Wendy and I saw Past Lives advertised a little while ago, and were keen to see it at the cinema.

It is Celine Song’s debut film, starring Greta Lee and Teo Yoo. It follows two 12-year-old friends in South Korea who are parted when one of them emigrates. We catch up with them at age 24, and again at age 36, as they reflect on how their lives have changed, and on the paths not taken.

It’s hard to know what to say about the film. It was wonderfully acted, beautifully shot and the script was understated and emotionally powerful. It is one of those films which is as much about what is not said as what is said: there are several extraordinarily powerful moments without dialogue.

Both Wendy and I thought this was excellent, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing it. Yet, I think we’re perhaps less likely to remember it a year hence than, say, Tár, which I think made a bigger impression on us both.

I’m not into cars. I once owned a PlayStation 2, but I’ve never played the racing simulator game after which this film is named. I’m patently not the target audience for this recently released Neill Blomkamp film. If it weren’t for my ‘new approach’ to going to the cinema, there’s no way on Earth that I’d have seen this.

The film is based on a true story. The main character is Jann Mardenborough, a young lad who is very skilled at the Gran Turismo computer game and is thereby recruited and trained up to drive real racing cars. The tension in the film comes from whether someone from outside can make it in the highly competitive world of racing… though, of course, the existence of the film is its own spoiler.

I sort of enjoyed this. It was too long—two hours and 14 minutes—and I could have done without all the extended racing sequences. I’ll confess that I had a bit of a micro-snooze in many of them. They didn’t seem to be doing anything particularly cinematically clever, and they didn’t really advance the plot, as the outcome was often plain from the start. Yet, I was captivated by Archie Madekwe’s performance as Mardenborough, and did find myself rooting for him.

But there were issues.

Firstly, some of the characterisation was awful. Orlando Bloom could not have been less convincing as PR man Danny Moore if his dialogue had been replaced by silent-film-style interstitials. It was awful. His character had essentially no narrative arc, his drive appeared to come entirely from wanting to promote Nissan, and his whole schtick was morally questionable given the life-and-death stakes for other characters. The character was poorly written, and Bloom wasn’t able to overcome that.

I didn’t recognise Ginger Spice Geri Horner as Lesley Mardenborough—I’m not good with celebrities—but did find myself wondering what had gone wrong in the film-making process. The delivery of her lines was so detached from the situations in which they took place that I found myself wondering if there had been a sickness-driven last-minute substitution or similar. This didn’t interfere with my enjoyment in any major way, though, as the character was so minor.

Which brings us to… the almost total absence of substantive roles for women in this film. Of the first twenty credited actors, only two are women. I don’t understand why you’d make that creative choice. Sure, if this was intended to be biographically accurate, then you’re limited, but it has been widely criticised for straying quite far from the facts. So why not make the creative choice to re-cast Bloom’s character as female? That could even supply a nice narrative arc as a female PR agent battles stereotypes to establish her credentials in a male-dominated industry. It’d be more satisfying than the main motivation being to sell more Nissans. I should acknowledge Maeve Courtier-Lilley, who managed to give some depth to her role despite only being given, like, five lines.

This is also a film that patronises. There are many scenes which begin with establishing shots of well-known skylines, overlaid with both the city and the country in large letters. For example: here’s the Eiffel Tower, let’s just overlay this shot with “PARIS, FRANCE” to make sure the audience really gets it. I’m afraid this really hit my funny bone, and I found myself audibly sniggering each time it happened. Plot points are also telegraphed: there’s a section of the film where Mardenborough must come in fourth place or better to progress, and this point is hammered home so many times for the audience that it begins to hurt.

But mostly… I don’t understand why the team decided to make the racing the main point of tension in the film when the outcome is obvious. It strikes me as a really odd creative decision, but maybe that’s because I’m under-appreciating the popular appeal of the racing sequences. There’s an underplayed subplot about Mardenborough’s relationship with his dad, and I think that’s where I would have located the heart of the film. There are interesting stages to their relationship: frustration at Jaan’s preference for computer games over physical sport; a feeling of exclusion driven by the expensive, elite nature of the sport; fatherly concern at the dangers involved; and, ultimately, reflection on the lack of support he provided. There’s a lot in there that could have been unpacked through the racing, with reconciliation perhaps serving as a more rewarding ending.

Perhaps what this whole review really says is: I don’t particularly warm to racing movies, and would have liked this to be an entirely different kind of film. Who knows? This is a film I would never, under normal circumstances, have seen or had any opinion on. I’m glad I saw it, and feel like I learned a little more about my own film preferences as a result.

I recently made a resolution to see more films in cinemas. It’s a bizarre coincidence that the first film I’ve subsequently seen has an over-the-credits speech by the lead actor about the impact of seeing films in cinemas, and hubristically underlining the importance of this particular film. The fact that I spent much of that speech racking my brain to remember the product name of the IKEA floor-lamp he was sat next to—it’s an Årstid, if you’re wondering—gives some idea of the impact of the speech.

I went into this blind. I had no idea of the whole Trump / QAnon controversy associated with the film. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, it’s a US culture war rabbit hole that you’re better off ignoring, as I will for the remainder of this post.

This was a really odd film. It is apparently based on the life of Tim Ballard, who is played by Jim Caviezel, and his work with Operation Underground Railroad. The film’s expressed mission is to raise awareness of child sex trafficking. This seems to be ’raise awareness’ in the sense of ‘make people aware that it exists’, not in the sense of ‘make people aware of their own agency in influencing the situation’. This is fine, if we accept that there are people unaware of child sex trafficking, which is surely a small group.

Oddly, for a film raising awareness, the victims’ narratives are mostly skimmed over. Once children are rescued, they are portrayed as immediately happy, as though their experiences might not leave lifelong psychological and physical scars. Instead, the film follows a sort of ‘rogue US agent saves the world from evil foreigners’ script, concentrating on the rescuer’s narrative.

There’s a troubling undertone of religion as a driving force for the action, with the lead character gravely intoning that ‘God’s children are not for sale’ in a moment that, I’m afraid, caused me to audibly snort. Women in the film aren’t really given much opportunity to offer thoughts on the wider issue of trafficking, and there’s a fundamental assumption that everyone involved is plainly evil: there’s no moral complexity or challenge to be found.

There was a brief promise of some interesting moral questions, like how we should support those who are forced to watch images of child abuse for investigation and evidential purposes… but it turns out that the film’s answer was, well, not very satisfactory.

Perhaps weirdest of all, in a film that is reputedly trying to convince its audience to care about a huge problem, not a single one of the characters is motivated by it. Indeed, several actively demur from tackling trafficking in general, and will only consent to becoming involved when a specific child is on the line. That’s a peculiar narrative choice given the message.

Basically, this film gets a ‘no’ from me, with the sole exception of the child actor Lucas Avila, who steals every scene he is in, and is completely heart-melting.

There are many, many things in this world that I know very little about, a fair proportion of which are things that you probably know quite a lot about. One area in which I’m woefully lacking in even rudimentary knowledge is cinema… as you may have noticed over the last two decades of this blog.

I can’t remember the last year when I read less than 52 books (averaging one a week). Yet, in my thirty-eight years, I suspect I’ve seen fewer than 52 films at the cinema in total. In 2023 to date, I’ve seen three. I wrote ropey reviews for each of them: Tár, The Laureate and Barbie. If watching a film while a live orchestra performs the score counts, I can add City Lights to this list too… but I expect that cinema purists would cringe at the very notion.

My knowledge of film stars is essentially non-existent. I’m one of those irritating people who exclaims “who?!” as Graham Norton lists his guests of the week… or I would be, if I ever watched his chat show, which I don’t, because I don’t know who anyone on it is. I stream films a little, but probably not substantially more than I see in the cinema, and I entirely understand the argument that productions made for the big screen are best seen there.

I’m not anti-cinema. I’m essentially ambivalent: I don’t think I’ve seen enough of it to have a well-formed opinion. I’m not even sure why I’ve seen so little. I might plead a lack of time if, nine years ago, I hadn’t made a big thing about no-one ever having time to do anything.

As there’s little as satisfying in life as filling a knowledge gap, I’ve decided to take drastic action. I’m going to follow the Stephen Bush mantra:

I think in general, beyond screening out some genres that aren’t for you — I never watch horror or anything involving fixing or racing cars — just going to whatever’s on is a pretty good way of having, at the least, a not-terrible time.

I’m going to make an effort to go to the cinema more often, and just see whatever. This might be a terrible idea, and I might give up on it after about a fortnight. Alternatively, if I’m not bored out of my skull or finding ways to avoid the flicks, then trying to see 52 films in a year might become a ‘thing’ for 2024.

This post is really my way of saying… there might be some unexpected film reviews coming up.

Watch this space.

The image at the top of this post was generated by Midjourney.

Wendy and I went to see Barbie at the cinema over the weekend, and I’m not sure that I’ve got much to say about it.

It was a perfectly fine allegorical tale of adolescence, of growing up and discovering the real world. It had a broadly feminist angle, but wasn’t in any sense challenging or radical. The cast was all-star, the acting was outstanding, the dancing was unexpected and great, and the set design was enormous fun. The script had some zingy one-liners.

It was fine. It was corporate, safe, solid, fun, funny and pacy. It was warm-hearted in a Sunday-night-television, mug-of-Horlicks sort of way. There wasn’t any real edge or subversion, and there were no unsettling surprises. It wasn’t a film that I’d want to go and see a second time, nor that I imagine I’ll remember plot details from six months from now, but it kept me interested for a couple of hours.

Not long after watching a 1950s play, I’ve thrown myself into a 1950s film… which isn’t even the oldest film I’ve written about so far this year. Truly, I’m a creature of the cultural zeitgeist.

There’s been a lot of press coverage recently of Nicole Scherzinger taking the leading role in a revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of Sunset Boulevard. This made me reflect that I’ve never seen the original film, which—unlike Lloyd Webber’s musical—is sometimes considered among the greatest contributions to the arts of the twentieth century. So I thought I’d stream it.

And blimey, it’s good. You already know the plot: Norma Desmond, a silent film star left behind by ‘talkies’, meets an up-and-coming movie writer, Joe Gillis, and a strange symbiotic relationship forms. Norma slowly descends into madness. It’s a plot that holds up wonderfully 73 years on: its black comedy unknowingly satirises many of our current cultural conversations about the duty of care to people who fall from the limelight.

You don’t need me to tell you that Gloria Swanson and William Holden give brilliant, era-defining performances. So many of the lines and scenes have become cultural touchstones, yet there is still something quite astonishing about how well the entire production holds up. We’re lucky to live in an age where we can, with a few taps on a keyboard, enjoy cinematic masterpieces.

William Nunez’s film about Robert Graves’s love triangle / square won a clutch of awards back in 2021, but has only just been cinematically released. Wendy and I went along to see it, knowing hardly anything about it.

I wasn’t impressed. This is one of those films whose opening surveys a troubling scene, with the rest of the film dedicated to explaining how things ended up this way. Except… it doesn’t because the explanation is prosaically pat, and most of the film is entirely extraneous to it. It could get there in five minutes with nothing lost. And, it’s revealed, the troubling scene isn’t quite as dramatic as it appeared to be in any case. It’s an odd point around which to frame a biopic.

This was a film that lacked soul and narrative drive. I’m not sure the film understood the forces behind the characters’ relationships, and as a result, they felt shallow.

And, the greatest cinematic sin of all, I was left without a clue as to what Nunez was trying to say with this film.

Basically: not for me.

I saw this Oscar-winning 2021 film though streaming it at home, which probably isn’t the best way to see a cinematic production. It’s a remake of the 2014 French film La Famille Bélier, which I haven’t seen. I mention these facts only to illustrate that you most likely shouldn’t trust my judgement of this film.

CODA—an acronym for ‘child of deaf adults’—features a family of four, of whom only the youngest, a daughter, has hearing. She is a talented singer, and wants to pursue a career that her family struggles to understand, but is held back by her family’s reliance on her sign-language translations.

The film features a stellar cast, many of whom are deaf, including the incomparable Marlee Matlin. She plays against type as an under-confident and under-empathetic mother to the main character, played by Emilia Jones, who has a genuinely remarkable singing voice.

The problem with the film was the book, which was weak throughout. This is one of those films where the main obstacles in the protagonist’s path are overcome in a silent montage set to music in the last few minutes of the film. The actors greatly out-performed the script, with the exception perhaps of Eugenio Derbez whose character was wholly unbelievable and partly unbearable. His character was a composite of several in the French original, which might explain the unevenness in characterisation which even Derbez’s considerable talent couldn’t smooth over.

There is much to enjoy in this film—the acting and the music, in particular—but it’s not one I intend ever to re-watch.

This 90-minute 2019 film is entirely composed of restored archival footage of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, plus a brilliant Matt Morton score. There are no talking heads and there’s no narration. The footage does it all, aided only by occasional captions (in irritatingly tiny size) and a diagrammatic representation of the mission.

It is properly breathtaking.

The opening sequence of the rocket rolling to the launch pad was, to me at least, redolent of childhood memories of Thunderbirds. The footage was so startlingly clear and bright that it is hard to believe that it’s over half a century old.

The film seemed to me to capture the daring of the mission, the tension at each crucial stage, along with a little of the humanising gallows humour. But it also showed something of the 1960s, of the societal impact of the space programme, and of the theatrics of the whole endeavour.

The film is a real triumph of curation of archive material, and a model of restraint in letter that archive speak for itself. It is well worth 90 minutes of anyone’s time.

On Friday evening, Wendy and I crossed the glassy Tyne to see Stefan Geiger conducting the Royal Northern Sinfonia. The occasion was a performance of Charlie Chaplin’s score to his 1931 silent film, City Lights. The film played out on a screen above the orchestra. This was our first time back to the Sage since the pandemic, and it was delightful to be back in a venue that holds so many happy memories for us.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen City Lights before. But, it is one of those films with such cultural relevance that perhaps I’ve just seen so many clips and references to it that I think I’ve seen it before. I’ve certainly never paid much attention to the score, and I wasn’t aware that Chaplin had ever written music. As Geiger pointed out in his opening remarks, Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in and scored the film, surely marking him out as a genius.

The experience of seeing the film with the score performed live obviously drew our attention to the music to a much greater degree than usual. The score is notable for its melancholy, which might not be expected in a comedy film. The Royal Northern Sinfonia performed it beautifully.

This was also, I think, my first experience of seeing a Charlie Chaplin film with an audience—and perhaps even my first time seeing a silent film with an audience. I was struck by how the laughter of the crowd—and especially the final “ahh”—became part of the soundtrack in itself, and made for a genuinely shared experience.

This was a lovely night out.