Crazy Rich Asians

Directed by: Jon M. ChuCrazy Rich Asians

Screenplay by: Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim

Based on the novel, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ by: Kevin Kwan

Produced by: Nina Jacobson, p. g. a., Brad Simpson, p. g. a., Jong Penotti, p., g., a.,

Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Harry Shum Jr., Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Nico Santos, Jing Lusi, Carmen Soo, Pierre Png, Fiona Xie, Victoria Loke, Janice Koh, Amy J Cheng, Koh Chieng Mun, Calvin Wong, Tan Kheng Hua, Constance Lau, Selena Tan, Nevan Koit, Amanda Evans.

Like Rachel Chu’s (Constance Wu) ‘auspicious nose’ I’m feeling very lucky watching Crazy Rich Asians just before going on holiday to Singapore – but trust me, I’m flying economy!

Watching Crazy Rich Asians does make you feel glamorous and extravagant, thrown into the world of the superrich.  And not just rich, old money rich.

Rachel may be an NYU Economics professor, but she doesn’t know what she’s getting into when travelling from New York to Singapore to go to her boyfriend, Nick Young’s (Henry Golding) childhood friend’s wedding.  And to meet his family…  The family… The Youngs.

Like Rachel’s college friend, Peik Lin Goh (Awkwafina) says, Nick’s like the Asian Bachelor.

And when everyone realises that Rachel’s a Chu but not any Chu worth noting, the claws come out.

Nick’s family are posh and snobby: they’re ‘snoshy’.

To survive, Rachel needs to fight back to prove that love can conquer money.

There’re some great characters here with already mentioned college friend Peik explaining the Singapore world – that they think she’s a banana: yellow on the outside and white inside.  And Peik’s ‘new rich’ family are hilarious with Neenah Goh, AKA Aunty (Koh Chieng Mun) and hubby, Wye Mun Goh (Ken Jeong) and creepy single brother (Calvin Wong) lurking and talking photos at every opportunity.

Based on Kevin Kwan’s New York Times and international bestseller novel, I can see why the story’s so popular.

There’s humour, love, history, the difficulties of relationships – the trial of meeting Chinese-mum-knows-best Eleanor Young (Michelle Yeoh) and the matriarch and Grandmother Ah Ma (Lisa Lu) who knows better.  There’s the story of the beautiful and warm sister, Astrid Young Teo (Gemma Chan) trying to make her husband feel like a man.  And the story of a mother who had to fight and give up her own ambitions of a career for family.

So even with all the money and glitz the story is still relatable.

It’s just that beautiful mansions lit up like a fairy tale castle in the middle of the jungle and rare orchids blooming at night and crazy fashion with golden sparkly outfits and party ships in international waters and fireworks look like so much fun on the big screen.

Sure, it’s over the top.  But why not!

The film’s like a bejewelled party box with a heart-warming romance inside.

I had a lot of fun watching this movie to the extent I’m wondering if I’m becoming a romantic because Nick Young was just so gorgeous and polite and lovely and Rachel’s such a relatable, likeable character: I loved that they were in love.

And there’s more to this film than romance and, ‘love conquers all’, Crazy Rich Asians is also about integrity being worth far more than money.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

 

Rated: MA 15+The Spy Who Dumped Me

Directed by: Susanna Fogel

Written by: Susanna Fogel, David Iserson

Produced by: Brian Grazer, Erica Huggins, Guy Riedel

Starring: Kate McKinnon, Mila Kunis, Gillian Anderson, Justin Theroux, Sam Heughan, Hasan Minhaj.

 

Who do you trust when the person you thought you could trust, tells you to trust no-one? Not even the bartender who just served you a few hours ago or the naked man your best friend has brought home so she can teach him to, ‘use his passive aggressive masculinity for good rather than evil’.

The film opens in Vilnius, Lithuania with Audrey’s (Mila Kunis) boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux) in a local market assembling a makeshift weapon with his woollen scarf and some eight balls, before he fights his way out, leaps from a tall building and speeds away on a conveniently located scooter. Audrey thinks he works in publicity, producing some kind of jazz and economics podcast that nobody listens to.

Back in Los Angeles it’s Audrey’s birthday and her uninhibited, attention-seeking best friend, Morgan (Kate McKinnon), is trying to cheer her up after Drew dumped her by text message. Not that dumping her was Drew’s real agenda.

From the moment Audrey takes over Drew’s mission to deliver his gold statuette to Verne in Vienna, she and Morgan find themselves on the run with nothing but their passports and the clothes they are wearing in a crazy chase across Europe with spies, assassins and double agents at every turn.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

The action is over the top and overwhelming, the script is dazzling, not a plot hole in sight, and the sound design ranges across the full palette from explosions and the ping of high-calibre bullets to the Czech version of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots are Made for Walkin’’, but the heart of the movie is the friendship between Morgan and Audrey. The innate trust they share is in complete contrast to the illusions and fabrications perpetrated by the spies all around them. Even the cheese fondue turns deadly when the spies in the ‘fancy café’ reveal themselves.

Despite lacking most of the basic qualifications required for a career in the international spying trade, Audrey is a terrible liar (she puts way too much detail into her stories) and Morgan cannot keep a secret from her mum (not even dick pics), the pair of accidental spies discover that they do have one of the skills that every spy must have; they have a natural talent for improvisation. A series of speed humps provide an effective way to remove that unwanted motorcycle assassin from the roof of their Uber and a craftily coordinated hugging style of mugging allows them to to lift the passports from two unsporting Australian backpackers when they won’t hand them over voluntarily.

But it is not until Drew’s counterpart in MI6 escorts the pair to headquarters that things begin to turn around. Against her best intentions, Audrey might be beginning to forgive the gorgeous secret agent (Sam Heughan) who introduced himself by kidnapping her. While Morgan is awe-struck from the moment she realises that she is in the presence of the Judy Dench of British Intelligence (Gillian Anderson), an austerely beautiful woman with the perfect sneer, who doesn’t need to sacrifice her femininity when she orders some of the most violent operatives in the world to do exactly as she tells them.

If your thing is wild action comedies where two unlikely women have it over them all, then you won’t want to miss them in the most impressive Scandinavian flick turn I have ever seen.

BlacKkKlansman

Rated: MA15+BlacKkKlansman

Director: Spike Lee

Written by: Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee

Based on the Novel by: Ron Stallworth

Produced by:  Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Ray Mansflied, Jordan Peele, Spike Lee, Shaun Redick

Music by: Terence Blanchard

Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Jaspar Pääkkönen, Ashlie Atkinson.

Winner of the Grand Prix Award (Cannes Film Festival 2018)

Based on the true story written by Ron Stallworth, BlacKkKlansman is set in 70s America where the Civil Rights movement of African-Americans’ fight against oppression.

Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) has just landed a job at the Colorado Springs Police Department as the first African-American detective where he has to tolerate fellow cops calling African-Americans’, Toads.  To his face.

Asked to work undercover, Ron infiltrates The Black Student Alliance (AKA the Black Panthers), to bear witness to the words of Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins) – a hint of the undercurrent and message of the film that unfolds under the careful direction of Spike Lee.

From the beginning, from the effect of showing words of film projected across the face of a Ku Klux Klan member (Alec Baldwin) as he’s making a propaganda film like so much red paint, like the words leave a curse of blood on his face; to the warmth of faces turned upwards in admiration of the words spoken by Kwame Ture at the Blank Panther rally, who wants the power to be fair and equal, to say black is beautiful; to say fuck the po-lice; to say, Boomshakalaka.

The audience is left in no doubt of the clear division between the white supremacists/KKK/general public and the African-Americans.

This is a political film. 

Yet the depth of the divide leaves plenty for the ridiculous and funny.

I couldn’t help but be tickled by the idea of a black cop pretending to be a white supremacist, asking to join the KKK over the phone.  To watch as the Klan’s Grand Wizard, David Duke (Topher Grace), is only too happy to help another member of the Klan, no not the Klan, the Organisation – and of course he’d be able to tell the difference if he was talking to a black man because they can’t pronounce their, ‘r’s’ properly?!

You can’t make this stuff up!

BlacKkKlansman

And there’s a cool vibe kicking with the funky-soul disco soundtrack (Terence Blanchard) and 70s red and orange outfits; the film embracing the times of the Mercury marauder, 70 Chrysler 300 and a well-shaped afro.

But there’s a strong undercurrent and message beneath the humour of this film; the rhetoric spewed by members of the Klan sounding all too familiar.

Ron’s partner in the infiltration of the Klan, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), is forced to deny being a Jew over and over when undercover.  He admits to Ron his heritage is something he’s never thought about before.  He’s always been just a white kid.   And then to deny, deny, deny, he’s forced to lie under threat of death by the KKK – it’s all he can think about. 

One could draw comparisons with the Denial of Peter.

The more I think about this film, the more there’s to be understood.

And the way Spike Lee has shown this layered true story, with eyes shining with warmth and conviction and others reflecting the hate of a burning cross, adds a distinctive visual layer drawing you in further.

Setting the film in the 70s lulls the mind into thinking all this hatred is something in our past, only to powerfully highlight this is a terror that continues in our present.

There’s a unique perspective and voice I feel like I haven’t heard before.  Sure, we all know history: the lynching’s, the slavery, the segregation.  But do we?  Really?

Being born in Australia, I can see we have our own history to face.  And our own present.

All I can ask is, are we going to let it happen again?

Re-counting the past from the lips of a survivor in the context of our present makes a powerful and thought-provoking film.

I feel like my eyes have been opened with a new understanding – the way the behaviour of racism looks on screen is so ridiculous it’s funny.  And very, very scary.

Dr. Knock

Rated: PGDr. Knock

Directed by: Lorraine Lévy

Based on the Play by: Jules Romain

Produced by: Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier

Starring: Omar Sy, Alex Lutz, Ana Girardot, Sabine Azéma, Pascal Elbé, Audrey Dana.

 An adaptation of the famous French play written by Jules Romain, Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine (1923), director Lorraine Lévy has brought the story forward in time to the 1950s and has replaced an older white gent with a tall and handsome black, Dr. Knock (Omar Sy). 

The play is a French favourite and I can see why: the setting a quaint village with its inhabitants fully formed characters that are both delightful, terrible and most importantly all know each other a little too well. 

Dr. Knock, although a stranger, arrives charming and smart and different, sweeping the villiagers off their feet. 

But I wasn’t always convinced of Dr. Knock’s good character. 

Knock, formally a gambler down-on-his-luck, finds fortune when escaping his debts by applying to be a doctor on board a ship, enthusiastically waving to his debtors as the ship departs.

He has found his calling.  After finishing his post, he takes himself to medical school to five years later fill the job of country GP in the beautiful provincial village of St-Maurice.

Conman-turned-GP, Dr. Knock plans on getting rich by making up as many illnesses and treatment plans as he can suggest to his willing patients.  

‘Healthy people are merely unaware sick ones,’ he exclaims to much agreement.

He has an uncanny ability to infect the healthy, explaining to a rich widow the cure for insomnia is to imagine a crab or giant spider eating away at her brain, while extending his fingers and dancing them in front of her eyes like spider legs.

His charm and business sense allow him reverence in the village, all the people thinking of him as a saint.  Except, ironically, the priest (Alex Lutz).

When meeting beautiful Adèle (Ana Girardot) it is the first time we see Knock lost for words and we begin to see the softer side of the man: she recognises him for who he truly is.  Yet the audience is still left to wonder: Is he a charlatan?  A doctor?  Or both?

The film is sweet and amusing with the slapstick humour of the French, alcoholic post office worker falling head first with his bicycle in the village fountain, included.

In the end, I was won over like the villagers as the film elevated above the usual human condition (and health issues!) into something more: you can’t make happiness happen, it just happens.  But you can try.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Rated: MMission Impossible: Fallout

Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie

Written by: Christopher McQuarrie

Based on: Mission: Impossible TV series created by Bruce Geller

Produced by: Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, Dana Goldberg, J.J. Abrams, David Ellison, Don Granger

Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan.

With a mega budget, cracking good use of the original TV show’s theme, endless action-packed chase sequences, exotic locations and enough double crosses to challenge a reality TV show, the latest instalment in the Mission: Impossible series, Fallout, more than lives up to its hype.

For those of us who are not fans of Tom Cruise (surely these are legion), the best movie of his is Edge of Tomorrow, where he is repeatedly killed in a variety of violently pleasing ways and then resurrected the next day to repeat the process – all very good fun.

In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, we have to settle instead for seeing Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt get repeatedly beaten, thrown, punched, stabbed, betrayed and pursued as part of the world-in-peril (again) mission he chose to accept in the pre-credit sequence.

The plot involves a nuclear threat and various international legal and covert parties’ desire to acquire key components ahead of their competitors, either initiating or preventing a new world-wide threat to humanity as we know it. So just business as usual.

Cruise actually broke his ankle while filming one scene (you can see him hobbling off afterwards and he isn’t acting!), so you have to give him full marks for throwing himself so enthusiastically into the breathtaking stunts that litter this two hour plus film like blood spatters at a crime scene.

Mission Impossbile: Fallout

Despite this being the sixth film in the series, it isn’t necessary to be familiar with the five that came before, none of which I have seen. There is enough exposition in the opening sequence and at regular intervals throughout the film to ensure we are sufficiently clued in about each character’s backstory. There are smatterings of amusing dialogue amongst the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team comprising Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson that indicate their shared history, closeness and unwavering loyalty, as well as their expertise in technology, explosives and medicine.

True to its television series origins, there are also a number of double crosses where characters are misled or tricked into betraying vital information. Although these scenarios were generally easy to predict, they were delivered with the requisite gusto and sleight of hand that had the audience relishing each new reveal.

The impeccably staged chase and action sequences are relentless and often very violent, with just enough quiet time in between for the audience to recover before being catapulted into another larger, louder, more explosive one that manages to outdo what has just gone before. Despite all of these action sequences interspersed with meetings with top brass, international terrorists or weapons brokers, the basic storyline remains easy to follow. The best aspect to all this was hearing the audience laugh at each new peril that stoic Tom Cruise faced, which left you wondering, ‘How is he going to get out of this one?’

What stood out most for me was how Cruise’s character retained his humanity and desire to protect the good guys, even under the most trying of circumstances, rather than being a one-dimensional assassin without a moral compass.

Rollicking good fun.

Funny Cow

Rated: MA15+Funny Cow

Directed by: Adrian Shergold

Written by: Tony Pitts

Produced by: Kevin Proctor, Mark Vennis

Composer: Richard Hawley

Starring: Maxine Peake, Paddy Considine, Stephen Graham, Tony Pitts, Alun Armstrong, Kevin Eldon, Christine Bottomley, Lindsey Coulson, Macy Shackleton, Hebe Beardsall, Kevin Rowland and Richard Hawley.

 

Seeing the title and hearing the song, Funny Cow, my reaction was defensive.  Being called a Funny Cow is not a compliment.

But growing up in Bradfield during the 80s, being called a Funny Cow is about the best a female comedian can hope for because, ‘unstable bitches aren’t tolerated in the pack’.

Opening to ‘Funny Cow’ (Maxine Peake) on stage, famous now, she reminisces about her past: her father (Stephen Graham) a great communicator with his fists; her mother (Christine Bottomley as younger mum, Lindsey Coulson as older mum), an alcoholic.

After sending her father off with a, ‘goodbye you miserable bastard’, she meets her husband, Bob (Tony Pitts), where the cycle starts all over again.

Sometimes life is so bad it’s funny.

The film follows Funny Cow through her life, surviving not because of a backbone but because of her funnybone.

Funny Cow

Funny Cow is raw, written by Tony Pitts (also starring) with truth and an extraordinary performance from Maxine Peake.  The times of the working men’s clubs during the 70s and 80s captured so well it felt like the story was based on an autobiography.

What makes the film so interesting is the poignant moments, to see behind the veil, to see the truth.

Being an outcast is tough.

Trying to be a female comedian, to stand-up in front of those audiences is even tougher, particularly when the threat of a broken nose is waiting for you at home.

Director Adrian Shergold pieces together a life over four decades.   Looking back the film shows Funny Cow walking past her younger self contrasting her new polished self, driving a red sports car, with the mud and poverty of her younger years: if only we could tell that young girl, the one we used to be, that everything will turn out okay.

We can be who we pretend to be and die, or we can hold onto the truth and live.  That’s the message I got.  Being able to laugh at life when it’s at its worst takes the bravest person.

The character, Funny Cow, is so relatable that I can say she’d be the last person to want to be an inspiration, describing herself as a monster.  Adding to the legend that all great comedians are depressives: to see life, to live it and see the truth of it and be able to share that truth with an audience takes talent.

But this isn’t a comedy.   Funny Cow is the journey taken to become a comedian, with all the good and bad shown with a rare honesty.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Rated: PGMamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Written and Directed by: Ol Parker

Based on the Original Musical Mamma Mia!

Story by: Richard Curtis and Ol Parker and Catherine Johnson

Based on the Songs of ABBA

Music and Lyrics by: Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus

Produced by: Judy Craymer, p.g.a., Gary Goetzman, p.g.a.

Starring: Christine Baranski, Pierce Brosnan, Dominic Cooper, Colin Firth, Andy Garcia, Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgård, Julie Walters, with Cher and Meryl Streep.

 

Going to see a musical makes me brace myself like some people cringe at the thought of watching a gory horror – it didn’t help I attempted to watch the original Mamma Mia! The Movie (2008) recently and just couldn’t stand the enthusiasm of idiots for more than half an hour…

So, from the perspective of someone who doesn’t go for musicals, I found Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again a far more subtle version of the original with the humour based on the silly rather than the ridiculous.

Opening on the beautiful Greek island of Kalkairi, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) has transformed her mother’s Hotel Bella Donna in preparation of a grand opening with views of an aqua sea, plantation blinds (that actually work) and a gentleman-manager: Señor Cienfuegos (Andy Garcia); the share of his niceties and fire bargained over, the final offer an 80/20 split between returning Dynamos, Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters).

But there’s a sadness that descends when Sophia is left without her Sky (Dominic Cooper also cast in a favourite series of mine, Preacher – talk about a different character!) who has a job offer in New York, the conflict reflected in the weather as rain falls, threatening to ruin the opening.

The film then follows threads back and forth between current day to 1979 where young and free Donna (Lily James) and best friends Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn) and Rosie (Alexa Davies) graduate from University.

There’s clever splicing and layers between the two times showing the young Donna as she meets Young Sam (Jeremy Irvine), Young Bill (Josh Dylan) and Young Harry (Hugh Skinner), to reveal what really happened with possible dad: one, two and three.

The film embraces the circle of life as fate turns from mother to daughter and all that brought their world together to fall apart to be brought back again all threaded together with the music of ABBA.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

I found the songs here calmer and more melodic compared to the original soundtrack with tracks such as ‘Fernando’ (by Cher and Andy Garcia), ‘Andante, Andante’ (Lily James) and ‘My Love, My Life’ (Amanda Seyfried, Lily James and Meryl Streep).

But don’t worry disco fans, Cher still manages a grand gesture: frilled, fluffy-haired and freed into the spot-light with ‘Super Trouper’ (Cher, Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Andy Garcia, Amanda Seyfried, Dominic Cooper, Lily James, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Josh Dylan, Jeremy Irvine and Hugh Skinner).

I’m just thankful the whole film wasn’t over-done like teens spliced with the older versions high on champagne and some hybrid of stimulant and steroid to beef up the screech of ridiculous in song!

Instead, Here We Go Again is kinda sweet (Lily James warm like sunshine reminding me of her role as Debora in Baby Driver (2017)) and funny with original Greek owner of the hotel, Sofia (Maria Vacratsis) commenting on young Sam’s wandering eye and restless groin.

And the harking back to young Harry’s virginal awkward days where he saw, ‘very little reason not to crack on’.

I admit I got caught up because I found the film able to take a crack at itself, to allow some of the enthusiasm to calm, to allow the charm and humour and silliness through like a village goat who gives chase through a grove of orange trees.

Not my style of film but I admit there were some laughs, and with a glass, a friend or partner (or piece of cake!), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a good bit of fun with a few emotional bits, some singing and life decisions all mixed with the turquoise beauty of Greece.

What Will People Say (Hva Vil Folk Si)

Directed and Written by: Iram HaqWhat Will People Say

Produced by: Maria Ekerhovd

Executive Producer: Alex Helgeland

Music Composed by: Lorenz Dangel, Martin Pedersen

Starring: Maria Mozhdah, Adil Hussain, Rohit Saraf, Ekavali Khanna, Ali Arfan, Sheeba Chaddha, Lalit Parimoo, Jannat Zubair Rehmani, Isak Lie Harr, Nokokure Dahl.

Released in Australia as part of the Scandinavian Film Festival 2018

Winner: Audience Award, AFI Fest 2017

Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2018

Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017

It took many years for director and writer, Iram Haq to tell the autobiographic story of her past.  To be able to tell of her experience as a sixteen-year-old, in the film known as Nisha (Maria Mozhdah), growing up in a Pakistani family living in Norway.

Now, after enough time has passed, Iram is able to show the pain of being betrayed and kidnapped with an unflinching eye.

No mean feat as the pain of this difficult time was caused by her family – her betrayal, the threat to kill, her abuse – all because, what would people think of her behaviour?

What Will People Think is an apt title as the embarrassment of the family is more important than the life of a girl growing up, just like her friends; the film about her father (Adil Hussain) as much as about her because it’s his over-reaction when finding a boy in her bedroom that sets the course of her life.

And the family follow his instruction.  His son; her brother partaking in sending her back to Pakistan against her will, telling her to enjoy the trip, talking to his father about how cool the new BMW is while Nisha has no idea of her fate.  Her life, not her own.

We are taken from the cold and snowy world of Norway, where kids play basketball and go to parties, to the heat of Pakistan, the crumbling old buildings and markets and mosquitoes showing the contrast of two completely different worlds.

What Will People Say

It’s a nightmare that deepens as Nisha’s left with relatives in Pakistan, trying to make her way, only to be betrayed again and again, all under the guise of being for her own good; the continued harassment and relentless discipline, to do what she’s told under threat of death, her constant reality.

There’s a fierce emotive story here, told without dramatisation so the performance of Maria Mozhdah as Nisha hits harder, digs deeper.

The times I did have tears spring to my eyes were those warm moments when Nisha was seen, heard and loved – a little sister giving her a hug, or the simple attempt to fly an orange kite upon a rooftop.

And the humanity of members of the family are shown through their love of being together: cooking, eating, praying, bickering.  All normal family stuff.

It’s the terror of stepping outside the social boundaries, of being found-out and shunned that turns good people into fearful people, into something cold.

The Norwegian Child Welfare Services are brought in to assess and act when the family show behaviour unacceptable in the culture they’re living.  Yet the family isn’t all bad, the film showing love and warmth making it harder to see the turning away – the authoritative stance and abuse giving insight into the culture clash that stuns the sensors.  To see a father spit in his daughter’s face, for her to lack any control makes me furious because it’s so unfair.

But the film isn’t about anger or hurt, in the end it comes down to courage and I was left with a lingering admiration of Nisha’s bravery.

Skyscraper

Rated: MSkyscraper

Written and Directed by: Rawson Marshall Thurber

Produced by: Beau Flynn, p.g.a., Dwayne Johnson, Rawson Marshall Thurber, p.g.a., Hiram Garcia, p.g.a.

Cinematographer: Robert Elswit

Composer: Steve Jablonsky

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, Hannah Quinlivan.

Going to see an action blockbuster with Dwayne Johnson at the helm, I felt I already knew what to expect with Skyscraper.

And as advertised Skyscraper dazzles with huge effects including: a burning super tower of 225 stories and more than 3,500 feet high, giant wind turbines used as power, an internal garden thirty-stories high with waterfall and all the tech that goes into the maintenance and functioning of such a massive building all controlled by the touch of one device, a tablet operational only with the bio imprint of security consultant, former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran, Will Sawyer (Dwyane Johnson).

The film opens on an operation that goes bad, Will severely injured losing his left leg below the knee.  But while getting treatment in hospital he meets his wife, Naval surgeon Dr. Sarah Sawyer (Neve Campbell).

He moves on with his life, getting married and having twins, Henry (Noah Cottrell) and Georgia (McKenna Roberts), but still struggles with his day-to-day life as an amputee.

Now consulting for the job-of-a-lifetime (thanks to his old buddy, Ben (Pablo Schreiber)) underwriting the security for the highest and most technologically advanced building in the world, Will and his family move into their new address on the edge of the Kowloon side of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour: the first residents to move into the Pearl.

Skyscraper

We see the injured hero nervously getting ready to meet the building’s visionary creator Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han), and see the love and support of his family making it seem anything is possible, until it all turns bad when deadly assassins and bad guys’ hell-bent on revenge steal the tablet to shut off all counter-measures as a fire rages on the 96th floor – below the floor where Will’s family are trapped.

It’s amazing what Will can do to save his family: leaping off a super-crane 1,000 feet in the air, edging along a window ledge so high above ground you’d need oxygen; all believable because it’s The Rock and as always, he manages to bring you alongside with him – like the crowd below the burning building, I cheered him on.

I made a comment before heading into the cinema, wondering if the character would weaponize his prosthetic leg, and the attachment comes in handy as he escapes death again and again.

The injury also gives Will vulnerability – a different role for The Rock that forces the character, Will to overcome not only external forces but also internal as he battles his own insecurity.

And the way he overcomes each obstacle with self-deprecating, yet practical self-reliance, adds some great humour to the film – a talent writer and director, Rawson Marshall Thurber has also shown in previous films, Central Intelligence (2016) and We’re the Millers (2013). 

I was also impressed with the performance from Neve Campbell as Will’s wife, Dr. Sarah Sawyer, her quiet strength making a stoic contribution, the two parents a good team in keeping their family alive.

So, if you’ve watched the trailer, you know what’s coming but you won’t be disappointed either with good action, vertigo-inducing effects and a solid story.

I won’t say my expectations were surpassed but there was some good fun here making Skyscraper a worthwhile entertainer.

The Gospel According to André

Rated: PGThe Gospel According to André

Directed by: Kate Novack

Produced: Andrew Rossi & Josh Braun

Cinematography: Bryan Sarkinen

Original Music: Ian Hultquist & Sofia Hultquist

Starring: André Leon Talley, Sean Combs, Divine, Tom Ford, Whoopi Goldberg.

The scene is a Paris show for the international fashion elite. A model in a lavish fur coat removes it to reveal an equally lavish fur bolero as she attempts to catwalk through a crush of bodies in an overcrowded suite of rooms. This documentary opens a window onto a world of dress-ups, where haute couture is an instrument to uplift the soul and the task is to remake the world into a more inclusive and light-hearted place. At least, that is the mission for André Leon Talley.

A tall black man. ‘A pine tree of a guy in fedora hat’. Could a more unlikely candidate be welcomed into the highest echelons of the international fashion scene in the 1970s, than a man who more than once has described himself as a manatee (a large sea mammal with flippers)?

Whenever I watch a biopic, one particular question always intrigues me. How did they do it? And when that question is asked of such an unlikely subject as Talley, the answer is even more compelling.

The Gospel According to André

When he arrived there, New York was considered to be the centre of everything, and Talley found himself at the very epicentre when he worked for Andy Warhol at the Factory. Here, he met and became a lifelong friend of Karl Lagerfeld and, soon after, the legendary Diana Vreeland’s protégée. They met when he helped Mrs Vreeland set up one of her high fashion extravaganzas at the Metropolitan Museum. This, too, would be the beginning of an enduring friendship and eventually lead to a thirty year association with Vogue.

All this was a very long way from his early life. Talley was brought up by his grandmother in the Deep South, the heart of Jim Crow country. Not only did the Jim Crow laws define a particularly vicious type of segregation, but it also meant that lynchings occurred until as late as 1975. It is hard to imagine how frightened, disenfranchised and deeply angry Tally must have felt as thirteen-year-old taking a shortcut back from the newsagents when a car full of youths pulled up and they hurled rocks at him, all because he was a black person with the temerity to walk across the campus at Duke University.

Even so, those early years laid the groundwork for Talley’s future path in life. The Church as the bastion of southern culture was essentially a fashion show and introduced Talley to its unspoken language. He began with hats, since his beloved grandmother had one for every season and every occasion, but he soon learned to read with fluency and subtlety across the lexis of style: ‘two bracelets instead of one means you’re wealthy’.

André Leon Talley became so many things he wasn’t supposed to be. A long-time friend described him as, ‘A man with a pure cashmere heart.’ And he was ‘A man who achieved his dreams’, according to André.

For those who wish to take a peek from a fashion insider’s perspective as well as those who want to look closely into an unusual life and find out how he did it, I can recommend this as a sensitive portrait of the man and a captivating documentary of his times.

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