A perfect storm
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA DON’T WORRY DARLING IS AMONG THE YEAR’S BEST MOVIES
DON’T WORRY DARLING (M) Director: Olivia Wilde (Booksmart)
Starring: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde.
Rating: ★★★★k
If something is too good to be true, must it be a lie?
The release of the shrewdly impacting and strikingly made Don’t Worry Darling – one of the year’s best movies – has already been overshadowed by the open off-screen antagonism displayed between several key participants.
The entire PR car crash has been widely chronicled elsewhere, but is best summarised as follows.
Leading lady Florence Pugh seems most unhappy with director and co-star Olivia Wilde, probably for casting her boyfriend Harry Styles as leading man (and possibly overpaying him more than Pugh for the privilege).
As for Styles, a team of behavioural analysts is still working around the clock to work out whether he spat on castmate Chris Pine at the movie’s posh premiere in Venice.
Don’t be distracted by the ropy razzle-dazzle of the gossip. Don’t Worry Darling is actually an excellent piece of modern, mustsee filmmaking: an ambitious, stylish and deceptively insightful psychological drama about how the pursuit of a perfect life can poison all who join the chase.
A visually mesmerising opening act transports us to the middle of the 1950s and, also, the middle of the Californian desert.
It is here we enter the town of Victory, a micro-metropolis manufactured exclusively for those working on a mysterious topsecret initiative known as the Victory Project.
Each perfectly sunny morning,
the men of Victory jump into their shiny convertibles and make tracks for Project HQ. Once their wives finish waving their loved ones away, they make tracks for one of four destinations: the home, the pool, the mall or a dance class.
A typical Victory housewife, Alice (Pugh) is absolutely happy with her place amid all this perfection until she notices what might be a single crack in the facade.
Her typical Victory husband Jack (Styles) is a real go-getter of a fella, and is rising through the Project’s ranks at a furious rate. He advises Alice to ignore that crack, should it suddenly widen and swallow them both.
As much as Alice tries to heed Jack’s warning, her instinct that something is horribly amiss with Victory – and also its controlling chief architect Frank (Pine) – continues to intensify.
The spookily precise direction of Wilde and the spellbinding cinematography used to enhance her vision is nothing short of first-class throughout Don’t Worry Darling.
However, what truly elevates this deceptively compelling production to the highest level is a carefully calibrated and unrelentingly effective performance from Florence Pugh as Alice.
Already one of the best reactive actors in the game today, Pugh keeps circling and underlining the middle word in the movie’s title with a subtle force that is quite something to behold.
Don’t Worry Darling is in cinemas now.
SMILE (MA15+) Rating: ★★★jk General release
Above all else, a good horror movie has just one job to do, and that is to not just occasionally scare, but continually frighten. It does not take long for Smile to declare itself to be a very good horror movie. A trauma psychologist named Rose (Sosie Bacon) is conducting a session with a new patient that suddenly screeches to a dramatic halt. Laura (Caitlin Stasey) has been having visions. She can spot a presence moving through people that will ultimately manifest itself as a single, disturbingly intimidating grin.
The simple sight of one of these super-sinister smiles is freaking Laura out. And now she is smiling at Rose. Uh-oh. Without going into too much detail, Rose discovers that being beamed at with pleasure in such a way has passed on a curse which seemingly cannot be broken. And should she break out with one of those megacreepy smiles herself? The answer is something you already know, but truly fear learning all the same.
A bone-rattling, brain-flipping chiller sure to be ranked highly by true fans of the genre.
AMSTERDAM (M) Rating: ★★kkk General release.
What we have here is a whole lot of so-so movies inelegantly stitched together to make a lessthan-satisfactory one. The longer proceedings drag on, the more you wish this erratic affair would hurry up and finish.
Just how this messy curio failed to make itself matter becomes even more of a mystery when you consider the cracking cast it had at its disposal.
The likes of Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy and even Taylor Swift must have seen something in the pitch of Amsterdam to sign on to the production.
Whatever it might have been appears to have disappeared the moment the cameras were switched on.
Bale stars as Burt, a dodgy doctor in 1920s New York wrongly accused of killing a socialite
(Swift). To clear his name and that of his old army buddy (John David Washington), Burt enlists the aid of a dotty artist (Robbie) and a distinguished general (De Niro).
The movie does have its heart in the right place – kindness and respect for each other are its key themes – and the production design is Oscars-grade alluring.
However, the tone, pacing and humour veer wildly in quality and coherency throughout, nudging everything into the annoying zone.