The Herald - The Herald Magazine
PICK OF THIS WEEK’S FILMS
BOMBSHELL (15)
Power taints and corrupts in director Jay Roach’s provocative drama inspired by the sexual harassment scandal that engulfed Fox News and precipitated the downfall of chief executive Roger Ailes. Bombshell bristles with intent but doesn’t always draw blood, delving only so far beneath the powdered and preened surface of a pervasive culture of exploitation. Screenwriter Charles Randolph, who shared the Oscar with Adam McKay for the whip-smart script to The Big Short, employs similar stylistic devices – characters breaking the fourth wall, pithy voiceovers – to ricochet between the viewpoints of three women (two real, one fictional) with the urgency of a breaking news story. It’s incendiary entertainment punctuated by a few knockout scenes including a sickening audition in Ailes’s office, which involves one naive employee (Margot Robbie) tearfully hitching up her skirt to show her legs until her underwear is exposed because the CEO claims that TV news is “a visual medium”. Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron add fire to the film’s gym-toned belly, the latter fully deserving her Oscar nomination for her startling transformation into one of Fox
News’s most prominent anchors, Megyn Kelly.
JUST MERCY (15)
Based on lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s memoir, writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton’s courtroom drama adds a thick layer of Hollywood sheen to the true story of an Alabama pulpwood worker who attempted to overturn his murder conviction from death row. The script is tethered to the facts of the case. There are no last-gasp twists in the judge’s deliberations nor any surprise witnesses, whose testimony provides a missing piece of the narrative. Just Mercy is a deeply conventional courtroom drama, galvanised by strong performances from Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx as the impassioned legal counsel and prisoner resigned to his grim fate, who learn valuable lessons about trust during four years of appeals. The emotional beats of Cretton’s script are predictable but there is undeniable satisfaction when they land, accompanied by heavenly harmonies from a gospel choir on the soundtrack.
1917 (15)
Sam Mendes set about the demanding task of doing justice to conveying the horrors and sacrifices of war. The result is magnificent. This is the First World War as depicted elsewhere but bolstered by strange, original, unforgettable images. Heaven and hell are in the details. Everywhere lies death, and rats the size of dogs. It is a measure of the riches on show that the cast boasts actors of the calibre of Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Colin Firth and Andrew Scott, all playing small parts. The screenplay, co-written by Glasgow’s own Krysty Wilson-Cairns, was deservingly nominated for an Oscar.
THE IRISHMAN (15)
Martin Scorsese’s exhaustive and exhausting return to the criminal underworld with GoodFellas leading men Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci transplants the toxic masculinity from New York to the mean streets of Philadelphia. Writer Steven Zaillian confidently plunders Charles Brandt’s true-crime book I Heard You Paint Houses to recount an epic tale of brotherhood, which culminates in the disappearance of union leader Jimmy Hoffa in July 1975. Scorsese’s long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker overcharges our patience with a running time – three-and-a-half hours – that feels almost as bloated as some of the titular heavy’s lifeless victims.
JOJO RABBIT (12A)
Adapted from Christine Leunen’s novel Caging Skies, Jojo Rabbit is a daring comedy drama which boldly recounts one episode of suffering and redemption during the Second World War through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, who claims the Fuhrer as an imaginary friend. New Zealand writer, director and star Taika Waititi confidently walks a tightrope between heartbreak and hilarity, employing his quirky brand of humour to witness the rise of fascism and its devastating consequences. Jojoo Rabbit will undoubtedly divide audiences as it turns the pages of one of the darkest chapters of 20th century history. The central concept is deeply objectionable and Waititi’s pointedly outlandish portrayal of Hitler as a bilespewing buffoon – as imagined by a boy who has never met the leader – has the power to offend. I wholeheartedly bought into the satire and sentimentality of Waititi’s vision, which affirms the enduring strength of love to light a path through the darkness.
SEBERG (15)
Kristen Stewart is well cast physically as the actress Jean Seberg, whom we first meet in Paris in 1968 as she heads for Los Angeles, leaving behind her young son and philandering husband. It’s an era of political turmoil, from student protests in France to the Black Panthers in the US, and on the flight to LA Jean encounters Black Power activist Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie) and, as well as making financial contributions to his cause, becomes involved with him. Meanwhile we meet FBI agent Jack Solomon (Jack O’Connell), who is assigned to begin a surveillance operation on Jean and her associations. To the FBI, these movements are akin to terrorist outfits. It scores a little with its ongoing relevance regarding racial tensions and female empowerment and how little we’ve evolved in 50 years, but that can’t compensate for the lack of compelling drama in a film that is more than a little dreary.
THE GENTLEMEN (18)
After the quick-stepping theatricality of a live-action Aladdin replete with Will Smith’s motion-captured genie, Guy Ritchie returns to the crime-riddled streets of London and filmmaking home comforts. The dodgy geezers and expletive-laden double-dealing of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which saddled the writer-director as a one-trick pony more than 20 years ago, are enthusiastically rehashed and recycled in The Gentlemen. The budget of this slickly orchestrated caper is bigger than Ritchie’s 1998 calling card, including a leading role for Matthew McConaughey, but the macho posturing, snappy dialogue and stylistic quirks are disappointingly familiar, including a point-of-view shot from inside a car boot.
Kinks in a predictable plot are clearly telegraphed through self-consciously quickfire dialogue.
LITTLE WOMEN (U)
For her handsomely mounted film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, writer-director Greta Gerwig remains faithful to the source text and abides by literary tropes. She also indulges in post-feminist revisionism to set her Little Women apart from previous incarnations and strike a chord in the post-#MeToo era. The fractured chronology isn’t entirely successful. By reframing the death of a pivotal figure, Gerwig dampens the emotional impact and the juxtaposition of scenes eight years apart can be confusing. “People want to be amused, not preached at. Morals don’t sell nowadays,” a publisher (Tracy Letts) counsels Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) in the opening scene. Gerwig’s splendid film disagrees and sells Alcott’s morality largely word for word through pithy observational humour and boundless affection for the characters.
KNIVES OUT (12A)
Writer-director Rian Johnson pays loving tribute to Agatha Christie with a tongue-in-cheek country house whodunit. Knives Out assembles a starry cast of prime suspects including Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette and Michael Shannon and cleverly conceals the murderer’s identity until a classic final act reveal. Johnson’s script lovingly embraces the tropes of a murder mystery while fishing for red herrings, assembling the accused in a wood-panelled drawing room for a private detective’s pithy summation replete with overlapping flashbacks. Perhaps curiously, the film’s weakest link is the brilliant mind in charge of the case: a sleuth played by Daniel Craig with a hammy accent fried in the Deep South. However, pieces of Johnson’s elaborate puzzle slot satisfyingly into place as the ensemble cast have fun with their colourful roles.
CATS (U)
Tom Hooper’s ambitious film version of Cats employs digital trickery to add coats of soft, wind-tousled fur to a starry human cast including Dame Judi Dench, who was supposed to originate Grizabella in 1981 until injury forced Elaine Paige to replace her.
The character’s belting ballad, Memory, is the show’s standout number and Jennifer Hudson sinks her claws into each tremulous word on screen, tears streaming as she confides, “I remember the time I knew what happiness was,” before the inevitable key change tips her over the edge into full-blooded caterwaul of the broken-hearted. Hooper’s strangely sensual extravaganza revels in the sight of cast members rubbing themselves up against each other in purring rhapsody or arching backs to the choreography of Andy Blankenbuehler, who won a Tony award for Hamilton.