The Hateful 8

You would have had to be living on another planet for the past couple of decades not to know that all the movies made by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino contain some of the most excruciating gratuitous violence ever seen on the screen. However you will also know, and hopefully appreciate, that at the same time they are also some of the most wickedly funny ones and this somehow makes all the excessively gruesome bloodiness a tad more tolerable. It's probably OK to assume then that the fact that you are considering even going to see this his eighth movie, that you are either a Tarantino fan, or the very fact that there will be uncontrollable carnage is not going to put you off.  However you probably have two very important questions about The Hateful Eight before you finally decide to buy tickets and these will be a) is this one of his best movies and b) does it contain even more violence than useful. So before we go any further, we can answer with a very categorically 'yes' to both of them.

This Western tale has eight gun-toting ruffians holed up in a remote Haberdashery Store in the backcountry of Wyoming in the middle of a fierce winter blizzard. At first it seems like they are all strangers before some of them will even admit to be acquainted, but after time when this complicated yarn starts to unravel, we realize that none of these fellows (and the one lone female prisoner enroute to be hung) are who they said they are.  There is the effete British hangman (Tim Roth) and black-hatted cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) who have been joined by two bounty hunters taking shelter from the storm.  Bushy faced John Roth (Kurt Russell) is escorting his lady outlaw Daisy Domergue (a marvellous Jennifer Jason Leigh) wary that his rival the smooth talking Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson) would happily relieve him of his charge, so that he could claim the reward himself.  They encounter the town's most unlikely replacement sheriff (played by Walton Coggins), a very bitter and surly rebel General (Bruce Dern) and an oddball quiet Mexican (Demian Bichir) complete this bunch of strange strangers.

There is no sign of the missing proprietress of the store but hints abound as to what may have happened to her before all is revealed. In fact Tarantino builds up the tension very slowly and keeps us in complete suspense as to the true nature of all these restless gunmen who all think that anyone may take a pot-shot at them any minute. In fact he waits way beyond the half-way mark of the movie to have the first bullet riddled corpse hit the floor, but he makes up for it in the remaining 70 mins of the film.

Much has been made of the fact that Tarantino chose to shoot the movie in 70mm which is considered an old fashioned format these days, but it so suited the whole epic nature of the movie with it's sweeping vistas and lush Ennio Morricone soundtrack (in the longer versions of the movie, the overture lasts an entire 8 minutes),

What does make each Tarantino movie such a joy is his regular ensemble of such wonderful actors who he uses time after time : none so more than Samuel L Jackson who has now appeared in seven on his movies. They are all required, this time more than usual, to give such hammy performances playing such exaggerated characters, and you cannot fail to sympathise with Jennifer Jason Leigh who has to combine that with some very nasty man-handling and some heavy blows to her face.   This is no way to treat a lady, but this is a Tarantino movie after all so that is really of little consequence.  

Tarantino is a cinematic genius.  For example asides from all this brutal mayhem and comedy  he is not afraid to tackle serious issues like racial politics. His movies are however, very much an acquired taste, and as it is one that we revel in, we are more than happy to recommend this one. That's as long as you are not feint hearted about the thought of all that blood.

★★★★★★★★

Seymour : An Introduction

Seymour Bernstein is probably the most talented classical pianist alive today, yet very few people have ever heard of him. He was at dinner party a couple of years ago and seated next to the actor Ethan Hawke who was immediately impressed that this octogenarian musician seemed to understand all his anxieties and self-doubts much more than his peers. The two formed a very close friendship out of which came this documentary on Bernstein directed by Hawke who wanted to share his remarkable find with the world.   

It's very easy to see why the movie star was so smitten with this genial genius who has such a measured and reasoned approach to life.  He started wanting to play the piano aged just 5 years old even though his un-musical family didn't even posses one. It was the beginning of a passion that has totally ruled his life through all its ups and downs, although it is initially hard to believe there could possible have been many of the later.  

Hawke films Bernstein giving masterclasses in NY (he has lived in the same small one room apartment on the Upper West Side for the past 57 years) as he found his true calling as a teacher.  He is precise and exact sharing his passion with a self-effacing humor that tempers the real seriousness he takes with every aspect of the music. 

When he had initially started out as very young concert pianist many years ago, he received unprecedented rave reviews from the notoriously ungenerous New York Times critics.  This however was never enough for him to overcome his nerves of performing, and so without warning he gave his last public performance 35 years ago. That is until now as Hawke has persuaded him to make this one recital which is the climax of the movie.  

As Bernstein discusses his theories with several of his ex-pupils who have gone on to achieve their own success, but not always performing and one of them was Michael Kimmelman a writer with the NY Times. Bernstein professes that he believes that having a major career in music is not a healthy thing, and agrees with Hawke that there is a very marked connection between having such a sheer talent and being a real monster too.  Or just becoming an uncontrollable neurotic like the genius Glenn Gould.

When Bernstein is pushed at one point to agree that if you are that talented, then you do indeed have some sort of responsibility to share this with the public, he neatly side steps  that with the assertion that he pours his own talent into others via his teaching which also gives him a sense of achievement.  It is actually easy to see that this man who places such great store on his solitude is in fact remarkable generous and sociable with anyone who shows the merest hint of sharing his passion for making the music.  It is he that has now helped Hawke overcome some of his own demons regarding performance nerves.

As much as Bernstein is on camera we still learn very little of any his life outside of music other than some years ago he was pursued by an overly keen wealthy patron, but he exudes an air of contented happiness. Evidence by the fact that one of his favorite expressions for describing things was calling them 'impossibly beautiful'.

That actually is an apt way of summing up his own playing at the Recital that ends this touching documentary on this charming and extremely affable old gent. He then sighs when he says 'I never dreamt that with my own two hands I could touch the skies.'

★★★★★★★★

The Danish Girl

This may be a thoroughly British take on this very real groundbreaking story, but immediately from the first frame the screen is awash with these muted languid tones of Copenhagen in the first half of the last century, that there is no doubt of where this is all taking place. Einar and Gerda Wegener are a young married couple and both Danish artists who enjoy quite a comfortable life as a respected part of the city's art community. Einar is relishing considerable success with his landscape paintings but Gerda is still trying to find her stride as a portrait artist.  After the latest rejection of her work by the Curator at the Museum she asks Einar to help her when the subject that she has just recruited is unable to sit for her portrait one day.

He finds that he actually enjoys being the substitute model and although he initially just dons the women's stockings and shoes, he soon finds himself graduating into wearing her dress too.  Gerda is pleased because what she captures on her canvas is better than anything she has ever painted, and Einar is more than happy to oblige as it is awakening thoughts about his gender identity that have laid dormant for years.

When Gerda shows the work to a very enthusiastic Dealer and is asked to identify her new female model, the Wegener's come up with the name Lili. Later when a brazen Einar decides to actually go out in public to an Art Exhibition dressed completely in female clothes, he explains away Lili as Einar's cousin to anyone who remarks on the facial similarity. At the Reception Lili is 'courted' by a gay painter who has immediately recognized her as Einer, however when he starts his wooing, Einar stresses that he does not have any homosexual tendencies at all and is still very much in love with his wife

The fact that the Wegener's enjoy a very full and regular sex life together is very much stressed throughout the developing story and even as Einar recedes and Lili takes over, they still consider themselves as a happily married couple. When Lili asks to wear one of Gerda's nightdress one night, she explains "it doesn't matter what I wear in bed, it's what I dream about" which is enough to appease Gerda.  

As we very quickly realize start Einar will transition completely into Lili, the real beauty of the fictionalized telling of this true story is in the minute detail and every single subtle nuance as Lili completely evolves and Einar totally disappears.  The fact that it works so very well indeed is due to the subliminal impassioned performance of Eddie Redmayne.  He is riveting to watch as he embraces Lili's whole being with such determination and a delicacy that rings so completely true.  

Questions have been raised about the political correctness of having a cisgender man play this role, but that aside, it is hard to imagine any other actor of Redmayne's generation nailing the part so utterly convincingly and so compellingly.  It is nothing less than a tour-de-force and I would even go to say that it surpasses his Oscar winning turn as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" last year. 

Redmayne has the support of the only Scandinavian in the entire movie the beautiful and very talented Alicia Vikander as Gerda the loyal wife who loves Einar so much that she is prepared to let him go so that he can claim his real identity.  Her fierce loyalty right to the very end adds an heart-touching emotional strand to the tale that ensures that you need to reach for the Kleenexs more than once.

The movie reunites Redmayne with "Les Miserables" director Tom Hooper (who picked up an Oscar for "The Kings Speech") but even with  Redmayne's magnificent performance plus a great visual look and a lush soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat, it somehow still lacks the excitement that one would expect from such a potentially powerful story.

However judged as a showcase for Redmayne's talent alone is reason enough to add "The Danish Girl" to the list of unmissable Oscar-potential movies this season.

P.S.  By far the best line of Lucinda Coxon's script is spoken by Einer's oldest friend Max played by Matthias Schoenaerts in response to Lili apologising for being a nuisance.  He tells her not to worry : "I have liked very people in my life, and you have been two of them."  

★★★★★★★★

Joy

There is more than a touch of irony that the heroine of David O Russell's new movie is called Joy as we can see right from the off, that her rather miserable life is far from joyous.  It is based on the true life story of Joy Mangano a divorced Long Island single mother who invented the Miracle Mop in 1990 which not only transformed her very unhappy and humble life, but also evidently lightened the loads of hundred of thousands of housewives who bought her magical invention. 

When Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) was a young girl growing up her grandmother (Diane Ladd) was really her surrogate parent as after her parents divorced her father (Robert De Niro) left home and worked his way through a string of other women and rarely came back to visit, whereas her highly-strung mother (Virginia Madsen) was addicted to watching all TV daytime soaps and rarely left her bedroom. Therefore Mimi the grandmother indulged Joy in all her childish fantasies and encouraged her to be as creative and inventive as possible.

The movie flashes forward to when Joy was now an adult and struggling to keep the household afloat which now doesn't just compose of her mother and Mimi but also her own two small children plus Tony her ex-husband (Édgar Ramírez) who is now living in the basement.  Joy is holding down a full-time job as an airline customer service rep which she loses at the same time her homeless father turns up on her doorstep having being dumped by his latest girlfriend. 

Her Eureka moment that leads to her inventing the mop is when she cuts her hands mopping up a spilt wine glass on her father's new girlfriend's yacht. Trudy the girlfriend (a blissfully funny Isabella Rossellini) is a wealthy widow so she is soon tapped up to finance the production of the mop who's development is anything but smooth.  It isn't until a desperate Joy gets the mop into the hands of Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) the CEO of the brand new QVC shopping network that things really do take off, but that's even after a nail biting false start when it looks like the mop may be a complete flop after all.  However by now nothing will stop a transformed Joy even it means having to get tough when a shady deal with someone claiming to own a similar patent threatens to bankrupt them all.

The movie reunites Russell for the third time with Lawrence, Cooper and De Niro but this time he fails to re-create the magic of either "American Hustle" and "Silver Linings Playbook" which racked up 18 Oscar Nominations between them (winning one for Lawrence). Lawrence does very well in this biopic which in itself is quite extraordinary in the fact that it is rare one about a woman, but it is even difficult for her to shine throughout the 2 hour running time with such a patchy script to work from. 


There are some real moments of sheer joy in the piece  ..... De Niro is gloriously funny as the outspoken ..... but there are parts that literally drag. For example Cooper's small but crucial role seems to be a blatant piece of PR for the whole TV Shopping Network concept as he overloads Joy, and us, with unnecessary minute detail on how it all works.  


The attention to all the period details pays off handsomely as it sets the perfect tone in its Long Island setting and also in the QVC Studios (look out for Melissa Rivers playing her mother Joan) but that still doesn't make up for fact that we may be convinced that the mop is indeed a miracle (!) but the story about it's birth is not.

★★★★★★★

Spectre

As always the latest James Bond movie is exceedingly silly and outrageously excessively over-the-top and exactly like Daniel Craig himself, we swear this may be the very last one we will  indulge ourselves in, knowing full well it certainly will not.  

Back in the directors chair for a second time, Sam Mendes makes sure that the extended chase scene that an 007 movie always opens with, is more spectacular than usual. It is a sensational rather manic white-knuckle action sequence in Mexico City for the Day of the Dead, which he does as one very long tracking shot that climaxes with a daring fight mid-air dangling from of an out-of-control helicopter. It actually gives an initial impression that he may even surpass the highly successfully "Skyfall" which was so wonderfully imaginative.

There are plenty of all the usual hallmarks of a traditional Bond movie to see,  but also more than its fair share of changes too.  M was killed off last time, and the new one is played by Ralph Fiennes who doesn't quite fill the big shoes left by Judi Dench whose scratchy relationship was so much more convincing. M has a new boss too called C (!) and played by a very young looking Andrew Scott  who,  heavens above, wants to scrap the whole spy program that Bond is a part off.  One of the few old faces is Q .... although it is hardly the right adjective for baby faced Ben Whishaw, but he seems more comfortable this time around giving 007 bigger and better 'toys' to ply his trade. When he foolishly mentions that the new whizzed up fully armed car he has designed is being allocated to another spy 009, it is obvious that Bond will end up with it.  And all the women too.

They start with a rather sultry Italian widow played by Monica Bellucci, but she is really an appetizer for the main course who is Dr Madeline Swann played very seductively by the french actress Léa Seydoux.

Blofeld the very sadistic Villain of the piece is played by Christoph Waltz who resorts to some wizardry high tech torture when he gets 007 where he wants him. It looks more than painful and not helped by a grinning Blofeld muttering ...."Out of horror, beauty".........but we know that Bond can and will survive this new fangled S & M even though it always seems like he won't.

Craig is still one of the very best actors who has donned the mantle of Ian Fleming's creation who has become the best, and most loved Spy in the world.  As well as Craig's stunning good looks and his over-pumped up body that has all his tight-fitting sleek suits straining at the seams, plus all his charm just oozing out, he has a great flair for adding the most perfect touch of sardonic irony that seems at times that he is actually making fun of himself.  He very seriously ensures that we do not take his version on 007 too seriously all the time, and encourages us to actually see how camp his character can be perceived. 

At the end of the day the 007 franchise is still one of the very best of all the blockbuster series that Hollywood spends its billions on, and we come to each new adventure with such high expectations. Compared to most other extravagant 'spy' thrillers, Spectre is still way out there ahead of the pack, but this time however it did not quite reach the giddy heights of Bond's last outing.

★★★★★★★★★

Macbeth

Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel's starts his awe-inspiring take on Shakespeare's most violent tale of Macbeth on the battlefield on the mist-drenched Scottish heath that he stages dramatically like an epic, but bloody opera. It sets the pace for what turns out to be one of the most enthralling adaptions of the Bards work on the big screen for some years.

Kurzel had made an enormous impact with his directorial debut in 2011 with The Snowtown Murders, a violent study of a particularly pernicious serial killer. It is therefore no surprise that he imbues his version of Macbeth's treachery egged on by his wife's unbridled ambition, with such savage and brutality reminding us too well that nothing at all would ever stop in the way of the Thane fulfilling the Witches prophesy that he would one day be King of Scotland.

As Macbeth's (Michael Fassbender) murderous plans succeed but lead onto the need to kill over and over again to secure his Throne, his paranoia turns him into a despot ruler as his madness sets in. Fassbender gives a powerful electrifying performance in a role that he really makes his own from enraging on the battlefield to the quietness of the some of the more entreating soliloquies from Shakespeare's rich text. Marion Cotillard, a phenomenal Lady Macbeth, adds another dimension into playing one of the Bard's toughest women and sends spine tingling shivers down one's back with her quiet rendering of the famous sleepwalking scene which is set in the darkness of a stark chapel lit by snowflakes. As the strong almost silent power behind Macbeth she does however seem almost unhinged herself when she is forced to watch the cruel killing of Lady McDuff (Elizabeth Debicki) and her three children. The chemistry between Fassbender and Cotillard practically sizzles at times.

The play, no long bound by the restrictions of a stage, comes alive as Kurzel and his Australian crew of cinematographer Adam Arkapaw and production designer Fiona Crombie, let loose in the Scottish glens and make this a real visual treat which is positively breathtaking at times.  What this helps to achieve is to make the plot line much easier for non Shakespeare aficionados to follow, and in fact makes this wonderful classic much more accessible to a wider audience without taking anything at all away from the text. 

★★★★★★★★★

Life

In 1955 the actor James Dean has just completed his first starring role in Elia Kazan's "East of Eden" and although the movie had not premiered yet, Warner Brothers Studio knew that when the film was released he would become a major star. Most of all Dean himself knew this and as part of his very contradictory nature this young man, about to celebrate his 24th Birthday, both wanted the recognition but at the same time he refused to play the part and co-operate and get involved in all the publicity events that was expected of him.

Whilst he waited for the world to discover him and for director Nicholas Ray to cast him in "Rebel Without A Cause" which he hoped would be his next movie, Dean met an unknown photographer called Dennis Stock who took a real shine to him. Twenty six year old Stock saw in Dean an awkwardness and purity and persuaded his own Agent to get 'Life Magazine' to commission a photo essay of the new young actor before he became famous. Dean whilst intrigued by the photographer's growing fascination by him played very hard to get and was much more difficult to nail down and refused to actually give his consent until Stock was about to miss the deadline set by the magazine and he had also run out of both patience and money.

It is based on a true set of events that resulted in an iconic set of photographs that so superbly captured the brilliance of this troubled but genius of this young actor who would end up in a fatal car accident seven months later after having just completed filming both "Rebel Without A Cause" and then "Giant". The movie from Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn ('Control') from a script by Luke Davies (Candy) beautifully captures the essence of this moody genius who would be the reluctant face of a whole generation. With an attention to the most minute detail of the period, Corbijn and his cinematographer giving it an almost monochromatic visual feeling which so wonderfully conveyed the spirit of Stock's photographs.

Corbijn chose an real upcoming star to play the star actor as young  Dane Dehaan with his marked physical resemblance to Dean is quite perfect as the confused prodigy who doesn't want to relinquish control over his life, even though he is incapable of managing any part of it himself.  Whilst he had filmed "East of Eden" he had a very public affair with Pier Angeli who at the time was a bigger star than him, but he also cannot stop flirting with Stock who has enough of his own issues, which makes sense given the reputation that Dean had about his own fluid sexuality.  

Stock, played here so compellingly by Robert Pattinson, would go on to become a really celebrated Magnum photographer after his career was catapulted by these epochal images.

Life is essential viewing for any cinephile who loved that era in movies as it is crammed with walk-on's playing some of the celebrities that Dean rubbed shoulders with like Natalie Wood and Eartha Kitt.  More than this however it gives an insight into a man who sadly never lived long enough to fulfill his enormous potential and about whom we can only just imagine what he would have become if had got beyond his 25th Birthday.

★★★★★★★★

Phoenix

As WW2 ends German former nightclub singer Nelly is shot as she leaves Auschwitz and her face is severely disfigured. When she arrives back home to a war-torn Berlin, her best friend Lene takes control and whisks her off to see the best plastic surgeon money can buy. With all her Jewish family now dead as a result of the Nazi's genocide, Nelly is a wealthy heiress and the next thing on her schedule after getting a new face, is to stake a claim to her inheritance, and buy an apartment in Palestine and leave Germany for good.

The one fly in the ointment of this plan is that Nelly still wants to find her Aryan piano-player husband Johnny even though Lene tells her that not only is he a no-good philanderer, but it is more than likely he was the one who betrayed her hiding place to the Nazis which led to her being captured and imprisoned.  Undeterred Nelly sets off to search for him in local nightclubs where she is guessing that he may now work, and she finds him surprisingly very easily, but now, down on his luck, he is no longer performing but working as a cleaner who spends his night collecting and washing glasses. 

He fails to recognize her at all, but mistaking her for someone who is just looking for a job, he suggests that as she bears a passing resemblance to 'Nelly his wife'  that she should pretend to be her in order for him to claim her inheritance for himself.  As Johnny sets about training Nelly to impersonate herself he has absolutely no inkling of the truth, or even note that despite the fact he is a real rogue, that she is totally in love with him.

This wonderfully detailed snapshot of a Germany that is just starting to come to terms with the end of the war which has devastated the country and its people themselves is helmed by writer/director Christian Petzold.  It reunites him with his favorite actress Nina Hoss yet again, and together the two of them uniquely capture the essence of a trouble nation trying to get itself together after all of the trauma of war through this very simple story. Hoss gives a powerful performance as Nelly desperately trying to resist getting a new face or a new life as she wants to re-kindle something that was so far from perfect the first time around.  Husband Johnny is played forcefully by Ronald Zehrfeld who also starred with Hoss in Petzold's East German tale "Barbara" that was his country's official submission for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar Nomination in 2012.

The beauty of this particular piece is in the rather triumphant and somewhat unexpected ending which once again simply reminds what an extraordinary team that these three really are.

★★★★★★★★

Meet The Patels

Finding the love of your life in today's culture isn't easy, particularly with its dependency on social media. In fact it can really be quite complicated as Ravi Patel found out especially when he wanted to bring his parent's happiness into the equation too. Ravi, a rather charismatic Indian/American actor living in L.A. has just split up with Audrey his redheaded girlfriend from Connecticut of 2 years who's very existence he kept a secret from his parents because she wasn't an Indian, and he wants to finally settle down with a wife. He and his sister Geeta .... who is behind the camera filming this documentary .... are very close to their parents, however as neither of the siblings, both in their thirties, have never married, the Patel seniors are really disappointed that they still cannot look forward to the prospect of any grandchildren like all their friends.

The family are entirely Americanized but once Ravi finally agrees that he will allow his parents to fix him up with an 'arranged' marriage, they all take a trip together to India in search of a traditional bride.  Not just any suitably unattached female, but one who is also named Patel.  It is not a matter of some icky incest (!) but this is also the surname of an entire community in a particular region of the country.  They even have their own Patel Matrimonial Convention to make it easier, but naturally with Ravi and all his westernized ways, even that is not really going to make it that simple for him. 

Ravi's parents are such an amiable and patient couple who adapt all their different searches back home in the U.S. to cater for his whims, because although he says he is in full agreement of them selecting a wife, it is soon very obvious that his heart is not actually in this whole exercise.  In fairness Ravi goes through checking out all the 'candidates'  under the very close scrutiny of the camera, and even though his world is far apart from that of his parents, he has inherited all their disarming charm, which makes both the search and this enchanting movie so completely enjoyable.

Greeta is hardly a good cameraman but even her sometimes shaky shots add to the informality of this completely engaging tale that has all the makings of a perfect TV reality show.  Except there is no need for any follow up as Ravi ended up set to live happily ever after, and with his parents with their big happy grins looking on  ...... but you will need to see the movie to discover why and how.

★★★★★★★★