Cinema

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is slow, churchy, cerebral, bleak, difficult, tormented and puzzling, which is always a blow. So exhausting when a film’s meaning isn’t laid out clearly and neatly before you. But it is, at least, powerfully puzzling and grippingly puzzling. You may not understand it (completely), but you will come away with the feeling that something was being said, whatever that something may have been. Ethan Hawke stars as the Revd Ernst Toller, leader of First Reformed Church somewhere in upstate New York. The church, which dates from 1767, is built in the Dutch style, and is white and clapboard, pretty as a picture. But right from our first sight of Toller we understand that he is a darker proposition, and is suffering in some way.

Swimming with Men is a British drama-comedy starring Rob Brydon as a disaffected middle-aged accountant who joins his local male synchronised-swimming team, doesn’t bond with any of his teammates, doesn’t learn about what matters in life, catches athlete’s foot plus several verrucas, then throws himself from a bridge. Of course, that isn’t this film, but if it were, it would be a film I hadn’t seen before. The fact is, familiarity is often fine — and comforting. The Full Monty, Calendar Girls, Brassed Off, Kinky Boots and all the other films of this ilk: fine, and always comforting. Plus, I’d seen the poster — Carson from Downton in Speedos! — and was a little bit excited, I have to say.

Debra Granik, the writer-director who made quite a splash with Winter’s Bone (which launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence in 2010), has returned with Leave No Trace, which is also powerfully compelling. By rights, it shouldn’t be. By rights, this tale of a father and daughter who wish to keep themselves to themselves (essentially) should be as dull as ditchwater. It is slow. Little is said and little happens — it’s inaction-packed, if you like — yet it pulls you in and keeps you pulled in. I’m still turning it over in my mind days later. It will certainly leave a trace in you, in other words. Adapted from Peter Rock’s novel My Abandonment, the film stars Ben Foster as Will, a Vietnam vet, and Thomasin McKenzie as his teenage daughter, Tom.

Hereditary is the horror film that has been described as a ‘ride of pure terror’ and likened to The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and The Shining, to which I can say only: in its dreams. Given I’m such a wuss when it comes to anything frightening — the child-catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang still scares the living daylights out of me — I’m rather thankful, but I’m perplexed as to why it received such rave reviews. Ride of pure terror? I’ve had more terrifying rides on the teacups at the fair. I saw it at the paying cinema with my adult son and his girlfriend, who were also bored out of their minds and could only conclude that ‘all other critics are idiots’.

Ocean’s 8 is the all-female spin-off of the all-male Ocean’s trilogy and it’s a sop, with a third act that drags like nothing on earth. But its success — it earned an estimated $41.5 million during its opening weekend, which is better than any of the male versions — shows the market isn’t that bothered by content, which is equality of a kind. Women can now make dull formulaic franchise films too! Hurrah! We’ve arrived! And we can do this rubbish for ourselves now! The film is a straight-up-and-down remake, where the gender swap may, in fact, be the best idea, possibly because it’s the only idea. (The Ghostbusters remake did it first anyhow.) It does not subvert the heist-caper genre in any way but instead follows the formula slavishly.

Back in the mists of prehistory, when I was eight, dinosaur films followed a set pattern. The dinosaurs themselves would be cheerfully unpalaeontological; women would wear improbable outfits; volcanoes would explode. Then, in 1993, courtesy of Steven Spielberg, came a sea-change. Jurassic Park was that cinematic rarity: a science fiction film that succeeded in influencing the science it was fictionalising. The story of a theme park populated by resurrected dinosaurs, it offered a portrayal of Mesozoic fauna that was as close to authentic as could then plausibly be achieved. For the first time, computer-generated imagery was used to portray dinosaurs as scientists had come to envisage them: agile, bird-like, smart. The impact was profound.

Two films this week, one that has stood the test of time, dazzlingly — it still feels as fresh as a daisy, almost 90 years on — and another that’s so tiresome it felt almost 90 years long. First, Pandora’s Box, directed by G.W. Pabst in 1929, starring Louise Brooks and her iconic hair-do. It is always described as ‘a masterpiece of silent cinema’, which, let’s admit it, can strike fear into the heart of the average cinemagoer. It’ll be primitive, vaudevillian, barely watchable. There will be exaggerated hand-flapping and over-the-top faces.

Edie tells the story of an 84-year-old woman who wants to fulfil a girlhood ambition by climbing a Scottish mountain. It stars the wonderful Sheila Hancock who has been criminally underused cinematically down the years — ‘I wasn’t considered attractive enough,’ she recently said. As there are anyway too few films featuring older women with their own narratives, I am absolutely desperate to be generous about this. That’s the aim. It won’t always be easy, frankly, but if there is one thing this film wants you to take away it is this: you’re never too old for a challenge. At the outset, Edie is seen living under the hand of her husband.

On Chesil Beach is an adaptation of the Ian McEwen novella set in 1962 when ‘conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible’ and a young couple suffer a disastrous wedding night from which there will be no return. This is surefooted, mostly, and literary and tasteful and sad and English, and it also stars the ever-remarkable Saoirse Ronan. But it does take a giant misstep at the end — the ending is plainly horrible — plus the book’s frustrations don’t magically disappear. One crap shag and that’s it, it’s over? It worried you then and it will worry you now.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is set in the 1970s and has punk as the backdrop and an excellent cast (Nicole Kidman, Ruth Wilson, Elle Fanning). It also features what could be a decent premise (boy who treats girls as if from another planet meets actual girl from another planet). But everything it has going for it is undone by what it doesn’t have going for it, which is substantial. This could, in fact, have been titled How to Stay Awake Once You’ve Lost All Patience because, I now know, staying awake once you’ve lost all patience makes talking to girls at parties look like a walk in the park, frankly.

Andrew Haigh makes inaction films. Weekend (2011) tells of two young homosexuals getting to know each other in Nottingham. In the wintry marital drama 45 Years (2015) two old heterosexuals get to unknow each other in Norfolk. The canvases are miniature, the resonances crevasse-deep. His third film, Lean on Pete, brings a change of scene and scope. And volume. Hooves thunder. A fatal gunshot goes off. Ornery men bawl and holler. There is a devastating road accident, and a climactic act of hideous violence. It’s as if Haigh has contracted ’roid rage. What he’s actually done is get on a plane to Oregon to adapt a novel by Willy Vlautin. Haigh is intrigued by the often silent space between two characters.

When I first read that Beast is a serial-killer thriller my heart sank like a stone — yet more women raped, butchered, murdered; splendid, bring it on. But it is, in fact, fascinating and brilliant, and not like any serial-killer thriller you’ve seen before. This is because a woman owns it. Psychologically and emotionally. Not because she’s the actual killer, although if she were the killer would she need to work four times as hard to achieve the same notoriety as a man? Kill eight to his two? But we mustn’t allow that to hold us up. Beast is a feature-length debut for writer/director Michael Pearce and it stars Jessie Buckley, who is phenomenal.

Two films about women this week. One, Funny Cow, is about a woman who daringly takes on men at their own game while the other, Let the Sunshine In, is dressed up in French art-house garb but basically has Juliette Binoche tirelessly running round Paris in thrall to every fella she encounters. I certainly know which I preferred. However, if you look at review aggregate sites, like Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll see Sunshine achieves the far higher score. But then most film critics are male and probably wouldn’t mind Juliette Binoche tirelessly chasing them round Paris, or anywhere else. (I have just asked a man if this is so and he has confirmed: ‘I wouldn’t mind at all. And it could be Bournemouth.

Custody is both social realism and a thriller and it’s terrific. It is smart, beautifully acted, never crass about the subject in hand (domestic abuse), and is one of those films that will have you totally gripped while you’ll also be longing for it to end, as it’s so unbearably tense. I swear my heart as good as stopped several times. It’s written and directed by Xavier Legrand, who handles both genres with supreme elegance. Or, to put it another way, it’s like a Ken Loach film that’s been hijacked by Stephen King, but seamlessly. (‘Mind if I have a go, Ken?’, ‘Be my guest, Steve’.) This is Legrand’s second film after Just Before Losing Everything (2013), which was only 30 minutes long, but earned him an Oscar nomination.

Wonderstruck is a film by Todd Haynes and you will certainly be struck by wonder, often. You will wonder at its painful slowness. You will wonder at the way it strains credulity until it snaps. You will wonder if the violins will ever give it a rest. You will wonder if it will ever end. And you will wonder at the ending, when it does finally come, as it is so stupid. So it does not short-change on the wonder front. Whatever the price of your cinema ticket, you will be getting limitless wonder in return. Haynes is usually such an immaculate, thoughtful, winning filmmaker (Carol, Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, that Karen Carpenter short told with Barbie dolls — Superstar) that you will also wonder: how could he have helmed such an unholy mess? ‘Is it for children?

The latest film from Wes Anderson is a doggy animation set in a fantasy Japan and as there was a screening in London earlier this week for owners and their dogs I took my own dog, Monty. He said he liked it. It was ‘good’, he said. I did not especially trust his opinion so investigated further. As good as, say, drinking from the toilet? ‘No,’ he said, ‘not as good as that, obvs.’ As good as this tennis ball here? ‘No’, he said, ‘because a tennis ball is always AMAZING!’ As good as cheese? ‘Nothing is as good as cheese. Fair play, you caught me out there.

Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, Unsane, is a psychological thriller about a woman who is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital even though she claims to be perfectly sane. But is she? It was filmed fast, on an iPhone 7, and some aspects are worryingly thoughtless — its treatment of mental-health patients, for example, is remarkably Unsensitive. And it does descend into a plainly ridiculous, sub-par farce. But it is also, in parts, deliciously schlocky and it stars the wonderful Claire Foy, whom one hopes was paid decently. So shocking that she earned less than Matt Smith for The Crown, but as a positive person who likes to look on the bright side might I suggest that we celebrate the fact men are still doing so well? And throw a party or something?

This biopic of Mary Magdalene is a feminist retelling that may well be deserved but it’s so dreary and unremarkable that the fact it is well intentioned and even, perhaps, necessary can’t come through and win the day. Or even part of the day. Just the morning, say. Directed by Garth Davis (Lion), and written by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett, this is, according to the bumf, the Mary of the original gospels rather than the repentant sinner and ‘prostitute’, which is what, in truth, I always had her down as, but then I did get most of my learning from Jesus Christ Superstar.

You Were Never Really Here is a fourth feature from Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) and the first thing to say is that it is exceptionally violent. I don’t say this disapprovingly but if your threshold for violence is as low as mine — I incurred a paper cut the other day and passed clean out — it will prove an 89-minute ordeal. Still, it has been described as ‘the Taxi Driver for the 21st century’, if that is of help while you’re bracing yourself for the next hammer blow. Personally, I found it of no help at all. Also, it’s untrue. The film stars a bulked-up Joaquin Phoenix as Joe, a tortured hit man, and it opens as it means to go on. That is, not prettily.

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 single headline, has already been carved.