Drama

THE LOST CITY OF Z

Cert 15 140mins Stars 3

Plod your weary way across South America with this historical jungle trek.

It’s a handsome, sincere and stiff upper lipped affair. There’s none of the swinging adventurous fun of a Tarzan romp. And it lacks the barking mad genius of the classic, Aguirre: Wrath of God, to which it aspires.

We join Geordie actor Charlie Hunnam as he sails up the Amazon, searching for the fabled city of Z. The Sons Of Anarchy TV star plays Colonel Percy Fawcett, a real life military man-turned-explorer.

Hunnam’s a perfectly capable actor who always seems far more comfortable on the small screen than the silver one. As a result he’s out of his depth in more ways than one.

He sadly hasn’t the necessary range to express Fawcett’s obsessive nature, and there’s not enough action to play to his strengths. His favoured means of expression are monotone whispers or the shouting of grand declarations.

Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland pass through the revolving door marked fellow travellers, sporting remarkable beards and threadbare clothes. Sienna Miller does well in a non-role as the Fawcett’s much neglected and stay at home wife.

Pattinson would have made for a more interesting choice as Fawcett, and arguably would be a bigger box office draw. Meanwhile Holland is about to swing into the Hollywood stratosphere as the new Spider-man.

Fawcett made several journeys between 1905 and 1954. Rather than streamlining the story into two trips, the script plods pedantically on, marking every stop from the Irish countryside, to stuffy London and into deepest Bolivia.

There’s opera in the undergrowth, alligators on the river and treachery in the hearts of men. They’re attacked by cannibals, abandoned by guides and face starvation and disease.

This wants to be a film about about obsession, faith and spirituality, but it never finds the transcendence it manfully strives for.

PERSONAL SHOPPER

Cert 15 105mins Stars 4

There’s no discounting the quality of the fare delivered by this unique psychological thriller. It’s a spine tingling tease of a ghost story, centred around sibling love, spirituality and self awakening.

Kristen Stewart has emerged from the shadow of the teenage Twilight franchise which her made a star, to reveal a serious actress with an impressive portfolio of work.

In her finest performance to date, Stewart moves mesmerically between vulnerable, aggressive, competent, lonely and fragile. Her understated yet significant charisma does much to heighten the mournful beauty and unsettling tone.

Maureen is an American in Paris who believes she has psychic ability. Her life is on hold as she mourns her twin brother who recently passed away.

While working as a personal shopper for a celebrity, a malevolent spirit draws Maureen into an extraordinarily tense and transgressive relationship.

If you’re in the market for a chilly and thought provoking spree, there’s no need to shop around.

 

 

 

TRESPASS AGAINST US

Cert 15 100mins Stars 3

Two great actors go head to head, as Traveller’s tradition sets father against son for the soul of the next generation.

This English drama has a strong celtic flavour as actor Brendan Gleeson plays the head of a small band of travelling folk.

Michael Fassbender is his illiterate son who wants an education and a better life for his own young family.

His wife, Kelly, wants away from the chaos, control and criminality of camp life. Lyndsey Marshal is more than a match for her better known acting colleagues.

Tying the film to England’s theatrical heritage are the the presence of a painted fool, the rural Gloucester setting, use of traveller dialect, and grand themes of family, inheritance, loyalty and betrayal.

Action scenes stray unintentionally into caper territory, and sit uneasily alongside the social realism and echoes of Shakespearean tragedy.

A sudden leap of optimism at the end is at odds with the carefully crafted sense of impending doom.

 

 

MOONLIGHT

Cert 15 111mins Stars 3

There was a mild buzz of disappointment at Sunday’s Bafta awards ceremony when this modest drama failed to convert any of its four nominations into even a single award.

It’s the sincere, sensitive and well crafted coming out story of Chiron, a shy, impoverished young gay African American in Miami. Played by a different actors, the three part structure shows him as a school boy, teenager and adult.

Chiron’s only role model is a local gangster, Juan. It’s a decent if remarkably over rated performance by Mahershala Ali, currently the bookies favourite for best supporting actor Oscar.

The House of Cards star also plays a small role in Hidden Figures, but where that film looks upwards to the heavens, Moonlight’s eyes are downcast. This introverted nature contributes to the films’ failure to move the heart to the intended degree.

‘Who are you?’ asks Chiron’s only friend after a ten year absence. After watching the film, I’m none the wiser.

AMERICAN ANIMALS

Cert 15 117mins Stars 4

Wildly ambitious and superbly crafted, this intriguing, tense and funny real life heist thriller is a light fingered and dexterous modern day morality tale.

In 2004 four misfit college students infamously stole rare books worth millions from a university library, they are astonishingly idiotic and incompetent amateurs.

Actors recreate the theft using typical Hollywood storytelling conventions such as the recruiting of the specialist members of the gang, and meticulous planning scenes.

Plus there are many nods and winks to the films such as Ocean’s 11, which the likeable conspirators watch to discover how to commit the perfect robbery.

However interrupting at regular intervals in confessional documentary style, are the actual gang members.

Now older and somewhat wiser, they question each other’s account of events, turning this extremely entertainingly thriller into a commentary on the glamorisation of on-screen violence and criminal behaviour, with the script emphasising there is no such thing as consequence-free crime.

Catch these American animals if you can.

FIRST MAN

Cert 12A 142mins Stars 5

Have an out-of-this-world experience with this brilliantly ambitious biopic of history-making astronaut, Neil Armstrong.

He became the first man to walk on the Moon on July 21, 1969, during NASA’s Apollo 11 space mission, and we learn how this flight of global importance was a trip of deeply personal significance.

Superb cinematography and astonishing sound design convey the bone-shaking, ear-shattering and nerve-shredding experience of travelling in the extraordinarily primitive spacecraft in terrifyingly immersive sequences.

While attempting space travel in little more than a Morris Minor strapped to a skyscraper-sized firework, the spacemen have to calculate their trajectory with paper, a pencil and a slide rule.

In being inspiring, mournful, uplifting, terrifying and heartbreaking, it’s another staggeringly accomplished success from Damien Chazelle.

For 2016’s romantic musical, La La Land, he became the youngest ever winner of the best director Oscar, and he’s reunited with his star, Ryan Gosling, who is skilfully cast as the impressively impassive pilot who is inwardly troubled.

We follow the devoted family man on his seven year mission preparing to boldly go where no-one had gone before, and experience his arrival at an unexpected and emotional destination.

His down-to-Earth wife, Janet, is played with devastating precision by The Crown star, Claire Foy, and with Armstrong regarded as a US national symbol, their relationship becomes a reflection on the US during the 1960’s.

Corey Stoll is abrasively outspoken as Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, and is someone you wouldn’t want to spend two minutes in a lift with, never mind a week-long space mission.

And the Command Module pilot, Michael Collins, is played by Lukas Haas, the young Amish boy in Harrison Ford’s 1985 cop thriller, Witness, who still doesn’t look old enough to drive.

Elevated by the divine spectacle of outer space, this trip of a lifetime will leave you bruised, battered and moved to high heaven.

IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Cert 15 119mins Stars 3

Director Barry Jenkins returns with another melancholy character-driven mood poem to sit alongside his 2016 Best Picture Oscar winner, Moonlight.

There is a standout score, tremendous use of colour and strong performances, but Jenkins also tests our patience with his rejection of dramatic storytelling.

KiKi Layne and Stephan James are endearingly sweet as young lovers, Tish and Fonny, but she is pregnant and he is prison after being wrongly accused of the rape of another woman.

And Regina King deservedly follows in the footsteps of Moonlight’s Naomie Harris by being Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress, as Tish’s mother.

Possessing the articulate elegance of James Baldwin, on whose novel this is based, this is less a night out, more a distillation of the late 20th century African-American experience.

But it’s frustrating to watch as the dreamlike narrative flits back and forth through time, and consequently Beale St. failed to challenge for the top Oscars.

 

PAPILLON (2018)

Cert 15 130mins Stars 3

Geordie TV star, Charlie Hunnam, takes on one of the iconic roles of Hollywood legend, Steve McQueen in this effective period prison drama remake.

As a prisoner nicknamed Papillon, he sweats through the vicious regime of a remote island prison in French Guiana, before being sent to the notorious Devils’ Island.

He befriends a forger called Dega, and as good as he was as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, Rami Malek is no Dustin Hoffman.

This second adaptation of Henri Charriere’s famous 1969 autobiography is straightforward, sturdy and handsomely designed with impressive location work and always commits to the brutality of the story.

But it cleaves so closely to the earlier film without offering any new perspective on criminal justice, colonisation, racism or any other subject, I wonder why they bothered.

And Hunnam’s a piece of casting on a par with Carl ‘Apollo Creed’ Weathers, stepping into Oscar winner Sidney Poitier’s shoes in the 1986 remake of 1958 chain gang classic, The Defiant Ones.

FIVE FEET APART

Cert 12A 116mins Stars 3

Sex means death in this teen romance which doubles as a disease awareness-raising drama.

Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse are a sweetly charming photogenic pair of patients, who meet in hospital while undergoing treatment for cystic fibrosis.

There is no cure for the genetic lung disorder which considerably shortens life expectancy. Five feet is the distance they must keep apart to minimise risk of a potentially fatal cross-infection, and touching and kissing are forbidden.

There are shades of the vampire Twilight series in their forced abstinence of contact, as well as noticeable nods to Kate Winslet’s epic romance in Titanic.

Based on the novel by Rachael Lippincott and dedicated to campaigner, Claire Wineland, it touches briefly on the financial cost of treatment and thankfully keeps the vomiting and other side effects down to a manageable degree.

If a little too much of the dialogue sounds like a teenage inspirational instagram post, then at least the film knows its target audience.

ON THE BASIS OF SEX

Cert 12A 120mins Stars 3

Hollywood gives a makeover to a spartan legal warrior in this earnest and easy to follow biopic of US lawyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Now an 85 year old Supreme Court judge and a popular media figure who’s known to her devotees as RBG, she made her name fighting gender inequality.

Her long career is boiled down here down to a landmark legal case of 1972. When Charles Moritz is denied to claim a caregiver’s tax deduction because he’s a man, RBG argues in the Appeals court discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional.

As well as demonstrating her willingness to fight for men as well as women, the timeframe allows for the box office friendly casting of Star Wars: Rogue One star, Felicity Jones as the young firebrand.

The Brit actress gives an impassioned portrayal alongside screen husband, Armie Hammer, whom the script is contradictorily over keen to crowbar in at every opportunity, leaving us to think RBG deserves better.