Fennell, Baron Cohen among Writers Guild Awards nominees
BRITISH stars Emerald Fennell and Sacha Baron Cohen have been nominated for Writers Guild Awards.
Fennell, who as well as her work behind the camera is known for playing Camilla in The Crown, has been recognised for writing her directorial debut, Promising Young Woman.
She is up for original screenplay at the Writers Guild Awards, alongside the writers of Judas And The Black Messiah, Palm Springs, Sound Of Metal and The Trial Of The Chicago 7.
Baron Cohen was nominated for adapted screenplay for his muchtalked about comedy Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
He is up against the writers of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Night In Miami, The White Tiger and News Of The World.
The latter, a Western starring Tom Hanks, was co-written by British filmmaker Paul Greengrass.
In the documentary screenplay category, the nominees are All In: The Fight For Democracy, The Dissident, Herb Alpert Is…, Red Penguins and Totally Under Control.
The Writers Guild Awards honour outstanding writing in film and TV, as well as other media including radio.
TV nominees were previously announced and include The Crown, The Mandalorian and Ozark.
This is Fennell’s latest nomination during a promising awards season with the Oscars on the horizon. For revenge thriller Promising Young Woman, the 35-year-old is up for best director at the Golden Globes and the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Oscar nominations will be announced on March 15 ahead of the ceremony on April 25.
THE CLIMB (15)
Bookmarked into seven wry and touching chapters, The Climb is a quirky ode to male friendship under duress, infused with the dry wit and warmth of writers and stars Michael Angelo Corvino and Kyle Marvin.
They possess an easy-going charm drawn from their reallife friendship, hitting various bromantic beats to perfection as bumps in the road throw one of their characters out of the saddle.
Corvino’s direction is impressive, orchestrating elaborate unbroken shots including a fraught opening sequence filmed on the ascent of a hill, and a Christmas party shot looking into a light-bedecked house as eggnog-soaked revellers move from room to room.
Characters’ pain is lightly salved by offbeat humour, punctuated by moments of genuine sincerity that seldom unfold as expected.
PIXIE (15)
Director Barnaby Thompson and screenwriter son Preston plot a blood-soaked road trip along the ruggedly picturesque west coast of Ireland in their blackly humorous crime caper.
Drawing inspiration from a drive from Sligo to Clonakilty, the film-making duo conceive a modern-day western that pits a wise-cracking heroine and two hapless accomplices against a small army of “deadly gangster priests”.
Olivia Cooke is a delightful fit for the titular troublemaker, who exploits the supposed weakness of her sex to gain the upper hand against anyone who stands in her way, including her own family.
Diction is occasionally smothered by the musicality of her Irish accent but there is an irresistible effervescence to her scheming minx, who is determined to seize life by the short and curlies.
“These sort of adventures are always more enjoyable with a positive attitude,” she trills after one particularly grisly interlude – a veiled instruction to us to gleefully embrace the escalating madness.
I CARE A LOT (15)
Gone Girl goes bad, despicably bad, in J Blakeson’s lipsmacking thriller of unremitting cruelty and greed.
Anchored by an incendiary lead performance from Rosamund Pike as a self-anointed “lioness” in a cut-throat world of apex predators, I Care A Lot is a chilling portrait of profit-driven villainy, which conceals a distorted Machiavellian grin behind the pristine public facade of a guardian angel of the elderly.
“There’s no such thing as good people,” professes Pike’s morally corrupt anti-heroine in a prosaic voiceover monologue set to Death In Vegas’s haunting Dirge.
That’s unquestionably true of the rogue’s gallery of misfits, opportunists and thugs, who swarm in Blakeson’s lean and gleefully mean-spirited script.
Pike’s deliciously vile ice queen deep-freezes every frame and she’s matched by a colourful supporting turn from Peter Dinklage as a hot head, who communicates most effectively with bullets and bruised knuckles.
TO OLIVIA (PG)
Based on Stephen Michael Shearer’s biography of actress Patricia Neal, To Olivia chronicles the strain on the marriage of the Hollywood star and writer Roald Dahl after they lose their eldest child to encephalitis following a measles infection.
Director John Hay’s script, co-written by David Logan, treads lightly over the couple’s emotional turmoil, eliciting strong performances from Hugh Bonneville (replete with facial prosthetic) and Keeley Hawes as they navigate anguish, rage and regret behind closed doors.
To Olivia paints Dahl as a troubled and complex character, who exorcised some of his demons on the page.
Bonneville and Hawes gel convincingly with young co-stars while Outlander hunk Sam Heughan makes fleeting appearances as Paul Newman to replay the bus station sequence from Hud that would earn Neal her Academy Award for Best Actress.
Hay’s handsomely mounted film may be too restrained and delicate to compete for its own polished golden statuette but there is undeniable power in some of the carefully chosen words.
HOST (15)
Written by director Rob Savage, Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, Host mines video conferencing during the Covid pandemic for spine-tingling chills as a group of friends conduct an online seance and inadvertently summon a malevolent spirit.
In 2014, low-budget horror Unfriended used a video call between pals to take the philosophical concept of a “ghost in the machine” to the outlandish next level.
Savage’s film attempts the same trick, albeit with some artistic licence – a free 40-minute Zoom call during one balmy evening is stretched to 54 minutes of screen time – and obvious nods to The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity with jump-out-of-seat scares.
THE UNITED STATES VS BILLIE HOLIDAY (15, 130 mins) Drama/Romance/Musical. Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Miss Lawrence, Garrett Hedlund, Rob Morgan, Natasha Lyonne, Leslie Jordan. Director: Lee Daniels. Released: February 27
A ferocious, uncompromising lead performance from Grammy-nominated R&B star Andra Day, making her feature film debut, almost redeems director Lee Daniels’ scattershot biopic of trailblazing singer Billie Holiday.
Based on the book Chasing The Scream by journalist Johann Hari, Suzan-Lori Parks’ script employs a cumbersome framing device to ricochet through 12 years of emotional upheaval, which culminated in Holiday’s arrest for drug possession as she lay dying in the Metropolitan Hospital in New York.
Colour bleeds into monochrome and back again as Daniels incorporates archive footage from the era, which packs a heftier emotional punch than anything he stylishly evokes with production designer Daniel T Dorrance and costume designer Paolo Nieddu.
Indeed, a sobering postscript about the progress of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, given greater impetus by the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, is an uncomfortable reminder of how little times have changed since Holiday first performed her defiant protest song Strange Fruit in 1939.
Day is a woman possessed, shedding clothes, inhibitions and the tiniest slivers of self-consciousness to explore Holiday’s courage under fire and her selfdestructive tendencies.
Her renditions of hits are delivered with piercing clarity, soaked in pain and despair.
Conversely, Trevante Rhodes is short-changed as the FBI agent, who spies on Holiday then becomes her lover.
The complex psychology of their volatile romance never comes into satisfying focus.
In 1957, Billie Holiday (Day) sits down with gossip columnist Reginald Lord Devine (Leslie Jordan).
They discuss Strange Fruit, which rages against the lynching of black Americans and is described by one government agent as “a musical starting gun for this socalled civil rights movement”.
She also traces her long-running feud with Harry J Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund), head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
The singer harks back 10 years to her performances at New York nightclub Cafe Society – motto: “The wrong place for the right people” – where she is introduced to ardent admirer Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes).
The handsome former GI has been secretly hired by Anslinger to infiltrate her inner circle.
Jimmy plays a pivotal role in Billie’s one-year prison sentence for heroin possession.
The FBI mole regrets his actions and becomes her protector alongside confidantes Roslyn (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Miss Freddy (Miss Lawrence).
Alas, Billie cannot escape the vice-like grip of drug addiction and she rebuffs Jimmy to spare him a one-way ticket down the road to hell: “Gotta find you a nice girl, and that ain’t me”.
The United States Vs Billie Holiday is a glittering showcase for Day but, as a coherent and compelling portrait of flawed musical genius, Daniels’ picture is offkey.
Chronology is occasionally muddy and there is a frustrating lack of clarity to on-screen relationships including Billie’s dalliances with screen star Tallulah Bankhead (Natasha Lyonne).
Musical sequences are dazzling, fixating on Day’s glossy red lips as she performs Solitude, Ain’t Nobody’s Business and All Of Me.
The singer unabashedly gives all of herself to the role. Everything else, regrettably, comes up short.