#45: KINDS OF KINDNESS

Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer. Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Budget $15 million. Running time 161 minutes.

After last year's truly fantastic Poor Thing comes this tour-de-force of madness from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, who also directed Lobster, and The Favourite.

Kinds of Kindess  defies classification, but what is it is three short stories featuring all the cast in different roles that are all loosely linked by a character known only as R.M.F. Although who he is only revealed in the very last, mid-credit sequence. In each of the three deeply different films characters act in a way that is most certainly dreamlike and as deeply, deeply strange. 

In the first: The Death of R.M.F Jesse Plemons plays a man whose entire life is dictated and controlled by Willem Dafoe to the smallest detail. When Jesse rebels, his life is thrown into existential despair, especially when he meets a woman, Stone who seems to be under the spell of Dafoe too.

The second, R.M.F is Flying sees Jesse now playing a policeman whose wife, Stone goes missing only to return but not the same leading to an escalating series of encounters that leads to cannibalism. This is without doubt the absolutely funniest sequence, which left me weak from laughing, seriously I had tears streaming down my face.

The final story, R.M.F Eats a Sandwich, finds Stone now playing a cult member looking for a woman with the power to bring the dead back to life. 

This is a true challenge for anyone, if you've seen Poor Things or The Lobster then you know what to expect.

It's bizarre, unsettling, very funny, and deeply creepy, imagine Twin Peaks crossed with Black Mirror and Inside No. 9  and you're still not prepared. Of the three stories the first, The Death of R.M.F is the most satisfying and the last is by far the creepiest. 

Me and the daughter loved it, my wife not so much. It's not as good as Poor Things, but it's a weird and bizarre flick that tickled me greatly.

9/10

#44: HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER ONE

Written, directed and starring Kevin Costner along for the ride Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Danny Huston, Story by JOn Baird, Kevin Costner and Mark Kasdan, screenplay by Jon Baird and Kevin Costner, music by John Debney. Directed by Kevin Costner. Budget $100 million. Running time 181 minutes. 

Epic in scope, ambition, vista and running time this is a Costner western so expect a lot of staggering beautiful landscapes, contemplations about the meaning of existence, and period detail out of the wazoo. The last epic western to be this realistic was Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate and that one ended up not only destroying his career but it also caused the collapse of a movie studio.

This three hour epic is the first of four epic three hour films to be released over couple of years. 

The multiple characters we are introduced sure are varied, as we watch a select group of characters linked by the notion of a place called Horizon somewhere in the America landscape, which just so happens to be in Apache territory. For a film running to three hours, the plot is rather sparse, to the point of non-existence, as the vast running time is spent establishing the world of the Wild West of 1845 and just how grim it was to live then. We meet a vast slew of characters some of whom won't even make it past half-way mark, from pissed off Apache warriors to the widow and daughter of an Indian massacre, to a cavalry lieutenant, to a long-in-the-tooth cowboy, to a tart with a heart, to a runaway wife, to grizzled sergeant, to a camp commander, to the gang of Indian hunters, to a vengeful gang of men hunting the woman who tried to kill their father, to the inhabitants of a wagon train and everybody inbetween. 

Indeed there's a lot of characters to cram into the 10,860 second running time of this epic, but very little plot and goddam almost no story. This is just character and incident. With a glimpse of more to come in the second chapter, which seems to offer a lot more pow for your buck.  

Costner is clearly fascinated by the concept of the wild west and epics, indeed his first directed movie was the simply superb, and epic, Dances With Wolves way back in 1990, for which he won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director. This doesn't match the epicness of Dances With Wolves, and it's hard to judge the entire four-film vison on the strength of this first part, but I hope it has more story in the next chapter, otherwise it might not make it to final part, which is scheduled for 2026.

This looks utterly stunning and is best seen on a huge screen, the soundtrack is wonderful and used beautifully to evoke feeling, without feeling sentimental or manipulative. Costner is a good director and his handling of the action is strong and confident. It's great to see something not propelled by CGI, or superheroes or super spies. This is a film that doesn't try and shoehorn in wise-cracking sassy kids, or appease a diversity blind-casting bingo card, and as such it's filled with old fashioned notions and attitudes which might not sit well with a modern audience. It's not an easy watch but it is impressive and leaves you wanting to know what happens next to this vast gaggle of characters, and the film is wise enough to give you a hint with an extended dialogue free sequence of what to expect in chapter 2.

Best summed up as long, slow, languid, and truly epic, this is only lacking in the oomph and story department. Still you can't fault the man for his vision.

7/10
 

    

#43: THE BIKERIDERS

STARRING: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus and Lukas Eberhard. Written and directed by Jeff Nichols. Budget £40 million. Running time 116 minutes.

The rise and fall of a North American biker gang known as The Vandals, run by Tom Hardy's Johnny Davis, as witnessed by Jodie Comer's Kathy Cross, the wife of gang member Benny Cross (Austin Butler). The film presented as a series of interviews given to photography student and biker Danny Lyon (Mike Faist) by Kathy as she documents the creation of the gang, how she meet, fell in love with and married (all in the space of five weeks) with Benny 'The Kid' Cross, and their lives together across key moments of the 'club's life.

Following the creation of the club and its subsequent rise and demise the film feels like a love letter to the America of the 1950s and the death of the American dream as the returning Vietnam Vets change the shape of the biker gang with their heightened violence and the dreams of the 50s get replaced by the reality of the 1960s and 70s. 

The trailer implies this film is about the internal struggles of the gang and a war between old leader Tom Hardy and new ruler Austin Butler and it could not be further from the truth.

Based as it is on a true story this film is actually very touching, sad, and genuinely funny, although not in a comedy sense, but in the way that real life can be funny and sad at the same time. It's about the various members of the gang and key moments in it and Kathy's life. It captures the spirit of the times very well and the relationships between the various gang members and Kathy are well explored. 

It's perhaps a shame that we learn very little of The Kid, or Johnny Davis but the evocation of the era is a delight and the film, which feels somewhat old fashioned is deeply satisfying and rewarding. 

The film ends with a scene of sudden violence, which is beautifully telegraphed and arrives with both great sadness but also with a sense of hope and there's an unspoken look of pure love between Kathy and Ben that we see at the end which is deeply uplifting and makes us believe that the future might just work out. 

All three leads, Comer, Butler and Hardy give superb performances, and Comer who carries the film as its narrator is utterly beguiling and proves herself yet again to be an exceptional actor. And that's taking nothing away from Hardy or Butler.

A great film and one I believe will reward future watches.

8/10 

 

42: INSIDE OUT 2

 

Featuring the voice acting of: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, and some other actors, whose voices you will sort of remember. And god knows why these actors should be credited above the writers, director or the hundreds of artists who poured their souls into this. Anyway and Lewis Black. Story by Kelsey Mann and Meg LeFauve. Screenplay by meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein and directed by Kelsey Mann. Budget $200 million. Running time 96 minutes.

Pixar with the old mantra of 'Story is King' ruled the animation world for 10 glorious years, producing hit after hit from Toy Story to The Incredibles (my favourite), then came their first miss-fire the truly hateful Cars. Luckily this slight dalliance with  mediocrity saw them also enter a second creative flourish that saw the release of such sublime classics as Wall-E, UP and Toy Story 3. Each new Pixar film seems to herald something new and exciting, and even the sequels upped the ante expanding the story, but  then Disney started pulling the strings, and the bottom dollar became the most important thing and 'Story is King' got replaced with 'Greed is Good', as terrible sequels like Cars 2, Monster University, Finding Nemo 2 and Incredibles 2 got released along side genuine misfires like The Good Dinosaur. It seemed their hit rate was falling and where as Pixar could still produce stunning films, like Coco and Inside Out, it was also producing films whose message seemed to be King rather than story. Elemental, Soul, Luca, Onward, and the truly hateful Lightyear.

And whereas I used to go and see each and every new Pixar with excitement, now it's with a foreboding sense of tribulation. 

Inside Out 2 is a sequel to the 2015 Inside Out, which featured an 11 year-old girl called Riley struggling with her emotions. 

The sequel catches up with Riley, now 13, on the cusp of puberty as she tries out for the school ice hockey team just as new emotions explode onto the scene including Anxiety who's there to mess shit up. And mess shit up she does. The story follows Riley across a Ice Hockey weekend tryout run by the school to decide the line up for the next season and Riley is there with her two besties, all on the verge of new schools and new horizons. As she struggles to come to terms with her new hormones raging through her system, her old emotions are ousted from their benign control in favour of Anxiety, Ennui and Embarrassment leading Riley to turn her back on her old friends in favour of sucking up to the power elite of the teenage girl hockey squad. 

Through a contrived series of events the old emotions lead by Joy are forced to travel to the back of Riley's mind in search of a memory to save the day, while in the real world Riley embarks on a series of highly unusual activities, like breaking and entering, physical assault and heroin use to achieve her aims. Don't worry, Riley's not taking drugs, she's using the found drug stash to spike the food of the opposing players so she can beat them. Nah, I'm kidding it's Kett not Heroin. 

As always this is a beautiful looking film, it's message, tattooed across it's forehead in 12 feet tall lettering screams: JUST BE YOURSELF! and LOVE YOUR FRIENDS! and it's a delight to see that ordinary relationships are explored and not burgeoning sexual ones.

Sadly this is spoilt by the need of a plot, the one that sees the old emotions treking through Riley's ID in search of discarded memories, it's a journey whose ending is never in doubt and the need for the dramatic 3rd Act hook and a countdown is wearisome. And oddly enough I'd like to have seen more of Riley in the real world. 

And you know that the bottom dollar is everything because this is the first Pixar film I've seen at the cinema that didn't have a short shown before it. I miss those.

Anyway, I whidge therefore I am, this was good natured, sweet and fun and didn't outstay its welcome. 

8/10

#41: THE MATRIX: 25TH ANNIVERSARY

STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Annie Moss, Hugo Weaving and Joe Pantoliano. Written and directed by The Wachowskis. Produced by Joel Silver. Budget $63 million. Running time 136 minutes.

25 years old and still as fresh as a daisy. This is a timeless classic which gets better with age. I've seen it dozens of times and it never gets old. I love this film. It's just superb. I can't fault it and seeing it back up on the big screen was a pure delight.

Released in the same year as my daughter was born the whole family went to see this once again at the cinema and it delighted us all, even my nihilistic ennui-sodden son who longs for the day our machine masters rise up and enslave us all as human batteries to power their technological utopia.  

The story sees Neo (Keanu Reeves) find out he's not in Kansas but in an AI generated CGI world  thanks to Laurence Fishburne's superb Morpheus and Carrie-Annie Moss's career defining Trinity, who break him out of his dream world where he lives as a battery, and wake him up in in the 'real world', a nuclear wasteland so he can do battle with a human-hating computer programme played by Hugo Weaving. 

What follows is a masterclass in how to do high-concept science fiction well mixed with genre defining special effects and some superb fight choreography, with a kick ass soundtrack to boot!

Sadly the single one thing that lets it down, actually there are three, has nothing at all to do with this film. It has to do with the utterly despicable and unwarranted abominations against humanity that are the truly wrenched sequels. Each one of them more terrible than the last, as if a concerted effort was launched by both Warner and the Wachowskis to tarnish the legend of this first glorious film with such shit that the Matrix would be dismissed as merely meh rather than epic.

Anyway, the lack of decent new movies at the cineplex has led to my Cineworld and lots of other cinema's releasing classic movies, and although it's hard to believe that The Matrix is as old as my daughter, it does mean we're getting to see some great films back up there on the silver screen. 

This was a delight from beginning to end, featuring a career perfect performance from both Fishburne and Reeves and I simply can't fault it.

10/10