January 24th 2025
A Complete Unknown
The Brutalist
The Room Next Door
Carry-On (streaming on Netflix)
This truly is a week of stand-out films, with wins and nominations right, left and centre. Plus a good couch-potato action thriller from Netflix! I'm blown away by the Dylan biopic, overawed by The Brutalist, and totally moved by the lead performances in The Room Next Door. Happy watching!
A Complete Unknown
Dir: James Mangold
Length: 141 mins
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© Searchlight Pictures - you believe that
Chalamet IS Bob Dylan |
Is this film unmissable for me because I grew up in that era, or because it's a brilliant film? Both! The story of Bob Dylan's rise from a folk hero of the mid-sixties to his controversial move to non-acoustic music is thrillingly depicted in this wonderful biopic. The film never seeks to put the man on a pedestal (his fans did enough of that!), but rather to show him warts and all: his astonishing talent with lyrics, his sociopolitical commentary on the era, and his many tumultuous love affairs with women. Also, the film never seeks to analyse the man; it just gives us a snapshot in time of that particular stage in his life, but it certainly helps us understand why today he is generally seen as a bit of a reclusive stand-offish character. Now to the most gob-smacking aspect, for me, of this movie. I totally assumed that the actors were lip-synching to the original singers' tracks, only to discover that the leads all did their own singing and guitar work. Starting with Timothee Chalamet as Dylan, I can only say he channels the singer's voice, and everything about his performance makes me think I was watching Dylan himself, not to mention the uncanny physical resemblance. Monica Barbaro almost replicates the ethereal voice of my childhood hero Joan Baez, while Ed Norton is compelling as mainstay of the folk revolution Pete Seeger. Dylan's romances were complex, as he juggled Baez and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a sweet young thing not part of the music scene. Bob's intrisic carelessness towards his women is never glossed over - making him all the more real. The whole film builds towards the "shocking" moment at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, when, much to the horror of his fans, Bob picks up an electric guitar. That seminal moment in music history is gloriously portrayed in all its seething emotion, with the song Like a Rolling Stone simply showcasing even more pointedly the turning point in the life of a master songwriter. 5 - unmissable
The Brutalist
Dir: Brady Corbett
Length: 215 mins
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| © Universal - it's in the realm of epic! |
Famed architect Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) has escaped the Holocaust and post-war Hungary and emigrated to America, but has been unable to bring his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and her niece Zsofia (Raffie Cassidy) with him. He works initially in a furniture store with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), but then gets the opportunity to redesign a library for millionaire industrialist Harrison Lee van Buren (an Oscar-nominated Guy Pearce). This opens the door for Toth to become involved in a monumental project envisioned by van Buren, but he also has to get his personal life in order as Erzsebet re-enters the picture. Already with countless nominations and wins, (including Best Actor for Brody at the Golden Globes) this is a movie on an epic scale. Its vastness thematically is almost overwhelming; we have the immigrant experience and the perhaps false hope of the American dream, the ongoing anti-semitism that dogs Toth, and the patronising superiority of the wealthy. Then there is the intimate and personal side of the tale; Toth's demons - a driven perfectionist personality, problems with addiction, and his relationship issues - all a clever counterpoint to the vastness of the overall tale. Brody gives a career-best performance, while Pearce is phenomenal as the ultimately reprehensible millionaire. Cinematography is sweeping, lots of fascinating angles, in keeping with the architectural ideas, and also capturing strongly the sense of period and place. Some may be deterred by the long runtime, but there is an official intermission, and the film is so engrossing it rewards the input of hours. It's a fiction, but so compelling you think it's truth!4.5 - wholeheartedly recommended
The Room Next Door
Dir: Pedro Almodovar
Length: 107mins
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| © Sony - facing the end with friendship |
Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice FF 2024, this haunting and gentle film raises the thorny issue of assisted suicide. Martha (a more gaunt than ever Tilda Swinton) and Ingrid (Julianne Moore), work colleagues from many years ago, reconnect at a time when Martha is dying from terminal cancer. The sick woman confesses that she has bought a tablet over the dark web; one that will end her life at a time of her choice. She asks Ingrid to come with her for a few weeks up to her home in the mountains, and to simply be in the next room when she decides to end it all. If you've already decided this is too depressing a topic, think again. In his first English-language film, Almodovar conjures something very positive about the idea of grasping what we have, living in the now, and simply being in the world until we are not. Both lead performances are, as to be expected, powerful, yet sweetly gentle, as the two women rediscover each other and face an impending death head on. Swinton is remarkably transformed by the make-up department to also play her own daughter. The film is not without its small moments of humour, and to offset the subject matter there is plenty of signature Almodovar color in the settings, while the musical soundtrack is quite sublime. Two small male supporting performances are worth mentioning - John Turturro as Daniel, a lacklustre man both women once dated, and Alessandro Nivola as a policeman from the bible belt who is hell-bent on exposing "the truth", a plot-thread which is thankfully not expanded upon. The poeticness of the inevitability and universality of death is expressed finally in the closing lines, from James Joyce: The snow is falling, falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling on all the living and the dead. A most worthy and sobering film experience. 4 - highly recommended
Carry-on
Dir: Jauime Collett-Serra
Length: 119 mins
Streaming on Netflix - new release
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© Netflix - prepare yourself for
non-stop action |
And now for something completely different!!! Feeling like popcorn on the sofa, and a fast-paced thriller that really won't challenge the brain too much? Taron Edgerton (best-known for playing Elton John in Rocket Man), is Ethan Kopek, one of those people at the airport check-in, charged with watching the bags go through the x-ray machine and pulling out anything suspicious. When he's tricked into picking up a mysterious earpiece, a disembodied voice (Jason Bateman) tells him he'd better do what he's told, or his pregnant girlfriend Nora (Sophie Carson) will die. And of course doing what he's told involves letting something through which should never get on an aircraft! The film moves along at a cracking pace, with one especially exciting and well-choreographed scene set in the backstage department of the moving luggage carousel, as the two adversaries face off. There are plenty of plot twists (Russian mobsters play a role) and generally the action keeps one engaged, even if there are a few unbelievable moments (Well, aren't there always in this type of movie.) But for lovers of the genre, it's just the ticket.3.5- well recommended
