April 2019 film review

FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL (2017) D- Paul McGuigan
An A list, if aging Hollywood film star arrives in Britain and finds herself falling for a nobody, 30 years her junior. Then she falls ill...
          Gloria Grahame, for lo that was her name, was no stranger to controversy. She nearly destroyed her career when she had an affair with her far younger stepson and later, further scandalizing a prurient American public, by marrying him. But no one disputed her claim to sit at the top table, having secured the Oscar for best supporting actress in The Bad and the Beautiful in 1954.
          With a brilliant Annette Bening in the lead, a fine supporting cast including Vanessa Redgrave and Julie Walters, and the whole treated with a disarming, unsentimental honesty, we have one of the finest ‘true-life’ movies to emerge in the last ten years. Moving and beautiful.

MUSTANG (2015) D- Deniz Gamze Erguven
In a remote village in northern Turkey, Lale and her four sisters fool about, perfectly innocently, with the local boys. This does not escape the attention of the other villagers, who decide they must be whores. Their parents are duly informed, and the girls from that point are placed under the closest scrutiny and surveillance. But girls will be girls...
          The agonies of adolescence are hard enough to endure in even the freest and open societies. Imagine then, the problems of a young girl growing up in an Islamic country where girls and women are second class citizens from the outset...
          In this film these problems are depicted with superb authenticity and sensitivity, though I doubt it went down well with a Turkish leadership who are anxious to proceed down the Islamic route and thereby eschewing the vision of its modern founder, Kamul Attaturk, who longed to see a secular state in his beloved homeland.

AFTER THE STORM (2016) D- Hirokazu Koreeda
In contemporary Tokyo, a struggling private dic wastes any fees he might garner on gambling, a character defect that has already cost him his marriage. He tries to turn over a new leaf and get back together with his ex, but she’s not buying it. Meanwhile his daughter is caught in the middle...
            I have said before in this blog how difficult it is to understand how Japanese culture works for us in the West, and how it is only in a few movies and books we gain an insight which really means something to us. In After the Storm we have such an example, which really shows that the problems of men, women and their families are not that different everywhere. Koreeda has created a lovely little movie, understated yet full of insight into the complexities of family life. Strongly recommended...

HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016) D- David McKenzie
In rural Texas, two brothers (excellently played by Chris Pine and Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote the script) embark on a series of bank robberies to forestall one bank’s intention to foreclose on their mother’s home. They take care to avoid capture by taking only small (and therefore unrecorded) denominations, plus carefully masking up and wearing thick rubber gloves. A Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) is intrigued by their modus operandi, and deduces what they are about. He feels sure they will continue, and holes himself up in a small town whose bank hasn’t been hit yet, having convinced himself, on fairly slim evidence, that this is where they’ll strike next. Days, weeks pass, but nothing happens. Is he wasting his time? His Native American partner certainly thinks so, and tries to talk him out of his waiting game. Will they ever come?
          Well written, acted and directed, I thoroughly enjoyed this tense, yet somehow lyrical piece. There’s something of Bonny and Clyde about these two brothers, who are only acting in their mother’s interests, but getting their kicks as well, or at least one of them is. For older brother (Taylor Sheridan) passionately relishes his role as old-time Bad Man, while kid bro (Pine) has his doubts.
           Definitely worth watching.