Festive Forays - Last Christmas (12A)

Missing, kissing - it's almost like we're having a relationship.

It's something of a cinematic Holy Grail - to make a Christmas movie that turns out a modern classic, one that'll join It's a Wonderful Life and The Muppet Christmas Carol and Love Actually in that pantheon of festive TV perennials. Last year alone saw The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (striped eye-candy but really muddled both plot- and tone-wise) and a Grinch update (fine animation, but ultimately not offering enough that was distinctive to earn a place on the Top List). Now 2019 brings us Last Christmas, a Yuletide comedy spiced with romance, poignancy and the songs of George Michael. As of now the reviews seem way too polarised for the film to show December-time staying-power. But Love Actually garnered a similarly mixed response - and personally I like this movie better. Quite a lot better. So let's just wait and see...

Emilia Clarke has relinquished her Game of Thrones dragon to play Kate, a cynical soul, whose mood isn't helped by her job dressed as a Santa's elf in a year-round Christmas store. Kate's life is a string of thoughtless acts and Fleabag-style bad choices, as she alienates one friend after another and holds her immigrant Slovakian family at arm's length. Then as actual Christmas approaches, she meets Tom - a life-embracing oddball, who refuses play their developing friendship by Kate's misanthropic rules. Whoever this guy is, he may be the only person who can help her face up to her very specific demons and stop her downward spiral into disaster.

There's a reason I include a 'Gut Reaction' at the end of my reviews - it's my first and most important guide to rating a film. Whatever some naysayers have been saying about Last Christmas, it won me early and despite occasional bumps held me throughout. Clarke is the main (but by no means only) reason. Post-Thrones she provides a luminous comic presence, one that shines through her frazzled, sarky demeanour. She's likeable, even though she's awful. Kate is a driving force through the story's early stages, but she's backed up by the sublime Michelle Yeoh (Crazy Rich Asians) as 'Santa', the Christmas store's eccentric proprietor, and co-writer Emma Thompson, who's having a great old time as the heroine's overbearing fuss-budget mother. Then Henry Golding (another Crazy Rich alumnus) shows up as the mercurial Tom, playing sincerity as deeply charming, while the story hits its romantic stride. 

Any danger of the film falling too deep into seasonal shmaltz is undercut by the sheer vinegar of the humour, not least when Kate clashes with other members of her dysfunctional family. Yes, a travelogue of London locations are shown at their twinkly end-of-year best, but there's a moody darkness here too, one at odds with the delightful Christmas kitsch of 'Santa''s Covent Garden store. We feel intimations of mortality, along with familial angst and political tensions - not unlike It's a Wonderful Life - ensuring that the inevitably life-affirming arc of the story never becomes too saccharine.

Then there's the film's final act, one that's proving divisive. If you know your Christmas movies - I mean historically - then it won't come as a complete surprise, or upend your expectations too much. I (kind of) saw it coming, but that didn't detract at all from the experience, in fact it enhanced the story, turning this from a run-of-the-mill Yuletide heart-warmer into something more weighty. If you think it leans too much into melodrama, I get that, but personally I thought it took a risk that paid off beautifully. 

Not everything in the film works. As with Paul Feig's last film A Simple Favor there are comedy moments that don't quite gel or that jar tonally, although those moments are rare enough not to matter. As for the George Michael element - while his writing served as inspiration, don't expect the songs to play an integral role. They're woven in, adding a subtle commentary to the story of long-time George fan Kate, with Heal the Pain working a particular kind of emotional magic.

I saw Last Christmas after the first wave of mixed critical responses - wanting to like it, but bracing myself for disappointment. The disappointment didn't happen and the liking did. While some people's response is your actual nausea, I genuinely enjoyed it, in fact I think it's a Greatest Showman-style crowd-pleaser and to hell with the sniffier critiques. It'll stick around longer than many predicted and some audience members will want to watch it every time the holidays come around. And if I'm right in that, it may just find its place in the Christmas movie pantheon.

Gut Reaction: I made me laugh. It made me tear up a bit. It charmed my socks off and replaced them with woollen ones bearing a reindeer motif.

Memorable Moment: Not a successful family dinner.

Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. Good-hearted and life-affirming, Last Christmas tempers its Hallmark sentiment with bittersweet humour and a great central turn from Clarke. Deck the flipping Halls, people!

Film Review - Ford v Ferrari (12A)

Look out there. Out there is the perfect lap. 

Certain films transcend their subject-matter - prison life or the fashion industry or boxing - to embrace an audience far wider than the demographic you might expect. Ford v Ferrari (marketed here in the UK and elsewhere as Le Mans '66) is a prime example. I'm no gearhead, a fact to which my battered old VW Golf will testify, but from the first engine rev James Mangold's new movie had my attention and it only kept increasing its hold.

In the early 1960s the Ford Motor Company decided to take on Enzo Ferrari's genius at crafting racing cars by creating one of their own - a win at France's Le Mans 24-hour car race becoming the acid test of their achievement. To that end they hired ex-racer turned automobile designer Carroll Shelby (played in the film by Matt Damon) to come up with their dream car. But Shelby had the wisdom to know he'd need to partner with an active racing driver for the project to succeed. The man he selected was brilliant but volatile English racer Ken Miles (Christian Bale given the behind-the-wheel honours).Their friendship had the combustive spark required to ignite the project, but their problems weren't limited to how far you can push a sports car. Ford's management had their own ideas on the venture and these odd-couple heroes  - so the film tells us - were soon struggling with more than carburettors and brake failure to achieve their near-impossible goal. They had The Man to contend with too.

 

Ford v Ferrari possesses the old-fashioned quality of human drama wrapped up in a sports picture. This story's pace is as stately as the cars are fast. It hangs out with its leads and lets us get to know them, it follows the machinations of the Ford executives as they angle to get the better of their Italian rival, it sets everything up painstakingly so that once the racing kicks in - and damn does it kick in - we really care about the guys in the car and the pit. By then we know the human stakes as well as the business ones and we're securely on board for the ride.

Steering us around a literate screenplay (UK's Butterworth brothers John and playwright Jez both have a hand in it) is Mangold. With Walk the Line and Logan under his belt he's simply one of the most accomplished journeyman directors working today; despite this movie's length it demonstrates streamlined film-craft in keeping with its RPM subject-matter. The cinematography makes the cars gleam with primary colour brilliance and scenes like the one where Ken Miles sits and chats with his son on the floodlit Daytona Speedway tarmac are just plain beautiful. But it's in the race sequences that the directorial brilliance really shows through. Track-level and car-interior shots tell the story of each contest superbly and to white-knuckel effect. You can know diddly-squat - like me - about the sport, yet you're still there with Miles, clinging to each bend and barrelling down every straight, willing him with Shelby to 'wait for it... wait for it...' until that optimum moment to accelerate.

It helps that Damon and Bale provide such a compelling central relationship. Shelby is the slick salesman, fending off the pressure of Ford to sideline his partner, while Miles is the edgy, spanner-flinging race-guru - infuriating but instantly likeable nonetheless, not least because he's frequently hilarious. And if Bale's Midlands accent sometimes takes detours around the far-flung byways of England, the sheer passion and depth he brings to the role render that quibble entirely moot. The men's friendship is combative but heartfelt, providing ample emotional context for the speed.

Meanwhile the film makes room for Miles' family life - Catriona Balfe and Noah Jupe supply touching moments as his no-nonsense wife and adoring son respectively. We feel the dynamics of the car-building team as they wrestle with the logistics of what they're creating. And the internal company politics adds a whole other intriguing layer; Jon Bernthal and Josh Lucas are competing voices in the boss's ear, while Tracy Letts makes for an imposing if insecure Henry Ford II. It all pushes the runtime, but thinking about it after, there's not a single element I'd discard.

Ford v Ferrari is much more than you expect going in. For all its focus on shared aspiration towards an unfeasible-seeming dream, it's also about the tension between creatives and management (and thus an allegory for every Hollywood movie ever made), and about the drivenness that threatens to end certain lives before they've been fully lived. But above all, it's a tale of friendship forged through common purpose, a theme that the movie's finale underscores. Racing car fans will have a great time here - but anyone who loves well-made film drama with an old-school twist will have their own engine turning over in delighted response.

Gut Reaction: It made me laugh, it accelerated all my vital signs, it glued my palm to my jaw at points through sheer high-speed tension. The epic '60s soundtrack wowed me too.

Memorable Moment: Carroll Shelby's unforgettable high-risk stategy.

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. It goes against the times in more ways than one, but this is a technical stunner of a film and massively enjoyable to boot. Basically - vrooooom.    

Film Review - Terminator: Dark Fate (15)

She's John.

Toy Story. Men in Black. Zombieland. Franchise revivals in 2019, all of which have prompted the question 'Is that a good idea?'. The answers have ranged from 'Abso-freaking-lutely!' to 'Nope - on the final evidence, not.' And now we have Terminator: Dark Fate - an attempt to finally provide the original two Terminator films the trilogy-making sequel they deserve. Even James Cameron was involved in an advisory role to keep things on track. So did it work? Was history finally rewritten to fan satisfaction? Has any of the old lightening been rebottled? Well this fan's going to nail his colours and say - to a limited extent, with a few caveats and paying no attention to projected box-office losses - yes.

The movie's starting-point is that neither 2003's Terminator 3 nor 2015's Terminator: Genisys actually happened. Much like last year's Halloween the timeline has been adjusted, Dark Fate events following on directly (well, a few decades having elapsed) from 1991's Judgement Day. The J-Day in question has indeed been averted, but now a new grim cyber-tech future is brewing - and from that yet-to-be epoch is sent a more advanced terminator than ever, the REV-9. This time he's not after John Connor, however, but rather Dani (Natalia Reyes), a naive young Mexican woman. Like Sarah Connor before her, she has no idea why she's being targeted - but an enhanced human called Grace (Mackenzie Davis), also sent back from the future, seems to know. She's set to protect Dani at the highest cost, but won't be enough muscle on her own. For that she'll need the assistance of a seasoned female warrior and a T-800 Terminator model who's developed a conscience. Yes - Linda Hamilton and Arnie are both back, and they're kicking ass harder and further than ever before.

Let me get those caveats out of the way. Structurally, this story is doing nothing new. From the opening time-drop of our protector and our antagonist to a final act that references the original films uncomfortably closely, this is a plot we know very well indeed - down to its freeway chases and bloodying punch-ups. All the time-travel problems to which the franchise tends are still in place; this film includes a central character who's travelled from a future that no longer exists (at least it has the grace to acknowledge the paradox), while asking us to accept other vast improbabilities regarding the workings of the fourth dimension. Don't try to make it make sense. It won't. As for the visual effects surrounding the REV-9, they're good, but inevitably pack a weakened punch compared to those ground-breaking liquid metal scenes in 1991. No Terminator will ever overwhelm us like that again.

All that said, the movie works in a way that the other sequels simply do not. The victory of Judgement Day isn't entirely endone, that ending allowed to retain some meaning, while the threat of nuclear apocalypse it replaced with the more zeitgeisty computer-related variety. One judgement has been averted, the story suggests, but never underestimate humanity's capacity to destroy itself and the planet along with it. It's a neat subtext. Meanwhile there's a satisfying physical crunchiness to the action in all the taut, well-staged set-pieces. Deadpool director Tim Miller provides the narrative with pace, sustaining a coherent hurtle, while slowing down just enough to let character detail be woven in.

And what satisfying characters I found these to be. Gabriel Luna's Terminator-upgrade has regulation menace no more no less, but the film's trio of female heroes prove a formidable team. Davis brings a lean single-mindedness to Grace (a different kind of intensity to the one she exhibited in last year's Tully), while Reyes evolves convincingly from innocent girl into warrior over a two-hour runtime. But there's a particular joy in seeing Hamilton return as Sarah C - grim-faced matriarch and nemesis of time-jumping kill-machines everywhere. Some internet fanboys have bitched about the movie's feminist element, but Filmic Forays loves this no-bullshit, Bechdel-acing combo. Oh, and we also love the twist on the Connor/T800 Terminator relationship, providing their scenes with interest and edge, while letting a grizzled Schwarzenegger be tough, funny and poignant. That in itself justifies the ticket price.

Terminator: Dark Fate is a confirmed box-office disaster as I write, and in the case of this sequel I think it's a shame. The action is thrilling, the drama involving and the characters are worth your investment. Yes the story is creaky and hackneyed, but it's told with indisputable vigour and the end-result, if not on a par with Terminators one and two, gets at least within shouting distance. This one I'll gladly let join them in my old-school DVD collection. It's not perfect, but it's a worthy trilogy-closer. And that in itself is quite the compliment.

Gut Reaction: A journey from 'This is okay...' to hand-on-mouth active enjoyment.

Memorable Moment: He's back. And he's... different.

Ed's Verdict: 7/10. Whatever the box-office says, this turned out a handsomely-mounted, solidly entertaining piece of action cinema, which made as much sense as any Terminator film. (And a lot more than Genisys.) Frankly, I'll take it. 

Filmic Frighteners 2019 - Doctor Sleep (15)

I don't know about magic. I always called it 'the shining'.

Screen-writer/director Mike Flanagan faced a uniquely difficult task in bringing Doctor Sleep to the screen. He wasn't simply adapting Stephen King's 2013 follow-up novel to The Shining. He was also crafting a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 iconic adaptation of the original book. That task would have been relatively easy had not King's and Kubrick's visions diverged so radically; key moments and plot twists from that movie bore no relation to the literary source material, so that the author felt (with some justification) that it did not truly represent his work. How then, in creating a new film within the Shining universe, do you satisfy the expectations of both sets of fans? Flanagan, it turns out, makes a remarkably good stab at it - or rather he swings the axe with aplomb.

Danny Torrence, the little boy who fled along with his mom from his murderously possessed father in the Overlook Hotel, has grown up learning to manage the paranormal ability - or 'shining' - with which he was born. Childhood trauma has taken its toll, and the middle-aged Dan (an initially ropey-looking Ewan McGregor) exhibits the same alcoholic and violent tendencies that afflicted his dad. He's battling his demons and finding positive ways of channelling his abilities, when he forms a psychic connection with Abra, a teenage girl significantly more powerful even than him. But Abra (Kyleigh Curran) is becoming a target for members of the True Knot, a travelling cult who feed vampirically on children who possess the shining. And as the group close in, Dan is the only person who can help her.

Director Flanaghan is well-acquainted with King's work, having already shaped Gerald's Game into a critically well-received TV mini-series. Here he digs deep into the author's preoccupations with character motivation, in an opening act that you'll consider either overlong or commenably nuanced. Multiple story strands are introduced - Dan's wrestling with the inner demons he inherited, Abra's struggles with her supernatural talents, even the villains are developed as a bizarre but tight-knit family unit. Serious time is taken weaving it all together, but everything dovetails neatly as the narrative progresses; it provides all the emotional context that The Shining movie might be said to lack, along with a real sense of investment as events turn critical.

Robust performances back up Flanaghan's intentions. McGregor proves a hugely sympathetic Dan Torrence, haunted figuratively and literally by his past and striving to be the better version of himself. Curran is great too, full of depth and spirit while side-stepping precociousness as the wise-beyond-her-years Abra. But it's Rebecca Ferguson who arguably steals the movie as the True Knot's formidable leader Rose the Hat; despicable to her core, there's still something delicious about the character with her hippy chic and fiercely intelligent allure. Even in her introductory scene - a shudder-inducing display of predatory intent - she makes Rose disturbingly irresistible.

At all points King's literary world is developed with a sense of dark wonder, not least in how all the second book's crazy psychic connections are represented on screen. There's remarkable storytelling craft in these sequences, as when young Abra clashes mentally with Rose. It serves to establish Doctor Sleep as its own story - an essential, since the final act plunges deep into the iconography of the original film. It's in this return to a derelict Overlook Hotel that book and film worlds collide most strikingly. While not 100% convincing in terms of plot logic, the experience does hold together thematically - plus there's an undeniable enjoyment in retreading the Overlook's horror-replete corridors after all the intervening years. It's a Kubrickian greatest hits with added psychological exploration of the relationship between Torrence father and son and it's nothing short of fascinating.

Thanks to Flanaghan's firm stamp on proceedings Doctor Sleep is more King than Kubrick, despite the fun it has paying homage to the classic Jack Nicholson crazy-fest. It's to the film's credit that it makes its original storyline and characters so compelling and the grown-up Danny such an appealing lead. The later avalanche of fan-service is earned, part of an expanded Shining world and a lot of spook-house fun into the bargain. It doesn't entirely avoid clunkiness, but it's entertaining nonetheless and one satisfyingly gripping ride. Considering how unlikely that seemed at the start, it's worth a round of applause - and an extra swing or two of that famous axe.

Gut Reaction: Appreciation of a well-forged adaptation, a hint of patience required at points, then complete absorption (including one wincing moment of horror) as events pushed towards their end.

Memorable Moment: The terrible fate of Baseball Boy - a sequence you may find truly upsetting.

Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. As someone who doesn't wholeheartedly embrace Kubrick's The Shining, I found Doctor Sleep a worthy follow-up - less ground-breaking iconography, but more fully empathetic storytelling. And a rich expansion of the 'shine' mythology.  

Film Review - Official Secrets (15)

Someone in this building has betrayed their country.

Much as I love the spectacle of super-hero movies and the frisson of horror and the adrenalin-rush of action-fests, there's little more satisfying than settling down to a really good political thriller. I'm not talking about the all-guns-blazing type featuring Jacks Ryan or Reacher. I mean those fuelled by intense conversations in darkened rooms - where everything that's said (or not said) brims with significance and where the stakes are raised to vertiginous heights through words alone. That kind of pure intrigue is a rare commodity in modern cinema, which is what makes Official Secrets such a brooding delight.

Keira Knightley plays real-life Katharine Gun, a low-key operatative in the British GCHQ intelligence agency. In|January 2003 she made the decision to leak an email from America's National Security Agency on the proposed invasion of Iraq; the communication in question outlined an illegal operation to influence member states of the UN Security Council into appoving the war. While Gun's colleagues received the same information, it was she who felt sufficiently outraged to pass on a copy of email, thus potantially blowing the operation's cover. Her action triggered events that threatened to destroy every aspect of her life. But more than that, it fuelled a massive political controversy the repercussions of which are felt to this day.

Official Secrets immerses you in its reality right from the start, not least through the frequent use of 2003 news footage. Catherine rants at Tony Blair and George W. Bush on her TV screen like so many did, as colossal international events unfold. It all convinces totally and she feels ordinary - an intelligent but anonymous woman, whose conscience (along with fate) thrusts her into an unenviable moral conundrum. Traitor or whistleblower? It's a question for our time and the film wrestles with it in fascinating detail, helped hugely by Knightley's haunted but fervent performance. The posh girl from Pirates of the Caribbean has come into her own as an actor these past few years and here she's never been better than here.

But impressive as she is, it's not just about Katherine. This is a story that begins with espionage, before transforming into both an investigative journalism drama and legal thriller, each as compelling as the other. It's all verbal cut and thrust - wrangling over truth and lies and taking massive risks to put the brakes on a war that might very well be illegal. Acting talent runs deep - Matt Smith's driven Observer reporter and Ralph Fiennes' campaigning civil rights lawyer are two of the more prominent and compelling examples. The direction is bow-string taut, courtesy of Gavin Hood, who in 2015 brought us nail-biting drone warfare thriller Eye in the Sky. It's moody too, the tension augmented by an ominous score from Hood's long-time collaborators Paul Hepker and Mark Killian. Everything from screenplay upward is working together sweetly here and if it becomes a little bit thematically in-your-face at points, that's a minor consideration. Too much else is spot-on.

Not a bullet is fired or a bomb triggered in Official Secrets (at least not on British soil), but the implications of brutal destruction elsewhere in the world are sobering. All is thick with duplicity and double standards, and the real-life recent nature of the story makes this arguably the most engrossing and vital thriller of the year. In a world where the true nature of patriotism is a source of daily debate and division, this is an essential movie as well as a very good one - and it needs to be seen by a lot more people.

Gut Reaction: Chin-resting-on-knuckles eyes-fixed-on-every-moment gripped. Oh and I got angry.

Memorable Moment: To 'fess or not to 'fess...

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Multiple elements knit together seamlessly to create a quietly pulse-racing and passionate drama-thriller. Seemingly out of nowhere comes a story that really, genuinely matters.