The Herald - The Herald Magazine
PICK OF THIS WEEK’S FILMS
EMMA (U)
In Jane Austen’s 1815 novel of mismatched lovers, meddlesome yet well-meaning Emma Woodhouse informs one dashing suitor, “I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other”. First-time feature film director Autumn de Wilde and screenwriter Eleanor Catton respond to those demands with a spirited yet staunchly faithful treatment of the source text, which gallops over various hurdles on the characters’ converging paths to enduring happiness. Neatly bookmarked into chapters denoting the four seasons, this incarnation of Emma is a handsomely upholstered and sporadically hilarious affair, distinguished by chocolate box production design and costumes. Anya Taylor-Joy is a snug fit for the aloof, shallow and adroit heroine and catalyses gently simmering on-screen chemistry with Johnny Flynn as her stiff-shirted sparring partner, Mr Knightley. The most imaginative and wickedly enjoyable screen adaptation of Austen’s work remains Amy Heckerling’s delicious 1995 teen comedy Clueless but de Wilde politely reminds us of the book’s bountiful but oldfashioned charms without straying far from the page.
PARASITE (15)
Writer-director Bong Joon-ho mines a mother lode of deliciously cruel intentions in his wickedly entertaining, genre-bending satire, which won Best Picture at the Oscars – the first foreign film to do so. Careening wildly from slapstick and scabrous social commentary to full-blooded horror, Parasite gleefully inhabits the cavernous divide between South Korea’s haves and have-nots. The script, co-written by Han Jin-won, lulls us into a false sense of security with a gently paced yet engrossing opening hour before Joon-ho tightens the screws on his desperate characters, setting in motion a jaw-dropping second act that leaves our nerves in tatters. The film-maker dissipates tension with staccato bursts of ghoulish humour but belly laughs are soaked with bile – primal screams of despair aimed at a world that repeatedly kicks the poor and disenfranchised when they are down.
BIRDS OF PREY
(AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF
ONE HARLEY QUINN) (15)
If being trapped inside a neon-lit carnival fun house for almost two hours with the music blaring at full volume sounds like a blast, then Birds Of Prey hits a sweet spot with its anti-heroine’s oversized mallet. Margot Robbie’s gung-ho embodiment of unhinged Gotham City psychiatrist Harley Quinn, who lost her heart and mind to the Joker, was the chief undeniable pleasure of the overstuffed 2016 fantasy Suicide Squad. She electrifies every brief lull in director Cathy Yan’s rumbustious chapter of the DC Comics universe, aiming for the irreverent tone and tomfoolery of Deadpool. The film and
Robbie hit the target more often than not – with glitter bombs.
DOLITTLE (PG)
Robert Downey Jr talks to creatures great and small but fails to communicate effectively with fellow humans - including us - in a special effects-clogged odyssey inspired by Hugh Lofting’s 1922 book The Voyages Of Doctor Dolittle. Director Stephen Gaghan searches in vain for animal magic as he shepherds a fitfully fantastical caper from the streets of Victorian London to far flung island locales. Downey Jr walks the same plank of intentional weirdness as Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow by adopting a strangulated Welsh accent, which varies in thickness from one scene to the next. A climactic comic set-piece involves Dr Dolittle forcibly unclogging a creature’s swollen bowels. He inhales a galeforce blast of trapped flatulence as a reward. Regrettably, it’s not the only thing that stinks.
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (PG)
It’s a beautiful day for everyone thanks to director Marielle Heller and her heartfelt love letter to self-acceptance. A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood dramatises the meeting of an emotionally bruised journalist (Matthew Rhys) and softly-spoken children’s TV host Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), who preached understanding and compassion for more than 30 years on his half-hour educational series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Regular forays into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe in the company of hand puppets and colourful supporting characters allowed Rogers to directly address his audience and shepherd pre-schoolers through tricky rites of passage.
Scriptwriters Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster bookmark the cynical reporter’s journey of self-discovery with miniature models of New York and Pittsburgh that perfectly reflect the opening sequence of
Rogers’s show. By the time Fred launches into his closing theme song, It’s Such A Good Feeling, we’re in rhapsodic agreement.
QUEEN & SLIM (15)
A first date culminates in a kiss of death in Melina Matsoukas’s stylish, sweaty and absorbing romance, which one character pithily describes as “the black Bonnie and Clyde”. Fuelled by the fury of Black Lives Matter, Queen & Slim kindles a fledgling romance between seemingly mismatched singletons and allows those sparks to build into a raging inferno of passion and protest in the aftermath of a police shooting that could have been ripped from news headlines. Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith are handsomely matched as the luckless love birds, who become poster children for racial injustice. Music video director Matsoukas, best known for her Grammy Award-winning work behind the camera of Beyonce’s black positivity anthem Formation, makes a splashy feature film debut with impeccable soundtrack credentials.
RICHARD JEWELL (15)
The media’s character assassination of a socially awkward yet resolutely wellintentioned loner casts a dark shadow over the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in Richard Jewell. Based on a Vanity Fair article and a subsequent book, director Clint Eastwood’s quietly indignant drama is a stark reminder of how easily rumour and supposition can be mistaken for “fact”. Scriptwriter Billy Ray distils three months of trial by media and at least one potential violation of Jewell’s civic rights, into a compelling character study anchored by a winning performance from Paul Walter Hauser as the do-gooder who pursues public service with a tenacity that errs uncomfortably close to obsession. Sam Rockwell is terrific as the down-on-his-luck lawyer, who is hired to pick at the seams of the FBI’s conduct and restore lustre to Jewell’s unfairly tarnished reputation. The problematic and hotly disputed depiction of hard-nosed journalist Kathy Scruggs, who burns white hot courtesy of Olivia Wilde’s performance, doesn’t extinguish the fire in the belly of Clint Eastwood’s film about presumed innocence.
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD (PG)
Writer-director Armando Iannucci realises great expectations with his madcap take on one of Charles Dickens’s indomitable literary heroes. The Personal History Of David Copperfield breathlessly abridges the mid19th century serial and novel to focus on the quixotic characters, whose fates intersect with the titular hero. A galaxy of stars in the British acting firmament sparkle in small yet perfectly formed roles including a delightfully bonkers Tilda Swinton as Betsey Trotwood, who mistakes salad dressing for smelling salts, and Peter Capaldi as lovable rapscallion Mr Micawber. The setting may be pungently Victorian but the tone is unmistakably modern from the hero’s knowing narration to nudge-nudge wink-wink flashes of directorial brio that bookmark each chapter of David’s rites of passage.
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”.
1917 (15)
Sam Mendes set about the demanding task of doing justice to conveying the horrors and sacrifices of war. 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.