Burnt

In this new mouth watering movie from the Weinstein Company there are three things that are hot.  The food, the tempers and the star Bradley Cooper.  It's not the first time he has tried his hand at playing a temperamental master chef: back in 2005 he was in the very short-lived Fox TV series 'Kitchen Confidential' based on the life of Anthony Bourdain.  Now he is back playing Adam Jones an ex-pat American in London trying to get his 'A' game back after having an almighty meltdown in Paris due to an expensive drug habit and an ability to wreck everything good in his life including the Michelin Two Star restaurant whose premature closure he apparently brought about.

For some unexplained reason he has been redeeming himself by shucking oysters in a New Orleans dive for the past two years and getting 'clean' at the same time.  Now he's back in London penniless and with a single purpose in mind : to open a restaurant to get an elusive third Michelin star. It's not going to be easy as it seems that half the capital city has a grudge to bear against this rather arrogant man, although they all seem eager enough to line up to proclaim that he is possibly the best chef in the world.

He does however manage to persuade a very reluctant Tony a Maitre D' at his family owned high-end Hotel to hand over his restaurant to help him achieve his goal.  Like so many others in this drama, Tony keeps cryptically referring to their past experiences together and 'what happened in Paris' but without ever going into any real detail.  The only reason that he is prepared to try to forgive and forget is that he has a bad case of unrequited love for Adam. Next Adam sets about gathering together his hand-picked motley crew of young talented chefs to cook with him. They include Michel who initially expresses his anger at Adam for being responsible for him losing his own restaurant in Paris, but then who begs him for a job. Plus there is an ex-con Italian just released from Prison, and a very nervous young Brit chef who has to even put Adam up on his own couch initially when he is homeless.

The only female in the team is Helene a single mother and an exceptional sous chef who is the one who takes the longest to fall for Adam and his genius as he treats her even worse than anyone else in his new kitchen.  When things start cooking he is always on an angry rampage doing his very best Gordon Ramsay impression hurling china and abuse every single second he doesn't get his own way, which in this culinary melodrama, is quite often.

There are also angry encounters with a chef from a another highly successful restaurant, plus temper tantrums with anyone who isn't going to help him achieve the ultimate Michelin accolade.  The only people that seem to get the better of him ....physically anyway ..... are the drug dealers trying to collect from him all the monies he owes for 'what happened in Paris'.  However, with only one minor unexpected twist to this plot, it is very obvious that Adam will always get his own way, even with Helene no matter how bad he treats her.

Bradley Cooper puts in a passionate performance as the fiery megalomaniac who is obsessed and has to deal with his inner demons as a perfectionist wanting to achieve his ultimate goal.  He does however look in far better physical shape than one would

expect from someone who has allegedly been abusing his body for years ....but this is a movie after all. The co-star of the movie is undoubtedly the food ... top Brit chef Marcus Waring who has his own Michelin 2 Star Restaurant in London, was the consultant .... and director John Wells ensures the camera lingers long enough to have you salivating through a good part of the movie.

There is a great international supporting cast headed by Sienna Miller who is a very spirited Helene, Daniel Brühl as lovelorn Tony, Riccardo Scamarcio as ex con Max, Omar Sy as Michel, Matthew Rhys as Adam's bete noire Reiss, and in two cameo roles Uma Thurman and Alicia Vikander.  In every movie these days there is always one scene stealer, and in this instance it is the ever wonderful Emma Thompson in a very small but crucial role as the Therapist hired to ensure that Adam doesn't relapse into his old bad habits.

What the movie lacked however, was that special ingredient similar to the problem that Adam had in his kitchen trying to avoid his dishes being just mundane.  There were too many aspects of the story that even the actors seemed to have trouble been convinced about and it certainly wasn't helped with rather stomach churning grandiose statements like Adam declaring 'I want to make food that makes people stop eating'.   

Adam had a very simple mantra in the kitchen of 'if it's not perfect, you throw it way' which is far too tough to apply to the movie itself. After all we can enjoy food without a Michelin star then we can also enjoy a movie that is certainly not going to win any awards any time soon as it is still very palatable.

★★★★★★

The Wonders

Living in a remote part of rural Italy, German transplant Wolfgang and his family have all but turned their backs on the rest of society to live on their desolate farm and survive on their ramshackle beekeeping enterprise. Gelsomina, almost a teen and the oldest of his four daughters, is expected to be fully proficient in helping him run the hives and also taking responsibility for her younger siblings whilst her mother and aunt tend to their small market garden. Their life is tough and hard as Wolfgang insists that on an existence which seems to shun any hint of modern agriculture machinery or methods.

One day when the family are taking a dip in the ocean after doing their daily chores they stumble on a film crew making an advertisement for a Reality TV Show called 'Most Traditional Family'. Both the set and the star are very cheesy but in the eyes of Gelsomina and her sisters who have never ever encountered anything remotely glamorous, it's all beauty personified.   The girls desperately want to be able to enter the competition which totally horrifies their father as it stands for everything he is against. However as the local authorities have just been to visit the farm and demand that he either brings it up to European Law standards or lose it, he is sorely tempted as the family are broke and could badly use the prize money. They have already taken in Martin a sullen German boy from a juvenile delinquent program but they got little money from that and anyway his presence disturbed Gelsomina who thought he would replace her  as her father's heir as he seems like the son that he always wanted.

When Gelsomina's secret application to enter the competition gets accepted, an extremely reluctant Wolfgang agrees.  Dressed up in ancient costumes and taking the boat to the isolated island where the filming is to be done in a cave complete with ancient Etruscan paintings gives an even more surreal feeling to this rather odd story.  Here Wolfgang who never shows any emotions to his family becomes yet even more remote as he goes through the motions required of him to try and get the elusive prize money.

This second feature film from German/Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher ('Corpe Celeste') focuses much more on the atmosphere and image of the situation of the family than the rather slight plot.  She works like a artist painting a blank canvass that she fills with a rough and unforgiving countryside littered with struggling peasants trying to eek out a living into which she places one of the worst ubiquitous symbols of contemporary society : the Reality TV Show.  It is a vivid contrast pitching Wolfgang's idealism with that of the greed and crassness that the TV company is inevitably promoting.

The star of the family .... and the movie ....is young Gelsomina who seems the only one set on keeping this family really together . She's matched in part by her sibling Marinella who is four years younger and is so independently minded that she never hesitates about arguing with Gelsomina about what's best for them all.  Although we should mention too the performance of Monica Bellucci (shortly to be seen in 'Spectre' making out with James Bond) as the TV star that mesmerizes them all.

'The Wonders' all looks like a world from a distant past that is pretty to look at for a very short while, but never to actually ever visit.

★★★★★★★

Rock The Kasbah

Veteran funny man Bill Murray is so good at playing miserable old curmudgeons who turn out to be really warm human beings before the final credits roll, that he's making quite a career out of it these days.  Following on the heels of last years 'St Vincent', Murray now swaps Brooklyn for Afghanistan but once again he is running out of luck.  He plays Richie Lanz a has-been Rock Group Road Manager who has run out of both groups and roads, and is now holed up in a makeshift office in a seedy motel conning talentless would-be singers.  His only 'client' is a singer who doubles up as his secretary, but she becomes his ticket out of there when one night performing in a dingy karaoke bar in L.A., she gets offered a gig on a Tour. The trouble is that's in Afghanistan entertaining the US Troops, but Lanz, desperate for money signs up anyway.

His 'Act' however is far from keen to be performing in a war zone and no sooner have they landed in Kabul, she runs off taking Lanz's money and passport with her too.  Penniless and stranded, Lanz hooks up with some ex-pat arms dealers and gets involved in a scam to sell bad ammunition to a remote Pashun village.  It is there that he accidentally discovers a remarkable young singer who he is convinced is enormously talented.  The trouble is that as she is a girl  she is totally forbidden to perform according to their very patriarchal culture.  To do so could put her life at risk, and Lanz's too if he insists on helping her.

This preposterously silly story is based on a real incident when a young local girl was actually brave enough to actually appear on Afghan Star , a TV show that is their equivalent to American Idol. However this take on it, written by Mitch Glazer and directed by Barry Levinson, uses that fact simply to build a rather ridiculously contrived story purely as a vehicle for Murray's wonderfully comic performance. 

Setting any comedy in a war zone is always something of a risk, especially one that is so pointless and controversial as Afghanistan, and Levinson has scenes of Lanz insisting on grand-standing and addressing heavily armed militia and getting away with it most of time.  Although Lanz is a failed hustler he still somehow manages to scrape through most of what is thrown at him not because it adds any credulity to the plot, but simply because there is this unwritten pact with the audience that we all want him to succeed somehow.

The casting is a little bizarre too.  Some of it works exceedingly well like Zooey Deschanel who shines as the singer who cannot get out of the country quick enough, and Bruce Willis who is quite brilliant as a strung-out mercenary with a very dull sense of humor. On the other hand Kate Hudson as the hooker who is all heart as she works servicing the locals from her Double Wide, looks decidedly uncomfortable out of place.

As a vehicle for Murray, it works well most of the time, and devoted fans will love seeing what he does best yet once again. Others however may thing it drags a little too much.  A little like the war itself. 

★★★★★

Truth

One of the more difficult aspects to swallow regarding the un-level playing fields of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign were rather scurrilous claims regarding Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record.  They proved to be totally unfounded but only after they had caused unrepairable damage. At the very same time there questions were raised about the service record of the other candidate, the sitting President George Bush, who had managed to avoid fighting overseas completely by opting for a much safer role in the Air National Guard. 

When Mary Mapes a senior Producer at CBS who was responsible for the prestigious 60 Minutes TV Program led by veteran newsman Dan Rather, got wind of a potential story about Bush managing to avoid even his easy stint with the Guard, she started a whole investigation.  With the approval of the Network's bosses, and encouraged by Rather, she got together a small very experienced team to check out documents purportedly from the files of Bush's commanding officer, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B Killian that confirmed that Bush had been been AWOL for most of his alleged military service.  Mapes had learned that the then-Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes had admitted making phone calls to get Bush into the Guard, as he claimed to have done for the children of several other influential Texans.  The story was that Bush had received preferential treatment in passing over hundreds of applicants to enlist in the Texas Air National Guard in order to avoid being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam after he had graduated from Yale in 1968.

When the 60 Minute team had gathered substantial evidence supporting the claims their aired their findings in a special edition of their show, but before Rather and Mapes could even celebrate their major news coup, they were immediately subject to some to some very virulent criticism. It all focused on the actual authenticity of the documents that they had received from Bill Burkett, who was a retired Lt. Colonel with the Guard.  Suddenly there was a very aggressive and effective campaign mounted to discredit the entire 60 Minute Team by some very influential and important political figures simply by rubbishing the validity of the evidence.   It eventually resulted in Rather prematurely ending his distinguished career in disgrace and ignominy, and Mapes and her entire team being fired.

This new feature film from screenwriter-turned-director James Valentine is based on a memoir by Mary Mapes so it is fair to assume that as the story is told from her point of view that she rightly comes out of this as the heroine of the piece.  What she insists on repeating was the fact that not once during this whole debacle did the debate ever touch on the more important issue and the crux of the whole matter which was the fact that the President shirked his easy and privileged  duties, from which he even managed to get released from early to go to Harvard. The opposition was always about the technicality of the evidence thus ensuring that the conversation remained firmly on that and that alone.

This is a powerful piece of partisan shenanigans and the reliving of which no doubt will enrage people from both ends of the political specter but obviously for entirely different reasons. With a central dynamic and electrifying performance by Cate Blanchett as Mapes which is a role that she delivers with such potent force that makes this whole wretched tale so completely compelling for each of the 120 minutes. Her co-star is Robert Redford, who in one of his best performances for years, is pitch perfect as the statesman-like Rather as he plays the wise sage to his passionate and provocative producer.

The 60 Minute team is played by Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace and Elizabeth Moss, and the manipulative CBS President who bails on his News room team to save his own neck and the future of the network is played by Bruce Greenwood.

Reference is made to the fact that Mapes had been in possession of the story about Bush's so-called military service before the 2000 election but the sudden death of her mother meant she shelved it then.  This was the US Election that resulted in Bush being awarded the Presidency by the US Supreme Court after Al Gore had won the popular vote. Maybe that would have turned out differently if it made our screens back then.  

Immediately prior to this drama unfolding at 60 Minutes, Mapes had produced the story that announced the US military's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.  She won a Peabody Award for this, but the time that was announced in 2004 she has already been fired, never to work in television again.

It's a deeply sad part of our recent history and this powerful re-telling of exactly what happened should simply not be missed by anyone.

★★★★★★★★★

Big Stone Gap

Big Stone Gap is the sort of old-fashioned homespun middle America town that represents a gentler and kinder world where time literally stands still.  It's actually a real blue-collar mining town in a corner of Virginia where the movie's writer and director Adriana Trigiani grew up, and this is not only based on her own true story, but she actually got to film it all in the small town itself.

The year is 1978 (and one wonders if the movie's production team had to change anything in the Town to take it back in time) and the town's pharmacist and resident old maid is getting itchy feet. Good natured and extremely generous, Ave Marie Mulligan is every one's friend and this year she is also directing the community theater's production of Tales of The Lonesome Pine starring the histrionic Theodore, who offstage is also sort-of her boyfriend too. The reason that he cannot follow through on their relationship comes as no shock at all when it is later revealed, but then again Trigiaini ensures that there really are no surprises at all in this story.

The fact that Ave Marie claims she is happy being single, even when her mother passes away and leaves her totally alone, rings a tad hollow as she lights up every time that she spots hunky miner Jack MacChesney, who obviously has a thing for her too.  The trouble is that 40 year-old Jack has somehow got through life not learning a thing at all about courting and stumbles badly at making a pass at Ave Marie. However at the same time,  the town's blonde ex-cheerleader divorcee is circling him for her next husband. When he fails to win Ave Marie over, she decides its time to finally leave town. After her mother's death she had discovered a dark secret about her past, and so now thinks she needs to go off to Italy to seek out her real birth father before life passes her by completely.

All this is played out with a wonderful list of colorful characters that at first seem that they are right out of a Robert Altman movie, but you soon realize that they would easily fit into a Christopher Guest farce too.  Everything that goes on in town is observed by the sharp eyed Fleeta, Ave Marie's her long-standing employee  at the Pharmacy,  who with her rapid fire acerbic wit makes great play of the fact that she is 'the only black woman' in the town. Then there is Iva Lou Wade the flighty and superstitious friend who runs the town's mobile library, and who believes that true love can be found through Chinese facial readings.  Plus Spec the Town's only lawyer, and as he is also in charge of the Emergency Services he insists on wearing his Warning Vest at all times.  It, and he, come in handy when Senate hopeful John Warner does a brief campaign stop in town with his wife Elizabeth Taylor who chokes on some local fried chicken! But that's the only really exciting thing that happens in this sleepy backwater.

The real joy in Big Stone Gap (the movie that is) is in the acting. Heartwarming to see again two talented actresses that are too rarely on our screens these days.  The lovely Ashley Judd was so perfect as the affable and spunky Ave Marie that you cannot fail to root for her, and the wonderfully funny Jenna Elfman was such a good fit as the ditzy Iva Lou. Whoopi Goldberg is also infrequently in movies these days, and its clear to see why she decided to take the part of the wise-cracking Fleeta, as it was made for her.  For Patrick Wilson however, who played Jack the strong man of few (ish) words, this was like coming home for him, as his father had actually grown up in Big Stone Gap.  In fact Trigiani has been quoted as saying when her novel (on which the movie is based) first came out 15 years ago, Wilson's grandmother actually asked that she cast him in that part.

This is obviously a very personal project for Trigiani who has never directed a feature film before, and this one will be a strange fit in todays multiplexes.  Its gently unhurried pace with it's cast of such very likable characters who exist in this picture-book world will probably not have universal appeal, which is a slightly sad indictment of some of society's values.  This feel-good potential crowd-pleaser should be allowed to find the audience that it so justly deserves. 

★★★★★★★★

Trash

When Jose Angelo is caught by the Police who have been chasing him through his working class apartment building in a Rio de Janiero suburb. he manages to throw a wallet that he has been grasping over an outside wall and it lands in the back of a passing garbage truck. Whilst the police are beating the living daylights out of Angelo as he refuses to talk to them about the wallet's contents, it actually ends up at the Municipal Trash dump where it is quickly discovered by Raphael, one of the scruffy young boys who spend their days sorting through all the trash.

Raphael splits the cash with Gando his best friend but when the Police turn up offering a hefty reward for the wallet's return they realize that it must contain something much more important than money. They seek advice from another more worldly boy called Rato who lives in the nearby sewers and he tells them that the key that was part of the contents will open a locker at the Railway station downtown.  That leads them to a letter with some code on it, and so they head back to the favela to sneak a peek on the local priest's laptop to see if that will help them try and decipher what this all means.

Father Julliard is one of those ex-pats full of good intentions (and a lot of alcohol too) that landed there years ago to help and minister to the locals in the favela, but is now a little too jaded to do any real good.  He tells Olivia another American who has just arrived full of energy and enthusiasm to teach the boys "don't waste your life fighting battles that make you bitter or make you dead."

When  Raphael and Gando fail to show up for work at the Dump next day a very suspicious Police Inspector hunts them down, and this time its Raphael who is almost beaten to death.   Instead of being scared off by this experience, it actually increases his determination to get to the bottom of the matter.  He had overheard the cops talk about a powerful businessman who is running for Mayor, so armed with this information, the boys persuade Olivia to take Gando to meet the person who the letter is addressed to, who happens to be in prison.  

They learn from Clemente the prisoner that the code works in conjunction with a Bible he has, and after the boys bribe a Prison Guard to get this, they are on the way to solve the mystery that Angelo had lost his life protecting.  The fact that these 14 year near illiterate street boys could crack the code is more than a tad far fetched but as that scene follows an exhilarating chase through the back alleys of the favela, we allow this rather big stretch of the imagination. This is after all Hollywood's take on Brazil and not the 'real thing'. 

The boys track down the missing millions Angelo had 'retrieved' from his corrupt boss, the mayoral candidate, plus the detailed ledger of all the corporations who have given him these massive bribes over the years.  They even finally get the better of the sadistic Police Inspector who has been on their heels every step of the way, to give this fast paced and very entertaining movie, an unexpected happy ever after finale.

Trash is written by Oscar nominated Brit screenwriter Richard Curtis ('Four Weddings and A Funeral'), and directed by fellow Brit and Triple Oscar Nominated Stephen Daldry.  It is also Daldry's fourth movie starring teenage boys ('Billy Elliot', 'The Reader' and 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close') and it is the electric performance of the kids that make this drama so very compelling. So much so that Daldry very generously gives the boys acting coach Christian Duurvoort a credit as his co-director.   The adults in the movie that play second fiddle to the boys are Brazilian superstar Wagner Moura as Angelo, Martin Sheen as Father Julliard and Rooney Mara as Olivia.

Despite its very Hollywood & European provenance this 'Brazilian' underdogs-beating-the-system tale has an authentic enough feel to tug at heart strings just like in 'Slumdog Millionaire'.  When a naive Olivia inquires why the boys stuck with it all, the answer is simple. It was because it was the right thing to do.

BTW, lest you should worry about some of the working conditions on the actors working in these slums are as atrocious as they looked, the production team had  2,000 cubic meters of “clean trash”  lugged in to recreate the Dump!

★★★★★★★★

Ashby

When 17-year-old Ed Wallis is given a homework assignment from his teacher to 'go talk to an old person', he has little choice than try and see if his next door neighbor will help him out.  Ed and his mother have just moved into the area to start a new life now that Ed's dad has apparently abandoned them both for good.  He does go through the motions of caring for his son, but does little beyond making empty promises during their occasional Skye calls which he never fulfills.

Ed's neighbor Ashby is not just old, but seriously odd too.  It is because that he is played by Mickey Rourke whose appearance seems to get decidedly weirder in every movie he makes nowadays. If you can just get beyond his bizarre look (which is very tough) Rourke is actually well suited for this part of a grumpy old man who takes his recent diagnosis of a fatal illness as an excuse to push his eccentricities to the extreme.  

He and Ed sort of bond, as Ed needs some kind of a father figure in his life as he such a sensitive book nerd and so regularly gets bullied at school.   He also wants to play football but lacks the initiative to get beyond the team trials and so he needs to 'man up'. Ashby on the other hand, now fading fast physically, needs someone to ferry him around town for Doctor's appointments and do odd errands.

Ashby plays at being a man of mystery and the arsenal of weapons that Ed discovers one day when snooping around his house would suggest some sort of violent past.  When Ed pushes the point about their existence,  Ashby admits that he has killed some 93 people in his 'line of work' but suddenly in a moment of unlikely self-examination he realises that his former bosses had used him to kill people who were not threats to national security at all, but just people they had personal grudges against.  Now that he is dying and has nothing to lose Ashby decides to spend his last days settling scores against his ex-employers and raising his total of kills even higher. 

Whilst this unlikely pair of 'friends' are traipsing all around town, Ed's mother is making some very bad choices in trying to have some male company of her own. This side strand of the story sits ill at ease with the rest of the action especially as 'Ma' is uncomfortably played quite straight by the comic Sarah Silverman.

Ed's only other hope of any happiness in this otherwise uneven comedy is a too-bright-for-her-own-good girl (played by Emma Roberts).  By the time she makes her mind up about Ed, it's a little too late.  We know then that he could do so much better with someone not quite so superficial. 

This is one of those movies that tries very hard at being something for everyone and in the end fails to really please anyone.  It's a mash up teen comedy, crime caper an coming of age story that is funny in parts but mostly never much more than mildly amusing. Shout out though to young Nat Wolff who plays Ed.  Not such a standout-performance as he gave in 'The Fault In Our Stars' last year, but he continues to show what a really fine actor he is even when he is not required to stretch himself much as in this instance.

★★★★★

The Martian

Filmmaker Ridley Scott seems to send people into Space more often than even NASA. In this his latest, and most thrilling blockbuster, he has a manned space shuttle land on Mars for a couple of weeks of research but then when the crew have to suddenly evacuate in a hurry, they manage to leave one of the astronauts behind.  In the rush to get on board their craft, Mark Watney gets hit by flying debris and is assumed to have been killed so the Captain reluctantly gives orders to take off and head back home.  Turns out that he was knocked unconscious and when the fierce weather disappears he wakes up to find himself with a piece of debris impaled into his stomach and totally alone on the entire planet.  

After a bit of self-surgery and with the bleeding stopped, Watney has time to stop and take stock of his situation.  It's a 4 year journey home to Earth so even if anyone at NASA headquarters back in Houston even remotely thought that he may have survived it would be years away before he could be rescued. With only enough rations to last for 400 sols (Martian days) he realizes that unless he learns how to make more food pretty quick, then he will be dead years before they could even arrive.  Watney is actually a Botanist and his role in the Mission had been to try and establish if plants could grow on Mars without either water or fertilizer.  Now he reluctantly realizes he has no choice but to make it work if he is to have any chance to survive.

On this vast barren landscape of the planet's unforgiven terrain, Scott makes this movie as much about the lone astronaut dealing with his own small space and his motivation and sheer cunning to stay alive as he talks through all his possibilities.  We anxiously watch each small step that Watney takes to figure out how grow enough food using Space Station in ways it had never been intended for.  Despite the fact that he can re-configure his sophisticated living quarters into becoming his indoor farm, he still lacks any means whatsoever to make any sort of contact with Earth. 

Watney shares this all with us as he records his daily video diary and despite the mounting challenges (their is an explosion and the precious potato crop is ruined) he maintains a wicked sense of humor bitching about being driven mad by the Captain's collection of disco music that she had left behind.

When a bright spark in Houston spots some movement in the satellite pictures of Mars that she monitors, they eventually realize that Watney is alive and surviving.  Now the movie moves on to a different plane with the hierarchy at NASA arguing over the logic and feasibility of sending a rescue mission to bring Watney back, and the moral dilemma  of keeping news that he is in fact alive from his colleagues who are still hurtling back to Earth in their space shuttle. 

With the best minds in the world now trying to figure out how to help Watney after all most two years have past, he is know no longer alone. Just a very long way away.  Even though we always suspect that the good guys will get their way and Watney will be rescued, Scott ensures that none of that will happen without more than a few nail biting moments.  Up until now most of the action had taken place firmly on the ground, albeit most of it a rocky red one, but now as it climaxes Watney and the rescuers are orbiting around Mars more than a little precariously, giving the story a sensationally dramatic ending.

Scott packs the space shuttle and Houston headquarters with a very starry cast that includes Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Donald Glover and as seemingly obligatory in every American blockbuster these days a couple of Brit stars too i.e. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean.  It is however very much Matt Damon's movie and he seems an even better fit here as an astronaut here then he did in his trip to space last year in Christopher Nolan's superb 'Interstellar'.   Damon is always best when he plays a 'goodie' especially when he can imbue his pitch-perfect performance with such a youthful mischievousness that actually makes you forget that he is in fact middle-aged.   They are few actors of his generation that could really fill the screen on their own for the best part of two hours in such a wonderfully compelling manner.

Is it too early to say if 'The Martian' will become as popular Scott's 'Blade Runner'  and 'Alien'?  We think there is a very good chance, but only time will tell.

P.S. If you have the option , then see it in 3D! 

★★★★★★★★★

99 Homes

When unemployed construction worker Dennis Nash finally gets evicted from his family house that he had been desperately trying against all odds to hang onto, he and his pre-teen son Connor, and his hairdresser mother get unceremoniously dumped with all their possession on their front lawn by the Bailiffs. The year is 2010 and their unprepossessing house in Orlando is just one of several thousands that are getting foreclosed by the Banks on a daily basis. In Nash's case, as in many others, the Realtor/developer who is acting on the Bank's behalf is a very smooth unblinking Rick Carver and he is there standing behind the Sheriff and gives the Nash's just two minutes to pack any personal items before his men will totally empty the house.  He is an old hand at this so is totally unmoved by all the desperate pleading and begging by Nash to be allowed to stay for just another  day and insists that he is being too generous in even allowing them even these few minutes.

Stranded with the few household items that they can pile in their truck, they end up at a run-down motel which is mainly occupied by other former homeowners facing the same dead-end predicament.  However a chance encounter with Carver next day, has Nash in the unlikely situation of doing some ghastly manual labour which no-one else will do, and as a result he is able to thrill his family when he returns that night with $250 in his pocket and the promise of more casual work.  He does however deliberately avoid telling either his son or his mother that the source of the income is the very man who evicted them the day before.

At first the work is piecemeal but Carver sees qualities in the hard-grafting Nash that he likes and respects and he soon adopts him as a full-time protege. The trouble is that the work involves more than just evicting people who have fallen on hard time but also stripping their houses bare to make even more money. Carver offers him such lucrative wages that are  more than he has ever earned in his life now, so having his own Faustian moment, Nash accepts as this it will enable him to get his own house back even though the price he will pay will mean making more people and families just like him homeless.

Carver keeps drumming into his new right hand man 'don't get emotional about real estate' but it's a losing battle for as competent as he is about playing the heavy man and fronting the evictions himself, it is obvious that Nash's heart is really not in it.  He is committed to it though as Carver agrees that he can buy his own family home back, although to appease the Bank he will need to make it look like a legitimate fair market sale, Nash will not be able to actually move back in for a couple of weeks. It is during that waiting period when it looks like his whole new life may blow up in his face as one day one of the new arrivals at the Motel is a couple who he had evicted, and who are now about to expose him to everyone, including Connor and his mother.

This compelling drama packed full of angst and tension so perfectly captured the depressing effects from the economic recession at the beginning of the millennium that resulted in so many people losing their homes. The Carver character with his complete lack or morals and principles, full of sheer greed, and not adverse to bending the law was a good representation of the shady types who made a killing in those days out of every one else's misery. Portrayed here so superbly by Michael Shannon who somehow made the sharp-suited slick shyster almost likable at times, it was a powerful performance that was never ever less than mesmerizing. Nash his right hand was played by Brit Andrew Garfield who had swapped his usual Spiderman garb for more humble working man's attire, and he filled the part with compassion and just enough uncertainty to ensure that even if we could not predict the end, we knew he would turn out to be a goodie after all. The always reliable Laura Dern played his slightly ditzy mother who wised  up when she had too. 

Written and directed by Iranian/American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, '99 Homes' picked up a couple of well-deserved awards at the Venice Film Festival and is highly entertaining movie, albeit a tad nerve racking at times for any home owner.

★★★★★★★★

What Our Fathers Did

When the British/French  renowned human rights lawyer Phillipe Sands was doing research for a book he was writing about crimes against humanity he came across two elderly German/Austrian men.  One was Niklas Frank who's father was Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer and, from October 1939, governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland, which came to include Galicia. The other man was Horst von Wächter, who's father was Otto von Wächter, one of Hans Frank’s deputies, and governor of Krakow and then Galicia. Between 1939 and 1945 the two men were responsible for actions that led to the deaths of millions of Jews and Poles.

Sands own family had all perished in the Holocaust with the single exception of his own grandfather who, right up to his subsequent death, refused to talk about events that led up to the annihilation of all his relatives.   It had been a long outstanding ambition of Sands to get details of how his past had been so violently re-shaped.  So after persuading both von Wächter and Frank to open up to him about what they knew of their father's crucial roles in the Nazi hierarchy, he took them on a journey to Ukraine where his own family had perished.

Frank has been on record before about his own feelings about the father he so vehemently hated in Chanoch Ze'evi's 2011 documentary 'Hitler's Children'. Frank has channelled that into positive action by writing two no-holds barred books about his father's exploits as 'the Butcher of Poland' as he was known, and has subsequently spent a great deal of time talking to schoolchildren about his father's pivotal role in the Holocaust. With Sands he is equally blunt about his childhood with a cold distant father and his total distaste for the genocide that he acknowledges he had been responsible for.

Horst on the other hand is clinging bitterly to the past living in his old unheated dilapidated Schloss and is still in total denial that his father was a mass murderer.  He grasps at straws like the fact that von Wächter Snr escaped after the war and given safe refuge by an Austrian Cardinal within the Vatican where he lived until he died thus escaping a Nuremburg War Crimes Trial that had found Frank and other senior Nazis guilty of mass-murder. During the first part of the documentary as both Sands and Frank argue with him gently, we get the impression that the elderly Horst is just mistaken and confused.  However as he digs his heels in and adamantly refuses to accept any evidence at all that his father as the Region's Governor was personally responsible for all the killings in the Camps that he help set up, we realize that this is much more than stubborn denial, and goes back to the fact that he probably is much more of a Nazi himself than he will ever admit too.

The final part of the documentary is the most shocking when Sands, who has been calm and dispassionate throughout, takes the two men to the very synagogue and the field outside where his entire family, bar one, and several other thousand Jews were killed one afternoon in cold blood.  As they stand together and Sands reveals exactly why they have come there, even then neither he nor a very subdued Frank can persuade Horst to finally accept his father's culpability.

David Evans's documentary written and narrated by Sands is more powerful for the calm and reasoned viewpoint they took even maintaining a dignified patience with Horst which he certainly didn't deserve, especially when he would ramble on about having an empathy for Jewish people.  It's a painful and grim piece to watch but so completely necessary, and full credit to Sands for getting all on record before all the people linked to that gruesome part of history have gone.

★★★★★★★★