2020

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS

Cert 15 Stars 4

Unlike any other cinematic teenage road trip I’ve ever seen, this raw, honest and unflinching coming-of-age US drama is all the more devastating for skilfully combining a reflective and sombre tone with a steely-eyed look at its subject matter.

Sidney Flanigan gives a remarkably nuanced and sensitive performance as Autumn, a pale and ordinary working class 17 year old high schooler and part time supermarket worker, who’s response to the tests and scans confirming her pregnancy is to self-pierce her own nose, which is more an act of self harm than fashion statement.

As we’re we’re left to guess the identity of the father, Autumn travels from rural Pennsylvania to New York to secure an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy, and is accompanied only by her supportive and similarly aged cousin Skylar, played by the impressively impassive Talia Ryder.

They struggle to negotiate a series of bureaucratic hurdles, medical tests, legal obstacles, social pressures and financial difficulties.

And among the many scenes of desperate heartbreak, the most agonising is an interview where Autumn endures a series of sexually intrusive questions, the possible answers to which form the film’s title.

The script by director Eliza Hittman maintains compassion and respect for Autumn but doesn’t bother trying to justify her behaviour with grand speeches, though it does condemn those who try to stall, abuse and manipulate her, and generally treats its male characters with deserved disdain.

Having established the divide between idealised romantic love and the realities of sex with consummate economy in a deft opening sequence, Hittman fully immerses us in Autumn’s world by using a hand held camera which frequently captures the actress in emotionally revealing close up.

A refusal to shy away from the procedures involved and bleak ordinariness of Autumn’s world brings harrowing authenticity and huge emotional power, and while this a deeply unsettling watch, the girls’ courage and solidarity demand our sympathy.

CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?

Cert 15 Stars 2

This feather light US romcom floats about in a pleasant enough way and occasionally forcing a smile but never laughter.

Adapted from writer Sophie Kinsella’ 2003 chick-lit novel, this feels exactly what it is, a weak combination rip-off of Bridget Jones and Sex in the City, and it’s as dated as that sounds, despite being updated to ‘now’, moved across the pond and littered with an attractive young cast.

A game and likeable Alexandra Daddario stars as Emma, a junior marketing assistant experiences massive turbulence on a flight home, and believing she’s going to die she unloads all her most intimate secrets to the handsome stranger sat next to her.

Unfortunately he turns out to be her new CEO, and is played by TV Superman Tyler Hoechlin, who’s mostly required to stand around looking handsome and bemused at Emma’s antics, a bit like err, Clarke Kent, but without the glasses.

It’s hard to argue with the film’s message of honesty in relationships, but lame innuendo fails to substitute for insight or wit.

REBORN

Cert 15 Stars 2

Mortuaries, murder and moviemaking feature heavily in this modern day US revenge horror throwback to the age of video nasties, which sees a young woman with electric psychic powers escapes captivity and tries to find her failing actress mother.

Welshman Julian Richards directs with this homage with love and clear understanding of the genre, crafting an effective homage to the films of his youth with a very knowing style, and as well as employing 1980’s style graphics, physical effects and a cheesy synth title song, he gives casts Barbara Crampton, star of 1980’s gory cult classic, Re-Animator.

THE IRON MASK

Cert 12 Stars 3

East meets West as ageing action stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan duke it out in this lavish and nonsensical 18th century globetrotting comedy fantasy adventure.

Schwarzenegger gives a thunderous pantomime performance as a guard in the Tower of London, making jokes at the expense of the incarcerated Jackie Chan.

The plot – such as I could follow or that it’s important – involves a man in an iron mask, a captured master wizard and a caged princess, warring wizard tribes and an enormous dragon whose eye lashes provide tea leaves.

Russian actress Anna Churina bring the glamour to the cosmopolitan cast and there’s fun to be had spotting big names Charles Dance and the late Rutger Hauer under their extravagant wigs.

Anything goes in the sake of entertainment as the filmmakers fill every moment with country estates, prisons, secret codes, stowaways, stolen identities, carrier pigeons, flying goblins, floggings, Transylvanian wolves, and mind reading demonic creatures, and what this romp lacks in coherence it over-compensates with personality and vigour.

THE ASSISTANT

Cert 15 Stars 4

A claustrophobic and chilling exploration of workplace exploitation, this small scale precision-crafted drama moves through a murk of whispers, collusion and paranoia to explain how the sexual abuse which resulted in the #MeToo campaign was able to continue for so long.

Jane is a hard working office admin assistant tasked with organising hotels and flights for a Hollywood mogul, and begins to suspect a new young female employee who is a very attractive but utterly unqualified is being sexually abused.

But Jane soon finds herself caught between the career price to be paid for whistleblowing, and the personal price for keeping quiet.

Julia Garner is best known as the combative and foul mouthed curly haired casino manager in the Netflix series Ozark, but is radically more unassuming, fragile and sweet as Jane.

And fresh from his brilliant performance as the ‘Coughing Major’ on TV’s dramatisation, Quiz, Brit actor Matthew Macfadyen is quietly and horribly manipulative as her complicit office manager.

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

Cert 15 Stars 3

Former Monty Python animator turned Hollywood director Terry Gilliam has realised his longstanding dream of adapting the four hundred year old novel Don Quixote, and though always watchable this fantasy comic adventure feels more a gentle valedictory lap over familiar turf than something necessary or groundbreaking.

It’s a loose modern day take on the famous story of an aged and deluded medieval knight who goes on a quest to re-establish chivalry in the world and ends up jousting at windmills thinking them to be giants.

Jonathan Pryce stars as a deranged Spanish shoemaker who’s convinced he’s the real Quixote, and drags Adam Driver’s obnoxious advertising executive on a quest, as ‘Quixote’ mistakenly believes he’s his trusted squire. Sancho Panza.

Veteran Pryce worked with Gilliam in the director’s finest film, Brazil, way back in 1985, and Driver is best known as the villainous Kylo Ren in the recent Star Wars films. Both actors were nominated for the best actor Oscar this year, though understandably not for this.

Nevertheless they’re an entertaining bickering pair and the wonderful costumes, Iberian landscapes, and terrific interiors such as an UNESCO World Heritage Site, make for a handsome film.

But the relatively minor budget exacerbates a surprising lack of the inventive visual flourish which marks Gilliam’s best work.

Dogged by repeated failure to secure funding and then a court case, this film has been 25 years in the making, and you’d imagine after all this time co-writer Gilliam would have a more polished script.

Instead we have a familiar collision of glorious fantasy and ugly reality, with added asides on old age, the need for romanticism and a throwaway rant against political correctness.

2002’s documentary Lost in La Mancha captured Gilliam’s previous disastrous attempt at adapting this material, and sadly that film is more fun and affecting. Meanwhile Gilliam, much like his hero Quixote, now feels a man out of time.

ASTRONAUT

Cert PG Stars 3

This uplifting and heartwarming fable sees Richard Dreyfuss give some teeth to a drama which makes a quiet yet passionate plea for more considerate treatment for the elderly and recognise their experience and expertise remains of value to society.

A billionaire entrepreneur advertisers a lottery which offers twelve winners a place in an X Factor-style public vote to decide which person will be offered a free seat on the first commercial flight in space.

Although Angus has an affecting friendship with his young grandson, relations with his daughter and in-laws are more fraught and Angus lies to them about having entered the competition.

Plus he’s desperate to escape the confines of his nursing home and the script happily launches rockets at the exploitation of the elderly thorough the astronomical cost of care.

Dreyfuss bestows the lonely widower with an agreeably spiky dignity, humility and wisdom, and there’s a welcome refusal to engage in twinkly-eyed mawkishness as Angus attempts to have a close encounter with destiny

FOUR KIDS AND IT

Cert PG Stars 4

Sadly denied cinema distribution by the lockdown, Jacqueline Wilson’s 2012 novel is brought entertainingly to life in this handsome, fresh family fantasy about a group of holidaying kids facing the perils of being granted wishes by a magical creature, voiced by Michael Caine.

Wilson based her book on E. Nesbit’s 1902 classic, Five Children and It, and updated it with a modern setting and contemporary concerns.

Ireland’s gorgeous countryside and beaches stand in for Cornwall and a lively young cast are supported by Russell Brand as a local eccentric and singer Cheryl Tweedy as a pop impresario.

 

WHY DON’T YOU JUST DIE!

Cert 18 Stars 4

Head bashingly brutal and tense from the off and a blood bath of carnage and corruption, this nasty and funny comedy thriller is a vicious commentary on modern Russia and definitely not for the squeamish or easily offended.

After a stand-off in an apartment between a detective cop and a young man who claims to be his daughter’s boyfriend, we flashback to see how the characters arrived there with murder in mind.

It involves shotguns, drills and hammers, and if the kitchen sink isn’t thrown into the mix, it’s only because they’re too busy throwing TV’s at each other.

 

SEA FEVER

Cert 15 Stars 3

This tense, atmospheric and claustrophobic sea-going Irish thriller ploughs ahead on strong currents of horror, sci-fi, and fairytales, skippered with a firm and sure hand by Neasa Hardiman on her feature film directorial debut.

When a fishing trawler becomes stranded in a military exclusion zone, a mysterious parasite infects the crew’s precious water supply.

Causing emotional outbursts, psychosis and violence among the increasingly desperate and dwindling crew, they resort to extreme measures to save themselves.

Veterans Dougray Scott and Connie Nielsen play the grizzled captain and his wife who due to being in financial straits, have taken on a fare-paying passenger.

Hermione Corfield is a thoughtful and reserved presence as marine biology student struggling to get her sea legs, but her auburn hair is a red flag to the superstitious sailors.

Taking its name from John Masefield’s evocative poem about the attraction to and obsessive nature of seafaring, the film’s intelligent photography captures the cold beauty and changing moods of the sea, while the scenes of isolation and deadly contagion make for a terrifyingly timely and uncomfortable watch.