Dickie White still refuses to come out, for fear of breaking his New Year’s Resolution not to think about killing himself until at least March. He has asked me to wish all participants in the forthcoming World War III, absolutely no luck at all.
Yours in art, Cubby Begge – eyes face forward.
A Real Pain 8.5 ⭐️
My sort of film. A hyperactive, inappropriate, rude, yet charming, idiot, without a filter, who has just survived a suicide attempt, goes on a Holocaust tour with his cousin, after their gran dies. The title works on three levels. Benji (Kieran Culkin) truly is a real pain; he is suffering real personal pain; but the bigger issue posited by this film is: can any of the pain we claim to endure, ever be compared to the real pain suffered by victims of the Holocaust? That makes it sound like a heavy duty film. It isn’t, it’s the opposite. It’s light, but not self-consciously so. It never felt like anything other than two cousins, close enough to be brothers, who love and infuriate each other in equal measure, hanging out. There was nothing melodramatic, mawkish, or exploitative about the film; nothing about it was didactic, or preachy. And nor did it try to assert that anti-woke thing – your forebears went through all that, for what? For you to sit here, feeling sorry for yourself? And yet, and yet… it made its point.
Conclave 6 ⭐️
Have you ever read a Robert Harris novel? I’ve read several, though not Conclave. But this film is just like all those books: it promises a big new idea, then doesn’t deliver on it. Lots of people will say that this film is great. It isn’t. It’s made tolerable by Ralph Fiennes’ brilliant performance. Otherwise, it’s as flat, and underwhelming as one of Harris’s attempts at a grand novel.
Small Things Like These 8 ⭐️
I was reluctant to watch another film about the Magdalene Laundries. But finally relented, and I was pleased I did. Cillian Murphy, as the damaged, deferential, decent, father of five girls, was masterful in his understated performance. And this story of small-town life made an important point that similar films never do – the extent to which the wicked nuns had a finger in every pie in the community, and by that, could extort obedience and compliance from all the poor dupes over whom they reigned. Many people say that Ireland has taken off as a country since it became part of the EU. That may be true, but once the truth was known about Magdalene Laundries, and paedophile priests, and the cover-ups that went with them, Ireland became unshackled, and its growth from the timorous, parochial, underachiever that was ruled from the pulpit, into a confident, commercial giant of the modern world, owes as much to that change in deference, every bit as does joining the EU.
Heretic 6 ⭐️
Hugh Grant is finally getting the recognition he deserves as a supremely talented character actor. He’s superb here too, exploring new ground again. I don’t enjoy horror as a genre, though, and avoid it where I can. But it wasn’t just a distaste for the genre that ultimately makes me say that this film failed to deliver on its promising beginnings (and I don’t think Rober Harris wrote the novel, either). It comes in two halves. The first is a really scary psychological thriller where the drama is driven by a perhaps zealot, but (plausible) creep (Grant). When he made his defining point, dead-on the halfway mark, using as an analogy the fraud perpetrated by the wrongly credited “inventor” of Monopoly, that all religions were a mishmash of stolen and preposterous bunkum, adopted by charlatans as a means to control biddable subjects, I let out a little squeal of delight. Then, at that very moment, it all descended into bog standard horror tropes, where it remained until the end.
Perfect Days 9 ⭐️
There has been a lot of religion so far, hasn’t there? So how about a man who cleans public toilets for a living, and religiously (but joyfully) repeats the same routine every day? Nobody say Zen. This is a film about a man who does what all the mental health coaches tell us to do – he lives in the present. Wim Wenders must be commended – he offers but the tiniest hint of a back story, when the temptation to explain must have been immense.. I think it’s also adapted from a book (maybe one of those that didn’t grandstand about its big idea, but quietly delivered one nonetheless). It’s a wonderful film, about a wonderful life.
Count of Monte Cristo 7 ⭐️
The novel, a superbly written and constructed epic, that had the first and last word on what constitutes, and how to deliver, revenge, has been failed in every attempt to transfer it to screen. It’s probably fair to say that most efforts have been pathetic. This one isn’t. Short of being five hours long, it was never going to match the novel, because it’s all about the narrative, and there’s too much of it. But it’s a thoroughly decent effort, and perhaps the sort of thing to which you could take a recalcitrant teenager, who refuses to read, to try and spark an interest. It deals with almost all the big points properly, without changing them too much, and the whole thing is plausible, and professionally executed. Having said all that, I still don’t know why anyone bothers to put this on the big screen in a sub-three hour format. If I was one of those media billionaires, (please God, never let me turn into a delusional cross-eyed, balding dwarf, who believes that the public will adopt me as their favourite Space Frontiersman, by wearing my dad’s too-big cowboy hat that sits on my ears, each time I return from a long plane journey) I’d commission a production of thirty-six one-hour episodes, pitch it like Indiana Jones for grownups, and present it as if everyone was watching something new for the first time.
Poor Things 9 ⭐️
My favourite film of the year. Like the advice delivered by Mark Ruffalo’s character, roué, Duncan Wedderburn, on the correct way to eat, and best enjoy, a Pasteis de Nata, to Emma Stones’ rapidly developing naïf, Bella Baxter – to stick it all in your mouth in one go, this film should be enjoyed in a similar way.
That Bella who begins the film with the mentality of baby, but, in relatively short order, becomes endowed with all the passions of an adult sensibility, is that way because she’s had the brain of her unborn child transplanted into her head to replace her own, in the wake of what would have otherwise been a successful suicide attempt, by her endlessly curious adoptive guardian, God(win) (Willem Dafoe), will make some people talk of this film in terms of Frankenstein, and lost innocence. Many have. But Wendy Ide’s review (The Guardian) best embraces the sumptuous sensory gourmandise delight of this film. She describes it as an endlessly fascinating carnival of oddness. It is made oddly coherent by Lanthimos’s unerring feel for relatable strangeness, Stone’s headlong dive into it all, a strange score that is eerily on point, and the vivid Belle Epoque, View-Finder quality cinematographic kaleidoscope of scenes, that look like enhanced hand-painted postcards from a time when the world was still fresh and hardly explored.
If any of your friends tell you that they don’t like, or get this film – you are hanging round with the wrong people. If they got as far as Mark Ruffalo’s entrance to the dance floor – a totally natural flamboyant flourish for him, the act of a weirdo devoid of even a trace of self-awareness to anyone who witnessed it – and didn’t change their minds, they are a lost cause.
Joker II 2⭐️
The Joker was very good indeed. A King of Comedy homage, remake, and update, all in one, starring the next generation’s version of delusional man in terminal decline, who never quite gets why the rest of the world doesn’t find him as funny as he knows himself to be. Then came this. A sort of nonsense musical, that has nothing to do with the original, and made no sense, not even within its own, absurd, terms of reference. Avoid.
Maria 4 ⭐️
The third of an unofficial trilogy of important women of the Twentieth Century following Jackie and Spencer, telling the story of the last week of Maria Callas’s life as she reflects on all that she has done, whilst also contemplating a return to singing. She dies of what, despite all that we see, must have been an unexpected heart attack at the age of 53. Amongst the flashbacks, tantrums, sulks and rehearsals, she is also cooperating in the making of a documentary of her life – but as the interviewer is called Mandrax, her preferred maintenance high (low?), we must assume that it all took place in her head. For some reason, they chose Angelina Jolie to play her. A leaden, lumpen, cliché ridden, self-indulgent mess of a film, made far worse by Jolie’s impression of (another) diva. And to top it all, an absolutely amateurishly bungled effort to lip-sync Jolie’s attempts to mime over the original arias. Couldn’t they at least have cast someone who could sing? For those of us who love Maria Callas, it was as an error of casting as bad as that in My Fair Lady back in the day. They never learn, do they, certain producers? They think that they’re buying box office, and all they manage to do is to produce something that ends up twice as expensive and half as good. They ought to take a leaf out of Lanthimos’s book, and take a few risks. Most of all, I hope Pablo Larrain stops before he gets on to Margaret Thatcher.
Anora 6⭐️
Loads of critics, as well as film-buff friends rate this film really highly. Perhaps I’m no better than the sort of person I sought to dis’ when I was talking about Poor Things. I see that it’s called a comedy too? A comedy in the sense that most of the movie time is devoted to clownish chumps chasing after a certifiable halfwit? To the point – a lapdancer is fallen for, and returns the feelings to, the son of a Russian oligarch (a really hateful teenage baby), and they marry at Las Vegas during a bender. When his family find out about it, they go, “Err, sorry, that’s not happening.” At which point some truths are told. Then they’ve got to catch the idiot, and exchange some more. Something like that. I guess it’s supposed to be the Twenty-First Century version of those Nineteenth Century marrying out of your class stories. I gave it 6 because it’s set in Brighton Beach, where the first language for many people is Russian, which I am trying to learn. I tried to follow as much as possible without looking at the subtitles, and about 50% of the film is presented in that way.. It’s also really noisy, got an infuriating soundtrack, and its first fifteen minutes or so, is non-stop porny lap dancing.
Paddington III 5⭐️
I watched I and II on the TV, and quite enjoyed them. So, when I found myself in a provincial town, with hours to kill, and not many options, I was delighted when I came across a local cinema offering a midday showing of Paddington III. It was really poor. The inspiration for the “in Peru” bit was soon confirmed, as I’d feared, to be all about having run out of ideas for Paddington in his usual habitat, you know, where his unworldliness and lack of familiarity gets him into funny scrapes? I wondered, going in, whether that in Peru suffix, indicated a sort of Are You Being Served/Carry On/Morecambe and Wise… Go on holiday caper. Oh, that sinking feeling, when I saw Hugh Bonneville in his intrepid tourist rig out.
Olivia Coleman, talent that she is, was jarringly miscast as the evil nun – she doesn’t convince as a pantomime villain. And the script? – It felt like a second draft, that everyone had overlooked revisiting. I mean, there was Olivia, dressed as a nun (before we knew she was a baddie), in the mountains, with an acoustic guitar, surrounded by a chorus of other nuns, and yet they still couldn’t get a good song, or gag, out of it. Imagine the budget for a film like that, and yet no one found a moment to say – let’s just let X have a look at the script. I know that children will buy anything – but it’s generally us adults who take them to the pictures, or switch on the tele for them (and sit next to them while they watch). The closing credits suggested that there’s going to be another. I know it looks like Hugh Grant’s back, and London. But please, whoever makes these things, take a moment to reflect first. And get some fresh eyes on the latest draft of the screenplay.
The Apprentice 3⭐️
It was a difficult decision for me to commit to two hours alone with the imbecile, narcissist and bully, Donald Trump. I wish I’d stuck to my guns. They had a chance to pull the rug from under him, and chose instead to pull their punches. Jesus, I know more and better dirt about him than was in this film, and I can hardly stand to have the arsehole spend beyond a moment in my head. A massive opportunity lost. A bollock dropped. I only hope it was because the people that made this film are useless, not that they were scared to do it properly.
The Outrun 8 ⭐️
Lovely debut movie from husband-and-wife team Saoirse Ronan and Jack Lowden (Slow Horses). Recovering alcoholic Rona (Saoirse) retreats to home in Orkney, after a postgrad course in London, and rehab, which is a small, chaotic, barely viable smallholding. Her parents still live there, separated. Her father, to whom, of the two, she relates more readily, still suffers from chronic and severe bi-polar disorder. We get to know that his condition has been exacerbated by a reliance on alcohol in the past, and we see nature and nurture in the difficulties now faced by Rona. She seems to be possessed of a steely determination not to let her illnesses get the better of her, but it’s a painful process, and her pain sits heavy in every moment of this captivating film. I hope these words don’t mislead you. It’s not a hard watch. The very opposite actually. And often (mostly?) uplifting. And there’s none of those cliché’s about paradise on earth, and all those sentimental tropes that other films might have used with the same subject matter.
The Critic 5⭐️
Someone wrote a delicious, fruity role, to display Sir Ian McKellen’s immense talents. They give him a waspishly cruel theatre critic, of the old school, in the old days, wielding the power of a Caesar at the games, to make or destroy a career. Then they got bored and gave it to someone in the office to finish off.
Freud’s Last Stand 5 ⭐️
It’s just so obvious that they’ve tried to stretch out what was probably a good play, into a film. I wish they’d just filmed the play instead.
Fly Me to the Moon 6⭐️
A plausible explanation of why there exists faked moon landings conspiracy theories. It just never really became that engaging for me. In fact, it felt a little bit like another of those good ideas that weren’t properly exploited.
Mary 0 ⭐️
As bad as any Hallmark film, and slightly more pointless. Who made it? Why didn’t they send the money to a foodbank instead?
Civil War 2 ⭐️
I suppose if our theme has been about grand ideas that the creators were incapable of living up to, and log lines that are redolent of big themes and intellectualism that turns out to be fatuous, Civil War takes the biscuit. Just marginally better than worthless, hence 2.
Lee 8⭐️
If our other theme has been religion, we should perhaps bookend this page with another reference to the Holocaust, entirely outside a religious frame of reference. Josh O’Connor appeared in two labour of love/passion projects last year. One was the lame, teenage-sensibility, Challengers, about tennis, and the project of someone called Zendaya. Then this, Kate Winslet’s. He should know the difference now. Lee Miller, photo-journalist, first eye witness, and recorder, of some of the worst atrocities of the Twentieth Century; muse to artists who are now revered icons; larger than life, rebellious, traumatised, mercurial, damaged, is played with unerring, steadfast, grounded, honesty by Winslet. There isn’t a moment of this film that does not feel real, and as the camera points at Lee, a woman of many stripes, in every scene, that is a remarkable feat of interpretation. There is not a moment where Lee resorts to caricature, in the lead or supporting roles. I realise, thinking about this, that I assume a judgment about these figures of history – that these events occurred, and this person, by coincidence, fate, desire, just happened to be there at that moment, to record it – that, were it not them, it would have been someone else. After watching this, I’m no longer so sure about this. Some people were made to be part of history.
There’s a multitude of sins hidden away in the genre description, ‘biopic’. They are not movies (hence no 9 or 10 for this), but some of them are leagues better than most of them. This is one.
Dickie White's Diary 