I suspect the fact that I recognise Chiwetel Ejiofor mainly from the British Airways safety video does not reflect well upon me, even as someone who doesn’t watch many films. But now I also know him for Rob Peace, a film for which he wrote the adaptation of the book, directed, and starred in, playing the titular character’s father.

This is a biographical film. Rob Peace is shown to be a precocious child born to a poor, black family in the US in 1980. During his childhood, his father is imprisoned for murder, though his family has doubts about the safety of the conviction. With a lot of hard work, Peace ends up securing a place at Yale. He begins to sell drugs while there to fund his father’s appeal, and the discovery of this plot puts paid to his desire to pursue a doctorate.

He moves onto a real estate career through which he intends to improve the neighbourhood in which he grew up, though his longer-term plans are scuppered by the financial crash. He once again takes to selling drugs in order to refund the money his friends had invested in his venture, though he is shot dead in the process.

Biography is hard, and it seems to me that biography on film must be even harder: how do you cram a life into a couple of hours? This film doesn’t quite crack that nut: it’s tonally uneven, and it does a lot of ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’, sometimes in quite peculiar ways. For example, we are told that Peace has a particular talent for bringing people together and that a party he has organised has an attendance list drawn from many different social groups, rather than shown this. He has a romantic relationship which we don’t see enough of to be truly invested in, but also shown more than just a ‘hint’ of. Some of the choices struck me as downright odd.

The other issue with this film—and it’s surely one of the challenges of biography—is that I don’t think it gets the balance right between the focus on its subject and the ripples of influence they have. Everything here is focused on Peace: we don’t really get to understand and appreciate his positive impact on others (though his housing project, for example), nor any negative impact (upon the people to whom he sold drugs, for example). This left it feeling a little bit insular, and it felt like this undercut the film’s attempt to meaningfully dive into some of the bigger social challenges the film raises.

But, nevertheless, I enjoyed this. This didn’t completely work for me, but I would like to see more of this sort of thing: it was close to being excellent.

The film was carried by its main star, Jay Will, who is magnetic and completely believable in the role. He must surely have a huge acting career ahead of him. Weirdly, I thought the weakest link among the actors was Ejiofor himself, whose character seemed utterly inconsistent from scene to scene—though perhaps this was more the fault of his writing than his acting.

I think this is worth going to see.

I don’t know much about cinema, and the critics seem to have enjoyed this film, so you may want to take my view with a pinch of salt… but I did not enjoy this “psychological thriller”.

The film is set on an island where a unique flower grows. This flower induces amnesia in those who come into dermal contact with it or ingest it. In an astounding coincidence, ingestion or injection with the venom of a species of snake native to the same island acts as an antidote.

A tech billionaire hires a workforce to kill the snakes on sight, lures women to the island, exposes them to the flower, and violently rapes them, leaving them with no memory of the event. These are not the actions of a criminal mastermind. You can already see the slithering flaw in this genius’s plan—I suspect you are not psychologically thrilled.

You may even have exported from that scenario a neatly packaged solution to the genius’s oversight—but, alas, you’re in danger of spoiling a plot point in the very last scene of the film.

But plot isn’t everything: perhaps I enjoyed the cinematography, the emotional set pieces, and the allegory? I’m afraid not.

The cinematography was poorly matched to the script. Extremely violent, distressing scenes were graphically realised, only to be undercut by lines of dialogue that made the cinema audience laugh out loud. There is something maniacal about about filming scenes disturbing enough to warrant a trigger warning before the start of the film and yet undercutting their impact to this degree.

The script also didn’t deliver on emotional set pieces. There’s a scene in which the antagonist repeatedly yells ‘I’m sorry’—a moment that every cue suggests is supposed to tense and emotionally charged—yet it is so utterly absurd and overcooked that it, too, raised a notable titter from the audience at my screening.

Allegory, it seemed to me, was absent. Or, at least, in light of the peculiarly pitched ending, there was no allegory I was interested in unveiling: it seemed to be sailing close to suggesting that financial success represented outsized recompense for suffering unfathomable trauma—and that inflicting abuse was a reasonable trade-off for securing that reward. Others have mentioned the film’s sharp take on gender politics and wealth inequality—I didn’t see what they saw.

I’d say something about the acting, but the script was so leaden that I don’t think even the world’s best actors could have saved it. Those who were cast certainly couldn’t, but it feels wrong to criticise them for that.

As I say, this interpretation seems to swim against the mainstream of critical opinion, so I might be talking nonsense—perhaps I missed the point.

But for me, the biggest failure of all in this film was that it was mindlessly boring. It’s been a long time since I last walked out of a film partway through, but I came close to doing so during this one. I can’t recommend it.

I streamed this 1995 Richard Linklater film after an online recommendation engine—I can’t remember which one—suggested it would be a good fit for me.

As you may know, it follows an American boy called Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and a French girl called Celine (Julie Delpy), both in their early 20s. They meet on a train, and spontaneously decide to alight together in Vienna, spending the night walking around the city and talking.

It was very warmly received in the 90s, and has been called one of the most romantic films of all time. My feelings were mixed.

This is a dialogue-heavy film: the whole thing is basically a single conversation between Jesse and Celine. This is exceptionally well-written and true-to-life, and the two actors have strong chemistry. I found it engrossing.

The problem—if it is a problem—is that the film doesn’t escape its confines. There’s a lot of naïve chat between the couple, the sort of cod philosophy of carefree wealthy twenty-somethings. Other than the viewer, there’s nothing within the film that’s at a remove from their perspective. This felt indulgent, and I vacillated between finding it charming and suffocating. I still don’t quite know whether I liked it or not: I wouldn’t describe it as romantic so much as a portrayal of a naïve idea of romance. It reminded me of Heather Rigdon’s Young & Naïve in sentiment, though the couple in the film—unlike the song—are the same age.

In the end, it’s hard to conclude that a film that had me glued to the screen and left me with lots to ponder is anything other than a success. Two sequels have also followed in the two decades since, and I plan to seek them out—which is surely an indication of recommendation.

It is, though, very much a film of its time. The gender politics have moments of real discomfort for one thing—so your mileage may vary.

In November last year, the FT’s Associate Editor Stephen Bush encouraged readers of his daily political email to see the film How to Have Sex, which he called ‘a peerless film about friendships, relationships and consent’. It has been on my ‘to watch’ list ever since, and I’ve finally got around to streaming it.

The film follows three sixteen-year-old girls, played by Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake and Enva Lewis, as they go on a boozy holiday in the party town of Malia, Crete, with the express intention of engaging in casual sex. It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that, at least for the central character played by Mia McKenna-Bruce, this intention is fulfilled—but that this leads to some complicated and often dark emotional places. The film is understated, and somehow both devastating and yet, by the end, weirdly uplifting.

This is a film that is observational rather than judgemental. The acting and cinematography are so astoundingly good that it feels at times indistinguishable from an artfully constructed observational documentary. All three of the female leads have the capacity to communicate profound shifts in emotional states with the slightest change of expression. They must surely all be on the road to becoming giant stars.

It’s a film which I think I could watch over again and see entirely different things within it. It’s also one of very few films I’ve seen where I’ve thought that the medium is essential: I can’t imagine this working as well as a novel, for example, the ambiguity of seeing events and emotions makes it.

I concur with Stephen Bush: this is peerless.

Sixty years before this film was released, James Burge QC found himself in court defending Stephen Ward in the trial associated with the Profumo affair. He famously described his client as ‘a man with an artistic temperament and obviously with high sexual proclivities leading a dissolute life’.

Ira Sachs’s Passages, released last year, features a central character could be similarly described. Sixty years on, however, the social outrage is mostly absent, and there’s no hint of political intrigue in this story. And so we’re left with ninety minutes of modern Parisian melodrama, a loose love triangle that I found neither interesting nor absorbing.

I don’t really mean to lay into it too much: it’s clear that the film is held in high regard by critics, so it must surely have a lot of technical merit, even if it didn’t stand out to me. The film had the feel of a passion project for the director and cast, and in that sense, I’m glad that it exists. The cinematography was impressive, capturing Paris beautifully, and the performances were compelling, even if the characters didn’t resonate with me.

It just wasn’t for me. Sitting on the sofa, my mind kept wandering, and it took some effort not to just give up on the film around the 30-minute mark. For all its abundant qualities, I simply didn’t feel any personal connection with it. Your mileage may vary.

This film was very much Wendy’s streaming choice: a long-term fan of trance music, and of Armin van Buuren in particular, she was intrigued to see this 2023 release. It combines footage of one of van Buuren’s shows from Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome with documentary footage and interviews.

This confounded my expectations. I didn’t expect a trance concert to feature a live orchestra of classical musicians, live singers and live ballet. Wendy has always argued that trance has its roots in classical music, and that couldn’t have been made plainer than in this production.

I didn’t expect the interviews to focus on van Buuren’s recent struggle with depression. He talked about how his therapy had taught him to live mindfully in the moment. It isn’t hard to see the parallel between that advice and trance music—which perhaps explains why this slightly bizarre combination of content slotted together so seamlessly.

He talked, too, about his struggle with social media and people’s criticism of him and his work online. I often read or hear of famous people simply ignoring this sort of content, and was struck by his different approach. He talked of recognising that everyone sees the world differently, but understanding that there may be a kernel of useful and usable feedback in even unjust criticism. He noted that he can’t control others’ opinions, but he can strive to be better by his own judgment. It seemed like a grounded and reflective approach.

I also found myself enjoying the music, perhaps all the more for understanding some of the thought processes which informed it.

This was not at all the film I expected it to be, and I very much enjoyed it.

Earlier this week, I said—in essence—that I didn’t see the point of the film Civil War. Maybe I’m in a strange mood, because I felt the same after seeing Back to Black. Perhaps I just don’t understand cinema.

Back to Black is a biographical drama based on the life of Amy Winehouse, who is brilliantly played by Marisa Abela. It is an unremitting sympathetic portrayal of Winehouse and virtually everyone else in her life—to the point where it doesn’t really hang together as saying much of anything at all.

I suppose the first decision a biographer in any format must make is to decide on the questions they want to interrogate about the life they are covering. Even to me, someone who didn’t especially follow Amy Winehouse’s life or career, it seems as though it had a rich tapestry, as though she existed mostly in shades of grey rather than black or white.

It might have been interesting to interrogate the thought processes behind her compositions; but this film just repeatedly features her sitting alone and suddenly singing line upon line of perfect lyrics. There is no process.

It might have been interesting to interrogate the influence of her use of alcohol and cannabis on her songwriting; but in this film, alcohol and drugs are portrayed only in the negative.

It might have been interesting to interrogate how success and fame changed her approach to her art; but in this film, they bring only intrusive paparazzi.

Really, the film doesn’t ask any questions. It turns a short but storied life and a remarkable talent into a sympathetic melodrama featuring nothing but blandly ‘nice’ people.

It feels almost like the writer decided that the film should portray some of the life events that inspired the songs without realising that the songs’ emotional heft comes from being personal, opinionated, and true. Show them as based on a sanitised, black-and-white version of the truth comes off as inauthentic.

This is a middle-of-the-road, inoffensive film about a character who was neither of those things. In the end, that’s just a weird choice.

I saw this recently released film on the big screen this week. It follows a journalistic foursome as they travel across a present-day USA embroiled in civil war, attempting to reach and interview the President in the White House.

Our foursome comprises celebrated war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), her aspiring protégé Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), Smith’s longtime writer collaborator Joel (Wagner Moura), and veteran New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson).

It seemed as if the film was going to be a tribute to the power of journalism, but it didn’t quite land: the central message ended up being about the futility of journalism, which was an odd choice, and I’m not convinced that it was what they were aiming for. I also didn’t really understand why they chose the US as a setting: it seemed to oddly hamstring the writers, who avoided any mention of issues which might divide the nation, which one might think would be the very issue journalists would want to examine. Some visual effects were jarringly ropey: a large group of helicopters seemingly caused no down-draft in one scene, which then immediately cut to the next scene beginning with the focus on a single helicopter’s down-draft causing dust to blow. There were a few deathly dull, protracted gunfight/battle scenes which could have been usefully cut.

And yet, for all that, I didn’t think the end result was too bad. It was a weird sort of road trip movie, and it was quite endearing to see the relationships of our foursome develop and to watch Jessie come of age. The soundtrack was not entirely successful, but was at least playful and unpredictable.

I don’t particularly want to see this again, but I wasn’t rolling my eyes and tapping my foot, waiting for the credits to roll.

It was… alright.

Last year, I enjoyed Charlotte Wells’s film Aftersun.

I recently learned that Wells had made a previous 11-minute short film which was particularly well-regarded: Tuesday. The whole thing can be streamed for free on her website.

It’s a short film centred on a Scottish sixteen-year-old girl’s experience of grief, most of it—like most of the emotion in Aftersun—unexpressed and repressed.

I noticed that Tuesday felt like it was, emotionally, at a remove from the viewer. I felt like an observer, rather than someone involved in the central character’s emotional life. This was similar to my response to Aftersun, and it’s made me reevaluate it: perhaps that was, in fact, Wells’s intent in both films.

There is something interesting about casting the viewer as an observer, about keeping the characters at a distance. It’s also something that must be difficult to achieve when the emotions explored in both films are such strong, universal feelings.

You already know that I know nothing about cinema; this short film made me realise that I perhaps missed the point, the artistic intent, of that longer one.

Maybe I’m learning… though writing about ‘Tuesday’ on a Monday perhaps shows I could learn a little more about good blogging technique.

A year on from watching the Royal Northern Sinfonia accompany Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, Wendy and I returned to see them repeat the trick with Chaplin’s 1936 follow-up, Modern Times.

I don’t think I’ve seen Modern Times before. The programme for this performance leaned into a narrative around automation and drew a comparison with the current debate about the future of work in the context of artificial intelligence. I found this a bit reaching: I saw the film more as a commentary on capitalism and the Great Depression.

You may already know the plot: Chaplin’s Tramp is sacked from his job at a steel mill after the pace and repetitive nature of the work produces a nervous breakdown. He meets a girl, they plan a life together, but he bounces in and out of employment and prison. It’s a mostly-silent comedy romance, scored by Chaplin.

Not knowing the film, I was disappointed by the score, which seemed to draw heavily on the jazz standard Smile. You may chuckle knowingly: as I’ve since discovered, the score came first, and combined with lyrics inspired by the film, it became Smile only two decades or so later.

Modern Times was brilliant, particularly in its physical comedy, but I thought it lacked a bit of the warm innocence of City Lights. It also had less emotional range: Modern Times didn’t have the profound melancholy and longing of City Lights: it was an altogether lighter affair, despite its political message.

But the film was only half the experience. The Royal Northern Sinfonia performed as brilliantly as always, and as with last year’s example, really brought the film to life.

We had a great time.