Misty Green is a hot mess. A talented actress with an Emmy to her name, she’s burnt bridges with producers and directors, is a functioning addict and, after being evicted from her home, has just seven days to find a job. She also has a brother with mental health problems, an audition for a highly-prized role and a lucrative escort offer in Dubai. Misty needs to make good choices but self sabotages; getting wasted and missing new script pages for her audition, drinking and driving and worst of all, being a ‘difficult’ woman in a Hollywood she can’t see her place in. As a bi-racial woman in her thirties she tells her friend (Anna Kendrick) that she is ‘too Black to be with Leo, not Black enough to be with Damson, not a nepo baby and not a Brit’.
A24
Turfed out of the apartment of her dead lover by his widow (Amy Landecker), Misty’s week is a firestorm. While her brother (Daniel Kaluuya, back on screen after a self-imposed break) turns up to cause chaos, she meets two movie producers with the potential to change her life. Adam Driver’s sleaze, Zach, dangling a cash carrot, and Chris Rock’s star-maker, Jordan, who could give her that much needed chance, even if she previously screwed him over on a project.
Merrick Morton/A24
That fact that Misty always does the least considered thing and that we still want the best for her is largely down to a mesmerising performance by Slow Horses actor, Rosalind Eleazar (who might not be a nepo baby, but is British). Rock pulls the triple as star, writer and director and his study of LA and La-La Land – with its wealth disparity, racism, ageism and the coin-toss luck that careers are made of – doesn’t say anything particularly new about a craven industry. But his handing over of the enterprise to Eleazar is unexpected and fresh.
Simmering with vim and a diamond self-worth (even if she doesn’t treat herself very well), Eleazar’s Misty carries the film to create an underdog portrait that feels blood-and-guts real even if a few of the scenarios don’t. With a DGAF walk and an ability to telegraph rich interior life, Eleazar makes Misty convincingly conflicted and undeniably talented. In a scene that will likely attract awards interest Misty is talked over and ignored in an audition and uses her rage to power up, leaving the room with casting agents agog.
A24
Rock peppers his film with industry haunts and speak, but also news reports of shootings and the streets lined with homelessness which some may find borderline smug. He throws in fourth wall breaks that seem to ask audiences how complicit we are in the build-them-up-knock-’em-down theatrics of stardom and the whether we might quite like watching a woman struggle. But he also understands how much viewers like to watch a star being born. In Eleazar he’s given us that.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of A24 Misty Green is out in cinemas now and will be available on Netflix in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia/New Zealand from 9 November
The title’s monster is the handle of a suspected trafficker and consumer of child sexual abuse material, tracked down to his bucolic home in the German countryside, a team of hardened specialist officers grimly explaining rights, bagging laptops and cuffing the suspect. It’s clear there are victims and trauma associated with the case, but what Maria Kreutzer’s study focuses on is the emotional, mental and moral fallout of those who thought they knew the perpetrator. And in doing so, showing the huge, wide-reaching impact such crimes create.
Frédéric Batier/Netflix
Musical performance artist Lucy (Léa Seydoux) is married to the suspect, Philip (Laurence Rupp), his early morning arrest a shock on every level. This is the man she has moved to the countryside after a work burnout, the father of her little boy, and the man she enjoys having languorous sex with. When he is accused, Lucy reexamines their life together, reappraising the safety of their child, contemplating the true meaning of Philip’s voyeuristic home videos, grieving the loss of her perception of her partner.
Philip claims innocence and this could be true, but so too could the accusations made against him by a detective (Jella Haase) who is also dealing with the loss of a man she knew, her dementia suffering father who is sexually harassing his carer. As Lucy navigates her life after this arrest (and Philip’s family and friends), the truth of the situation comes slowly to light – revealed like sickening twists that wrack her with doubt, guilt, rage and grief. With the help of her no-nonsense mother (Catherine Deneuve), Lucy must build a new normal, but what does that look like?
Frédéric Batier/Netflix
Kreutzer was inspired to write the film from news headlines which became personal when one of her cast on Corsage was accused of the same crime. Perhaps that’s why Lucy’s confusion, horror and hope feel so truthful as she flip-flops between believing her husband and not. And why art, in Lucy’s piano recitals which take male songwriters’ work and turn them into something uniquely female, feel like necessary healing and processing. As she tells an interviewer ‘I take their words and question them’.
In Seydoux’s expressive hands the experience is visceral. Lucy is French, living in Germany and speaking English around the house, a multi-language scenario that echoes her sense of isolation when Philip is arrested. Shame and doubt prevents her from talking to others, her shifting position on believing her husband means she never quite understands who her community is, and her difficulty in expressing her turbulent emotions (apart from through performance) is like her constant switching of language until the moment she speaks in her literal mother tongue to her Mum.
Seydoux is mesmerising as a woman who knows two things can be true at once: she can love her husband and also abhor him. She charts the agony of suddenly not fully knowing a person while also fearing that one may not have been vigilant enough in protecting a child. And while the idea of committing the crime may be unfathomable to audiences, those feelings are entirely recognisable, making Kreutzer’s film a discomforting and vital watch. Meanwhile, Seydoux’s vanity-free, raw performance should land her in the season’s awards conversation.
Frédéric Batier/Netflix
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of NETFLIX Gentle Monster is in cinemas now
Jaws traumatised beach dippers and now Brian Duffield’s efficient survival thriller will likely make it even more terrifying to venture out into deeper waters without recalling primal, horrifying sequences in this big-gulp nailbiter. Based on Daniel Kraus’s smart modern flip on the tale of Jonah and the Whale, this real-time nailbiter recalls Buried in its claustrophobic single-location chutzpah and the problem-solving of The Martian, providing a briny cine-ride with a hefty side of sentimentalism. The two do not always dovetail successfully, but this is a big-screen bite that’s easy enough to digest.
20th Century Studios
Kraus co-wrote the script (adapted from his bestseller) with Duffield and it shows, with aspects of the book that worked better on the page and in the imagination living alongside a banger of a ‘what-if’ opener. After a prologue watching a salty Central Coast seadog Mitt (Josh Brolin) take his own life by drowning, we meet college student Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams). The son of Mitt, he decides to come to terms with his Daddy issues and grief by scuba diving to find the lost body of his Pa. But Gardiner Sr shifted his mortal coil in Monastery Beach at Monterey, a beauty spot where the sea shelf drops to a deep trench and all manner of Cetacea and giant squid habitually cruise the dark waters. In a breathless stage-setter, Jay is inadvertently chugged by a Sperm Whale the size of a bus, sucked into its gloopy belly with only an hour of air left in his oxygen tank. (And yes, the press notes assure us, it is possible for a human to end up alive in a Sperm Whale gut according to marine biologists.)
20th Century Studios
Light is provided by gobbled phosphorescence and glow-in-the-dark jellyfish, but essentially the next hour of the movie is Jay chatting to himself while squashed in slimy internal organs, stomach acid rotting his skin and an understandably furious squid snapping its doomed beak. As he contemplates the way out (whale anus isn’t an option) and has a brief taste of freedom in a gonzo moment that sees him screaming at a tourist boat from the breaching mammal’s gullet, Jay flashes back to moments with his stern Dad and the life lessons he taught.
Mitt was never knowingly wearing a top, obsessed with the sea and constantly pushing his son to follow in his footsteps as a Scuba Captain Ahab type. As played by the always-excellent Brolin he’s the narrative anchor, a messy, bruising Dad who one can imagine screwing up a kid so badly he thinks jumping into whale-infested waters is the best idea. In the duo’s fractious exchanges key info is imparted about the perfect mix for oxygen and the social behaviour of whales. Within an hour, Jay has managed to get months worth of therapy and begins an audacious plan to free himself (just don’t ask questions about The Bends) while having a conversation with his father as the whale. There’s a chat about Nitrogen Narcosis early on in the film and you may wonder if Jay is simply tripping balls at this point, but the film offers this segment with such earnestness you either have to swallow it or it’s jumped the shark.
20th Century Studios
As a Leviathan race-against-time Whalefall certainly makes a splash, but whether it’s seaworthy depends on personal tolerance to slippery (whale) body horror and mawkishness. The ocean is deeper than the premise, but it’s worth a dip.
20th Century Studios
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS Whalefall is in cinemas now
David Fincher’s 2010 study of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his tech-bro MO, The Social Network, explored the genesis of Facebook and Zuckerberg’s dubious but impressive drive. Now writer-director Aaron Sorkin returns to the Silicon Valley well to unpack the repercussions of allowing the digital frontier to evolve unchecked and unpunished when big tech business pushes its product at the expense of users’ mental health, and allows ‘fake news’ to become the new norm. Based on the Wall Street Journal’s 2001 expose of Facebook’s internal workings, Sorkin depicts the real-world result of radicalisation, the endeavours and importance of a free print press to investigate, and the shark-eyed response of a billionaire to data that reveals a moral quandary. As a follow-up to The Social Network it’s necessarily less fun and suffers from the absence of Fincher’s particular style. But as another film that asks an audience how complicit they are in the erosion of democracy, fact-checked and properly-sourced ‘truth’ and free speech (FB censors comments on everything, including free speech posts), it’s a sobering watch.
Leah Gallo/Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
Beginning with a prologue, Sorkin plops us squarely in a 2019 world where far-right ideology is pedestrian, all ‘facts’ are platformed and society is polarised as a pair of cops pull up to help a broken-down motorist at the side of the road. She is an indignant, drunk, racist ‘Karen’ (Portia Doubleday) who live-streams her bigotry and MAGA politics. And she’s also the nucleus for Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison, in her first post-Oscar role) to begin to question the company she works for when content like this is not only allowed, but promoted by intentional algorithms. Haugen may be dismissed at work for raising concerns but she’s smart as a whip and talks like Rosalind Russell. She’s soon connecting to WSJ investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) to facilitate a covert whistleblower takedown. Haugen is a movie ‘nerd’ who spouts the facts, Horwitz a technophobe and audience surrogate who parses it down into layman’s understandable terms.
Leah Gallo/Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
This is the meat of the film, with Sorkin (like Danny Boyle’s Ink) championing the disappearing need and skill of journalism and the importance of the print press in a Wild West culture. Horwitz is needled by a snarky bureau chief (a scene-stealing Betty Gilpin), writes long-hand in legal pads and shows his work in the way he approaches his source in ensuring he moves within the law. He and Haugen have a flirty, adversarial relationship (though did she really wear slinky evening wear to his hotel room as a cover for their meetings so that she could be perceived to be on a date should she see a work colleague?) and there’s much to enjoy in the banter and frisson created by White and Madison. As they pore over laptops and meet in rainy redwoods, the timeline toggles between the investigation and the resulting media fallout for Zuckerberg and Haugen’s 2021 Senate committee testimony.
The side dish then, is Zuckerberg, now played by Jeremy Strong as a stiff psychopath with robotic deportment, zero charisma and a pathological devotion to ‘free speech absolutism’. Teased towards an outward appearance of humanity by his crisis management expert (Wumni Osaku) in the wake of exposé, he’s little more than a caricature and ‘Big Bad’. As with Facebook itself, there is little nuance, or interest in getting to the root of who Zuckerberg has truly become after his initial college dorm brilliance/ruthlessness. That will likely make the whole endeavour easier to dismiss by those Sorkin seeks to challenge. As a narrative that champions those who risk everything to do the right thing, it’s a curiously old-fashioned but engaging entertainment.
Leah Gallo/Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT INC. The Social Reckoning is in cinemas now
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
For over 20 years Greg Williams was the official photographer to James Bond. Here he looks back at his time shooting the beginning of Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007 on the twentieth anniversary of Casino Royale.
The first Bond set I ever went on was The World Is Not Enough, when I visited the Caspian Sea caviar factory set at Pinewood, which was Robbie Coltrane’s character’s lair. I went on that because I made a book called Greg Williams on Set which featured pictures from different British movie sets. Three years later I got a phone call from Eon – they wanted to do a book on Die Another Day. And that was the beginning of my working relationship with James Bond.
I must have spent 60-odd days on the set of Die Another Day, and, in that time, really became a part of the Eon/Bond family. A couple of years later I was building a relationship with Daniel Craig on the set of Layer Cake. When I started work on Casino Royale, the screentests for Bond were down to the last three, and Daniel was one of them. I remember Daniel saying, ‘Well, look, if I get the job, it’d be brilliant to have you there’.
I was commissioned to make a book on the making of the film and was given this incredible privilege of being handed a script and a schedule, and told, ‘You work out what you think you’ll need’. It’s a very different role to that of the unit photographer whose primary role is to recreate the shots filmed in stills. I didn’t have to look for that picture. My MO was to find the other stuff that is presented here.
In preproduction Daniel was getting stronger and stronger, and taking on the physique of the Bond that he wanted – a character that really looked like he was capable of killing. At the same time he was learning all the skills. He was training in weapons, fighting and driving.
On about day six of filming I was on set of the famous bathroom scene which opens the film where Bond makes his first kill. This was the first time they’ve ever used the classic gun barrel shot as part of the narrative of the film and once they filmed it, they dragged the camera off to the right, and I went into the position, and we shot it again for me and for the unit photographer. The resulting shot was very much ‘eyes and gun straight down the barrel’. And that, along with the movement of his jacket, makes it a really dynamic picture and it made the cover of my book Bond On Set – Filming Casino Royale.
Later in the shoot we went to the Bahamas where I shot Daniel in the classic Aston Martin which Bond wins in a card game. I love Daniel framed the way he is in the car door. It really reminds me of a young Steve McQueen or a young James Dean, this picture somehow already feels vintage.
I love the shot of Daniel in his stunt harness, it just drums home the physique that he’s carrying under there. It’s just such a physical manifestation of James Bond. It’s one of my favourite pictures from the whole set.
Producer Michael Wilson pulled me aside when I was trying to photograph Daniel with an emphasis on strength, and he said ‘Greg, listen, Bond doesn’t stand there showing everyone how strong he is. Think of Bond as a leopard’. He said that when you see a leopard, it lies on the tree and is totally relaxed. It’s not showing you how strong it is, but you know that in a split second it could jump up and be ready for attack. I found that really useful, and it informed the way I shot Daniel’s Bond from that day forward.
The actors had all done a lot of training to learn how to play Texas Hold’em poker convincingly. I like that the chair’s empty next to Bond, that you can see the dealer’s chip there and ‘Casino Royale’ on the table.
While we were there I shot this portrait of Daniel at Barrandov Studios. I just asked him for a couple of minutes during a break in filming, and went up to the sparks [on-set electricians], and asked them to borrow one little 650-watt Tungsten Fresnel light. There’s a trick I learned from reading a book about how they used to light portraits in the ‘30s and ‘40s. They used the very edge of the Fresnel, which was called feathered light. So this light is mainly pointing at me, and it’s just the feathered edge that I’ve shaped Daniel with. I had two V-flats, which are two 4-by-8ft polyboard flats that are taped together. One’s behind him, and the other is to the left, which is creating that fill light around his ear and cheek. It’s shot on a very, very low aperture. It’s shot on f1.2, which creates a dreamy feel timeless feel. It’s my favourite portrait I’ve ever taken of Daniel. And it was made in seconds. No crew.
Towards the end of production we were in Lake Como (see top). There was a real decision that Daniel made on this gun, that it wasn’t going to be a Walther PPK in this moment. He chose an assault weapon. It reminds you that Bond has only recently become a double-O, and really he’s a naval officer. I remember there were a number of options. But Daniel said, ‘I think it’s this’. And this is the moment in the film where he shoots Mr White in the leg, stands over him, and delivers the famous ‘Bond, James Bond’ line.
I love this picture because, it’s a frame within a frame. And the boom points your eye directly to Daniel. The camera on the floor is looking directly up, and even the lines of the rope all guide you to Daniel. These are not calculations I’m aware of making at the time. But I do have an interesting trick; when I’m in a situation I often go and stand where other people are standing to watch. People tend to stand naturally where they get the best view of something. So without thinking, they’re all seeing a photo they’re not taking.
Also on Lake Como was the ‘convalescence home’ where Bond recovers after being tortured by Le Chiffre. I took this picture of Eva Green after a day’s filming. We were travelling back to her hotel on one of the old Riva boats and I asked if I could take some portraits along the way. I shot a series, but this one stood out. There’s a real authenticity in her smile, it feels natural and completely in the moment.
This was also the film that I got to shoot my first Bond movie poster. I had this idea of doing something that was a real hark back to a ‘60s Bond. We wanted the smokiness of a casino so we rented a ballroom in a hotel in Prague where they had chandeliers and filled this room with haze. We set up the table and all the chips, and Daniel had a Walther PPK and a deck of cards. We used mirrors that would just dink a little bit of reflective light across his eyes, and make a dreamlike, ethereal poster. Sony, at the time, was not interested in that. It wasn’t a concept that they wanted us to invest our time on. So when they went for lunch during the shoot, Daniel and I had a go at it, and showed it to [producer] Barbara Broccoli, who liked it. And hey presto, a few months later, it turned out to be my first-ever Bond poster, and the first teaser for Casino Royale. There’s a picture of me looking horrifically young, holding it up with beaming pride in the offices of Eon Productions. It was definitely a seminal moment for me and my career. If I talk about 10 things I’ve done in my career, shooting Bond posters is definitely one of them.
And the beautiful thing about it is that it is an actual photograph. Nowadays so many posters are a ‘photoshop fail’ – the hand is different to the arm; it’s different to the shoulder; it’s different to the head. I was very proud that it was an actual photograph. It was amazing to go to the premiere and see that the whole of Leicester Square was just my posters. It was a ‘pinch me’ moment, which I was then lucky enough to have several times over with other Bond films.
What I learned on Casino Royale, that I try to take forward in life, is the innocence of not knowing everything, and not overthinking things. I used to get very nervous before shoots, and then I started to learn that I do know what I’m doing, and if you put me with an amazing actor or actress, and you have then dressed in amazing clothes, and you put them in beautiful light, you’re going to get something good. It’s going to happen.
I learned who Daniel’s Bond was quite quickly and I’m proud to have been a part of building that visual identity in stills. I was often trying to shoot motion, action, trying to capture this feeling that something is always happening. Bond always has some form of motivation, and I wanted to see that in the pictures and in the posters. I’m so grateful to Daniel, Barbara and Michael Wilson for having me on that ride. As a photographer, it was such an insane gift.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
Ahead of the Royal Film Performance™ and World Premiere of Digger, Greg Williams catches a moment of calm with Tom Cruise.
Standing on the seventh-floor roof terrace of the Chancery Rosewood Hotel in Mayfair on a bright Tuesday afternoon in September, Tom Cruise surveys London from the top of the building that was once the American Embassy in the city. Above him, in full flight, sits a huge metal 35ft-wide American Golden Eagle made from WW2 B-52 bombers by Theodore Roszak. It’s a fitting spot for the actor/producer to contemplate the worldwide premiere of his latest film, Digger, which will bow in Leicester Square to an audience including the Prince and Princess of Wales in a few hours time.
In the movie, Cruise plays a jingoistic Texan oil tycoon with White House sway and the view that he is above accountability when his Alaskan drilling causes a global environmental disaster. Directed and co-written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu (his first English-language film since The Revenant), it’s a role in which Cruise dons ageing make-up, a paunch and cowboy boots, chewing his uncomfortable words with a syrupy Texan accent. It’s a world away from the tux he’s wearing as Greg Williams shoots him in the hotel’s Eagle Bar before he begins hours of meeting fans, media and royals on the red carpet.
‘With Digger, I have to say, I’ve never had a guy that challenged me in this way,’ he admits of the role. ‘I had to draw on all of my experience, all of my learnings from all of the years and every film I’ve made to be able to play this character and match the ambition of this movie. That’s because even while I’m drawing on the tools I’ve learned over time, this is not a one-size-fits-all job.’ To avoid spoilers it’s impossible to detail just how Cruise’s decades of acting informs his performance, but suffice to say it involves duality, a meta element and walking a tight-rope of tone in a gonzo satire that requires him to use physical comedy and oratory bombast. ‘Finding the right tone is finding that line,’ he says of the balancing act. ‘It’s so precise. You have got to buy into the character, you have got to buy into the world.’
Part of that process, he says, was leaning into the clothes and make-up of Digger (designed by master prosthetist, Kazu Hiro), a man who wears silk pyjamas and Stetson, beige sports shirts and Texan cowboy suits with giant belt buckles nestling under his well-fed gut. ‘The colors and the wardrobe and the makeup… and Alejandro showed me his inspiration wall for Digger. From there, I’m playing, discovering the rhythm, and suddenly I can just be the character.’ He’s nodding to the character today by wearing black cowboy boots with his classic Armani tux and Jaques Marie Mage sunglasses.
The character is one of the most unpleasant he has played in his career and one who operates within a recognisable world stage – and his performance is likely to put him into the awards conversation. And, he hopes, makes audiences question and discuss what they’ve seen. ‘It’s definitely the oldest story ever told about humanity. What Alejandro has done is put a spotlight on our humanity in such a humorous and entertaining way, and I want people to bring to the story who they are, and to discover it for themselves and have conversations. The same themes play out in the schoolyard. You don’t have to be rich to wield power or to be a bully, there is a power play going on and it’s everywhere in every level of humanity. No one is immune, and history is written by the victors. Things happen fast, but human nature hasn’t changed.’
As a self-confessed movie fan, Cruise relishes the idea of seeing a big, bold film that challenges expectations and creates a debate when the lights go up. ‘I love sitting in that theatre opening weekend, I like being there with an audience so I can experience it with them. That’s something I’ve done since I was a kid. We traveled all over and whenever I would watch a movie with an audience, I was so curious – are they feeling the same way I do, are they enjoying this as much as I am? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s the beauty of cinema. Everyone likes what they like, what works for me may not work for you, but we’re there, together, and that’s what unites us. Your taste may not be mine, but what I want is for people to be immersed in the experience, to go along on this journey that’s projected up on that screen, whatever it takes to tell that story. And it takes all of us, together.’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER Diggeris in cinemas now Thanks to the Eagle Bar Upper East at The Chancery Rosewood
Of course we all adore Tom Cruise running and saving the day. But we also love it when he takes a gamble on a performance, when he doesn’t ask an audience to root for the character he’s carefully crafted, when vanity is thrown out the window. While we warm to Maverick and Ethan Hunt, we also relish the bitter repellence of Frank TJ MacKey and the corpulent twerking and pottymouth of Les Grossman. Digger Rockwell is Cruise unapologetically swinging for the fences, his movie star charisma buried under ageing, swelling prosthetics, and his character knowingly repulsive.
Seoju Park/Warner Bros. Pictures
On that level alone, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s bleak satire prodding at big business, environmentalism and the human need for stories (both in the news cycle and to process trauma) is an intrigue. Do you want to see Cruise with cowboy boots, paunch and an accent as thick as oil getting peed on by his animatronic incontinent cat? Yeah, you probably do. Writer-director Alejandro G. Iñárritu has called for care when reviewing his film in order for surprises to be preserved, but any viewer who has seen Birdman or Bardo should feel a sense of deja vu.
Seoju Park/Warner Bros. Pictures
Themes and sensibilities from both are present in a broad satire that introduces us to Digger as he awakes in his palatial, willfully artificial and OTT mansion, his 30 year-old cat, Maggie, in his bed. A tycoon who built his business on the ethos of his grand-daddy and his humble shovel (which hangs with other trophies in his home), Digger has an infuriated sister (Sandra Hüller, wasted) and a big problem with his Alaskan operation. A piece of the ice shelf the size of Washington DC has broken off and is heading towards Europe, a cataclysmic situation that requires accountability, atonement and action. Digger and the US president (John Goodman) conspire to do the opposite…
With mentions of getting ahead of the narrative and the value of truth, plus Digger giving a baldly truthful speech about consumer complicity to a room of oatmeal men, Iñárritu strives to be both deep and relevant. But with a one-note tone that only operates at eleven (though MVP Riz Ahmed modulates for nuance), an unsatisfactory mid-film rug-pull which undermines any sharpness, and a preponderance for the grotesque, Digger feels like it does a lot of shouting without saying much at all.
Seoju Park/Warner Bros. Pictures
Thank goodness then for Cruise – committing to the bit with the sort of dedication we expect of him, going gonzo in a manner that entertains even when the material does not. And production design, while bilious, is detailed and accomplished – worth looking at if Goodman’s bellowing is losing its charm. It’s a technically impressive film, with an all-star cast around the nucleus of Cruise and ambition for days. But it’s also messy, ugly and unfocused. And while it should buoy Cruise into the awards conversation, it will likely be him alone on the campaign trail.
Seoju Park/Warner Bros. Pictures
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of WARNER BROS. PICTURES Digger is in cinemas now
Those wanting more earthy romance, mooning about on the moors and frisson rather than the finger sucking, bridle-wearing, mucus-smearing provided in Emerald Fennell’s recent Wuthering Heights may find exactly what they’re looking for in this handsome period romance. With a screenplay by Diana Reid and direction from Georgia Oakley, Sense And Sensibility tips a Georgian hat to modernism and passion while still retaining the character and well, sensibilities of Austen’s work. And though it’s hard to push Ang Lee and Emma Thompson’s excellent 1995 version from the mind while watching, this considered and good-looking piece manages to seduce without ever feeling truly fresh.
Alex Bailey/Focus Features
This generation’s sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, are played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles and we find them turfed out of their ancestral home upon the death of their father. With a half brother and his bitchy wife inheriting the family pile, the siblings (and their younger sister Margaret, played winningly by Bodhi Rae Breathnach), are forced to downsize with their mother to a windswept cottage in Devon. Elinor is a sober young woman who haltingly falls for Edward Ferrars (George MacKay) while younger Marianne is wild, a stranger to a hairbrush and looking for torrid romance.
Alex Bailey/Focus Features
She finds it when rescued from a sprained ankle by Mr Willoughby (Frank Dillane) while spurning the overtures of grumpy ex-military man, Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum and his big beard). Various annoying people interrupt the sisters’ swooning: their Hagrid-esque landlord neighbour and his dull wife, a prattling society wife and – lifting everything with each appearance – a busybody relative, Mrs Jennings, played to hooting perfection by Fiona Shaw. She is MVP along with her snuffling black Pug.
Taking its lead from Joe Wright’s Austen adaptation, the Dashwood world is one of dirty petticoats, lush countryside and grimy nails, but it hits some tonal bumps. There are a couple of ball scenes featuring deliberately anachronistic dancing which jar, there’s a perceptible lack of lust between Marianne and either of her suitors, and there are, frankly, baffling choices of hat wear all round.
Alex Bailey/Focus Features
Mr Willoughby turns up in a floppy headpiece that The Wizard Of Oz’s Scarecrow might have misplaced, there are bonnets like lamp shades. Mrs Jennings dons what looks like meringue and and in one art gallery scene it’s difficult not to note the tiny flowerpot chapeaus of the background artists. That is to say that though engaging (thanks to the efforts of Edgar Jones and Creed Miles), classy and interested in the economic hardships of Regency women, this Sense and Sensibility impresses without ever sweeping you completely off your feet.
Alex Bailey/Focus Features
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of FOCUS FEATURES Sense and Sensibility is in cinemas now
Having premiered at TIFF last year, this dark comedy arrives in cinemas just as the Autumn school term gets under way. There will no doubt be educators for whom this story of a frazzled primary school teacher with a troublemaker in her classroom will be triggering. But for everyone else it’s a mean little amusement which, like the bad apple kid at its heart, starts out ferocious and ultimately, when stuck in a corner, runs out of steam.
James Pardon/Paramount Pictures
Maria (Saoirse Ronan) is a sad teacher living in a sad house recently vacated by her colleague lover. Heartbroken and alone, she simply exists in an ugly, in-flux home (she had hopes of doing it up and ‘making it lovely’ during her romance) and at work where her classroom is dominated by a disruptive, aggressive pupil, Danny (Eddie Waller). We know Danny is a wrong ‘un when we’re first introduced to the exasperation and resignation of Maria as she takes a school trip to an apple pressing factory and Danny purposefully chucks his shoe into the machines, spoiling the produce and the outing. When he’s not causing damage to objects, this feral child is bullying other kids or causing rageful chaos in class.
James Pardon/Paramount Pictures
Maria is drained, thwarted, frustrated. No one here is reaching their full potential while Danny rampages, least of all her. But what happens if a chance meeting with Danny turns into an accidental criminal act? If Maria can keep him away from school, doesn’t life get better for everyone? Who is really the bad apple then?
James Pardon/Paramount Pictures
While Bad Apples begins in grey reality, it soon veers out of credibility and into satire that isn’t quite bold enough to be really transgressive. Ronan elicits compassion for Maria despite her character being morally slippery and the situation she finds herself in demanding comeuppance or clever escape. Neither are forthcoming in a solution that turns almost Wicker Man before tapping out on an open ending that might frustrate.
That said, it’s horrible fun to watch Maria spar with two manipulative little tikes; damaged, damaging Danny and teacher’s pet Pauline (Nia Brown). Both kids are nightmares in their own way, both coming from homes of absentee parents. And neither are entirely what they present in the classroom. Waller is excellent at traversing the leering swagger of a bully to the pitiful cries of a boy who believes no one cares about him, while Brown makes Pauline increasingly unhinged as she insists on living her best school life. It’s their performances that do the work of asking audiences uncomfortable questions; about nature vs nurture, the sins of the fathers and how any of us can be the well rounded people we hope to be if school or society funnel us through a machine designed to crush us all into a homogeneous juice.
James Pardon/Paramount Pictures
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of PARAMOUNT PICTURES Bad Apples is in cinemas now
VENICE DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Australian actor volleys with Greg Williams on the Cipriani tennis court and with journalists on the Lido as he premieres his music documentary, What Love Builds, at the Venice Film Festival.
If there’s one question Russell Crowe wants to stop being asked it’s to define the difference between music – which he’s been creating since he got his first guitar in 1970 – and acting. His documentary, What Love Builds, which charts his musician side during his long career, and had its world premiere out of competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, aims to answer that query once and for all. ‘The film attempts to explain the two things are completely intertwined for me,’ he told journalists as he arrived to debut the film. ‘Everything comes from the same creative source so hopefully I won’t get asked that question too many times after people have seen the film. Everything that I do as a film actor is informed because I know how to drive an audience, live, even if they’re not in the room. That doesn’t mean that I’m any kind of a slave to the audience, it’s just that I’m aware – and that purely comes out of coming out of rock and roll and theatre.’
Having started out as a teen in the ’80s (as a solo artist under the name of Russ le Roq), Crowe has been in numerous bands over the years, performing in tandem with his growing stature as an actor. ‘Film is great, it’s a cerebral adventure. You construct the performance, go and do your job, and then a year to a year and a half later you see the effect of that, the series of emotional points that you may have planned and whether you’ve taken the audience with you or not. Rock and roll is right there and right then. It’s completely immediate and that’s what is exciting about it.’ His film, which he directed with the help of editor Padraic McKinley, is a celluloid scrapbook of his musical life, culminating in his current role as lead singer with group, Indoor Garden Party. For the last fifteen years he’s been collecting footage, photos, interviews and concert footage which amounted to 18 million feet of film to edit down with the help of McKinley. The band will go on tour next summer throughout Europe but Crowe says that in general – both in music and acting – he does not have a grand design or master plan. ‘The implication that any of this has been a choice is kinda funny. Because I’ve just rolled with opportunities as they’ve come along. I didn’t have a plan, and I still don’t have a plan. I just do what becomes apparent to me, pursue the things that I feel connected to. I wouldn’t want to change anything about the career that I had. Even in its darkest moments, it was incredibly educational.’
Though he didn’t dig into what his darkest artistic moments were, he admitted to an adversarial relationship with Hollywood thanks in part to Antipodean bluntness, self deprecation and sarcasm. ‘I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’ve mismanaged my relationship with Hollywood,’ he laughed. ‘But always to my benefit. I’m not driven by the same things that people who come necessarily from that culture are driven by. And my sense of humour has got me into trouble so many times because we like to call things as we see them where I come from – and that’s not always appreciated.’ Now 62, the actor/director says what motivates him to perform onscreen is feeling a project ‘on his skin’, describing how if the screenplay gets to him he feels ‘compelled’ to serve the work. ‘At the age of 62, to be in demand and working as much as I want to be, it’s incredible. Part of the reason that I am still working is that I do it from a very pure perspective. When I have to get up at 4.30am to go to a film set, I absolutely know why I’m getting up at 4.30am and that motivates me and drives me. I feel very sorry for actors who make decisions to go on films sets where they’re not believing in the subject matter that they’re working on, the character they’re working on, because I don’t know how the hell could you motivate yourself at that time of day if you didn’t have a fundamental love for it.’
Crowe has felt happy about getting up at dawn for a raft of incoming projects which he name-checked, including playing Ramírez in Highlander, returning to Roman times with historical actioner The Last Druid, Ted Kaczynski exploration, Unabomber and Cold War thriller, Billion Dollar Spy. He also considers getting his documentary which he says is ‘about storytelling, performance, artistic integrity, determination and joy’ to the Venice Film Festival something of a wish fulfilled. Despite having invitations from other festivals, Crowe values Venice as the ‘most fun film festival with a depth in the appreciation of the audience’. ‘You ask, do I have a dream in my drawer?’ he smiled. ‘There’s so much for me to accomplish yet – I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface creatively on things I want to do…’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER What Love Builds premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival
