SCREEN SHOT - Kingdom of Heaven ( 2005 ) Director's Cut

Kingdom of Heaven is a Ridley Scott epic film through and through. This probably contains some of his finest stagings of battle sequences, with a gritty, if not to says sand dusted, aesthetic. This is bold large scale filmmaking, with an attempt at a big story at its core. The original release had nearly an hour cut from it by the distributor, and unsurprisingly people were a bit baffled and non plussed by the film, it didn't quite fully make sense. Very shortly afterwards Ridley Scott released a Director's Cut, which at over three hours in length does give the story more time to breathe properly. There are some brilliant performances from the likes of Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, Ghassan Massoud, Eva Green. Plus Brendan Gleeson as a knight who has completely lost his marbles to barbarity, and an admirably restrained Edward Norton is devastating as the leperous King Baldwin.

Balian (Orlando Bloom) is a blacksmith in a nondescript French village. His life has fallen apart with the post partum suicide of his wife. Nothing about his life makes sense for him anymore. A group of Crusader knights pass through. One of them, Godfrey de Ibelin (Liam Neeson) turns out to be his Father. He tells him one way to redeem himself from the shameful shadow of his wife's suicide, would be to come with him on crusade. At first refusing. he later gets into an argument with his brother, whom he ends up murdering. He escapes on horse, to catch up with the Crusader knights. He really needs the salvation of the Crusades now.

The Crusades are a fascinating period to attempt to portray through one story. Kingdom of Heaven takes snapshots from the history and tries to deminstrate quite what a moral quagmire the Crusades were. Crusaders often had a very mixed perversion of motives. The character of Balian attempts to keep his volutions pure in a situation that screams at him to be morally compromised by a desire for power, wealth or sex. Sybilla ( Eva Green ) the sister of King Baldwin, is married to a brute of a Templar knight. The evident affection between Balian and Sybilla has to remain suppressed or at least chaste. Sybilla's life is one long suffering series of dutiful actions to protect herself, her brother and her nephew from harm. The ideals of the time were indeed held very high, only for most to inevitably fall hard and short of.

There are then a number of very meaty themes running through this film, which the script does sensitively grapple with, but doesn't always fully give convincing form to them. And if I were to hazard a guess at why this film, which is undoubtedly a very fine example of Ridley Scott at his most ambitious, nonetheless fails, I'd say it comes down to two things - it's script and it's leading man. 

The script lacks sharpness and bite, it doesn't quite get to grips with forming a cohesive line of moral tone through it. It went for far too broad a pallet of characters and scenarios that ended up muddying the clarity of the narrative line. Now this may have been saved if your lead had all the acting heft and sensitive intelligence of a Russell Crowe in Gladiator, which this film attempted to follow. But Orlando Bloom, really does not have a bone of moral gravitas in him. So as soon as you ask him to defend Jerusalem with a noble rousing speech from the battlements, it falls somewhat flat and limp. It's not that he is a bad actor, far from it, But a light romantic comedy this is not. What this film requires of him, is the breadth of his acting talent to raise its game to match it. I can understand why he was chosen, he was at his peak in popularity between Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings, he was big box office. But having this low key emotionally thin form of acting at it's centre, knocks a great big hole in the compelling vividness of its storytelling. You don't root for this guy, just pass him the sun cream and moisturizer. 

This Director's Cut does a sterling job at salvaging Kingdom of Heaven, because there is a lot to be in love with in this film. But it still only tips a hat towards greatness, unable to grasp it with both hands.

CARROT REVIEW -6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Project Hail Mary

Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up, his hair and beard are long, and he is on a space craft. He doesn't remember why or where it is going. Two fellow astronauts on the mission are both already dead. He has to slowly piece together his own past and his role in the mission they were on, with only the ship and his own slowly returning memories to guide him. What becomes clear is the Earth's Sun is dying. Small particles of unknown origin, are eating away at its energy. He identifies what they are, and where they are coming from. A space mission is launched to hopefully find out more and discover a way to neutralise these particles. And he is the only survivor of that mission. He encounters an alien spacecraft, and befriends this rock like alien form, whose own galaxy is being destroyed by the same particles. Together they come up with a plan.

This is Ryan Gosling's movie. He is the lead actor and is in most of its two and a half hour running time. He was a big fan of the book by Andy Weir, hands on in its adaption for film, and was one of its producers. In an age preoccupied with dark fatalistic dystopia's, this is an extraordinarily optimistic sci fi movie, with a sharp witty script to boot. This also brings out, quite the best acting performance I've seen from Gosling, since some of his early independent movies. It plays to all his strengths as an sctor, the slight nerdiness, the dry quick wit, the ability to speak volumes with a telling look in the eyes. The part of Grace is really one of an ordinary person who becomes extraordinary through the circumstances they are thrown into. The unlikely friendship that develops between Grace and 'Rocky' sets the film's core emotional tone. And unbelievable as it might seem, this friendship becomes really emotionally touching, bringing a lump to your throat and a tear to your eye. If there was ever a danger of this movie becoming overly sentimental, it's the honesty of Gosling's performance, and the dialogue between Grace and 'Rocky' that deflates time and again, any tendency to take itself too seriously. This is just the most hopeful and delightfully playful movie I've seen in a long time. Highly recommend it.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8 

FILM REVIEW - Born Into This (2004)

 

This documentary Born Into This, tells Charles Bukowski's life story mostly via the filmed record of the great man speaking. Of all modern poets and novelists, Bukowski exploited the subject matter of his own life to the full. All his flaws and virtues are on show, and we are not spared his occasional unpalatable excess, his compulsive drink fueled behaviour. The violent, self-destructiveness and womanising, that was often misinterpreted as unrepentant misogyny, when it really was an expression of his sensitivity and sentimentality, to a feeling of being unloved or rejected. He didn't have to live up to his wild drinking and debauched image because that was how he often was. The discomfort of the almost daily childhood beatings from his Father,and his Mother's complicity in it, appears to have turned him into the archetypal non-conformist for the late sixties. Many of his fans live off this stance voyeuristically. He,however, lived an extraordinarily plain and ordinary working mans life, whilst continuing to write. He spent years working as a carrier for the Post Office, until his growing fame suddenly made it possible in mid-life to make a living from his prolific output.

There is a quality to his writing, sometimes swaggering, sometimes so frank about his own moral turpitude it is shocking, yet there is a huge warm human heart beating in broken voiced sympathy underneath it. He describes the effect of living on the low life edges of West Hollywood, its humiliations and the corrosiveness of this suffering on the human spirit. This is where Bukowski's writing frequently transcends the specifics of his own experience, and gives voice to something with more universal resonance. His poetry is never wilfully obscure or filled with literary references, a style best exemplified by Elliot, a fellow American, but someone who could not be further away from Bukowski. Elliot was part of the literary establishment, that was the cultural authority for the middle class intelligentsia. In Bukowski we hear the genuine voice of the American working underclass, simple, direct and unaffected.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Living ( 2022 )

Living has a script written by Kazou Ishiguru, that is adapted from the Kurosawa 1952 film Ikiru. It has been re-set in an archetypal post war Britain, so this has a very similar period vibe and portrayal of constricted masculine self expression, as Ishiguru's Remains of the Day. Bill Nighy's style of buttoned up restrained acting is, in this sense, tailor made for the central character of Living - Mr Williams.  And he plays it with a consummate subtlety, understating the emotion whilst providing all the visual physicality that suggest a more disquieted and deeper unease beneath.

Mr Williams runs a department in the city council. Most of the time he is warding off or delaying work being approved, by referring it to other departments, who refer it to other departments, who refer it back to Mr Williams desk. At which point he'll place it in a tray saying, 'I think we'll hold that here for a while'. The whole departmental appears set up to bureaurcratically procrastinate, delay  prevent or cancel projects. Very little gets the thumbs up to proceed. It is a nightmare run entirely on stuffy minded prejudices of class and gender. Then Mr Williams is given a fatal health diagnosis, that he is suffering from a terminal cancer. This awakens him to what the reality of his life has been. He tells his family nothing about his imminent death. But his whole approach to life alarmingly changes, and the effectiveness of his department is consequently transformed for the better.

The opening credits evoke a Pathe News visual style and colour palette, Living is soaked in nostalgic sentiment and lovingly recreated period details. Mr Williams becomes a representative of an every man or every woman, who devotes their working life to doddling through a meaningless job, producing little of long lasting worth. It provides them with no satisfaction, or any feeling that they can achieve anything remotely good. This is something most of us will have some experienc of at some point in our life. The moral of the tale, does get over egged and a tad laboured by the end. It remains, however, a deeply affecting film, with a central superlative acting performance that single handedly brings real heart to it.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Backrooms

I'm writing this review tonight, because I saw a matinee showing and I need to start putting words down before I lose all sense of the film. Not that there is any sense to be made of it. Because this film is deliberately perplexing and has no consistent logic or framework to make sense of it with. It's a bit of a psychological tease, dressed up as horror.

Clarke (Chitel Ejenfor ) runs a furniture business. His life is a bit of a mess. His wife threw him out of his own home, so he has ended up living in the back of his own showroom. He goes regularly to see his psychiatrist Mary, to make sense of what has happened and try to move on. One day, whilst trying to discover why his shop lighting is flickering and going on and off all the time at night, he discovers there is a part of a wall in his basement display area that is permeable. He can walk through it into a whole complex of backrooms, corridors and doorways. With random stacks of furniture, on many different levels. Aspects of his own furniture showroom appear but are backwards, or chopped off half trapped in walls. The whole backrooms are a vast space, but it makes no logical sense. He brings in two employees to help him document it on film, so he can show Mary. But this goes wrong and they end up being killed by a malevolent creature that lurks somewhere in its depths.

That's about as far as I'm willing to go with plot, to tell you more would spoil the film. To be honest providing more information will not make the film any more comprehensible. The film appears placed very confidently in the world that is created. There are moments of real shock and tension, but most of it is not in what you are being shown, but in the terrific sound design that impresses a huge feeling of foreboding upon you, very loudly. This is undoubtedly a cleverly constructed film.  Previously it was a series of short films on You Tube, that went viral. It's director Kane Parsons, does appear to know how to conjure nightmarish surrealism out of nothing. 

This the sort of film nerds of all ages will absolutely love and get off on. Spending endless amounts of time theorising about what its meaning might be and knowing references.  I think this will largely be a complete waste of time, but it will happen regardless of my view. You will not discover some great profundity hidden in these backrooms. It is fundamentally a film that constructs a realm out of human emotional memories and the psychology of recollection, how through remembering them, things often become more and more inaccurate with each repetition. That we all live with some area in our psyche that we never want to look into, lest we discover some demon in the dark corners of our past. These are the sorts of themes the film attempts to explore. 

It's in the nature of this type of film, that nothing is without significance here. The film one family is watching is A Never Ending Story. The psychology book Mary has written is called The Memory Within. This story, for what it is, presents itself as though based on someone's psychologically mangled memories, it's just not entirely clear whose. I dare say, given its success, a sequel will quickly follow. But I'll give that one a miss. Seeing or knowing more will be of no help here. I began to find The Backrooms tiresome by the time we reached it's last half hour.  It's certainly diverting entertainment, but only the once. It is, just one long tease, that I found in the end, exasperating. That said, the Backrooms will probably be the highest grossing film of the year, primarily because it was also one of the cheapest to make.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

SCREEN SHOT - Sisu ( 2022 )

On one level all that could be said about this film, is that it is bloody gory. This film will not be for the faint hearted. It has a similar mode of operation as a John Wick movie, in that it is really a sequence of carefully orchestrated set piece instances of utter hilarious carnage. And it is unsparing, heads get blown to pieces, land mines explode in someone's face, knives are thrust straight through someone's cranium. Yes, it is all patently ridiculous, as cod as the German accents, but a mischievous tongue is being firmly held here. This film will cause a few chuckles at the absurdly grisly lengths to which it will go. If you are looking for carefully drawn characters or want to understand their motivations in going on a killing spree, then please look away now.  The many ways explored of executing and slaughtering, are done here entirely for comedic effect. And it is quite often laugh out loud fun to watch. As cartoon violence often is.

The film is set in Finland, near the end of the war. The Nazi's are in retreat, but are executing a scorched earth policy as they make their way to leave. The film opens with a man digging holes in a landscape, he's looking for gold, whilst the planes fly over on their way to fire bomb a city into dust. One day he does find gold, life transforming mega amounts of gold. He packs up that gold and sets off on his horse to cash in his haul. He encounters Nazi's on the way, but makes very short shrift of them, and leaves a grim catalogue of mutilated bodies behind him. And so this is how the film goes on. 

The Nazi's want revenge, which only grows more intense when they discover just how much gold the man has on him. But they don't yet know that this is Korpi, a Finish assasin who is renowned for being unrelenting in his pursuit once his anger is raised. Is he immortal, or just good at evading death? Because there are repeated times in Sisu when you would think this man was a complete gonna, but comes back yet again on his mission of seeking revenge. Dialogue here is brief and perfunctory.

Whilst this film is not remotely attuned to being subtle or nuanced, the director Jalmari Helender knows exactly what he is aiming at here and pulls it off with aplomb. He is fortunate in having Jormma Tomilla playing the lead Korpi, without his 'man with no name' taciturn abilities, this film would not have enough to hold your emotional attention. Gore is never enough, you need at least to be rooting for Korpi, And you do. There is a sequel from 2025 which I suspect Hubby will be itching to watch before too long.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Our Land ( 2025 )

 

This documentary quietly reveals the level of privilege and self entitlement embodied in the English ownership of land. It presents the ideas of the group Right to Roam, that is campaigning to be able to roam freely and responsibly over the English countryside irrespective of who owns the land. This is a right already enshrined in law in Scotland.

The arguments against this from landowners varies. Some see it as almost their divinely given right to possess, bequeathed to them through sometimes centuries of ancestral ownership. Others that they are stewards of the countryside, and they are preserving and maintaining the countryside for our benefit. Irrespective of whether the rest if us can have access to it. Others recognise the need for people to have access to the countryside. To manage and accommodate that access, to limit, but channel the roaming through defined spaces and routes.

The Right to Roamers see land and having access to countryside as a fundamental right that has been robbed from the English people. Either handed to the French nobility by William the Conqueror, actively stolen from common land during the act of enclosure or bought with money made through slavery. Both campaigners and landowners both recognise the value of nature to them for their individual health and wellbeing. Some want access purely for themselves, whilst others want access to be for everyone.

Our Land - Trailer

The film endeavours to let the landowners state their case, but is primarily supportive of the campaigners argument. And in one landowner they found your archetypal posh - aristocrat who would seem a laughable caricature, until you realise he is a real person and this is what enshrined privilege really looks and sounds like. At root landowners tend towards seeing open access to their land as a fundamental assault upon their right to express their total personal ownership of that land. As one guy tellingly stated, they could have access to his land just so long as they were prepared to pay for it.

The Right to Roam make a quite simple request for responsible open access to the countryside. The landowners immediately turn this into an extremely complex issue, of checks, balances and qualifications. It really doesn't need to be that big a deal. The example in Scotland is that provided you make it clear to roamers how they are expected to behave as they roam, that people do respect the land  the animals and your requests. It's not difficult or hard unless you make it so, by resistance to embracing it as the positive thing it could be.

Ultimately this becomes a matter of the law, and what the government and establishment will support. Both sides claim they have rights on their side. Rights of ownership or rights of access. However, both of these are based on idealised moral assumptions, that these rights are in some way innate and inalienable ones in relation to human liberty. When in reality these can only be granted because the law allows this to be so. The law decides whether the right of access to roam is theirs to give, or ours to have.

As a documentary this laid out the broad case and what issues from that. It's cogency flagged by the end, as it started simply repeating previously stated standpoints. It didn't appear to know how to draw the documentary to an end, by either concluding its arguments well, or providing a telling image or statement. If anything this documentary felt too gentle, middle class and respectful. 

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Rose Of Nevada

 

A fishing boat reappears in a once prosperous Cornish fishing village that is now in terminal decline. The Rose of Nevada was thought lost at sea twenty years ago. The original boat owner, after he gets over the shock of its return, decides to start using it again for fishing. 'Shall we try again' he says ominously. Recruiting an old sea dog he vaguely recognise as Captain, who then finds the enigmatic Liam, and employs Nick, a straightforward family man who just needs to earn some money to repair a collapsed roof in his home. Once out on the ocean they quickly learn the ropes of sea fishing, casting nets, gutting and preserving fish in ice, until the galley is full and they can return to port. But the port they return to is not the fishing village of the present day, but the busy active one of twenty years previous. Liam seems to quickly adjusts to the period and lifestyle, whilst Nick feels trapped, becoming increasingly desperate to return to the family he's left behind. There is a sense that something here, much larger than them, is wanting restitution.

Mark Jenkin's third film is a real feast for the eyes and ears. Brilliantly executed, it is the most confident and expressionistic movie he's made so far. At times it has the style, quality and visual poetics of Tarkovsky, with the highly amplified reverberating sound quality of early David Lynch, where even small natural sounds can become hugely foreboding. It also has some really stunning rough hewn cinematography and sharply edited sequences.  Beautifully constructed shots capturing the tough unyielding lifestyle of a sea fisherman, the orange crust of rusting machinery, the rumbling spindled colours of ropes, the creaking clanging noises of chains, wheels and cranks, the sounds of boots or fish landing heavily on deck. One of the qualities of Jenkin's film making technique, is that he is able to overlay the sound design on top of his hand cranked film. This he can then highlight and focus the ears on specific sounds, with greater clarity of purpose. Sound in this film, more than in any of his previous films, has almost a visually evocative quality. On this movie it's epic, managing to be both small and panoramic in scale. It does most of the heavy lifting for the storytelling. 

At the core of this film, are interrupted, if not shattered relationships, between parents and a son, between fishermen and their families, of lives and communities literally torn apart by tragedy. The sense of yearning and existential distress of Nick, is conveyed by some superlative acting from George McKay. His visible facial and bodily responses tell you all you need to know about his emotional state of mind. The dialogue in this movie is generally a secondary player, that gives away little about the story arc. The tale is told largely through sound and visual imagery. However, the final piece of dialogue at the end of the movie, from the mouth of Nick's wife that 'there is no time', does speak volumes. This is a film so rich in tiny but important details, that I dare say it will bare repeat viewing. An utterly captivating film, that left me feeling quite moved and exhilarated simultaneously. It is one of those films that continues to haunt your imagination afterwards.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

SCREEN SHOT - Exit 8

We are on a crowded train in the underground. A man by the carriage doors is listening to Ravel's Bolero on his ear buds. As he looks down the carriage to where a baby is crying. It's Mother is struggling to comfort it. A standing passenger, starts shouting and berating her for not doing more to quieten the child. He becomes increasingly agitated and rudely insults the seated woman. Just as the train pulls into a station, the man by the carriage door receives a phone call. It's a former girlfriend, she is in hospital, she has just given birth to a baby boy, who is his son. She wants to know whether he wants to be actively involved in bringing him up or not. As he exits the carriage the man is in a panic, he's coughing a lot, he reaches for his inhaler as he climbs the steps, heading for Exit 8. But as he progresses along the empty underground corridor it becomes clear he is going round and round the same circuit of tunnels, ending back at the same point. He is getting no nearer to Exit 8. Just one driven man with a briefcase keeps repeatedly passing him. What is happening here? becomes the question that preoccupies both the man and the viewer of the film.

This Japanese movie from 2025, directed by Genki Kawamura, is a psychological nightmarish drama. Taking the frequent premise of our nightmares of being caught in a situational loop, it takes its time to build it's world and the twisted incomprehensible logic of it. If indeed it has any. It's the sort of movie that leaves you pondering on what is occurring here, was this actually happening, or is it just his dreamworld, or a psychological conundrum he needs to work out before he can move on? Are all the people he encounters in the corridors simply aspects of his own psyche? Based on a computer game from 2023, Exit 8, the movie, exhibits all the recognisable tropes of being derived from that genre, but is not a slave to them, and actually makes something that is intriguing intellectually, which also engages you emotionally.  It is simultaneously a comment on the modern urban Japanese work ethic, where you can feel like you are trapped in this endless tragic life cycle day after day. And subtly drops a few comments and asides as the movie progresses. The driven man with the briefcase being once referred to as 'a monster'. The Escher poster on the corridor wall acts as a background motif for the whole movie, with it's number eight shaped loop.

The movie at just over ninety minutes long,  makes the most of this relatively contained time span. Just when you think you are becoming used to whatever is going on here, it suddenly upends the nature of it. If you are the sort of person who wanted to work out what was going on in the Matrix movies, this movie might give you something juicy to chew over. But putting aside all of that, this is a very effectively made and satisfying piece of film making, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Locke ( 2013 )

Ivan Locke ( Tom Hardy ) is driving his car along a busy motorway.  His journey is being punctuated by a range of phone calls, pulling his attention, often in opposing directions. He's an extremely  competent man working for a firm managing the practical logistics of constructing a huge new development. 

Tomorrow a huge pour of concrete will mark an important foundational stage in this job, and Ivan has, out of character, just announced he is not going to be there to supervise it. His immediate superior goes completely ballistic over the phone. Ivan is evasive at first, as to why he won't be there to oversee it. He's not going to be back home in time to watch the match with his family either. It turns out that he is on his way to support a woman who is about to give birth to his baby. A one off casual shag nine months ago, has now become this moral obligation that means he needs to be there. Potentially threatening both his career and previously happily contented lifestyle. 

Written and directed by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) this is a tautly written one hander. One forgets just how brilliant Hardy can be as an actor, when given a superlative script to work with. That this is gripping stuff, packed with emotional tensions, explosive anger and edge of the seat frustrations, is down to Hardy's ability to communicate the essentially self deluded goodness of Ivan. The turmoil going on in his heart and mind is visible, as he tries in vain to not let taking responsibility for his one reckless mistake, completely ruin everything else.

You only ever hear voices on the other end of the phone. But they are recognisably those from a list of top notch English actors - Andrew Scott, Olivia Coleman, Ruth Wilson, Tom Holland, Ben Daniels, Alice Lowe. They vividly paint in sound the picture of confusion, despair and fury about why Ivan has chosen to do this. Why? Well its something to do with not wanting to behave irresponsibly like his father did. Which is communicated via Ivan occasionally having a conversation with his Father as though he were sitting in the car's backseat. This movie as a whole is nail bitingly believable, but this was one point where I felt its sure footedness nearly tripped over itself. Hardy makes it credible, but only just.

Locke is like watching a masterclass in subtly nuanced acting from Tom Hardy aided by skilled direction from Knights.  Apparently Hardy performed the script, filmed in a car on a motorway, twelve times. The best bits being then edited into this final film. I found myself unexpectedly deeply gripped, by what seemed at first an unpromising premise.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Last Showgirl (2024)

Shelly (Pamela Anderson) has been a performer at the Razzle Dazzle review on the Las Vegas strip for most of her life. Working her way up to being the central dancer, in what twenty odd years later has become a distinctly old fashioned, and seedy semi nude revue. She always talks it up, about how it is in the tradition of the Paris Revue, as if this was high art she was involved in. This show she believes creates beautiful tableaux not crude sensationalism. Then one evening at a dinner party with the other showgirls, Eddie ( Dave Bautista ) turns up to tell them the revue is being cancelled and will close in a fortnight. For Shelly this news is devastating, she's never known any other life. Surrendering her daughter Hannah (  Billie Lourdes ) to fostering, so she could continue her important work on the strip, The film covers the period up to the final show, and how she slowly goes to pieces, and has to face some painful truths about the shallowness of her life and the supposed 'art ' she has created. In this she is aided by Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) whose life has already transitioned from retired old showgirl to spunky casino waitress, who is approaching old age with nothing in the bank financially or emotionally.

The Last Showgirl is a beautifully written and composed film, that is extraordinarily sad and touching. Pamela Anderson is the vivid heart of it, in a career defining performance. Shelly is shown warts 'n' all, how she has lived an essentially deluded and selfish life. Exhibiting both the good and the bad in her character, and yet still you feel for her. Like many Americans, she's unable to retire, because with little or no pension, she needs to keep working till she dies. There are many gut reaching moments, that ring painfully true. Eddie, is the shows floor manager who has been there since Shelly began, and is, unbeknownst to Hannah, her father. Bautista plays him sympathetically as a good hearted soul, who unfortunately has this habit of unwittingly putting his foot clumsily through his own best intentions, so the showgirls don't ever respect him. Jamie Lee Curtis, appears to no longer mind how she looks in movies, and plays Annette as this profoundly embittered woman who has lost respect for most people, but feels for Shelly's predicament because it has been her own.

The Director Gia Coppola ( Francis Coppola's  grand daughter ) had to pro-actively seek out Anderson for the central role. Which relies crucially on subverting our own expectations of Anderson, and her career and reputation, to end up completely transforming both. The acting trio of Anderson, Bautista and Curtis are what make this film believable and sing.  All of them play deeply flawed characters, with a depth and nuance that is rare to see in contemporary American movies.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Civil War (2024)

 

Civil War has broken out in the US. States wanting to leave the union have formed their own army known as The Western Forces, and all the indications are that they are on a final winning frontier. But the President is holed up in the White House, making encouraging announcements to camera that his forces are effectively pushing the rebels back. A small group of a photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) and a couple of journalists Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), are travelling across dangerous and still contested terrain, trying to get to Washington to photograph and interview the President. Along the way they pick up a young adult photographer Jessie ( Caliee Spaeny) a bit naive and green, but who idolises Lee's work and wants to be like her. Lee, much to her frustration, is forced to take her on and teach her how to operate and stay safe as a photographer, when combat and fatalities are going on all around you. The personal civil war here is to stay alive and still sane.

I've seen Civil War twice now, and each time I am struck by how this film does not pull any punches in showing you the horrors of war. The political set up is believable, particularly with the current US political regimes behaviour. But the film, however, is not really about why the civil war is happening, or the rights and wrongs of it. Its really concerned with what documenting it does to your mental state. Primarily its what this has done to the photographer Lee. Whose character traits bares strong echoes of what happened to Lee Miller. She is as hard as nails, battle hardened. Very effective as a photographer in difficult situations. She sees something of herself in Jessie, but steadfastly resists romanticising what war photography requires of you. You can see that some part of her is emotionally inactive, deadened almost. You are given a palpable sense for how oddly inhumane the war photographers task is. People are suffering and dying right in front of you, and rather than help or console them, they are taking a photograph of them in the process of dying. Its uncomfortable to watch, because it shows you just how weird that is. A tragedy happens later in the story, and only then does Lee completely lose her stern composure and mentally falls apart.

Alex Garland wrote and directed Civil War, and it has all the feeling for prescience and character led drama one expects of his movies. A pivotal scene, is a master class in show not tell, where the group encounter a White Supremacist (Jesse Plemons) in the midst of committing an unspeakable atrocity, and this is the most nerve wracking unsettling scene in the entire film. Very few words spoken, but the tension is absolutely unbearable. The films scenario is extraordinarily believable. Civil War echoes contemporary issues and dilemmas without turning its entire narrative purpose into a political piece of propaganda or moral tub thumping.  Kirsten Dunst's performance is the real cold hearted, yet mesmerising, hub of this entire movie.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Creator (2023)

 

Gareth Edwards has made his name writing and directing sci -fi action films. His breakthrough film Monsters (2010) was a low budget marvel. Since then, giving him larger blockbuster level budgets has produced very mixed results. The best having been Rogue One, the worst a Godzilla movie which was quite undistinguished, testing, boring, pick your adjective. So I came to The Creator wondering quite which side of the fence opinions would fall this time.

The films basic premise is a future world is at war over AI robotics. America having almost been destroyed by it, has become evangelical in its desire to eradicate it from the world. Whilst New Asia (by which it really means China) has gone hell for leather in developing it. For those looking for contemporary relevance Trump and China have adopted similar political- economic orientations of late.  In the film, there is intelligence that an AI creator called Nirmata has developed an AI hack that is designed specifically to destroy NOMAD a brutally destructive weapon that the US is employing to devastating effect. If this happens then the war will be over, and New Asia will have won. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) is an undercover agent living with his pregnant wife Maya ( Gemma Chan) when a NOMAD destruction mission blows his cover and his abducted wife is caught in an explosion. His mission, however, remains to locate Nirmata and to destroy whatever it is they have created.

For all its highly developed and certainly impressive visuals, The Creator suffers from two cripplingly deficient qualities that are unfortunately intrinsically entwined - a lack of credibility - and underdeveloped characterisation and flimsy mise-en-scene. The genuineness of the love affair between Joshua and Maya gets insufficient time to develop depth before the first action sequence barges into it. The dubious nature of this covert operations 'love affair', that makes Maya angry when the truth is revealed, exposes a moral quandary that is never adequately accounted for. This fundamentally undermines the subsequent crestfallen intensity of his eternally smitten love for Maya, that apparently propels him throughout the movie. Making one of the prime emotional axises of the entire movie, an almighty plot hole down which our investment is continually swallowed.

That New Asia is populated by AI robots dressed as though they're ordinary peasants, or worse still Tibetan Monks.This requires more context to make this idiosyncrasy seem understanable. at all Otherwise we simply assume this world is occupied by every Asian trope and cliche a white screenwriter could come up with. Though it has plenty of large scale spectacle in its action sequences, its importance all feels terribly over egged. The sense of peril perishing under the sheer invincible avalanche and massiveness of its tank onslaughts. Hence, I found I was never really engaged with the apparent jeopardy everyone was supposedly in, under heavy handed US military hegemony. 

The movie sort of happened, it was sort of predictable where it would go, it sort of went there and we sort of did not care that it went there, it sort of had scenes of love and redemption and still we sort of did not care. Because it sort of hadn't really put in enough work to make us sort of want to root for it. It felt sort of...shit. With an empty heart emoji, and a shrug.

CARROT REVIEW - 3/8

SCREEN SHOT - Sinners

 

I've held off reviewing this film because I didn't quite know how to approach describing it, nor whether I could do justice to portraying its themes, and the effect that it has. It is undoubtedly to my mind a brilliantly executed film. Ryan Coogler knows what he's trying to achieve and sticks to his aesthetic guns over the whole approach to storytelling. Some might find it a bit too self consciously unrelenting in its stylisation, which I can understand. It is a bizarrely over the top baroque film about the blues, and how this is intrinsically intertwined with, and hence, representative of the black experience in the US. How that consciousness used its blues music to break out of the confines of slavery, segregation and the whole bible belt thumping evangelism of blues music being a sinful work of the devil. Blues becomes a liberative force for good or ill.

Young Sammy Moore (Miles Caton) returns to his home and to his preacher Father, with only the broken fret of his guitar in his hand, deep scars etched across the left of his face. He's been out playing the blues last night and something happened that has devilishly mortified his soul. And the film then tells you the story of how that night came about. Stack and Smoke ( both Micheal C Jordan ) are twin brothers who return to their homeland after a period in Chicago. They have pockets full, with a good deal of cash to splash, but everyone who knows them understands this wealth was not acquired by healthy legitimate means. They purchase a huge barn with the intention of creating a dance club, a juke for black folks to congregate, drink, eat and socialise in.

The first half of the movie is taken up with the brothers gathering up friends and old girlfriends to run the juke. The ex girlfriend Mary ( Haliee Steinfield ) of mix race, The girlfriend and voodoo practitioner Annie (Wunmi Musaku ). Delta Slim ( Delroy Lindo ) the old timer blues pianist. Cornbread ( Omar Benson Miller ) a man desperate to break away from his life as a sharecropper. And throughout all this process of assembling the team, blues music rumbles on in the background in almost every scene. This propels the movie onwards to the opening night. When the brothers realise this is never going to make them money, because too many folks can only pay with their plantation tokens, not real redeemable money. But let them have their fun for this one night.

The central scene of the entire movie pivots around Sammy's debut performance, singing a song I Lied To You, by way of an apology to his Father for pursuing the life of a blues musician. It's spine tinglingly good. The performance unleashes the whole of black ancestry, the spirits from all cultures from the past and the future come to manifest themselves in this one juke,summoned by the power of Sammy's Blues. Its a visual and musical tour de force that takes your breath away. But it also brings forth malevolent forces in the form of Remmick ( Jack O'Conner ) and his gang of vampiric followers. And literally all hell breaks loose to save Sammy's soul from capture by the Devil.

So, not a small scale independent movie, but a whopping great beast of a tale, superbly rendered and sung with a bellowing voice from a fast beating heart. This simply wipes the floor with a lot of this years film releases. 

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

SCREEN SHOT - Starve Acre

Starve Acre has been adapted from a novel by Andrew Micheal Hurley in a screenplay by Danial Kototajlo, who also is the Director of this film. It falls comfortably into the inimitable English tradition of folk horror, very intimately connected with the earthy and with landscape.

Richard ( Matt Smith) his wife Juliette ( Morfydd Clarke)  and their young son Owen ( Arthur Shaw ) are living in Richard's childhood home, after his Father dies. Richard has a flourishing vocation as an archaeologist, so his returning here is not a great career move. Though its clear from the start he has issues with his deceased Father's abusive relationship towards him, that he wishes to try to resolve. Richard tells Owen about the old oak tree that used to be on the land, that was a gathering point for the locals. Once he sets about excavating the remains of it, weird things start to happen. He rediscovers the boxed skeleton of a hare in his Father's office, which almost over night develops flesh and fur and comes back to life. It appears to be embodying the suppressed spirit of this harsh barren landscape.

Owen starts behaving erratically, and at the local fair he stabs a pony in the eye with a stick. Juliette is frantic with concern, whilst Richard appears to be trying too hard not be ruffled by it. Then Owen dies in tragic circumstances. Juliette's sister Harrie comes to provide emotional support, but finds the relationship between Juliette and Richard has become strangely dysfunctional. This turns around the rejuvenated Hare. Richard perceives something in it that is reviving painful memories from his childhood. 

Set in the early 1970's this film has a distinctively period patterning and colour pallet, of orange  and brown ochres and insipid pastel greens. Even down to the colours of their cars. There is a feeling for their isolation, not just physically, but also in time and in their minds. This film benefits hugely from having lead actors of the calibre of Matt Smith and Morfydd Clarke, there is not a huge amount of dialogue in the film, but a lot of staring transfixed meaningfully into space. Both of them have subtly expressive faces that communicate a massive amount without saying a word. Morfydd Clarke, in particular, has this almost mad intensity that is quite mesmirising to watch. I found the film unsettling. It has a creeping unease that can be uncomfortable to sit with at times. This is an odd film, consciously quirky and idiosyncratic. Its tells you just enough, but suggests a whole lot more is going on here than what you're being shown.  You are never exactly sure quite how far the script and the Director might be willing to take you.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Menu ( 2022 )

 

Margot (Anya Taylor Joy) and Tyler (Nicholas Holt) arrive on a dock waiting for a boat to take them to a secluded island, where the famous and exclusive restaurant Hawthorn and its highly respected chef Slowick ( Ralph Fiennes ) live. Gradually the guests arrive and board. Its a mix of wealthy regular patrons. a famous food critic and her editor, Slowick's financiers, a film star, and Slowik's Mum. Margot is Tyler's last minute change of accompanying guest, which the maitre'd Elsa ( Hong Chao) notes with evident irritation. Its obvious they've all been handpicked to be here, for what, becomes evident later as the evenings meal commences.

The mis-en-scene of The Menu is necessarily tightly controlled and confined largely to the dining area and kitchen alongside. It is then, quite stagey and theatrical in its set pieces. The movie's denouement becoming clearly inevitable once one of the kitchen staff shoots themselves in front of the guests.Was this a well set up and executed performance, or was this all too real? No one is initially sure, so rattled, but not yet in outright rebellion, the guests resume their seats and continue to eat the meal. Margot, as the one unexpected guest, is the only one who is clear this is not OK, regardless of whether what has happened is real or not. For Chef Slowik wishes to torture, punish and murder them all for the various things they have done that has offended him. Only Margot does not fit into this, because she was not planned for, so she must decide her own fate.

The conceit of The Menu works well, for the first half of the movie. With some clever, if easy shots being taken at the pretentiousness of the whole outrageous celebrity chef shtick  But once the carnage ensues the predictability of its conclusion does sort of diminish its impact and engagement. It becomes merely a question of following an unveiling procedure, of how they are all going to cop it. Its evident script flaws are substantially compensated by watching the creepy consistency of Fienne's calmly emollient performance. Anya Taylor Joy is excellent as the only ordinary person, who represents us watching, seeing through the pretense of the kings new clothes. And how all the other guests are so bought into the mythology of this particular celebrity chef, they are initially unable to see what is actually going on.

With sterling support from substantial actors of the caliber of Janet McTeer and John Leguizamo, this film has a lot going for it. And on the whole it does not disappoint, even if the narrative journey it is taking us on has a certain predictability to it. Billed as a horror/comedy it has flashes of doing both extremely well, but it is intermittent. Dramatically its broadly a quietly effective satire in its first half and is a moderately horrific one in the second. It really needed to commit to being primarily a satire or a horror movie. In the end it was only quite good at being a bit of both.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

 

SCREEN SHOT - Drive Angry ( 2011 )

John Milton ( Nicholas Cage ) escapes from hell in order to save his daughter's baby girl. She has been taken by Jonah King ( Billie Burke ), a charismatic leader of a Satanist cult, after murdering Milton's estranged daughter. He only has a short time to find his grand daughter and exact his revenge because The Accountant ( William Fitchner ) is in hot pursuit to return Milton to the prison of  hell ASAP. Along the way Milton saves Piper Lee ( Amber Heard ) from being beaten up by her boyfriend. As she gradually realises what Milton really is, and the purpose of his mission, she decides to go all in and help him.

By 2011 this was far from being Cage's first foray into occult movie territory. But whilst he has undoubtedly taken parts in some real plonkers in his late career 'dash for the cash' career strategy, this one is unexpectedly a really sparkling turd of a movie. It's story line is frankly ludicrous over the top nonsense, but it knows that, putting everyone's tongues firmly in their cheeks, and turns up the acting to maximum ham. As a consequence its a hugely enjoyable film to watch. It was made for 3D, but was not a huge box office success taking 40 million dollars, on a film budget of 50 million. So lets say, this obviously never quite found its ultimate target audience. But, please, watch the trailer its priceless.

It has oodles of snappy throw away dialogue, particularly from Fitchner, who appears to be relishing playing a character who knows exactly how long everyone has to live. Encountering two local hicks, he tells them 'You, I'll see you in 73 years, and you in three months' then walks off. without any further explanation. He asks a woman from the satanic cult whether she would have really sacrificed the baby, if she'd been told to, she doesn't really reply, he departs saying 'See you in three minutes'. And the whole movie is just full of these sort of knowing winks and flourishes. It doesn't take itself remotely serious, except actually it does, deadly serious, and that is why it has this trashy charm.

Nick Cage, is Nick Cage playing John Milton ( Paradise Lost 'n 'all ) with his distressed hair and serious purposeful face on, maintained unflinchingly throughout the entire glorious hour and forty four minutes of the movie. Its like someone told him the title of the movie, so decided, yeah, that's what I'll be like, driving angry, like that. Cage, so it appears, is always at his dead pan ironic best, when he's free to play up to the stupidity of the film he's making. And this film encourages Cage to go on the fullest tilt he's been in any such movie. Aficionados of late career Cage movies will find lots to love in this movie. A film so god damned bad, but boy does it know how to sell that to you.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8  ( on the bad into good scale )

SCREEN SHOT - A Real Pain

David (Jesse Eisenberg) and his cousin Benji ( Keiran Culkin ) have recently lost their Grandma. Of the two, Benji was the closer to her and has been heartbroken since her death. She left them some money  So the two cousins book themselves on a guided tour to travel through Poland to visit the Holocaust sites and to find the house where there Grandmother originally lived. Benji and his Grandmother were similar spirited individuals, quite intense and opinionated. And he's had a tough time since her death. David sees the trip as a way to support him at a difficult time and renew their bond. 

The film opens with a shot of Benji sat in the airport lounge quietly watching people come and go, intercut with David neurotically leaving voicemails for Benji, keeping him informed of where he is and when he'll arrive at the airport. Its obvious the two cousin's personalities are chalk and cheese. Benji is charming, interested in other people, comfortably outgoing and easily breaks down social barriers. Whilst David is paralysed by social anxiety and is jealous of his cousin's apparent ease. Finding Benji's openness and frank way of expressing himself deeply embarrassing. Much as he loves him, he thinks his cousin is a real pain. 

The other people in their small touring group, each have their own issues they are dealing with, their own reason for wanting to come and visit the sites of the Holocaust. That these places ought to put their own pain in perspective, but instead appear to amplify them. Benji easily connects and empathises with other people's pain. But Benji as a social being is very different to Benji's internal world, where he really struggles. David sees this outward Benji as a fake facade, and a very effective performance entirely for the benefit for others. For he recently had found Benji after he'd taken an overdose. 

The performances of Eisenberg and Culkin are both so perfectly pitched, as is Eisenberg's film script. Fun and witty, but also emotionally intelligent and very able in quickly touching on great depth. One moment David is all full of the neurotic resentments that Eisenberg is so used to portraying, Then when he's expressing his frustrations with the frankness and rudeness of Benji, he sudden erupts with suppressed anger at Benji, because he doesn't understand why he tried to take his own life. Its one of the most heartfelt and astonishing moment of acting in the entire film, as it erupts so completely unexpectedly out of the blue. 

But the loving beating heart of the movie is all Culkin's Benji. The sort of outgoing uninhibited person perhaps we all would like to aspire to be, but would be too afraid to even try. Culkin's performance is so intuitively acted, really finely judged, full of subtle nuances. He has a quietly expressive face, that is at one turn mysterious, but without guile the next. You can read his thoughts, see the good hearted motives behind the unguarded honesty. Culkin would often not prepare for scenes, preferring to just turn up and respond in the moment to what was going on around him. It was a risky acting strategy, but one that paid huge dividends in the clarity and appropriateness of his performance. Its little wonder its been lauded with awards so frequently. 

A Real Pain, explores a lot of the mixed messages of that term. Who is the real pain? To whom is he a real pain, just to others or to himself. Then there is the irony that they are on a trip visiting the Holocaust sites. And as Benji points out, they are all privileged individuals travelling on a very luxurious train, whereas their dead ancestors were most certainly not. Who has the right to express their real pain here? This is one of the best written and coherently performed films I've seen for quite a while. A Real Pain was quite surprisingly thoughtful and really impressive.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Amateur

Charles Heller ( Rami Malek) is a brilliant cryptographer, who spends far too many hours in dark soundproofed rooms scrolling through code looking for significant discrepancies. His wife Sarah ( Rachel Brosnahan ) is away at a conference in London. So he stays at work delving deep into a complex piece of data. He discovers that an operation previously slated as the work of a suicide bomber, was in fact a CIA black operation, and a deliberately focused unsanctioned drone attack. Instantly he realises he's stumbled upon something that is dangerous for him to know. The next day, when he arrives at work, he's called into the CIA Director's office. Suspecting his previous nights discovery may have already been exposed. But in fact she informs him that his wife has been killed in a terrorist attack on her hotel in London. 

Devastated, Charles starts to use all his own skills to investigate what happened, identifying three individuals responsible. In a discussion with Agent Moore (Holt McCallaney) he realises that they intend to do nothing to capture the folk responsible, saying they want to get the whole operation. Charles decides to tell them he knows about the Black Ops, and blackmails them into training him up to go in pursuit of his wife's murderers. It turns out in his training with Hendo ( Laurence Fishburne) that he's a hopeless shot with a gun. So he will need to use all his personal resourcefulness to develop an innovative approach to his mission. A mission no one seems to wants him to succeed in.

Though the essential premise of the movies set up is a tad unrealistic, the film does stick to its guns and does not pull any unbelievable punches in order to make it more dramatic. Malek is very good as the man that finds he's more than a little bit out of his depth, but remains driven by his own psychological compulsion to see this through. His facial expression shifts effortlessly from despair, desperation and deliberation, that feed into lightening responses in the moment. You are never allowed to forget this man is grieving and is seeking his wife's murders in order to have closure. When he does eventually find the gangs leader he asks him why his wife had to die. It was necessary in order for them to escape,he says, it was decided spontaneously, whereas Charles's revenge killings, well they are deliberate and remorselessly executed. Which is worse? Pointing out what his wife's death has driven him to do.The Amateur is a well paced thriller, that is never tempted to stray from the conceit within which it is set to operate. They carry it all off cleanly and with all the ruthless efficiency necessary.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Oppenheimer

 

Though its running time might seem a bit of an ask when pinned to a cinema seat, Oppenheimer more than justifies its three hours dramatically. It is a visual tour de force from Christopher Nolan, maintained with consistency and flare. He has also assembled here some of the greats of modern day cinema. Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) that most chameleon of actors is superb. As are Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt as his two unconventional wives, who both make the most of their limited screen time. Blunt in particular seems on fire playing the ever morally indignant Kitty.

The story arc of Oppenheimer is structured over the lamentable bones of a committee, trying to assess whether Oppenheimer should have his security clearance renewed.  This entails interviews of friends and work colleagues, secret documents, passed surveillance, all his passed actions trawled over in order to establish whether he was really a 'commie' or not. For the committee is really a set up, a kangaroo court, organised covertly by Lewis Strauss ( Robert Downey Jnr) to basically trash Oppenheimer's public image and reputation post war. In the process it tells the story of how the famous theoretical physicist took over the management of The Manhatten Project that devised the atomic bomb, in a nail biting aim to beat the Nazi's in developing it. Then to make the bomb in order to launch it against the Japanese and bring the war to a end.  Followed by his own guilt over the mass casualties and his part in that, and the public slandering of him and his reputation.

This story has everything going for it treachery, betrayal, sex, communism, rivalry, scientific break throughs, acclaim and infamy. And Nolan gives it all the punch and propulsion it needs to keep you with it. It is no wonder this has won so many awards, particularly for its leads. Whilst in the background you have notable cameos from the likes of Kenneth Branagh as Niels Boher and Gary Oldman as President Truman, who both give restrained toned down performances, for a change. At a few years distance I cannot for the life of me envisage why you would want to do a Barbenheimer and see Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back. Were they completely mad?

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8