December 7th 2023
Master Gardener
Two Tickets to Greece (opens Boxing Day - previews 10th December)
Coup de Chance (opens Boxing Day)
Paradise (streaming on Netflix)
Sly (streaming on Netflix)
The Pope's Exorcist (streaming on Netflix)
Farha (streaming on Netflix)
The Present (short film streaming on Netflix)
Here's a mixed grab bag of films. Two are slated for Boxing Day, with one previewing this weekend. Another is out in cinemas today, and I've added a few very brief reviews of films I've snapped up streaming on Netflix.
Dir: Paul Schrader
Length: 111 mins
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© Transmission - a gardener with a past -
two women in his orbit! |
Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton) is chief horticulturist for the sprawling gardens of the estate of wealthy old dowager Mrs Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). He pays fanatical attention to detail in his job, as well as fulfilling a few other dubious duties for his boss. Mrs Haverhill decides Roth should take on her great-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) as an apprentice, to give the wayward disturbed young woman some direction in life. But as Maya's involvement in her new craft blossoms, so does a romance with Roth, inciting Haverhill's jealousy. Both Roth and Maya have a dodgy history, his involving hate crimes with a white supremacist group (all in the past - he since turned informant), and hers with deceased parents and drugs. Can the pair move forward to make a worthwhile life? This is an odd little film, uneven in its tone, full of strong points and some weaknesses. It starts off well with a grand and formal feel, almost like a Southern period piece, evoking wonderful images of gardens, especially as healing tools. With the appearance of Maya, and Haverhill's jealousy, disdain and disapproval, the tone takes another turn and it becomes a different type of story. Finally, as we discover through flashbacks Roth's past (as evidenced by disturbing tattoos on his body), and as Maya's drug connections enter the story, the tone turns yet again with a more contemporary (and less interesting) sensibility. But the three lead performances are excellent. Edgerton is suitably tense as a man constantly doing battle with his demons and seeking redemption. Weaver is a past-master at doing imperious and cold. And of course any film that has gardens (both actual and used metaphorically) is going to be intrisically pleasing to me.3 - recommended
Two Tickets to Greece
Dir: Marc Fitoussi
Length: 110mins
Opens Boxing Day with advance screenings Sunday December 10
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© Palace - a total delight - friends and
Greek islands - what more could you want? |
Reuniting childhood friends after years apart can be fun or fraught. Blandine (Olivier Cote) and Margalie (Laure Calamy) are chalk and cheese, the former serious, grieving a divorce from her husband who is with a new, younger wife. Margalie is a good-time gal, always up for a bit of a dance, a laugh and a scam (like trying to rip off the Greek ferry operators!) Blandine's son Benjamin sees his mother's depression and engineers a reunion of the two friends, then pulls out of a trip he promised to go on, and suggests Margalie go in his place. After all, as teens, the pair always wanted to visit the Greek island of Amorgos. Nothing goes quite as planned, the pair fret and quarrel, thanks to mishaps end up on islands not on the schedule, and finally connect with Magalie's friend Bijou (Kristin Scott Thomas), a Bohemian jewellery maker who lives on idyllic Mykonos with her artist partner Dimitris (Panos Koronis). This is pretty much a road movie and a odd-couple buddy movie, refreshingly starring women instead of blokes. And it's a sweet, fun, gentle and delightful story of finding the good in life, overcoming the obstacles, and holding tight to friendships and support along the way. Calamy is a powerhouse, whipping up a storm of vibrant enthusiasm, and yet when the time comes for hidden secrets or serious confrontations to emerge, her range of acting talents are totally up to the job. Scott-Thomas and Cote are equally convincing in their very different roles. Each of the women has their own baggage but nothing in the plot or its small revelations is ever laboured; everything in the script is kept nicely understated, keeping it real. And of course the settings are simply to die for. What's not to love in this film, perfect for the holiday season?4 - highly recommended
Dir: Woody Allen
Length: 113 mins
Coup de Chance will be in cinemas Boxing Day
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© Sharmill - Woody takes his story-telling to
Paris in a fun love story |
Not to be outdone by fellow oldies Ken Loach and Martin Scorsese, (their latest fabulous films recently reviewed), 88-year-old Woody Allen comes up with his 50th feature film. Fanny Fournier (Lou le Laage) is married to wealthy businessman Jean (Melvin Poupard). They live and work in Paris. Sometimes Fanny fears that she is a bit of a trophy wife, uncomfortable in the circles in which Jean moves, but she has everything her heart could desire and the couple seem very much in love. One day, by chance, she meets Alain (Niels Schneider) an old schoolmate who is not backward in coming forward to tell Fanny what a crush he had on her when they were kids. They meet for lunch and one things leads to another. Set in Paris, all in French, this is Woody territory to a tee. Bright throwaway lines and telling conversations, tense relationship dynamics, plenty of subterfuge and of course much humour. There's a delicious subplot with Fanny's cheery mother Camille (Valerie Lemercier) deciding to do some snooping into Jean's deceased business partner, all of which leads to a wonderfully unexpected and farcical ending. All in all, light breezy story-telling, in a glorious setting, with a wonderful cast and Woody's ever-assured directorial hand. (Brave man making a film in a language he doesn't speak!)3.5 - well recommended
Dir: Boris Kunz
Length: 117 mins
Streaming on Netflix
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© Netflix - seriously freaky premise in
a strong futuristic tale |
This German sci-fi is a winner, but somewhat disturbing. A company called AEON develops a technique to transfer years of one's life to another human. The exchange is of course monetary, and the person who sells their years ages proportionately, and fairly instantly. Unsettling already! One of AEON's top salesmen, Max, discovers, when his apartment burns down, that his wife Elena put 40 years of her life up as security against a housing loan. Now, that debt is being called in. This gripping thriller raises many ethical questions, and of course they all have to do with greed, fear of aging, and that old chestnut of how the rich in society get all the benefits and opportunites while the poor are often forced to make invidious choices. Well acted with a chilling and tense plot this is a beauty for sci-fi lovers. 4 - highly recommended
Dir: Thom Zimny
Length: 95 mins
Streaming on Netflix
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© Netflix - the man will surprise you. He's
neither Rambo nor Rocky. |
This short and sweet look at the life of Sylvester "Sly" Stallone is nothing like you would have imagined. Firstly he is not the rough and tough Rocky or Rambo that he plays. He comes across as a more insecure man, coming from a traumatised childhood with a brutal father, and determined to make something of his life. He speaks openly, without much ego, and what he has to say is interesting and useful in a life sense. With terrific clips from his films, and surprising insights into his deeper psyche, Sly makes for good watching. Worth seeing!
Dir: Julius Avery
Length: 103 mins
Streaming on Netflix
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© Netflix - die-hard horror fans could
get a kick out of this one |
I don't usually go for this sort of horror film, but Russell Crowe drew me in, starring as Gabriele Amorth, a real-life exorcist who wrote many books about the thousands of exorcisms he performed. This particular demonic episode begins in Italy in the late 1980s, where we meet a cheery joke cracking, motorcycle-riding Amorth who performs an exorcism which he declares seems to be more a case of psychological disturbance. But then he is called to Spain, where Julia, a widow, has inherited an old abbey that was in her husband's family; she has gone there to renovate and sell. Her two kids Henry and Amy don't care for the place, even less when it seems Henry has been possessed by a particularly strong demon. Enter Fr. Amorth. Though there is a lot of gore and foul language, a couple of things impressed me: Rusty's skill with the Italian language and his subsequent Italian-accented English, and the intriguing story of what was really under the abbey, connected somehow to the Spanish Inquisition (and a few theories about the Devil's role in it). Although some parts of the film border on silly, there is enough scariness to warrant a look for die-hard horror worshippers (and Rusty fans). Possibly worth seeing
And now a couple of films that are disturbingly relevant for what is going on in the world today . . .
Dir: Darrin J Sallam
Length: 92 mins
Streaming on Netflix (2021)
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© Netflix - a young girl's aspiration for
an education cut short |
Winner of a number of recent awards, this timely film is the true story of a young Palestinian girl Farha (Karam Taher), who, much to her delight, is accepted into higher study. But the year is 1948 and the country is Palestine. The state of Israel has just been created and all hell breaks loose between Arabs and Jews. Farha's father hides her in a locked pantry, from which she cannot escape, and from where she witnesses all manner of atrocities perpetrated by Israeli fighters on Arabs who they believe to be in the resistance. Regardless of your stance on this never-ending Middle-eastern nightmare, with its rights and wrongs, a film of this nature is well worth watching as it shows ultimately the destruction enmity wreaks on people's lives. 4 - highly recommended
Dir: Farah Nabulsi
Length: 24 mins
Streaming on Netflix
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| © Netflix - a touching and salutary short drama |
Nominated in 2021 for Best Live Action Short Film at the Oscars, this is a tiny gem of a film. (Thank you ol' buddy Elly Z for alerting me to it!) It is a perfect companion piece to Farha, and to the current situation in Israel/Palestine. Although part of a complex geopolitical disaster, the film is a small, gentle and utterly human story of a father taking his little girl shopping to get a present for his wife. The indignities and dehumanising treatment they must endure give an insight into one of the factors causing so much tension in the region today. But it is the family and its relationships depicted that reinforce for us that most ordinary people are similar the world over, and are unfortunate victims of the warring, power-mongering few. A great opportunity to see the small films that vie for Oscars and are often so hard to get to view. 4 - highly recommended
