Rust and Bone (2012)

Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard in an unusual romantic drama

Director: Jacques Audiad

Cast: Marion Cotillard (Stéph), Matthias Schoenaerts (Ali), Armand Verdure (Sam), Corinne Masiero (Anna), Céline Sallette (Louise), Bouli Lanners (Martial)

Audiad’s films combine cinematic artistry with profound, sometimes elliptical, character studies that provoke great work from talented actors. Rust and Bone is no exception.

It’s the plot of a melodrama, staged like social-realism. Written down it sounds like the purest Hollywood schlock: crippled killer whale trainer Stéph (Cotillard) enters into a friendship that grows deeper with would-be kickboxer Ali (Schoenarts), who has a troubled relationship with his 5-year-old son. But the realistic portrayal of the pain of losing your limbs (in a scene of raw intensity from Cotillard) and Ali’s troubled homelife, penchant for casual sex and occasional resorting to violence when frustrated, pegs the film style farcloser to a hard-edged Bicycle Thieves. The film also has a lyrical poetry about it, as their relationship gently develops from friends with benefits to genuine feeling, which stops it from feeling gritty or hard-edged.

The film’s main strength is the brilliance of its two leads. Cotillard is outstanding as a passionate free-spirit whose entire world ends overnight. Her expressive face carries a host of confused feelings which shift and reform across her like a human kaleidoscope. Stéph’s vulnerability is married with a great strength of character, but Cotillard avoids many of the clichés of movie paraplegics by making her a woman who adapts without anger to her new condition. Instead, after overcoming depression, Stéph is looking actively (and with a curiosity) for something new to fill her life with.

Cotillard is so wonderful in the role, it’s very easy to overlook Schoenaerts’ skilful underplaying and Brandoish physical mastery. Ali is, I’ve got to be honest, a hard character to like – selfish, childish, in many ways thoughtless, blunt and fixated on himself. He’s also a terrible dad. Not malicious or cruel, just easily bored and frustrated with his kid. This frustration appears with anyone who doesn’t react the way he wants – “You’re so annoying!” he whines at both Stéph and Sam. Despite this, Schoenaerts’ is the heart of the movie. The film is his story, and he makes a difficult character engaging enough to carry the audience with him.

Rust and Bone is a film constructed around brilliant scenes and striking moments. In a wonderful sequence, Stéph repeats the arm signals she used to train the whales: at first she seems sad, then a warmth of enjoyment crosses her face. It’s the prompt for her to revisit the zoo, but the visit seems bittersweet: we see hugs with her friends, but Audiad cuts out the dialogue, adding to Cotillard’s own confused feelings about her return. Later she visits the whale that crippled her. Her mood here (with the camera to her back) is hard to read – is she forgiving the whale? Is she saying goodbye to this part of her life? Moments like this work so well because of the brilliance and humanity of the performances of both leads and Audiad’s patience and control as a filmmaker.

Audiad packs this beautiful film with moments like this. I particularly liked the bookend images he uses for each act. Each sets up the act thematically, from a bloodied tooth spinning on a pavement to the cover of a transit van flapping in motion. Audiad bathes the film in a series of cool blue colours, interspersed with flashes of light at moments of suggested revelation. He also has the discipline not to belabour the points of scenes or hammer home the feelings of characters (sometimes leaving you wanting more definition for the emotions they experience).

For a film immersed (to a certain degree) in a social realist world, there are odd gaps in logic: after throwing Ali out of her home (at gun point!) over his serial disregard for Sam, his indirect responsibility for her losing her job and his stroppy temper, would Anna really happily allow Sam to visit him a few months later? The disappearance of Stéph for much of the final reel of the film also pulls the focus from the central relationship and makes the final ending both rather sudden and slightly pat, out of step with the rest of the movie.

Audiad does bring a degree of engaging ambiguity to the story. The relationship between Ali and Stéph is intriguingly hard to define. She seems drawn to him for his lack of guile and his treatment of her disability with a matter-of-factness free of pity or embarrassment (qualities that linger around many of her other interactions). However, shifts in her character over the course of the film are deliberately kept low-key and open-ended, allowing moments where she surprises herself and the audience with the strength of her feeling. Similarly, the lack of depth in Ali’s personality makes his emotional development halting and discordant – he is attracted to her physically, but which qualities in her cause those feelings to deepen? It’s not immediately clear watching it – and I suspect many viewers would have different opinions from watching this curiously inscrutable film.

It’s a thoughtful film, but somehow never quite as moving as you expect. I think a lot of your connection with it depends on how much you feel Ali deserves redemption, or if you can forgive the constant stream of selfish and thoughtless things he does. I’m not quite sure I did. Similarly Stéph remains, for all the expressive humanity Cotillard brings to her, strangely unknowable.

That’s partly the problem with the film. Despite its beauty, it’s a little too enigmatic to be completely engaging. Wonderfully shot, and strangely haunting as it is, I think this is one every viewer will have a personal reaction to. I can imagine many would be deeply moved by its blue-tinted mystery and fragile dissection of damaged souls. For me it didn’t quite have the impact I think the film needs, and I didn’t feel this love story quite coalesced into a something truly profound in itself. It’s a beautifully made and intelligent film but not one I fell in love with – though I can imagine many people have.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Our heroes line up for action in a fun follow-up to a more fun movie

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt (Peter Quill), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Dave Bautista (Drax), Bradley Cooper (Rocket), Vin Diesel (Baby Groot), Michael Rooker (Yondo Udonta), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Kurt Russell (Ego), Elizabeth Debicki (Ayesha), Sean Gunn (Kraglin), Sylvester Stallone (Stakar Ogord)

In 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy was expected to be Marvel’s first flop: an odd collection of ridiculous looking characters, from a comic book few had ever heard of. Instead, its oddball charm and wit made it one of the most popular in the franchise. This is the tricky second album, which has to deliver more of the same while trying to build on the first film.

Set a few months after the first film, the Guardians are left stranded on an alien planet after a job for elitist race The Sovereign (led by a drily witty Elizabeth Debecki) goes badly wrong. They are saved by Ego (Kurt Russell) who reveals himself as Peter Quill’s long-lost father. Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Drax (Dave Bautista) follow Ego to his homeworld, while Rocket (Bradley Cooper) stays to repair the ship with their captive Nebula (Karen Gillan). While Ego’s world hides a range of dangers, Rocket and Nebula come under attack from Peter’s former guardian Yondo (Michael Rooker), whose pirates have been hired to capture the Guardians.

First the good things: this is a very entertaining film, packed full of funny lines and entertaining moments, solidly acted (with some stand-outs) by a cast who are able to communicate their enjoyment with the audience watching. Like the best of the Marvel films, it focuses on a core cast and establishes an audience bond with their characters very swiftly, and care about their fate. The focus of the film is actually skewed in favour of character over plot and action, which makes a nice change from many of these films (the action quotient is actually fairly low for a Marvel movie, and a large chunk of the film largely involves spending time with our heroes). It’s also admirable that the film doesn’t shy away from the fact that, to varying degrees, all of our heroes are in some way anti-heroes, or perfectly willing to perform selfish, dangerous or questionable acts for their own immediate gain (even if on the bigger issues their hearts in the right place).

It’s clear what type of movie you can expect right from the opening credits, where the camera focuses on (adorable) Baby Groot dancing to music in close-up, while (out of focus) our heroes combat a space monster in the background, each of them at key moments interacting with Groot in a way that demonstrates their character. It’s a lovely, witty way of opening the movie (perfectly scored to ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky) and firmly states that character and personality will be central. Baby Groot is, by the way, possibly the star of the movie, Gunn making sure the character isn’t overused or becomes wearing. The film gets the tone more or less right: it would be easy for this to feel like a private party we’ve been invited to watch, but it just about feels inclusive enough (and avoids smugness or self-satisfaction at its own wit) to remain charming and fun.

The focus is so much on jokes and fun that the actual plot of the movie is a little bit weak: a (predictable) villain reveal is made late-on, seemingly to give the film an antagonist. The actual plot content of the film is pretty lightweight. What plot there is, is nothing new (Daddy issues, spliced with Universe-in-peril) I’d also say that the films length is probably a bit too much – considering not a lot really happens, the film takes a long time to do it – it could do with a bit more discipline in the editing room, and a bit more willingness to trim out some of the material. This is, however, not a major problem –– and the film just gets away with it because it gets the character moments so right you simply enjoy spending time with this group, even if what they are getting up to is little more than a second-rate episode of Star Trek.

Where Guardians 2 falls a little bit flat is the wearily on-the-nose “emotional” sections of the script. While in the first film much of this goes unspoken, here several scenes are featured where the characters carefully spell out their feelings. The most egregious examples are an almost laughably overplayed game of catch between Peter and his Dad, and a terrible “everything spelled out” conversation between feuding sisters Gamora and Nebula. Whenever this film goes near this emotional content, its points land with heavy punches, while coating the content with sticky sentiment that gets “bad laughs” from the audience. The film has plenty of well-crafted and funny impact lines, but its script rushes through the areas where depth is needed, and doesn’t seem to trust the audience to understand the emotions that underlie the bickering between the characters, or that some of them may be tempted to do terrible things to fulfil their emotional needs. Only the final sacrifice of a character really works – and that’s because it is the only emotional connection that is quietly built in the background of the movie, rather than in the foreground.

But that’s probably a movie trying too hard for good reasons, rather than bad. There is more than enough here to recommend the film. Interestingly, Pratt’s Peter Quill is largely sidelined for chunks of the film (the fact that its nominal plot is all about Quill and he feels like a supporting role tells you how weak the plot is) so other members of the cast really stand out. Saldana has a slightly thankless role as the “Big Sister” of the group, but manages to bring a lot of unspoken depth to her role. Bautista provides excellent comic relief as Drax (though his lines are such gifts, it would be hard to screw them up), Baby Groot is very funny, Cooper’s Rocket has a juvenile, rebellious attitude that that deserves a more interesting subplot. Surprisingly though, the film is repositioned more as a redemption journey for Michael Rooker’s space rogue Yondo, and Rooker delivers a surprisingly emotional performance as a confirmed killer and thief struggling with his conscience. Gunn allows him contemplative moments that really ring true within the chaos of most of the rest of the film, and this feels like one of the best displays of simple “acting” you’ll see in the MCU.

Guardians 2 is not a perfect film, and I suspect its weak plot, predictable and uninteresting villain, and often ham-fisted emotional moments will grate more and more once the exuberance of the ride has worn off on the second or third viewing. But it’s got a lot going for it: genuinely funny jokes, an intention to entertain which it largely succeeds in, some charming performances and enough action in it without letting that overwhelm the film. It’s a roller-coaster rather than a gift that will keep giving, and it lacks the first film’s well balanced plotting and world-building, but it’s entertaining and a great deal of fun (if 20 minutes too long) and the final reel’s sad events do carry an emotional weight (because they are based on largely unspoken feelings) that will stay with you after the film wraps. Not as fun as the first one – but still better than many others.

The Robe (1953)

Richard Burton puts on his best “worried with a hint of madness” face as he explains Christianity to Jean Simmons and the viewers.

Director: Henry Koster

Cast: Richard Burton (Marcellus Gallio), Jean Simmons (Diana), Victor Mature (Demetrius), Michael Rennie (Peter), Jay Robinson (Caligula), Dean Jagger (Justus), Torin Thatcher (Senator Gallio), Richard Boone (Pontius Pilate), Betta St John (Miriam), Jeff Morrow (Paulus), Ernest Thesiger (Tiberius)

In 1953, Hollywood was running so scared of TV they needed a magic cocktail to win viewers back to the big screen. They settled on their main advantages over TV – a very big screen, colour and a lot of money. Sweeping epics were born – but in order to get as many people in as possible, gotta make sure it’s an important piece of filmmaking as well. What’s more important than religion?

Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton) is a carefree playboy Tribune, interested only in splashing his cash on bets and slaves. After betting against heir-to-the-throne Caligula (Jay Robinson) for rebellious slave Demetrius (Victor Mature) – plus charming away Caligula’s betrothed Diana (Jean Simmons), also Marcellus’ childhood sweetheart – he is banished to Palestine. Marcellus is soon ordered to crucify a humble carpenter from Nazareth, leader of a new religion that Demetrius swiftly converts to. After being confronted by his former slave atop Calvary, Marcellus finds himself wracked with guilt about his actions – and on a journey towards conversion and martyrdom. The Robe of the title is the Turin shroud, here a red rag macguffin passed from pillar to post.

By any objective standards, The Robe is a pretty terrible film. It’s long, self-important, slow, talky, episodic, poorly-structured and, above all, boring. Despite its length, nothing much really happens. Marcellus is a waster, he crucifies Christ, he feels guilty, he goes a bit barmy, he converts, he dies. That’s kind of it. When important moments happen, they flash past so quickly you start to think you missed something – I rewound Marcellus’ crucial conversation with St Peter where he finally converts as I assumed I’d missed something he changes his mind so quickly. I hadn’t.

The whole film is full of sudden, juddering changes like this. Marcellus and Diana are estranged for years – next thing we know they are in each other’s arms. Demetrius is a convert after one glance. Within seconds of screentime, Marcellus goes from unconcerned to wracked with guilt over Christ’s death. The whole first scene sets up Caligula as an antagonist only to have him disappear for almost an hour. Demetrius is suddenly being racked in a dungeon in Rome. The film keeps slowing down for lots of Christian reflection on the righteousness of the holy message.

Oh blimey, the Christian message of the film is not subtle. The film drips with sanctimony and wearying self-importance, with no trick missed. Angelic voices, light from the sky, actors staring upwards with awe, impossibly sweet youths frolicking with joy, wise old buffers droning on: it’s all here, every single note you would expect of the classic Hollywood “Swords, sex, sandals and sanctimony” epics. It’s all ridiculously on the nose, with Burton reduced to having to carry the entire weight of Christianity seemingly on his shoulders, with only the most bland and forgettable of lines to support him. Nothing eases up right into the final moments, when Marcellus and Diana walk towards the camera as the background fades away to be replaced by clouds. Yeah we get it: they are off to heaven. The big thing the film struggles to get across in all this is why the Christian message had such appeal to Marcellus and others, or why these people might have put so much at risk for it, but this sort of thing is beneath the film’s clumsy interest, as if any actual analysis would be sinful.

Burton, bless him, struggles through the role with the slightly disconnected air of a man who thinks the entire film is beneath him (he famously called the role “prissy”). He must have been stunned to get an Oscar nomination. But to be fair it’s a really tough part, with Marcellus required to go from a sort of relaxed dissoluteness, via disconnected pride, to a sort of catatonic series of fits before back to serene peace. Saying that, Burton’s fits over the robe itself aren’t going to win any awards for subtlety, done with a wild eyed hamminess that looks impossibly old fashioned today. But it’s all comparable – next to Robert Taylor in Quo Vadis, Burton feels like the height of emotional realism. It’s not helped that he’s paired a lot of the time with Victor Mature, who acts throughout with a sort of balsawood earnestness that requires a great deal of middle distance staring in awe. The video below gives a good idea of both performances. Watch how wildly varied the writing is of Burton’s part and feel a little bit sorry for him.

Very few of the other performances make positive impressions. Jean Simmons as Diana is such a bland, forgettable character that her conversion only really makes sense because we have learnt so little about her over the course of the movie. Jay Robinson goes for overblown as Caligula but instead sounds like a shrieking child in a pretty woeful performance.

These two failed performances add to the film’s problems. Caligula is such a non-presence for most in the film that, as the nominal antagonist, his lack of impact makes the film shapeless, lacking any “villain” we can hate or provide any sort of obstacle for Marcellus to struggle against. Similarly Diana is so bland and anonymous a personality, that we neither root for their relationship, nor experience any concern for its outcome.

The film is directed and framed in an equally dull way. Its only claim to fame today is its status as the first film to be released in Cinemascope. This ultra-wide screen was intended to be another rival to TV – never mind the little box, look at the mighty vistas! But the importance of widescreen hangs over every creative decision of the film. Nearly every shot in Koster’s turgid direction is either middle or long, with the camera held static, focused on getting as much of the background in as possible, the actors often reduced to focus or foreground interest around the scale. It’s no wonder few performances break through this overbearing backdrop.

Every so often you get moments where you think the film is going to burst in life. They’re rare but they are there. There is a great scene between Demetrius and a man revealed (eventually, but it’s pretty obvious from the start) to be Judas Iscariot fresh form Gethsemane (Michael Ansara as Judas might, in two minutes of screentime, give the best performance in the film). Marcellus has a pretty good (if inexplicable) sword fight with a former rival. A mission is launched to rescue Demetrius. But every time something happens like that, the film immediately doubles back into heavy-handed symbolism and dull, unrevealing chat, all of which is focused on hammering home the message.

The Robe is an impossibly dated religious epic, worthy, dull and lacking any real interest or reason to watch it. Its star seems a little embarrassed to be there. No-one else makes any impact. It’s directed with a flatness that turns it into a series of lifeless paintings. Its story turns a major moment of history into a boring, inconsequential series of events. It lacks even the campness that many epics of this genre carry that make it a good tongue-in-cheek watch. It’s just a yawnathon from start to finish, a crushingly tedious saga that has all the subtlety of being hit across the face by a prayer book for over two hours.

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Pacino and Depp deliver low-key, carefully controlled, sensitive performances: how often do you get to write that?

Director: Mike Newell

Cast: Al Pacino (Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero), Johnny Depp (Joseph Pistone/Donnie Brasco), Michael Madsen (Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano), Bruno Kirby (Nicky Santora), Anne Heche (Maggie Pistone), James Russo (“Paulie” Cersani), Željko Ivanek (Tim Curley), Gerry Becker (Dean Blandford), Robert Miano (Al “Sonny Red” Indelicato), Tim Blake Nelson, Paul Giamatti (FBI Technicians)

The Mafia film genre is a crowded market, so it’s a brave film maker who enters it with something a little different. But we get that with Donnie Brasco, which focuses on the bottom rungs of the Mafia ladder, suggesting that being a low-ranking member of “this thing of ours” is in many ways quite similar to being a corporate drone in the big city, only with more killing.

Joseph Pistone aka Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp) is an undercover FBI agent, infiltrating the New York Mafia. He wins the trust of “Lefty” Ruggiero (Al Pacino), a Mafia hitman. Drawn deeper into the Mafia world, the pressure builds on Pistone/Brasco, who slowly becomes more and more indistinguishable from the criminals he spends his time with – and feels guilty about the deadly fate Lefty will meet if the Mafia discover he inadvertently introduced a rat into the family.

Newell’s film (from Paul Attanasio’s excellent script) is a dry deconstruction of the gangster life, bringing it closer to the grind of the 9-5. The criminals put in long hours to earn the income they need to push up to those above them. Class distinctions abound – in one scene, Sonny Black (a good performance of ambition and resentment from Michael Madsen) forces a smile onto his face while mob bosses laugh openly at his dress sense. Lefty whines like a mule about everything from his lack of recognition to how put-upon he is (never has a mantra about 26 hits over a lifetime sounded more like complaints about constant filing requests). He could easily be mistaken half the time for a harrassed office junior who never made the grade. When violence comes, it’s sudden, graphic, confused and brutal – a hit in a basement goes far from smoothly with one victim struggling for his life while another screams in pain.

On the other hand, the gangsters are also suggested to be maladjusted teens who never grew up. The more time Donnie spends with them, the less and less capable he becomes of relating to (or even communicating with) his wife and family. The gangsters have a routine lack of empathy for each other and treat the rules of “our thing” like a boys’ clubhouse. Many of their actions have an ill-thought-out juvenility to them: Sonny at one point steals a lion for Lefty as a gift – in a bizarre scene immediately afterwards, Lefty and Donnie feed it hamburgers through the window while it sits in the back seat of Donnie’s car. On a work-trip in Florida, the gangsters behave like kids – mucking around in the pool, delightedly going down waterflumes, burying Lefty in the sand on the beach while he sleeps. Even Lefty is overcome like a star-struck teen when meeting a famed Florida boss.

It’s not surprising that Donnie and Lefty, both outsiders in a way, are drawn together as kindred spirits in this strange, unbalanced world. Donnie obviously is an FBI agent, but Lefty is a world-weary old-timer, with a sense of honour who seems (apart from his ease with killing and violence) to be the most “normal” of the gangsters. The film is a careful construction of the growth of loyalty between these characters – particularly the slow development of Donnie’s feelings of genuine friendship towards Lefty. What’s effective is that this is a gradual process without a definable key moment. Instead, it becomes rather touching as Donnie starts to avoid moving closer to better “contacts” in order to remain close to Lefty. Donnie Brasco might be one of the few films that really gets a type of male friendship, and the unspoken emotional bonds that underpin them.

Perhaps the best things about Donnie Brasco are the two wonderful performances we get from actors who never knowlingly underplay. Watching this and Ed Wood is a reminder of the actor Johnny Depp could have been, before clowning in Pirates of the Caribbean seemed to shatter his focus. Brasco/Pistone is a brilliantly low-key presentation of a fractured personality. At first, the differentiation between the two personalities is distinct and clear – but as the film progresses, Depp allows the two to almost c/ollapse into each other. Everything from his body language to his manner of speaking slowly repositions itself as he becomes more consumed by the gangster world. Depp is also very good at not losing track of Pistone’s horror at murder and violence, while allowing the Brasco persona to take part in its aftereffects. The quiet building of guilt in his eyes at the fate he is creating for Lefty is also gently underplayed, making it more effective.

However, this is Al Pacino’s movie. It’s certainly Pacino’s last great performance: with the added frisson that he’s Michael Corleone demoted to the bottom rung of the ladder, Pacino is magnetic. Lefty is a put-upon whiner, who still has a charisma of his youth that draws Donnie (and others) in. A man of strong moral principles, who treats Donnie with a fatherly regard, uncomfortable with much of the ostentation of his fellow gangsters, he’s also a ruthless killer who blithely shrugs off his killing of an old friend. All Pacino’s bombast is only rarely deployed for impact – instead Lefty is a low-key, almost sad figure, whose chance in life has passed by.

One extraordinary scene late on deserves particular mention. I won’t spoil things too much, but Lefty prepares to leave the house after a phone call full of bad news. Carefully, sadly, he smartens himself up then returns (after saying goodbye to his wife) to gently remove his valuables and leave them in a drawer for his wife – he even carefully leaves the drawer ajar so she can find it. Setting himself before leaving the house, he takes a small look around. It’s a beautifully gentle scene, which could be overloaded with meaning from another actor, but Pacino plays it with such quiet but intense focus, and such careful precision it works brilliantly. Take a look at the scene here (warning spoilers!)

Newell’s strength as an actor’s director is apparent in all the performances, and Donnie Brasco is a film of many wonderful scenes and moments. The film never loses track of the danger of undercover heart – and several striking scenes have Pistone close to being discovered. The film is not perfect: the aim of the FBI investigation, and the impact Donnie’s work are never really made clear and the scenes involving Pistone’s homelife feel far more predictable and conventional than the rest of the movie (Anne Heche has a thankless part). But when it focuses on the two leads, and their dynamism together, it’s a damn fine film. It’s not going to challenge Goodfellas as a story of low-key hoods, but it’s certainly a worthy addition to cinema’s mafia films.

Passengers (2016)

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt juggle moral dilemmas in the surprisingly dark Passengers

Director: Morten Tyldum

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence (Aurora Lane), Chris Pratt (Jim Preston), Michael Sheen (Arthur), Laurence Fishburne (Gus Mancuso)

The Avalon is a spaceship carrying over 5,000 passengers and crew to a new planet for resettlement. With the flight due to last 120 years, everyone is in suspended animation. After an accident, passenger Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) is woken 90 years early. Trapped on the ship, unable to return to cyrosleep or change the direction of the ship, and with the round-trip time for messages to Earth being 76 years, Jim faces living the rest of his life alone on a spaceship. After over a year of isolation, with only android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen) for company, Jim succumbs to temptation and wakes another passenger, Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), for companionship. They fall in love over time – but how will Aurora react when she finds out the truth?

Passengers was a film that received a negative reaction perhaps because it managed to successfully not spoiler its plot in advance. While the trailer seemed to promise this would combine mystery and romance in a space setting, it’s actually more about the effects of isolation and the moral quandary of relieving your own despair by placing someone else in the same position. While the film is never going to win awards for its exploration of psychosis, it certainly tries to tackle this idea and explain – but not excuse – why Jim takes the decision he does.

A lot of people felt this suggested Aurora effectively falls in love with her kidnapper-cum-stalker, and that Jim’s actions are glossed over. Well I’d argue against this. Firstly, the film never shirks the repercussions of Jim’s decisions – indeed that’s really what the film is about: can you forgive the unforgiveable? A large chunk of the film is a build up to Jim taking a decision he acknowledges is wrong, and feels tremendous guilt and shame about. The later section of the film revolves around the impact of this action coming to light. Discovery of the truth destroys Aurora and Jim’s relationship, and it’s uncertain for much of the rest of the film whether there will ever be any forgiveness for Jim. If the film had shelved the issue, or Jim had been forgiven within minutes of screentime, that would be another question.

Secondly, the film works hard to show the savage psychological impact of complete isolation, and (after a year of this) the dangerous temptation of having a companion a push of a button away. Jim is clearly not in his right mind when he makes his decision – and later when Aurora faces the prospect of similar isolation, she responds with similar despair. If there is a fault with this, it is that the film shies away from defining the time progression explicitly enough – and doesn’t quite have the courage to increase its timeline (imagine if Jim had been alone for 3-5 years rather than one. Imagine if Jim and Aurora had not spoken for 2-3 years rather than one etc. Straightaway, I think the actions in this film could have been more readily understood by people).

Thirdly, these questions of isolation and morality are not as black and white as your casual internet moaner would like. Trapped alone with no human interaction, with literally zero chance of being rescued, is a psychological situation it’s just impossible to comprehend. Expecting people to behave as they would normally is simply unreasonable. Jim and Aurora do not fall in love after the truth comes out – they fall in love well before this (sure Aurora doesn’t know what Jim has done, but her feelings for him are real) – so it becomes a question of forgiving someone you love who, in extraordinary circumstances, has done something they normally would never do.

As such, Passengers is actually the sort of film where it will benefit you to discover more about what the film is going to be about before you go into it (and how often do you hear that?). Because, once you know the sort of film you are going to get, it’s not that bad a film. It’s handling of these moral issues is, I’ll readily admit, not the most effective or thought provoking (and the lack of mention of it before the film’s release, and its slight fudging through the film, suggests the “suits” weren’t happy with it either) but at least this is a film with some ideas behind it. If it had really seized the effect of isolation as its theme, and really explored the moral issues behind Jim’s actions, it might well have avoided much of the criticism. But it does enough to make some of that criticism unfair.

Away from this main plot point, Passengers is an entertaining, high-budget, character piece. Whatever your view of the character, you can’t argue against Pratt’s charisma and wit as a performer and Lawrence is also good. It’s not their best work, but they make the relationship – with all its peaks and troughs – work, and it’s endearing or tense as required. Michael Sheen is also excellent as the humanish-but-not-human-enough android bartender. The design of the ship is imaginative and the film looks gorgeous. The second half of the film delivers a fine series of tense set-ups (even if many of them are echoes of things we have seen before), and Tyldum does well to ensure that the often swiftly changing mood of the film (despair-romance-anger-tension-danger-terror etc.) seems like a smooth progression rather than a jarring one.

Passengers doesn’t have the courage of its convictions to really explore its “Ben Gunn in Space” set-up, and much of the criticism of its plot stems from its not-completely-committed exploration of the effects of isolation. But, if you know what you are going to get, it’s an entertaining film.

The Iron Lady (2011)

Meryl Streep impersonates the Iron Lady to excellent effect in this otherwise bland and forgettable, compromised mess of a picture

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Cast: Meryl Streep (Margaret Thatcher), Jim Broadbent (Denis Thatcher), Olivia Colman (Carol Thatcher), Roger Allam (Gordon Reece), Nicholas Farrell (Airey Neave), Iain Glen (Alfred Roberts), Richard E. Grant (Michael Heseltine), Anthony Head (Sir Geoffrey Howe), Harry Lloyd (Young Denis Thatcher), Michael Pennington (Michael Foot), Alexandra Roach (Young Margaret Thatcher), John Sessions (Edward Heath)

In British politics has there been a figure as controversial as Margaret Thatcher? A domineering Prime Minister who reshaped the country (for better or worse depending on who you speak to), crafting a legacy in the UK’s politics, economy and society that we will continue to feel for the foreseeable future, she’s possibly one of the most important figures in our history. It’s a life rich for a proper biographical treatment; instead, it gets this film.

The film’s framing device is focused on the ageing Thatcher (Meryl Streep), now dealing with onset dementia and having detailed conversations with her deceased husband Denis (Jim Broadbent). Cared for by her daughter Carol (Olivia Colman), she reflects on her political career and the sacrifices she made personally to achieve these. Woven in and out of this are Thatcher’s increasingly disjointed memories of her political career.

The most surprising thing about this film is how little it actually wants to engage with Thatcherism itself. Perhaps aware that (certainly in the UK) Thatcher remains an incredibly divisive figure, the film’s focus is actually her own struggles with grief and approaching dementia. Her career as PM is relegated to a series of flashbacks and short scenes, which fill probably little more than 20-30 minutes of the runtime, shot and spliced together as a mixture of deliberately subjective memories and fevered half-dreams. Can you imagine a film about Thatcher where Arthur Scargill and the miners’ strike doesn’t merit a mention? You don’t need to: thanks to The Iron Lady it now exists.

Perhaps Thatcher’s politics were considered to “unlikeable” – certainly, one imagines, by its writer and director – to be something to craft a film around, so it was thought better to brush them gently under the table. Instead the focus is to make Thatcher as sympathetic as possible to a viewer who didn’t share her politics, by concentrating on her struggles against sexism in the 1950s and her struggles with age late on. Why not accept what Thatcher stood for and make a film (for better or worse) about that? Perhaps more material on her actual achievements in office were shot and cut (the film does have a very short run time and underuses its ace supporting cast), but the whole film feels fatally compromised – which is more than a little ironic since it is about a woman famous for her lack of compromise.

In fact it’s rather hard to escape the view that Roger Ebert put forward: “few people were neutral in their feelings about [Thatcher], except the makers of this picture”. It’s a film with no real interest in either politics or history, the two things that defined Thatcher’s entire life. And as if to flag up the mediocre nature of the material they’ve chosen, it’s then interspersed with too-brief cuts to more interesting episodes from Thatcher’s life than those we are watching. Only when the older Thatcher hosts a dinner party and launches into a blistering sudden condemnation of Al-Qaeda and support of military action against terrorism (followed by her casual disregard of a hero-worshipping acolyte) do we ever get a sense of finding out something about her, or of seeing her personality brought to life.

The film’s saving grace is of course Meryl Streep’s terrific impersonation of Thatcher. I call it impersonation as the film so strenuously avoids delving into the events and opinions that shaped Thatcher that Streep gets very little opportunity to really develop a character we can understand, or to present an insight into her. Her performance as the older Thatcher – losing control of her mannerisms, deteriorating over the course of the film – is impressive in its technical accomplishment, but that’s largely what it remains. As the film doesn’t allow us to really know Thatcher, and doesn’t work with what defines her, it largely fails to move us when we see her weak and alone. So for all the accomplishment of Streep’s work, I couldn’t say this was a truly great performance – certainly of no comparison to, say, Day-Lewis as Lincoln or Robert Hardy as Churchill. I’d even say Andrea Riseborough’s performance in TV’s The Long Walk to Finchley told us more about the sort of person Thatcher was than Streep does here.

Despite most of the rest of the cast being under-used though, there are some good performances. Jim Broadbent is very good as Denis Thatcher, although again his performance is partly a ghostly collection of mannerisms and excellent complementary acting. However the chemistry between he and Streep is magnificent and accounts for many of the film’s finest moments. Olivia Colman does sterling work under a bizarre fake nose as a no-nonsense Carol Thatcher. From the all-star cast of British actors, Roger Allam stands out as image-consultant Gordon Reece and Nicholas Farrell is superbly calm, cool and authoritative as Airey Neave. Alexandra Roach and Harry Lloyd are excellent impersonating younger Thatchers.

The Iron Lady could have been a marvellous, in-depth study of the politics of the 1980s, and a brilliant deconstruction and discussion of an era that still shapes our views of Britain today. However, it wavers instead into turning a woman defined by her public role and views into a domestic character, and brings no insight to the telling of it. By running scared of Thatcher’s politics altogether, it creates a film which makes it hard to tell why we should be making a fuss about her at all – making it neither interesting to those who know who Thatcher is, nor likely to spark interest in those who have never heard of her.

The Cider House Rules (1999)

Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire deal with moral dilemmas in this handsome adaptation of John Irving’s Dickensian novel

Director: Lasse Hallström

Cast: Tobey Maguire (Homer Wells), Michael Caine (Dr. Wilbur Larch), Charlize Theron (Candy Kendall), Paul Rudd (Lt. Wally Worthington), Delroy Lindo (Arthur Rose), Erykah Badu (Rose Rose), Heavy D (Peaches), K. Todd Freeman (Muddy), Kieran Culkin (Buster), Jane Alexander (Nurse Edna), Kathy Baker (Nurse Angela), Kate Nelligan (Olive Worthington), J.K. Simmons (Ray Kendall)

The Cider House Rules is the sort of well-constructed literary adaptation that Hollywood excels at producing: a well-crafted script (Irving adapted his own novel extremely well), juggling serious affairs without hectoring the audience, handsomely mounted, with a Dickensian style and a cast of heavyweight actors delivering performances that speak of their investment in the film.

In a Maine orphanage in the 1940s, Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) is raised by Dr Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine) as a surrogate son. Larch is a domineering autocrat with a passionate love for his charges, whose humanitarian instincts lead him to perform illegal abortions. Troubled by this – and feeling pressured into succeeding Larch’s as director – Homer leaves with a young woman (Charlize Theron) and her fiancée (Paul Rudd) after she visits for an abortion. Working as an apple picker in their orchard, under Mr Rose (Delroy Lindo), Homer learns important lessons above love and duty.

There are many similar films that feel like dull awards-bait, and the fact that this one avoids that is a major point in its favour. It’s very easy with material like this – cute orphans and tear-jerking speeches – to feel Cider House is a manipulative film (and I guess in a way it is) but it’s put together with such commitment and sincerity I found it genuinely moving. Hallström’s warm and beautifully paced direction creates a marvellous coming-of-age tale with characters whose flaws can be as deep as their warmth is vibrant.

The film also manages to move beyond its ‘coming-of-age’ roots with intelligent (but not too heavy-handed) mulling on the nature of “rules” – both those imposed on us and those we impose on others. Dr Larch (a magnetic performance by Oscar-winner Michael Caine) is a maverick, disregarding the abortion laws as he believes it is better he does abortions rather than someone untrained; he is also perfectly willing to impose his own rules on Homer as testaments to be followed without question. Similarly the “Cider House Rules” written on the wall of the apple workers’ lodgings are rejected outright by the working gang for their own unspoken code of conduct, no more effective than the system it replaces. All the characters are forced to draft their own rules (or principles) they can live with, matching their circumstances and actions.

The film also looks gently at the conflict between our desires and our duties, with Homer and Candy both yearning for freedom from their natural inclinations to have something to serve. This is presented as a struggle without a natural “right or wrong”, even if the apple orchard is a loose Garden of Eden, into which evil is admitted with tragic (and life-changing) consequences. A small criticism would be that the charismatic warmth of Caine’s performance and the family atmosphere of the orphanage are so endearing that it does unbalance the dilemma Homer eventually faces – instead of the audience feeling as torn as Homer about whether he should stay or return, most audience members I think would want him to return to the orphanage forthwith!

Tobey Maguire is so perfectly cast as the naïve in some ways, wordly wise in others, old-boy-young-man that he effectively reprised Homer Wells as Peter Parker a few years later. His sweet face –uncomplicated innocence and charm are in every twitch of his smile – carries the film, and his easy-going desire for a simple life makes perfect sense of the character’s rebellion against Larch’s benevolent dictation. Equally good for me though is Theron as Candy. She is a wonderfully expressive performer: midway through the film she is caught off-guard by an overlong hug from Homer, and a series of conflicted emotions from shock, to guilt, to attraction play across her face.

There is hardly a weak performance in the film, with Hallström drawing excellent work from the young orphans. Amongst the sprawling, Dickensian feeling cast, Caine is marvellous as the part dictator, part humanitarian Larch making a larger-than-life character feel real and grounded. Lindo captures the pride mixed with arrogance of Mr Rose. There are plenty of other excellent performances, not least from Baker and Alexander as two contrasting nurses in the orphanage.

I almost feel slightly guilty for the impact Cider House Rules had on me. In many ways it’s exactly the sort of safe, middle-of-the-road “serious” drama that seems designed to attract the notice of Oscar voters. But it’s told with a great deal of skill and dedication, and delivers so many emotional moments with warmth and feeling, I found myself genuinely moved by it. In fact I felt a bit teary at least twice. This is closely linked to some excellent performances – and a wonderful swelling musical score by Rachel Portman – but despite being the sort of middle brow Hollywood film it’s fashionable (and easy) to attack, I thought this was engaging, moving and thought provoking from start to finish.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

Colin Firth means business in super-violent Bond spoof Kingsman

Director: Matthew Vaughan

Cast: Colin Firth (Harry Hart/Galahad), Samuel L. Jackson (Richmond Valentine), Mark Strong (Merlin), Taron Egerton (Gary “Eggsy” Unwin), Michael Caine (Chester King/Arthur), Sophie Cookson (Roxy Morton), Sofia Boutella (Gazelle), Samantha Womack (Michelle Unwin), Geoff Bell (Dean), Edward Holcroft (Charlie Heskith), Mark Hamill (James Arnold), Jack Davenport (Lancelot)

Okay Kingsmen. I’ll hit a beat later on which explores a major problem I had with this movie, but let’s talk about the rest of the film first shall we?

Firstly, Kingsmen is for the most part rather good fun (even if it is too long). It’s an excitable, teenage-focused riff on James Bond films that throws in ultra-violence and foul language alongside the overblown villains, insane plots and super-spy skills (all themselves amped up to 11). “Eggsy” (Taron Egerton) is a drifting, working-class young man from a council estate who is recruited as a candidate for super-secretive espionage firm “The Kingsmen” by Harry Hart (Colin Firth). Bucking against the system, Eggsy must prove himself against the privileged, public-school types he is competing against for a place. Meanwhile, Hart investigates sinister plans from tech billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), aiming at reshaping the world to fit his own insane ideas.

Kingsmen basically has a teenage sensibility, with a “too cool for school” love for swearing and extreme (if comic book) violence. It deliberately sets itself out as a grimy, modernish, street version of Roger Moore’s Bond movies (at one point, Hart and Valentine even discuss “old spy films” – presumably copyright prevented a namecheck for Britain’s finest). The plot (and the cascade of exploding heads, satellites, sinister cross world signals, world leaders in danger etc.) all have the air of the sort of stupidity you found in Moonraker or The Spy Who Loved Me: the joke being that these fantastical elements have been mixed in with a sweary working-class hero and graphic violence. It has a pop-culture knowingness about it which it just (by the skin of its teeth) manages to prevent becoming too smug or self-satisfied.

This is partly because it is so well made. The violence and fighting are rather well done in their overblown, excessive excitement. Vaughan shoots it with a loving camera, revelling in the dynamism and speed of his agents (and their ruthless efficiency) in a way that’s very hard not to find entertaining. Some interesting music choices also add an ironic commentary to the killing. Vaughan’s also to be commended for spotting the potential for ass-kicking super-spy in Colin Firth (even if Firth himself probably plays the whole film marginally too seriously). The film’s main set piece a jaw-droppingly violent but slickly made fight sequence in a church is probably the only thing it will be remembered for in ten years time – but is certainly worth remembering. The fighting is fun to watch – it’s a shame it’s not married with a wittier script, as if the wit of the visuals couldn’t be carried across to the dialogue in case we got bored.

Vaughan’s script also wants to fight the corner of the working class – although saying that, since every other working class character in the film except for Eggsy and his Mum are criminals, wannabe gangsters or thugs, it could just as well be fighting the corner of the “deserving poor”. Some rather obvious notes are hit during Eggsy’s training as he clashes with the chinless wonders that populate the Kingsmen candidates. It would perhaps work better if Eggsy himself was a more engaging and sympathetic lead – but as it is, the parts of the film without Firth (and Strong as a Scottish, grumpy Q) do drag a bit, which is unfortunate when your film is already over two hours long. It’s hardly Saturday Night and Sunday Morning but it pushes through its Pygmalion-plot line reasonably well.

For the most part, Kingsmen is stupid, teenage fun. It takes place in a spoof James Bond world of huge bases in mountains and plans to destroy the world that can only be foiled by dynamic acrobatic fighting. If you were a male teenager watching this it would probably be your favourite film ever. It’s probably a little too knowing and isn’t really as charming as it really needs to be to work really well, but it’s entertaining enough. I was happy to leave it like that. And then this happens quite late on in the film:

Now it’s important to remember when watching this, that the video contains all the interactions in the movie between these two characters. Now I suppose you could just say it’s a smutty joke that, like the rest of the movie, takes the elements of a Bond movie (“Keeping the British end up sir!”) and amps them up to 11. But it’s cruder and (in my opinion) too clumsy and sexist for that. Not only that, but it’s the sort of exploitative, sexualised rubbish that makes you suddenly address the entire film’s attitude towards women.

The film has five female speaking roles (at a push). Each of these roles fills a specific stereotyped, trope-based function. One is a victim in an abusive relationship (the mother). Another is a standard “hot action chick” (the villain’s henchperson). Another exists solely to die early on. The character in the clip only exists to provide the hero with anal sex as a reward. None of these characters serve any purpose in themselves, other than how they relate to the male characters of the movie. All of them to varying degrees require protection from a man, or exist purely to service his needs. The cliché of a physically-strong-but-still-really-hot woman being created in place of an actual character is so tired, I’ll just leave it here as I can’t be bothered to type up why this isn’t a good balance.

That leaves Roxy, Eggsy’s fellow candidate. On paper, Roxy is a strong female role – only of course she isn’t. There is the standard hand wave that she is “the best in the class” during training – but she’s also established as the only candidate to have a genuine fear (of heights) that she has to be coaxed through by the hero. Her role in the conclusion is conquering this phobia again. The subtle implication is that Eggsy to some degree sacrifices coming top of the class himself to support Roxy.

I’m sure this is all po-faced political correctness and I’m being the sort of humourless prig sitting among the “20% of offended people” Matthew Vaughn said should basically get a sense of humour. But I mean, come on. The last shot of the film is a woman’s naked bottom rearing towards the camera. And yes I know, I know, I know it’s all riffing on Bond films but at least there the heroine was a presence throughout the film. I actually would have much less of a problem if these two characters had spent at least some time throughout the film together – but jumping straight to anal sex? It’s too much. It also seems to be fighting battles of the 1960s. Overt class consciousness from the rich is terrible – but women? Nope they’re just there for the sexier times.

Leaving everything else aside, it’s not that funny a joke. It’s such a terrible joke it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. So what’s otherwise a decent, fun film chooses to end with its lead character invited to perform anal sex by a complete stranger. And how a film ends tells us something about the film we’ve just watched – and for Kingsmen it’s not good.

Carol (2015)

Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in a moving dance of love and romance

Director: Todd Haynes

Cast: Cate Blanchett (Carol Aird), Rooney Mara (Therese Belivet), Sarah Paulson (Abby Gerhard), Kyle Chandler (Harge Aird), Jake Lacy (Richard Semco), John Magaro (Dannie McElroy), Cory Michael Smith (Tommy Tucker), Carrie Brownstein (Genevieve Cantrell)

It’s the way of things that gay love-stories in Hollywood are invariably relegated to a sub plot – often one that has a certain tragical element to it. This is not the case here in Todd Haynes’ superlative romance, which places a lesbian love story at its centre, sensitively building the characters and romantic journey between them.

Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is a lost department store worker, drifting through life. One Christmas, working on the toy stall, she recommends a toy for the daughter of socialite Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). A spark of attraction between the two is immediately apparent, and Carol invites Therese first to dinner, then to spend an evening together and finally a Christmas road trip across America, during which their attraction grows and deepens into a flourishing love.

This wonderful love story, almost a twist on Brief Encounter, is a brilliantly done, extremely engrossing and moving romantic film, a film that manages the rare feat in Hollywood movies of not making a homosexual relationship something that requires narrative punishment. Haynes’ luscious 1950s filming style, stressing the aesthetics and manners of the era, combines brilliantly with a subtly murky photography style that darkens and lightens at different points to create an immersive fairy-tale quality. It’s a perfect tapestry for a deeply caring and sensitive story, anchored by a superb script and wonderful performances.

It has now got to the point where it is axiomatic to say Cate Blanchett gives a wonderful performance – she is, after all, one of the best actresses in the world right now. She is quite simply perfectly cast as Carol, her features having the flexibility to appear both cold and distant and soft and caring, a switch she is able to make with the slightest of gestures. Her patrician manner is deconstructed brilliantly. Her character is initially established as an almost predatory figure, a determined and manipulative woman; it’s only over the course of the film that this persona is slowly taken apart, revealing waves of emotion and pain from years of denial, loneliness and a sense of being trapped. Each scene slowly prompts us to reassess and reevaluate her character, and Blanchett handles this journey with astounding skill, revealing a hinterland of pained, self-doubting isolation and desperation to experience real love behind her cool and confident exterior. It’s a performance of phenomenal skill and emotional force.

It’s matched brilliantly by Rooney Mara as the object of Carol’s affections – and it must be said at the very least a co-lead of the film. Therese is a woman sleepwalking through life when we first see her, trotting through the motions of her interactions with others – a clear void in her, waiting for something to happen to her, but clearly with no idea of what that might be. Similar to Blanchett, Mara’s gentle and sensitive exterior deepens over the course of the film as she becomes more assertive to those around her, more of a determiner of what she wants from her own life. Mara’s soulful eyes and gentle face make her a perfect audience surrogate, creating a character whose feelings, doubts, anxieties and growing confidence we become immersed in. The film is in many ways her story, and Mara’s expressive gentleness is vital to our investment in the story.

The road trip at the heart of the movie’s plot is a charming, lyrical dance between two people juggling an unspoken attraction: one of them on the edge of all times of saying it, the other drawn towards an attraction she is still trying to understand and express. Haynes perfectly captures the small playful moments of first love that pepper these scenes, the camera intimately placed to make us part of this growing partnership of equal minds and hearts. Slowly they grow physically closer – both in their ease of body language, and through their slow progress towards sharing hotel rooms and finally (in an achingly romantic scene) a bed.

It’s a film about romantic longing between two people, the instant attraction. Therese’s first glance of Carol is across a crowded room, with the camera panning past Carol in a POV shot and then returning to her, before cutting back to Therese, now seemingly alive with an attraction she doesn’t quite understand. The Brief Encounter structure of the film is established with the film opening with Carol and Therese’s (possible) last meeting in a dinner. We see their interrupted conversation leading to Carol’s departure, leaving after touching a hand on Therese’s shoulder – the camera lingering on Therese’s back and her unseen reaction (and contrasting it with a meaningless similar touch from a male friend). When this scene is replayed later, we see it more from Carol’s perspective – and her pulsating emotion and longing.

The reason these scenes work so well is that the film continually shows Carol and Therese struggling to hide their growing attraction in plain sight, to maintain the balance between expressing their feeling and keeping a plausible deniability. This feeling grows because the film has the patience to take its time with building this relationship– and because we are aware of Therese’s feelings earlier than she is.

The film’s sensitivity extends to the sympathy it feels for all its characters. As useless as many of the men in the story are, they are confused, distressed or lonely rather than malicious or cruel. Carol’s husband Harge could have been a bullying monster, but he actually comes across as a frustrated and deeply hurt man, who understands on some level his wife’s sexual preferences, but is unable to fully comprehend the implications of this. On paper it’s a thankless part, but Kyle Chandler is superb, his Mad Men features perfectly suited to the role of floundering masculine figure. Many of Therese’s would-be suitors are similarly drawn reasonably sympathetically, however laddy, over-keen or dull they may be – Haynes’ film has an understanding that they are products of their time. In a lovely scene Therese talks about homosexuality with one of her male suitors, who can barely countenance its existence, as if she was talking about the man in the moon.

Haynes’s mastery of the aesthetics of the material is present throughout. Haynes increases the feelings of being trapped or surrounded by a number of shots through windows, using mirrors, from the other side of doors – divides that stress the characters’ sense of being trapped and enclosed in their lives. He also carries across just a small teasing touch of the melodrama of 1950s films – though I would argue this is no way a melodramatic film – with a gun making a deliberately misleading appearance, and a few beats that briefly suggest the film is heading in an entirely different direction.

Carol is a wonderful, soulful and entrancing film. It’s about two people showing each other hidden depths about themselves, uncovering truths and building each other’s capacity for love and ability to admit and understand their feelings. It makes this a tender and endearing film, with two characters whose fates we become completely involved with. It also avoids passing any form of judgement over any of the characters. Filled with subtle moments, open to interpretations (even their first meeting is full of code, from the recommendation of a non-gender-conforming train set to Carol’s gloves left invitingly on the counter) that constantly ask us to review how open we feel the characters are being with themselves and others. With brilliant performances by Mara and Blanchett (backed by Chandler and a very sensitive performance from Sarah Paulson as Carol’s former lover), this wonderful film is both profoundly moving and very uplifting.

U-571 (2000)

Matthew McConaughey and Harvey Keitel crack the Engima Code. With lots of guns. And no maths at all.

Director: Jonathan Mostow

Cast: Matthew McConaughey (Lt. Andrew Tyler), Bill Paxton (Lt. Com. Mike Dahlgren), Harvey Keitel (Chief Henry Klough), Jon Bon Jovi (Lt. Peter Emmett), David Keith (Major Matthew Coonan), Jake Weber (Lt. Michael Hirsch), Jack Noseworth (Bill Wentz), Erik Palladino (Anthony Mazzola), Thomas Kretschmann (Capt. Gunther Wassner)

On its release, U-571 was something of a sensational scandal– and in fact gained far more attention than a fairly standard submarine movie probably deserved. Why is that? Because it epitomised the perception in this country of American films taking war achievements from us poor Brits and giving them to Yankee heroes. Was this annoying for a British people all to used (it seemed) to having their war contribution lost in the crush of American films? You betcha.

During World War 2, Lt. Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey) is sent to lead a team of American sailors to capture an Enigma machine from a stranded German sub. The Enigma machine, and the inability of the Allies to break it, is losing America (whose involvement in the war has been moved forward for the purposes of this story) the war after all. However, the mission swiftly goes wrong and Tyler is left commanding a rogue bunch of terrified sailors on the captured German submarine, trying to get the Engima machine back to the US Navy before its loss is discovered. All that is missing is Alan Turing reinvented as a hard-boiled Brooklyner totting a machine gun and shouting “I gotta Bombe for ya, ya Kraut Bastards!”.

The movie itself is not too bad, to be honest. although nothing special. The expected clichés of the submarine are all there: the fears about water pressure, claustrophobia, a sequence where the boat sinks inexorably towards the bottom of the ocean, torpedoes in the water, depth charges, “right full rudder”, sonar pings, water gushing from pipes, someone having to undertake a vital repair underwater with limited air supply etc etc. – it’s all been done before, from Enemy Below to Crimson Tide. Saying that, Jonathan Mostow knows how to cut the heck out of a movie and as a result this charges forward with a relentless energy which works rather well and makes this a suitably tense film. Special mention also goes to the sound editing, which won an Oscar for its brilliant creation of the aural impact of everything from depth charges to torpedoes scraping hulls.

Of course the story itself is nothing unique: even the personal plot lines are largely recycled from other movies: will McConaughey’s young XO be placed in a situation where he has to prove his chops as a commander? You bet he will! Keitel is an Old Sea Dog, Paxton is a fatherly Captain, Kretschmann is a cold professional German – but the actors play these well shuffled stock characters with an admirable level of commitment. The film has a great “Dirty Dozen” vibe to it, and does manage to throw in a couple of surprises about character fates. For those of us who love the predictable trotted out with po-faced commitment and energy, it’s hard not to be entertained.

There are some well-done (if unsurprising) scenes as Tyler struggles with his authority over men who don’t have trust in him and are terrified of getting killed. It’s interesting how much the film asks us to invest in essentially willing Tyler (a decent performance by McConaughey) to have the guts to send a man to his death for the good of the ship. Centring this moral dilemma as a crucial qualification for leadership at least means the film does take a honest look at the complexities of command to counter the boys’-own heroics elsewhere. Saying that, the almost pathological mutinous rumblings of Seaman Mazzola against an officer we are told early in the film is “popular with the men” does seem rather sudden – possibly because making Tyler a distant stick-in-the-mud (which he would need to be for the level of rejection from the crew to really work) rather than a regular Joe might have made us less likely to root for him at the start.

Of course all of this seems pretty inconsequential next to the real issue of the film, which is its historical accuracy (or complete lack thereof). To be honest, the fury against the film’s appropriation of British Naval achievements is rather harder to sustain (a) nearly 20 years on and (b) when you see what an agenda-free, entertainment-only movie it is. Perhaps the real insult was that the crew of this mission contained actors like Jon Bon Jovi and the guy who played ER’s Dr Dave. But that doesn’t change the fact that this stuff didn’t happen, and the elements of the story that did certainly didn’t happen like this and were done by completely different people. It’s hard to shake the feeling, even while you enjoy the film, that it gives a false glory to the wrong people. If even a few people came out of it thinking the Americans cracked Engima (or that Engima was cracked like this rather than primarily by maths) it’s certainly a few people too many.

As a side note, while reading up about the film before this review, I found that one of the screenwriters, David Ayer (now a purveyor of average WW2 films himself with Fury), had this to say about the controversy of the film’s re-writing of history: “[I do] not feel good…it was a distortion, a mercenary decision to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience…Both my grandparents were officers in World War Two, and I would be personally offended if somebody distorted their achievements…I understand how important that event is to the UK, and I won’t do it again.”