A Hero

Iranian writer/director, Asghar Farhadi returns to familiar ground for A Hero, a film reminiscent of his 2011 masterpiece, A Separation. Like that film, this deals with family, social 'contracts', stifling bureaucracy and loss of innocence. It follows the plight of Rahim Soltani, played with fantastically dim-eyed naivety by Amir Jadidi, and his attempts to gain release from prison by paying off a creditor.

The backstory goes that Rahim needed a guarantor to set up a new business, so his ex-wife's brother stumped up, only to see the money disappear with Rahim's dodgy business partner. Loan-sharks need repaying, so the brother-in-law, Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh) has to cash in his daughter's dowry, depriving her of marriage. All this is winkled out during the actual plot, which is pretty labyrinthine as it stands. Needless to say, events turn more complex when Rahim's new fiancé, Farkondeh (Sahar Goldust) finds a bag carrying a number of gold coins, giving them a moral decision to make.

Rahim floats through the story, central yet adrift, as a slightly gormless cipher, who can't see the reality of society going on around him. His sister and her husband, the prison hierarchy, a local charity organisation, even a helpful taxi driver - all get involved in one way or another, but all seem to have a greater grasp of how things are. Rahim talks about honour and truth but is clearly flawed. When asked if he's really smart or simple, he sadly replies "I wouldn't be in prison if I was smart". It's almost unbearably frustrating watching the small errors of judgement spiral out, and rather than resolve issues, become continually thrown spanners.

Much of the film is seen through the eyes of an innocent, Rahim's young son, Siavash (Saleh Karimaei) who speaks with a stutter. He plays a similar role to that of the daughter in A Separation - who is incidentally, the director's daughter, Sarina Farhadi, AND is also in A Hero, as Bahram's daughter, Nazanin. Intricate. This film is a gripping morality tale that couldn't be more prosaic, albeit in a culture that's probably alien to most of us outside Iran. Farhadi is a master of making minor details seem earth shattering, and ultimately, bringing everything back to a sense of fatalism. 

[As a side issue, at the time of writing, Farhadi is being sued for plagiarism by an ex-student of his who made a short documentary called All Winners, All Losers that covers that same ground. Latest reports suggest he has been found guilty but that the judgement is not final, due to the case being in the public domain.]

A Hero opens at The Luna on June 9th, with an advance screening on Sun May 29th in the Movies with Mark session.

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Definitely A Separation (2011), which is incredible, and maybe it was the dusty setting that reminded me of Nadine Labaki's great film, Capernaum (2018).

The Innocents

In the first ten minutes or so of The Innocents cute, blonde nine-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløtta) eats a lolly that's been stuck on the car window, pinches her autistic sister's leg, HARD, gozzes over the balcony of her new apartment and puts broken glass shards into her sister's shoe. Pathological or sociopathic, maybe, but innocent? Hmmm. Of course, there's a lot more to it than this, not least the other children in the film - Ida's sister, Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad); Ben (Sam Ashraf); and Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim). This quartet dominate the film, leaving the parents to play very minor roles. In fact, we know very little about the adults, though we can surmise that Ben and Aisha's respective mums have it tough due to some nicely subtle shots (Aisha's mum weeping behind an open cupboard door, Ben's mum smoking nervously). Ida and Anna's folks are also struggling, mainly with concerns about Anna's condition, but also moving to a new area. Suffice to say, the older people have more than enough to worry about, which probably explains how these kids are able to roam the local area as freely as they do.

Early on, we learn that Ben is able to move things with his mind. Neat trick, in the right mind. It soon comes to light that all the kids have certain abilities, mainly the power to hear what one another is thinking, but as the film progresses, extra elements come into play. Ben discovers, via a horrific incident, that he's able to 'fetch' people, make them do what he wants. As Ben's mental stability deteriorates, it becomes clear this won't pan out well for those involved with him. Meanwhile, Anna's connection to Aisha helps her to speak for the first time in years and Ida slowly gains levels of empathy she hadn't previously shown. As events develop to a troubling crescendo, it's still the children that have the agency, the adults either being used as pawns or unwitting bystanders. One of the final scenes by the lake shows the neighbourhood kids all taking notice but, crucially, none of the adults, and watching this as a parent, it's a powerfully worrying moment. It's likely no accident that the 'innocents' of the title are not the kids at all, but their parents, and maybe all adults.

The four children are incredible - I'm guessing they were between 7 and 11 years of age - and special mention must go to director Eskil Vogt for making such a fantastical story believable and moving. I mean, some of the things these kids do in the film are near waking nightmares. Personally, I read The Innocents as a cautionary tale of laissez faire parenting, but maybe that's just my neurotic bent. What's not subjective is the film's quality. It's a corker.

The Innocents is showing now at the Luna cinemas.

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Josh Trank's Chronicle (2012) and Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special (2016) are about kids with powers, but honestly, these aren't great. Maybe it's better going back to Richard Donner's The Omen (1976) or even this film's namesake, Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961). They're proper creepy, them.

Hatching

This debut feature from Finnish writer/director, Hanna Bergholm is almost perfectly pitched. It's about a young girl, Tinja, played by Siiri Solalinna (also, amazingly, her screen debut), who is struggling to live up to her mother's exacting expectations. Mother, Äiti, played by Sophia Heikkilä, wants her daughter to win the school gymnastics competition and show the world through her 'lifestyle' vlogs what a great family they are. Rounding out this family are downtrodden husband, Isä (Jani Volanen) and irritating son, Matias (Oiva Ollila), though they all seem to be only mildly on board with the whole social media enterprise. 

At the beginning of the film, a panicky blackbird gets trapped in the living room of the family house and smashes up the place. After catching it, Tinja asks if she can release it outside. Mother, instead, snaps its neck and tells Tinja to dispose of it. Later that night, Tinja is awoken by a shrill squawking and upon searching the creepy forest outside, she finds the bird, barely alive beside a nest. Here's where the film hints at the way it to means to go on. Tinja realises she must put the poor animal out of its misery and proceeds to bludgeon its head with a rock. It's hard to finish off, so she must repeat the act a fair few times. Not for the squeamish, it's safe to say. Finally, she notices an egg in the nest and decides to take it home. 

You might guess that a film called Hatching will have something come out of the egg. You'd be right. Not only does the egg grow to about the size of a child's bean bag, it also has a faint glow inside AND seems to absorb Tinja's tears. When it does hatch, the creature appears to be a cross between a skeksis from The Dark Crystal and an archaeopteryx - with hands. Top animatronic puppet work here from Gustav Hoegen. It appears horrific but it soon transpires that it's connected emotionally in some way with Tinja, as the neighbour's dog finds out the hard way. As time passes, and the creature transforms, the mental link between the two causes several, umm, situations. Tinja goes into a fit as she appears to virtually inhabit the 'other's' body during these moments of confrontation. This push and pull, a kind of Cronenberg-ian dichotomy, becomes a key facet of the film. 

Bergholm and co-writer, Ilja Rautsi have cleverly balanced the body horror and dark humour with themes of parental pressure and the beginning of menstruation - glimpsing spots of blood on the bed, Father assumes it's Tinja's first period (not a carcass), and awkwardly leaves the room. The film could even be viewed as a revenge thriller of sorts, with Mother paying a high price for her self-absorption. Her special 'friend', Tero (Reino Nordin) says to her, "You only see yourself, huh? Your daughter has some serious problems." Heikkilä and Solalinna are brilliant and the finale left me with a huge grin on my dial. Highly recommended Finnish gem, possibly best of the year so far.

Hatching opens in Perth on May 26th at the Palace cinemas.

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Some of the physical movement reminded me of Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998), and the feel of the film has a cousin in Tomas Alfredson's excellent Let the Right One In (2008).

Maigret

This version of author Georges Simenon's famous detective is the latest in a pedigree stretching back to the 1930s. Pierre Renoir (son of Impressionist Pierre Auguste, brother of director Jean), Charles Laughton, Jean Gabin, Richard Harris, Michael Gambon (two Dumbledores right there) and even Rowan Atkinson have all played Detective Maigret. That could play as a variation of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - what links Mr. Bean to Luncheon of the Boating Party? Anyway, this 2022 iteration is housed in the formidable personage of Gérard Depardieu and he's calmly excellent. He can do this kind of role in his sleep, and I'm nicking this adjective from Roly - what he does in Maigret seems effortless.

Whether it's Simenon or writer/director, Patrice Leconte or perhaps co-writer, Jérôme Tonnerre to thank, they give Depardieu some golden lines to deliver. His grumpy coaxing of his underling in how to smoke a pipe is top drawer - "You're sucking it, you have to puck, puck, puck." It's these minor moments and Depardieu's performance that lift this slightly from the average. This Maigret is based on the 1954 novel, Maigret and the Dead Girl, and that should give you an inkling as to its topic. Maigret is being told to quit smoking and take care of his health when news of a dead girl in a park arrives. Earlier, said girl, Louise Louvière (Clara Antoons) is getting ready for a high society party, where she's confronted by a young woman and her fiancé, Jeanine and Laurent (Mélanie Bernier and Pierre Moure). This is the last we see of her alive. 

Maigret is a very traditional thriller, light on actual thrills but heavy on charm. If this were a 'modern' suspense film, there'd likely be layer upon layer of detail, twists unfolding one after the other. Maigret, though, is all rather staid and almost desultory in its handling of story. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, it's kind of refreshing, in fact, to see a film lacking in 'snap' moments, one that puts in faith in novelistic structure and atmosphere. Aside from the 'whodunit' through-line, there are quietly affecting scenes, especially involving Maigret and Betty (Jade Labeste), a girl with a similar look and backstory to Louise. It seems initially that Maigret has a plan to use Betty as bait to trap the killer, which he tries, but there's also a paternal instinct underpinning his motives. Much of this is hinted at in a conversation between Betty and Madame Maigret (Anne Loiret).

This is a pleasantly diverting Parisian period piece, lifted by Depardieu's star turn. It's not a must-see but you could do a lot worse at the cinema.

Maigret opens at the Luna and Palace cinemas on May 26th.

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I'm going to go with one from Depardieu and one from Leconte, both masters of their fields. The late 70s and all of the 80s was Depardieu's peak and it's hard to choose one, but I'll go for Jean de Florette (1986), directed by Claude Berri. Ridicule (1996) is Leconte's most famous and one of his best.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

For all Sam Raimi's standing in the industry and the adulation in which he's held, by my reckoning, his last good film was 1995's The Quick and the Dead. I haven't forgotten his Spider-Man films (really disliked those) and there are a couple I've missed, sure, but Marvel took a risk signing him on for this. The good news for Feige and co is that it works. It's more inventive than recent MCU films, what with the multiverse angle that was road-tested by the Loki (and WandaVision to a lesser extent) TV series, and its smattering of Raimi touches. It's arguably the best of the phase 4 films so far.

Brief rundown - a demon is hunting a girl, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez, and you're on your own pronouncing that first name) to steal her power of traversing the multiverse (multi-traversing?). Our Strange (Universe 616) is co-opted into helping her avoid said nasty. Cumberbatch is supreme (though not Sorcerer Supreme) as Strange, and he's well supported by Gomez, Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlett Witch and Benedict Wong as the actual top wiz, Wong. There are also a number of alternate universe characters that open the door to the introduction of various Marvel properties - I'll leave that here, hopefully your eyebrows will raise in the same way mine did.

At its core, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a film about loss - Strange losing Christine (Rachel McAdams) to another dude; America losing her parents; but most centrally to the plot, ScarWitch losing her 'kids'. I suppose you could say that as she invented the kids in WandaVision, she's actually losing (lost?) her mind as well. Wacko three-eye Darkhold Strange has clearly misplaced his ego (probably id and super-ego too), not to mention a universe that was wiped out thanks to an incursion (where two universes get too close to one another). Another Christine lost her Strange as well, but you get the drift by now, it's loss all the way down.

As sombre as all this thematic misery sounds, the film as a whole jazzes along, no little thanks to writer, Rick and Morty and Loki alumnus, Michael Waldron. He and Raimi combine to give this Marvel film glimpses of indi-cred and bizarro shit that feels fresh to the MCU. Strange and America's careen through various universes - hellish, paint, cartoon, Cubism, etc. - is pretty mint, reminiscent of the first Doctor Strange film where the Ancient One sends him proper trippin'. This bit also sits as a companion piece to Everything Everywhere All at Once, equally impressive, just more buckage spent on the technicals. There's a great fight with musical notes (sure, why not?) and some very Raimi hits, with undead souls co-opted as a hang-glider for a zombie Strange, and Bruce Campbell in a not unexpected cameo. Top bins.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is showing on many screens in many universes right now.

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The old London bus thing has just happened with multiverse films (like meteor films or bug animations  - there's even a name for this phenomenon, Twin Films). Hence, you should go and see Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. And steering away from multiverse films, why not dig a bit deeper into the origins of the Campbell cameo with Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II (1987). This was one of the films Matt brought to art camp in high school. Don't recall it going over too well:) Mind you, my Marx Brothers films didn't either.

Operation Mincemeat

This film was on a hiding to nothing from the start. The actual story of Operation Mincemeat is so unlikely, so fanciful that any rendition would be hard pressed to do it justice. As far as accuracy goes, the writer, Michelle Ashford and director, John Madden have been scrupulously loyal to the events and people involved (give or take a romantic misfire and an invented character or two). In 1943, British intelligence were looking for a way to convince the Germans that the planned Allied invasion was going to be somewhere other than Sicily, the actual target. Two officers suggested reviving an earlier plan (probably devised by Bond author, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming) to drop a dead body in the sea near Spain with papers indicting Greece to be the spot. Deception afoot!

The film revolves around the small team tasked with planning the ruse - the aforementioned duo, lawyer Ewan Montagu (Colin Firth) and intelligence officer Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), along with clerk, Jean Leslie (Kelly McDonald), and Montagu's assistant, Hester Leggett (Penelope Wilton). A shedload of acquainted characters, including Fleming (Johnny Flynn) and Admiral John Godfrey (Jason Isaacs) orbit this group, but the focus remains on the core four. The platonic romance between Firth and McDonald doesn't work, much better is Macfadyen's bristling jealousy - this is the best I've seen him. His is the most natural performance in this stiffly British, po-faced war panto, though Isaacs was fun in a stern, one-note role.

Some of the writing was forced, especially the spoon-fed stuff with Fleming - they want to be very clear that the audience knows that THIS IS THE GUY WHO WROTE THE 007 BOOKS!! If only the whole film was based around the guys in Spain - one Sancho Panza dude (Will Keen), one bisexual gadabout (Nicholas Rowe) paying for favours with hand jobs. The film took a much needed deviation with these fellas. It seems they were either not historically accurate, or a compilation of characters, but this is the part of the film that very nearly redeems this well-intentioned work of fustiness. A more adventurous, less hackneyed director that Madden might have done justice to this incredible story.

Operation Mincemeat opens May 12th.

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Bletchley Park is mentioned a couple of times in this, so for a better coverage of the times, try Morten Tyldum's film about Alan Turing and the Enigma code, The Imitation Game (2014). On a tangent, Swiss Army Man (2016), directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, makes use of a corpse (Harry Potter, indeed), but in a very different way.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The nutters responsible for the oddly engaging Swiss Army Man have upped the ante with this multiversal ode to familial love. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, credited as Daniels, have Michelle Yeoh play Evelyn Wang, a frazzled owner of a coin laundry. We're introduced to her as she's preparing for two concurrent events - a Chinese New Year party and a trip to the tax office - both of which are causing a fair amount of strain. Her husband, Waymond, played by Short Round himself, Ke Huy Quan, is attempting to serve her with divorce papers; her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is not best pleased to be there, especially with her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) in tow; and her crotchety father, legendary James Hong, is all patriarchal glower. It's amazing to see this guy still turning it out - he's 93 and imdb has him down for 451 acting credits! Among those are roles in The Sand Pebbles, Chinatown, Blade Runner and Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise. Like I said, legend.

Anyway, this opening is sharply played out and is a master class in character development. The rest of the film could perhaps have taken the lead from the intro, as there are sequences that lag a bit, especially in the mid-section. The story kicks into gear proper when Evelyn, Waymond and father Gong Gong meet an excellently dowdy Jamie Lee Curtis at the tax office. It's here where the 'verse-jumping' begins, as Alphaverse Waymond entreats Evelyn to join them in their battle with Jobu Tupaki, the malevolent being that wants to put everything on a black hole bagel (yep), probably destroying the multiverse along with it. Suck on those high stakes, Doctor Strange!

Evelyn quickly gets the hang of this verse-jumping, which is suddenly inhabiting the body of another version of oneself by way of some unusual trigger. She 'borrows' a martial artist, a singer, and a chef, among others. Look, there's some absolute batshittery going on here - sausage fingers that ejaculate tomato sauce and mustard, enemies anally inserting bulky phalluses as triggers to jump consciousnesses (that old chestnut!), snorting a fly, stapling heads, the bagel of truth, a Ratatouille raccoon, someone battering a dude with long rubber dildos, and yet the film somehow still manages to be poignant. The mother/daughter relationship is nicely written, Yeoh and Hsu bounce off each other with frustration and tenderness, and I really didn't expect to tear up during this film. It's not perfect but it has bucket loads of energy and heart, off the charts ideas, near epileptic visuals and the whole thing plays like a live action Rick and Morty episode. Can't argue with those levels.

You can still catch Everything Everywhere All at Once in cinemas now. 

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), directed by Perischetti, Ramsey and Rothman is another great multiverse film, and J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot (2009) utilised a parallel universe pretty well.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Somebody on the Adam Buxton podcast recently told a story of a person who shouted 'UNBEARABLE' then stormed out of a screening of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Well, not much of this film was unbearable, unless you dislike Nicolas Cage. Wrong film for you, if that's the case. For the most part, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was a bloody hoot. 

After a serious break-in/kidnap sequence, the film gets right into the Cage-work. There's a Hollywood lunch with a director (played by an actual director, David Gordon Green), where Cage - wait, I didn't mention, that he's playing himself in the film - tramples all over his chances of getting a sought after part. The car ride from the restaurant gives us a peek at the peak of this bonkers work. Nicolas Cage driving, Nicky Cage - from Wild at Heart, Terry Wogan appearance era - sitting in the passenger seat. This conjures up memories of Cage playing identical twins in Adaptation, though obviously this is played more for the chuckles. He cops a lot of shit, does Cage, but underneath it all, he's an incredible comic actor. His line to the barman after an 'episode' with Nicky is priceless.

The story that hangs off this central conceit is that Cage, missing out on the aforementioned role, decides to take a huge paycheck to appear at a millionaire's party in Majorca. Enter a very funny, very sincere, Pedro Pascal, miles away from The Viper or The Mandalorian. He plays Javi, the Cage-obsessed olive-garch, who has also written a script that he wants Cage to star in. The side wrinkle is that the CIA believe Javi is an arms dealer who is behind the kidnapping of the daughter of a Catalonian politician, and so they convince Cage to help them find her. And you think it's laboured now? This is just the first act.

The honking plot is really just an excuse for the relationships to play out - Cage with Javi; Cage with younger Cage; Cage with daughter, Addy (Lily Sheen); Cage with ex-wife, Olivia (Sharon Horgan); and even Javi with his cousin and his girlfriend. The third act feels a little slapped together, and in the desire for a satisfying conclusion it ratchets up the ridiculous, but honestly, this is where the film lives, in its own ludicrousness. When Cage can deliver lines about his Nouveau-shamanism acting style and remind himself and others that he's back, though he never went anywhere, we're ultimately pretty chuffed that this guy gets all the noise about him, and he's happy to pull the royal piss out of himself. Thanks Nic, I haven't had as much fun in the cinema for a long time.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is showing in cinemas now.

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This reminded me of when Jean-Claude Van Damme played himself in JCVD (2008), directed by Mabrouk El Mechri. For a few more examples of Cage's comic skills, try the Coens' Raising Arizona (1987), Robert Bierman's Vampire's Kiss (1988) and Spike Jonze's Adaptation (2002).