March In Film

Cocaine Bear

My theory was that this film was either going to be magnificent or terrible and it’s something of a disappointment that it turned out to be neither. It’s nice to see Character Actress Margot Martindale on the big screen and she provides the most entertaining performance in the movie as a sassy park ranger. She and the rest of the cast aren’t given a tremendous amount to work with script wise, as jokes about “dusty beavers” demonstrate.

Nonetheless, I also enjoyed the film debut of Scott Seiss, whose comedic employment based TikToks have become so popular that even I have heard of them. He and Martindale are involved in by the far the film’s best sequence, a ludicrous vehicle chase that ends in a memorable if somewhat gory fashion. It’s probably the only section where the film truly commits to the ludicrous nature of its premise and the remainder is largely dull by comparison. Phil Lord and Chris Miller have producer credits here and it’s a shame that there’s a lack of the absurdist invention that characterises their best work.

I feel overall that the film squanders a mildly interesting premise and more could have been done with it in other hands. It’s dedicated to the memory of Ray Liotta, who undoubtedly phones it in here as a drug dealer with wafer thin characterisation. I hope he has at least one more posthumous performance forthcoming, if only because this would be a highly peculiar note for his career to end on.

Women Talking

A group of women in a remote Mennonite community are subjected to a series of sexual and physical abuses by the men. They are informed that they must forgive them for their crimes or they will not be permitted to enter the kingdom of heaven. When the men are away from the colony to bail out the offenders in the city, the women meet to discuss and decide their next course of action. Do they do nothing? Do they stay and fight? Or do they leave?

What feels quite striking is the universality of the setting and the subject matter. There is very little to tie the events taking place to the 21^st Century until one particularly surreal scene involving one of The Monkees’ greatest hits. The majority of the film takes place in a barn, with three of the colony’s senior families deliberating on the women’s fate.

That may be a key factor in why I didn’t find this particularly dramatic or theatrical. But the film is effective at unravelling the full extent of the horrors the women had been subjected to, from the physical damage inflicted upon Salome and her children (a furious Claire Foy) to Ona, who is carrying her rapist’s child (a soft-spoken Rooney Mara). I am somewhat uncomfortable with highlighting virtually the only male performance in a film called Women Talking. But I thought Ben Whishaw was terrific as August, a man with a complicated history with the colony who has returned to teach the boys (women conveniently are not permitted to receive education). He attempts to wrestle with the horrors inflicted whilst also trying to plot a route to redemption for the younger members of the colony and this provides some particularly powerful scenes.

I am not as enthusiastically full of praise for the movie as some critics have been. But I thought it was a thoughtful and quietly impactful piece.

Rye Lane

This is the debut film of Raine Allen-Miller, which centres upon Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) who meet at an art installation in the immediate aftermath of Dom’s messy breakup from his girlfriend. Jonsson performs with an understated charm and Oparah is terrific, lighting up the screen with an energetic and charismatic but believable performance. The scene in which she gatecrashes a meeting between Dom and his ex is particularly delightful.

The pair have great chemistry together, they almost dance around the screen in their scenes with one another. They feel like genuine young people with genuine issues young people might have, as they explore their feelings of inadequacy related to their lack of success in their respective fields. This is something which is not always depicted well on the big screen.

One of the movie’s great strengths is that it takes place in and around Peckham and the titular location, with the excellent Peckham Plex getting a much-deserved shout out. Unlike many British romcoms of the past, it feels plausibly grounded in the real capital city, even when it reveals who the proprietor of takeout joint “Love Guactually” is.

The obligatory romcom conflict and its subsequent resolution in the final act doesn’t feel entirely plausible and is a little too neat, but that’s a minor complaint. It’s a sweet, charming little film and a strong calling card for Allen-Miller, Jonsson and Oparah, providing an important reminder to us all to endeavour to be the type of person who waves back at boats.

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

Having gone off on one about the current state of superhero films last month, I was not particularly looking forward to this. I was somewhat mystified by Helen Mirren’s appearance here as one of the three daughters of Atlas threatening to wreak havoc on the world. Then I remembered she has appeared in multiple The Fast & The Furious films suggesting her choice of project is not always discerning (a trailer reminded me that a tenth edition is somehow forthcoming). Both franchises have a not particularly subtle fixation on the importance of family, as noted in a throwaway line here.

Lucy Liu (not her finest work) and Rachel Zegler (who was very good in Spielberg’s West Side Story remake in 2021) are the other two sisters, the latter bringing some emotional heart to proceedings. The “Shazam!” family are a likeable bunch, the action sequences do enough to keep your attention and the movie’s dialogue is generally funnier than most. There’s a sequence towards the end featuring a truly ridiculous piece of product placement, but the movie at that point had built up enough goodwill for me to let it go. Satanic unicorns marauding through the streets of Philadelphia? Oh, why not.

If I did stars, which I don’t, this would be a solid three purely on the basis that it’s a superhero movie which has remembered that superhero movies are supposed to be fun. It may be a low bar, but I enjoyed it a good deal more than I enjoyed Quantumania.

Shaun Of The Dead

I enjoyed revisiting the first of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s “Cornetto” trilogy, a comedy horror film which is both legitimately scary and legitimately funny. There’s a lot of fun comedic business in it, like Shaun and Ed deliberating on the artistic merits of the musicians in their vinyl collection before deciding which LPs to throw at the heads of oncoming zombies.

I had totally forgotten that Bill Nighy is in it as Shaun’s stepfather. It’s a testament to Nighy’s skill as an actor that he gives his minor role some genuine pathos. Which has reminded me that I can thoroughly recommend “Living”, one of my favourite films from last year in which he is terrific.

Amusingly, the gang bump into fellow Spaced alumnus Jessica Hynes who plays Yvonne, who leads a similar ‘Who’s Who?” of British comedy talent through the zombie apocalypse. It has been suggested that this implies the existence of “Yvonne Of The Dead” occurring concurrently, a film I would also like to have seen. Of the central gang in the film, it’s a bit of a shame that Dylan Moran and Lucy Davis aren’t given more to do.

Of the three films in the trilogy, it takes second place for me behind Hot Fuzz, whose premise of American cop movie themes juxtaposed with small town parochial England yields greater comedic returns*. But it’s funny, charming and (apart from an unfortunate piece of “ironic” racism) has largely held up well.

*We shall never speak of The World’s End again.

Tetris

This is a film about the attempt to licence a video game in the 1980s, which is not the most compelling of pitches. That is succeeds is testament to Taron Egerton, who I have seen in a few things in recent years and is always a compelling on-screen presence providing wholehearted performances. He plays Henk Rogers, a small-time software publisher who quite literally bets the house on securing worldwide distribution rights for Tetris, savvily identifying an opportunity in conjunction with Nintendo’s new handheld Game Boy console. To do so, he must go to the Soviet Union to strike a deal, a task which predictably proves onerous.

In the process, he meets Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov) the inventor of the game. I thought Yefremov was terrific, providing the emotional core of the film as the hugely talented coder caught in the middle of the situation and fearful of the potential repercussions for his family. As a Nintendo enthusiast I was aware of the basics of this story but didn’t know that Robert Maxwell (monstrously portrayed by Roger Allam here) was involved in the battle for the rights, as well as his weaselly son Kevin (everyone’s refusal to refer to him more formally provides an amusing running gag). I greatly enjoyed a nonchalant and not strictly speaking relevant reference to his theft of company pension funds. Time should not allow us to forget precisely how big a bastard this man was.

The credibility of the plot is stretched somewhat towards the end, but I found it highly enjoyable.

Creed III

I have effectively committed to seeing everything that is on at my local cinema, which results in me jumping into certain franchises at the midway point or in this case, a long way beyond. I have not seen any of the Rocky films or either of the previous two Creed films but am broadly familiar with the conventions of the series and those seem present and correct here. Real life grievances settled in the ring, with upbeat outdoor training montages and at least one truly absurd contrivance that the boxing authorities would not agree to in a million years in the real world. Essentially, everything in this movie pans out as you would expect it to.

What elevates it somewhat are the performances, Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan, also on directing duty) and Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors) prove strong friends turned adversaries. Majors is truly menacing in his role and his character’s sense of betrayal feels genuine. He’s much scarier here than as Kang in the most recent Ant Man picture and the alleged destroyer of worlds in forthcoming Marvel films. Tessa Thompson provides an understated but impressive performance as Creed’s wife, a talented music producer in her own right coming to terms with the end of her popstar heyday. The scenes involving the couple’s daughter, Amara (who is deaf) and the use of sign language feel organic and genuinely inclusive. The fight sequences themselves are well shot, cinematic and compelling. No-one is reinventing the wheel here but it’s a solidly entertaining picture.

Allelujah

This is a curious one. Based on a 2018 Alan Bennett play and positioned as a sort of love letter to the NHS, it centres on a hospital in Yorkshire nicknamed “The Beth” which has been earmarked for closure. Jennifer Saunders is terrific as the put upon nurse Alma Gilpin, who has developed a “stiff upper lip” attitude to care over her many years in the NHS. Bally Gill plays the appropriately named Dr Valentine, whose love and compassion for his patients is such that he feels less like a rounded human being and more like a candidate for sainthood. This sentiment is reinforced by an earnest fourth wall breaking coda at the film’s denouement.

A somewhat too convenient conflict of interest is provided by Colin Colman (Russell Tovey), a management consultant charged with visiting The Beth and reporting back to the Health Secretary. His father Joe (David Bradley) just so happens to be a patient there. The two share a somewhat turbulent history and Colin’s scenes with the curmudgeonly left-wing Joe are some of the film’s most entertaining, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by the son’s last minute ideological conversion. Of the patients, Joe is the film’s focus but Derek Jacobi provides some much needed comic relief as Ambrose, a pompous old English professor.

The film suggests if and when the NHS is dismantled, the people will neither forgive nor forget, which is almost certainly true. But that message is comprehensively undermined by a bizarre narrative turn in the final act which unfortunately will be my abiding memory of this film.