Category: Drama

Elvis

Rated: MElvis

Directed by: Baz Luhrmann

Screenplay by: Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner

Story by: Baz Luhrmann and Jeremy Doner

Produced by: Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCormick and Schuyler Weiss.

Executive Producers: Toby Emmerch, Courtenay Valenti and Kevin McCormick

Starring: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh.

‘What about you Mr. Presley, are you ready to fly?’

Written and directed by Baz Luhrmann (The Great Gatsby (2013), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Strictly Ballroom (1992), Australia (2008), William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)), Elvis is a biopic told from the perspective of infamous manager, Colonel, the Snowman, Tom Parker (Tom Hanks).

Colonel Parker learnt how to shake a dollar from a punter while leaving a smile on their face working in a carnival.

When he saw Elvis (Austin Butler) perform, he knew all his Christmases had come at once.

And boy, could he make it snow.

The film has a heady introduction with cuts back and forth from glaring signs and bluesy music to revival tents and the young Elvis shaking those legs.

Elvis didn’t know why the girls in the audience were screaming, until a bandmate tells him, ‘The girls want to see you wiggle.’

Austin, who sang a lot of the songs himself, is so fresh it was like getting to know the superstar all over again.  To admire the rise of this smalltown kid to become, The King.

‘That boy from Memphis,’ was put in the back of a police car after starting riots because of the way he moved on stage.

Elvis literally changed the world, embracing black America back in times of segregation while the Colonel turned his fame into a money-making machine: merchandise, records, movies, concerts, sponsors and then to the bright lights of Los Vegas.

The Colonel knew every trick in the book and then invented new ways to make money.  As long as Elvis would keep getting up on stage.

In the end, we all know, it’s a sad story, but the telling is exhilarating.

There’s risk not only in making a film about the most famous person in the world, but then changing up the music, so the soundtrack has remixes from the likes of Eminem, Doja Cat and Denzel Curry.

There’s a combination of the blues from B. B. King and Little Richard, Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton with revival music and rap so there’s an edge to the tone of the movie.

And that flash back and forth, to time stamps becoming part of the scene to cartoon add to the pace only to stop in close-up of the smoky blue of Elvis’ eyes.

Has to be said, Austin’s great as Elvis.  What an undertaking.

There’re cuts to Elvis himself and the heart still skips a beat.

What is it about this guy?!

He’s Elvis.  He’s, The King.

 

Men

Rated: MA15+Men

Written and Directed by: Alex Garland

Starring: Jesse Buckly, Rory Kinnear and Paapa Essiedu.

‘What do you want from me?!’

I had an angry response to, Ex Machina (2014) (a strong response a sign of an emotive movie, I guess).

Conversely, I really enjoyed the head-bend of, Annihilation (2018).

So I was curious to see what writer and director, Alex Garland was going to evoke with, Men.

The film follows lead character, Harper (Jesse Buckly) – it’s raining outside.

She has blood smudged under her nose.

She runs.

She stays in an idyllic country house to heal.

Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) shows her around, a classic affable Englishman, ‘Won’t be a jiffy,’ he says.

Then comments, ‘The M4, a dreary bore.’

Then adds, ‘Watch what you flush.  It’s a septic tank and all…’

A jarring statement and a hint of what’s to come.

Geoff, it turns out, is one of the many men-clones, that Harper must endure during her time away from life.

Contrasting the clones is this heightened sense of beauty, the landscape like a moving Monet painting.

Beautiful, then flawed by a naked man, a running man, that stalks her.

The telling of, Men, feels off-centre but clever and green, like an expression of the primal with Harper taking an apple from a tree and taking a bite like Eve in the, Garden of Eden.

The film weaves around this theme of Adam and Eve, subtle, then visceral.

The present bleeds into Harper’s past, her screaming voice becoming one with the soundtrack.

What do you want from me?!

This constant demand becomes an extreme depiction of men’s misunderstanding of what a woman needs.

That a woman has her own life too.

Rather than a confronting horror, I found the thought behind the film refreshing.

 

The Innocents

Rated: TBAThe Innocents

Directed by: Eskil Vogt

Screenplay Written by: Eskil Vogt

Produced by: Maria Ekerhovd

Executive Producer: Axel Helgeland, Dave Bishop, Céline Dornier

Starring: Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim, Sam Ashraf, Ellen Dorrit Pedersen, Morten Svartveit, Kadra Yusuf, Lisa Tønne.

Norwegian with English subtitles.

‘What do you do when someone’s mean?’

A sleeping child

Is the picture of innocence.

The shot is close.

Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) has freckles on her nose.

She has an autistic sister, Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad).  Anna’s non-verbal.  She can’t even feel a pinch.

Ida is nine years old, yet it doesn’t feel like innocence when she pinches her sister, spits from the balcony and stomps on a worm.

When writer and director, Eskil Vogt (also screenwriter of, The Worst Person in the World, ‘In Competition – Feature Films’ 2021, Festival De Cannes. See review here) was asked about the idea behind the film’s title (The Innocents) he responds,

“I think kids are beyond good and evil or rather before good and evil. But I don’t think children are little angels, that people are born pure. I think children are born without any sense of empathy or morals, we have to teach them that. That’s why I think it’s interesting to see a child doing something that we would call evil in an adult. The moral aspect is more complex since they aren’t fully formed yet.”

Ida’s family has moved, her mother (Ellen Dorrit Pedersen) tells her it’s a new school, new friends.

Ida lies back on a swing and looks at the world up-side-down.

She meets Ben (Sam Ashraf).

He’s moved around a lot.

He has a bruise on his chest.

He can also move things with his mind.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into at the beginning of this film – children doing mean things is confronting.

Yet, as the film continues, the characters, the children get complicated.

The Innocents is a horror with children as the main characters, with the parents on the outside, not knowing or understanding.

It’s a film about forgotten kids, who suddenly find they have powers.

Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) who lives in the building complex, finds Anna with her mind, the film following her mind like flying through the mist of the outside.

She can hear Anna even though Anna can’t speak.

‘I’m talking to someone who isn’t here,’ Aisha tells her mother (Kadra Yusuf).

Her mother cries in secret.

When the four children are together, Ida, Ben, Anna and Aisha – they become more powerful.

But rather than focussing on the supernatural, the film is about the children exploring their new powers and how each reacts to having power, therefore revealing the truth of who they are and why.

I was haunted by this film, the power shown in the ripples of water, by the wind in the trees.  Like the audience is invited into this secret world of the children as they pick scabs and dig in a sandbox, the boredom, the exploring, the violence – I believed all of it, the children the driving force of the film, shown in careful detail by cinematographer, Sturla Brandth Grøvlen.

A quietly menacing film that’s riveting, shocking and unique.

Downton Abbey: A New Era

Rated: PGDownton Abbey: A New Era

Directed by: Simon Curtis

Written by: Julian Fellowes

Produced by: Gareth Neame, Liz Trubridge, Julian Fellowes

Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Kevin Doyle, Joanne Froggatt, Harry Hadden-Paton, Robert James-Collier, Allen Leech, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Tuppence Middleton, Lesley Nicol, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, Penelope Wilton, Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye, Dominic West and Jonathan Zaccaï.

‘You rang, m’lady.’

The opening scene of, A New Era, is of course of the rambling castle that is, Downton Abbey.

Someone’s getting married – I’m not going to say who because I don’t want to give anything away, and I don’t know who they are because I never caught the ‘Downton Abbey train’.

I promised myself I’d keep an open mind while seeing all the smiling faces of the cast as they lamented the leaking roof and uttered comments such as, ‘We seem to have brought our butler.  I don’t know why.’

I was regretting not grabbing that second glass of bubbles…

It’s all very pleasant.  Except the leaking roof.  So when an offer is made for Downton Abbey to be used as a set for a film: The Gambler, it’s a matter of suffering a film crew for a month or continuing on with no money to repair the crumbling Abbey.

‘It’ll be exciting,’ is one statement.

One can only hope, I thought.

Then the Dowager, Violet (Maggie Smith) pipes up with, ‘We got through the war, we can get through this.’

Maggie Smith really does deliver the best lines, with plenty of opportunity with not only a film crew and a star that’s beautiful (see Laura Haddock as Myrna Dalgleish) while also being rude and speaking like a fishwife; a letter arrives, stating a villa in the South of France has been bequeathed to the Dowager.

Violet’s unperturbed by the potential scandal, planning to leave the villa to Lady Sybil.

But the Montmirail’s widow is unhappy at the loss of her villa.  And frankly insulted.

So while Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) runs the household and keeps the film director, Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy) happy, the majority of the family travel to meet the son and window of the mysterious Monsieur Montmirail.  To meet and smooth the transition of the villa, and perhaps find out why the villa was left to the Dowager in the first place.

I want to say I was bored throughout the entire screening, but there was just enough wry humour to keep me engaged.

When Lady Mary utters, ‘I suppose he wasn’t just a lunatic,’ about the now deceased, Monsieur Montmirail, I had to chuckle.

And, ‘They’re very French, aren’t they…  The French,’ remarks, Mr. Carson (Jim Carter).

The ‘potty’ humour made the borderline ridiculous, endearing.

Fans with a previous history with the franchise will no doubt be chuffed to see another chapter about the (many) residents of Downton Abbey.

For my taste, Downton Abbey: A New Era was not exciting at all, it turns out – but an agreeable watch with a few chuckles: yawn.

The Northman

Rated: MA15+The Northman

Directed by: Robert Eggers

Written by: Sjón, Robert Eggers

Produced by: Mark Huffam, Lars Knudsen, Robert Eggers, Alexander Skarsgård, Arnon Milchan

Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Björk.

‘We thirst for vengeance but cannot escape our fate.’

The Northman is set in a time when the gods are worshiped with blood and villages are plundered, the people chattel, either killed or taken as slaves.

Only the strong ones survive the pillaging.  And if they live to arrive at their next destination, most wish they’d died in their homes.

The film opens with stencil against the grey imagery of ash billowing, belching from a volcano.  It’s a brutal black and white world until a child, young prince Amleth (Oscar Novak) calls out: his father, King Auvand (Ethan Hawke) has returned home.

The King and Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) reunite, but not for long.

After King Auvand is betrayed and killed by his half-brother, Feng (Claes Bang), Amleth escapes, swearing to avenge his father and to free his mother.

The film runs in chapters so Amleth grows, becoming a wolf (Alexander Skarsgård).  Now he’s the brute, pillaging villages and talking slaves.  Until he’s reminded by a Seeress (Björk) of his promise of vengeance.

There’s a touch of magic in the story telling by Robert Eggers, with expansive scenes of Nordic grasslands, black sand with running rivers and the quiet of snowflakes falling.  The constant play of colour sets the mood of the film, with the black and white, the stark, to show the harsh fight for survival, to the red of fire, to a rebirth of green and new life.

The thread of the gods runs through the film like swords run through guts and throats and already cut-off noses; the Valkyrie rides a white horse into the heavens and the white-haired Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), whom Amleth is destined to meet, can talk to the earth and evoke the wind.

The story’s about fate and the gods and family, betrayal and survival.

There’s a flair of the dramatic that needed strong performances to hold the push of violence and drama and magic.  And Eggers achieved his vision – Kidman and Skarsgård particular highlights, with Willem Dafoe made for the role of Heimir the Fool – who’s, ‘wise enough to be the fool.’

The dramatic scenes have flair but are played with just enough restraint to add the right gravitas to the dialogue.

The violence too was intense but held back enough so as not to be disgusting but to allow a harsh reality.

Overall the best way I can describe, The Northman is a film of vengeance that is both brutal and beautiful.

Dog

Rated: MDog

Directed by: Channing Tatum & Reid Carolin

Story by: Reid Carolin, Brett Rodriguez

Produced by: Gregory Jacobs, Peter Kiernan, Brett Rodriguez

Starring: Channing Tatum, Ryder McLaughlin, Aavi Haas.

‘You’re more than just a dog.’

Opening the film to puppy pics then written assessments, Lulu, a Belgian Malinois Army K9 is no ordinary dog.

With eight military tours to her name, Lulu was part of the Ranger Battalion team.

But after injury and her master, Rodriguez dying in a high speed car crash, she’s not the same dog.

US army Ranger, Jackson Briggs (Channing Tatum) finds out the hard way, ‘You do not want to touch her ears.’

Banged up and on forced leave but desperate to get back into the action, Briggs has one more job to complete before his sergeant signs off the last document, clearing him for active duty: he has to drive from Washington to Arizona to take Lulu to her master’s funeral.  Then take her on her last journey to be put down because now, she’s a killer dog that’s unmanageable.

It’s understandable to think, Oh, it’s another one of those tear-jerker dog movies…

But there’s something unique here that’s funny and kind, with man and dog damaged in a job they love, where they were, ‘kicking doors, getting our murder on.’

Dog is a movie that surprises in its depth.

It reminded me of how Hemingway writes men: stoic with a soft spot when understood – think, the character Thomas Hudson and his cat in, Islands in the Stream.

Channing Tatum is great in his role as an army brute with a scar running up the back of his neck on a road trip with a ferocious dog he can’t stop talking too.

Of course they win each other over, that’s kind of expected with this type of movie, but the military angle added another layer so it was two brutes that save each other.

There’re light-hearted moments that are so strange that it feels like real life, while also touching on sensitive subjects like PTSD, war and suicide.

So yes, it gets emotional but without any forced sentiment.  Because more than anything it’s a cracker of a well-paced story about a man and a dog.

I’ve never liked Channing Tatum as much as I like him in this film.

It Snows in Benidorm

Rated: MA 15+It Snows in Benidorm

Directed by: Isabel Coixet

Produced by: El Deseo, Pedro And Agustín Almodóvar

Starring: Timothy Spall, Sarita Choudhury, Ana Torrent, Carmen Machi.

For years, nice guy Peter Riordan (Timothy Spall) has been losing himself in the modest comforts of his daily life. The four ginger nut biscuits he carefully lines up to dunk in his solitary cup of tea every morning, the photograph of the sky he snaps before breakfast and the satisfaction he takes when he finds compassionate and sustainable solutions for his clientele. With his work unappreciated and made to report to a much younger man, Peter’s ethics are out of step with the slick practices and doublespeak of contemporary banking and he eventually finds himself pushed into an early retirement.

That is just the nudge Peter has needed to take up his brother’s invitation to come and stay with him in his apartment on the Mediterranean coast at Benidorm. Only there is no sign of his brother by the time Peter lands at Alicante Airport. Daniel has just vanished. At a complete loss, Peter finds himself ushered up to his brother’s flash but slightly trashy apartment, from where he sets about trying to find Daniel through the traces his brother has left behind.

As Peter is very much an archetypical outsider who spends much of his time alone, director Isabel Coixet uses a voiceover to as a way to convey Peter’s thoughts. It’s a risky technique but, in this instance, it is reasonably subtle and it does underscore how solitary Peter’s existence is. At the same time, the feeling of alienation and distance Coixet achieves is at odds with the feeling of being caught up in the moment, which makes watching films so compelling.

However, I was soon yanked back into Benidorm’s ambiance when Peter goes out for the evening and winds up at his brother’s nightclub. He arrives just as a chunky Elvis impersonator is finishing a very amateurish but moving version of ‘The King’s’ In the Ghetto. This is followed by an act put on by Daniel’s business partner, the slinky, leather-clad, prawn-head-chomping Alex, whose seductive gyrations instantly beguile Daniel, as well as holding everyone else in the audience in thrall.

Benidorm is a place that holds a strange attraction. On the surface it is a gaudy tourist resort and party town that thrives on sunny mornings and long, tropical nights, at the same time it is a place with a seamy underbelly infiltrated by the mafia and shady dealers. But Benidorm is also an outpost where the locals live their lives according to their own sense of poetry and philosophy. This, they attribute to the celebrated poet Sylvia Plath having rented a beachside cottage there in the 1950s.

As Peter spends more time prowling around the city in search of his brother, Benidorm itself gradually becomes one of the characters, with its own subtle methods of alluring and beguiling those who thought they were just passing through and even those seeking to escape.

While there might be some echoes of Citizen Kane in Peter’s quest to find his errant brother, it is not the deepest truth about Daniel that Peter uncovers, rather he finds a conduit into the workings of his own long-suppressed desires.

It Snows in Benidorm is a beautifully filmed and thoughtful drama, buoyed by a gentle humour and unexpected moments of lyricism.

Cyrano

Rated: MCyrano

Directed by: Joe Wright

Screenplay by: Erica Schmidt

Based on: The stage musical adapted and directed by Erica Schmidt, from ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ by Edmond Rostand, with music by Aaron & Bryce Dessner and lyrics by Matt Berninger & Carin Besser

Music by: Bryce Dessner & Aaron Dessner

Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Guy Heeley

Executive Produced by: Erica Schmidt, Sarah-Jane Robinson, Sherraz Shah, Lucas Webb, Matt Berninger, Carin Besser, Aaron Dessner

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn.

‘My sole purpose on this earth is to love Roxanne (Haley Bennett),’ laments Cyrano (Peter Dinklage).

He at least has the decency to be a little embarrassed of the words uttered to his friend, Le Bret (Bashir Salahuddin).

It’s not the flowery words that embarrass Cyrano, but that he has admitted his love for the unreachable.

He is a midget and she a great beauty to be worshiped.

Cyrano and Roxanne are friends.  Best friends.  If he told her of his true feelings, he would lose her forever.

Cyrano sighs as he states, ‘I am living proof that God has a sick sense of humour.’

Pursued by the Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), Roxanne’s loved by many.

The Duke is rich, she’s poor. Her handmaiden (Monica Dolan) reminds her, ‘Children need love. Adults need money.’

Roxanne wants love more than anything. And thinks she’s found it when she sees the dashing soldier, Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) for the first time.

It’s love at first sight.

Christian is handsome but without a sharp wit. It’s up to Cyrano to write letters on Christian’s behalf, to write all the things he’s ever wanted to tell Roxanne.  Only to be signed by Christian.

Cyrano is a musical romance set at a time of puppet shows, lace and ribbons, duels and corsets.

Not my favourite flavour of film.

I promised myself to keep an open mind.

Expect singing from the outset.

And also some great lines from Cyrano like, ‘Would you defend this… sausage?!’  He describes an actor wearing a red frizzy wig and well past his used-by date.

I quote the dialogue often because there is just so much to quote; the words, the lyrics roll like waves throughout the film.

The love story does cloy with Roxanne’s demand of a handsome Christian filled with handsome words – with the expectation of nothing less.

It’s all very pretty and irritating with the ink on the paper of the first letter making her nervous.

But wow, there are some spectacular scenes of clever camera work of sword fighting and the audience back-and-forth in the theatre; the quiet of breathing.

And then the tears started.

It wasn’t the love story that got me, but the soldiers singing the words of their letter to be sent to their loved ones back home.  The lyrics here are beautiful in their lack of sentiment.  That’s what got to me: the clear-sighted expression of feeling.

The words and lyrics of the film are more like poetic truth than song.

Yes, there are irritating, long-winded moments but Peter Dinklage as Cyrano has a way of balancing the sweetness of the romance with a wry wit.

And once the tears started, the rest of the film built on that emotion.

So I admit, I got into a musical romance.

India Sweets and Spices

Rated: MIndia Sweets and Spices

Directed and Written by: Geeta Malik

Produced by: John Penotti, Sidney Kimmel, Gigi Pritzker, Naomi Despres

Starring: Sophia Ali, Manisha Koirala, Rish Shah, Adil Hussain, Deepti Gupta, Anita Kalathara.

India Sweets and Spices presents a feast of Indian food and a glittering array of saris as the residents of Ruby Hill dress to the hilt for a weekly rotation of dinner parties during the holiday season. When Alia (Sophia Ali), the eldest daughter a successful heart surgeon (Adil Hussain), returns home from her first year away at university she is expected to play the role of demure Indian daughter looking to attract a suitable husband at these gatherings, but she has long ago outgrown her part. Now she cannot even pretend that she doesn’t find life in this bourgeois Indian enclave utterly stultifying. On the night before her departure she confides to a friend that it’s: ‘The place where brain cells go to die’.

During her time at UCLA, Alia has become heavily involved in social justice issues and takes it as her right that she is entitled to speak out and act upon what she believes in. Much to the horror of her mother. Sheila (Manisha Koirala) is not only a bored but devoted housewife and hostess extraordinaire, she is also the unofficial queen of the Ruby Hill social scene, and she is a woman with a past. It is a secret she has been keeping from her children and the community. In a community where everyone has a secret.

Once a haven for new arrivals looking to safely establish themselves in their adopted country, Ruby Hill has over time become a locked cage, where the corrosive tongues of ‘the aunties’ not only keep the residents in and in line but also keep new arrivals out. On the surface life is uncomplicated and easy in this enclave of backyard swimming pools, luxury vehicles and fantasy weddings where a groom might ride in on a tiger, but the entire community is being held hostage to the threat of exposure and embarrassment. It is a powerful deterrent, but the carefully manicured web of illusion this coterie has cultivated around themselves is impossible to maintain, even with the most watchful of blind eyes.

When Alia locks eyes with her new beau (Rish Shah) in the biscuit aisle of the local Indian grocery store and on impulse invites him and his family to a weekly dinner party, it will tug at a thread that will eventually unravel all of the secrets. Beginning with, possibly, the biggest secrets of all. The ones her own family have been keeping from her.

This feminist romantic comedy/ coming of age drama begins with a finely wrought script from Geeta Malik, with some precisely-calibrated lines for Alia to deploy against the ‘aunties’. Originally reading for the part of Alia’s best friend Neha (Anita Kalathara), Sophia Ali has been beautifully cast Alia Kapur as she tenaciously pursues the question, ‘What if we are who we are and then we don’t recognise ourselves anymore?’ It’s not only a question for Alia; the conundrum equally applies to Sheila and Ranjit when their secrets are finally revealed. As it is, perhaps, for many more in their circle.

Red Rocket

Rated: MA15+Red Rocket

Directed by: Sean Baker

Screenplay Written by: Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch

Produced by: Sean Baker, Shih-Chihg Tsou, Alex Saks

Starring: Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Suzanna Son, Shih-Ching Tsou, Parker Bigham, Brenda Deiss, Ethan Darbone, Brittany Rodriguez, Judy Hill, Marion Lambert.

‘Why are you here?’

Bruised and sleeping on a bus, Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) is back in Texas.

He fronts up at his ex’s mum’s house – ‘What are you doing here?’ asks Lexi (Bree Elrod).  Because she knows Mikey way too well.

But Mikey knows which buttons to press.  He’s a fast talking, ex-porn star who’s ‘been blessed’ with a decent package and good looks.  And no moral compass.

He’ll say and do anything to survive.

He’ll f*#k his ex-wife just to sleep in a bed, deal pot to make money.  And seduce a seventeen-year-old girl because she’s smoke’n hot.

Meet, Strawberry (Suzanna Son).  Sweet and not-so-innocent, she’s a young girl who ‘likes men not boys.’

She doesn’t stand a chance.  Because Mikey has decided he likes her.  He’s going to make her famous.

‘What did the donuts do on their first date?’ Mikey asks Strawberry – she works at a donut shop.

‘They glazed into each other’s eyes,’ he smiles.

I could kinda get behind this guy down-on-his-luck.  But when he starts to charm this young girl, I started to cringe.

There’s a glib lightness to the film but underneath there’s a dark reality.

‘Your mother hates me.’

‘She hated you.  She died,’ says Lonnie (Ethan Darbone).  He’s the nextdoor neighbour.

It’s a sad place, with smoke stacks of oil refineries blowing pollution into the air virtually in the backyard.  The emergency test announcement can be heard in the bedroom.

It’s like this chancer brings light into the lives of these people because they have so little and he’s so nice and polite.  They don’t see what’s happening at first because he lifts them up, shines a light.  Until suddenly they see how much he takes.  When it’s too late.

I didn’t find the film funny or light.  Like Mikey, there’s a dark layer underneath shown in a-day-in-a-life style of filming that’s really about prostitution, drugs, sickness, poverty, betrayal, fake valour, selfishness and complete blindness and lack of empathy.

Not that Red Rocket is a badly made film.  The casting is brilliant.  But it was like it was up to the audience to decide how things were going to work out, depending if you’re an optimist, meaning, Strawberry will be OK.  She’ll be discovered as a musician.  Someone aside from Mikey will see her worth.  Or not, only the worst is to come.  And I lean towards the cynical these days making me see only bad things to then realise how dangerous and blind this character Mikey is as he continues to politely destroy.

It was disconcerting because the film is from the point of view of Mikey.  So I could see what he’s doing is wrong but he can’t see the damage, so I got angry at this douche bag and wanted to yell and kick him in the guts.  He turned up

He turned up with bruises and you get to know why, well pretty much straight away.

I get the layers of the film, but it annoyed me and in the end, I was left feeling angry.

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