Film

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series Who Is America? isn’t funny. But then, nor was his terrible 2016 movie The Brothers Grimsby. Nor was his rubbish 2012 film The Dictator. Nor, let’s be honest, were his classic original characters Borat, Brüno or even Ali G. Obviously, they had their moments: the ‘mankini’ — that bizarre, electric green, giant-thong-like swim wear worn by Borat; the classic late-Nineties catchphrase ‘Is it because I is black?’ And sure it must have taken some nerve — even in character — to explain to a clearly impatient and unimpressed Donald Trump his business plan for some anti-drip ice-cream gloves. But how often, even at his best, does Baron Cohen ever make you laugh?

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again aims to do what it says on the can. That is, be Mamma Mia, going again. But while many of the elements are the same as in the original —beautiful Greek island scenery; the actors frolicking among local folk and falling off boats; the knowing cheesiness; Pierce Brosnan singing his little heart out (alas) —you will be asking: where the hell is Meryl Streep? She’s on the poster but there’s no sign and no sign and no sign until, finally, at about 100 minutes in, she makes an appearance, and is wonderful. You do get Cher in an extended cameo, which is thrilling, but that doesn’t happen until about 90 minutes in. As the film has a running time of 114 minutes, this means that it’s only the last chunk that is worth seeing.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Stay too long in the Lee Miller exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield and the metronome might drive you mad. Considerate curators will only set it swinging in stints to spare the gallery guards. Man Ray, who made the metronome ‘Object of Destruction’ (1923), meant it to infuriate. His assembled sculpture came with instructions. ‘Cut the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.’ Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Smash. The eye on Man Ray’s metronome was Lee Miller’s, beautiful, blue, bewitching.

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.

The Italian film director Alice Rohrwacher’s rise to the top has never been more obvious than this week at the Cannes Film Festival. Her third feature film, Happy as Lazzaro, which she wrote and directed, stunned the critics gathered in Cannes for what has been a very strong 71st edition. A distinctive and yet quiet talent since her first film Corpo Celeste was selected at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight in 2011, followed three years later by her second film The Wonders, Alice Rohwacher has reached, at just 36, a maturity and force that echoes both Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ermanno Olmi. Conceived as a diptych, Happy as Lazzaro is a poetic fable which starts in an enchanted and timeless Roman countryside and finishes in the asphalt jungle of industrial Turin.

There’s nothing that screams 2018 feminism more than a bunch of celebrities holding hands on a red carpet. This year’s Cannes festival is the latest opportunity in a long string of awards ceremonies for the rich and famous to gain some brownie points. If there were an awards ceremony for the most right-on awards ceremony (please no one take me up on that), Cannes might well win. This year’s tote bags contained a flier emblazoned with #NeRienLaisserPasser (or, roughly, don’t let anything happen). ‘Let’s not ruin the party’ it said in French, warning attendees to watch their behaviour.