Black Bag

Unauthorised Item
In The Bagging Area

Black Bag
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
USA 2025
Focus Features
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Very light spoilers.

Steven Soderbergh retired from directing in 2013. Since then he’s directed another 11 movies plus assorted TV shows and one can’t help but think that he’s more prolific now than before he made that statement. In fact, this is the second cinema release to be written by David Koepp and directed by Soderbergh this year and it’s only March (the first being Presence, released at the end of January and reviewed here).

And, like the aforementioned Presence, his latest opus Black Bag is absolutely brilliant. A startling and intense, emotionally claustrophobic thriller which seems to be an homage to the best of the cold war spy movies of the 1960s. I’ll give a couple of the references as I run through this review. .

The always interesting Michael Fassbender plays British intelligence agent (that’s spy to you and me) George Woodhouse, which is surely not a coincidental first name as a reference to George Smiley in a number of John LeCarre’s famous books (not to mention a character appearing in a number of movie adaptations of them). He is married to Kathryn St. Jean, a similarly high ranking spy who is played by the always amazing Cate Blanchett. Both are playing very muffled versions of themselves here, as two very cautious denizens of the global spy network. Both relying on the spy term ‘black bag’ as an area of their work lives which are off limits to talk about in their marriage, due to authorisation levels and ‘need to know’ status.

After hearing that one of five in his organisation is a traitor putting a huge number of lives at risk, with his wife being one of that list, George invites all the names to a dinner party at his and Kathryn’s home, with a little spiking of some of the ingredients, to loosen tongues and behaviour (a choice which leads to some more than inflammatory behaviour between the guests). These guests are played by Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page and the always brilliant Naomie Harris.

As the seeds of suspicion grow, the emotionally aloof and icy George starts exploring the twists and turns of the plot which features a device which could kill untold millions of people, called Severus. This includes suspicion and shadow thrown onto the head of the department, played by Pierce Brosnan. Shenanigans ensue and lovers of non-Bond sixties spycraft movies of the mostly British variety will love this suspenseful and well written thriller.

Well directed too, with Soderbergh directing, shooting and editing (using his mother’s name as a pseudonym) an intriguing concoction of thriller and ‘will he or won’t he shoot first and ask questions later’ style tension, as George moves ever closer to the solution of the problem (once he’s figured out that at least two people have been set up, including himself).

And it’s a damn near perfect movie, it has to be said.

The pre-credits sequence, filmed in a number of locations in London in one take (or appearing to be at least but, I suspect, just well staged and rehearsed and done in one take, as George arrives at a location and wanders a few floors of a busy bar until being led out somewhere else) with the camera firmly following George from behind, with his face hidden for this sequence.

Then, as we go into the credits, we see another major influence of the film as George prepares the meal in a way reminiscent of Michael Caine’s breakout role of Harry Palmer in The IPCRESS File, the first of his three movies playing the nameless character from Len Deighton’s famous spy novels. George even wears the exact same type of NHS spectacles which were synonymous with the Harry Palmer personality throughout the entirety of this movie. Soderbergh just couldn’t resist wearing his influences on his celluloid-like sleeve here.

The actors are all incredible in this, with an actress I don’t know, Marisa Abela, being particularly stand out as a young recruit who is perhaps a little too sensitive for the brutal world of international espionage. And she plays perfectly in a film which is, to be fair, only using the genre trappings of the spy movie to explore the depths of deception, loyalty and trust inherent in relationships, especially those in the spy game where the ‘black bag’ manifestation can be seen as a fallback to cover a multitude of sins, such as hiding a sexual affair.

Indeed, this is further explored in a scene which crosscuts between multiple subjects in a polygraph test.* A sequence which has been done to death in so many movies by this point that it’s become a very obvious cliché but, luckily for the audience, is executed to perfection here and which even gives some of the characters a little more depth than they had before this scene.

The ruse of the ‘gun on the table’ game towards the end of the movie will not surprise many people in the audience as to the intent of such an item on an open table but in terms of the surface story revelations as to the identity of the traitor in the ranks, it may well come as a surprise. Just like an Italian giallo trying to remain inscrutable by throwing motives at every single member of the cast, the traitor in this one could be anyone... even George. So when the traitor is finally revealed, coupled with the fortification of one character deciding not to kill that person when they had the chance to earlier in the film, it is somewhat surprising but, by that point there’s not much at stake in terms of the ultimate identity of said treacherous individual. And the film has a nice little punchline in terms of the secretive personal motivations of other characters in the narrative.

So there you have it. Black Bag gives us a  brilliant set of performances in a well written and directed motion picture which includes a very nice score by David Holmes, sadly not available on a proper CD at time of writing. This one is a full-on recommendation from me, especially for those lovers of cold war thrillers from days gone by. 

*Fun fact: The original lie detector test was invented by Professor William Moulton Marston who created and wrote the Wonder Woman character for comics in the 1940s. It's also why she has a 'rope of truth'. For more information, see my review of Professor Marston And The Wonder Women right here.

Borderlands

A Border
Understanding

Borderlands
Directed by Eli Roth
USA 2024
Lionsgate
UK cinema cut

Warning: Some insinuated spoilers.

Well now, I’ve not played the video game Borderlands, which this film is based on, so I really can’t tell you how close of an adaptation this movie is. Not that close is my guess. I also have a problem with the films of Eli Roth... I don/t like them (the few I’ve seen by him) so I went into this expecting to be disappointed.

You might then ask why I went to see this movie in the first place?

Two reasons. Firstly the trailer was bright, colourful, had some nice stabs at humour and with a lot going on. Secondly, one of the main protagonists, bounty hunter Lilith, is played by Cate Blanchett... who I think is one of the greatest actresses of her generation. Not to mention that Jamie Lee Curtis is also in the movie. So I was going on trust that if Blanchett had signed on for it, there must be something to the script.

Now, I’d like to be able to tell you I finally loved a movie that Eli Roth directed. However, as I was coming home I looked up the trivia on this title and found that he’d shot the movie in 2021 and finished a cut early 2022 which was all in keeping with the violence and bleakness of the video game on which it is based. However, the studio didn’t go for this so they held it over for two years and got another director to come in and shoot/reshoot a load of scenes to try and dumb the movie down to a lower certificate... what in the UK is a 12A (says it all about how rubbish studios are and how their executives make bad decisions).

The punchline to all this is that, in spite of really terrible reviews coming in for this film (presumably written by people who have played the game and been disappointed by the deviations from the tone the film takes), I actually really loved the movie and I will definitely be picking up the Blu Ray at some point, if and when it arrives on proper physical media. I just don’t know if the parts of the movie I’m responding to are Eli Roth, the original director, or the next guy along.

But I did really like it and I even found Jack Black, playing the voice of the irritating robot character, to be less irritating (in terms of me being able to put up with him) and fairly entertaining also.

Yeah, it feels like a typical, late 1980s/early 1990s sci-fi action flick and I generally had a good time with it (especially with the always watchable Gina Gershon playing a character who, I can only assume, is somewhat influenced by the style of Mae West, in a couple of scenes). It’s pacey, humourous, has some nicely edited action sequences and does most things right (even if the trailer maybe gives away too much, it has to be said). The rest of the cast are all great too, including Kevin Hart as an ex-soldier, Ariana Greenblatt as ‘the chosen one’ and Edgar Ramirez playing a nasty villain.

Having said all that, though, it does have a couple of tiny problems.

Firstly, there’s a scene where Kevin Hart’s character sacrifices himself against overwhelming odds as a gazillion psycho killers jump on him. Later on, he just gets up and extricates himself from a pile of dead bodies. Did I miss something here? My best guess on what the hell happened (it’s never explained) is that the character was supposed to die there but the studio brought him back for the reshoots and didn’t bother to explain things. That is just a guess, though.

Secondly, there’s a so called twist near the end (which I’m assuming is also in the game on which it’s based) involving the character played by Cate Blanchett and a certain deus ex machina moment at a crucial point. It’s badly telegraphed and I think anyone paying attention to her character’s back story will be able to figure things out from about 20 minutes into the film. You can see it a mile off and... my best guess is that it’s an element from the video game and that they didn’t want to lose it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the moment and its implications but... I’d almost rather the writers had changed their minds about this because, honestly, it’s hard not to guess that this is coming from very early on in the film.

But, other than those two small things, I’m happy to report that I really liked Borderlands and will be recommending it to people for sure. A cinematic throwback, maybe but, a nicely done one, I think.

Thor - Ragnarok

Ragnarok N’ Roll

Thor - Ragnarok
2017 USA Directed by Taika Waititi
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very minor ‘ish’ story spoilers, I suppose.

So here we go again with Thor - Ragnarok. It's yet another, fairly impressive, entry into Marvel’s strand of MCU films (Marvel Cinematic Universe) which all take place in a shared universe and have interlocking characters, themes and situations which build on and support each other. So, essentially, this is yet another sequel to Iron Man, even though Robert Downey Jr’s version of Tony Stark is only mentioned here and doesn’t actually appear in the flesh. Although there have been a few misses along the way... Iron Man 2 and the two Guardians Of The Galaxy films really didn’t do much for me, it has to be said (although I do like the characters in the GOTG films... just not the story ideas surrounding them)... the films are mostly solid and, musical continuity aside, the Marvel films in this sequence seem to have a knack for good casting (both in front of and behind the cameras). This latest installment is no exception to that rule. Sure, it’s certainly not the best of them but it’s definitely somewhere in the upper half of fun Marvel movies, I would say.

The previous two Thor ‘solo’ movies (if you can call this a solo adventure) were different in tone to each other and this third entry again changes the look and feel of the stories. Starting off with Thor imprisoned and talking to the a captive audience abut how he got in this predicament, I at first thought the majority of the running time was going to be one long flashback telling us how Thor got to this point and that the conclusion would lead on from here. Not so, though, and in the first of many surprises, we have a typical James Bondian ‘end of a mission’ moment when Thor talks to a big fiery devil creature and gains an inkling about the duplicity of Loki’s last trick, when it was revealed to the audience but not to Thor that Loki had replaced Zeus and was impersonating him to rule Asgard (at the end of Thor - The Dark World reviewed here). Thor then does battle with the monster and, when he finally gets back to Asgard, uncovers Loki tricksterism (in a nice scene which spoofs Loki’s fake death from Thor - The Dark World). After the two go to find Zeus, played once again by Anthony Hopkins and helped in their quest by a recent addition to the Marvel Universe, they learn that they have an older sister, Hela (played by the wonderful Cate Blanchett), who was banished by Zeus in days gone by. She is the Goddess of Death and she’s pretty powerful.

In a mini showdown, Hela destroy’s Thor’s hammer and, while he and Loki are fleeing to Asgard, she follows them up the Bifrost and both Thor and Loki are thrown from that mode of transport into a random part of the Universe where Thor is taken prisoner by Jeff Goldblum’s ‘Grandmaster’ and forced to fight in the arena against... The Incredible Hulk. However, he has to find a way back to Asgard and so he teams up with Loki, Valkyrie and Hulk/Banner to try to make things right. And that’s the plot set up and that’s all I’m saying about it here... which is pretty much what you can gather from the trailer anyway.

So we have Chris Hemsworth back as Thor and Tom Hiddleston back as Loki and, frankly, the chemistry between them is great. We also have one of my favourite modern actors, Mark Ruffalo, back as Bruce Banner/Hulk and he’s always a fun watch but he’s mostly back as Hulk here, rather than in his human form. The Hulk character has, as you will have seen from the trailers, finally ‘found his voice’, so to speak and is more in keeping with the original comics in this way. I think the character also looks a lot more like Ruffalo here and, maybe I’m wrong here but his head seems to have grown smaller in size too? Seems to have been redesigned. We also have Tessa Thompson who seems miscast, racially, as the blonde haired, Wagnerian styled Valkyrie from the 1970s comics, although I don’t know if she’s been revamped in recent comics like the Nick Fury character was so I might just be showing my age here. Away from the ‘look’ of the character, though, she does do pretty well here and creates an entertaining screen personae but, again, she seems far removed from being The Enchantress as she ‘kinda/also’ was in the early 70s comics.

Idris Elba returns as Heimdall, partaking in some nice heroics and there are also a couple of special cameos here from Sam Neil and Luke ‘brother of Chris’ Hemsworth which provide a great moment when Thor gets back to Asgard. Karl Urban also turns up (although I didn’t actually recognise him, which shows just how good of an actor he is) as a... well he’s definitely someone you have to keep an eye on. He’s not a black and white character by any means, even though he’s still a quick sketch of one... in terms of the film moving at a very fast pace. My favourite new character here, though, was easily a rock creature called Korg who definitely gets all the best laughs in the movie... so I was surprised to learn later that he’d been played by the director, Taika Waititi.

And when I say he got the best laughs...

Thor - Ragnarok shouldn’t really work as well as it does here and this is due to the tone of this one. I mentioned earlier that the previous Thor movies seemed to have a slightly different tone but this one is a complete ‘about face’ to the way in which the characters were presented in the previous Thor adventures. In fact, this one is pretty much written as a comedy all the way through. The scripting pretty much consists of a load of jokes and one liners thrown together and, although a lot of it was apparently improvised on set for this particular film, it really works quite well for most of the time.

Now, you’d think that such an out and out comedy treatment of the subject matter might trivialise the story arc of the ‘big picture’ the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building towards completing over the next two years but it really doesn’t fall into any of the traps it could have been tripped up with and the tone of the piece never really interferes with the tone and credibility of the established characters (for the most part... I’ll get to my one big complaint in a minute). Furthermore, although comedy is the order of the day in this one, you never really feel like it’s watering down the stakes which are quite high here. It’s also quite edgy in something it does to one of the characters and I realised at one point in the film that one of the scenes used in the trailers must have been shot twice (once with and once without... something) or at least had some heavy CGI work done on it in order to not reveal something which will be a permanent change to one of the regular characters in the MCU.

My one big problem here was the Banner/Hulk character... not in terms of acting but in terms of scripting. For starters, Banner’s few scenes in the movie seem to be really ‘out of character’ to me and it’s like he’s gone completely mad. I understand that after being ‘imprisoned’ in the Hulk’s body for two years the character might return a little dazed and confused but something about the writing here just didn’t seem to ring true to the excellent work Ruffalo has done with Bruce Banner in previous films in the series. Also... and I may be completely wrong about this... but isn’t the continuity completely wrong here. I thought the jet that Hulk used to escape in Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here) was found or tracked to a specific place on Earth, although Hulk was not found. Or did I remember that wrong because... that’s not in the back story here. The jet seems to have ended up somewhere completely different and ‘off world’. Also, the character makes reference to having been on another planet other than Earth and the one he’s currently on here and Thor seems to remember this too. Well, I don’t. When the heck did this happen in the intervening movies? So I was finding myself very puzzled during some scenes here.

Also, while I'm on the subject of continuity. If Thor was in a happy relationship with Natalie Portman's character still when he left Earth in Avengers - Age Of Ultron... how can they have had any time to 'split up', as is stated here, when he hasn't been back to Earth since then until a certain scene in this film? That makes no sense. Honestly Marvel, if you find yourself in the position where you have to write a character out because they don't want to do anymore, you could at least make it a little more credible.

However, this is all just minor stuff and, in terms of broad strokes, Thor - Ragnarok is definitely one of the better entries in the MCU. Mark Mothersbaugh’s score is nicely done too (although I would have liked to have heard what Brian Tyler might have done with this one) and there’s even a nice musical cameo from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, if I’m not much mistaken. If you’re a fan/follower’/true believer’ of the Marvel movies then you really need to see this... especially since it helps set up (as do they all, I guess), next year’s Avengers - Infinity War. It’s perhaps more married, in terms of the kind of comedy action style it has here, to the two Guardians Of The Galaxy movies but it doesn’t seem to make the same mistakes that those two did (for me) and this one was a much more positive experience. And, like I said, the stakes are high in this one and, by the end of the story, you definitely feel that various things have been changed forever in the wake of this movie. Things which certainly, in some ways, live up to the movie’s subtitle of Ragnarok. My big question of the writers, though, is this... where the heck is Lady Sif these days?

Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick-A-Brac

Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick
6th July to 24th August
Somerset House, London, England

While I was on the way to stay with a friend for a London holiday over a few days, I noticed a tube train advert for an art exhibition called Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick. Now Kubrick has always been a bit hit and miss for me (although he did some films which I hold in very high regard), so I didn’t give it much of a second glance. However, on the last day of the holiday, me and my friend decided to go to the show at Somerset House, last minute, since it’s located only a few minutes walk from the hotel where we were both staying.

I have to say... I’m glad we did. I also wish we’d got there earlier as two hours was not enough and one of the exhibits shuts at 5pm, before we could get to that room (although I will most certainly be going back there to check that one out too).

The exhibition is a selection of works with the common theme of art inspired by Stanley Kubrick and, although it sounds like its going to be a bit derivative of the director’s work... nothing could be further from the truth and there are some great works of art on display here, along with the fair share of pretentious rubbish you also get at these things. There are paintings, installations and also some films with big names such as Michael Nyman, Joanna Lumley, Cate Blanchett, Samantha Morton and Philip Castle involved in one way or another. Not to mention a contribution by Stanley’s wife, Christiane Kubrick.

After seeing one of her paintings opposite the desk where you buy your tickets, you go into a room and are confronted with an art installation of a space helmet with a screen inside depicting a monkey. No guesses for which of Kubrick’s famous films inspired this one then. After that, a fair amount of the exhibition is floored with shiny tiles which sport the same pattern as the carpet in the Overlook Hotel from Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, The Shining. After pausing to look at a pile of electric fires over the carpet, you enter a room with lots of old radios and the Dies Irae playing loudly in the background. It’s amazing stuff but it just keeps getting better and better as you make your way through this astonishing exhibition.

There were two works in particular which invoked the ‘wow’ factor in me when I saw them. One is a room you enter to watch a short film play out on each of the four walls. The piece is called The Corridor and it’s by Toby Dye. Each wall's film is shot in the same corridor but... stick around and look at all the screens as much as you can, constantly shifting your head, as the looping movies with no actual end or beginning (and starring Joanna Lumley, amongst others) start to interpenetrate and invade each other’s narrative space in a truly amazing way. I’ve got no idea how the artist was able to plan this one all out in his head but it’s worth standing in the centre of that room and just watching what is going on, constantly changing your viewpoint, as it plays out. Just mind blowing.

The other mind blower, for me, is a long, thin, flashing light situated near the end of the exhibition on the far wall of a lighted corridor. It’s stroboscopic and looks a bit pretentious until you... well... until you see the brilliance of it for yourself. The piece is by Chris Levine and it’s called Mr. Kubrick is Looking. I’ll quote the free booklet you get when you buy a ticket here, I think.

“A self-portrait by Kubrick is projected into the viewers peripheral vision using LED light technology. This ‘visual echo’ appears and disappears in a moment like a phantom. Levine is fascinated by the ‘sensory energy’ and ‘spiritual dimension’ of light.”

So, yeah, what happens here is quite uncanny and, being as I’m not technically minded, I am at a loss to explain exactly how it does this but... look at it full on and it’s a thin column of flashing light... look away from it and immediately, for half a second or so, you’ll get a photograph of Stanley Kubricks face as a fading ghost impression on your eyeball. As your eyes flash back and forth between the light and anywhere else in the room, the image briefly appears and reappears in your vision. Just incredible, amazing stuff. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the scientific alchemy on display here and will need to look into this at some point soon.

There are, of course, some not so hot pieces with fairly tenuous links in the show too. For me the two similar Scottish churches made of cardboard as a ‘tribute’ to the twin girls in The Shining seemed nicely constructed although a bit ludicrous but... you know... one person’s disappointment is another’s true art. I would certainly say the exhibition was way more positive than the few negatives I found and with 45 exhibits of varying shapes, sizes and media dotted about the ersatz Overlook, you’d be hard pushed, I think, not to find something to your liking here. Definitely a big recommendation for me and something which I’m still thinking about a week on from having first seen it. A repeat visit is certainly on the cards and you can find out more about Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick at the website somersethouse.org.uk/dreamkubrick and photography is, apparently, allowed... although ‘flash photography’ is forbidden.

Carol

Aird Today, Gone Tomorrow

Carol
2015 UK/USA/France
Directed by Todd Haynes
UK cinema release print.

Exquisite.

That’s probably a good word for this movie, if I’d been asked to sum it up immediately after seeing it at my local cinema.

I don’t think I’ve seen any movies directed by Todd Haynes apart from his other 1950s set film Far From Heaven... which was pretty good and lured me to the cinema with the promise of an interesting Elmer Bernstein score. In the case of Carol there were a number of factors which compelled me to pick this one out among others for my Sunday trip to the local picture house this week.

For one thing, I’d not read a single tweet about this movie from people who had been to see it at the London Film Festival that was, in any way, negative. They’d all been downright through the roof in terms of their positivity, in actual fact. There was also the promise of a new score by Carter Burwell, a composer who I quite like, although I do find him a bit hit and miss. The few tweets I’d seen about the score, however, were also extremely enthusiastic... and so I decided to see this one as soon as I could to see what I thought of said score, in case a purchase of the CD was necessary.

Of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t say a major draw to going to see this movie was the prospect of seeing the villain from Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull indulging in hot ‘girl on girl’ action with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but... heck, nobody asked me so I shall refrain from mentioning that aspect of the story unless politely asked.

So this movie is based on a novel Patricia Highsmith wrote under a pseudonym in the early 1950s (which is the period in which this movie is more or less set) called The Price Of Salt. Well, I don’t know what that title’s got to do with... um... anything ;-) but, whatever, it was retitled Carol decades later when it was reprinted under Highsmith’s own name. Alas, it’s not a novel I have read so, in terms of the quality of the adaptation, I can’t tell you how true it is to the source novel... although I understand the ending is not far off, in fact.

What I can tell you is that, with Carol, I’ve seen an absolutely amazing movie and one which will easily slide somewhere into my top ten for this year. The film centres on the intense, loving relationship between the two main protagonists Therese Belivet (pronounced Tirez), and played by Rooney Mara and the title character Carol Aird, played by Cate Blanchett... and the devastating effect it has on both their lives, especially when it is used against Carol to bolster an injunction to prevent her seeing her daughter during a messy, divorce child custody hearing. Both actresses, of course, are absolutely perfect in their roles... Blanchett coming over as a bit splashier than usual but, frankly, I could watch her ‘til the cows come home (so to speak) and with the pixie-like Mara playing almost an Audrey Hepburn/Breakfast At Tiffany’s kind of role, at least in terms of channeling a gorgeously delicate, waifish visual reference that makes up the look of the character.

Watching these two and the chemistry they bring to this half hidden lesbian relationship, and the subtlety of their facial expressions and body language... with the writing often leaving out unnecessary dialogue to accommodate the silent aspects of the performance... it seems pretty clear that the director couldn’t have asked for two more perfect actresses performing their central roles than these two do here. What they bring with them in terms of professional performance is absolutely astonishing.

What’s more rewarding here though, is that the visual design, the editing and the sound design all work in perfect harmony and are used to enhance the performances to the nth degree, with Haynes meticulous control over the look and sound of the film being quite evident in every frame which flickers past the eyes and ears. This is amazing cinema and the director is doing some really cool but controlled things here.

I say he’s meticulous because he’s using pretty much every vertical (and the occasional curve) to split the screen and chop it up into sections throughout the entire movie. Using the lines in sharp contrast, even when they are a background element, and placing the various actors within these sectioned off spaces to lead the eyes of the audience to go exactly where he wants them to in order to pick up on the details of the rich performances littered throughout the canvass of this extraordinary work of art. It’s quite startling how much he does this all the way throughout the running time too... pretty much most, if not all, of the time, I would guess. It’s like watching an Italian giallo from the late 1960s/early 1970s or a movie by Sergio Leone. Everything is compartmentalised and framed within a specific section of space... blinding stuff.

Another thing he does, not quite as often but certainly enough that it keeps cropping up again and again throughout the movie, is to have the camera eye of the collective audience look through something (or occasionally peak out from behind something in terms of camera movement to fulfil the destination of the final frame in a sequence) such as a sheet of distressed glass or a curtain or some such transparent, textured material. This gives the element to a lot of the movie of each audience member being a voyeur rather than just naturally following the drama in the way one normally would. We are collectively eavesdropping on conversations and moments of expression as we observe through a secondary layer and this, of course, makes the audience feel more empathy with the characters even as the director uses the distance of that intermediary plane, combined with the compartmentalising of the screen I’ve already talked about, as a form of visual tension. And, of course, in the many shots where he doesn’t use this tactic, we are suddenly, through that style of entrance into certain scenes of the characters who inhabit the movie, brought into the midst of the action with no barrier to empathy at all. This is because the contrast between shots where he does this and shots where he doesn’t conditions us to feel completely relaxed and in the moment.

He also uses sound quite brilliantly.

For instance, he has a cleverly constructed sequence at the start which he sets up to be a potential book end device for the film and from which most of the action of the running time takes place in flashback. When we see an emotionally fuelled moment early on in the proceedings, which we know will mean a whole lot more to us when we see the back story of the two leading protagonists, Therese finds herself whisked away in a taxi and looking out the window in a possible moment of deep regret (and yeah, of course, we are observing her from the outside of the window which has rain trickling down the glass). As we sense the tension building, the director has the natural sounds of the street, cars and alarm bells from passing premises, coming up in volume on the foley with all the kind of impact that a whistling kettle has when it’s near to boiling point. This perfectly re-enforces the tensions of the emotions the viewer senses he or she is supposed to be feeling while simultaneously signalling the affirmation of alarm as the key tone of the character at this point. And, again, this is a tactic the director seems to use a few times during the course of the film.

And staying with this opening sequence... the other clever thing he does, by using this flashback formula, is set up an assumption that we are seeing the end of the movie when, in fact... well I really don’t want to spoil this one for you but the opening sets up an emotional tone which doesn’t necessarily reveal the true ending of the movie. To quote a cliché, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings and all I will say about the conclusion of this particular ‘forbidden romance’ is... it’s not what I was expecting and I’m a sucker for this kind of ending. So I was really pleased with the way the story content in this movie turned out.

And, of course, we have that score.

Carter Burwell’s score.

Which, to be honest, really was the main reason why I was so curious to see this one. What can I say? It’s brilliant, moving, comes and goes at just the right times in the mix (in between the various 1950s song standards that litter the soundscape) and heightens the emotions beautifully. It is rich and vibrant and I’m pretty sure that as a standalone experience it will be truly wonderful... I know this because I was toe tapping practically the whole way through the movie like I was watching some kind of rock video. However, it has to be said... it’s also a complete copy of the compositional style of composer Philip Glass. I don’t mean just the minimalistic, short cells repeating to bind a slower melody hiding in a faster rhythm approach that Glass uses either... I mean the orchestration of it too. It’s absolutely pseudo-Glass from a specific period which dates it, to my mind, as having come from any or all of his theatre or opera works from the early to late 1980s, in tone. I don’t mean this as a slur to Burwell, who I have admired as a composer ever since I heard and then bought his score for Psycho III on vinyl all those decades ago... I’m sure this is a result of either a strong voice from the director or a case of the temp track taking over at the 11th hour and finalising the style. However, I’m not alone (it turns out) in recognising the fact that this score sounds like it was written by Glass and it does make me wonder just what went on during the post-production of this movie.

That’s okay by me though. I absolutely love the music of Philip Glass so there are no complaints from me here. A friend of mine has told me he’s getting me the score for Christmas and I am really looking forward to picking a few tracks out to play on Christmas morning, time permitting. A truly great piece of work, whether Burwell owes a debt to Glass or not, and absolutely supportive of the images while enhancing and elevating the tone of the emotions. It’s truly amazing stuff and that’s really all I’m going to say about this picture now. Carol is an absolute knock out of a movie and if you call yourself a film buff, a cinephile or, like me, just a plain old cinema goer, then you owe it to yourself not to let this one pass you by. An absolute treat of a movie by a director I’m really going to have to look out for more in the future. Just marvellous.

The Monuments Men

The Art Of War

The Monuments Men
2014 USA/Germany
Directed by George Clooney
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Very slight spoilers which, in no way, 
give away the course of the story.

There’s a scene about three quarters of the way or more through The Monuments Men which best demonstrates one of the things I found a little disappointing with this film overall. One of the lead protagonists has stepped on a landmine and cannot move for fear of blowing up himself and his colleagues. We’ve all seen this scene before in countless war movies, of course, and it’s a cheap but effective trick used by directors for decades to build up suspense, tension and force the audience to empathise with their characters even more... but this time it doesn’t quite work in it’s intent. At least that’s how it felt for me.

Instead of being played fully for tension, the director, as is his right, seems to want to play it for yet another in a series of “war romp” scenes. It’s not a funny situation but it’s played quite lightly and, for me, this really highlights the movie’s one, main flaw. There’s no edge to it and almost no consequence. It’s also dealt with in an unrealistic manner too... I thought the central characters were smarter than this.

Now my reaction to this might just be one of conditioning, to be honest. I’m really not one for watching too many war movies but we have been under fire in recent years from films like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and The Pianist, which show the horrors of war and pull, relatively few, punches in showing the raw misery that conflict will always bring into being. The Monuments Men, on the other hand, seems to be of direct lineage from films such as Kelly’s Heros and The Dirty Dozen in it’s genetic make-up (two films, I hasten to add, that I’ve not yet seen... so if I’m wrong in this judgement, please feel free to take me to task over it in the comments section below) and, naturally, films like The Inglorious Bastards and Tarantino’s own war movie in this vein, Inglourious Basterds (not actually a remake or homage to the former, in fact)... the latter being perhaps the best of this lineage to combine the War Is Hell but also, the bizarre War Is Fun element of a conflict which has been the subject of so many hundreds of movies since the 1940s.

It’s a decision and Clooney goes with his gut and delivers a war romp which is, in all honesty, quite entertaining... but finds itself at odds with itself, I believe, because some of the scenes he’s written in to deliver “the dark edge” are perhaps played a little too lightly for their own good. And I’m not putting that down to the acting because everybody in this movie... Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban and even Clooney himself, are all absolutely brilliant in their performances and it doesn’t seem to be their tone which is the problem.

For instance, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, when it comes to a movie set during the Second World War, that some of the main protagonists are going to wind up dead at various points in the movie. However, I found that, even though I liked all these characters, I didn’t really feel much when they died. Don’t get me wrong, the other characters on screen did... but I, as the audience, didn’t feel much. Similarly, when a couple of characters realise the gold they’ve been running their hands through is comprised of the gold fillings of dead victims of the German concentration camps, although we are given time to dwell on this horror, along with the characters, we don’t really feel it as such. At least I didn’t and, believe me, I’m not taking the actual events any less seriously for it.

I think the “lightening” effect I’m talking about here is something which came in the struggle to find the perfect edit and sound mix from the film. And also perhaps from the baggage that some of the actors have brought with them from other roles. Many of these are noted for giving some great comic performances and maybe that’s thrown into the mix too. Perhaps some shots needed to be a little longer or maybe have a less beautiful score than the “classic war anthem” style of composition, with direct lineage from the scores of Ron Goodwin, that master composer Alexandre Desplat has delivered... much to my puzzlement as this score doesn’t seem to me to fit his usual modus operandi, although it’s still a score and a half, to be sure.

So yeah. The film does seem a little, “war light” in places. Especially after such a brilliant opening montage of static shots of works of art juxtaposed with the sounds of hammer blows. This short sequence was almost stomach turning, when seen on a big screen, in the way the sound and image worked together in rhythm and sets you on edge for an intense and dynamic darkness which never quite delivers, at least on that front.

Okay, so that’s a pretty negative view of the film so far so let me just temper that a little and tell you about the good way of looking at this...

It’s actually quite fun and it’s well acted, holds your attention and doesn’t, not even once, get boring.

It was possibly scripted so that certain scenes would go to the various “stars” in the movie to play to their strengths but, honestly, it doesn’t look or feel like it’s been tailored for specific performers in that way and it flows beautifully, not feeling like a series of separate incidents highlighting characters... even though it kinda is in many ways, as the lead protagonists work in smaller, separate units for the majority of the film and only come together for key scenes every once in a while. It’s a solid little story and although it certainly doesn’t drum home the horrors of war I was talking about earlier, they’ve not been forgotten or pushed to the background either (maybe tonally but not in terms of sweeping them under a rug or something like that).

What we have in The Monuments Men, I think, is one of those films which is going to play on television during seasonal holidays like Christmas and Easter for decades to come and will, in future years, be rightly identified as a classic. I know, for instance, that when future generations sit down and watch this, they’ll see a snappy and solid little war movie with a great cast of actors who all died many years ago and wonder why this didn’t make a bigger splash when it landed at the box office on its release. The haze of nostalgic rediscovery is as valid a process of receiving the art form as any other, it’s my belief, so I think this film will be remembered well when it starts to be included in text books of the history of war films in years to come. But don’t take my word for it... go and see this possible classic in cinemas now while you still can. It’s nothing like a perfect movie for us now... but it may well be a perfect movie in the future.

Blue Jasmine

All That Jasmine

Blue Jasmine
2013 USA
Directed by Woody Allen
Playing at UK cinemas now.

I‘ve been a Woody Allen fan for a long time now. Ever since I was about 8 years old, back in 1976, after seeing one of his movies on late night TV. I’ll always remember the comment made by a good friend after we left a screening of Allen’s Shadows And Fog, his souped up reworking of his stage play Death, which we saw at a late night showing at the Lumiere cinema in London... now sadly gone. My friend said, on leaving, something along the lines of... “Wow. That was just Woody Allen flexing his muscles. Showing people he can make movies better than any of them.” I didn’t disagree and it’s a moment I’ll treasure because of my friend’s reaction, but I will say that, as the years have worn on, I have found Allen to be a little hit and miss... especially in the last two decades.

If Shadows And Fog was Woody Allen flexing his muscles, though, then I have to say I found his new film, Blue Jasmine, to be Woody Allen sitting back and relaxing on a sofa, watching the world go by and just bringing out the usual stuff. This is not to say it’s in any way a bad movie. It isn’t. But I don’t find it to be the revelation that a lot of people seem to be finding this one to be either. I find it strange that people are picking on this movie to lionise when it seems to me to be... not so much unremarkable but certainly less interesting than some of the work he’s been doing lately.

This film stars two of my favourite actresses - Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins.

That Cate Blanchett has been singled out for praise and made a fuss over for this particular movie is something I also find quite strange. That she’s one of the most incredible actresses of her generation is not to be denied. Nor is the fact that she can do the brilliant performance she gives in this film in her sleep because she really is that good. She’s worked with some of the greatest directors and turned in some of the most interesting performances going. She’s worked with Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson, Lasse Hallström, Tom Tykwer... even Steven Spielberg. Why she’s getting singled out just for this role at the moment is beyond me. But still, she does it really well, as expected, so I certainly don’t begrudge her the attention she’s getting. I think she’s fantastic.

Sally Hawkins is kinda interesting in this film because the very first scene she’s in she is totally transformed both in looks and in tone of delivery. But then, as the story progresses, she quickly seems to revert to something more bubbly and Sally Hawkins like... which is fine, I like bubbly Sally Hawkins. But it’s like somebody forgot to reshoot the first couple of scenes to match the acting style and tone of the rest of her performance. I felt that a bit disconcerting.

All in all, though, all the acting in this film is superb... well you’re really not going to go wrong with a cast like this. And Blanchett’s performance of Allen’s Jasmine is certainly more compelling the more you see of her. As we see this woman getting bad breaks after a life of wealth and not working, we are interested in her madness and the impending breakdown that we can see coming from afar. From any other actress this would be incredible but I guess I’m expecting something more challenging... which is wrong, I know. Why should I expect actors to be challenged? And, to be fair, I’m sure this was a very demanding role actually. Seriously, that Blanchett can carry off this stuff with that amount of ease is no surprise.

Maybe my dissatisfaction comes not from the acting but from the general tone and writing of the piece. Allen has done serious works before and this one is certainly a straight piece (although the audience I was with seemed to be programmed to laugh at any slight character quirk because, I assume, they went to see a Woody Allen movie and were therefore expecting to laugh). I just think it’s a pretty slight piece too, especially when we’ve been getting such strong stuff from my childhood hero just recently (see my reviews of Midnight In Paris and To Rome With Love).

The film is cleanly shot in Woody’s usual, uncluttered style and the structure of the writing, as Jasmine hovers in and out of flashbacks from her life, which slowly fill us in on the tragedy of her past, and the way in which Allen chooses to present this, without fanfare on screen did, I have to confess, remind me of Ingmar Bergman and the fact that Allen was constantly getting compared to that great director’s work in his early career. Indeed, if truth be told, I would much rather be watching Allen’s early and much Bergmanised straight movie Interiors to this one. That’s always been one of my favourites though. I don’t think Blue Jasmine is comparable to some of those earlier works if I’m being honest.

All that being said, though, it’s not a terrible movie and certainly something the majority of Woody Allen fans will want to take a look at, I think. He doesn’t hit any wrong notes and the central characters of Jasmine and her adopted sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) are watchable and compelling enough to hold your attention. So I would still recommend it and it still blows away most of the other stuff at the cinema at the moment. It’s not exactly his best film but, heck, it doesn’t have to be. And I’m glad he’s got a hit out of it.

Hanna

Hanna, Solo

Hanna US 2011

Directed by Joe Wright

Playing at cinemas now.

Caution: There are NO real spoilers on this one but I should probably warn you up front that... if you don’t like the current trend for filming absolutely everything in shades of blue and orange, you might want to give this movie a miss... I’d advise you not to though... it’s really excellent.

Hanna tells the story of a sixteen year old girl called... um... Hanna (played absolutely impeccably by Saoirse Ronan) who has been living in the snowy wilderness with her guardian, Erik (thoughtfully played by Eric Bana), for the majority of her life. She has been leading a life of hardship and lacking in the normal luxuries that you and I take for granted (like the beauty of music) and Erik has been training her in all the essential skills of survival and combat for the day when she becomes, like Erik, A Jason Bourne-like killing machine in order to invade the civilised world and kill Marissa (the always wonderful Cate Blanchett) who was the woman who killed Hanna’s mother when she was just a little girl.

That’s your basic set up and that’s as much as I’m going to tell you about specific elements of the story. There’s not a lot you won’t see coming but that doesn’t really matter on this particular piece of action-thriller celluloid. It’s more about the journey of one person and the peripheral damage created by her passing through the lives of others. Friends and foes alike do tend to get pretty f*cked up in her wake... often without her even noticing this unfortunate trend.

You might say that this movie is a patchwork quilt of Nikita and The Bourne Identity and there are certainly elements of those movies to be found in Hanna. Cate Blanchett is very much a more “hands on” version of the Brian Cox character in those movies and if she comes across as a little bit of a broad villain, much as she did in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I think she can be forgiven this since the genre elements used to tell the story almost beg for the kind of larger-than-life characterisation that she chooses to inject into this character. The coldness behind her eyes is almost freezing.

And coldness is almost a key motif for the movie as a whole. The film starts off in a sequence in the snow with Hanna hunting a deer and the rest of the film seems to take this sequence as a template of sorts with absolutely beautiful and very cleanly composed cinematography (it looks like something directed by either Kieslowski or Hartley) which mostly uses frosty shades of blue or cooled down oranges or a combination of both on screen sometimes... such as when Hanna is escaping her captors/pursuers through an almost maze like building in dull, neutralised colours but wearing cool orange clothing which, although quite toned down in itself, makes for a nice contrast with her immediate environment without warming the shots up too much and retaining that theme of frostiness throughout the whole movie. Even when, in some sequences, some greens and reds and yellows are brought into the general mix to “rock the palette” as it were, the overall effect is still mostly one of stark neutrality and this is also echoed in the attitudes of the main characters throughout the course of the movie.

I’ve talked about Cate Blanchett’s steely, cold exterior which she uses to highlight the professional ruthlessness of her character... this also is to be found in Eric Bana’s character in a lot of the sequences and he only really warms up when he’s sharing screen-time with the title character.

The real contrast in tone is, perhaps, Hannah herself, who is forced to fly solo and make her own way in the world... she too has a very frosty exterior but it clearly holds a very warm, beating heart and it becomes apparent as Hanna “makes friends” that the ice and frost in her killing-machine exterior is as much about the realities of her hermit like existence and detachment from a social milieu more than anything else. And there are some beautiful sequences which highlight the chaos, confusion and adrenalin filled underside of her character, one which involves her freaking out over the abundance of electrically powered consumer items and another as she is escaping her would be captors/killers... where the camerawork and editing style just go completely mad... as though the camera-eye is just giving up for a moment on the cleanliness and coolness of the mise-en-scene and just throwing its hands up in the air to give the viewer a crazy collage of aggressively shifting visual psychedelic riffs on the films environment... with the camera actually spiralling about 360º in one instance. This is a actually a very dynamic film where the tension and release nature of the atmosphere is very much controlled but can also “get rowdy” on the viewer very quickly if it needs to push an emotional point.

The tension and suspense is wrought from every shot, ably supported by a likeable score composed by some people called The Chemical Brothers (?), but these sequences of tension are regularly released by the odd burst of broad humour or an orgy of violent action cinema not dissimilar to anything Besson has been producing over the last few years. This is a film which will pull you in and not let you go until it’s created a smorgasbord of emotional highs and lows by pitching the intensly grim plot of the movie against a sense of playfulness and beauty... whether you like this film or not, you’re certainly unlikely to be bored by it.

And then there’s the ending. This film has one of those perfect endings that rarely come up. Without giving anything away there’s a beautiful symmetry to this film which is derived from the set up in a way that means you will know, roughly 3 or 4 minutes before it happens, what both the last line and the last “shot” of this film will be. There’s a poetic quality to the end sequence and a haunting premonition of events in a tangible form which informs the audience of the metaphor it’s about to witness... the film just has to end this way... and it does.

I’m not going to say anymore on this one right now except that if you like cinema in general then Hanna kind of has the feel of a French action thriller filtered through a Polish camera lens and an American Independent sensibility while still, I suspect, playing for a mass audience. And that’s probably not a bad thing to aim for really... all things considered.