Come to Daddy

COME TO DADDY (⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Director: Ant Timpson. Cast: Elijah Wood, Stephen McHattie, Garfield Wilson 

When it comes to unpredictable genre-bending movies “Come to Daddy” really deserves the palm d’or… Right from the first few frames where we are treated by a quote by Shakespeare followed by one by Beyoncé, we know we’re in for something pretty crazy. What starts of as a movie about a reunion between a son and his estrange father, turns quickly into something completely different and unexpected.

To say more would be a BIG spoiler, but you should only know that this is actually a gory horror, so if you don’t like this type of things, stay well away from it.If you do, you might actually “enjoy” it.

Elijah Wood has the quality of choosing pretty weird roles from time to time and this is certainly one of those. With his terrible haircut and the weird moustache (both matching the weirdness of the film), the eternally young actor’s performance here is a real tour de force: he’s virtually in every single shot and it carries it through great energy and conviction.In the end the emotional stakes are completely submersed by the gory madness and it’s hard to take any of it seriously.

It’s fun, of course, but all a bit flimsy.

You can rent it on iTunes for £1.99

The Prom

The Prom ⭐️⭐️

Director: Ryan Murphy. Cast: Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Kerry Washington

Where do I start? Tonight I wanted to see something completely silly and uplifting that would distract me from the gloomy news coming from America (I’m writing this on the day the Capitol Building in Washington was under siege) . How could I do wrong with a glitzy musical starring Meryl Streep (among the many others) who I could watch reading a directory?

Well, let me tell you, it did distract me from the news, but only in so far as I kept wondering “how could they have made something so crass, so predictable and make 2 hours feel like an eternity?

The prom feels like a bad extended episode of “Glee” (a series which at times I actually did enjoy) with a bigger budget and bigger stars. Not for anything director Ryan Murphy (not somebody known for his subtlety) was the “brain” behind that show.Yes, there’s a great energy in the film and some of the numbers are actually OK(ish), but essentially it’s a series of cliche about coming out, being gay, high school bulling and all the things which we’ve seen a million times before, done a lot better. In the end the film becomes exactly what it pretends to be criticising throughout. I thought it was excruciating.

James Corden has been slaughtered for his performance and for pretending to be a gay man… I didn’t think he was that bad, nor I see what the problem with playing a gay man would be. Isn’t he an actor after all? In fact, he’s the least of the problems with “The Prom”. It’s the terrible, unsubtle, hollow, preachy, hokey script which is embarrassing.

If if wasn’t for Meryl singing and dancing and looking splendid as ever at the age of 71, I would have turned it off after about 20 minutes.

On Netflix

Pieces of a Woman

Director: Kornél Mundruczó. Cast: Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn 

The first 30 minutes of this film are some of the most uncomfortable and gut-wrenching to watch of any film I’ve seen in a long time (aside from “For Sama”, which still keeps that trophy) and I suspect they might be even harder for any woman who’s ever been through a pregnancy. There’s a stark and immersive sense of realism at play here, enhanced by some spectacular performances and made even stronger by the fact that it’s all filmed in a very long uninterrupted take. All of which adds to the urgency and overgrowing sense of an excruciating dread. I felt I wanted to pause and even stop the film more than once, but I’m happy I persevered because (and this is not intended as a spoiler) there is eventually “light at the end of the tunnel”. 

And then just moments before the “resolution” of what you’ve just witness is about to hit you, the film cuts away to the main title.

Just like the characters in the film, the audience is not given time to realise what just happened, to digest it, to grieve… 

Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó (here in his first film in English) then fasts forward through the year that follows, building and building towards a cathartic ending, as the “woman” from the title, Martha, (a magnificent Vanessa Kirby who the real heart and soul of this film and deserves many many awards for this) tries to come to term to the heart-breaking and horrifying event, and we as the audience, are on a parallel journey with her. 

I thought this was a spectacular film, though one I probably never want to watch again. Interestingly it has a very low score on imdb (it has been shown on various festivals), but when you watch the breakdown of the votes you’ll find that women, especially slightly older ones, were particularly negative towards it (something which I find very interesting, though I don’t completely understand, nor agree with).

Shia LaBeouf, is equally good, producing a fearless performance and throw himself in it completely naked both emotionally and physically. And finally Ellen Burstyn who at 88 still has the power to amaze me, as she makes the most with her little role of Martha’s mother, delivering a monologue which has Oscar written all over it.

The film is out on Netflix from the 7th of January

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Director: George C. Wolfe – Cast: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Colman Domingo

Watching this film I couldn’t help thinking back at the 2016 multi-Oscar nominated “Fences”. That too was produced by Denzel Washington and adapted from a play by August Wilson. Viola Davis also starred in that film, in fact she even won an Oscar for it, giving one of the most powerful performances of the last few years. It comes to no surprise to see her in “Ma Rainey” confirming once again her status as one of the best actress of our time (she even sings one of the songs in the film, “These Dogs of Mine”).

However I have to say, just as in “Fences” I found the film’s direction and presentation in general (this time, not by Denzel, but by George C. Wolfe), incredibly stagy and a bit stiff, somehow unable to detached itself from those theatrical roots.

The result is a film full of dialogue-heavy scenes and not a lot of attention to the visual side of things (though I the costumes are great!)Because of all that; I’ve had the same reaction to this that I had during Fences: I could never quite engage with it, as most people seemed to have (this one has 98% on Rotten tomatoes!).

I found it all slightly forced and a bit in your face (though I do recognise that it MY problem with August Wilson more than anything else).It’s not really a movie, but a piece for theatre: even the sets look like they could be on a stageSo all I was left to do was to watch, slightly distant, the powerful performances by the impressive cast and think about what a great loss cinema’s has suffered with the premature death of Chadwick Boseman. Here once again, after Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” a few months ago, he has shown us he had so much more in him than what we saw in “Black Panther”.

The Courier

The Courier

Director: Dominic Cooke. Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Vladimir Chuprikov, Merab Ninidze, James Schofield

I have to confess, I started watching this with zero expectations: it seemed the most generic title ever (type “the courier” on imdb and you’ll get over 40 other films For some reason it is called Ironbark in several other countries though in Italy it got then changed again into “L’ombra delle spie”).

From the plot it sounded like yet another film about Russian spies and how close we got to war during the Cuban missile crisis. And it is indeed all that, but somehow by the end of it I found myself more and more gripped by the story (particularly in the second half which quite tense) and I ended up enjoying it a lot more that I thought I would.

Obviously if you’ve seen the astonishing (and highly recommend) TV series “The Americans” this one feels a bit like a light version of it, set in the 60s. How many other films have we seen with spies hiding their secret identities to their wives, sneaky exchanges at night, scary looking Russians threatening the Americans and so on? Everything has been done and seen before and even though this is a true story, it seems to go through pretty much every cliche in the book.

And yet despite all that, also thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch who turns in a very good performance (especially in the latter part where he literally transforms himself), the film is very very watchable and never once I checked my watch.Equally good is Merab Ninidze who plays the Russian counterpart. In fact the film is equally interested in the Russian spy and the American. Alas, it never goes quite deep enough into any of that, preferring too keep things moving and “entertaining”: arguably it does do a decent job with that, but it’s al just surface. The film cannot quite give this important story the weight it deserves, nor can it make it feel relevant to today, especially given the ongoing relationship with Russia.

A slightly wasted opportunity.

The film is schedule to come out in most countries this February.