The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions
The wedding of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry has no precedent in the history of the Royal family. How will a relatively ordinary person, albeit a celebrity, cope with the rigid etiquette and stifling sense of entitlement of the culture into which they are marrying? I’m referring, of course, to Harry. From the moment he … Read more
A couple of months ago, I moved to the capital of the United States. I had one year of university left and applied for a fellowship (in journalism) in my final term which parachuted me into the world of Washington D.C. The view from my bedroom window is now the distant Capitol Building and the … Read more
Films about the Winter Olympics don’t grow on conifers. Twenty-five years ago there was Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsleigh team. It took many years for Eddie the Eagle to reach the screen. Both were cockle-warming comedies about implausible Olympians who embody the ideal that participation is all. Only last week Elise Christie, the British speed skater who kept tumbling in Pyeongchang (and Sochi), hoped that ‘Reese Witherspoon’ would play her in the movie. In the mean time, the latest Olympiad has flushed out two more biopics on ice. I, Tonya tells of Tonya Harding’s catastrophic career. Like Monica Lewinsky, Harding is a public figure whose epitaph, thanks to a
Reading the lip-smacking reports of the latest troubled celebrity relationships (Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux definitely high and dry, Cheryl Cole and Liam Payne allegedly on the rocks) I couldn’t help musing that stars – and more specifically, the place they occupy in our mass psychological landscape – have very much changed since the first mass-market celebrities emerged. The film stars of the fledgling Hollywood truly were worshipped as higher beings; a tribe of Pathan Indians opened fire on a cinema when they were denied entry to a Greta Garbo film while women committed suicide when Valentino died. Their marriages were regarded as heavenly unions; their romantic sunderings as tragedies.
Bruce Springsteen promised that he was ‘Born To Run’, and now, like Judy Garland and Ethel Merman before him, he is running on Broadway—and running, and running. From last October to early February, the workingman’s tribune performed five nights a week at the Walter Kerr Theatre, his tools a piano, an acoustic guitar, and a … Read more
The Oscars promise to be truly unbearable this year, with vomit-inducing levels of sanctimony followed by the usual gibberish from the commentariat. The results and speeches and even clothes will be subject to endless politicised scrutiny, and whatever the film industry does to stay Woke, the Buzzfeed headline will inevitably be ‘and people aren’t happy about … Read more
As a British woman, I love Americans’ kindness, generosity and energy but am often thrown by their exaggerated politeness and euphemistic speech. They use ‘passed’ for ‘died’ and always say ‘excuse me’ if they brush against you in a shop. They sentimentally refer to ‘your puppy’ when the dog is patently over three years old. … Read more
Lady Bird is a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Greta Gerwig with a plot synopsis that need not detain us as it is basically only this: girl has a mum. (Or: girl has a mum, and sometimes they row and sometimes they don’t.) But thus far it has won near universal critical praise, two Golden Globes and five Oscar nominations, thereby proving there is mileage in girls and their mums, and box office in girls and their mums, and that girls and their mums can be more than mere afterthoughts. In this respect, Lady Bird may, in fact, be quite the rare bird. It’s set in Sacramento, California, in
‘Hi, it’s Jonas.’ When the great tenor rings from Vienna, I ask if there are any topics he wants me to avoid, such are his minders’ anxieties. ‘Ask anything,’ laughs Jonas. ‘I’m not shy.’ He is heading in from the airport to see a physio — ‘these concerts, you have to stand there all the time’ — before taking Hugo Wolf’s Italian Songbook on a seven-city Baedeker tour: Vienna, Paris, London, Essen, Luxemburg, Budapest, Barcelona. I wonder if he is aware that Wolf is a hard sell to English audiences. ‘Not just the English,’ he replies. ‘Even in Germany promoters say to me, please don’t do a Wolf-only recital, no
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is a lush psychosexual drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a pampered, tyrannical, pernickety 1950s couturier whose life is disrupted when he falls for a waitress who, in the most unexpected way, proves his match. It is a wonderfully fixating film in every respect, and wholly non-formulaic. And it miraculously transforms an addition to a breakfast order — ‘…and sausages’ — into one of the sexiest things ever said. Ultimately, its meaning will be open to interpretation. I saw it as the rather timely story of a man who is finally forced to cut out his misogynist heart and see women as real people, but your
Downsizing is a film with the most brilliant premise. What if, to save the planet, we were all made tiny? What if we only took up a tiny amount of space and flew in tiny planes and produced tiny amounts of rubbish? And what if we could live in the sort of mansions that would cost millions if they were regular-sized? What if, what if, what if, what if… but most crucially: what if this film had run with the premise rather than throwing it away? Could it have avoided becoming just another dumb ‘white saviour’ movie? And this, alas, is the ‘what if’ that must preoccupy us today. This
Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which dramatizes the Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, doesn’t exactly push at the frontiers of storytelling. It’s told straight and in a familiar way. Here are the journalists furtively working through top-secret government papers in a smoke-choked room for the public good. (There were no empty pizza boxes in this instance, but there could have been, if you get my drift.) Here’s the government trying to stop them. Here’s the newspaper rolling off the press, and everyone clapping. And so on. But it does star Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, engaged in a kind of dance as the paper’s editor and proprietor,
Gary Oldman has joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of them in movies and 28 on television. He is one of the best three. ‘I knew I didn’t look like him,’ Oldman has said. ‘I thought that with some work I could approximate the voice. The challenge in part was the physicality, because you’re playing someone whose silhouette is so iconic.’ We all have our own mind’s-eye view of what Churchill should look and sound like, and his personality was so strong and sui generis that it is almost impossible for an actor to impose himself on the role. He
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri does, indeed, feature three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. They have been placed at the roadside on the outskirts of town by Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a middle-aged woman whose teenage daughter had been raped and murdered seven months earlier. The billboards read: ‘Raped While Dying’; ‘And Still No Arrests’; ‘How Come, Chief Willoughby?’ Mildred is grieving, in pain and a ball of fury. But not your regular, everyday ball of fury. She is a ball of fury of the most magnificent, unstoppable kind. If only she could go after every rapist from now on. I’d certainly sleep better in my bed. Written, directed and produced
Brad’s Status is a midlife crisis film starring Ben Stiller as a nearly 50-year-old man whose status anxiety is through the roof, poor thing. My heart bleeds and all that. I’ll tell you what Brad’s status should be: face well and truly slapped. The film is written and directed by Mike White (Beatriz at Dinner; Enlightened) and in some quarters it has been renamed Mike’s White Privilege, which is fair — no one else gets a look in — but as it’s intended as a satire of white male privilege you can’t exactly blame it for being white, male and privileged. However, while some moments will resonate (who hasn’t ever
Molly’s Game marks the directorial debut of Hollywood’s most celebrated screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, and is based on his adaptation of the memoir by Molly Bloom. Nope, me neither, but she’s the one-time Olympic skier who, at the age of 26, started a high-stakes poker game for ‘the richest, the most powerful men in the world’ and ended up with the FBI in her face. Poor Molly, we’re meant to think, when the FBI ends up in her face, but I was delighted. Bang her up! This has been posited as the antidote to all those male-driven, big money Wall Street films, with Sorkin even declaring Ms Bloom a ‘feminist icon’.
Menashe is a drama set amid Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. It is performed entirely in the Yiddish language. It is peopled exclusively by Hasidic non-actors. (Real-life grocer Menashe Lustig plays the title character.) It is small and specific, admittedly, but it also tells a universal story about a father’s struggle to hold on to the son he loves, and it tells this story tenderly, thoughtfully, beautifully. It may even be my favourite frum film of the year. Thus far. (Still a few weeks to go.) This marks the feature debut of director Joshua Z Weinstein (no relation), who made documentaries previously, and who wrote this with Alex Lipschultz and Musa
Battle of the Sexes recreates the famed, culture-changing 1973 tennis match between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a self-proclaimed chauvinist, and 29-year-old Billie Jean King, the world’s top female player who was out to liberate women and herself. (She was just discovering her true sexuality at that time.) Unless you happen to identify with Bobby — ‘Don’t get me wrong. I love women in the bedroom and in the kitchen, but these days they want to be everywhere!’ — this is certainly a great comeuppance film of the kind that will amply satisfy all your comeuppance needs. No complaints, comeuppance-wise. But it doesn’t run very deep, divides everyone into heroes and villains,
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is plainly wonderful, and stars Annette Bening, who is plainly wonderful, as Gloria Grahame, a one-time Hollywood movie star who in later life hits on hard times — ‘a big name in black and white. Not doing too well in colour,’ comments her landlady at one point — and embarks on a romance with a young English actor who is 30 years her junior. It is based on a true memoir. It is a love story, told tenderly, bravely, smartly, movingly. And believably. Older women, it seems, can be interesting, complicated, vital, attractive and sexual. Who knew? (But don’t spread the word, or they’ll
The Florida Project is a drama set in one of those cheap American motels occupied by poor people who would otherwise be homeless. It’s sad but not depressing, bleak but also joyful, and features one of the best and truest child performances you will ever likely see. Also, it is captivating without ever being condescending — I think. It is always so hard to know, but if you get too hung up on that, cinema will never be allowed to say that poverty exists, or deal with stories that don’t regularly get told, and that’s the end of my lecture for this week, you will be delighted to hear. The
