film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Mark Goodyear

  • Eternal Beauty: Review

    Eternal Beauty: Review

    Even the most celebrated films to delve into the realm of schizophrenia have the peculiar habit of taking the most literal of approaches. So often, fully formed people appear and make it near impossible for audiences to differentiate the delusion from reality. Generally, this difficulty is intentional and often used to significant effect allowing twists in a story. However, what makes certain depictions so peculiar is that the hallucinations of schizophrenia are known to be primarily those that appeal to the sufferers hearing as opposed to their sight. I say this to be clear about what I love about Craig Roberts’ second feature film, “Eternal Beauty”. 

    Not only does this film serve as a more plausible interpretation of the struggles of mental disorder, but it also plays like a breath of fresh air in a genre riddled with fierce melodrama or otherwise overly quirky misfires. Eternal Beauty finds the sweet spot right in between and is genuinely one of the funniest movies of the year while still managing to keep intact its emotional core. 

    The story is that of Jane (Sally Hawkins), a lonely woman who succumbed to schizophrenia after being left on the alter 20 years before meeting her. And while it is her lost love that caused her ailment, it is the actions of her sadistic and manipulative mother which have entrenched Jane into her psychosis. We learn of Vivian’s (Penelope Wilton) manipulative ways through a series of flashbacks depicting her as a mother demanding beauty and success, primarily through the avenue of teen beauty pageants. Despite Jane’s striking beauty as a youth, she was always far too shy to speak in front of the judges, leading Viviane to displace her for her younger sister Nicola (Billie Piper), who instantly adored the limelight. 

    These cruel maternal actions of the past twist Jane’s reality in the present. She continually receives phone calls from a mysterious man she believes herself to be in love with. She then convinces herself her nephew is her son with this man and attempts to run away with the utterly bewildered child. These are just two examples that fall into the vat of hilarity that is her generally eccentric nature. So strange is Jane’s life day to day that when we meet her, she has bought her own Christmas presents, intending to invoice her family the costs. With this said, no matter how funny things get, there’s an inescapable sombre undertone. One formed from the fact we know Jane can’t help herself and that she didn’t deserve what happened to her. Everything changes when she reunites with an old childhood acquaintance, Mike (David Thewlis), who is just as quirky as she is and the two almost instantly fall for each other. 

    Despite the clichéd nature of their relationship Thewlis and Hawkins are irresistible together on screen and become delightful to watch. However, it isn’t to last, and when they sour, the film reveals itself to be about the catharsis of three tormented sisters far more than it is just about Jane. The eldest sister Alice (Alice Lowe) never forgave her mother for sectioning Jane years earlier and has become estranged from her mother in exchange for becoming Jane’s main form of care. But when it becomes clear Vivian is dying, the tortured trio must find their way back to one another and to the side of their ailing mother. There’s a fair argument to make in saying that Roberts loses his focus here, and he does. The final act feels near entirely separate from the rest of the film, it may still emanate the same dramedy cocktail as the first half, but it lacks clear thoughts about what to do with its characters, with Nicola especially feeling redundant. 

    Uncomfortable as the transition into the films final act may be, there is one true and shining constant aspect throughout, and it is the gorgeous work of Sally Hawkins. Her work here is the funniest performance of the year. Full of quirky indifference and Jane’s own kind of razor-sharp rhetoric. Near every line that isn’t designed to make you cry will have you laughing. Thewlis is her brief but just as endearing and humorous counterpart, and as mentioned before, together, they positively command the screen. 

    Eternal Beauty loses its way in the final act but remains a refreshing look at mental illness and an avenue for the fantastic work of Sally Hawkins.

  • I Am Woman: Review

    I Am Woman: Review

    In 1966 Helen Reddy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) takes the daunting first steps towards her historic career. With what is perhaps a blissful ignorance or otherwise an unduly trusting nature she waltzes into a music executives office believing she is the recipient of the chance to record. Possibly such an offer was laid out at some point, but it is not in the nature of the music business to throw bones to struggling artists and as such, daughter Matilda in tow, Helen leaves the office jobless and alone in New York. 

    She goes through many more highs and lows before writing the unofficial anthem of the woman’s liberation movement, I Am Woman, after which the film takes its name. The most important of those highs is her meeting of the man who gets her where she needs to be to shine, her second husband, Jeff Wald (Evan Peters). The film is just as much his at it is Helen’s and the audacious and charismatic Wald soaks up every minute of the limelight. They meet when he gatecrashes her birthday party and soon enough after they are on their way to California where he dreams of representing movie stars and she dreams of making an album. It is here in the Golden State, far removed from the squalor she found herself performing for in New York, that Helen Reddy truly becomes a star. 

    As she elevates to stardom, it gets more and more difficult not to wish this film had come out maybe three years earlier. Before Bohemian Rhapsody had hampered the music biopic so carelessly and before Rocket Man had shown us how to do it properly. In those days I Am Woman would soar as a perfectly reasonable and empowering film, but unfortunately, that is not the case. Instead, watching this in 2020 only highlights the worst tendencies of biographical film making, particularly of musicians. These films feel the need to get by on haphazard normalcy as if showing everything to be stock standard drama is enough to get by. When directors do this, they often include set pieces to add some vigour and give a reason to stay, and this is no different. 

    The performance of the titular song is Unjoo Moon’s selected set-piece and when it comes around the film takes on an entirely different aura for a few moments. So powerful and infectious is Reddy’s song that not only does it overcome the, unfortunately obvious, lip sync, but it also becomes indelible. Cobham-Harvey looks every bit of the part has she mimics the performance and the way she is shot, in both the first and second performances, is impeccable. 

    In fact, throughout the entire film, only one thing remains steadfast, the fantastic work of Dion Beebe, the cinematographer. So brilliant and modern is his work that it almost becomes incongruous to the period and otherwise general straightforwardness of the film. The strength of last years fantastic Judy was that it was a deeply personal film, and despite the attempts for this to be the same it simply isn’t. One moment there will be a spectacular use of Steadicam that promises a deeper glimpse into this impressive figure only to be followed by a scene taken straight from Walk the Line, it’s dreadfully uneven and reeks of having already been done.

    The story remains interesting enough, the familiarity of it can’t be helped in this aspect because if this is what happened, then this is what happened, or is at least some form of it. The performances too are praiseworthy. Her work here could well be Cobham-Harvey’s step into fame should the right people see it and Peters has begun his journey out of his beloved Quicksilver’s shadow. They will both go on to bigger and better things, hopefully in the near future. 

    As time passes through the slightly overlong 116-minute runtime, the film never delves into dire failure, nor does it even come close, it is more that it makes so little of an impact. Eventually the song I Am Woman becomes a crutch for its namesake film and attempts to carry it upon its back. Every moment that isn’t performance just plays it too safe and it compounds into the realisation that there is a great film to be made here, this just isn’t it.

    I Am Woman is heartfelt and well-meaning in its approach. However, it is far too uncomplicated and direct to inspire any of the feelings Helen Reddy’s powerful music does and instead leaves you begging for any sign of risk or vulnerability.

  • I’m Thinking Of Ending Things: The BRWC Review

    I’m Thinking Of Ending Things: The BRWC Review

    The internal machinations of our minds sometimes betray us. Fantasies spiral out of control, thoughts embarrass us by slipping through their Freudian holes, and in the midst of puzzling equations, they have the unfortunate knack of forgetting to carry the one. Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is one such puzzling equation set in a spiralling fantasy world filled to the brim with haunting mental slips twisted as cultural references coming to life. Following a young woman (Jessie Buckley) and her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons), Kaufman’s latest is a confronting, often chilling look at life unfulfilled and the ways in which we compensate for that inside. 

    “It is beautiful out here. In a bleak, heartbroken kind of way.” so thinks the young woman, who for convenience I will call Lucy, the first of her many ever-changing names. Lucy thinks this while gazing out from Jakes car on the way to meet his parents for the first time. The whitewashed landscape outside is rapidly worsening in the snowfall, and despite the frequent chatter with her boyfriend, she cannot escape one perpetual thought, “I’m thinking of ending things”. What she’s thinking of ending precisely is challenging to dissect, but on the surface level, Jake is on the chopping block. 

    Most of the film takes place like this, isolated in the ever-plodding car and, as if driving some mythically foreboding road, the further they go, the more unsettling things become. Its subtle interactions the couple have that force this sensation. Moments where Jack interrupts Lucy’s thoughts, as if reading her mind, or the few times Lucy’s ever-seeking eyes find the camera and she stares straight through us. Yet these instances are only harbingers of what’s to come, which is a meeting of parents that makes Ben Stiller’s efforts look like a perfectly comfortable and effortless occasion. 

    Jack’s parents are freaky figures, simply named mother and father (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). They flow through time together while we are with them, aging rapidly both forwards and backwards through time, but they aren’t all that changes. Lucy’s name changes as well, as does her occupation, the way they met, her hobbies and interests. Suddenly it becomes clear that this is not reality as you and I know it. What we are seeing is a blank canvass upon which someone is painting their desires, and as they paint, they are changing their minds about what is ideal to them. Everything becomes infinitely more uncomfortable from this point as we realise how perverted it is that we are being made privy to this individual’s innermost desires. Almost every moment inside Jack’s childhood home only makes this more evocative. When we enter his room, the voluminous mise-en-scene reveals the sources of many of the references, and it’s clear whoever’s fantasy this is it’s made up entirely from the media they have consumed. 

    We do know whose fantasy Lucy exists in; he isn’t kept secret from us. In fact, throughout the film, we cut to him living his lonely life. Credited only as “Janitor” (Guy Boyd), our de-facto storyteller works in a local high school where he struggles with both his image in the eyes of the students and his empathy for those who are bullied. And through him, I’m Thinking of Ending Things becomes a melancholy tale of unrequited love within oneself. Even in his own fantasy, the Janitor faces rejection, and I can’t think of many things sadder than that. 

    Sad as it may be, everything does come across masterfully. Kaufman is sincere enough in his writing to simply let his mystery be clear-cut once it is resolved. However, the film’s issues lie in the presence of the conundrum itself. In both direction and content, this is an inaccessible film nearly impossible to fully comprehend in a single viewing, which can make its vast 134-minute runtime drag. It is so easy to get caught up in analysing every passing line as if the next one could be the Rosetta Stone for the entire piece, and doing this won’t uncover much of anything in this movie. The film’s twist lies in the big picture, and the references and the mind-bending are only the manifestations of the Janitor; they are what he is. In saying this, a firmer hand would likely have seen the film crumble before our eyes as a nuance-less mess, so whilst it all gets dangerously close to being pretentious, it remains respectable. 

    I would be remiss to end this review without mentioning two of the hottest actors in the world right now in Buckley and Plemons. The calibre of work they produce while almost exclusively seated in a car is phenomenal. They are becoming the kind of actors whose names on a cast sheet are all the convincing you will need to watch, and their efforts in digesting and reciting Kaufman’s abstract dialogue is some of the finest work of the year. Thewlis and Collette are also predictably irresistible in their quirky roles, and together they each make for a perfect ensemble. 

    I’m Thinking of Ending Things is unashamedly not for all tastes to worthwhile results. With this said, deciphering what it all means is justifiably difficult and will doubtless see many seek other avenues to spend their time.

  • Tenet: The BRWC Review

    Tenet: The BRWC Review

    In 2006 Christopher Nolan asked us if we were watching closely, now fourteen years later he’s making sure we still are. Tenet requires every ounce of attention you can muster, and blanking at the wrong moment could leave you lost for everything left to come. This is what he does though, and it always has been. Nolan doesn’t just make films; he makes spectacles of the highest order. For all its ruthlessness his auteurism is as distinct and audacious as the other elite of the filmmaking craft, and although he’s used his talents to greater effect in the past, Tenet is a welcome reminder of the genius of his method. 

    No director thinks as much of humanity as Nolan does. Almost all his films speak to the power of individuals to transcend perceived reality and achieve great things. He deals with grand abstract themes traversing dreams and dimensions and yet presents them in such a way that there is always a human who can master them, or at the very least keep them at bay. His obsessions don’t lie explicitly within the supernatural, more aptly they lie in humanities ability to traverse it. In Inception, this meant experiencing dreams as a reality and Cobb venturing deeper into them than ever before. In Interstellar, it manifests as a fourth dimension of human creation that allows Coop to send signals back through time. As for Tenet, the “Nolanness” here is the ability to move forwards while moving backwards. 

    To explain this is to explain the movie so I’ll begin with our protagonist, simply named “The Protagonist” (John David Washington). He’s an operative who proves himself worthy of knowing two things. The first is a gesture composed of intertwining the fingers on both hands and spreading the palms, and the second is simply a word, “Tenet”. Combining these two things is described to us as something that will open many doors, not all of them the right ones. Armed with these mysteries The Protagonist begins to investigate a strange kind of ammunition he’s been encountering in the field, one with the ability to defy physics. It turns out massive amounts of concentrated radiation is causing objects to reverse the flow of time, instead of moving forward as we do, they are moving backwards, and if bullets can be “inversed” as they describe it, then any manner of larger and more dangerous objects can too.

    One man controls this phenomenon, a man with the ability to contact the future and have things sent back to the past. He is Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a Russian oligarch who suddenly came into his riches despite his low-class upbringing. Rapidly it becomes clear that his intentions with the new technology are nefarious and contain world-ending ramifications. In short, he needs to be stopped. The Protagonist is then left with a fight against, and through, time itself and has two main companions to help him. The first is Neil (Robert Pattinson) a resourceful man who knows too much and explains too little, and the second is Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) Andrei’s emotionally battered wife who proves to be the only means of getting near her husband.

    That is as clear as Tenet can be laid out without unnecessary confusion or blatant spoilers, and therein lies its most significant problem because Tenet is so much more than that. Countless lines pass with great difficulty to comprehend them, and it leaves you grasping for essential pieces of context and explanation. Often a sensation arises that the film is passing by without inspiring any great feeling or leaving any imprint. Here is when Tenet is at its weakest, its an oddly stubborn and uncompromising beast you desperately want to understand but can’t, because frankly, it won’t let you.

    However, the film has more than enough saving graces, and the action is its first and most prominent. Nolan is known for his adrenaline-fuelled set pieces, and Tenet has some of his best ever, many of which play simultaneously in reverse and forward motion. There’s nothing quite like the experience of feeling a cinema shake during a Nolan movie, and as this time-defying combat occurs, it’s impossible not to be enthralled. Ludwig Göransson had impossibly big shoes to fill in the absence of legendary composer and long-time Nolan collaborator Hans Zimmer, and he delivered expertly. These sequences ensure even the most lost of viewers will be in awe for a few moments, and even with a lack of full comprehension, their pulses will race. 

    The performances are the films other triumphs. Even with what is a rather one-track role, Washington has never felt more like a superstar, proving he is just as at home in high-budget blockbusters as he is in indie films. Robert Pattinson is every bit as charismatic as he has proven he is of late, and this is another welcome addition to his recent homerun filled filmography. Their two largest co-stars steal the show, however, and without them, the film would be void of emotional stakes. Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki have the rare kind of chemistry that speaks to genuine hatred. Their characters have a relationship based on blackmail and manipulation, and when they go at each other, they go hard. Together they make for an irresistible cocktail of villainy and despair, and when all is said and done, it will be them whom you remember the most. 

    For better or for worse Tenet is Christopher Nolan’s ultimate puzzle. Those with the constitution to unwaveringly pay attention to its secrets will be rewarded with an epic tale found somewhere beyond time. Those without may just have to get by on the visual achievements alone.

  • The Secret Dare To Dream: Review

    The Secret Dare To Dream: Review

    In 2006 The Secret launched as an hour and a half video documentary entailing how the secret to life was visualising your success. Later that same year Rhonda Byrne published a book of the same name and on the same topic that Hollywood has now decided was worthy of adaption into the feature film “The Secret: Dare to Dream”. What a long way to go for so very little. 

    I want to start by saying that the most egregious part of this entire film is the very fact that it even exists in the first place. It should go without saying, but self-help books should never be adapted into feature films, Mean Girls notwithstanding, it has never worked. These books are not there for the benefit of moviemaking, nobody is asking for it, and every single time it happens, it feels like shameless money-grubbing from authors milking the limelight. 

    The movie itself is totally harmless and fine, at times, even moving. However, it lacks any real conviction to convincingly express the thought process behind the hit book. Ultimately the titular secret only amounts to, “think good things will happen, and they will”  a rather unimpressive mantra. That is not to say living by “the secret” is not a positive way to live. However, that is to say, that it one, does not always work, and two, is simply the basic process of self-affirmation spun to sound more grandeur than it really is, which is precisely this adaptions greatest sin.

    The story is about single Louisiana mother of three, Miranda Wells (Katie Holmes), who is struggling to get by five years after her husbands’ death. On the same day we meet her she is lucky enough to meet Bray Johnson (Josh Lucas), a university lecturer who unwaveringly subscribes to the secret way of life, and who comes brandishing a manilla folder to give to the Wells’. However, Miranda crashes into the back of Bray’s car before they can officially meet, setting in motion a series of events that see Bray hold off on sharing his reasons for being in town because he believes he is heading down a far greater path. 

    It would be putting it lightly to say this is about as clichéd as it gets, but that did not have to be a bad thing. Small town love against the odds is overdone and always will be, but that does not mean it is impossible to put a unique spin on your interpretation. Unfortunately, Andy Tennant decided not to add any flair and instead produced the single most stock standard effortless motion picture I have seen in a long while. There is no risk here, and there is no excitement or vulnerability. All there is are predictable plotlines smothered in sap and southern accents.

    To make it all the worse, the performances from Holmes and Lucas are both effective. Lucas, in particular, makes for a perfect obnoxiously positive person. He does his part in convincing you this philosophy is worth believing in, thanks to his innate charm. The only issue is the sheer silliness and improbability of the things he is supposedly making happen by just believing that they will. For example, pizza arriving right after the children describe the exact pizza they want or finding the perfect piece of plastic to fix a roof because it was floating in the river he happened to be walking by. It is hard to imagine anyone reading the script without many an audible groan.

    The Secret may preach to dare to dream, but it fails to dare to be anything more than another failed attempt at translating self-help to the big screen.