The Winslow Boy (1999)


Nigel Hawthrone will stop at nothing for justice for his son in faithful literary adaptation The Winslow Boy

Director: David Mamet

Cast: Nigel Hawthorne (Arthur Winslow), Rebeccca Pidgeon (Catherine Winslow), Jeremy Northam (Sir Robert Morton), Gemma Jones (Grace Winslow), Guy Edwards (Ronnie Winslow), Matthew Pidgeon (Dickie Winslow), Aden Gillet (John Waterstone), Colin Stinton (Desmond Curry)

David Mamet surprised those who associate him with macho, alpha-male led drama with this sensitive and faithful adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play. After his young son Ronnie is sent down from naval college for stealing a five shilling postal order, Arthur Winslow (Nigel Hawthorne, terrific) will stop at nothing to clear his name, supported by his suffragette daughter Catherine (Rebecca Pidgeon, excellent in a difficult role). They recruit Sir Robert Morton (an electric Jeremy Northam) to champion Ronnie’s case, as the scandal rocks the nation.

There can’t be many film adaptations of plays that so completely avoid “opening up” the play. The settings and dialogue of Rattigan’s original are kept largely as is. This means that – just as in the play – all the major dramatic events happen off-stage and are reported in dialogue. The campaign to clear Ronnie’s name? Apart from flyers and newspaper prints in Winslow’s home, you’re not seeing that. Morton’s advocacy of the case in the House of Commons? The smallest of scenes. The crowds outside the Winslow home? A faint echo on the soundtrack. The pivotal court case itself? Not a single shot. If ever a production made Rattigan feel more like Chekov, I’m yet to see it.

This theatricality is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll admit it may create a film a bit too contained and low key for some. But catch this in the right mood and Mamet’s carefully considered staging brings many of its smaller moments and personal interactions into shape. Would a film full of triumphal courtroom scenes have so perfectly captured anti-climax and confusion that can come after an event that has dominated your whole life comes to an end?

This approach also allows the relationships to come front and centre – in particular the growing attraction between Catherine and Morton, treated lightly and subtly but with huge warmth. Catherine here mirrors the main plot. Her suitors are, in turn: an upright military careerist (whom she loves, but we care little for), a gentle non-entity (whom we like but she is bored by) and the imperious Morton – on the surface someone she shares few opinions with but, subconsciously, recognises a deep kinship with. Like the public reaction to the campaign, the attitudes of these people to Catherine represent the wider reactions happening off-camera. The Morton-Catherine story is a beautiful romance in which not a single word of overt, direct affection passes between the two characters, but volumes are increasingly spoken in each glance.

Mamet’s approach also allows plenty of stagy touches to translate really well to film. The film is clearly divided into acts, and each one returns us to the Winslow home, each time in less pomp than before (by the final scene it’s stripped down to bare essentials). Arthur Winslow is less and less sturdy each time we see him, the character shrinking ever closer to old age and infirmity. Each member of the family increasingly pays heavier prices, as their financial security is sacrificed (though Mamet certainly understands the characters’ very British acceptance of these turns in fortune).

The other major benefit is that the acting comes to the fore. I’m not sure Jeremy Northam has been better than he is here: the one downside of not staging the courtroom scenes is that we will never get to see Northam play them! His Morton is a perfectly pitched imperious upper-class professional, whose exterior hides a compassionate and selfless concern for “right”. The film’s most electrifying moment is his hostile examination of Ronnie, a dynamic verbal assault that rips into the film’s quiet austereness, crackling with tension. Northam is so good, at one point I am sure he muffs a line – but he carries it off with such brilliance (the austere man awkwardly burying his feelings) that Mamet keeps it in (take a look around 2:10 here and make up your own mind!). It’s also a beautifully real moment – the man of words, briefly revealed by them. This scene is, by the way, a masterpiece of unspoken emotions and affection (from both actors).

 

The other main performers are equally strong. Nigel Hawthorne mixes his cuddly avuncular wit with hints of the monomaniacal obsessiveness that leads Winslow to drain his resources, and strength, in pursuit of justice. While the film doesn’t always acknowledge the sometimes self-destructive effects of Winslow’s passion – and only hints at how much Winslow sees the accusation against his son as a personal affront, as if questioning his son’s honesty is questioning his own – Hawthorne keeps the character morally rigid yet sympathetic and understandable.

Rebecca Pidgeon, the director’s wife, is practically an open target for suggestions she only got the part through nepotism. Such views are unjust. While her accent seems a little forced, her performance as the slightly distant, intellectual, prickly and driven Catherine is spot-on. The crusade begins as her father’s obsession, which she shares. Their characters then evolve so naturally that you only realise at the conclusion that she has become the lead character, and the main driver of the crusade, for quite some time.

I’ve seen The Winslow Boy three or four times now. The first time I saw it I was thrown (disappointed) by its staginess, its surface stateliness. However, since then I’ve grown to appreciate its careful, respectful lack of showiness more and more. It’s an intelligent, well-handled adaptation, crammed with wonderful performances. Yes it’s sometimes a little too “Masterpiece Theatre”, but when it can deliver such stirring, and moving, moments as it does – well you could never refuse it a place in your heart. Let Right Be Done.

The Girl on the Train (2016)


Emily Blunt on a commute into danger in the underwhelming Girl on the Train

Director: Tate Taylor

Cast: Emily Blunt (Rachel Watson), Rebecca Ferguson (Ann Watson), Haley Bennett (Megan Hipwell), Justin Theroux (Tom Watson), Luke Evans (Scott Hipwell), Allison Janney (DS Riley), Edgar Ramirez (Dr Kamal Abdic), Lisa Kudrow (Martha), Laura Prepon (Cathy)

Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) is a lonely, divorced alcoholic who takes the train into New York every day to spy on her husband (Justin Theroux) and his new wife (Rebecca Ferguson), whose house the train passes. However, she also becomes obsessed with the seemingly happy marriage of her ex’s neighbours (Luke Evans and Haley Bennett), who live an apparently Instagram-perfect life of coffee on the balcony and candlelit sex in their perfect living room (with the curtains conveniently left open – everyone leaves their curtains open in this film, no matter what they are doing). When the picture-perfect wife goes missing, she inveigles her way into their lives to try and help.

This is not a good film. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s a flat and lifeless one – a plot-boiler that simmers along without ever really getting exciting.  The story feels like it’s been pulled together from crumbs swept from the table of Gillian Flynn. It’s a hotchpotch mess, tangled, unclear and not that interesting. I can’t be the only person un-intrigued by the mystery of who shags who among the middle classes. Even a murder doesn’t spice it up. The small cast makes many mysteries obvious – when one character is found to be pregnant, but two of the three male characters we’ve been introduced to have been ruled out, you don’t need to be Poirot to work out who the father might be. Even the title is a call back to better thrillers, with its Girl with the Dragon Tattoo styled title.

The story drifts on and on, never really getting anyway or explaining anything properly. It doesn’t help that it’s mediocrely filmed. Look at the lean, compelling and sharp film David Fincher made of (the much better) Gone Girl. Then look at the murky, plodding, dull execution here. Particularly damningly it’s a shock to find out this is less than 2 hours, because it feels a hell of a lot longer.

The story has been switched from the book’s original London to somewhere outside Manhattan, which doesn’t help either. There is something quite small scale and domestic about the story that the sweeping vistas and huge houses of wealthy American suburbia don’t match up with. The very concept of the film – seeing into houses from commuter trains paused at signals – doesn’t even work removed from London’s architecture (the train in this film stops regularly on a huge expanse of track due to rail works that go on for ever and ever). Edgar Ramirez’s psychiatrist keeps the name Kamal Abdic (with its suggestion of middle Eastern roots) but now seems to be Mexican. Everyone in the film looks like a fashion model. Lots of other small moments just don’t make sense in the way they would have done in the original setting.

Emily Blunt is pretty good in the lead role, much better than the film deserves. Okay the drop-dead gorgeous Blunt doesn’t even remotely look like the overweight, sweaty alcoholic described in the book. But she nails her drunk acting, and carries the emotional heft of the film rather well, with an engaging vulnerability. She is, perhaps, even a little too engaging – the book’s original version of her character is apparently pretty unlikeable. The script trims away her needy obsessiveness, and creepy stalker tendencies. But Blunt is a little too likeable, and a little too sophisticated (despite prosthetic eyebags), to really convince as the pathetic Rachel. The switch to America doesn’t help here either – basically Brits make better losers than Americans tend to.

The rest of the cast are okay, but there is hardly a stand out among them. I have to admit I found Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson (with their identikit blond hair dyes) hard to tell apart at times (this may be due to staying up all night watching the 2017 British election the night before).

By the end, when the killer is revealed (with a graphically suggestive flashback) you’ll find it hard to really care. In fact the final reveal is so clumsily put together all the implications aren’t clear at all. It’s a load of fuss about nothing. Taylor is trying to turn a pulpy novel into an arty thriller – but he doesn’t have the cinematic know-how to do it. He’s far too bland and middlebrow. Maybe that makes him a suitable match – a derivative director for a derivative book – but it hardly helps make this a good film. If he’d gone for a more B-movie approach, playing up the dark satire you could find in the story, then we could have had something interesting here. But he didn’t and we don’t.

127 Hours (2010)

James Franco is literally stuck between a rock and a hard place in this mesmeric film from Danny Boyle
Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: James Franco (Aron Ralston), Kate Mara (Kristi Moore), Amber Tamblyn (Megan McBride), Clémence Poésy (Rana), Lizzy Caplan (Sonja Rolston), Kate Burton (Donna Ralston), Treat Williams (Larry Ralston)

Even people who’ve never heard of Aron Ralston, surely know this as “that film where James Franco cuts his arm off” (as my wife called it when I said I’d watched it). But, with the inspired direction of Danny Boyle and brilliant performance from James Franco, this is so much more than just a film about cutting an arm off.

Aron Ralston (James Franco) is an adventurous free-spirit, who loves nothing better than solitary journeys in isolated places. He’s asking for trouble – and ‘Ooops!’ (as he puts) one day he gets it, falling into a crevice where his arm is crushed in place by a boulder. Ralston is trapped for 127 hours, with limited food and water and only the contents of his rucksack to help. There is no chance of anyone finding him for weeks. Eventually the only option left for Ralston is the unthinkable: to disconnect his body from his trapped (and already dead) arm.

Possibly only Danny Boyle could make a film as dynamic, visually exciting and fun as this, about a man who spends the entire time stuck behind a rock. Ralston is such a vibrant personality that Boyle’s visual inventiveness works perfectly for the material. Boyle finds a host of brilliant angles and editing tricks to film, not only Ralston’s trapped positon, but also the host of day dreams and (increasingly) hallucinations Ralston experiences.

The film doesn’t rush us into Ralston’s trap either. The first 20 minutes show Ralston’s life as he lives it – independent, friendly, adventurous and essentially focused on himself. It also shows us how exciting and fun exploring can be – something we really need to know, so as not to think “Why are you even doing this, you idiot!” later.

When the event happens (and the film mines a lot of good-natured tension as we constantly wait for it to happen) it’s both sudden and low-key. Ralston’s first reaction (and yes it’s partly shock) is surprised irritation. Then the film swiftly tightens in on the small world this adventurer is now restricted to. The crevice, the boulder, a strip of sky, the contents of his rucksack – all of which (despite his best efforts) are inadequate for getting him free. Boyle’s immersive skill in staging Ralston’s claustrophobic position is so great that you feel the same unnerved surprise as Ralston does when he is finally free, after watching him fixed in place for over an hour.

The film gets a certain dark humour from the foreknowledge almost anyone watching has. Some of the very first shots, show Ralston’s hand reaching into a cupboard looking for his pen knife (the want of which he later heavily regrets), the knife close to the camera, just out of Ralston’s casual reach. Later, there is an extra agony watching him chip away uselessly at the rock (with a utility knife he establishes is not sharp enough to cut his thumb), knowing every blow is making this knife blunter and blunter –making what we know he will have to use it for later harder and harder to do.

Ralston finds himself in an impossible situation (from his own hubris and overconfidence), but not only keeps hold of his sense of hope and humanity but also makes profound discoveries about himself and his life. That’s the focus Boyle keeps his story on – and each of the flashbacks and hallucinations focus on Ralston reviewing his past mistakes he’s made and reflecting (without heavy handed dialogue) on how (if he escapes) he could change his life.

A lot of the film’s success is based on James Franco’s exceptional performance. It’s is as alive and throbbing as the movie, and he really understands the charismatic fire in Ralston, the egotism and cockiness matched with resourcefulness and determination. He’s every inch the guy cocky enough to go it alone in the wilderness, and skilled enough to explore every angle for escape. He’s not an idiot, but not a hero – he’s a guy who grows to understand mistakes he has made, while never wallowing in self-pity, who can make the kind of calls most of us would find unthinkable.

As for that scene? Well yes it’s tricky to watch (to say the least), but not because it’s graphic or unpleasant – but because Boyle makes carrying out such an act so logical, so necessary, that you look down at your own arm and wonder if you would have the guts to do the same. The premonition Ralston reported of seeing his own yet-to-be-conceived son, giving him the determination to do the deed, is staged by Boyle with a dreamy lyricism. This is picked up in AR Rahman’s score, which slowly build in intensity to consume the scene. As Ralston cuts each of the nerve endings in his arm, the music jars in a way that tells us more about pain than any level of screaming would do.

So yes the central event is hard to watch – but this is not exploitative or gross-out. Instead it’s a rich, rewarding and engaging film, dynamically filmed – for a film about a guy trapped in one place, it constantly feels like it is on the move. It’s a story about the human spirit, and how we can conquer impossible odds – especially when we feel, as Ralston did, that he wasn’t doing this just for himself but for his family. Far from an endurance trip, this is a heartfelt and moving story that left me feeling uplifted. I think it might be Boyle’s best film since Trainspotting.

Denial (2016)


Timothy Spall as Holocaust denier David Irving in this misfiring courtroom drama

Director: Mick Jackson

Cast: Rachel Weisz (Deborah Lipstadt), Tom Wilkinson (Richard Rampton), Timothy Spall (David Irving), Andrew Scott (Anthony Julius), Jack Lowden (James Libson), Caren Pistorius (Laura Tyler), Alex Jennings (Sir Charles Gray), Mark Gatiss (Professor Robert Jan van Pelt), Harriet Walter (Vera Reich), John Sessions (Professor Richard J. Evans)

In 2000, historian David Irving (here played by Timothy Spall) was exposed as a Holocaust denier who forged and distorted historical records to help his pro-Hitler agenda. This came after his unsuccessful attempt to sue American historian Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) for accusing him of Holocaust denial in her book Denying the Holocaust. The decision led to the destruction of Irving’s reputation, career and financial wealth. This film tells the story of this case. Lipstadt’s legal team are played by Andrew Scott (solicitor Anthony Julius), and Tom Wilkinson (barrister Richard Rampton). The publicity-hungry Irving famously acted as his own lawyer.

Denial has a fascinating story at its core, but bungles it by getting the focus wrong. Now I’ll admit I might know more about this trial than the regular guy-on-the-street. But the drama here was in the detail of the debunking of Irving’s denier bullshit. The film benches most of this, reducing Irving’s career of historical re-adjustments into a few simple sound bites. The fascination of this trial was the dissection of denier myths – but the film aims for more conventionally “drama”, by introducing a series of “could Irving win?” moments that never ring true. Not only does this detract from the drama – it also, arguably, makes it easier for Holocaust deniers out there to claim the film doesn’t give the appallingIrving a fair crack of the whip.

It’s a shame, as when the focus is on the facts of the case, it’s very good. Tom Wilkinson is excellent as the maverick Rampton, whose abrasiveness hides his humanitarianism. The drama skirts over the trial’s cut and thrust, but when it does tackle these moments it’s very interesting. The sequence where Rampton pins Irving to the floor over theories that the gas chambers were de-lousing stations for dead bodies (“then why are there bolts on the outside of the doors?”) or air raid shelters (“are we to imagine the SS running 2.5 miles from their barracks to a shelter in an air raid?”) are compelling, and far more interesting than anything else in the film. Even the Cliff’s Notes version of Irving and his views in this film is enough to repulse any sane viewer, and watching him skewered on the witness stand is fascinating and satisfying. There just isn’t enough of it.

One of the film’s greatest problems is pushing Lipstadt front and centre. This seems logical on paper but, as her lawyer says, “this trial is happening to you, it’s not about you”. Lipstadt was deliberately not part of the trial strategy, to keep the focus on Irving. But the film can’t accepts her “story” was to do nothing. It keeps wanting to give her a ‘Hollywood moment’, but the facts can’t provide one – so we get lots of scenes of Lipstadt jogging, or feeding her dog, or watching news reports – time that could have been much better spent elsewhere.

Despite this, Weisz’s performance is very good –she bravely makes Lipstadt prickly and hard to like . Similarly, Andrew Scott is excellent as Julius, but his character is poorly explained (“He’s using you for the publicity” Lipstadt is told – we see no indication for this anywhere) and his decision to exclude Holocaust survivors from the witness list to prevent them being harangued by Irving is botchily explained, the film not wanting to admit that this was a wise decision.

I feel a lot of the film ended up on the cutting room floor. Short scenes pop up now and again around paralegal Laura making you feel she must have been a more important character at some point. I feel huge parts of courtroom reconstruction got trimmed. I suspect there was more around Harriet Walter’s Holocaust survivor. Even Irving feels heavily trimmed – Spall is very good (and subtly vile, but with a persuasive old school charm) as the faux-historian, but the film needs more of him, if only to explore his views more, rather than just treating him like a demon.

That sums the film up: it’s ham fisted. Too much dialogue thunkingly introduces historical events or legal procedures. The film talks about the importance of research, but relies on characters “cracking the case” with flashes of inspiration. It handles the research trip at Auschwitz sensitively (and daringly, shows Rampton taking an aggressive questioning stance of the guides to prepare for the case) – but then the film can’t help throwing in Lipstadt imagining victims clawing at the gas chamber door for escape. I hated the final shot, lingering on the disputed holes in the gas chamber roof used to drop in Xyklon-B, as if we needed this to be confident that, yes, the Holocaust did happen.

I really wanted to like Denial, but it’s no more than an adequate dramatisation of a fascinating court case. It’s brilliantly acted, in particular the four principles. There is an interesting film to be made here about the increasing struggle we have with the abuse of free speech to give equal importance to views that are offensive or just plain wrong. But Denial never really becomes that film – instead it turns its fascinating historical event into a run-of-the-mill Hollywood tale of a plucky heroine vanquishing the bad guy.

In Which We Serve (1942)


Noel Coward takes command in stirring British wartime drama In Which We Serve

Director: Noël Coward, David Lean

Cast: Noël Coward (Captain E.V. Kinross), Bernard Miles (CPO Walter Hardy), John Mills (Shorty Blake), Celia Johnson (Alix Kinross), Joyce Carey (Kath Hardy), Kay Walsh (Freda Lewis), Michael Wilding (Flags), Leslie Dwyer (Parkinson), James Donald (Doc), Philip Friend (Torps), Frederick Piper (Edgecombe), Richard Attenborough (Young Stoker)

Only the British would make a wartime propaganda film about a sunk ship where over half the crew gets killed (the Navy nicknamed the film In Which We Sink). It says something about this endearingly muddle-headed country that the stories that appeal most to us are those that celebrate our struggles against adversity. It was filmed in the aftermath of the Battle of Britain but before the Battle of El Alamein – the British considered themselves safe from invasion, but still saw victory was a long way off. In that climate, the film’s attitude of knuckling down and doing your duty to achieve a distant dream must have resounded profoundly with millions of people.

Based on the early war career of Louis Mountbatten, this “story of a ship” revolves around the Torin, a destroyer captained by E.V Kinross (Noël Coward). The ship is dive bombed and sunk by the Luftwaffe, and the captain and survivors cling to a lifeboat, waiting for rescue. While they wait, the crew remember their lives back home in flashback – in particular the captain, CPO Hardy (Bernard Miles), and able seaman ‘Shorty’ Blake (John Mills). Can you imagine an American propaganda film with a plot like that?

It’s easy to mock a film like In Which We Serve today. Its stiff-upper-lipped, duty-led, hierarchical world has been lampooned countless times since Peter Cook’s pitch-perfect Bernard Miles impersonation in Beyond the Fringe. (Early in the film, watching Kinross at home, I remembered Eddie Izzard’s spoof: “Don’t go to the war Daddy / I must they won’t start without me…”). The first 30 minutes, with its clipped dialogue, fast-paced delivery and stiff-backed, formal playing style takes a while to tune into. But it’s worth it, as the establishment of this carefully controlled exterior is what makes the later sections, with strong emotions just below the surface, so moving.

Coward was of course primarily a man of the theatre, and this was his only original film script. His collaboration with experienced film-makers produced a stirring, skilfully crafted epic that reflects on several levels of British rank and society, and not only shows us “why we fight” but also “why we should fight”. Coward is credited as the principal director, but much of the direction (and the film’s skilfully constructed structure in the editing suite) comes from his co-director David Lean, here making his directing debut.

Lean’s expressive hand is clear in the brilliantly composed sequences on board the ship itself, both in action and at ease. An example of the fluid editing, is where the camera follows the progression of a missile through the ship, passed from crew member to crew member, each given some brief moments to show their quiet determination and resolve. Similarly, the sequences on the drifting lifeboat have a claustrophobic intensity about them. The flashbacks are carefully placed to allow our understanding of the characters and their backgrounds to grow each time.

The scenes back home are remarkable for their dramatic simplicity. Coward understood the stories that move are those of normal people. The sailors’ home lives – from the captain down – are domestic, calm, happy and above all normal. Very little happens: one sailor gets married, the captain plays with his children, the Petty Officer teases his wife. This regularity makes their courage under fire all the more stirring: truly ordinary people doing the extraordinary. Some critics have called Coward’s attitude to the working classes snobbish, but there is no disdain at all here – instead there’s a paternal admiration with genuine warmth.

This warmth extends even to a stoker who cuts and runs during action. It would be easy to use this moment to amplify the braveness of the others. Instead, in a moving speech to the men, the captain takes the blame onto himself for not supporting the young man earlier. The mortified stoker, in a wonderful little scene, struggles to express his shame to a barmaid, not in anger but in a quiet, confused guilt. The film never condemns or judges him – he is quietly shown returning to his duties. There is no explicit moment of redemption, just a sense of a man who has let himself down, resolving quietly to do better.

The opening sequence covers the lifespan of the ship – from its construction and commissioning, to its launch, early actions and sinking, with the implication of a nation coming together. Later scenes mix theatrical touches with documentary realism. A marvellous sequence covers Dunkirk, which feels incredibly real but also showcases a few wonderful flourishes, from Kinross’ speech praising the soldiers’ bravery to Shorty’s affectionately wry remark on the rivalry between soldiers and sailors. The final sequence brings us full circle, with the construction and launch of another battleship under Kinross’ command. We may lose a battle, but we are never beaten.

Coward takes on the lead role. To be honest, it’s a striking piece of miscasting that somehow works out – Noël Coward is no-one’s idea of a hard-nosed naval veteran. He lacks the range in particular for his scenes of domestic life, coming across as too detached and distant – particularly noticeable since his wife is played brilliantly by the radiant Celia Johnson, conveying layers of emotion under a controlled exterior. But, his quiet, buttoned-up professionalism and clipped Englishness work perfectly for the quietly emotional speeches he delivers. These he nails perfectly, his voice just giving the hint of cracking. It’s a curiously stagy, and in no way naturalistic, performance – but as a representation of a particular type of Britishness it’s perfect.

And Kinross is just the sort of man you would follow to the end – distant and authoritarian, but just and warm. Rescued from the ocean, he goes immediately to his men, moving quietly from wounded man to wounded man, collecting addresses, issuing quiet words of unexpressive comfort (“I’ll tell her you did your duty”). His closing speech (heavily based on Mountbatten’s own address to his crew) throbs with emotion just below the surface as he thanks his men – and it’s hard not to feel it as he shakes the hand of each man and is overcome with emotion, he can only nod a brief acknowledgement to his officers. Lean trains the camera on his back, as we see his shoulders seem to swell to support the pride, respect and love for his men. It’s peculiarly British, but this unspoken affection is hugely powerful.

The more naturalistic performances from the rest of the cast help to anchor the film – and also allow Coward’s more stylised acting to work effectively. John Mills is wonderful as Gunner “Shorty” Blake, a plucky, kind and witty man. He’s just the sort of unexpressive hero we’d all like to be, and his homespun love story with Kay Walsh is genuinely engaging and moving for its everyday normality. Mills also carries much of the film’s humour.

It’s the final sections of the film that really, really work. I can’t get through the scenes of the surviving crew being saved, the quiet courage of the dying men and the austere warmth of the captain, the speeches that burst with pride and respect under a reserved veneer, without feeling a lump in the throat. It’s a masterful piece of quietly powerful film-making, that pays off precisely because so much of what has gone before has been so normal. The fact that we’ve seen the lives of these people – and can see what, in their quiet way, they are fighting for – I found increasingly moving.

In Which We Serve is a wonderful piece of film-making, very well written by Coward and strongly directed (largely) by Lean. Coward himself, in the lead role, is far better at the speeches than as either a captain or husband, but the rest of the cast is excellent with Mills and Johnson both outstanding. It’s truly the stuff of spoofery in many ways today, but tune yourself up to the accents and the repressed Britishness and this is a heartfelt and deeply moving film. Perhaps one of the finest propaganda films you’ll ever see – and still so very British.

Solomon Kane (2009)


James Purefoy excels in cult-classic in the making Solomon Kane

Director: Michael J Bassett

Cast: James Purefoy (Solomon Kane), Max von Sydow (Josiah Kane), Pete Postlethwaite (William Crowthorn), Alice Krige (Katherine Crowthorn), Rachel Hurd-Wood (Meredith Crowthorn), Jason Flemyng (Malachi), Mackenzie Crook (Father Michael)

Solomon Kane was a pulp-magazine character from the 1920s. I’d never heard of him before – I imagine many others haven’t either – so bringing a film about him to the screen was always going to be a labour of love. That’s certainly what this film is. 

In 1600, Solomon Kane (James Purefoy) is a ruthless mercenary, but is confronted by a demon who tells him his soul is forfeit to the Devil. Horrified, Kane flees to sanctuary in a monastery, forsaking violence and devoting himself to God. After being expelled because the abbot has a dream, he encounters a Puritan family, the Crowthorns, and travels with them. Kane is deeply drawn to the Crowthorns – and when they are ambushed, the family killed, and daughter Meredith (Rachael Hurd-Wood) kidnapped by the servants of the sorcerer Malachi (Jason Flemyng), Kane swears to revenge the Crowthorns and rescue Meredith.

There’s something quite sweet and charming about Solomon Kane. It’s an old fashioned B-movie with a winning style. Is it going to rock any worlds? Probably not, but it’s got plenty of swagger and it makes a small budget go a long way. Bassett’s influences are pretty clear – everything from Witchfinder General to Lord of the Rings – but he shoots the film with a commendable energy. The visual flair is impressive, and successfully creates the feel of an England halfway between civilisation and the middle ages. Bassett also knows how to shoot an action scene, and the film is stuffed with fantastic sword fights that hit the right balance between brutality and dynamism.

Bassett also finds a fair amount of emotional heft in the story. The decision to focus a large chunk of the opening 45 minutes on Kane’s guilt and his attempts to make amends, make him a character we end up caring about. The “good family that wins our hero’s heart” cliché is exactly that, but it works very well here as Bassett takes his time and lets Kane’s bond with the Crowthorn family grow organically. All this patient establishment of Kane’s personality really pays off during the action of the second half.

It’s also helped a great deal by James Purefoy’s committed performance in the lead role. Purefoy has long since been a favourite of mine, who never really got the breaks to become a bigger star. His performance has the physicality and charisma, but Purefoy also adds in a Shakespearean depth to create a man desperate for redemption, carrying a pained heart very close to the surface. He dominates the whole film, setting the tone; and I suspect his dedicated performance encouraged fine work from the actors around him, despite almost all the other roles being little more than cameos. There are blockbusters whose leading actors are incapable of holding the screen as well as Purefoy does here.

Bassett’s B-movie spectacle is not perfect. The eventual explanation of why the Devil wants Kane’s soul is inexcusably garbled. Jason Flemyng is miscast as the demonic sorcerer Malachi, and his final confrontation with Kane lacks real impact (largely because Malachi has so little presence throughout the film) and devolves into a face-off with a dull special effects monster that looks rather like Megatron in the live-action Transformers films. There is a smaller-scale, personal ending in this film, but it gets crushed under the foot of the special effects. It’s a shame that a large portion of this film’s budget probably went on this.

Solomon Kane is structured, and plays, like a B-movie – but it’s proud of that. Its low budget demanded inventiveness and dedication from the cast and crew, all of whom delivered. The grimy design of the world is perfect, the story creates a good combination of action and emotion. Its story may be pretty clichéd, but it’s presented with great gusto – and has a terrific leading performance from a heavily under-rated actor in James Purefoy. More people deserve to see this – if this isn’t a cult classic in the making, I’m not sure what is.

Woman in Gold (2015)


Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds stumble through bland Philomena rip-off Woman in Gold

Director: Simon Curtis

Cast: Helen Mirren (Maria Altmann), Ryan Reynolds (Randy Schoenberg), Daniel Brühl (Hubertus Czernin), Katie Holmes (Pam Schoenberg), Tatiana Maslany (Young Maria), Max Irons (Fritz Altmann), Charles Dance (Sherman), Elizabeth McGovern (Judge Cooper), Jonathan Pryce (Chief Justice Renhquist), Antje Traue (Adele Bloch-Bauer), Allan Corduner (Gustav), Henry Goodman (Ferdinand)

The Nazi regime across Europe was a criminal one in every sense of the word. Along with the hideous acts of murder and warmongering, Woman in Gold uses its story to remind us their leaders were also little better than common thieves.

Maria Altmann was a young Jewish woman from a wealthy family, living in Vienna in the 1930s. She escaped from Austria to the US in 1939 with her husband, but had to leave the rest of her family behind. Their fine possessions, including several paintings by Klimt, were stolen by the Nazis.

Decades later, Maria (Helen Mirren) recruits struggling lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help her reclaim the paintings, now owned by the Austrian government. The government are predictably dismissive of any claims on their heritage, and are particularly unwilling to give up Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (or Woman in Gold), a portrait of Altmann’s aunt, proudly displayed as a jewel of Austrian culture. So begins a case that will go, via the American supreme court, to the very heart of Austria’s uncomfortable relationship with its past. In parallel, Maria remembers her younger self (Tatiana Maslany) and her escape from Vienna.

I think it’s fair to say Maria is a role Helen Mirren could play standing on her head. It’s a cliché – the feisty, imperious elderly woman who cows all around her, but has a heart of (forgive me) gold. Ryan Reynolds Schoenberg is similarly predictably: a young, naïve, slightly bumbling do-gooder revealed to have hidden depths of strength, and ends up connecting with his own heritage in a “very personal” journey. In fact, every character in the “present day” plotline is a hopeless cliché. Katie Holmes has perhaps the worst role as Schoenberg’s wife – as The Wife always does in these things, she spends the first half of the film asking her husband to drop his time-consuming crusade, but come the second half she’s making the inevitable “you’ve come too far to give up now” speech.

Every bit of the modern day story is predictable, reheated slop from other, much better movies – you literally recognise every beat of every courtroom scene. Most conversations are essentially the actors spooling plot at each other, explaining everything from art history to Austrian mediation procedures. The moments where the dialogue allows the actors to focus on character land with a hamfisted heaviness, with all the subtly of Oscar “for your consideration” scenes.

Periodically the story abandons logical evolution altogether and leaps from A to B without explanation: Maria will never go back to Vienna, less than five minutes of screentime later oh no actually she will (explained by a timely, on-the-nose flashback), no she definitely won’t go back a second time, ta-da there she is. She wants to fight, then she wants to give up, then she wants to fight again. Whether these events were real or not, the film makes them feel like humdrum screenplay hokum.

You keep waiting for this to spring to life and do something fresh, but it never does. Even its odd-couple pairing is essentially Philomena reheated – but without the wit and warmth of that film’s script. It manages to turn what should have been an interesting story into something drier and duller than a documentary would have been.

The film takes wing a little more in the flashbacks to the 1930s. Again, there’s nothing new here, but the performances in are infused with a warmth, emotion and humanity missing from the other storyline – Allan Corduner is particularly good as Maria’s loving father. The sense of peril from the Nazis also gives the film a clear and unequivocal antagonist: the sequence where Maria and her husband flee Vienna is more engaging and tense than anything else in the film.

The weight of these flashbacks, however, only serves to contrast poorly with the strange, odd-couple comedy of the rest of the film. It’s literally two different films sitting uncomfortably together, neither doing either any service.

Woman in Gold is a confused film, that drags down what could have been a fascinating story into a safe, Sunday-afternoon film that never wants to say anything too controversial (even its potshots at the Austrians for overlooking their Nazi past is balanced by “good” Austrians). It reduces its characters to plot-spouting clichés, wrapped in a dry story. Although its flashback scenes carry some emotional heft, they can’t save the main plotline which spirals on and on, never engaging the viewer’s interest. It’s not gold, it’s very base metal.

Alien: Covenant (2017)


The xenomorph rises again, in prequel Alien: Covenant

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Michael Fassbender (David/Walter), Katherine Waterston (Daniels), Billy Crudup (Oram), Danny McBride (Tennessee), Demián Bichir (Lope), Carmen Ejogo (Karine), Amy Seimetz (Faris), Callie Hernandez (Upworth), Guy Pearce (Peter Weyland), Noomi Rapace (Elizabeth Shaw), James Franco (Jacob)

The Alien franchise is a series I’ve always had a lot of time for. Perhaps I just enjoy the carnage and blood letting of these movies, but at their best there is a sinister poetry behind the pure destructiveness of this rampaging beast, with a perfect mix of haunting nihilism and stirring action. In 2012, Scott returned to the franchise to explore its roots. His prequel film, Prometheus, had a mixed reception (and it’s a film I’ve found weaker with repeated viewings) but it still had that mixture of nihilistic poetry and gore. So where does Alien: Covenant fall?

Set 10 years after Prometheus, a solar flare hits the colony ship Covenant. To repair the damage, the ship’s android Walter (Michael Fassbender) wakens the crew, although the captain (an unbilled James Franco) is killed by a malfunction. Command passes to Oram (Billy Crudup), although many of the crew look to the captain’s wife Daniels (Katherine Waterston) as their moral leader. After the damage is repaired, the crew investigate a signal from an abandoned world, where they find the marooned android David (Fassbender again) and a planet with a terrible virus, that infects its hosts to create brutal Xenomorph monsters. But is all as it seems?

Alien: Covenant is a mixed bag. It has a haunting and unsettling tone and gives us plenty of aliens in all their various forms. Many of the sequences of alien attacks are exciting. It’s trying to build a mythology around the creation of the aliens, and tie that in with a thematic exploration of our needs to create and destroy. It wants to explore the potential dangers of artificial life, and how it could judge us and find us wanting. At the same time, it’s a flawed and rather predictable film, which never really surprises you. It might give you some things to think about – but it won’t provoke your interest enough to make you really think about them for long after the credits roll.

Its main weakness is in its large cast. Most of the characters are referred to throughout by non-descript surnames, hammering home their lack of individuality. The film is so resolutely invested in the establishment of its mythology, it has no time to build characters or a story around the crew. They are little more than ciphers, plot tools to deliver specific points rather than for us to relate to them, or feel concern for their fate. Even Waterston’s Daniels, nominally our surrogate character, feels distanced and undefined. Like the rest of the cast, she suppresses the loss of a loved one (there are at least three bereaved partners in this film) with a suddenness that speaks less of her professionalism and more of the film’s shark-like need to always moving forward.

The one exception to the blandness is Fassbender’s dual role as androids David and Walter. It’s an actor’s bread and butter to play different roles, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a great actor like Fassbender executes it here with such skill. But he clearly distinguishes both the loyal, straightforward Walter and the darkly oblique David, and manages to craft the two most impressive performances in the film. This also gives Fassbender several chances to act oddly with himself, including a scene where David (rather suggestively) teaches Walter to play a pipe (it’s all about the fingering) and even a creepily possessive kiss scene between the two androids.

It helps that the film positions David as a protagonist-antagonist, and spends time exploring his fractured psyche (because it is central to the creation of the aliens, the film’s main interest). From its dark prologue, which shows David awkwardly questioning his nature with his creator (a swaggering cameo from Guy Pearce), David carries much of the film thematic interest. He is a creation of mankind, who believes he has surpassed his creators. Learning that Walter, a second generation, has been programmed to be less ‘human’ in his emotional capability as David, only confirms his belief that he is perfect. David is fuelled by a homicidal rage towards his creators, matched with an insane fixation on his own perfection.

The film wheels out a host of literary big guns to suggest a richness and depth to its exploration of these themes, from Milton to both Shelleys, but these points are really window dressing, as David is really closer in spirit to a Mengele crossed with a mad scientist from an old Hollywood B-movie. Despite this though, Fassbender’s David feels like a fully-rounded, absorbing character. His ‘Walter’ performance is equally good – gentler, compassionate, less grandstanding but quietly engaging.

Alien: Covenant is a film that aims high and wants to add some intellectual heft to its “slasher” roots. I think it’s probably a film that “hangs out” with ideas rather than enters into a proper conversation with them, but at least it’s aiming for thematic depth and richness, even if it often misses. I’m not sure it carries the sense of wonder and awe, and near-religious parallels, Prometheus (a deeply flawed, but more haunting film than this) managed. But it wants to make us question our place in the universe, and how our blind overconfidence could one day doom us. These ideas may just be window dressing to the blood and guts that the film delights in, but it at least shows that Scott is trying to make something a little deeper, and trying to make points about human nature.

It may be this focus on philosophical musing and the mythology of the alien’s development, distracted the film-makers from creating a plot to wrap around all this. The characters actions are too are often determined by the requirements of the plot, rather than logic or characterisation. So many dumb decisions are made, it stretches credibility: deflecting on a whim to a strange planet, charging around this alien world with careless abandon, following a clearly demented android you don’t trust into a room full of alien eggs – the plot requires each of the characters to perform various acts of stupidity in order for it to get anywhere.

The plot is also a hybrid that remixes beats from the previous films. No death (and there are loads of them) carries any surprise or shock value, and the alien itself (impressively filmed as the action is) behaves pretty much as you would expect. The familiarity of the events also makes the characters feel (to the audience) even more stupid and careless. There is excitement, but the film never really gets you to the edge of your seat – with its familiar action, and bland characters most of whom are little more than alien-fodder, you just never feel a tension or investment in their fates.

I wanted to like Alien: Covenant more than I actually did – but the truth is that it’s a film that lets itself down. There are moments of awe and wonder in there. It has a very good villain, whose motives and reasoning are interesting and thought-provoking. It has a terrific pair of performances by Michael Fassbender. But it’s also got too much flatness – plot and characters seem rushed and thinly sketched out. It’s clear where Scott’s and the writers’ focus was – and it means chunks of this movie just glide past the eyes and ears. Not the worst Alien film by a longshot – but still someway off the greatness of the first two films.

Terminator Genisys (2015)


Arnie saddles up (again) as The Terminator, this time with Emilia Clarke in tow. Reboot or remake?

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Pops), Jai Courtenay (Kyle Reese), Emilia Clarke (Sarah Connor), Jason Clarke (John Connor), JK Simmons (O’Brien), Dayo Okeniyi (Danny Dyson), Matt Smith (Alex/Skynet), Courtenay B Vance (Miles Dyson), Byung Hun Lee (T-1000)

Every few years, Hollywood convinces itself the Terminator franchise is a licence to print money just waiting for exploitation. Since the late 90s, three movies and one TV series have attempted to relaunch the franchise. Each has underperformed, and left plans for sequels abandoned. Terminator: Genisys is the latest in this trend, the first in a planned trilogy that will never be made. As such, it’s a type of curiosity, a film that sets up a new timeline and introduces mysteries never to be answered.

Once again, the film starts with John Connor (Jason Clarke) sending Kyle Reece (Jai Courtenay) back in time to save his mother Sarah (Emilia Clarke) from deadly Terminators sent to destroy her and prevent Connor from being born. But when Reece arrives, he finds the past he was expecting altered and that Sarah was already saved years before from a first Terminator, by a re-programmed one nicknamed Pops (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Our heroes find themselves adrift in a timeline dramatically altered from the one they expected, and transport themselves to 2017 to combat Skynet once more.

It says a lot that the most original and daring thing about this movie is that no-one at any point says “Hasta La Vista, Baby”. Aside from that, the film is a Frankenstein’s monster, assembled from the off-cuts of previous franchise entries. The familiar lines are trotted out once more: I’ll Be Back, Come With Me if You Want to Live, Get Out and many more. The structure of the film limply settles into the same basic set-up we’ve seen since Terminator 2, while the big set pieces have an air of inevitability about them. This is a lazy, half-baked claim to re-invent the franchise that essentially copies and repeats everything from previous films with only a few small changes of angle. You can admire briefly the skill that has re-created moments from the original film, and be impressed by the effects that show a newly-young Schwarzenegger fighting his grizzled future self – but it will largely just make you want to watch the first film again.

This stench of familiarity is despite the huge, seemingly-inventive loopholes that the film, Bourne Legacy like, jumps through in order to try and justify its existence. The Terminator franchise has become so scrambled with alternative timelines, paths not taken, and film series cancelled that it spends almost the first hour carefully recreating events from previous movies, with some major tweaks and changes to allow a new “timeline” to burst up and act as a jumping off point for this movie. By the time the complex timeline politics has been put in place, the film has barely an hour of its run time left – at which point it needs to introduce its two antagonists and give our heroes a mission. The timeline is truncated, the villain is under-developed and the mission the dullest retread of the plot of Terminator 2 possible: a race to get to a building to blow it up. Yawn.

Is it any wonder that people shrugged at this movie? Even it can’t imagine a world outside the confines of its franchise rules. It reminds you what a small world the Terminator universe is. There’s little more than 3-4 characters, Skynet is always the adversary, time travel always seems to involve variations on the same people, the future is always the same blasted wasteland. The films always degenerate into long chases, compromised by our heroes’ attempts to change the future. So many Arnie Terminators have been reprogrammed by the resistance now, you wonder if any of them are left fighting for Skynet. What seemed fresh and daring in the first two films, now feels constrained and predictable. To find life in this franchise, it needs to do something genuinely different, not go over the same old ground over and over again.

The tragedy of this film is that the one unique thing it had – the identity of its main villain – was blown in the trailer of the film. Taylor was apparently furious at this undermining of a twist his film takes time building up. It ought to have been a shock for audiences to find out the franchise’s saviour-figure, John Connor, was instead the film’s villain – instead anyone who’d seen a trailer knew all about it before the opening credits even rolled. They even put it on the flipping poster! On top of which, the trailer carefully checks off all the major set pieces up to the final  30 minutes. Is it any wonder so many people gave it a miss at the cinema? Shocks left unspoiled, such as Matt Smith (strangely billed as Matthew Smith) revealed to be the embodiment of Skynet, are so dull and predictable they hardly counted as twists.

There is little in there to bolster the plot. The action is shot with a dull efficiency. The film is edited together with a plodding mundanity. Schwarzenegger once again goes through the familiar motions, but surely we have now seen enough of this character, which could in fact be holding the franchise back. Emilia Clarke looks bored, Jai Courtenay (an actor who came to prominence with a warm and intelligent performance in Spartacus: Blood and Sand) is again cast as a charisma free lunkhead, with attempts to add shading to his character only adding dullness. Jason Clarke lacks the charisma for the cursed role of John Connor (every film has seen a new actor take on the role).

Reviews claimed the plot was too complex for the audience: not the case. The plot is clear enough – it’s just dull and engaging. It never gives the viewer a reason to invest in the story. Terminator: Genysis is a ploddingly safe, predictable and routine piece of film-making, from a franchise that desperately needed reinvention. But so long as average and uninventive filmmakers – Jonathan Mostow, McG, Alan Taylor – are entrusted with its future, it will always be a franchise with no future. It’s time it was terminated. Hasta La Vista, Baby.

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010)


Andy Serkis and Bill Milner recreate the 1970s in this mixed bag Ian Dury biography

Director: Mat Whitecross

Cast: Andy Serkis (Ian Dury), Bill Milner (Baxter Dury), Naomie Harris (Denise), Ray Winstone (Bill Dury), Olivia Williams (Betty Dury), Noel Clarke (Desmond), Toby Jones (Hargreaves), Ralph Ineson (The Sulphate Strangler), Mackenzie Crook (Russell Hardy), Michael Maloney (Graham), Luke Evans (Clive Richard), Tom Hughes (Chaz Jankel), Arthur Darvill (Mick Gallagher)

Ian Dury, one of the leading new wave British musicians of the late 70s, has his life brought to the screen in an eclectic and inconsistent film with flashes with genius. The film covers Dury’s life, from his early polio to initial success and later revitalisation. Front and centre is the effect disability has on Dury’s life, and the relationship with his son, wife and girlfriend.

The film’s main claim to fame is Andy Serkis’ brilliant performance as Dury. The role is a perfect match for Serkis’ vocal range and physicality. As a reconstruction of Dury’s style and manner it is triumphantly perfect (he has a standing invitation from the Blockheads to tour with them as Dury). What Serkis does really well here though is to delve into the heart and mind of Dury, to bring out the emotional confusion, pain and mixed desires within him – to believably present someone confusingly in love with two people, but causing both of them great pain. A man who can idolise the relationship his late father had with him, but confusingly repeat many of the mistakes of his isolated later childhood with his own children. Serkis burns up the screen, and motors the film – he’s the heart, the lungs and most of the brain as well.

It needs this ­tour-de-force of committed resurrection from Serkis, boiling with righteous indignation and cheeky charm, as the film itself is a little uninteresting to anyone not already into this era of British pop. In fact, I’d go so far as saying some initial study of Dury is pretty much essential to understand what is going on – and above all to understand the impact of various moments on the wider world. The film is rather confused in explaining the impact of this band on the cultural scene, and tends to fly too quickly over events.

It’s also stylistically an odd film. It starts with a fantastic device of Dury presenting the film like a compere at a surreal lecture, or music gig. Filmed in a concert hall, Dury runs through the events and even drags onto stage at times, like props or exhibits, moments from his past. It’s a rather avant garde idea, returned to only sporadically throughout – I suspect limited access to the filming location may have had something to do with it – but it sets up an expectation of a film that will be a bit more thematically and structurally daring than it eventually becomes. The film has a scattergun range of filmic styles, from animation to surrealist recreation, as if the director had a host of ideas about how to make the film, and threw them all in, rather than make something tonally consistent.

Away from the stylistic flourishes, you are constantly reminded that this film follows a pretty familiar series of music biog tropes: the early struggles, the success, the drugs, the loss of form, the triumphant return. The film does mine some interesting material from the relationship between Dury father and son, but even this is fundamentally a “Dad and Lad” story we have seen before.

So what makes the film stand out is the performances. Naomi Harris is heartfelt and sweet as Dury’s lover, while Olivia Williams is excellent as his understanding, undervalued wife. There are decent supporting turns from the rest of the cast, while Bill Milner underlines his promise as a performer with an intelligent turn as a son pushed into being a rebel.

It’s a decent rock biography, but depends too much on you already knowing the story – and forgiving the fact that it’s not nearly as different from other films as it likes to think it is.