, Simone is not happy at being replaced, and the three head into a clash that will see Nadia become a victim in the twisted, oppressive, family-dominated loyalty between the two brothers.

Rocco and His Brothers is a further extension of Visconti’s love of realism – but mixed with the sort of classical themes and literary influences that dominated his later period pieces, themselves in their stunning detail a continuation of his obsession with in-camera realism. Filmed in the streets of Milan, where you can feel the dirt and grit of the roads as much as the sweat and testosterone in the gym, it’s set in a series of run-down, overcrowded apartment blocks and dreary boxing gyms that you could in no way call romantic.

This ties in nicely with Visconti’s theme. Rocco and His Brothers is about the grinding momentum of historical change – and how it leaves people behind. In this case, it’s left Rocco and Simone as men-out-of-time. Both are used to a hierarchical family life, where your own needs are sacrificed to the good of the family and every woman is always second best to Momma. While their brother Ciro knuckles down and gains a diploma so he can get a good job in a factory, Simone drifts and Rocco bends over backwards to clean up the mess his brother leaves behind. Naturally, Simone and Rocco are the flawless apples of their mother’s eye, Ciro an overlooked nobody.

The film focuses heavily on the drama of these two. And if Visconti seems split on how he feels about the terrible, destructive mistakes they make, there is no doubting the relish of the drama he sees in how it plays out. Rocco, by making every effort to make right each of the mistakes his brother makes, essentially facilitates Simone’s collapse into alcoholism, criminality and prostitution. Simone flunks a boxing contract? Rocco will strap on the gloves and fulfil the debt. Simone steals from a shop? Rocco will leave his personal guarantee. Simone steals from a John? Rocco will pay for the damage.

Caught in the middle is Nadia, a woman who starts the film drawn to the masculine Simone but falls for the romantic, calm, soulful Rocco. Wonderfully embodied by Annie Girardot, for me Nadia is the real tragic figure at the heart of this story. Whether that is the case for Visconti I am not sure – I suspect Visconti feels a certain sympathy (maybe too much) for the lost soul of Simone. But Nadia is a good-time girl who wants more from life. Settling down to a decent job with Rocco would be perfect and he talks to her and treats her like no man her before. Attentive, caring, polite. He might be everything she’s dreaming off, after the rough, sexually demanding Simone.

Problem is Nadia is only ever going to be an after-thought for Rocco, if his brother is in trouble. Alain Delon’s Rocco is intense, decent, romantic – and wrong about almost everything. He has the soul of a poet, but the self-sacrificing zeal of a martyr. He clings, in a way that increasingly feels a desperate, terrible mistake, to a code of conduct and honour that died years ago – and certainly never travelled north with them to the Big City. When Simone lashes out at Nadia with an appalling cruelty and violence, making Rocco watch as he assaults her with his thuggish friends, Rocco’s conclusion is simple: Simone is so hurt he must need Nadia more than Rocco does. And it doesn’t matter what Nadia wants: bros literally trump hoes.

Rocco does what he has done all his life. He wants to live in the south, but the family needs him in the north. He wants to be a poet, but his brother needs him to be a boxer. He loves Nadia but convinces himself she will stabilise his brother (resentful but trapped, she won’t even try, with tragic consequences). All of Rocco’s efforts to keep his brother on the straight-and-narrow fail with devastating results. Naturally, his mother blames all Simone’s failures on Nadia, the woman forced into trying to build a home with this self-destructive bully. Rocco’s loyalty – he sends every penny of his earnings on military service home to his mother – is in some ways admirable, but in so many others destructive, out-dated indulgence.

And it does nothing for Simone. Superbly played by Renato Salvatori, he’s a hulk of flesh, surly, bitter but also vulnerable and self-loathing, perfectly charming when he wants to be – but increasingly doesn’t want to. His behaviour gets worse as he knows his brother is there as a safety net. It culminates in an act of violence that breaks the family apart: not least because Simone crosses a line that Ciro (the actual decent son, who Visconti gives precious little interest to) for one cannot cross and reports him to the police.

That final crime is filmed with a shocking, chilling naturalism by Visconti, horrific in its simplicity and intensity. But I find it troubling that Visconti’s core loyalties still seem to be with the out-of-place man who perpetrates this crime and his brother who protects him, rather than female victim. Rocco and His Brothers could do and say more to point up the appalling treatment of Nadia, or at least make clearer the morally unforgiveable treatment she receives from both brothers (she’d have done better disappearing from Milan after Simone’s attack and never coming back, not playing along with Rocco’s offensive belief that Simone’s assault was a sort of twisted act of love).

Saying that, this is a film of its time – perhaps too much so, as it sometimes feels dated, so bubbling over is it with a semi-Marxist view of history as a destructive force. But it’s shot with huge vigour – the boxing scenes are marvellous and their influence can be felt in Raging Bull – and it ends on a note of optimism. The film may have disregarded Ciro, but there he is at the end – happy in his choices, settled, making a success of his life. Rocco and Visconti may see the drama as being exclusively with the old-fashioned brothers, making their counterpoint a paper tiger, but it ends with him – and (I hope) a reflection that Ciro’s path may be duller and safer, but also nobler and right.

Tender Mercies (1983)

Quiet, contemplative and almost wilfully undramatic, Duvall wins an Oscar in this gently moving soul-searching film

Director: Bruce Beresford

Cast: Robert Duvall (Mac Sledge), Tess Harper (Rosa Lee), Betty Buckley (Dixie), Wilford Brimley (Harry), Ellen Barkin (Sue Anne), Allan Hubbard (Sonny), Lenny Von Dohlen (Robert), Paul Gleason (Reporter)

The music industry can be cruel. It’s bought out the self-destructive traits in Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall), a Country and Western singer whose career collapsed into alcoholism. Estranged from his wife Dixie (Betty Buckley) and a stranger to his daughter Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin), Mac finds himself crashing, penniless, in a rundown motel in Texas. Paying for his bed and board with labour, Mac falls in love with and marries the motel owner, widow Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) and becomes stepfather to her young son Sonny (Allan Hubbard). Mac quits the bottle and turns his life around, living quietly and determined to become a new man.

Tender Mercies is a slice-of-life film. It aims to present an ordinary man, facing challenges and struggling with demons. But in many ways, it’s quite remarkable. There can be few dramas that so consciously avoid drama. In Tender Mercies the expected fireworks and dramatic tentpole moments never happen. Events that in other films would have been “for your consideration” scenes or so underplayed they almost pass you by, or don’t even feature in the film. Mac and Rosa Lee’s courtship is made up of small, quiet conversations on the sofa. The proposal is a polite, softy spoken request. The wedding isn’t even shown.

This is a film that lets events play out with the random disconnectedness of real life. Characters from Mac’s past life drift in and drift out of the story with the unpredictability of reality rather than the construct of scriptwriters. Horton Foote’s Oscar-winning script is written in soft, quiet moments of silence, tenderness and quiet decency. It’s a film that wants to embrace classic, Southern values. Where religion, modesty and keeping your word are pivotal. Kindness, reserve and a lack of exhibition are traits widely praised. It’s a celebration of letting the ‘tender mercies’ of faith into your life and letting them define how you respond to the world and events around you.

It can feel like very little happens. But this is largely the point. That’s what life is like. Mac decides to change his life and knuckles down and does it. Rosa Lee trusts him to keep his word. Temptations and moments of anger are rare, and events are usually met with a suppressed acceptance. You could argue that Mac is emotionally repressed – that perhaps he associates emotional expression with the wildness that clearly plagued his early life of drink and violence – but also perhaps it is intrinsic in his stoic character. In the broader scheme of life – and in this faith-tinged world – accepting the rough with the smooth is a duty.

Robert Duvall won an Oscar for this, and he is at the heart of the film’s quietness, gentleness and lack of demonstrance. Duvall is so quietly restrained he masters the technique of doing a lot while seeming to do very little. He is softly spoken and carries much of his emotion behind his eyes. Mac does little that is conventionally dramatic, but constantly Duvall lets his face, body and the careful soulfulness of those majestic eyes convey great regret, guilt and tragedy. Duvall’s Mac is gentle, but with the careful determination of a man determined to keep his second chance alive. There is a weary sadness at him, a longing for emotional connection that he struggles to express. And few actors would be willing to embrace a part so low on emotional fireworks. Even when tragedy strikes, Duvall remains quietly restrained.

He’s the perfect lead for this Chekovian conversation piece, well filmed by Bruce Beresford. Beresford brings a marvellous visual sense for the wide-open spaces of Texas and a perfect empathy for the observational, careful balance of the film’s narrative. It’s a film made up of events taking place in long and medium shot, filmed with natural lighting. Beresford encourages all the actors to gently underplay and lets his camera observe without flash and flair, letting the deceptively simple set-ups focus on the emotions.

It’s a film about a quiet quest for happiness – but also a wary suspicion of the pain and guilt life can bring. The fear that happiness can lead to loss and pain. Its why Mac has placed such a premium on stoicism. It’s an attempt by a fragile man to emotionally protect himself. He silently longs for a bond with his daughter, played with a wonderful little-girl-lost quality by Ellen Barkin, and struggles with the responsibility for the unhappiness he has caused his ex-wife Dixie (a more overtly fragile Betty Buckley). Happiness might not be what you expect – jubilant music and an explosion of joy – but quietly finding a contentment.

And contentment is embodied here by Rosa Lee, played with dignity and rectitude by Tess Harper. Rosa Lee is gentle, understanding and in many ways defined by her faith of forgiveness and second chances. She represents the rebirth that starts the film – which opens with a drunk Mac crashing to the floor – and is the lodestone around which the plot rotates, the fixed-point Mac needs in his life. Duvall and Harper have a fabulous chemistry and fully commit to the honesty at the film’s heart.

Tender Mercies is a honest short story expanded into a thoughtful and (in its way) brave film. It veers towards silence where other films would hit noise. It presents inaction and acceptance where other films would pick melodrama. It centres a still, calm continuation of events over fireworks. Duvall is central to this, an affecting performance of immense complexity under a stoic exterior, all framed around Beresford’s reflective shooting style.

It’s lazy to say this is “old fashioned” – no 40s film would be as uneventful and restrained as this – instead this feels like a final flourish of 70s filmmaking, a late burst of Malick-style American romanticism and poetry. Perhaps that’s why it was surprisingly nominated for multiple Oscars. And why it carries a quietly hypnotic power.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)

Affectionate and faithful Holmes pastiche that shines an interesting light on the Great Detective’s character

Director: Herbert Ross

Cast: Nicol Williamson (Sherlock Holmes), Robert Duvall (Dr John Watson), Alan Arkin (Dr Sigmund Freud), Laurence Olivier (Professor Moriarty), Vanessa Redgrave (Lola Devereaux), Joel Grey (Lowenstein), Jeremy Kemp (Baron Karl von Leinsdorf), Charles Gray (Mycroft Holmes), Samantha Egger (Mary Watson), Jill Townsend (Mrs Holmes), John Bird (Berger), Anna Quayle (Freda)

The magic of Sherlock Holmes is he is immortal. Doyle’s detective has been reshaped so many times since the publication of the canonical stories, that we’re now used to seeing him presented in myriad ways. It was more unsettling to critics – particularly British ones – in 1976, who didn’t know what to make of an original, inventive Holmes story that treats the characters seriously but is playful with the canon. Was this a parody or a new story? (Why can’t it be both!) Today though, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution stands out as a Holmesian treat, a faithful slice of gap-filling fan fiction.

Based on a best-selling novel by Nicholas Meyer (who also adapted it), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution expertly reworks Doyle’s The Final Problem. Professor Moriarty (Laurence Olivier) is not the Napoleon of Crime, but a mousey maths tutor, the subject of Holmes’ (Nicol Williamson) cocaine-addled idée fixe. Worried about his friends dissent into addiction, Dr Watson (Robert Duvall) tricks Holmes into journeying to Vienna to receive treatment from an up-and-coming specialist in nervous disease and addiction, Dr Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). The treatment is a slow success – and the three men are drawn into investigating the mysterious threat to drug addicted glamourous stage performer Lola Devereaux (Vanessa Redgrave) that may or may not be linked to her fierce lover, the arrogant Baron Karl von Leinsdorf (Jeremy Kemp).

As all we Holmes buffs know, seven per-cent refers to Holmes’ preferred mix of cocaine, taken to stimulate his brain between cases and see off boredom. But what if that persistent cocaine use wasn’t a harmless foible – as Holmes tells the disapproving Watson – but something much worse? Kicking off what would become a decades long obsession with Holmes the addict – Brett and Cumberbatch would have their moments playing the detective high as a kite and a host of pastiches would explore the same ground – Meyer created a version of Holmes who was definitely the same man but losing control of himself to the power of the drug.

This short-circuited some critics who didn’t remember such things from school-boy readings of Doyle and hazier memories of Rathbone (those films, by the way, were basically pastiches in the style of Seven-Per-Cent Solution as well). But it’s a stroke of genius from Meyer, shifting and representing a familiar character in an intriguing way that expands our understanding and sympathy for him. Holmes may obsessively play with his hands and have a greater wild-eyed energy to him. He may sit like a coiled spring of tension and lose his footing. But he can still dissect Freud’s entire life-story from a few visual cues in a smooth and fluid monologue and his passion for logic, justice – as well as his bond with the faithful Watson (here bought closer to Doyle’s concept of a decent, if uninspired, man) – remain undimmed.

It helps that the film features a fantastic performance from Nicol Williamson. Few actors were as prickly and difficult – so could there have been a better choice to play the challenging genius? Williamson’s Holmes is fierce in all things. Introduced as a wild-eyed junkie, raving in his rooms and haring after leads, his behaviour oscillates between drug-fuelled exuberance to petulant paranoia. But there are plenty of beats of sadness and shame: Holmes is always smart enough to know when he no longer masters himself. When the mystery plot begins (almost an hour into the film), Williamson’s does a masterful job of slowly reassembling many of the elements of the investigative Holmes we are familiar with – the focus, the energy, the self-rebuke at mistakes and the excitement and wit of a man who loves to show he’s smarter than anyone else.

The film is strongest as a character study, in particular of Holmes. Its most engaging sections take Holmes from a perfectly reconstructed Victorian London (including a loving, details-packed recreation of 221B from production designer Ken Adam) to waking from a cold turkey slumber full of apologies for his cruel words to Watson. Seeing Watson’s quiet distress at Holmes state, and the great efforts he takes to help him, are a moving tribute to the friendship at the book’s heart. The clever way Meyer scripts Holmes’ ‘investigation’ into Moriarty (an amusing cameo from Laurence Oliver, his mouth like a drooping basset hound) sees him apply all his methods (disguise, methodical reasoning, unrelenting work) in a way completely consistent with Doyle but clearly utterly unhinged.

That first half serves as a superb deconstruction of the arrogance of literature’s most famous detective, who won’t admit the slightest flaw in himself. It’s still painful to see a frantic Holmes, desperate for a hit, causing a disturbance in Freud’s home and denounce Watson as “an insufferable cripple” (a remark met with a swift KO and later forgiven). Holmes’ cold turkey sequence is a fascinating sequence of nightmareish hallucinations, as he is plagued by visions of cases past (The Engineer’s Thumb, Speckled Band and Hound of the Baskervilles among them) and the eventual awakening of Holmes as a contrite, humbled figure very affecting.

Bouncing off Williamson we have the traditional “Watson” role split between that character and Freud. Robert Duvall is a very unconventional choice as Watson – and his almost unbelievably plummy accent takes some getting used to – but he gives the character authority without (generously) giving him inspiration. Limping from a war wound (another touch of the novels often missed until now), he’s dependable, loyal and goes to huge lengths to protect his friends.

But most of the traditional role is actually given to Freud, played with quiet charm and authority by Alan Arkin. Intriguingly the film places Freud as a combination of both men’s characters. He has the analytical mind of Holmes, investigating the subconscious. But he also chases after errands for Holmes, “sees but does not observe” during the case in the manner of Watson and eventually becomes an active partner in confronting the villains.

The actual mystery (taking up less than 40 minutes of the film’s runtime) can’t quite maintain the momentum, being a rather trivial affair (greatly simplified from the book) revolving around a cameo from Vanessa Redgrave as a fellow drug addict Holmes feels a touching sympathy for. Jeremy Kemp makes a fine swaggering bully, but his greatest moment is actually his pre-mystery anti-Semitic confrontation with Freud at a sports club, culminating in a Flemingesque game of real tennis between the two. If the film has any moment that tips into outright comedy, it’s a closing train chase that involves Holmes, Watson and Freud dismantling the train carriage to burn the wood as fuel.

But the real heart of the film is Holmes. Throughout the film we are treated to brief visions of the boyhood Holmes slowly climbing a staircase. What he saw at the top of that staircase is buried deep in his subconscious, with the final act of the film revealing all under hypnosis. It’s an intriguing motivator for all Holmes has become, just as it is surprisingly shocking. As Watson comments, the bravest act is sometimes confronting ourselves: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution treats the detective with huge respect, while pushing him into psychological waters Doyle would never have dreamed of. It’s why the film (and Meyer’s book) is a fascinating must-see for Holmes fans: it takes the material deeper, but never once forgets its loyalty to the source material.

Judy (2019)

A star turn is the only thing of note in this empty, uninsightful biopic

Director: Rupert Goold

Cast: Renée Zellweger (Judy Garland), Jessie Buckley (Rosalyn Wilder), Finn Wittrock (Mickey Deans), Rufus Sewell (Sid Luft), Michael Gambon (Bernard Delfont), Richard Cordery (Louis B Mayer), Darci Shaw (Young Judy Garland), Bella Ramsey (Lorna Luft), Royce Pierreson (Burt Rhodes), Andy Nyman (Dan), Daniel Cerqueira (Stan), Gemma-Leah Devereux (Liza Minnelli)

By 1969 Judy Garland (Renée Zellweger) was homeless, broke and stuck in a pill-and-alcohol fuelled depression. Desperate to provide a home for her children, she flew to London for a five-week booking at the Talk of the Town nightclub. Judy sees her, pushed beyond her physical and emotional limits, as she struggles to complete the run – or even get on stage – marrying the feckless young Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock) and flashbacks to her memories as a Hollywood child star (Darci Shaw), under the punishing “mentorship” of studio head Louis B Mayer (Richard Cordery).

All this gets mixed together in Goold’s uninspired, sentimental and rather empty biopic that never really gets to grips with Garland’s personality, so desperate is it to shoe-horn her into a bog-standard narrative of redemption mixed with personal tragedy. Garland, I’m sure, would have hated it: she always pushed back against the idea that her life had been tragic (which this film whole-heartedly embraces) and the portrayal of her as a constantly misunderstood victim, generously one-sided as it is, boils her down into someone with no agency or control at all in her life.

As such, the most effective parts of this film are the flashbacks to her childhood, filming Wizard of Oz, living off diet pills so she can’t put on weight and working 18-hour days. All under the direction of a monstrously calm Louis B Mayer – a terrific performance of amiable, grandfatherly menace from Richard Cordery – who pleasantly tells her she is a dumpy child who must work like a dog to get ahead and owes everything to him. If the film gets anywhere to understanding Garland’s psychology, it’s in these scenes – I’d rather they’d made it about this than her swan song in England.

In the 1969 sections, the film continues to try and communicate that a life of constant work and pressure left Garland an emotional, physical (and possibly mental) wreck. It puts us on her side, stressing her vulnerability and desperation which she covers with brittle, demanding behaviour. But it’s too squeamish to show too much of her popping pills and downing more than the odd glass of vodka – despite the fact she’s clearly intoxicated for large parts of the film. It only briefly looks at how crippling anxiety affected her unwillingness to rehearse and implies her time in London was a lengthy period of unending servitude rather than a five-week booking singing her greatest hits (the film is hugely vague about timelines to increase the feeling of Garland’s powerlessness).

The film isn’t even smart enough to give us moments where other characters get a glimpse of the fragility under Garland’s prima donnai-sh petulance. Despite her treating both of them as a mix of underlings and informers, Jessie Buckley’s minder and Royce Pierreson’s pianist inexplicably become friends to the star part-way through the film. There is no scene to transition this, no moment of fragile tenderness they witness that makes them understand there is more to this demanding person than they initially thought. Instead, it feels like the narrative requires them to like her just as the audience is supposed to, so whoosh they like her.

The one affecting sequence sees a lonely Garland bumping into two gay fans (Andy Nyman and Daniel Cerqueira) and rather sweetly asking if they would have dinner with her (they are of course thrilled). Back at their apartment, they cook a disgusting looking omelette, play the piano and she listens as they are tearfully talk about their life of persecution in homophobic Britain. It’s gentle, sweet and the only time we (or she) get a real sense of what Garland means to people – these fans idolise her as a symbol of hope. Even this scene is undermined by (a) it not having any lasting impact on Garland as soon as it finishes and (b) these characters being shoe-horned into a blatantly emotionally manipulative ending almost unwatchable in its cloying feel-good-ish-ness.

The one thing the film has going for it is a committed, pitch-perfect performance by Renée Zellweger who captures the vocal and physical mannerisms perfectly. She won every award going including the Oscar. It’s an impressive study and she plays the moments of pain as committedly and rawly as the gentle, tender moments. She does everything the film asks of her, and it’s not her fault that it asks so little of her. There is no dive into Garland’s personality, no questioning that any of her ills were self-inflicted, no criticism for her not turning up for gigs where customers have paid a fortune to see her, no attempt to explore other perspectives on the impact of her actions or how she has become the woman she is.

Instead, Judy meanders towards its semi-feelgood ending without ever really letting us feel we’ve understood much about either this woman or her difficult life, other than framing her as a victim from a life of exhausting show-biz exploitation. Told within a story that is low on drama, pathos or humour, you end up wondering what point it was trying to make in the first place.

Corsage (2022)

The perils of a life married into royalty are as tricky for some 150 years ago as they are today

Director: Marie Kreutzer

Cast: Vicky Krieps (Empress Elizabeth), Florian Teichtmeister (Emperor Franz Joseph I), Katharine Lorenz (Countess Marie Festetics), Jeanne Werner (Ida Ferenczy), Manuel Rubey (King Ludwig II), Finnegan Oldfield (Louis de Prince), Aaron Friesz (Prince Rudolf), Rosa Hajjaj (Valerie), Lily Marie Tschörtner (Queen Maria Sophie), Colin Morgan (George “Bay” Middleton)

Known to the world as Sisi, there are few more troubled figures in the history of European royalty than Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Locked into a largely loveless marriage with Emperor Franz Joseph, she struggled with the expectations of her position. She suffered from an eating disorder in an obsession to reduce her waist size, exercising vigorously every day. She was an international icon, formed strong bonds with the Hungarian people, helping integrate them into the Austro-Hungarian empire and her later life was touched with tragedy (including her son killing himself in a murder-suicide pact with his lover) before her assassination.

Only touches of this dynamic story make it into this curious film, that focuses on one facet of her personality at the cost of exploring others. Focusing on the years 1877-78, Elizabeth (Vicky Krieps) is strapped into ever tighter corsets, struggles with “representing” Austria, attempts several love affairs that end in rejection, smothers her youngest child Valerie (Rosa Hajjaj) with affection and is prescribed a new “wonder drug” (heroin) to ease her nerves. While her family despair, she starts to groom her lady-in-waiting Marie (Katherine Lorenz) to stand-in for her at public events.

From a British perspective, pretty clear parallels are drawn between Elizabeth and that icon of 20^th century monarchy Princess Diana. Like Diana, Elizabeth’s personal struggles are misunderstood and unsupported by her royal network. An intelligent, passionate woman, Elizabeth stifles under conditions that require her to do and say as little as possible. Her dull, formal husband (Florean Teichtmeister, refreshingly decent and befuddled as the Emperor) merely needs her to wave at events, nothing more. She finds this increasingly oppressive and constrictive.

Kreutzer’s film is a stylish presentation of Elizabeth as a sort of Royal rebel. Drenched in lavender – even the cigarettes she chainsmokes are lavender – Elizabeth takes every opportunity she can to leave the palace, avoids “smile and wave” events and behaves with unpredictability at social events (she’s as likely to laugh and flirt as storm out giving the room the finger). Her fainting could be due to her incredibly tight corsets – or it could just be a way of causing mischief. The system around her simply doesn’t know how to react to someone who doesn’t know herself what she really wants.

Corsage is most engaged with this analysis of undiagnosed depression, at a time when the condition was largely utterly unknown. We can see Elizabeth is mired in misery, but to others she’s merely a self-indulgent, difficult, un-co-operative woman. Shot with a candle-lit intimacy and drained out colours, the film presents the world much as Elizabeth (it suggests) may have seen it. Dark, oppressive and domineering.

Kreutser bravely avoids making her completely sympathetic. The film doesn’t shirk in showing how selfish and self-obsessed she can be. She can’t tell her maids apart (even Franz Joseph is more clued up on their names), bans loyal lady-in-waiting Marie from marrying as she needs her too much and drags her daughter through endless reluctant excursions (including a pre-sunrise horse ride) because she’s more interested in moulding her than listening to her.

Vicky Krieps embodies this prickly personality with huge skill. There are flashes of the sort of person Elizabeth could be. She frolics playfully for an early film camera in the countryside and comes flirtingly to life with two potential lovers, an English riding instructor “Bay” (played with bashful charm by Colin Morgan) and the man closest to being a kindred spirit King Ludwig II of Bavaria (an ebullient Manuel Rubey). Sadly, Bay is far too cautious to become the Empress’ lover (even when she turns up at his room dressed in little more than her corsage) and Ludwig far too gay (much as he values her friendship).

Krieps performance is full of empathy for her pain. She skilfully communicates her mixed feelings towards her genuinely decent-but-dull husband (Franz Joseph, the sort of man who peels off his fake sideburns and stores them carefully in a box). But also makes her demanding, sullen and frequently rude and overbearing. She lashes out at and banishes from her presence those who ‘betray’ her.

Elizabeth’s status is compared with those in the mental health hospitals she took such an interest in. There women are bound to their beds or dunked in freezing baths to cure them of their lustful desires) and the war wounded. It’s a reminder that things could be a lot worse. But it’s also a reminder of the film’s singular focus, away from the other facets of this woman’s personality. There is no real reference to her efforts to support the Hungarian people, her most successful attempt to break out of the confines of her role. It’s part of the film’s sometimes myopic view of its subject.

Kreutzer’s film is full of style. But it’s sometimes hard to see to what purpose. Much of the music the characters listen to is anachronistic modern pop (performed by period instruments). Locations have been deliberately chosen for their ramshackle, faded appearance, no attempt made to return them to the grandeur they would had at the time. Elizabeth takes dips in a very modern pool and the film closes on a cruise liner that wouldn’t look out of place today. Semi-surreal moments pop-up, such as Elizabeth towering in a small-scale room that may-or-may-not be either a giant doll’s house or a visual representation of her state of mind. But they never quite coalesce into a whole or carry a clear purpose, beyond design flourish.

I think part of this is because the film delves into Elizabeth’s depression but offers little in way of acute analysis as to why she felt like this. With most of the interesting events of her life kept out of the film, we effectively drop into a few years of depression without a wider context of her interests or passions. Elizabeth becomes someone the film defines largely by her position, much as her depressing life did, leaving her remaining a somewhat puzzling enigma.

It culminates in a genuinely confusing, alternate history scenario that I was mystified what the film intended to me to feel about. Does it end on a note of tragedy or triumph? I’ve no idea – and the coda with Krieps dancing confuses me further. It’s a befuddling ending for a stylish film (with a great central performance) but which is often one-note. Eventually you feel you effectively learned everything it had to say after the first few minutes, and its happiness to settle for repetition and style over a more searching study eventually makes it disappointing.

Croupier (1999)

Slow-burn delight in this low-key but compelling British crime and gambling drama

Director: Mike Hodges

Cast: Clive Owen (Jack Manfred), Alex Kingston (Jani de Villiers), Gina McKee (Marion Neil), Kate Hardie (Bella), Nicholas Ball (Jack Manfred Snr), Nick Reding (Giles Cremorne), Paul Reynolds (Matt)

The last thing would-be writer Jack (Clive Owen) wants is to be sucked back into the grimy underbelly of the casinos where his father (Nicholas Ball) made his living. Jack fears his addiction to the places. But his buzz is not the gambling or the chance of raking in cash himself. Nah, his particular hit is the cold voyeuristic delight of watching others lose. The greedy, the arrogant, the clueless, the desperate: he gets the same buzz from sweeping their chips away from the table in front of them. Jack knows you play, you only guarantee you will lose: but will glamourous South African Jani (Alex Kingston) persuade him to join her in another game against the casino?

Mike Hodges’ fascinating crime drama struck out of the blue to restore Hodges from yesterday’s man – the forgotten master of Get Carter – as a vibrant voice in British cinema. Typically, of course, this was only after the film had been all but ignored in Britain but became a hit in America. An Oscar campaign was planned but cancelled when it emerged a single screening on Dutch TV before its release in LA made it ineligible. Nevertheless, the film’s cold, arch mix of distance, cool and menace was a keen reminder of what a great director of mood and intention Hodges could be.

Hodges also has the perfect actor in its lead role. Clive Owen’s precision, quiet exactitude and mastery of the micro-expression is perfect for a man as distant, observant and (at times) uncaring as Jack. Only someone as effortlessly cool and striking as Owen could have made us like Jack as much as we do, a particular challenge as he is a cocky shit with an almost sociopathic coldness, viewing the creep of the voyeur who loves control. Owen captures all this perfectly, his voice rarely rising, his life lived to a sort of bizarre samurai code where he the only person he needs to impress with his superiority is himself.

Hodges film is one of mood and sensation rather than plot. Events unfurl with an increasingly dream-like logic, dictated by Jack’s noir-like voiceover as he slowly turns his life and experiences in the casino more-and-more into fiction. Sections of the film are divided into chapters in voiceover and Jack’s arch commentary exposes his views of those around him (communicated only by the most micro expressions on Owen’s face). Jack dreams of publishing a novel that will worm its way inside people: it’s the yearning not of the artist but the control freak, as excited by the sensation of knowing his words can guide people’s reactions and feelings just as a flick of his wrist at the card table or the roulette wheel can enrich them or drive them to destitution.

Jack’s control makes him a perverse stickler for rules. Jack’s professional croupier life – slicing money with a thunk down a pipe to the cashier or sweeping lost chips into a count-up oblivion (Hodges’ eye for the brutality and violence in the mechanisms of gambling is matched by his brilliance in demonstrating the businesses cold-eyed indifference to short-tern winning and losing) – is one of masterly control. His personal something else. The drama comes from wondering how far he will stick to that when offered the temptation, not of wealth but of proving he’s smarter than anyone else. There he allows himself the risks that he would never take when working.

Three women rotate around Jack. Gina McKee has the most thankless role of the three, a cop turned store detective who seems to be propping up the initially bohemian (a blonde, porkpie hatted Owen) Jack but offers the sort of dull, parental support lacking in his life. Two other women appeal to different parts of him. Kate Hardie’s Bella – a fellow croupier as chillingly professional as the DJ-suited Jack – is a sort of half-mirror image, bubbling with temptation (and very appealing to an egotist like Jack, who would like nothing better than to sleep with himself). Most striking of all is Alex Kingston’s erotic punter Jani, a mysterious South African who attempts to both seduce and bring out the protective side in Jack. Jack may never gamble his money, but risk in her personal life seems a harder dodge. He sleeps with women, gets in fights – which he engages in with a terrifying capacity for violence – and casually seems to invite dangers to drop into his path.

Spontaneously taking Jani to a weekend at the country-house of a would-be publisher, Jack mixes his buzz of voyeuristic control with the temptation of doing something wild and dangerous. He agrees to join a late-night card-game as dealer only – and promptly uses his card shark skills to deal out a series of progressively brilliant hands to the players in the final game. He then goes to bed with Jani, doesn’t touch her but quietly listens to her offer of ten grand in return for his aid in stealing from the casino. This is not the behaviour of a normal man.

If the film has a flaw, it’s the almost indifference with which Hodges wraps up most of these plots. There is a shock death, but the impact of it is almost deliberately passing and the heist of the casino is as laughable in its amateurishness as it is sudden in its resolution. Is it because we have moved from the real world to Jack’s noirish I, Croupier novel without realising it? You could imagine, as the film grows more dreamlike, that at some point we shifted from Jack’s reality to the constructed one he has formed for his novel. What better thrill for a control freak than to become ‘God’ of the narrative. After all Jack dreamed of his novel climbing inside people’s brain and infesting their thoughts.

Jack ends the film the smartest, most well-adjusted addict you could ever imagine, The short-term job at the casino is something he cannot let-go and Hodges’ shooting of this den of addiction, this theatre of destitution turns it into a mirror-lined sess-pit of human frailty, reflecting vice back into itself, presided over by a man who delights in weakness. More money is swept, triumphantly, from the table by Jack and its clear being there for him is the real triumph. Atmosphere, style and vicarious thrills. It’s these chilling things Croupier finds so thrilling, enticing and fascinating.

Elvis (2022)

A brash, confident exterior hides a more sensitive and tender film – rather like its subject

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Cast: Austin Butler (Elvis Presley), Tom Hanks (Colonel Tom Parker), Olivia DeJonge (Priscilla Presley), Helen Thomson (Gladys Presley), Richard Roxburgh (Vernon Presley), Kelvin Harrison Jnr (BB King), David Wenham (Hank Snow), Kodi Smith-McPhee (Jimmie Rodgers Snow), Luke Bracey (Jerry Schilling), Dacre Montgomery (Steve Binder)

You know someone has reached an untouchable level of fame, when their first name alone is enough for everyone to know who you’re talking about. Few people are as instantly recognisable as Elvis. He had such impact, that the world is still awash with impersonators decades after he died. He’s an icon like few others – perhaps only Marilyn Monroe can get near him – and if Baz Luhrmann’s ambitious, dynamic biopic only at times feels like it has really got under his skin, it does become an essential, tragedy-tinged tribute to a musical giant.

Its slight distance from its subject is connected to Luhrmann’s choice of framing device. This is the life of legend, as told by the man behind the curtain who pulled the strings. The film opens in the final moments in the life of Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Whisked to hospital after a terminal stroke, Parker sits (hospital gown and all) in a Las Vegas casino (standing in as his own personal purgatory), bemoaning that everyone blames him for Elvis’ death and he never gets the credit for giving the world the genius in the first place.

Like a mix of Salieri and Mephistopheles, Parker is a poisonous toad, a cunning “snowman” who spins spectacles at travelling fairs with Elvis as his ultimate circus “geek”, a peep show for the whole nation. Played by Tom Hanks under layers of prosthetics, with a whining, inveigling voice and a mass of self-pitying justifications, he is an unreliable narrator who we should be careful to listen to (a neat way of justifying any historical amendments). It also helps prepare us for one of the film’s main themes: Elvis is a man so trapped by what others want, he doesn’t even get to tell his own life story.

You can’t argue Luhrmann isn’t a polarising film maker. Elvis starts, as so many of his films do, with an explosion of frentic, high-paced style. The camera sweeps and zooms, fast cuts taking us through the final fever dream of the dying Parker, 60s-style split screens throwing multiple Elvis’ up on the screen. It’s a loud, brash statement – much like that visual smack in the face that opens Moulin Rouge! You either love or loath Luhrmann’s colourfully brash style – love it and you are in for a treat.

Like Luhrmann’s other films, the attention-grabbing start is our doorway into a sadder, quieter, more reflective film. The early sweep of the camera, zooming in to Parker’s eyes and whirligigging around his giggling frame as he wheels himself through a casino, the transitions to comic-book style visuals, the location captions that loom over the scenes… it all builds to a sad, depressed and trapped Elvis sitting alone in his hotel room in America’s city of sin. Elvis is a film about an abusive relationship between two people, where the victim can’t imagine life without his Svengali. It’s Romeo and Juliet – but if Romeo was a poisonous succubus draining the lifeforce of Juliet.

Luhrmann is a master of quick establishment and has the confidence to make scenes that really should be ridiculous, work wonderfully well. The key musical influences on Elvis – the blues and Gospel – are introduced in a neat scene which shows the young Elvis moving from one to another on the same afternoon. His first performance captures the world-changing impact of the sex appeal of those swivelling hips by Luhrmann cutting to women, almost surprising themselves, by jumping out of their seats screaming and then looking around stunned at their reaction, before screaming again. It conveys whole themes in cheekily constructed vignettes like this.

It’s the same with stressing the obligations and influences that fill Elvis’ world. His dependence on the affection of a series of women – from his tough but demanding mother (strongly played by Helen Thomson) and then his loving but frustrated wife Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) – is equally well established, as is Parker’s skill in sidelining these figures. The film deftly explores Elvis’ musical influences and that his success partly stemmed from being a white man singing black music. It’s an attraction Parker instantly picks up, and if the film does skirt over some of the more complex feelings of the black community towards this white singer, it does make Elvis’ debt to them hugely clear.

Luhrmann’s film takes a cradle-to-grave approach but manages to be a lot more than just jukebox musical. While there are performances – impressively staged and recreated – the music is used more to inspire refrains and ideas in the score rather than shoe-horned in as numbers. It’s a skill you wish the script had a little more of at times. Elvis doesn’t always quite manage to tell you about the inner life of this icon. We begin to understand his dreams of leaving a mark, but little of his motivations. His feelings for his wife are boiled down to a simple lost romance and his opinions on everything from politics to family dynamics (both subjects the real Elvis was vocal about) remain unknowable.

But this is film that focuses on the tragedy of an icon. And it makes clear that Parker – whose bitter darkness becomes more and more clear from the beginning – was responsible for crushing the life from a man who he turned into a drugged showpony, in a glittering Las Vegas cage. Parker and Elvis’ first meeting is a beautifully shot seduction atop a Ferris wheel, and helps cement in the viewer’s minds the power this man will have over the King’s life and career.

Crucial, perhaps above all, to the success of the film is Austin Butler’s extraordinary, transformative performance. This is sublime capturing of Elvis’ physicality, but he matches it with a beautifully judged expression of the legend’s soul. His Elvis is always completely believable as the most famous man on the planet, but also a conflicted, slightly lost man under the surface, lacking the confidence to build his own destiny. Butler’s recreation of Elvis’ singing is extraordinary and his performance bubbles with an unshowy tragedy. He breathes life into this larger-than-life icon in a subtle and eventually deeply affecting way that will make you want to throw an arm around his shoulder.

Luhrmann’s film ends a world away from its bright beginning. We’ve seen Elvis triumph, but we’ve also seen him buffeted by events, never really becoming their master. Elvis becomes a highly emotional tribute to a man who gave us so much, but was prevented from giving more. When the real Elvis appears on screen, singing Unchained Melody with passion, it’s undeniably moving. Even more so because we get a sense that performances like this was what we wanted to be doing. Luhrmann – and Butler, whose work cannot be praised enough – may not always manage to make us know the King as completely as we could, but it certainly makes us care deeply and share his regret.