#4: THE FABELMANS

Starring: Michelle Williams, Gabriel LaBelle, Paul Dano, Seth Rogan and Judd Hirsch. Written by Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Music by John Williams (obvs). Budget $40 million. Running time 151 minutes. 

As we bask in the a glut of Award Season movies, give pause of thought for our poor bottoms, flattened into hard little chairs for extended periods of time as films arrive that wallow in at well over two and a half hours, nearing three hours in length. Woe betide a film maker worth his salt who dares to put out something that only 90 minutes long, he will be strung up by his short and curlies and left to ponder his transgressions. 

And so we have The Fabelmans (not to be mistaken for Meet the Feebles, Peter Jackson brilliant first film, which will have you laughing your socks off). Not so Steven Spielberg's 34th movie to date, this is 'coming-of-age' drama based loosely on his own life sees our plucky hero Sammy taken to see his first movie The Greatest Show on Earth at the tender age of 8. It has a profound effect upon his life and sets the course of his destiny. And for the next 140 odd minutes we'll marvel at the highs and lows of this young boy's life through primary school, high school and college as he navigates the boy scouts, some anti-Semitic abuse, some house moves and the break up of his parent's marriage.

But the plot really doesn't matter, this is the story of a young boy with a vision and an obsession that seals his destiny for ever. 

Everything about this film is top-notch, the direction, obviously is peerless, the music outstanding, the performances, the art direction indeed everything. And yet two things bugged me. Two things that shouldn't have but did. The first is Paul Dano, who I just don't like as an actor and the second is Seth Roger who I really dislike as an actor, although I found him far less objectionable here as he plays it straight. In the case of Paul Dano, it's the size and shape of his head that really narks me and the way he looks like he's permanently squeezing out a silent but deadly fart.

I have nothing to add, I was engrossed and loved the young boys homemade movies which became more dramatic and accomplished with each outing, culminating in a very entertaining High School documentary which leads to a very funny punchline. 

But for me the standout scene, the one that made the hairs stand up on my arms was the last scene where the young Sam gets to meet his hero John Ford, the director played to perfection by none-other than David Lynch who gives our hero a truly fantastic piece of advice about movie magic which had me roaring with laughter.

I left with a warm glow and a sense of deep satisfaction, any film about the creative process fascinates me and one about the birth of the creative process is a rare treat indeed. Definitely one of my films of the year!

9/10

#3: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

STARRING: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Buric, Iris Berben, Vicki Berline some other people, then Woody Harrelson. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund. Budget $15.6 million. Running time a not at all brief 147 minutes far too long.

Back in 2003 the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which included a £50,000 prize, went to Vernon God Little, a book described by some in the intelligencia as 'the funniest book of the Century'. I read it and discovered it wasn't. In fact, it was one of the most boring and unfunniest books I had ever read. However, I did learn a valuable lesson that day. If a book or film has been lauded by the critics as the 'funniest thing ever', or won the Booker Prize, or the Palme d'Or, then not only is it not funny it is indeed going to be both deeply unfunny and frankly unbelievably pants.

Now, 20 years later Triangle of Sadness is released, a film described by New Yorker as: 

"a movie of targeted demagogy that pitches its facile political stances to the preconceptions of the art-house audience; far from deepening those ideas or challenging those assumptions, it flatters the like-minded viewership while swaggering with the filmmaker’s presumption of freethinking, subversive audacity".

This satirical black comedy about how disgustingly the over privileged and super wealthy are won last year's Cannes Palme d'Or (and an eight minute standing ovation). 

I can only assume that last year two films starring Woody Harrelson about the super rich onboard a luxury yacht where released at the same time and with the same title, one was fantastic and the other was the one I saw, which turned out to pretentious, pompous, self-important and actually really, really rather boring.

The plot, sees two over-privileged models land a free trip onboard Jackie Onassis's old yacht which is filled with only horrible super rich shits, the serving staff, the maids and finally the engine room boys and we learn that even among those below stairs there exists a hierarchy. 

For the next hour and 45 minutes absolutely nothing happens, until, communist and alcoholic Captain Woody Harrelson turns up for the trips obligatory Captain's Dinner meal which quickly turns into the Mr. Creosote scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life as the ship hits an extreme storm and the projectile vomiting and liquid diarrhoea are explosively released from both ends .  

Then the ship is attacked by pirates and sunk. The next day the survivors wash up on a desert island and you realise this is a remake of the vasty superior 1957 The Admirable Crichton starring Kenneth More. There on that beach, the ship's hierarchy is shattered and the poor become the rulers and there, dear reader is where my patience finally snapped and I gave up. Yes, after having spent over £20 to see this literal piece of crap, I stood up, grabbed my coat and left with my Brother-in-Law in tow, leaving behind an utterly empty cinema. 

I had enjoyed Ruben Östlund's last film, The Square about an Art Museum installation but not so this self indulgent mess of a film, the points it raises are facile, the pace leaden to the point of self-induced narcolepsy and the humour, what little exists, relies exclusively on the Captain's Dinner scene and Woody Harrelson drunken tirade over the ship's tannoy and once he's gone, so did my patience.

When I got home I looked up how it ended on Wikipedia and thanked the gods of cinema from saving me from this wretched piece of twaddle. 

A total bag of piss, tied up with string and run over by a truck carrying liquid shit to a vomiting convention. Not worth even checking out for the Captain's Dinner. 

Wretched beyond belief. 1/10  

#2: BABYLON

 

Starring Margot Robbie, brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo Li Jun LI. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle. Budget $80 million. Running timer 189 minutes, or three hours and nine minutes.

Imagine if Singin' in the Rain remade in the 21st Century with added drugs, sex and violence and you have Babylon. Set in 1926, Babylon follows the fortunes of four characters, Brad Pitt's silent movie star Jack Conrad, Margot Robbie's wannabe sex siren Nellie McRoy, Diego Clava's fledgling Mexican movie producer Manny Torres, and Jovan Adepo's African American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer as they navigate the silent days of Hollywood and the introduction of sound to the movie industry. It's the classic rise, and fall story for our four lead characters as their lives intertwine and collide and in some cases spectacularly implode. 

The first hour of this three hour plus visual onslaught is an extraordinary visual and audio delight of such energy and frenzied relentless kinetic fury that left me happily dazed, confused and breathless. It's an arms-flung-wide celebration of the golden age of cinema and I found myself utter in love with it. I was desperate for it to retain that sheer bravado of that opening hour for entire length of its running time, but sadly, it couldn't and oddly it's when Manny Torres travels to NY to see Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer that the film starts to loose momentum. Indeed you could say it's the introduction of sound that not only changes the shape of cinema forever but also this film.

Apart from the staggering opening Hollywood party of such wanton drunken debauchery as to beggar belief, There's an extraordinary sequence that takes place in a dusty field outside Los Angeles where a dozen different movies are being made at the same time, that makes this film so astonishing, it's pure unadulterated chaos. The frenzied action and pure energy of the films being filmed leaves you bludgeoned with delight. It shows us simultaneously the making of a Middle-Ages war epic and Nellie's first movie and it's glorious. Indeed the scene where she cries on demand take-after-take is superb. 

But as sound comes in and the studios change, the gonzo rawness becomes replaced with a machine-like quality that sees our four heroes fortunes change and not all for the good, or worse.

Brad Pitt's Jack is the funniest of the four, his Conrad the most at ease in this world and he stumbles from one disastrous marriage to the next, and from one debauched party to another. Margot's Nellie gives both the most powerful performance and the most divisive, while Manny our touchstone ultimately becomes the most ridiculous particularly during the coda moment of the film. Sadly Jovan's Sidney Palmer, perhaps one of the most interesting characters, becomes just a side note.

And giving the proceedings its furious heart beat is the music, a glorious frenzied jazz funk soundtrack by Justin Hurwitz which matches proceedings perfectly. 

Sorry, way too many superlatives. 

And yet despite all this positive shtick, this doesn't really nail the landing. Sure, it's a visual tour-de-force that left me dazed and breathless, but it left the group of chums I saw this not only unmoved, and divided but openly hostile about it.

That it apes Baz Luhrmann style too much (true), that Margot Robbie's character is horribly anachronistic, that Sidney Palmer, the only black actor feels badly short changed and that the ending set in a cinema with Manny (now a late middle aged man) watching Singin' in the Rain is badly fumbled and ludicrous and yet despite all that I was still profoundly moved and delighted by the sheer power and energy of its opening hour.

8/10

 

#1: M3GAN

Starring Alison Williams, Jenna David, Violet McGraw. Written by Akela Cooper for a story by Akela Cooper and James Wan. Directed by Gerard Johnstone. Running time 102 minutes. budget $12 million.

When Cady, a young girl is orphaned she's sent to live with her next of kin, Auntie Gemma who just so happens to be a roboticist working for a high-tech Seattle toy company making artificially intelligent toys for children because you know it's a movie.  

Obviously being a scientist, Gemma is incapable of just giving her grieving Niece, who let's not forget lost both her parents just two days early, a hug and instead gives her a AI powered robot doll called M3GAN. This is bonded to the child and very quickly, I mean with in minutes develops a deep connection with Cady, becoming her best friend, surrogate parent and fanatical defender. Obvs, M3GAN is perhaps a tad over protective and sets about protecting the young Cady the moment anyone, say Gemma's cranky next door neighbour, or that kid at camp, does anything that upsets, potentially might injure or god forbid bullies Cady. 

Soon, Gemma begins to realise that maybe giving your niece a lethal, walking talking AI robot wasn't the smartest thing to do especially when the bodies start stacking up and said doll goes on a killer rampage at your place of work on the eve of a big presentation. 

An absolute hoot, not big or clever (hee hee, I almost wrote cleaver), but nevertheless entertaining. M3GAN is excellently realised using a combination of a small very flexible young girl, a very creepy mask and some subtle CGI. 

I wish this had had more teeth and been a tad more horrific, because it's a great idea, as long as you ignore the ridiculous plot contrivances. A slow start to the new year although this wasn't a bad way to get things going.

7/10