CHOCOLATE CITY

'Y'all seen Magic Mike right? Now we gonna add a little chocolate' intones Michael Jai White before the opening credits of the movie. What he fails to mention is that they have also added a lot more cheese and a great deal of soap too in this all-black take off of the 2012 smash hit movie about a group of hot male strippers. The story follows a similar vein about a regular guy who reluctantly becomes an exotic dancer to discover that in fact that this is his natural calling and overnight becomes a big star.

In this movie our man Michael is a Grade A student who has a part time job in a hamburger joint to help support his mother who has just had her job cut and his older brother who has an complete aversion to work. He wants to have a girlfriend and his heart goes aflutter every time he sits next to Carmen in class but she will not go out on a date with him as he doesn't have a car.

The family are about to have their power cut off when Michael is approached in the Men's Room of a Club and offered a job (!) which he ends up taking. Actually at first he turns it down flat, but his greedy brother seeing how much money can be made, eggs his sibling to get on stage and strip in front of a packed crowd of black women all waving wads of dollar bills in the air.

Strangely enough given the nature of the job he, and most of the other strippers, finish their acts with their trousers still intact, but there are many points like this in this poorly written movie that simply do not seem to ring true. Having said that, all of the stripper/dancers are amazingly sensuous and their sexy routines are one of the only things that is so much hotter than they were in 'Magic Mike'.

Now working late nights, Michael's school work suffers so within weeks his grades in his French class go from A to D but on the plus side as he now has a set of wheels he finally gets laid so he does at least get to use some french letters.

His church going mother worries about Michael's new found wealth as she and Carmen have no idea that he is getting it by just shaking his stuff for hoards of screaming ladies who cannot get enough of him.  His co-workers resent the fact that newbie Michael is promoted over them to get star billing and hence more money.  It is obvious though that it is all going to end in tears and quite quickly, although funny enough the two women in his life surprisingly take his eventual disclosure with no more than a mere bat of an eyelash.

Chocolate City is  cliched, packed full of stereotypes, and with such corny lines that you positively wince for the actors who have to trot them out. Like when Carmen asks why he kept the fact that this was the way he chose to get his family out of debt, Michael replies 'I'm a man.  I can't ask for help!' Writer/director Jean-Claude La Marre is a man too, and he so should have asked for help with this movie.

In fairness the target audience for this movie is young black  women and I am anything but that. Also as I am going for complete disclosure I will admit that I thought that 'Magic Mike' was just a piece of really bad sex-less soft-porn and saw no 'magic' in it at all. Chocolate City does at least have some good routines plus  Michael is played by Robert Ri'chard who does have the most amazing washboard abs, even though he is a good churchgoing boy who keeps telling his mum how much he loves her.

★★★★  

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

It’s hard to distinguish if some of the criticism leveled at this, the fourth adaption of Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel, is because the director of this English classic is Danish, or because ardent cinephiles are miffed that anyone should try surpassing John Schlesinger’s 1967 definitive version starring Julie Christie. Nevertheless this new pared down adaptation scores high with its take on the tale of how Miss Bathsheba Everdene discovers that her new found wealth makes her the most eligible spinster in the County.  

To be fair her first suitor Gabriel Oaks, the strong rough farmer of very few words, pops the question when he first meets the headstrong young woman before Bathsheba even knows that she is about to inherit her late Uncle’s very impressive farm.  Poor Gabriel is not only unlucky in love and fails to get Bathsheba to accept him, but very soon afterwards his young sheepdog goes wild and in a freak accident, Gabriel loses his flock and the farm with it too.  So instead of becoming his wife, Bathsheba becomes his employer when she hires him as a shepherd to work on her farm. 

Her second suitor is a wealthy middle-aged landowner whose vast estates adjoin her land. Mr. Boldwood initially seems to view a potential marriage as a way of merging their properties together but it soon appears that this confirmed bachelor is quite smitten with his pretty young neighbour and steps up his courtship a peg or two in the hope that he will win her hand.  She lets him down gentler than she had with Gabriel and gives him hope when she promised to seriously think about his offer of marriage.

The third man to court her is a dashing army Sergeant who is still smarting from the fact that a kitchen maid had left him standing at the altar recently.  Now on the rebound Sergeant Troy in his bright scarlet uniform puts on all the charm he can muster to outrageously flirt with this wealthy pretty heiress, and totally out of character this normally level headed young woman falls for his veneer of smarm, and runs off and marries him.

Back on the farm with the new ‘master’ installed who is hell bent on gambling away all her income, Bathsheba soon comes to regret her mistake in marrying a scoundrel who had only courted after he had been jilted by the love of his life. Something that becomes quickly confirmed when the body of his dead pregnant ex-girlfriend appears on their doorstep.

Troy drowns his sorrows and himself, and so now a ‘widow’ Bathsheba is courted once again by Mr Boldwood and this time he almost makes it to the finishing post.  However, in Vinterberg’s take on the story, Ms. Everdene’s choices for a spouse had been clear all along. It was either to be the Goodie, the Baddie or the Hottie, and even in this rural 19th Century setting, we always knew who had to succeed.

Shot on location in Hardy’s lush Dorset countryside it feels as English as it could with Carey Mulligan shining so radiantly as the woman that everyone wants to fall in love, especially in this case, the camera. Michael Sheen gives a wonderfully moving performance as the heartbroken Boldwood; Tom Sturridge plays the Sergeant , and Belgian Matthias Schoenaerts does his best West Country accent as the broody Gabriel.

Coming in at 60 minutes shorter than Schlesinger’s epic, it still packs the full punch of Hardy’s classic tale, and for once this is a remake that is almost as good as the original.

★★★★★★★★

ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

Greg Gaines doesn't make friends easily.  Not that he tries as he has concocted a way to get through his high-school days without making any. He is a funny smart-alec who is rather clever at telling people what they want to hear, but not very good at human interaction. He and his only friend Earl, an African-American who lives with his family on the wrong side of the tracks, spend their time together making really corny short film parodies of the classic movies they are oddly addicted too.  They give them titles such as 'A Sockworth Orange' and 'Pooping Tom'.

However Greg's mother has plans to shake him out of trying to be so anonymous when she springs on him that one of his classmates has been diagnosed with leukemia.  He neither knows the girl or has any intention of changing that as essentially he is pretty terrified of girls in general.  However when he finds the only way to get his nagging mother off his case, he agrees to go visit.  Poor Rachel has been fending phone calls all day from well-meaning strangers pouring out sympathy so its somewhat of a rude awakening when Greg just blurts out really why he is there. The brazen honest strikes a chord with her and sows the seed for what will become the most unlikeliest of friendships with unexpected easiness.

We know a lot what Greg is thinking thanks to his voiceover in appropriate moments, and so we know that as this is not a romance, Greg will not be taking Rachel into his arms and kissing her until she is better.  In fact he really has his eyes set on the school hottie who he allows to ride roughshod over him as he is convinced that with his chipmunk face and scrawny body she would never ever go for him.

The relationship with Rachel does flourish even though we are neatly reminded of its lack of any real future with chapter titles saying 'Day 44 of Doomed Friendship'. It does however make Greg's posturing as someone who cares little about anything else, much more difficult to maintain. He’s been living in a world of his own, walking around with an art-film score in his head. Now he is engaging with a world where reality isn’t of his design.

For a movie that deals with teens it is remarkable mature, and one of the refreshing things about this story is that it tackles all the emotions and complex issues head on and does not try to dilute them to make them more palatable.  It's helped too by the eccentric cast of characters in their lives including Greg's caftan-wearing house-bound Sociologist Professor father, his muscle-bound tattooed pot-smoking history teacher, and Rachel's mother who smothers Greg with tight hugs and incessant kisses that are best described as 'inappropriate'.

This comic drama is however not destined to make you want to reach for the Kleenex box in the same manner as last year's teenage cancer drama 'The Fault In Our Stars' which this will inevitably be compared with. There is a sharp edge to Greg's wit and his subversive humor as he holds out against his journey of self-discovery as long as he can.  He knows he will have to come out of denial eventually.

This is the sophomore feature from filmmaker Alfonso Gomez-Rejon who cut his teeth working with Martin Scorsese, and with a script written by Jesse Andrews which he adapted by his own novel.  It is a flawless movie in every single aspect, from the cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung to the delightful soundtrack from Brian Eno. It is however the remarkable performances from the three young leads that made this piece come alive so wonderfully and that had the audiences at Sundance clamoring to their feet and giving them spontaneous standing ovations. Thomas Mann ('Project X') gave such an understated well-nuanced pitch perfect performance when he completely got under the skin of the self-deprecating Greg; Olivia Cooke proved to be fearlessly brave playing the head-shorn Rachel with such confidence and sincerity and without even trying to milk the potential melodrama of her character; and finally Earl played by newbie actor RJ Cyler who had less to say than the others, but was such a pivotal part of keeping the other's friendship going.

Final credit goes to the animators who were responsible for making the short movies that dominated the boy's lives.  When at the end Greg finally gets to show Rachel the first movie that he has made for someone else, and you see that  it is quite devastatingly beautiful and you realize that he has finally grown up.  Then you may want to grab a Kleenex.

★★★★★★★★★

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND

François Ozon means to grab your attention from the very first frame of his movie, which shows a young bride in a wedding dress lying in a coffin surrounded by sobbing mourners.  Standing besides David her husband is Claire who has been Laura's best friend since childhood and she finishes her emotional eulogy by promising to look after Laura's baby and her husband too. 

In the weeks that follow Claire is too distraught over the loss that she resists checking up on her new charges. When she does finally pop in to their nearby house one day without warning, she is totally unprepared for what she finds.  Sitting on the couch is a blond woman who from the back is a dead ringer for Laura, but when she turns around Claire is confronted by the sight of David dressed head to toe as a woman. Both of them are startled by the confrontation especially Claire who quickly departs after denouncing David as a pervert.

However she is intrigued enough to want to go back and learn more about his long-standing cross-dressing habit.  He explains that he is not gay but that he has always enjoyed dressing up in women's clothes and something that he did with his wife's knowledge.  

When Virginie and Claire get really tight it leads to a suggestion of sexual attraction, which muddies the water somewhat.  Virginie has fallen in love with his late wife's best friend, but it seems however that Claire has been drawn in looking for a substitute for her Laura who she so pines for .

In one of his best ever performances, one of France’s finest contemporary actors Romain Duris totally nails David/Virginie. He’s lost even more weight which suits all the chic clothing he gets to dress up in, but much more important than that he captures the feminine aspect of his character so perfectly without even a hint of campness that could so easily have reduced Virginie to a caricature. He is a sheer joy to watch.

Ozon has always been a great one to play with different sexual and gender identities and he has a wonderful time with this story making Virginie aka David ultra feminine right down to her flouncy lingerie, whereas Claire is so often in trousers that her husband is visibly shocked on the rare occasion she puts a dress on.  It is a real treat.

P.S. The movie has been adapted from a story by British crime writer Ruth Rendall who died 10 days ago aged 85.

★★★★★★★★★

COWBOYS

'Cowboys' is an oddball absurdist Croatian comedy that was such a hit at home it became the country's official submission for an Academy Award Best Foreign Picture Nomination last year. It didn't win anything but it did at least show the world what extraordinary filmmakers they are, and what a glorious bizarre sense of humor they have that is a sheer treat.

Saša, a famous stage director suffering with cancer, returns to his small depressing industrial hometown where he is immediately press-ganged into putting on an amateur show for the culturally starved townsfolk. Only five eccentric and most unlikely people turn up for the auditions, and so by sheer default that become what Saša aptly calls his 'idiots'. They include a silent deeply closeted gay man, an overly keen mama's boy/postal worker, a street vendor trying to avoid the loan sharks who want their money repaid and a young woman who speaks in a language that none of them understand.  None of them have ever acted before in their lives.

When Saša tries to comb this unkempt and illiterate group for inspiration as to what they should perform he draws a blank as none of them have any cultural references at all. The only thing that they seem to be able to relate too are cowboys, so Saša resolves to mount a musical western. He bravely ensures that the production is more than a touch avant-garde having his limited cast playing all the human parts and the animals too.

As the rehearsals get underway each of the crew seems to have either a major personal problem or just simply cold-feet so Saša has them all sing out a chant about not accepting 'I can't' under any circumstances.  He meanwhile is battling the return of his cancer which may limit him physically and give him a valid reason to lose his rag occasionally, but doesn't dampen his enthusiasm for the project.

The movie written by Saša Anonic, who also stars as Saša too, is based on his own very successful stage play and has its fair share of local jokes which get somewhat lost in translation and account for the fact that at 108 minutes is at least a half an hour too long. Having said that there is a delightful soundtrack of cowboy songs, and the rather wonderful uplifting ending, albeit tinged with sadness, is well worth the wait.

If this outlandish black comedy is atypical of Croatian cinema, then it is definitely a genre the world needs to see more.  It is something of an acquired taste but if you like somewhat ludicrous oddball movies, then it's a taste you will want to experience.

★★★★★★★★

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Actress Maria Enders a 40-ish movie star is having something of a middle-aged crisis with her marriage dissolving and her career at a crossroads.  She has been persuaded to travel to Switzerland to accept an Award on behalf of her close friend the playwright Wilhelm Melchior who had given her the breakthrough role that started her career decades ago.  En route she gets a message that he has suddenly died, and soon after learns that to mark his passing there will be a theatrical staging of his celebrated movie 'Maloja Snake' that had made Maria a star. This time however they do not want her to recreate her original role of the young woman but play the part of a burned out older businesswoman who is manipulated by a young female assistant in a daring lesbian dynamic.

It's not something that Maria is keen to undertake as that would mean acknowledging that she is too old to play the part she really identifies with, but also there is bad omen that still remains about the role of the bitter older woman as the original actress had died in a tragic accident soon after the movie was released.

Whenever it suits her, Maria tends to shield herself from the outside world behind Val who acts as her personal assistant, confidante, minder, unofficial therapist and her rehearsal partner.  It is Val who persuades her reluctant boss to accept the stage role and even drags her to a nearby cinema to show Maria a rather appalling movie starring the hot young actress who will be playing the part in the play that Maria still covets. The fact that the ingenue has a infamous Lindsay Lohan type reputation in the media just serves to remind Maria of her own wild times which she had reluctantly left in her past. 

Marie's almost total dependency on Val almost burns her young assistant out and just when there is a hint of some physicality between the two, Val drives off into the night for a date with a boyfriend that she had strangely failed to mention any time prior.Then soon after this she completely disappears somewhat mysteriously when the mists of the clouds high up in the mountains engulf both women, and she is never seen again.

Juliette Binoche brings this rather disturbing plot completely alive with an outstanding and impeccable performance as Maria.  It is on one level a case of art mirroring life, as Ms Binoche got her first big break almost 30 years ago in 'Rendez-vous' written by Oliver Assayas who has now directed her in 'Sils Maria'.  A very impressive Kristen Stewart played Val with such veracity that it earned her a Best Actress César: an extremely rare honor for a non French actor, and Chloë Grace Moretz played Maria's bete noir.

It is very much a thought-provoking piece that gets a tad esoteric at times as Maria struggles to verbalise her own unsettled state.  It takes a brave actress to undertake a role which shows her rather exposed, racked with fear and such uncertainty but luckily for us Ms Binoche is totally fearless.

★★★★★★★★

LOVE ME

There is no such thing as a bargain basement when it comes to getting yourself a mail order bride as the lonely men featured in Jonathon Naducci's compelling and somewhat sad documentary soon realized. He chooses to follow five men from the US who have been unable to find a replacement for their ex wives, or in one case have never yet managed to lose their relationship virginity. They all are prepared to hand over several thousands of dollars and transaction fees to an online dating agency called 'A Foreign Affair' who have promised to find them the Ukrainian woman of their dreams.  Or at the very least one who will pretend to go along with the idea if there is the possibility of marriage and the chance to leave Ukraine for a better life elsewhere. 

The Agency is run by an American man and his younger Russian wife with a website with pages and pages of scantily clad women in very provocative poses that looks something more akin to an old-fashioned soft-porn site. The men, all middle-aged and overweight and hardly good looking, get to chose their fantasy woman to start corresponding with at $10 per email (the charge is evidently for 'translation' something that Google will do for free). Then when they want to take it one step further they join one of the Agency's tours to meet a whole bevy of women at different social gatherings in Ukraine.

Some of the men harbor desires to meet up with the women that have invested several hundreds of $10 emails in, but often they fail to turn up at the organized gatherings giving rise to the possibility that they may never have existed in the first place. Those that do find 'love' at first sight on the dance floor with a women who doesn't understand a word they are saying, enjoy some 'passion' which seems to end abruptly when the money does too.  Both dry up at the same time.  

Naducci also followed the scenario of an completely hopeless Australian man who seemed unable to even notice the total disinterest of the woman he pursued and he even took her and her two children to Bali for a vacation. She returned her thanks by marrying him although she never let him get more than a peck on the cheek before she left him for good.  He actually received a letter from a friend of his 'wife's' who warned him that she was only after his money, but he still refused to believe that this wasn't a match made in heaven, let alone Kiev.

There were some successes and two of the men found brides who they eventually managed to get visas for to take them home to the U.S. Although to be fair, one of the couples was such a glaringly odd miss-matched pair it seems inconceivable that their relationship would last once the bride had her own legal status to remain in the US.

Naducci carefully does not question either the legitimacy or the validity of 'A Foreign Affair' or other agencies like this, but it is obvious that the whole concept/business is riddled with abuse and deception, even though it is never clear if the Agencies are complicit with girls or not.  What is sad that is unfairly promising hope to some very desperate and painfully naive men who think that the only way they will ever get a happy relationship is to buy it from a group of women who may be content with far less than their American counterparts.

★★★★★

SLOW WEST

16-year-old Jay Cavendish travels from Scotland to Colorado in hot pursuit of the object of his affections after she had to flee the country in haste when her father had accidentally killed a local aristocratic landowner.  It’s the 1880’s and the naïve young Scot is totally unprepared for the rough Wild West and all the danger he encounters, but fortunately for him he is rescued by Silas a rugged frontiersman who agrees to help shepherd and protect the young man for a small fee until he finds his precious Rose.

What Jay doesn’t realize is that Silas has an ulterior motive that he doesn’t reveal to his new charge that he too is looking for Rose and her father as there is a price on both of their heads.  He hopes that Jay will lead him there quicker than all the other bounty hunters out to cash in on rewards offered for the two fugitives from the law.  However even Silas cannot protect them from an attack when they get caught in the cross-fire when a desperate immigrant and his wife hold up the general store to feed their starving children in one of the many scenes of bloody violence that pervade this story.

Written and directed by Scottish musician turned filmmaker John MacLean, this debut feature of a hybrid western is a coming-of-age tale, a romance and a thriller too. Right from the start, it is fairly obvious that this is not going to end happily. ‘There’s much more to life than just survival,’ Jay tells Silas at one point to which he replies. ‘Yeah, there’s dying.’ When they finally catch up with their quarry in the midst of the plains there is a lengthy savage shoot-out between them and the gang of thuggish gun-slinging hunters.  Even with its excessive bloodshed that seems almost unending at times, it is an impressive spellbinding beautifully staged finale to this intriguing wee film.

Starring a scrawny looking Kodi Smit-McPhee who caused such a stir with his breakthrough performance in ‘The Road’ and who is now equally splendid as the determined young Jay. Alongside him is an intimidating Michael Fassbinder as Silas, a man of few words, but big on action

Credit also too the rather spectacular photography that turned the New Zealand stand-in-location into such a dramatic vista that really made the terrain so untamed and stunningly foreboding.  It helped it pick up a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

★★★★★★★★

I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

Retired school teacher Carol Peterson has been widowed 20 years but it isn't until her pet dog gets sick and has to be put down that she realizes how lonely she really is. True she has her three best girlfriends who she plays cards with and gossips when sipping countless glasses of chardonnay (with little visible effect) but she knows that is not enough. According to 'the girls' she needs to put herself back on the market even if that means subjecting herself to the indignities of speed dating with an assorted odd bunch of seniors.

Its actually when she is leaving this event that she is spotted in the parking lot by a flirtatious handsome gent who promptly asks her out lunch.  Turns out that Sam is quite the catch and ticks enough of Carol's boxes to end up in bed with her too. It is something she tries in vain to keep a secret from her nosey friends they soon discover it and immediately start to rib.

Sam is however not the only new man in her life as she has a new pool boy.  Well Lloyd is in his early 30's but to Carol who is very aware of their age difference, this young man who still lives at home with his parents and seems content to live just drift by him, he appears to be very young indeed.  They do bond though through the chardonnay, and a rat that insists on living in Carol's house, and music.  In fact he persuades Carol to take the mike at a karaoke night where she eloquently croons the song that this movie takes its title from. 

Nothing quite works out as we think it may or that Carol thinks she wants but director and co-writer Brett Haley at least allows this delightful romantic dramedy to end on a kind of positive note.

The real delight of the movie is that Carol is played by the subliminal Blythe Danner with such a remarkable performance that it is something of a real mystery why she doesn't get to play the lead more often.  She is obviously having a great deal of fun and she told the crowds at the Sundance Premiere that this was 'a role I have waited 50 years to play'.   She handles the fine line of her inter-generational friendship with the dead-pan ambition-less would-be Poet so beautifully that it never seems predatory or the slightest bit uncomfortable or icky even.

Haley is to be commended for tackling a subject that is usually totally avoided in movies i.e. the need for seniors to enjoy a regular sex life. However despite the optimism that Carol suddenly shares when Bill starts courting her, there is still a very clear message that at this age one should never realistically raise expectations above a dog for a close loving relationship. That, and a weekly card game with your wise-cracking friends.

Sam Elliot played Bill, Martin Starr was young LLoyd, and the hilarious gaggle of 'girls' were Rhea Perlman, June Squibb and Mary Kay Place.

This is a rare treat : a grown up story for grown ups.

★★★★★★★★