Civil War

Directed by Alex Garland. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Jesse Plemons.

In the near future a civil war has broken out in the United States. The President (Nick Offerman) claims that victory is close at hand, in fact the Western Forces are on the verge of taking Washington and ending the war. Lee Smith (Dunst), a renowned war photographer saves a young woman named Jessie (Spaeny) when a suicide bomber targets a rally she’s photographing.

Later that evening in a hotel full of fellow members of the press, Lee and her colleague Joel (Moura), who’s a journalist, explain they plan to go to Washington DC in order to interview and photograph the president before the Whitehouse falls.

Sammy (Henderson) is a veteran journalist who was Lee’s mentor, and he asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville. Lee and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie (who wants to be a war photographer) has persuaded Joel to let her accompany them as well.

As the four travel south towards Washington they encounter an America torn apart by hatred and violence, and when brother fights brother it can be hard to tell which side is which.

I have been a fan of Garland’s work for some time, and was dismayed to hear that he plans to step back from directing after his next film, and given he is only co-directing this it really does feel like Civil War could be his last full film. It’s a shame, he is a genuinely visionary director and I’ve loved all his films.

By all accounts he started work on this before the January 6^th insurrection, and he doesn’t see the film as political, this has annoyed some people who clearly wanted Offerman’s President to be more of a Trump stand in than he actually is, but I think they’re missing the point. Garland wasn’t making a film about left and right, in fact in most instances we don’t know which side is which. Consider the car wash scene, the sniper scene, even the infamous Jesse Plemons scene, in none of these instances is it entirely clear which side people are on. Plemons’ soldier could be a Loyalist covering up a war crime, but he could be Western Forces or even the Florida Alliance or the New People’s Army (there’s a handy diagram online listing the various factions!) or he could just be some nut who happens to be wearing camo fatigues. In the sniper scene they never even see who’s shooting at them, and the point is that it doesn’t matter, all that matters is that someone is shooting at them.

We learn very little about the President, except that he’s contrived to serve a third term, and routinely executes journalists, which given the Western Forces allow unfettered access to journalists suggest that, whether right or left wing, the Loyalist forces are, nominally at least, the bad guys.

The plot is relatively straightforward, like Apocalypse Now it’s a journey through the chaos of war, the difference is that rather than a foreign land, the characters are travelling through their own country. This seems to affect Lee most of all, who makes the point that part of the reason she sent back images from all those warzones was precisely to provide a warning against such violence happening back home. As such does it feel a little like the characters are on rails? Perhaps, but you could argue the same about Coppola’s masterpiece or Heart of Darkness.

The cast is excellent, especially Spaeny who convincingly essays a young woman visibly growing up in the space of a few days, moving from nervous, ingenue photographer to a fearless veteran putting herself in danger to get The Shot. Moura and Henderson are great, and special mention has to go to Plemons, whos’ genuinely terrifying with just a few minutes of screentime, a monster given to casual bigotry and just as casual violence. That Plemons was able to step in at the last minute after the original actor had to drop out was a major coup for the film.

This is Dunst’s film though, and she imbues Lee with so many emotions, she’s cynical and world-weary, yet still capable of being appalled, and she’s retained her empathy. When she begins to break down late on in the film it’s clear this isn’t a spur of the moment collapse, instead it’s something that’s been building inside the character for many years. The film might have come out too soon in the year for her to get an Oscar nod, but let’s hope she does.

Garland’s direction is accomplished as ever and I love the cinematography of this film, but also the sound design (there’s a single gunshot that comes out of nowhere midway through the film that scared the bejesus out of me!) The assault on the Whitehouse that marks the film’s finale is simply superb, one of the best evocations of warfare I’ve seen in a long time, and that Garland can make a film looks this good and this epic on a relatively low budget speaks volumes. It really will be shame if he steps back from the camera.

It isn’t perfect, I like the lack of a political viewpoint but see how others would find this a negative, the plot is fairly linear, the arrival of certain characters just in time to become victims feels like a cheap trick, and the arcs of some characters have fairly predictable conclusions. In spite of this it’s a shocking, well directed and well acted war movie that’s genuinely tense for much of its runtime and puts you in the unenviable position of realising that in war, especially a civil war, it can be hard to tell one side from the other. As with other Garland films a second viewing will confirm whether I merely like it, or genuinely love it. 

Back to Black

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Starring Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville.

Amy is a young woman with a fantastic voice and a talent for songwriting that belies her years. When her friend Tyler hands a demo tape to his manager at Island Records, they’re impressed. They sign Amy up and her first album Frank is a critical success.

When her record company suggest changes to her stage act, she rebels and says she needs time and space to come up with a new album. When she meets a young man named Blake in a pub in Camden their chemistry is intense, but Blake has his demons, as does Amy, she drinks too much and has bulimia, and what begins as a joyful romance quickly becomes more toxic. As Amy’s career sores to great heights her personal life plumets, and like vultures the paparazzi are circling…  

Musical biopics are always popular, in recent years we’ve had the lines of Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, and Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, so it was odds on that eventually we’d get an Amy Winehouse biopic, even setting aside the fact that there was a great documentary, Amy, back in 2015.

That Back to Black works at all is down for the most part to the cast. Abela is very good as Amy and has a great voice. Is she remotely as good a singer as Amy? No, but then who is? That said it feels more believable that she uses her own voice rather than them dubbing over her with Amy’s singing. She shows us Amy’s vulnerability and her fire, even if I’ve heard people suggest the one thing she doesn’t bring to the role is how funny Amy was, but that’s likely not her fault. O’Connell is good as well, and manages to make Blake Fielder-Civil a fully rounded character rather than the moustache twilling villain it would be so easy to make him. In fact, the film is at its best in the early days of their romance which feel natural and sweet, and Abela and O’Connell have great chemistry. Marsan and Manville are reliably solid as Amy’s dad Mitch and her gran Cynthia.

Where the film falls down—beyond the overarching question of whether it’s poor taste to make such a film—is the script which is so on the nose that not only at one point does Amy say “Only mugs do drugs” but later on has her telling her dad that she won’t go to rehab!  As for her bulimia, yes this is shown in the most turgid way possible by having her vomiting in the toilet. It dances around blaming anyone for Amy’s problems, even Amy herself, and really the only villains are the faceless paparazzi, and sure they were scum for the way they treated her, but the film seems to use them as cover and ignores other causes—in particular her dad Mitch gets a very easy ride and even Blake gets off a little easier than perhaps he should.

The worst part is the suggestion that the reason she was so messed up towards the end was down to Blake getting his new partner pregnant; boiling a female character down to purely her ovaries is never a great look.

 It isn’t terrible, the performances and Amy’s songs are worth it, and Taylor-Johnson adds enough directorial flourishes to perk things up. It just all feels a trifle by the numbers, and even a trifle safe. Amy Winehouse was an incredibly talented, incredibly complex woman beset by many issues, some of her own making, many caused by external factors, and you can’t help feeling she deserved better than this. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Directed by Gil Kenan. Starring Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Annie Potts, William Atherton, Emily Alyn Lind and Kumail Nanjiani.

Three years after the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife and the Spengler family, mom Callie (Coon) son Trevor (Wolfhard) daughter Pheobe (Grace) along with former high school teacher and Callie’s boyfriend Gary Grooberson (the ever reliable Rudd) have moved to New York where they helped Winston Zeddemore (Hudson) and Ray Stanz (Ackroyd) in reviving the Ghostbusters.

When they catch a ghost in broad daylight after a car chase through the city, Walter Peck (Atherton) who’s now mayor makes it clear he wants to shut them down, but for starters he says Phoebe can’t be a Ghostbuster because she’s too young.

Benched and unable to go on missions Pheobe wanders the streets until she starts playing chess with the ghost of a girl called Melody who died in a fire many years before.

Meanwhile a man named Nadeem (Kumail) visits Ray’s shop and sells him a strange brass orb carved with weird symbols. Eventually they discover the orb is the prison of a demon named Garraka who has the power to freeze anything. When Garraka escapes Ghostbusters old and new will need to team up to fight him.

After the failure of the Ghostbusters reboot in 2016 (which was a mess but nowhere near as bad as it was painted) we got the nostalgia heavy continuation in 2021 (which I enjoyed way more than I expected to) so a follow up to Afterlife was always on the cards. Frozen Empire is a decent enough Ghostbusters film. It’s let down by a bloated cast and a slightly ho-hum final act, but I enjoyed it a lot while I was watching it, I’m just not sure it’s a film I’ll rewatch it a lot.

Afterlife gave us some great new characters, in particular Grace’s Phoebe, who continues to be the face of the new Ghostbusters, but Afterlife also gave us the 1980s’ crew, thankfully with a beefed up role for Hudson who gets even more to do this time. I like the Spengler clan (and I even like Podcast and Lucky) and I obviously have a huge love for Winston, Ray, Venkman and Janine. There’s just too many people in this. Bringing Peck back as the mayor works, but he just isn’t in it enough because there are even more cameos to throw in there. But wait, they’re not done yet, here comes Nadeem and Melody and James Acaster’s Dr Pinfield and Patton Oswalt’s expert in dead languages and oh look it’s the library administrator from the original film, and the librarian ghost and Slimer and….just stop already!

They could, and in fact should, have excised many characters, lose Lucky and maybe even Trevor (which means you can lose Slimer), and we didn’t need Dr Pinfield or Patton Oswalt (good as he is). Of the brand new characters Melody is good, and Lind has great chemistry with Grace, and I genuinely liked Nadeem who’s kinda the new Louis. It is good to see Janine in uniform, and despite only being on screen for about five minutes Murray makes everything better, but if there’s another film they need to trim down the cast. I’d drop the old cast down to at most Winston and Ray, send Trevor and Lucky off to university.

I’d also increase the level of threat. The scene where Garraka’s ice powers freeze the sea and the beach are great, and New York covered in ice is a wonderful visual, but it goes nowhere. You might argue the same about the original, but the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man shows up fairly late in the film and his swathe of destruction is limited to the vicinity of Dana and Louis’ building, meanwhile Garraka appears to freeze the entire of New York.

At the end of the day this is a Ghostbusters film, they do indeed bust some ghosts and bustin’ ghosts has been making me feel good since 1984 and this film made me feel good too, just maybe not quite as good as I’d hoped.

Wicked Little Letters

Directed by Thea Sharrock. Starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan and Timothy Small.

In the town of Littlehampton, a scandal is brewing. Devout spinster Edith Swan (Coleman) has been receiving foul mouthed poison pen letters. She lives with her parents and her controlling father Edward (Spall) is convinced that the culprit is their next door neighbour, Irish migrant and single mother Rose Gooding (Buckley) Rose and Edith used to be friends until a falling out, and Rose is rough and uncouth and certainly foul mouthed enough to be the author. The police are convinced, all except for Woman Police Officer Gladys Moss (Vasan) who isn’t so sure that Rose is the guilty party. Can Gladys, along with some like-minded local ladies, prove Rose’s innocence before she’s sentenced?

Let’s be honest here, I’d happily watch Olivea Coleman and Jessie Buckley hurl expletives at each other all day, the addition of a plot is just an added bonus. Of course, there is more to this film than merely some national treasures using language that would make a sailor blush, and while it is funny, the film is somewhat darker than the trailer made it out to be, and it tackles some difficult issues, particularly around controlling behaviour and the place of women in post-World War 1 Britain. That it’s a true story only adds to the charm (though it seems some artistic licence has been taken in places.)

Colman is superb as Edith, playing her as a meek church mouse who’s appalled at the horrible letters she’s receiving, while also secretly thrilled at the attention her newfound fame provides her. When she finally gets to unload her own foul mouthed tirades later on, she lets an impish side through, playing Edith less like a tired spinster and more like a naughty schoolgirl.

Buckley is equally great as Rose (and frankly I’ve yet to see Buckley not be great in anything) with her lopsided grin, easy swagger and foul mouthed delight she’s a joy to watch and livens up every scene she’s in, though much like Coleman her character is deeper than she appears.

Vasan perhaps has the trickiest role of the three, but she plays it with gusto and the film relies on her decent copper who’s slightly horrified by Rose’s language but still believes her innocence and who has to put up with a lot of stupid men above her in the chain of command.

On the subject of men, Spall is excellent as Edward, a nasty piece of work who couches his toxicity in love and Christian decency. There’s nice work from the likes of Gemma Jones, Joanna Scanlan and the ever wonderful Lolly Adefope amongst others.

Yes it’s perhaps a trifle lightweight, and does rely a little too much on the novelty of acclaimed actors swearing, but it’s still a fun watch and a surprising one. I went in with a very clear idea of who was actually behind the letters, half an hour in I had a new suspect, but I was wrong both times.

It’s fluff, but it’s f*%king fun fluff!

Immaculate

Directed by Michael Mohan. Starring Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte and Benedetta Porcaroli.

(Seen in March)

After her convent in the United States closes, Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) accepts an invitation from Father Sal Tedeschi (Morte) to join an exclusive convent in Italy where dying nuns spend their final days, cared for by the order. Despite the language difficulties she travels to Italy and becomes part of the order. She makes a friend in Sister Gwen (Porcaroli) and something of an enemy in Sister Isabelle.

As time passes, she notices certain odd things about the convent. Who are the nuns whose faces are covered by red fabric, why does one nun have scars in the shape of crucifixes on the souls of her feet, and is the holy relic hidden away really a nail from the crucifixion?

When something miraculous happens Cecilia finds herself feted by the church, though not by Sister Isabelle, but she becomes increasingly convinced that something terrible is happening at the church, but can she possibly escape her fate?

This nunsploitation film hit the cinemas around the same time as Late Night with the Devil, and I’ve already seen some comparing the way their audiences are feeding off each other as being similar to the Barbenheimer phenomenon from last year. Of course, Barbie and Oppenheimer were radically different films, and while Immaculate and Late Night with the Devil might be different takes on the horror genre, they are both clearly in the horror genre. If people have been encouraged by seeing one into seeing the other, then that’s no bad thing in my opinion.

For me Late Night with the Devil is the superior. Immaculate is decent enough, and given how many lousy horror films there are in the world that’s quite a positive. It benefits from the undoubted star quality of Sweeney, and a final act that’s borderline insane (and a final scene that’s quite shocking whilst showing us absolutely nothing, relying on Sweeney’s performance and our imaginations.)

I think the main flaw with the film is that it isn’t quite sure what kind of film it wants to be. A creepy, unsettling Rosemary’s Baby of a psychological horror, or a jump scare infused gore fest. While it isn’t impossible to merge the two, it doesn’t work completely here, and I wish they’d leaned a little more into the weird. Those red faced nuns are genuinely creepy, we just don’t see enough of them.

The other probably with the film is the fact that its main plot point necessitates quite a lot of time passing, which means months must pass between spooky moments, and this kinda deflates the tension somewhat. It takes Cecilia an awful long time to realise something is amiss.

Sweeney is likely to be a big star, if she isn’t already, it’s easy to be distracted by her looks, but she is a good actress and she has such a talent for promoting herself that even career choices that might on paper seem poor ones (Madam Webb) somehow still feed into her star power. She’s done some brilliant promotional work for Immaculate and her enthusiasm should be lauded.

The rest of the cast do a good job of seeming friendly or creepy as the script necessitates (special mention for Morte who seems equally comfortable as the warm and friendly priest and the deranged Dr Frankenstein.).

It’s nice and gory, has a couple of nicely executed jump scares (the one in the confessional genuinely misdirected me) and Sweeney is very watchable, I just can’t help feeling it should have added up to slightly more than the sum of its parts. It might grow on me with repeat viewings however.

Late Night with the Devil

Directed by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes.  Starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi, Ingrid Torelli, Rhys Auteri, Georgina Haig and Josh Quong Tart

Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian) is a late-night talk show host whose show, Night Owls, competes with Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show for ratings. He has a great life but then his wife Madeline (Haig) dies of cancer. Delroy take a break but when he returns but the show begins to lose viewers. In desperation he plans a very special Halloween Special for October 31^st 1977. His guests include a psychic Christou (Bazzi) and a former magician turned debunker Carmichael (Bliss) but the stars of the show are planned to be Parapsychologist June (Gordon) and her teenage patient Lilly (Torelli) who June claims is possessed by a demon Lilly calls Mr Wriggles. When Delroy convinces June to conjure Mr Wriggles the stage is set for a Halloween no one will forget!

Some movies are just fun, some movies just capture your eye from start to finish. Late Night with the Devil IS one of those movies. While not perfect it’s an engaging and original found footage film (though as with many found footage films it can’t help but move outside of its scope on occasional, thankfully such detours are brief and don’t detract from the whole). And yes there is more than a hint of BBC’s Ghostwatch here, but that’s no bad thing.

The film looks incredible, the 1970s’ talk show aesthetic seems, to me at least, spot on, and the characters are so engrossing that this is one of those films I think I’d love, even if it didn’t head into the supernatural. I’d kinda like to watch some regular episodes of Night Owls.

At the heart of it all is Dastmalchian who plays Delroy to perfection. He’s ever so slightly sleezy, but never so much that you don’t like him, his love for his deceased wife seems genuine and sure, he’s desperate for ratings but what talk show host isn’t? Seriously without Dastmalchian this film wouldn’t be as good, and one hopes this is finally the breakthrough part for an actor who’s been around a while and always delivered interesting performances.

Fayssal Bazzi is good as ‘is he/isn’t he fake’ medium Christou, again nailing that 70s’ lounge lizard look, as does Ian Bliss as Carmichael who, given he’s a sceptic who wants to debunk the supernatural, actually doesn’t come across as remotely likeable, it seems less about the truth than it does about forging a new career. Laura Gordon is solid in perhaps the least interesting role, but someone has to play the straight man, and Ingrid Torelli switches between sweet and creepy eerily well. Special mention to Rhys Auteri as Jack’s comedy sidekick who really does feel like he’s stepped off the set of one of these shows.

Is it perfect? No. It isn’t as scary as I’d been led to believe it was, which is fine and I suspect my next viewing I’ll enjoy it even more knowing what I’m signing up for, and it doesn’t quite stick the landing, but frankly everything up to the final moments is so wonderful that this hardly matters.

A film I’ll be watching again, in fact I’m already planning on buying the Blu-Ray.

Dune: Part Two

Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux,  Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem.

Following the destruction of House Atreides on Arrakis, Paul (Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Ferguson) travel with the Fremen to one of their cities. Many of the Fremen there are suspicious of Paul and Lady Jessica, believing them to be spies, but Stilgar (Bardem) vouches for them. He implies that they are the fulfilment of a long held prophesy that a mother and son from the outer world will liberate Arrakis, and even encourages Jessica to take the place of their Reverend Mother, who is close to death. To do this Jessica must drink and survive the poisonous Water of Life. No one realises she is pregnant however, and the poison prematurely awakens the mind of Jessica’s unborn daughter.

Chani (Zendaya) doesn’t believe in the prophesy, correctly realising that the legends were seeded by the Bene Gesserit hundreds of years before in order to manipulate the Fremen. She learns to respect Paul despite this, and the two fall in love. Jessica pressures Paul to assume his place as the Freman Messiah but he resists.

Meanwhile the Harkonnen are struggling to keep up spice production due to attacks by the Fremen, and eventually Baron Harkonnen (Skarsgård) decides to replace his nephew Rabban (Bautista) with another nephew, the psychotic Feyd.

Paul is faced with an impossible choice, in order to defeat the Harkonnens he will have to lean into the legends and drink the Water of Life himself, even though he knows this will instigate a religious jihad that will kill billions.

Having missed part 1 when it originally came out at the cinema (in part due to Covid) there was no way I was waiting until I could get the Blu-ray when part 2 came out. I saw it a week after it opened, in IMAX, which is probably the best way to see it.

It was difficult to imagine that Villeneuve, having given us a great first part, would screw up the conclusion, still you never know…

I needn’t have worried. Dune part 2 is everything part 1 was. It’s epic and glorious. It looks and sounds incredible, and it’s filled with standout performances from a magnificent cast (with one notable exception.) Is it actually better than part 1? It’s hard to say at the moment, repeat viewings will decide that, but it’s hard to imagine either part existing without the other. Villeneuve has created a spectacular cinematic event, and given how successfully it’s performed at the box office one can only hope that he will get to make Dune Messiah now.

It’s hard to say who gives the best performance in the film, because so many are at the top of their game. Without Chalamet of course it all potentially falls apart, and he essays the shift from a cocky yet naïve young man into a leader and a warrior effortlessly, and his resistance to who he knows he needs to become is heartbreaking at times. Zendaya matches him well as Chani, and it’s good that Villeneuve has changed the story to give Chani some actual agency. Zendaya really is a great actor.

As is Rebecca Ferguson (I mean first off, she convincingly plays mother to a guy only 12 years younger than her). I adored Francesca Annis in Lynch’s Dune, but Ferguson is probably better, and the conversations she has with her unborn child (yes that is Anya Taylor-Joy) are nicely done.

Bardem is always good value and the shift in Stigar from leader and friend to devoted underling and religious fanatic is wonderfully tragic.  Skarsgård remains great as the Baron, though you wish he got more to do, similarly Bautista, but in Harkonnen terms it’s Butler who shines. He’s come a long way from Elvis and he’s truly terrifying.

Always nice to see Seydoux and Pugh, even if sadly neither has quite enough screen time. Hopefully one or both of them will be back for Messiah. Pugh yet again effortlessly shows what a magnificent actor she is. The look in her eyes when she realises Paul will always love Chani and never love her is practically Oscar worthy on its own. The only misstep is Walken who feels like he isn’t sure which film he’s supposed to be in (I’m happy to accept this was maybe intentional).

The battles are nicely handled, the sandworms portrayed as true leviathans, and the cinematography stunning. The Harkonnen home world under its black sun is simply magnificent. 

Is it a tad too long, perhaps, although you could just as easily complain that the story rushes too fast, but maybe that’s just because you don’t want the story to end, don’t want to leave this world.

Frankly Denis Villeneuve is probably my favourite modern director. A visual treat for the senses.

Long live the fighters!

All of Us Strangers

Directed by Andrew Haigh. Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell.

Adam (Scott) is a lonely screenwriter living in an almost deserted tower block in London. After a fire alarm sends him outside he waves at another man still in the building. Later that evening the other man, Harry (Mescal) turns up at Adam’s door, drunk and with a bottle of whiskey he’d like to share with Adam. Adam is tempted but also wary of connection with other people and so he sends Harry away.

Adam begins to write a treatment based on his youth, and this prompts him to take a train to his childhood home. He is surprised to find his parents are still there because they died in a car crash when he was just 12 years old, yet they seemed to have been preserved just as he remembers them in the late 1980s. He has dinner and promises to return.

Back in London he encounters Harry again. This time he invites him in for a drink and after talking for a while, they have sex. As his feelings for Harry grow Adam also finds solace in visiting his parents, allowing him to deal with the trauma over their deaths he’s hidden from all these years.

A wonderful example of what film can do with little beyond an amazing script and four superb performances. On the face of it this is a relatively simple story, albeit a simple story told very well.

Haigh loosely adapted the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, although that book is more obviously a horror story than this, and at its heart there’s ambiguity over whether Adam is visiting the ghosts of his parents, or whether he is imagining the contact he has with them as a way of processing his own grief. In the end I don’t think it matters, as his mum says to him at one point; “Does it feel real?” and that’s the important thing, whether it’s genuine or illusory Adam needs to talk to them.

The film is about several things, grief obviously, but also loneliness. The fact that Adam and Harry seem to be living in a practically empty tower block in London is improbable, but it reinforces the isolation that Adam feels, he is a man who’s cut himself off from others, not because he is gay so much as because he fears losing those closest to him, although this is very much a gay love story as well as a meditation on loss and loneliness.

The film excels in the scenes between Scott and Mescal, the awkwardness of those first fumbling encounters that are universal no matter what your orientation, although it’s nice to see a budding relationship told from this perspective. The two men have a lot of chemistry and their nascent romance feels very real.

So too does Adam’s interactions with his parents. The fantastical nature of those meetings hardly matters because they are so grounded, so heartfelt and genuine. For saying Foy and Bell are younger than Scott, all three do a fantastic job of selling the parent/child dynamic without it ever feeling ridiculous—though there is humour to be had, Adam in his childhood pyjamas for example. The illusion is helped by har and makeup, and clothes, that make Bell and Foy look way older than they are, and as a child who grew up in the 70s and 80s this resonated a lot with me, people looked a lot older back then, gotta love Foy’s perm and Bell’s moustache.

It isn’t just about the sets and the outfits though, the attitudes of Adam’s parents are era appropriate as well. Take the somewhat different reactions of both parents upon learning of Adam’s sexuality.

Mescal, Foy and Bell are all magnificent, but it’s Scott who is the beating heart of this film, who lays his emotions on the line and drops any defence to leave himself incredibly vulnerable, whether he’s sharing intimate details of his grief with Harry, telling his mum he’s gay, or discussing the bullying and unhappiness he encountered at school with his father.  

Beyond the script and performances the film looks gorgeous as well, despite its limited number of locations. I enjoyed this film a lot when I saw it and it’s stayed with me, whether that’s simply because it’s so good or because parts reminded me of my own childhood is anyone’s guess, but whichever way you slice it this is a very good film.

The Zone of Interest

Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Starring Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller.

It is 1943 and Rudolf Höss (Friedel) is commandant of Auschwitz. He lives outside the camp in a large house with his wife Hedwig (Hüller) and their five children. They live an idyllic life, while a few hundred metres away the horrors of the concentration camp unfold.

When Höss is promoted to become deputy inspector of all concentration camps it seems like they life of luxury will come to an end, but Hedwig convinces him to ask that she and the children are allowed to stay at Auschwitz while he travels to Berlin.

The idea of a film that examines the horrors of the final solution while not showing any of the horrors of the final solution is an interesting one, and in other hands this could have failed miserably, but Glazer is such a good director that he makes it work.

What we see is the lives of the Höss family. Our view is almost totally from the outside of the concentration camp, though its presence is always there, from the smoke pouring from the chimneys to the ambient soundtrack of the camp; machinery, gunfire, trains arriving and departing, it pervades everything and is in stark contrast to the privileged life of the Höss family.

The mundanity of their lives could have made for dull viewing, and yet it is strangely compelling, and lest anyone think that this approach might humanise the Nazis, the opposite is true, if anything the ordinariness of their lives, and their acceptance of the horrors happening just a few hundred metres away, makes them even more monstrous.

“That banality of evil” is a term that has perhaps been overused in recent times, but here Glazer uses it to great effect. Thousands upon thousands die, yet Rudolf is appalled that the camp guards have trampled his flowers. Meanwhile Hedwig gets her pick of the prisoners’ belongings, swanning about in a fur coat and telling the story about how one woman found a diamond hidden in a tube of toothpaste because ‘they’ are very clever.

The Höss residence looks beautiful, a calm, splendid place at odds with the camp behind it, and its all the more unsettling for this.

Friedel and Hüller are superb, and you will hate Rudolf and Hedwig, though in some ways Hedwig comes across more grotesque, because she revels in the horror, whilst Rudolf seems to derive satisfaction only from the mechanics of the operation he has overseen.

It’s the tiny moments that encourage our revulsion. From one of their sons playing with human teeth, to Rudolf finding human remains in the river he and his children have been frolicking in.

Rudolf seems soulless at times, at a swanky Berlin dinner party all he can think about is the most efficient way he could gas all the guests, while Hedwig’s first thought upon hearing of her husband’s promotion is how this means they’ll lose their fine house and servants.

It isn’t an easy watch, and I think some people will find it boring, but I thought it was captivating.

Despite everything Glazer provides a modicum of hope, from Hedwig’s mother who isn’t as comfortable with things as she first appears, to the young woman who seeds the ground with food for the prisoners, at the risk of her own life (based apparently on a real person, the bike used is the actual bike).

If there is a flaw it is the lack of resolution. Rudolf was hanged after the war, but Glazer shies away from this. He doesn’t give us the catharsis we crave, and it’s up to each viewer to decide if that is a good thing or not. Instead, there’s an odd flash forward, presumably contrasting the banality of evil with the banality of remembrance, and again it is a bold, if perhaps not wholly satisfying choice, but one thing you can say about Glazer, he’s not in the habit of giving you what you want, perhaps only what you need.

The End We Start From

Directed by Mahalia Belo. Starring Jodie Comer, Joel Fray, Katherine Waterston, Mark Strong, Nina Sosanya, Gina McKee, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Seen in January

A young woman (Comer) is on the verge of giving birth. She lives in a nice house in London and is very much in love with her boyfriend. It’s raining heavily but that’s ok because that’s outside. Except it keeps raining, and as rivers breach their banks and flood defences are overwhelmed, London, and other parts of the country, are deluged. As water begins to seep into her house she goes into labour. Taken to hospital she’s joined by her partner R (Fry). The hospital is under massive strain because of the floods and when she, R and her baby leave they can’t return home and so they drive out to the house of R’s parents (Strong and Sosanya) although they almost don’t make it. With so many people made homeless many smaller communities are refusing entry to refugees and R has to convince the police that this is the place he grew up in.

For a time life is idyllic as they watch from afar the chaos engulfing much of the country, but with food running out, and after several tragedies, they have to flee. Soon Mother (no one has a name in this film) finds herself having to enter a refugee camp with her baby.

Can she keep her baby safe and will she ever be able to go home again?

It would be wrong to say that I loved The End We Start From, but it’s a solid take on the post-apocalyptic survival story. Sure, in some respects it is the kind of story we’ve seen before, with a lot of the same tropes, but the choice to show survival from a new mother’s perspective is an interesting one. Comer’s Mother (the lack of names feels pointlessly pretentious) not only has to try and keep herself alive, but also her baby, and the film is definitely looking at a disaster from a female perspective and it’s to be lauded for that.

It’s also good to see an environmental catastrophe rather than the tired old nuclear war/plague/zombies etc, and in the midst of one of the mildest winters I think I’ve ever known, and following on from a lot of floods last month, the film feels very current. It’s also an intriguing take to examine the concept of becoming a refugee in your own country. In tone at times it feels like Children of Men (only nowhere near as effective) and it even segues into something reminiscent of 28 Weeks Later towards the end (sans rage zombies obviously).

Comer is superb, which is just as well as she’s on screen for the entire film. The only slight niggle I have is that she never quite looks dishevelled enough, but it seems churlish to complain because she can’t help being naturally beautiful and her performance is very good.

Katherine Waterston is great as the fellow mum she befriends in the refugee camp as is Joel Fry as Mother’s increasingly frazzled partner. Strong and Sosanya don’t get a lot to do, and McKee feels slightly wasted as well. There’s also a cameo from Cumberbatch (one of the production companies involved is Cumberbatch’s) that could have felt jarring, but outside of Comer and Waterstone he manages to be the best thing in the film despite very limited screen time.

The effects are good, especially given the film’s limited budget, and while scenes of a flooded London are sparse, they’re also very effective, as is the refugee camp.

Where the film falls down is in the plot. There just isn’t enough to justify the length of the film and after a strong start the film sags quite a bit and meanders to a conclusion that feels welcome, yet also strangely unearned. In part this is down to the film’s grounded nature, and inserting more action would have probably detracted somewhat from everything that makes the film interesting.

In the end it’s an appealing film that’s too slight to be truly memorable, but is buoyed by a great central performance from Comer who continues to show she’s a damn fine actor.