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Gleason

Steve Gleason was a successful NFL player whose career highlight  occurred when he was playing with the New Orleans Saints in their first game in the city’s Superdrome exactly a year after Hurricane Katrina. Gleason made a spectacular pass which enabled the team to win this crucial  game which was a vital step in the recovery of all their after the intolerable devastation that they had survived, and it made the whole city feel good again. They called it ‘the rebirth’ of New Orleans, and Gleason was named as the hero of the day.  

A few years later in 2011 after he had just retired from playing professionally, Gleason then aged just 34 years old, was  diagnosed with ALS also known as Lou Gehrig disease, and told he had 2 -5 years to live.  Then 6 months  after that when he and Michelle his artist wife were still trying to come to terms with the reality of Gleason’s illness, they discovered that Michelle was pregnant with their first child.  This put more of an urgency as to how they should deal with their impending situation as their research had uncovered the fact that whilst Gleason would keep his cognitive functions for a while, however in a very short time he would lose all movement and speech. 

From the word go, it is obvious that Gleason is an irrepressible optimistic man who is extremely good natured and generous and he easily channeled all his energies into what he considered to be paramount for the future. To this end he started making a regular video record for his yet unborn son just in case he was still not around when the boy was older and he wanted to have a real conversation with him. He insisted to Michelle that they live life to the full even though it got increasingly difficult once the disease started to take its  hold.  Michele was a tower of strength but she soon couldn’t handle all the physical lifting when Gleason got weaker so she ‘persuaded’ their hunky neighbor Blair into being a full time caregiver with a simple threat ‘if you don't take the job I'll kick you in the balls!”

Gleason knew that he had this great support system that he could depend on but as he became aware of how tough it was on others and how expensive it was too, he persuaded Michelle's father to help them start a foundation to help other less fortunate ALS sufferers. The Gleason Foundation, with it’s defiant catch phrase ‘no more white flags’  was set up to finance special equipment in treatment centers and to be able to give special treats, like a surprise dream holiday, to others who simply couldn’t afford them.

The ever-present camera records not just the rapid decline in Gleason’s body, but also the highlights such as his sheer determination in conquering the sight talk machine now that he could no longer speak.  However even this remarkably strong man had his ‘off’ days  and some of the most heartbreaking moments are when he is at his lowest and he questions his wife's attitude to him and the process, and even his own purpose of still being around.  It takes an immense amount of bravery on both their parts to deal with this once healthy man becoming a mere shadow of his former self, but  it was even more courageous of both of them to allow these very intimate  scenes to be shown.

His old teammates treated him as a hero, and they not only erected a statue of his moment of glory in ‘the re-birth’ but they also got totally on board actively supporting the work of the Foundation. The only real fly in the ointment was Gleason’s own father who was a right-wing fundamentalist and at every single opportunity he had, he tried to impose his own unshakable faith on his son, which made for some very tense moments between the two of them. But Gleason’s own relationship with his son Rivers is exceptionally wonderful and full of so much love that it makes for a real highlight of the whole film.

The documentary directed by J Clay Tweel with its unparalleled unrestricted access to the family is a powerful piece of filmmaking of how this family unflinchingly deals with something which could have torn them apart, but which instead emboldens them into finding the strength to get even closer together.  It will probably be one of the most emotional and heartbreaking stories you will see all year, and be sure to have a large box of kleenex ready.

★★★★★★★★

A Good Wife

Milena is an attractive 50-something-year old who lives with her husband in their comfortable middle-class home in a small suburb not far from Belgrade.  She seems to spend her life of the edge of perpetually about to do something, which she never follows through on. Her days are spent aimlessly looking perplexed and anxious as her presence is ignored by her family who just take her for granted. Her grown up daughter has moved to Belgrade and has own city life in which she does not involve her mother in.  Her son has also left home and just flits in and out of the house when he wants his laundry done.  Her husband prefers drinking with his wartime buddies and although she and the other wives tag along they are hardly the centre of attention. The only real joy in her life seems to be singing in choir of the church that she is very attached too.

One day mooching around the house she finds an old VHS tape and playing it is shocked to learn that her husband and his closest friends were personally involved in some dire war atrocities.  This discovery is about the same time that the medical examination she has been putting off for years, reveals that she has an advanced case of breast cancer.  After learning these two very different pieces of bad news, Milena gets even more withdrawn and goes into total denial and she  simply refuses to either make any decisions on how to proceed, or ever discuss these with her family who are so self-involved that they just fail to notice any difference with her at all.

Her cancer is the first thing that she eventually goes public with and when she shares this with her husband he simply does not know how to re-acts and walks out of the room saying nothing. In all the years they have been married they have talked very little together. and its always been nothing beyond their usual daily routine.  It's obvious too late and too hard for them to change that habit now.

However it seems that no matter how much her husband's activities in the war really appall her, Milena is probably never going to discuss it with him, let alone make a publuc fuss.  Then when one of his rengade collegues threatens him with blackmail and then next day turns up dead, she knows she is left with no other choice. 

The movie is the writing/directing debut of  veteran Serbian actress 

Mirjana Karanovic who also stars as Milena and it is  an earnest and serious look at how good life is for Serbs who were on victorious side of the civil war, but it all came at a very heavy price.  Her excellent rather earnest drama that premiered at Sundance shows that really in war there are no winners, and she ensures that the somewhat surprising end was well worth the long wait to reach its conclusion.

★★★★★★★

Triple 9

From John Hillcoat the Australian filmmaker who gave us the enthralling apocalyptic thriller The Road comes a new modern day heist movie about a bunch of corrupt Atlanta cops and ex-soldiers who are about to pull off one last job for the Russian-Israeli Mafia. The gang's leader Michael Atwood (a terrific Chiwetel Ejiofor)  is pulled up sharp by the Mafia boss the ruthless Irina (a total scene-stealing Kate Winslet) who tells him that they will in fact have to stage yet another robbery or face very unfortunate circumstances which can get very personal for Michael as the mother of his child is Irina's younger sister.

Their new task is break into a Homeland Security bunker to steal the files from that, together with the contents of the Safe Deposit Box that they just raided a major bank for, will be enough evidence to free Irina's husband who is currently languishing in a prison cell as a 'guest' of Vladmir Putin.  When Michael appears reluctant to do Irina's bidding this time around, she sends a 'message' in the form of one of his gang members who is so badly beaten up he is practically dead that Michael has no alternative to than to finish the poor man off, and agree to Irina's demands.  

This action packed thriller is an ensemble piece that has more than its fair share of talented actors : the other gang members are played by Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus, Anthony Mackie and include a stand out performance by a sinister-looking Clifton Collins Jr. Mackie plays Detective Marcus Belmont who is assigned  a new partner at the Precinct a rather green and totally honest policeman called Chris Allen (a magnificent Casey Affleck).  Chris's uncle is the major crimes investigator on the force Jeffrey Allen (a wonderfully sardonic Woody Harrison) and he is determined to ape his success.

With his unbending ways Chris inadvertently becomes the perfect ruse to cover the impending robbery as the gang know that the best way to divert the attention of the entire police force is when one of their own is shot.  The code for that is 999 and implies that every officer must drop what they are doing and immediately rush to the scene. Marcus has no qualms about carrying the cold-blooded killing  out, but what seems like a foolproof plan on paper is never ever quite the same in reality.

Plenty of high speed car chases through Atlanta, incessant gun battles and some sheer bloody minded violence keeps the whole thing rattling on at quite a fast pace, and the fact that not all of the plot twists are that predictable make this (almost) two hour high octane thriller very diverting.  It is however without doubt the acting of its leads that lift it way above average, and Winslet and Harrelson in particular are a sheer joy to watch.

★★★★★★★★

Son of Saul

Just when you may have felt that there could be nothing more new to say about the Holocaust comes one the most powerfully disturbing movies ever that plunge you into the abysses of hell from the very first scene. This brilliant new movie is the debut feature written and directed by Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes that shows the full horror of the Auschwitz in 1944 when the Nazis had stepped up the genocide of the Jewish population.

His  story centers on a fictional member of the Sonderkommandos a select group of Jewish prisoners who were forced to assist in the mass murders of their comrades and then be responsible for disposing of their piles of their bodies.  They knew that this work only delayed their own executions for a few months, but they all lived in hoped that this may just be enough time to find a way out of this hell.  

Nemes focuses on just one individual Saul Alexander a Hungarian Jew who is assigned to be part of Sonderkommando gang in Birkenau, one of the sub-camps at Auschwitz which was the largest killing centre in the Nazi's network .  By placing the camera firmly on Saul's face at all time he ensures that all the carnage and the stacks and stacks of dead bodies are shown in the background slightly out of focus. These long single shots from a handheld camera tracking Saul as he tries to disguise his distain for his small part in what became known as The Final Solution stuns one into a rigid numbness which never quite leaves you even when the movie ends.

One day Saul comes across a small boy who has somehow survived the gas and whom the Doctor quickly puts to death.  Saul however decides that his one goal left in life is to ensure that the boy with not get incinerated with all the others and given a proper Jewish burial.  It's a foolhardy and dangerous decision that could end up hastening his own death, but Saul becomes totally obsessed with following through with it no matter what obstacles he has to overcome.  It's an act of unselfish humanity in a world that has been stripped of every single strand of it. 

There is a plan by a few key Sommerkomandos to escape and although that gets a tad confusing to follow at times, we are so fin-tuned to every nuance by then, so we  know that there is not a slither of a chance of a happy ending. 

It's the overwhelming sight of seeing these thousands of Jews, including young children, being herded from the trains into the dressing rooms to strip off and then immediately shuffled into the gas chambers in droves. The nightmarish screams that are heard as the gas is turned on are painfully unforgettable, and it is nigh on impossible to grasp that this is one of the worst true stories in the history of mankind.

Credit to actor Geaz Rohrig for his magnificently potent performance as Saul, but more so to Nemes for finding the perfect balance for not shirking from portraying the sheer horror of events but never either exploiting the carnage or trying to imbue it with even a hint of emotion or sentimentality.

Son of Saul won the Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival and also a Golden Globe and numerous other Awards and is deservedly the hot favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture too.

★★★★★★★★★★

Race

This new crowd-pleaser biopic of African/American athletic hero Jesse Owens sees his troubled world through rose colored glasses (even the Nazis running the 1936 Olympics are not THAT bad ) as it fore-mostly focuses on his remarkable achievements of winning 4 Gold Medals, with the political ramifications taking second place. 

The movie starts with the teenage Owens leaving Alabama and his poverty-stricken family plus the mother of his daughter to go far away to Ohio University simply because of the Athletes Coach was once a great runner too. Larry Sydner is struggling to find any star athletes on his team and is in real danger of losing his job so he instead he seeks solace in a whisky bottle. He immediately sees the potential in Owens as he can outrace everybody else and as  he knows that Owen could be his path to redemption,  he quickly takes sides with the athlete and supports him through all the incessant racist bigotry that he has to face on  a daily basis. 

When Owens starts winning races and fame .... and the overtures of a wealthy black socialite who wants to bag him as a husband .... it is obvious that as he broke three World records in a single afternoon, that his selection for the Berlin Olympics is a forgone conclusion.  The trouble is the American Olympic Committee have serious misgivings about participating as they feel it will be seen as endorsing the Nazi regime which was already known for their extreme right-wing political views that were having grave consequences on the Jewish population already.

The Committee was however persuaded by  wealthy buisnessman Avery Brundage who, after a fact finding mission to Germany, said that everything in Germany was totally fine and that they should send an American Team. The movie in fact implies that Brundage had actually been bribed by the Nazis in return for his approval. The pressure on Owens to participate because of the German Reich's sheer hatred of people of color was much more pronounced than that of his white team mates. We see part of it in the movie, but apart from that occasional moment of doubt, Owens didn't really seem to struggle a great deal with his decision. In fact when he and his African/American teammate arrive at the Olympic Village they are shocked to discover they are to be billeted and fed with everyone else and not segregated like back in the US.

As the Games start and Hitler studiously avoids any possible contact  with Owens even though he greets all the other winners, we are also witness to another power struggle between Goering the Minister if Propaganda who is running these Olympics and the young filmmaker Lief Riefenstahl who's been commissioned to make a very glowing record of the Event. For some, slightly unknown reason, she is made to look a tad heroic.

Much is made of Owen's close friendship with the aryan German champion Carl 'Luz' Long which seems to be included to show that not all the citizens where supportive of their country;s government. It does however just remind one that such a relationship between a white and black man back in the US then would have been completely impossible.

Jesse Owens is admirably played by Stephan James (John Lewis in Selma)  Coach Snyder by SNL's Jason Sudekis, and Jeremy Irons put in a perfectly pitched turn as the slippery Avery Bundrage.  

Race is released at the perfect time given the present paranoia of the lack of diversity in Hollywood and should benefit from the current attention to African/American themed movies. Even though this one will not still be in anybody's minds when they think about the next round of Oscars in 2017 , it should still make its own impact with its audience.

★★★★★★★

Touched With Fire

Writer/director Paul Dalio's mesmerizing new drama about a young couple of manic depressives who fall in and out of love takes on a whole new sense of meaning when you appreciate that he has had his own similar struggles being bi-polar. This heartbreaking tale is of two good looking poets : Carla has published a slim volume of her work, and Marco takes part in rapping at poetry slams held in smoky Manhattan basements. They meet by chance at a psychiatric hospital where they have both committed too .... he by his father but she had inadvertently been admitted voluntary .

Their similar mental conditions meant that they had these manic highs and whilst they were both going through one Marco used his heightened sensibility to persuade Carla that they should embrace these moments (of madness) and use them to lead a much fuller and creative life.   He is successful, but the trouble is the moment they come down from these and have to face reality again, their depression can re-emerge and be a real challenge to them trying to develop a relationship with each other, let alone anyone else in their lives.

After they leave the hospital, to the consternation of her parents and his father, Carla and Marco move in and lead a somewhat carefree life not bound by the normal conventions of other couples.  Even another spell back in hospital will not stop their ardour, but then when they discover that Carla is pregnant, they both reluctantly decide to try to 'go straight' and play by the rules.  This means taking their meds regularly and getting a job so that they can become responsible parents.

For a very brief time it looks like they may actually be able to pull it off, but it very quickly becomes obvious that they don't really stand a chance and their mental states ...... particularly his .... render this impossible.  

What Dalio achieves, thanks mainly to the beautiful career-best performances by his two stars Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby, is this very fine line between sanity and mania, that he (and they) approach with both such sensitivity and conviction that we can really appreciate how life can seem much more real when our sensibilities are heightened in this way. Carla and Marco are petrified that sticking to their extensive daily regime of meds will stifle their creativity and reduce the depth of their feelings, and their rationale for this is so sound, we are there for them every inch of the way.

It's a heartbreaking love story because you know that in the end so called sanity will win out, but actually for once you never stop wanting it to lose.

★★★★★★★★

Dough

In this decidedly old-fashioned movie British filmmaker John Goldschmidt lays on the schmaltz with a charming wee tale of how a small part of a traditional Jewish bakery struggles to adapt to the demands of contemporary life in London's East End. Sixty-something-year-old widower Nat Dayn (an excellent Jonathan Pryce) is something of a curmudgeon who is struggling to keep open the Kosher Baker Shop that has been in his family for over a hundred years.  As the area has gentrified his clientele drastically dwindled and many have moved away, and his own son, a successful lawyer, has no interest in becoming the next generation to take on the store. 

When his only assistant is lured away by the large grocery chain that is moving into the neighborhood, Nat who is left with hardly any options agrees to take on Ayyash (an impressive Jerome Holder) the teenage son of his immigrant cleaning woman. The boy is equally reluctant to work in the bakery but he has no luck finding any legitimate employment and the local drug dealer will only employ him if he has a legitimate 'cover job' so he accepts. 

The young Muslim kid and the devout Jewish baker make a strange pair ... especially at prayer time ... but they somewhat begrudgingly get along. Then one day after Ayyash accidentally spills some of the marijuana that he has been dealing with on the side into the dough, the resulting challah loaves are such a big success. As demands for the bread now starts to grow, he gets the idea of using the not just continuing the practice but also of selling the hash to a whole new clientele who come in to the bakery buy some cakes/bread as cover.

Meanwhile the Bakery's Landlady (an hilarious Pauline Collins) is a feisty Jewish matron who has been widowed just six weeks ago and she has two goals in mind.  One is to sell up and move to Florida and secondly is to put the moves on Nat as a potential replacement husband.  Whilst the Baker is slow to step up to the plate, the owner of the large grocery chain is anxious to expand its empire and pursues her aggressively to buy her property. 

There are no real surprises in this fairly predictable story (except for some of the rather silly ending) and although this quintessential Brit movie is hardly a stretch of the imagination, it's a warmhearted feel-good movie with its very gentle humor that softens the edge of the more serious underlying urban racial issue. 

★★★★★★★

Jim : The Story of James Foley

James Foley .... known to everyone as Jim..... was a American freelance photojournalist who was abducted in Syria in 2012 and then publicly beheaded by ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) eighteen months later.  His compelling story is told in a new HBO documentary by first time director Brian Oakes who had been Foley's friend since first grade, and it tells how this man from a tight-knit large New England Catholic family ended up on the front line of a war zone.

Foley with his four siblings had a conventional upbringing, but h was quite a restless soul as a young adult and tried his hand at all sorts of enterprising ventures like teaching kids in a juvenile detention center. However, he never really found the 'calling' he was searching for until in 2009 he got it into his head that he wanted to go overseas as a war correspondent.  Totally untrained and clearly out of his depth, he hooked up with a small itinerant band of other freelance journalists in Libya who he bonded with and quickly learned on the job.  A handsome rugged man who was described by one of his new colleagues 'with a jawline you could cut cheese on', Foley simply used his incessant charm and sheer optimism to make up for his lack of experience. 

Two years into his stint there Foley was captured by Gaddafi loyalist forces and held prisoner for 44 days.  The moment the news of his abduction reached his family they mounted a high profile campaign to secure his release, and when they succeeded there was much relief all round when he was back home on US soil again. Whilst his siblings and parents were happy to have him back in their bosom, Foley however was not.  Even the offer of a desk job in Boston at the HQ of Global Post, who he reported for back in Libya, was not enough to keep him from wanting to go back to the front line.  When he soon decided this is what he would indeed do, he chose to go to Syria which was so very dangerous that it would make Libya seem like a walk in the park.

Oakes makes no attempt to portray his best friend either as a Saint or a misguided fool, instead what comes over is this image of an old-fashion romantic who was an incredibly resourceful and unselfish man who never showed any sense of personal danger. Foley was simply determined to play his part in making the world aware of the atrocities that were being carried about in these treacherous war-zones in the hope that dialogue from all this information might provoke some change.  However, before he could even send much footage back in November 2012 Foley was abducted and held captive.

This time however there was so much mis-information that even the State Department could not establish who in fact was holding Foley, even which region he was being held.  There was eventually email correspondence from people who claimed to be holding Foley and they issued demands for an enormous ransom, which after they offered proof that they indeed had captured him, then the family prepared to raise the monies they demanded. However communication with them ended as abruptly as it had started. and as the State Department proved reluctant to help pursue the matter, it was dropped.

Most of Foley's time held by the Syrians was recounted by some European photojournalists who were also imprisoned with him for the best part of 18 months, but who managed to be released.  It is their testimony that sheds light on how inhumane the violent horrors of their treatment was at the hands of their vicious and vindictive captors.

The documentary states at the very beginning that it will not show the actual beheading, but is does show video of a shaved-head Foley wearing bright orange robes making an anti-American speech with a defiant look on his face.  It is never really clear why he was killed, especially as all the other journalists were freed. 

One of his ex-colleagues says that Foley would have been really annoyed that the world's attention on his death was a in fact distraction from his own work exposing the massive human rights crisis in the region is neglected.  The last word however goes to Foley's elder and somewhat conservative brother who not only deeply regretted that this job in the US Airforce may have caused him problems, but more importantly he said that he had never ever really understood or appreciated him as much as he did now.

Winner of Sundance Audience Favorite Award this movie can be seen on HBO On Demand  until 03/06/2016

★★★★★★★★★

Eddie The Eagle

Michael Edwards better known as Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards was a charismatic British folk-hero that most Americans will never have heard of. This plasterer from a blue-collar family ignited the U.K. public's imagination when, in this real shaggy-dog story and without any real experience, in 1988 he finagled his way into the British Olympic Team to become the country's only Ski Jump Competitor. He came in last of course, but thanks to the blanket media coverage at the time his spectacular endeavor made him the crowd's favorite and the people's man of the hour. 

This real story is now the basis for a vaguely true new movie that has taken a few liberties with some of the facts leading up to the Games, and thus making it one of the most enjoyable crowd pleaser feel good sports movie for quite some time.

Eddie (a wonderful Taron Egerton) has been obsessed with competing in the Olympic Games ever since he was a kid and his less-than-patient father was always collecting him from the bus stop where young Eddie was running away and 'off to join the team'.  When he grew up he did actually learn how to ski race, but never quite good enough to be selected by the rather snooty class-conscious British Team managers who never wanted to accept him. When Eddie therefore hit on the idea of becoming a ski jumper instead, he assumed that he would be automatically be chosen as Britain hadn't had anyone compete in that event for he past 30 years.

However the British Authorities suddenly introduced a minimum standard jump for qualification so that they could refuse Eddie. Crestfallen but still determined to participate, he took himself off to the Olympic Ski Jump Training Camp in Germany to try to meet the new requirements.  As he practiced he was the laughing stock of all the experienced athletes, and also Bronson Peary, a one-time American champion who had for some reason given up ski-jumping and replaced it with drinking whisky for breakfast.

Peary (a very relaxed Hugh Jackman) is eventually persuaded to lay the bottle aside to help train Eddie and he does so because he believes in supporting the underdog, plus besides the fact that he is worried if he doesn't Eddie may just kill himself out there doing one of the more dangerous jumps.

Directed by British actor turned director Dexter Fletcher from a script by two newbie writers Simon Kelton and Sean Macaulay, this highly entertaining movie  has some impressive photography that takes you down the high slopes the same time as Eddie, plus a great '80's soundtrack with a few Hall & Oates tracks.  The filmmakers make it nigh on impossible not to want this obsessed and fearless and extremely likable eccentric to beat the odds.  And as we are reminded more than once here, it's the taking part and not the winning that counts. 

★★★★★★★★

Hail Caesar!

For their latest collaboration the multi-Oscar winning Coen Brothers have produced a full-blown comedy that, like many of their films, is based around a botched crime job, although in this instance they treat this as a rather insignificant plot twist which they never really bother to follow through. Instead the focus is on an over-worked 'fixer' of a large Hollywood Studio in the early 1950's who must make sure all the movies there are churned out on time and within budget, whilst at the same time keeping his coterie of difficult and temperamental movie stars happy and working.

Based on the real life of Eddie Mannix who was at one time General Manager of the vast MGM Studios,  the movie is a kind of tongue-in cheek love story to the glamorous days of an old-fashioned Hollywood.  Mannix, superbly played by Josh Brolin, is the anchor to the whole piece which is essentially 28 hours in his rather manic life.  From fixing up the pregnant unmarried DeeAnn Moran (Scarlett Johansson) who is an aqua star in the mode of Esther Williams, to rescuing ingenue Gloria DeLamour (Natasha Bassett) from the clutches of a French Postcard Photographer, is all in a day's work for him.

This however all pales into insignificance when the studio's biggest star the nice-but-dim Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), disappears whilst in the middle of shooting the studio's hammy religious epic "Hail Caesar.''  It turns out that he has been kidnapped by a friendly bunch of communist screenwriters who are disgruntled with the studio system, and who (naturally) are controlled by the evil influences of Russia as all the panic mongers thought back then.  

Whilst Mannix is trying to resolve this problem, he has all the Studio bosses in NY that he must answer too in his daily phone call, and when they insist that he cast one of the studio's biggest box-office draws who is a singing cowboy in a elegant costume drama, he has no choice than to comply. However Hobie Doyle (an exceptionally wonderful Alden  Ehrenreich) has a great deal of trouble just stringing words together in a sentence and his struggle with his new role makes for one of the funniest scenes in the movie when his director Laurence Laurentz (a terrific Ralph Fiennes) tries to get him to manage to say the simplest of lines.

The Coens touch on most of the Hollywood stereotypes of the period and at times this rather uneven movie of theirs is nothing more than a series of somewhat isolated incidents just strung together. Some of them work extremely well such as Burt Gurney’s (Channing Tatum) delightful big song and dance routine in the style of Gene Kelly, whereas the usually reliable Tilda Swinton’s performance as a pair of twin gossip columnists a la Hedda Hopper falls rather flat, despite her rather stunning hats. The high points do at least give the overall impression that it is an enjoyable and funny film even though it is far from the best that the brothers have made. They manage to cram in a lot of action with very little real plot into quite a fast paced 106 minutes, but at times it seems that the Coens have not so much been inspired by the original classic Hollywood but more by the master of high camp Mel Brooks and his classic gem of a movie "Blazing Saddles" from 1974.    

★★★★★★★

The Lady In The Van

Sometime in the 1970's Mary Shepard decided to park her beaten up old Bedford van in one of the nicer leafy streets in London's Camden Town area. The street with it's expansive Georgian houses was home to several professional upper-middle class Brits that included a smattering of famous people such as the widow of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, and now it was to become Miss Shepard's home too.  The van that is.  As a devout Catholic she was prone to get 'messages' direct she believed from the Virgin Mary who told her to park her beaten up home-on-wheels there.\, and at precisely exactly 1.5" from the sidewalk.

The elderly Miss Shepard was a determined and rather belligerent force to be reckoned with and although the residents of the street bitterly resented the presence of her and the unsightly dilapidated van, they were far to British to come out and complain directly to her. In fact she relied on the fact that she intimidated them and consequently took advantage of any slight kindness they felt obliged to proffer, without even a hint of gratitude. None more so than that of playwright Alan Bennett who had just moved in to the Street, and when the sudden arrival of street parking restrictions were imposed in the area it was he who came to her rescue when he somewhat reluctantly offered to allow Miss Shepard to move the van into his driveway instead.  He intended it be to for just a few weeks, however she ended up staying 13 years, and only eventually left when the undertaker came to collect her body.

As the opening credits of this wonderfully warm new comedy remind us, this is in fact a mostly true story. There was a real Miss Shepard (although it turned out that wasn't her real name) and she did indeed camp out in the driveway of  Alan Bennett's nice North London home. She was such a colorful and somewhat difficult character she was too good a subject for him not to write about.  At first Bennett made this eccentric woman's life into a play for the radio, which he  converted into a hit stage play in London's West End before ending up now as a movie.  

There is talk that the mysterious Miss Shepard in real life wasn't always quite as amusing and funny as Bennett makes her appear in the movie.  He has imbued her role with a great deal of his own dry sardonic wit and has written her some gloriously hysterical one-liners that has the audience in stitches. The back story of her history of how she ended up living in the van unfolds slowly in the movie and is based on fact and heresay and probably more than a small part by the writer's imagination.

In the movie Bennett is portrayed as two parts of a split personality (both excellently played by actor Alex Jennings) : one is Bennett who is living though the experience and seemingly little else other than the rare visit of the occasional hunky man later at night, and 'other' Bennett is the observer and writer who sees the potential of Miss Shepard as good copy.  The 'two' Bennetts argue with each other until there is eventually a real live-in boyfriend/partner who insists that he has simply got all this talking to himself.

In every incarnation of Miss Shepard from the radio play onwards she has been played dead straight by a poker faced (Dame) Maggie Smith in a role that she was destined to play. In reality she is simply a carrying on with even more of the same attitude and disdain as if a grander version of Dowager Countess of Grantham was now a homeless bag lady. This sheer joy of her spectacular tour-de-force performance is every inch worthy of an Oscar that it shamefully did not even get nominated for.  

The movie reunites Bennett with (Sir) Nicholas Hytner who has directed all of Miss Shepard's outings to date as well as both of Bennett's other plays that were adapted into movies.  In fact sharp eyed audience members will spot that almost the entire cast of "The History Boys" from James Corden to Dominic Cooper etc have cameo roles in "The Lady In The Van" .... with the notable exception of the late Richard Griffiths. Shot in the actual house in London's Grosvenor Crescent where Bennett and Miss Shepard lived cheek by jowl, we are actually rewarded with a cameo of the writer himself as he comes to witness the last few scenes of the movie being shot.

It's a wonderful quintessentially English movie that tells it as it is, and doesn't try to pretend that being homeless is anything but rough even if you are an educated woman,  and  even if the rest of us as guilt-ridden liberals would want to pretend otherwise.

★★★★★★★★