JEWEL IN THE OCEAN’S CROWN
There are giant waves of fun as Rihanna joins Sandra Bullock in an all-girl reboot of the Rat Pack’s classic crime caper ...
Ocean’s 8 (12A) Verdict: Escapist treat ★★★★✩ Hereditary (15) Verdict: Chilling but overwrought ★★★✩✩
FRANK SINATRA and his alpha- male Rat Pack cohorts would be tickled, or possibly aghast, to see what their 1960 crime caper Ocean’s Eleven started.
First, there was the well-received 2001 remake with George Clooney in the Sinatra role as wise- cracking heist mastermind Danny Ocean, followed by a pair of shakier sequels.
And now there’s an all-female gang doing the crime-capering, with Sandra Bullock (playing Danny’s sister, Debbie), Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter and popstar Rihanna all in lively form.
Another knee in the crotch on behalf of those screaming gender inequality in Hollywood, or just a contrivance to squeeze even more dollars out of a franchise that was becoming tired? I’ll let you decide. Either way, the good news is that this is the best of the Ocean-going films since 2001.
But first, some caveats. Unlike the fabulous diamond necklace at the heart of the story, the film is not without flaws. The character development could be better (ie, there could be some) and James Corden, joining the action late, is miscast as an astute insurance investigator. He’s a talented fellow and all that, but I don’t think he’s quite the actor he and everyone else seems to think he is.
Somehow, playing a facetious cleverclogs, as he does here, he’s more of an irritant to the audience than he is to the characters, which isn’t the idea at all.
At any rate, Oscar Isaac, a very classy actor indeed, played a similar part in last year’s Suburbicon (directed by Clooney, coincidentally) and effortlessly stole all his scenes. Corden, just as effortlessly, rather botches his. Those are the negatives. But looking beyond them, Ocean’s 8 is great fun, a giggly, escapist joyride of a picture slickly marshalled by The Hunger Games director Gary Ross, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Olivia Milch.
Incidentally, she is the daughter of David Milch, the hotshot TV producer who created hits such as NYPD Blue and Deadwood. And Ross’s father was Arthur A. Ross, the screenwriter behind Creature From The Black Lagoon.
HOLLYwOOD family trees teem with inter-marriage and myriad connections just like those of European royalty, which aptly enough brings us to the plot, because European royalty is the theme of the Met Gala, annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and highlight of the year for all New York City socialites, which Debbie and her gang are targeting.
The film begins with her getting out of jail after serving five years for fraud, and diving straight back into a life of shoplifting and petty scams. But she has something bigger in mind. Danny is dead and she needs to live up to the family’s reputation for grand larceny.
So she hooks up again with her old accomplice Lou (Blanchett), a leather-jacketed rock chick. The script hints coyly at a past lesbian love affair between the pair, but personal lives play second fiddle, maybe even third fiddle, to the intricacies of Debbie’s scheme to get rich.
Her former boyfriend, an oily English art dealer played by Richard Armitage, who helped to send her to prison and with whom Debbie has vowed to get even, is more a device than a character.
Lou runs a nightclub these days, and watering down the vodka is the height of her dishonesty. She quickly buys into Debbie’s ingenious plan to steal the famous $150 million ‘Toussaint’ necklace, which is kept deep in the vaults of the jewellers, Cartier.
Naturally, to pull off the heist, they need assorted criminal talents, but they also need a stooge. Hathaway plays spoilt, self-absorbed actress Daphne Kluger (sending up all spoilt, selfabsorbed actresses beautifully), who is identified as little more than a mannequin.
At the insistence of the eccentric Irish fashion designer dressing her (Bonham Carter, deliciously over the top, recalling the excesses of her fairy godmother in 2015’s Cinderella), Daphne will wear the necklace to the gala. with some brilliant jiggery- pokery, Debbie and her team must then pinch it from under the
noses of a formidable security detail. That’s the plan, which also relies on the expertise of a computer hacker (Rihanna), a pickpocket (Awkwafina), a fence (Sarah Paulson) and a jewellerycutter ( Mindy Kaling), making the titular Ocean’s 8.
Additionally, the film throws us a few 24-carat celebrity cameos (Anna Wintour, Serena Williams), which is another reason not to take it the slightest bit seriously. If you go along with that, an hour and 50 minutes will pass very enjoyably indeed.
n HEREDITARY, by contrast, is being taken extremely seriously, with some giving Ari i Aster’s debut feature e equal status to The e Exorcist in the pantheon heon of great horror films.
I was reminded more of the World Cup, which is now under way in Russia, meaning that we must brace ourselves for a month of football cliches.
Here, aptly, is a film of two halves. For an hour, Hereditary unfolds compellingly, chillingly, as a genuinely harrowing study of bereavement, grief, guilt and recrimination. But then, suddenly, it lurches into something else altogether, a tale of the supernatural which gets more and more overwrought, stopping it ever being truly scary.
Still, Toni Collette is fantastic throughout as Annie Graham, a mother of two whose job is crafting scenes of everyday life in miniature.
Clearly, this is significant. The
Shine bright like a diamond: (from left) Sarah Paulson, Sandra Bullock and Rihanna in Oceans 8. Inset, Anne Hathaway (wearing the necklace they hope to steal), , with Richard Armitage
implication from the outset is that just as Annie manipulates her mini-people in their dolls’ houses, so she, her decent husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) and their children, dope- smoking Peter (Alex Wolff) and social misfit Charlie (Milly Shapiro), are themselves being manipulated by a greater, malevolent power.
At the start, her mother has died and Annie must cope with some ambivalent feelings, because they were estranged for many years and, even when they were reconciled, never really got o on. Her mother w was a cold, distant ta woman. But Annie A has plenty of love in her, and an there is no su such ambivalence ab about a later, infinitely in more shocking sh death in the family.
Annie A finds what comfort co she can in collective grief counselling co sessions, sio through which wh she meets another ano bereaved woman, wom Joan (Ann Dow Dowd), who evidently den can offer her the help she so desperately pera needs.
This Th is about the point poin at which the film changes in tone and character. Man Many will disagree, but I wish it had teetered teet on the edge of creepiness, instead of taking the plunge into full-on horror.
Nonetheless, writer- director Aster, who somewhat alarmingly is said to have been inspired by his own family experiences to make this film, announces himself as a serious talent.