Another racing retread runs out of mileage (AND SCRIPT IS AS FLAT AS AN OLD TYRE)
FFlaws aside, Ferrari looks fabulous with wardrobe on top period-Italian form
our years ago, Michael Mann, he of Heat, Ali and The Insider fame, served as an executive producer on a motor racing picture that was originally called Ford v Ferrari before being released under the slightly less corporate- sounding Le Mans ’66. It starred Christian Bale and Matt Damon and was no more than okay.
Now he’s gone back almost a decade further, opted to direct as well as produce and returned to the idea of corporate-sounding titles. Set in 1957, Ferrari sees the ageing founder of the company, Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver), facing two big dilemmas.
The first is personal – how to divide his life between his mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley), and his passionate, gun-toting wife, Laura, played with fiery Mediterranean gusto by Penélope Cruz. The second concerns his beloved sports car company which, because of the huge cost of running a racing team, is losing money piston over camshaft and facing bankruptcy.
Either Enzo finds a big corporate partner such as Fiat or he has to sell many more road cars to wealthy buyers. And to do that, a Ferrari definitely has to win the iconic Italian road race, the Mille Miglia… Once again, however, it’s no more than okay. Yes, it looks fabulous, with production design and wardrobe on top period Italian form. The crucial motor racing sequences look and sound fantastic too, even if distinguishing one very fast red car from another is challenging at times.
But the screenplay from the late Troy Kennedy Martin often feels staccato and flat, despite the fact that he also wrote both versions of The Italian Job. Mann’s decision to have the whole thing play out in Italian-accented English is the wrong one and, with a cruel irony, the film only comes properly alive when people tragically start dying. For the ‘Tifosi’ (serious Ferrari racing fans) only, perhaps.
Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom continues in the same disappointing vein as the first film from five years ago. So it’s more bad acting from a cast led by Jason Mamoa, a labyrinthine plot with a pseudo-environmental subtext and an endless stream of underwater visual effects that often seem more like Marine Boy-style cartoon from the 1960s than bigbudget live action.
This time around, both underwater and surface worlds are threatened by the globally overheated ambitions of Black Manta, aka David Kane (Yahya AbdulMateen II), forcing Aquaman, aka Arthur Curry (Momoa), to join forces with half-brother and former Atlantean enemy Orm (Patrick Wilson). I was bored silly, but a houseful of fantasy-loving preteens might be more receptive.
In 1972 a Uruguayan flight carrying 45 passengers and crew, including 19 members of a Montevideo rugby union team, crashed into the Andes mountains. Despite an extensive search, no sign of the wreckage was found and it was presumed everyone had perished. Until two exhausted, malnourished members of the rugby team staggered into Chile more than two months later.
But it wasn’t just their extraordinary survival that would keep the story in the headlines for decades, it was the grisly fact that the survivors had resorted to cannibalism to keep themselves alive, eating the flesh of those who either died immediately in the crash or in the days and weeks that followed.
In Society Of The Snow, this extraordinary and harrowing story is brilliantly dramatised by the Spanish film-maker, JA Bayona. The crash is terrifying, the characters touchingly real and the tone respectful and appropriate, with the action pausing each time someone dies so their name and age can be shown on screen. Not Christmassy at all; just very, very good.
I was bored with Aquaman, but a houseful of pre-teens might enjoy it