Film: 'Once Upon a Time ......in Hollywood'

Quentin Tarantino's new film (Final one? Yet again?) was, at just 20 mins shy of three hours long, something of an endurance test for me. It wouldn't have mattered so much if the first couple of hours had been really gripping -  or even plain moderately interesting - but, apart from a very few moments of wry humour plus a little dash of violence (most of which is reserved for the final twenty minutes, and fairly graphic, as is only to be expected from Tarantino), I found it all something of a drag. 
The set-up is okay, quite original as far as I know, but hardly substantial enough to sustain interest for a period of what is longer than a lot of other entire feature films. 

!969, mainly in Hollywood - fading film star (Leonardo DiCaprio) whose usual screen appearances as sharp-shooter cowboy is now reduced to guest slot appearances on TV. He and his stand-in stunt double (Brad Pitt) are practically joined at the hip, mooching around, drinking their idle time away in fraternal amity (and both smoking like chimneys), living in plush Hollywood celebrity-area residences. Pitt's character lives with his dog next door to director Roman Polanski's and his wife, film star Sharon Tate's, spacious home (she played by Margot Robbie). The film starts a few months before and leads up to the time of the Charles Manson 'Helter Skelter' murders. We recall from the news at the time of a group of Manson's 'hippy' followers, high on drugs, who'd got into Polanski's house (he himself being in Europe at the time), committing several grisly murders including that of the heavily pregnant Sharon Tate. I'll say no more on that score.

Although Margot Robbie as Tate gets third place billing, she doesn't really have that much to do. Probably her longest scene is when she goes alone into a cinema to watch, with great pride and satisfaction, one of her own films, pleased at the positive response to her screen appearances by the surrounding audience.

I am a fan of Tarantino's films but I'd definitely say that this is his weakest one of all, not exactly a good one to go out on if that is what is intended. Overall, it's nowhere near as violent as his other films and though I was tensing myself up expecting to see a finale of major bloodbath dimensions when it came he didn't go quite as far over the top as I was anticipating. 
A major compression of the film by reducing its playing time by one full hour would, in my opinion, not go amiss. It can take it, and there'd be the gain of taking out those many intervals of ennui. However, yet again (as you can see by ratings from other sites) my view is not widely shared, so in disagreeing with how I feel you'd be part of a majority. 
Oh, and by the way, Brad Pitt's dog doesn't come to any serious harm - only some rather cruel teasing...............6.

(IMDb...............8.2 / Rott. Toms..........3.77/5 )

Film: 'Blinded by the Light'

Here we have yet another in what has become a sequence of films revolving around pop music of decades past.  This time, however improbable (though based on a true story), it concerns a 16/17-year old student  (Viveik Kaira) in a Pakistani family living in Luton  (one of the large British towns with the highest proportion of Asian-origin population) in 1987 with an obsession for the songs of....... Bruce Springsteen (yes, really!)  It's based on the true life experience of Sarfraz Mansoor, who, in recent years, has become quite well known in British media circles - and whom, I do believe I very briefly encountered (amiably) in Luton in the early 90s, though he won't recall it.

Director is Gurinder Chadha who has created a notable niche for herself in British-Asian based films in the last two dozen or so years - 'Bhaji on the Beach', 'Bride and Prejudice', 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging'  - and her best known to date, 2002's likeable 'Bend it like Beckham'.  

In this film, with a talent for writing articles and poems, the young aspiring writer is floating directionless under the concerned eye of his strict Muslim father (Kulvinder Ghir) who wants him to have a steady, reliable job with regular income, and with whom he lives along with his keeping-head-down mother and socially aware teenage sister, superficially conformist.  At college he meets a young Sikh (Aaron Phagura) who introduces him to the songs of Springsteen - and which brings him to a 'lightbulb' moment!   
All this is set against a very evident background of Mrs Thatcher's divisive premiership in a town where, in particular, anti-Asian prejudice is rife (though basically anything non-white English) seen through racist graffiti on homes, openly hostile conduct, intimidating presence of the National Front (now morphed into the 'English Defence League') and some appalling and disgusting behaviour from the latter and their sympathisers.

The young man's epiphanous moment of awareness of Springsteen's lyrics is during the hurricane night of October 1987, when he puts on a tape he'd been given - a night when I, living in Oxford at the time and not having heard the warnings, had simply slept through those hours of the strongest and most destructive winds to hit Britain in a century!
Springsteen's lyrics (seen floating on-screen and swirling round his head, which is just as well as I found them not easy to decipher by ear alone) give him the confidence to acquire a regular girlfriend (Nell Williams) the untypical daughter of hoity-toity Tory parents.  

Much of the drama of the story lies in the conflict between father and son over the latter's writing ambitions, his down-to-earth father preferring to see his son in a secure, steady-income occupation, the situation being exacerbated by the father himself being laid off with hundreds of others from the nearby car-making plant, leaving the mother as the family's sole bread-winner through her home sewing work. Of course the young man continues to aspire towards his own dreams, encouraged by his sympathetic college tutor (Hayley Atwell).   

I thought the first hour of this two hour film (too long by at least 20 mins) was first-class. Then it not only sags conspicuously but gets very bleak with a drastic mood change when racial matters come right to the fore. Also I felt let down by, despite it being true story-based, how in predictably filmic style, the conflict between father and son is finally resolved by the cheesiest of developments when the father comes round to seeing his own error - something we've witnessed countless times on film before  - and in revelatory mode he turns into being proud of his son's achievements, accepting him as a talented writer. Wince-inducing stuff!  

Overall I did like the film. If it hadn't been based on reality I'd have laughingly dismissed the unlikely premise of a young Pakistani kid being so influenced by Springsteen, a singer who was already considered as getting 'past it' at the time this film is set. But given how it is I must accept that this was near to what actually had happened.

I wish I could have rated this film higher but that over-extended second half did have some nasty edges to it, and that unbelievably banal ending devalued much of what had gone before. Still, by no means a bad watch........6.5.

(IMDb...........6.2 / Rott.Toms (critics only)............7.4 )

Film: 'The Current War'

I found this an oddity, and not a terribly satisfactory one either.
As far as I know it's virgin territory for this particular story in the cinema - the competition between Thomas A. Edison, played by Benedict Cumbersome (sorry, couldn't resist!) and one George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) as to which of them would be the one to install a nationwide system of electric power in the U.S.A. 
One particularly unsavoury feature I wasn't expecting is that an inordinate proportion of the film deals with who would design the first electric chair for capital punishment.  Eventually we see not only the first 'occupier' of that means of execution but, leading up to it, a demonstration of a horse being electrocuted.  All this was a prequel to my leaving the cinema with a nasty aftertaste lingering.   If this kind of thing simply washes over you, fine, but I was left almost wishing I hadn't seen the film.   

It's an exceedingly busy feature with very few shots lasting more than, perhaps, five seconds.  If this was a technique to insure against one getting bored it didn't work in my case as, despite its visual flitting here and there like a hyper-active butterfly, it was peculiarly stodgy in a convoluted story which quickly lost me and my interest.
The rivalry between the two men is so bitter throughout that I was only surprised they didn't challenge each other to a duel.  There's also some betrayal in what passes between the respective assistants of both of them in stealing each other's secrets, all making for a thorough unpleasantness with frayed tempers on display,   Cumberbatch's Edison being the more cerebral of the two, and feeling particularly hard done by as the film progresses.  Both the latter and Shannon as Westinghouse represent two towering intellects burning up with jealousy against the other in a strangely stolid film. 
As nearly all of the action takes place before widespread electricity is in use, much of it involves inadequate gas-lit scenes, not always easy to decipher.

During the film I had the leisure to ask myself what was wrong with it to explain my lack of engagement.  I thought at first that it might be the screenplay, though listening carefully, that aspect wasn't especially weak. 
The photography was generally good or very good, befitting of the subject matter, with some impressive vistas now and again. 
I failed to pin down the fault other than identifying the underlying repugnance I had towards certain aspects of the story which I've mentioned earlier, so my partiality may be at least some way to blame.

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon has made a few cinema features before but nothing to have got him especially noticed.  Maybe he was trying too hard with this one with all those tricksy visuals?  I don't know. I only throw out the thought.

I don't think it's a film to warm to.  Might be useful as an historical representation of a little-documented episode, little represented at least in popular culture.  And was this matter of creating an electric chair truthfully so pivotal as this film seems to imply?  

Not a film I can whole-heartedly recommend, though others may differ from my very personal appraisal.  I can safely say that I for one won't be watching it again...............5. 

(IMDb..................6.2 / Rott.Toms (critics only)......31% )

Film: 'The Keeper' / 'Trautmann'

Here's yet another film I would have allowed to pass were it not that I'm still trying to make a dash for the 'finish line' of 5,000 films, and anyway it now being the school hols there's precious little else on right now which seems deserving of the expense and effort. It transpired, though, that given the (to me) uninspiring subject matter - football - this might have been considerably worse than it was.

The name of Bert Trautmann remains familiar to me because it was in my pre-teen years (mid-1950s) that he was oft talked of in glowing terms by my soccer-mad brothers. I retain the fact that he was a renowned and internationally acclaimed goalkeeper of great distinction, though which team he played for I couldn't have said. Still less did I know that not only was he German, but he'd actually fought on the Nazi side until captured in early 1946 - and was held at a prisoner-of-war camp in Lancashire until his talent as player was spotted and he was let out to play in a local team then returned to incarceration - eventually being signed up in 1949 to play as goalie in the top division for none other than Manchester City. 

The rather likeable German actor David Kross plays the title character in this largely German production (99% in English), which starts at the end of WWII and follows his 'discovery' as a footballing marvel, from where his career takes off, very gradually at first, then right up to his playing in the 1956 FA Cup Final at Wembley when he suffered a broken neck yet continued to play on heroically in indescribable agony, ensuring his team's victory of 3-1 against Birmingham City. But what I was completely oblivious about, then being but a young boy myself, was the hostility he received from all directions right through almost until that Wembley game, because of his invidious war record, which he tried to play down ("I had no choice!") though he did carry a particular baggage (or two) of guilt through certain of his experiences. 
When he became a national figure so did the outcry about his allowing to participate at all become a nationwide clamour, fed by media hostility whipping up unforgiving anti-German sentiment. Some scenes illustrating this really did make me cringe, though in the post-war climate of the time such might be considered as more understandable than had war been not so recent.

While he still plays for the local team Trautmann falls for the daughter (Freya Mavor) of the local team manager (John Henshaw) who'd spotted him, her initial cold, even hostile, responses (she having lost relatives in the war) finally melting until he marries her, yet still not telling his bride the full story of his war-service.
It was when he was in hospital recovering from his broken neck injury that he undergoes a family tragedy which marks both him and his wife for life.

I really didn't think I was going to like this at all. The very fact that I quite did so means that real addicts of the game are likely to get more out of it even than I did.
Bavarian director Marcus Rosenmuller doesn't hold back in depicting nasty aspects of Trautmann's fellow Germans in the war as well as the anti-German British sentiments in the decade following the war's end. He does manage to play it all quite even-handedly in a film which gallops along with very few 'boring bits'. However, maybe two hours is stretching it a bit, though even so I got the feeling that more was being left out rather than an excessive amount being put in.
I was surprised to find out that Trautmann himself died only six years ago at the age of 89.

Not at all a bad film, then, though I think you well might need a good reason to be wanting to see it in the first place.................6.

( IMDb...........7.2 / Rott. Toms...........4.5 / 5 )

Film: 'Armstrong';

(If there's really someone around who doesn't recognise the name or photo, this film is about Neil A.)
After yesterday's viewing here's another film related to the current 50th anniversary which I might have let pass me by, but as I'm now within spitting distance of the pre-determined tally after which I start to wind down my cinema-going frequency, thought "Might as well!" just to get there all the sooner. 

This film will be of most value to those who know little about the man though I gleaned nothing new of major import, certainly no revelatory facts.
Armstrong's own words are voiced through the warm, agreeable tones of Harrison Ford.
It's an impressive, fairly comprehensive overview of the subject's life from his birth in 1930 up to his death in 2012 - including a fair bit about his pre-astronaut days, then onto his training up to the moon landing and a further section on his post-space years, including his hardships in dealing with fame and the effect on his family. There's considerable contribution from his then wife, Janet, who died shortly before the release of this film. There are also generous contemporary inserts from his two sons. 
Although his divorce in 1994 is covered there's strangely no mention of his second marriage to Carol. 
Quite a bit of home movie footage is shown of his family when his children were infants - including a daughter who died of a brain tumour at the age of three, something I hadn't known. 

If the film's intention was to inform and to fill in what might otherwise have been no more than a sketchy knowledge of the man's life then director David Fairhead has succeeded admirably.   
But I think that the less you know then, obviously, the more you'll get out of this film - and you really have to be sufficiently interested in the man in the first place............6.

(IMDb......................7.2 / Rott. Toms.........N/A )

Film: 'Apollo 11'

In other circumstances I would have given this a miss because, although I'm an Astronomy nerd and have been since a boy of nine (yes, I can date it that precisely, almost down to the actual day) I've really had more than my fill of programmes celebrating the event of 50 years ago this very day, having watched the landing live at my then age of 22, and seen so many replays of that truly momentous event over the decades that I've long since found the subject positively boring. I often still think that if I have to once more watch that "One small step for man......." clip I'll go mad! (It is, of course featured here too - but how could it not be?) 
But this was also an opportunity to try to wash away some of the diabolical effect of the cinematic experience I had four days ago, which was the subject of my previous posting. To expunge the memory entirely would be my earnest wish - it's still making mental waves in me (waves, note, not ripples!) both day and night - but as that's not going to be possible, I hope that this might at least dilute the horrible recollection of it. 

This film was much better than I thought it would be, with many as-it-happens shots I'd not seen before - and nor had most people it seems. It moves along at snappy pace, much of the 8-day mission telescoped considerably into digestible, yet flowing, segments, such that its 90-odd minutes fly by. Without complex scientific explanations, and with little pre-mission talk, it focuses on the visuals as well as personal interchanges of the crew of Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins with Houston control - and the entirely male team of scientists and operatives on the ground, at least I didn't see one single female among them (I believe this has been significantly 'corrected' since that time). The un-narrated film manages to be both moving and exciting despite our knowing what happens. The film footage is quite magnificent and I wish there'd be a convenient chance here to have watched it on IMAX screen.

Director Todd Douglas Miller has done a sterling job and this is a first class and convenient encapsulation of that wondrous venture............7.

(IMDB..................8.3 / Rott. Toms.......N/A )

Film: 'Midsommar'

Every so often a film comes along of such disturbing effect that it shakes you to the core. Such was this for me - and I never want to see another which does the like. I'm sure there'd be those who can laugh it off and forget it. Lucky them, I say! For me, nightmare material!


So where to begin? 
I'll just set up the situation and say no more. Four American friends, including the only female (Florence Pugh) who has just lost her parents and tags along half-heartedly, fly to northern Sweden (though shot in Hungary) to visit a rural community, perhaps 70-80 strong, celebrating the Summer solstice in 'Midnight Sun' land where one of their brothers is a member. Everyone permanently dresses in white - dresses, robes etc, sometimes bedecked with flowers - and they engage in various rituals, occasionally involving singing and dancing. Communal meals are strictly programmed. At first this visiting group are just spectators, but they get drawn in and at least two of them get involved in serious infractions of the community rules, with consequences which are only fully horrifically demonstrated in the closing scenes. Can't go further - and anyway, I don't want to think about it.

There are clear resonances with the 1973 film 'The Wicker Man' which soon became and remains a cult favourite. (I saw that film in the days when there were two films on the programme, and it was the supporting film to the deservedly highly regarded 'Don't Look Now').
But this present film takes it well beyond 'Wicker Man' level - with several grisly and very powerful shocks, both unexpected and those you can see coming, yet I just had to keep my eyes on the screen, it really was that compelling, dammit!
There is, by the way, one particular bizarre episode (in an entire film of 'bizarres') approaching the conclusion which raised more than a few sniggers in the audience. But the building up of tension throughout the film was, I must admit, quite masterful - leading up to a predictably horrifying climax.

Words are not coming easy and I don't want to spoil things for anyone reading this and yet dares to see it, though everyone's reaction varies such that the effect it had on me won't be shared by others who do venture towards it. It really got under my skin. 

Director (and writer) is Ari Aster who was also responsible for the generally highly praised 'Hereditary' of last year for which I didn't much care. In my view 'Midsommar' is a much more 'successful' feature, if I may use that word.

To do my duty in awarding this a rating I've got to take a deep breath and stand back, judging what I've just seen as dispassionately as I can manage, though that is being a huge task. Okay, just to get it over with, and wishing I could scrub this infernal experience from my trembling memory...................7.


(IMDb.............7.7 / Rott.Toms..........3.4 / 5 )