February In Film

 The Fabelmans

The film follows Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), a young aspiring filmmaker dedicated to his craft who must negotiate the challenges posed by familial strife. Any resemblance to a real director is I presume entirely coincidental.

One of my issues with the family early on is that they’re almost insufferably twee and not a great deal of interest seems to happen. The film’s central familial conflict feels somewhat implausible and is centred around Sammy’s mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams). I have enjoyed Williams’ work in the past but found her overwrought, hysterical performance here rather offputting.  

Thank goodness then that Uncle Boris (Hirsch) arrives to drop a grenade into proceedings, explaining his own history with film and the arts and underlining Sammy’s forthcoming dilemma. He decides to get to work on his highest scale production to date, a war epic. These are the most joyous shots in the movie, teeming with invention especially in the deployment of practical effects. One of his sister’s complaints upon seeing Sammy’s war epic is that there’s not any female representation, which is a little rich given that his three sisters are barely given anything to do in this movie.

It's the continuation of his personal journey as a filmmaker that provides much more fertile ground in the second half. A scene where one of his fellow students takes exception to his depiction in one of Sammy’s films is much more intriguing than the drama elsewhere in the film. Ultimately, in the battle between art and family, the artist’s story is a much more compelling one.

When Harry Met Sally

There are a plethora of holes in my cinematic knowledge and the classic Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner romcom from 1989 is one of them. I knew nothing about the film going in, except for that scene in which a certain male assumption is emphatically refuted. What surprised me a little is precisely how good Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal are in the titular roles, the chemistry between the pair lighting up the screen.

It’s always a delight to see Carrie Fisher and she and Bruno Kirby provide strong support, both at the centre of the film’s best physical joke, two phone calls with a sort of vaudeville absurdity. Sadly, there is a certain poignancy in watching their wedding scene in the knowledge that both actors are no longer with us.  I may not agree with all of the conclusions that Ephron draws about the nature of relationships between men and women, but she undoubtedly had an eye for sharp, amusing dialogue (“We live in a city of eight million people, of course I was going to bump into my ex-wife at some point”). 

For a film that’s approaching 34 years old, it has stood the test of time remarkably well. It continues to possess a level of wit and sophistication absent from more recent entries in the genre. With a duration of 90 minutes, it’s also the perfect length*. A warm, funny film worthy of its classic status.

*I will never stop banging this drum. More 90 minute films please

The Whale

Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a 600 pound housebound man in the last week of his life who wants to make peace with his estranged daughter before he dies. As a morbidly obese man there are probably a number of things I could say about the depiction of the overweight in this film. I certainly took exception to the scenes where Charlie binge eats, filmed in such a way as one would film a beast or monster. That isn’t the central problem here though. I like Fraser a great deal, an affection that goes back to watching him in George Of The Jungle as a kid. His personal problems over the past decade are well documented and I hope this appearance is a precursor to more work.

What this isn’t unfortunately is an Oscar worthy performance or film and the drama is largely unengaging. The film wants us to believe that Charlie’s estranged daughter “has forgotten what an amazing person she is” when the evidence in front of our eyes is that she’s nasty, vindicative and cruel. I quickly lost interest in the movie’s attempts to redeem both him and her. The biblical and literary allegories used in the film are also unsuccessful in producing depth or profundity.

Hong Chau and Samantha Morton provide the best performances in their supporting roles, but it’s not enough to prevent The Whale from sinking into a sea of mawkishness. Everything about the entire exercise screams “Oscar bait” which it appears The Academy have gleefully taken.

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish

I wouldn’t ordinarily go and see a Dreamworks movie at this point. However, I decided to take a punt on Puss In Boots: The Last Wish as I had read some favourable reviews. It starts promisingly, as an extended fighting sequence between Puss and a giant land monster showcases the colourful visual style of the animation.

The problem is that after this point the rest of the film isn’t quite as fun. Most of the laughs come from John Mulaney having a good time as the exceedingly oversized Big Jack Horner and the film is nearly stolen by a Jiminy Cricket-esque insect with the voice of James Stewart who reacts with high pitched incredulity to Horner’s misdeeds. Additional support comes from Goldilocks and The Three Bears (Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Samson Kayo, all doing largely interchangeable vaguely Cockney accents). If I gave you five minutes you would probably arrive at the same fairy-tale related jokes that are used here. The film is generally underpowered in terms of comedy which is a shame.

Characters go on journeys. Puss In Boots learns to value the last of his remaining nine lives. It's fine but unmemorable stuff. I hope that there’s better to come from this year’s animated offerings. The closing scene teases a return to Far Far Away and presumably another film featuring a certain green ogre. I suspect that the temptation to milk that particular cash cow one more time will be too much to resist. Turn up that Smash Mouth record, it’s time to go back to the swamp.

Pretty Woman

Has this 30-year-old film about an exceedingly wealthy man who falls in love with a sex worker stood the test of time? I found myself being somewhat hoodwinked by this movie, having never seen it before. It’s a fun and enjoyable watch for much of its runtime and you believe in the relationship between Julia Roberts (who is particularly terrific) and Richard Gere up to a point.

It’s only really when I left the cinema that I suddenly realised there were a fair few retrospective red flags. It undoubtedly fetishises wealth and power (Gere’s character is very much from the school of “Greed is good” espoused by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street) and its attitude towards sex work is condescending and patronising. A scene in which Gere’s character informs her that she “could be so much more” is particularly cringeworthy. It also has entirely the wrong ending*. The narrative demonstrates how both parties have had their lives positively impacted by the other (he makes a selfless business decision, she plans to leave LA and explore a new life) and thus they don’t need to get together at the end with some dubious allusions to Cinderella thrown into the mix. I’d like to think a modern-day romantic comedy might be more bold but who knows?

So, it’s problematic. But still fun. Problematic fun? It’ll never catch on.

*I ordinarily will try to avoid major plot spoilers in these reviews but am not sure that policy should be applicable when the film is three decades old.

Shotgun Wedding

A rare foray into straight-to-streaming here but as it was officially released in 2023 I think it’s legit. Think I’ve finally decided on the scope of this blog:

1.       2023 film releases in the cinema

2.       Non-2023 films in the cinema

3.       2023 film releases on streaming services.

I saw the trailer for Shotgun Wedding in December and thought it might be worth giving a go. Unfortunately, the final film is not as fun and action packed as the trailer would suggest. It’s a reasonably functional romcom with one decent action set piece. That’s about it though and I was looking for more, perhaps with a greater commitment to the silliness of the premise. Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel are both basically fine as the bride and groom. I was initially too distracted by Lenny Kravitz’s sensational physique to question his dubious performance. That’s possibly a bit unfair but I felt he lacked the requisite chops (I believe that’s the technical term) required by his role.

We appear to be living in the era of Jennifer Coolidge and she unsurprisingly has most of the funny lines here through her character’s bizarre pronouncements. Cheech Marin is also understatedly funny as the father of the bride.

Any movie which has Coolidge going ballistic with an automatic rifle is not entirely devoid of merit. But I can understand why this didn’t get a theatrical release. There were two films released in 2022 with destination wedding or action romcom themes, Ticket To Paradise and The Lost City. I’d recommend both of those over this one.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance

Magic Mike’s Last Dance? On this evidence, I would certainly hope so. The plot is an incoherent mess. Our titular topless dancing hero (Channing Tatum) is dragged to London by Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek-Pinault), a wealthy woman going through a divorce who wants to adapt the current production at the theatre she owns and shape it in the mould of Magic Mike. Predictably, this adaption at the end of the film bears no resemblance to the original show. So why not just put on a new show? This is one of several facets of the story which make no sense whatsoever, including one remarkable scene where council regulations are circumvented by dancing on a bus.

 When we finally get there, the show is entertaining enough in itself (and demonstrates that Tatum has got the skills) but completely sidelines Maxandra’s character, having spent the previous two hours focusing mainly on their relationship. She also has a daughter named Zadie, a sullen, moody know it all teenager who inexplicably also narrates the film, a truly bizarre device that serves to make the whole thing seem like some sort of college Media Studies project. Her lofty pronouncements about the history of dance are not as profound or impactful as Stephen Soderbergh would like to think. Kudos to Ayub Khan Din who does his absolute best to eke out some humour as Maxandra’s deadpan butler, but there is little to recommend here. It's not so much as film as a two-hour advertisement for the Magic Mike stage show.

Heat

I knew basically nothing about this film going in apart from recalling it from a brief reference in Peep Show where Mark Corrigan and Jeremy Usborne are bored to tears at a lengthy play and lament the fact they can’t leave. Their anguish is compounded when they come to realise they could be at home watching Heat.

Everything about it works. Al Pacino is fantastic as Vincent Hanna, an LAPD detective obsessed with the job to the detriment of his personal life. Robert De Niro is fantastic as Neil McCauley, the expert career criminal going for one last big score. Val Kilmer is great as one the loyal members of McCauley’s crew. There’s also a lot of fantastic supporting work done by the likes of Danny Trejo (whose character is imaginatively called Trejo). As a basically lifelong fan of The Simpsons, I enjoy seeing its voice actors turn up in things and the fantastic Hank Azaria is part of a memorable, hilarious scene with Pacino here.

It’s a compelling cat and mouse thriller that is brilliant from start to finish and it’s easy to see how it became a reference point for the Grand Theft Auto game series. The scene in which Pacino and McCauley meet for coffee is probably one of the best things I’ve seen in any film. Unlike many of the classic movies I’ve seen so far this year, it’s an experience greatly enhanced by watching it at the cinema. Take Mark and Jez’s advice and watch it, on a big screen if you can.

Ant Man And The Wasp: Quantumania

In every discussion I have had in the past five years about superhero movies, I have used the phrase “Marvel fatigue”. It’s a long-term affliction and unfortunately there are no signs of it abating here. I have not seen the previous Ant Man films but I understand that his central gimmicks are his ability to become very small and very big. Neither of those are much in play here, save for a section near the end and even that doesn’t explain to the viewer quite how scale and perspective work in the Quantum Realm in which nearly the entire film takes place.

I like Paul Rudd a great deal but here he just seems to be an identikit superhero in a film drenched in CG that’s not terribly engaging. There are a couple of interesting facets here. There’s no doubt that the freakish M.O.D.O.K is an intriguing screen presence and as a fan of The Good Place it’s fun to see William Jackson Harper as Quaz. He has some droll lines as a psychic tired of everyone’s nonsense, the most notable of a bunch of tertiary characters who look like rejects from the Star Wars Cantina.

Generally though, it seems to encapsulate a lot of the problems with modern day Marvel, with a lack of identity and a lack of meaningful narrative stakes. It also introduces the character of Kang, who is supposed to be the Thanos of this era of Marvel. At this stage at least, he’s not a convincing villain. But we’ll see much more of him over the coming years in what feels like less of a franchise and more of a slog at this point.

Broker

This is a curious film, the third Korean picture I’ve seen in recentish times after Parasite which I greatly enjoyed and last year’s Decision To Leave, an artful thriller that was well made but didn’t quite gel with me. Broker concerns the phenomenon of “baby boxes” where unwanted babies are left by mothers to be cared for by the state. One such child is stolen by two “brokers” (one of whom was previously orphaned) with plans to sell him on the black market to affluent couples who wish to operate outside of the conventional adoption procedures. The child’s mother discovers this but is unable to report them to the police as she is also a person of interest. It is proposed that she accompanies them on the road to find a buyer for the child, agreeing to split the proceeds. They set off on their journey, followed ominously by members of law enforcement.

The film is ultimately about the mental/emotional baggage carried around by these protagonists as they form an unlikely union. Parasite’s Song Kang-ho stars here as one of the brokers and in both films, he’s a hugely engaging screen presence. There’s a fascinating scene late on in the movie which explores his own struggles with family and his sense of isolation that I wish had been explored in more detail. The narrative ultimately feels too implausible and this took me out of the movie in the end. Still, it’s thematically interesting even though it didn’t quite work for me.

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

I’m going to lay down another edict here, which is that no film title should have more than five words in it.

“They’ve become like family to me ever since your father left for that teenage whore”

“She’s 35”

“Exactly”

If nothing else, Emma Thompson’s character in this film provides some comfort to those of us hitting that particular milestone in the very near future. This romcom follows Kaz (Shazad Latif) as he pursues an arranged marriage and Zoe (Lily James), his childhood friend and award winning documentary maker who has agreed to make him the subject of her next film (Love Contractually, as she puts it in a meeting with insufferable TV bigwigs).

It gives some interesting perspectives about arranged marriage, through some interviews on sofas with couples which owe more than a little to When Harry Met Sally. The film analyses the contrast between the idea of an instant spark and instant attraction and developing love over time through an arranged marriage.  It’s thoughtful and more subversive than you might necessarily think, particularly when addressing the views of the young people in Pakistan on their religious and familial traditions.

It's warm and genuinely laugh out loud funny in places, with Thompson having fun if not particularly stretching herself as Zoe’s mother. I wondered earlier in this blog whether a modern-day romantic comedy might be bolder than those of the 80s and 90s. Ultimately, this is not that film, but it’s an enjoyable watch and I can see it picking up an audience when it makes it to streaming.