Film Reviews by PD

This one begins as a social drama before revealing itself as psychological revenge-thriller - but for me the former (based on an the adoptee's right versus the right of the birth parent) is rather overpowered by the latter, and whilst the film is strong enough in performance and direction to survive the direction of events, much of the second half still feels to me like an intrusion on a better story.

At first, Rose's clumsy attempts to connect with her birth parent meets with resistance. But Rose is persistent in utilizing unethical methods that border on stalking to gain access. Indeed, we are concerned about Rose's mental state: Rose's trance-like stare revealing an internal pain that remains obvious even when she smiles. The film might have presented an intriguing dilemma—and a daring unsympathetic portrait of adoptees—should a child return to torment the birth parent? For adoption remains contentious - advocating for adoptees' right to confront their past, heritage, and history continues to put many at odds with family, friends, colleagues, etc; here we seem to be invited (generally speaking) to take Rose's side, and I found myself wondering whether the directors of the film are adopted or have adopted. As a thriller, however, the film is much less forceful, the story’s direction becoming increasingly predictable as it goes on, especially once Rosie's mother takes centre-stage. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, a highly watchable and distinctly unsettling piece.

This pocket-sized comedy by newcomer Emma Seligman is by-and-large a successful, relentless parody of North American Jewish types (although quite a lot of the satire is universal) which will delight most and probably offend some (and that's a compliment). Dragooned into the event by her anxious parents, the drifting Danielle (the wonderful Rachel Sennott) attends a family shiva – the Jewish equivalent of a wake, albeit more decorous. The boasting 'bubbies' and meddling mamas would be bad enough, but Danielle also has to contend with the presence of both her ex-girlfriend and the older man with whom she sleeps for money. The film's humour is derived from an impressive range of social awkwardness, with some positively Woody Alleneque lines: a Gentile baby, complains Danielle’s mother, is “freakishly pale and has no nose.” Meanwhile, broken glass objects, a deafeningly screaming baby, a relentlessly suspicious wife and a shedload of prying relatives make the claustrophobic house a scene of excruciatingly beautiful tension. Seligman overdoes it occasionally – there’s a tableau of the older generation eating for example that just feels mean – and the premise, which began life as a short film, is stretched pretty thin, with an awful lot of implausible twists, by the end of 75 minutes. Still, the concept holds strong amid all the craziness because Seligman has such affectionate sympathy for her protagonist. Pleased I gave this one a go.

This one is set in a care home in 2020 and two thirds of the film is very effective at depicting the pressure-cooker anguish of dealing with Covid in this environment.

Jodie Comer is spot-on as 20-year-old newly qualified carer, Sarah, who proves unexpectedly good at the feeding, changing, cajoling, cheering and calming that makes up the average day of the residents / patients. The film centres around Sarah's relationship with Tony (Stephen Graham), who has young onset Alzheimer’s and a tendency to roam if not gently monitored. He is one of the more able residents and they form a friendship alongside her duty of care, fostered by games of 'Shithead', over which they trade stories of their respective misspent youths. There are lovely, funny, poignant scenes as they talk, laugh then suddenly have to negotiate the blanks in Tony’s memory and ride the mood swings his relentlessly advancing condition causes.

Sarah is still in her six-week probationary period when Covid strikes, brought in by one of the “bed-blockers” the hospital delivers to them to free space for the growing number of patients stricken with the new virus. The ambulance crew who bring them ask where the staff’s masks are. “We were told we didn’t need them.” Director Jack Thorne constructs a fine portrait of the interconnectedness of all things – or at least all chronically underfunded, under-advised things left to beg for help, piece together independent protocols and scrabble for PPE. However, when Tony becomes an indirect victim of Covid, the film moves into a much less convincing third act, one that seems even to come from a different drama - if the film had ended 20 minutes earlier, it would have been much more powerful, but as it is, the final section seriously undermines the character of Sarah we have come to admire, which is a pity. But overall, it's a timely reminder of some of our society's dark corners - a chilling reminder during the closing credits that care workers are, on average, paid £11.50 an hour says it all.

Jack London’s tale of Martin Eden - an unschooled sailor who wants to become a writer after falling in love with an upper-class woman, gets an engaging European makeover here from iconoclastic Italian director Pietro Marcello. Instead of Oakland, the titular character now lives in Naples, and Martin is played, in a solid performance, by an always-intense Luca Marinelli. While the geography of this version of Eden is extremely specific, the time frame is much harder to pin down, with various 20th century influences existing alongside even older material, with brief documentary excerpts woven into the main narrative to provide local colour or draw historical parallels. These are not only well-integrated — the colour grader deserves some kind of award — but add little daubs of contextual information that never intrude on the film’s fictional arc.

The film works best when it concentrates on the protagonist’s personal journey from Parthenopean Nobody to a determined writer fully in command of his language who knows he’ll make it big and then finally (and tragically) does. What's very much weaker however is Marcello's desire to shoehorn in both more than a century’s worth of European struggles and sociopolitical thinking, and the full story of Eden’s downfall after he’s finally become successful. Indeed, these weighty concerns rather capsize the entire enterprise in the final stretch, where the story runs aground on an iceberg of undigested ideas, barely developed themes, and distinctly bad hair choices. Meanwhile, sadly, the subtitles make no attempt to differentiate between Neapolitan, Italian and French, which means that the linguistic subtext, and what it constantly says about class and education, is literally lost in translation for foreign audiences. And despite its length the film doesn’t have enough time to dig very deep into Eden’s growing and then gradually shifting philosophical thinking, and there is no way of knowing what the work of Eden as a writer actually contains — a few stray phrases said out loud notwithstanding — Martin Eden’s sociopolitical and literary considerations finally feel very superficial. Finally, when the last act starts it feels like the viewer needs to quickly run a couple of extra laps to catch up with what has happened during the ellipse and there's not nearly enough evidence to figure out whether what Eden has always preached has suddenly become true and no longer being misunderstood has made him unhappy — or whether it is simply impossible to talk truthfully about the poor and exploited once you’ve become rich and successful and this is what is causing his anguished expressions, bad hair and terrible teeth. How his Darwinian take on socialism, much of it gleaned from the works of Herbert Spencer, figure in all this is also not made clear.

There’s a telling scene in which Martin and Elena come out of a cinema with Elena saying she liked the film and Martin saying he didn’t. It gave her hope, she says, while he doesn't think it reflects the misery of reality or saus anything new. Harshly but perhaps not unjustly, he tells her: “Those who are always full can’t understand the misery of the hungry.” It feels like a moment in which philosophy, literature and the political and class struggles take the upper hand for Martin, and his idealised love for her starts to wane - indeed, not much later, he’s picked up a lowly waitress (Denise Sardisco).

Marinelli is a force of nature in every scene and doesn’t play Eden so much as inhabit him, ensuring that the titular figure is always credibly alive as a determined, foolhardily-in-love young man, an insatiable intellectual-in-the-making and a man bent on beating the odds and becoming a published writer however many of his manuscripts are returned to sender. We might not understand WHY Martin is unhappy when he becomes a success, but Marinelli at least communicates his despair very effectively indeed.

In his feature debut, American director Michael Sarnoski has come up with a highly original piece which is part revenge tale, part character-study, part satire on the meaning of value and social status . The result is certainly a bit hit-and-miss but is nevertheless gripping throughout.

The comparison with John Wick is an immediately obvious one – a brooding loner retired from the outside world has his beloved pet taken from him inspiring him to go on a single-minded quest to find what was stolen. Curiously, Pig also comes hot on the trotters of The Truffle Hunters, a romantic documentary about mushroom digger-uppers and their dogs set in Northern Italy. In terms of tone and form, Pig and The Truffle Hunters couldn’t be more different, but it’s a rather neat coincidence that in being released so close together, each offers a strange emotional juxtaposition to the other. Visually, too, Pig has more in common with The Truffle Hunters, its early scenes in particular awash in earthy brown tones and close ups that unify both Nicolas Cage's Rob and his pig’s perspectives and their relationship with the land.

Cage starring as former chef turned truffle hunter is the big draw here; brooding and contemplative, Cage gives a haunting, captivating performance, each encounter on his quest to find his pig layering pathos upon tension. Violence hangs in the air of every scene, yet with the exception of a couple of eruptions, it remains resolutely out of frame - indeed, Rob is like an anti-John Wick: just as relentlessly single-minded but with his pain turned inwards, not out.

Rob's quest brings him into the purview with the lower and upper echelons of Portland society, and he has more than a few pithy observations to make about the hypocrisy and pretension of the society he has shunned. In one of the film’s most effective scenes, Rob destroys one of his former sous chefs, now running a fancy but vapid restaurant, by reminding him of his former dream of running a pub. Later, in Pig’s emotional climax, Rob confronts the person responsible for the pig theft by simply cooking him a meal. Bloody retribution is hinted at but ultimately withheld, denying us the easy catharsis that screen violence often denotes. True catharsis comes – if at all – not through the barrel of a gun but from Rob’s ability to see through his adversaries .

Perhaps the film ends up being less than the sum of its parts, as it were, but it's a thoughtful and beautifully crafted piece.

A quietly affecting depiction of how a long-term couple negotiate the inexorable effects of dementia, Harry Macqueen’s second feature relies heavily on the comfortable chemistry between the two actors, long-time friends off-screen, to bring its central relationship to life. The result is a bit 'talky' and could easily be re-imagined for the stage, but generally it is a beautifully modulated drama that is unforced and naturalistic, perfectly played by Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. It's a sort of road film, with the couple travelling through the Lake District in a campervan en route to a comeback recital, but it's centre is a study of the adaptation of grief. Tucci is in quixotic, intoxicating form, using cheek and wit to hide a reservoir of feelings, a man who desperately wants to be remembered for who he was, but it’s Firth who provides the real heart of the film, skilfully capturing the strange predicament of loving someone with dementia, that sense of mourning a person while they are still alive. Neither Tucci and Firth give showy turns; instead they are reserved and refined, and Supernova is all the more moving for that (although there are some unnecessary sentimental touches and a somewhat cloying score), whilst the gorgeous autumnal shots of the Lake District courtesy of Mike Leigh cinematographer Dick Pope are neatly interwoven with the action. Yet it is a film that works by stealth. It starts with an accumulation of intimate, everyday moments that feels like it is going nowhere fast, but gradually without warning you feel deeply involved in these characters’ relationship and predicament - at a family party Tusker is told, despite his illness, “You are still you.” “No, I am not,” he replies, “I just look like him".

Firth and Tucci are definitely stronger than the script, which is a tad thin at times, and Macqueen often feels like he’s aiming for a lighter touch than he ends up using, whilst the tasteful, minimalist approach often precludes true connection and meaning - for dementia deserves more serious treatment. But such weaknesses are more than made up by the performances, which are lovely, and they successfully carry this minor-key piece, especially in those sequences in which Sam and Tusker cuddle up together and we understand just how much their lives are intertwined.

As someone who lives with someone with dementia (my father in fact), Florian Zeller's piece is undoubtedly both an unsettlingly accurate simulation of what it’s like to live with and love someone with dementia, and a strikingly believable conception of what it’s like to live AS someone with dementia - the film envisioning senility as a house of mirrors in which everyone loses sight of themselves and reality itself becomes destabilized. There are so many overtones with my own experience - the obsession with a watch and other compulsive behaviour, the disorientation in an unfamiliar room, the aggression and paranoia.

Anthony Hopkins is predictably superb in the title role, deftly conveying that, for better or worse he still has the vim and vigour of a much younger man, but his mind is a leaky ship in search of land - although it's perhaps a pity that, as with many films of this ilk, we are invited to feel it's more tragic because of his past intellectual accomplishments - it isn't: everyone of course, regardless of their past, deserves our compassion. And his performance is neatly complemented by Olivia Williams, whose ongoing realisation that she cannot give her father what he needs is equally as heart-rending. And one of film’s best scenes involves an introductory meeting between the father and his bright new aide (a brilliant Imogen Poots, negotiating an entire Pinter play worth of resolve, doubt, and betrayal in just a few short minutes). Anthony is at once both more aware than we think, and less aware than he knows. That tension erupts into a rare burst of melodrama — though Hopkins keeps the ham in check — but it leaves the entire flat unsettled in a way that makes it hard to know what it is you should be feeling.

There's quite a few weaknesses - it's always difficult transferring a stage play to screen, and some of the 'tricks' used here are very clunky indeed in film close-up, whilst occasionally, despite Hopkins' superb performance, the words are simply not up to the terrifying reality on screen - towards the end, Hopkins evokes King Lear when he compares himself to a tree losing its branches, and though he just about gets away with it, Shakespearean poetry this is not - for sheer power, 'Elizabeth is Missing' and 'Eternal Beauty' are for me better films dealing with mental issues. Nevertheless for all that, a brave, empathetic piece.

It's always very difficult to transfer a tale of ideas onto screen, and this one for me doesn't quite succeed in bringing it off - occasionally the dialogue gets to grips with the ethical complexities Arendt confronts us with, but far too often the screenplay simply isn't up to the job, with the result that rather too much of the 'action' feels somewhat stilted. There's some great moments - original footage of Eichmann's trial at the beginning for example is disturbingly compelling - maybe he does 'look like a nobody', but then, what do we expect? A devil with horns? And Barbara Sukowa's performance, particularly in the scenes where she is complemented by Janet McTeeer's Mary McCarthy, is a convincing one. Unfortunately however, Arendt's detractors come across mainly as puppets mouthing a party line, with the result that there isn't really any serious, forensic challenge to Arendt's thought, and the pantomime villain quality of her opponents merely makes the drama less powerful than it should be; an attempt to shoehorn Arendt's affair with Heidegger, moreover, is just a distraction from the film's main concern - the depiction of someone committed to what she considers the truth. So, all in all a worthy subject but not one that does Arendt full justice.

Filippo Meneghetti’s heart-rending directorial debut is a finely wrought and tragic tale of love, loss, ageing and how the secrets we keep affect ourselves and our families. The fact that the subject matter is a lesbian relationship between two elderly women is a striking thing in itself - how refreshing to see this theme portrayed without resorting to the usual (invariably male-centred) cliches. The brief, intriguing opening sequence immediately tells we're in the hands of someone who's going to keep us spellbound, and the film lives to its promise.

The first act belongs to Martine Chevallier, who, as Madeleine, gives a commanding performance of someone lovely, fragile and vulnerable, whilst she is neatly complemented by Barbara Sukowa who dominates the second half as the panicked, grieving Nina, who nevertheless remains the strong, earthy, determined half of the couple. She embodies the exquisitely singular agony Nina experiences: the loss of a partner who never fully disappeared, remaining frustratingly out of reach just beyond their apartment doors.

The film doesn't entirely avoid melodrama, and some of the plot developments are a little contrived - a tangent involving a vengeful care-assistant is also totally unnecessary. Moreover, at just 90 minutes, the film isn't nearly long enough to explore all the (very important and universally relatable) issues it raises. But the film is at its most powerful when dealing with subtleties: tender, erotic caresses, the flickering of a glance, a hand grasped; clocks ticking and spoons clinking in an oppressive environmental pressure cooker; an ongoing eavesdropping motif via spy-holes in doors is particularly effective , introducing a quasi-thriller element to proceedings. More to come, hopefully, from a talented director.

Kelly Reichardt’s wonderful film opens with a present-day scene involving two neat skeletons being found side by side by a curious dog and its owner, who treats the find like a professional archaeologist. It doesn't take us long to realise that these are the bodies of Cookie Figowitz and King-Lu, the friendship of which the film concerns itself. Their remains are remnants of a long-gone West, namely 1820s Oregon - its mélange of business and trade, origins and ethnicities, together with its opportunities and dangers, superbly depicted. John Magaro is spot-on as as Cookie, a humble Jewish cook travelling West from Maryland with a gang of fur traders who seem to hate him, his performance beautifully complemented by Orion Lee as King-Lu. on the run from killing a man. Their friendship is quickly kindled; the men move in together out of the completely natural instinct, often shared by outsiders, to stick together. Lee takes the Western trope of the indecipherable East Asian outsider, typically a complete non-character, and imbues King-Lu with a magnetic cleverness—something intriguingly at odds with Cookie’s humility, in that it could work to Cookie’s benefit or his complete demise. Magaro, meanwhile, is an actor with the kind eyes of a saint - the scenes involving him sweet-talking a cow into relinquishing her milk are tender and totally convincing.

But the men’s friendship isn’t the only story of First Cow. It’s the seed of something larger, portended by way of William Blake in the film’s epigraph: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” This being a Western of sorts (but don't expect any 'action' - Reinhardt is in no hurry at all), tensions arise from the broader problems of commerce and ambition that beset these men. Capital, the film reveals, is sustained through intimate transactions, be they the lowly designs of propertyless men like Cookie and King-Lu, the face-to-face haggling of culture and craft between whites and Natives, or the deals people apparently make with nature and fate. King-Lu is the guy with a mind for business, who takes Cookie’s humble ideas—the man just wants to bake!—and, through acumen and risk, makes them plausible, but, inevitably, Cookie and King-Lu find themselves enmeshed in the sort of trouble that arises when the have-nots try to make a way in the world for themselves.

Throughout, Reichardt successfully undoes the traditions of Western iconography - in place of the vast and symbolic possibilities of Monument Valley as with John Ford, we get tight, local depths based on forests and local life, whilst her emphasis on specific slits of character—the holes in Cookie’s boots, the sensual waves of his honey dipper as he lovingly garnishes the oily cakes that become his trade—has the effect that untouchable horizons and broad vistas do in more traditional Westerns. At the same time, here, as with Reichardt’s other films, the characters’ lives are whittled down to spirit-shaking, material choices, decisions that at times literally set the course for the rest of their lives.

There's a few little implausible plot contrivances in the last sequence, but given what went before one is swept along nonetheless. Poignant and highly intelligent filmaking.

This very watchable piece starts as a straightforward revenge tale, but director Emerald Fennell has an awful lot of tricks up her sleeve, exploring Cassandra’s vigilante campaign from different angles, such as her relationship with her parents, who've all but given up on her, and what happens when, in the midst of a non-too subtle tale of 'all men are bastards', one of her targets shows genuine remorse for what he’s done, or, even more poignantly, when Cassandra meets a man she actually likes. Shifting tones keep us going despite the various plot implausibilities (and there are rather too many of these for comfort), and also of interest is the fact that Cassandra is not simply a righteous avenger.

The fact that a film with such disturbing elements is so accessible is a testimony to the cleverness of the writing, and it's a plain as day that questions over 'rape culture' deserves some serious treatment - the film works very hard at making us think: consent, or lack thereof, is obviously foregrounded, but academia’s leniency toward male students accused of rape and assault is another important one. One of the film’s most provocative if rather under-explored elements is its interrogation of alcohol and the role it plays in consent; Cassandra hates men who victimize drunk women, but isn’t above drugging a drink if it’ll assist in her mission. Meanwhile, Carey Mulligan successfully portrays plays Cassie as a woman who’s been robbed of joy, leaving her exhausted and distrustful.

Unfortunately, there's quite a few weaker elements which rob the film of some of its potential power. To begin with, a lot of the psychology portrayed here remains on the highly superficial side. Cassie’s motivations are questionable - she coaxes out men's worst impulses to prove to herself, and to us, that all men are terrible, and the film's conclusion—not only are men just as bad as you always thought they were, they’re worse—is an all-too easy one to reach, not a hard one. And whilst we're invited to be her accomplice there's some highly questionable tactics - in one particularly strange sequence, Cassie lures a teenage girl into her car for what looks to be a nefarious purpose, and whilst Fennell resolves the episode in a jaunty way—not even Cassie would go that far— the scene still leaves a bad taste, flirting disturbingly with the idea that it’s fine to corrupt innocent girls as long as the goal is to punish bad men. At times this laudably feminist manifesto (women are indeed angry for good reasons) rather undermines itself by being overly cynical without being particularly perceptive. So all in all a film which has a lot of punches but doesn't always land them all effectively.

This very entertaining 'sci-fi' piece stars Theo James who is very impressive as George Almore, an obsessive robotics specialist living in a remote security facility whole he works on an AI project. There's many highly intriguing elements, including impatient bosses, eerie operatives, security issues and whatnnot, but especially George's relationship with his 'companions' J1 and J2, robot prototypes for the supposed goal - to develop an AI sophisticated enough to process senses and experience emotions. The sections involving George's interaction with J2, in particular, are wonderful - J2 clearly feels emotions such as loneliness, jealousy, need for affirmation etc (the drop of J2's metal head communicates a surprising amount of teenage-like interior pain which is very touching indeed) but George turns a blind eye to these, given that she's just a means to an end.

Unfortunately, however these fascinating threads are largely abandoned in favour of another, much weaker unifying theme. For needless to say, George's real goal is a different one, and it doesn't take us long to work out what it is - and therein lies the film's main problem, with all the interest generated by the other elements being sidelined in favour of it, and whilst the twist-plot ending certainly comes as a surprise for me it's all a bit of let-down given what came before. For me, the director has therefore successfully assembled a fantasy world with a strong convincing cast, but the ideas raised - what people owe their children, the limits of our control over others' lives, the sacrifices that come with love, are largely buried. That said, it's beautifully made and highly watchable, with some great moments.

“I’m not homeless, I’m just houseless. “Not the same thing, right?

This truly remarkable piece is an understated yet devastating film about the delicacies of that distinction. An adaptation of a non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder, it uses Frances McDormand's Fern as a lens through which to question the very nature of the American Dream. The subculture sensitively depicted here concern many people near retirement age but without the option or inclination to retire, and, instead of struggling to sustain what they once had, have whittled down their needs. They’re refugees of the last recession, of rising housing costs, of a threadbare safety net — though director Chloé Zhao never reduces them to by-products of a callous capitalist system. Through choice or necessity, they’ve traded career grinds and the lure of the property ladder for a precarious but carefully guarded kind of liberation.

But the film goes further than this, having a fable-like quality worthy of John Steinbeck, dealing with the bigger issues of life and death, love and loss. It takes a while for Fern to firm up into a character rather than a narrative vehicle, but when she does, she emerges as a fascinatingly contradictory figure, being someone who’s still in mourning and in whom the desires for connection and freedom are constantly at war. She hasn’t been abandoned, either by strangers or those who know her — throughout the film, people offer to take her in, but that is never what she wants. Through the nomads, who cross paths and help each other but never try to hold on to one another too tightly, Zhao is able to examine the idea of wide-open frontiers without nostalgia or the need to preach: shots of Fern, a tiny, determined dot out there on a stunning panorama, are breathtaking and elegiac, worthy of some of the great directors. She is a woman eking out the life she wants to lead, a woman who has gone searching for her soul in a country for which this is deemed irrelevant, and if you don't cry during the last sequences then there's something truly wrong with you. Compelling viewing.

This is one of those drama/fantasy things, the basic theme of which is a family guiding a young child through his father’s terminal illness.

The fantasy element comes from the “hero’s journey,” an odyssey on which the dying father accompanies the boy (in the boy’s imagination) to help him transition to the new world that won’t have his father in it. The film is rooted in reality largely because it’s a continuation of writer-director Mark Webber’s experiments with casting real families (principally his own) and friends in his work and letting those relationships inform the films, so here veteran actress Teresa Palmer is both real-life and film wife, whilst the child is his real-life son, Bodhi Palmer, who delivers a remarkable, truly guileless performance. The basic problem however is that that the fantasy and real-life worlds are not very well woven together, with the former being much more engaging than the latter, which is rather cloying and cumbersome by comparison. So, watchable enough but for me the construct doesn't quite come off.

Mmm - I tried very hard to like this one - one of those that attempts to deal with some serious themes (loss, grief, desire for familial connection etc) by being self-consciously 'charming', but for me I'm afraid pretty much everything, whether script, or production, or acting, all fell a bit flat. The self-mocking styling of the film (a promising construct) stands awkwardly, separately, from the dialogue, which is realistic by comparison, but this, which includes an abundance of soap-opera style cliche, only serves to distract the audience from what's going on rather than reinforce any emotive power the film might have (although to be fair there are some very good moments en route when the syrupy strings get put away and the characters engage with their respective pasts). Meanwhile, the performances just seem to lack depth and nuance to me, and add to all this an American-style saturation of sentiment throughout, I'm coming away thinking this one ends up not saying very much, sadly.