Lion

'Lion' is based on the novel ‘A Long Way Home’ the true story of Saroo Brierley, as he is known now.

We start in Khandwa, India in 1986 with five year-old Saroo (Sunny Pawar) and his older brother Guddo (Abhishek Bharate). They help support their family by stealing coal from trains and general scavenging for items which they then trade.

When Saroo manages to persuade his brother to take him on a job at night it doesn't end well. Saroo gets so tired he falls asleep on the station platform where his brother tells him to wait until he returns. When Guddu does not return, Saroo gets on a train that is parked in the station hoping his brother will be on it.

When the train moves off not only is his brother not there but there seems no way out of the empty carriage and the train does not stop for anyone to get on until it arrives at its final destination of Calcutta, nearly 1,500 kilometres away.

In Calcutta he joins masses of other homeless children as he cannot get anyone to help him because they speak Bengali and he only speaks Hindi. Someone eventually takes him give, giving him food and shelter but Saroo flees when he rightly senses that they have unpleasant plans for him, mostly likely being sold into prostitution.

Then he is rescued a second time and placed in an orphanage. The staff attempt to locate his family but Saroo cannot correctly name the place he is from and does not even know his mother's actual name.

As they can’t return him home he is instead adopted by a Tasmanian couple, Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John Brierley (David Wenham) and he grows up with them in Hobart along with another adopted but emotionally disturbed Indian boy Mantosh (Divian Ladwa).

Twenty-five years later, and totally Australised, Saroo (now Dev Patel) heads off to University to study Hotel Management where he even bags himself an attractive girlfriend in Lucy (Rooney Mara). However as flashbacks to his early years surface in his mind he begins to wonder about his past.

One of his student mates tells him to trace his home town on Google Earth which at first he doesn’t take seriously but an obsessive need to trace his origins soon takes hold, disrupting both his career plans and his relationship with Lucy. To be fair Hotel Management was probably giving Dev unsettling flashbacks anyway, all the back to the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Of course, looking for your home town when the town name you have in your head doesn't exist is akin to looking for a very small needle in the very large haystack that is India and he spends many months starting at railway lines on Google Earth looking for something he recognises.

It’s all very sweet, if a bit of an advert for said Google Earth, but I don’t really get all the angst. Why does he shut everyone out? We did he not let his Uni mates help him or his girlfriend or his family and when he finally traces his home in India he goes out there alone.

Overall it’s decent enough film that ends with actual footage of Saroo being reunited with his mother. Dev Patel has bagged himself an Oscar nomination for his role but it has to be said the real star is Sunny Pawar who puts in an extraordinary performance as the younger Saroo.

By the way Saroo, or Sheru as it actually is, means Lion.

La La Land

La La Land is of course the ‘must see’ film of the year and, of course, a musical. So never before have I been ready to hate a film so much because I really dislike pointless singing in films but we always try to see all the Oscar nominees so... here we are.

What’s worse we’re even at the Cineworld multiplex as our local independent Broadway is fully booked. The omens are not good, not good at all.

I immediately feared the worst when the film opened with a scene that was practically straight out of Grease. Grease isn't a bad movie, just not really my thing at all, and people sing ‘n’ dance in traffic jams all the time, so nothing pointless about that. It happens every day on my commute down the A52.

This however was a pivotal moment, things got a whole lot better.

La La Land tells the story of Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) who first meet in that all singing all dancing traffic jam in Los Angeles, presumably the LA in La La, in what becomes the first of several chance meetings. 

Sebastian is a frustrated jazz pianist who dreams of opening his own jazz club but is stuck playing Christmas songs in a bar just to make ends meet. That is until he finally cracks, plays something different and gets sacked. As he storms out he brushes past Mia who was about to approach him in chance meeting number two.

Mia is a prospective actress but who works in a coffee shop on Warner Brother's lot while she awaits her big break. Unfortunately audition after audition just deals her rejection after rejection.

Mia again bumps into Sebastian at a party where he is in the band that are playing. He’s looking very bored as they cover A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ but that’s nothing to how he looks when they take requests from the floor and Mia asks for ‘I Ran’. They don’t really come much more uncool that the uncool 80’s band that were Flock of Seagulls, unfairly so me thinks, and it’s like a knife in the back for our frustrated jazz pianist. The song is perhaps also an appropriate comment on the Mia\Sebastian story so far.

It probably means something... he says of their third chance meeting, probably not... she replies, as they finally get to talk.

They get together and we follow them over the course of the next four seasons as they urge each other to pursue their dreams but while eventually Mia does and starts her own one woman show, Sebastian goes on tour with a band playing music he doesn’t really like just for the money. He is away so often it kills their relationship.

Yet it is Sebastian that turns up out of the blue to pick Mia up off the floor after her show fails and forces her into one last audition which is the one that finally lands her big break but that takes her away from him, possibly for good. 

Five years on they have another chance meeting. Sebastian has finally started his nightclub while Mia has moved on with someone else but... what if... and this is the deal with La La Land, everything has a 'what if'.

The big one is whether Mia and Sebastian should pursue their dreams and their art or just go after the money? Do they then end up together? 

Meanwhile the film take a swipe at Hollywood for having the same choice and repeatedly picking the latter. What if Hollywood doesn’t make Star Wars 27 and Rocky 46? Ha ha.

In between there are clever references to classic films such as ‘Rebel without a Cause’ which is an interesting choice for their first date and which Mia had to dump her current bloke to get to.

The other thing is that this isn’t really a musical, it’s just a damn good film with a decent soundtrack that they happen to sing rather than play in the background but it also has a message, a decent plot, a lot of cleverness and some astonishing cinematography, if bordering on the surreal at times. It’s happy, it’s sad and I do love an unhappy ending but of course, different people will see different things in this film as I’m sure is the intention.

Emma Stone is simply amazing, which ought to make the whole thing disappear down a massive plot hole as she plays a girl who can’t get an acting job. Ryan Gosling meanwhile tries to not look out of his comfort zone and I think gets away with it. 

I shouldn’t really have doubted the film as it’s directed by Damien Chazelle who made the excellent Whiplash, another jazz filled film, and this also features the brilliantly humourless JK Simmons as Sebastian’s bar owner boss.

The worrying thing for the Oscar competition is that this is such a good film as it is but imagine how good it could have been if they’d left out the singing and dancing. Doesn’t bear thinking about. Fellow musical haters face down your demons and go see it.

Manchester By The Sea

Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is a janitor in Boston who spends his days just getting through life and his job while hopefully avoiding any social interaction along the way. While his nights are largely spent drinking alone at home or in bars with a quick fight to round off the evening. We do not know at first what has brought him to this.

If he isn’t fed up enough he then hears that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has died from a heart attack. Lee now has to return to his hometown of Manchester, a picturesque place on Massachusetts' north shore, to put his brother's affairs in order but where he also has to face many people from his past including his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams).

Then he finds out that he has been named the legal guardian of Joe's 16-year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges) because Patrick's mother Elise (Gretchen Mol) is an incapable alcoholic. This is a task he feels he’s not up to but he reluctantly takes it on while trying to move Patrick back with him to Boston because he really cannot bear being in Manchester any longer than necessary.

Patrick meanwhile is having his own problems coping with his father's death but at least he has his two girlfriends to help him with this.

The film moves between the past and the present, showing a time where Lee was content with his life and the present day when he clearly is not. Everything moves along at a slow, measured pace, revealing details of Lee's past bit by bit, drip feeding us the gradual unravelling of Lee’s life until when you're least expecting it, the pivotal event that altered Lee's life forever is casually tossed into the film like a hand grenade. Boom. 

Once you’ve found why he has detached himself so much from life you're inside his head and you are suddenly watching the film from a very different point of view to where you started. Brilliant.

Clearly they needed someone to play this solemn, withdrawn, complex loner who could nail miserable to a T so they sent for Affleck and the role fits him like a glove. He proves that nobody does emotional distancing like him and he's amazing from beginning to end. 

Michelle Williams is good too in her small role, as are most of the cast, but Manchester by the Sea belongs to Casey Affleck.

An absolutely brilliant film. Must see.

Jackie

Jackie follows Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) during the days after her husband's assassination in Dallas in November 1963. Moving backwards and forwards in time, the film mainly revolves around the interview that she gave to Theodore H. White (Billy Crudup) for Life Magazine.

In flashback we see her recording a televised tour of the White House in which she appears nervous and almost shy. This is in complete contrast to her demeanour in the interview where she appears much more confident and even controlling. Throughout the interview she attempts to set the record ‘straight’ about herself and her family while basically telling the reporter what he can and can't write about her. Right down to saying she doesn't smoke while she sits there smoking a cigarette.

We also see her planning a grandiose funeral for her husband against the wishes of the secret service but mostly we see her wandering around the White House in a moribund state of grief. The primary aim of the film seems to be an exploration of her state of mind and sadly the actual story becomes a bit of a side show. The film is clearly trying to make points about her character but I feel like I'm sat in a lecture theatre being taught them.

This focus on the one character also means that Natalie Portman becomes basically the entire film and she has clearly spent some time learning every last nuance of Jackie Kennedy's mannerisms. She appears to succeed at this, totally immersing herself in the character, so much so that she becomes an absolute clone of Kennedy. For me though this isn’t really acting, it’s just impersonating. We know Portman can act but she isn't really allowed to here.

Kennedy also comes over as quite artificial, incredible vain and a bit of a cow if I’m honest. I certainly didn’t feel any sympathy for her. I actually came out of the film actively disliking her but then I wasn’t that familiar with Jackie Kennedy beforehand as many people won’t be.

This is another problem with the film, its assumption that you know a lot of the background history, not just about the assassination of JFK but also about the Kennedys in general and the ‘Camelot’ myth. As we are going back over fifty years here that quite an assumption. Particularly if you're not an American but then when have US film makers ever assumed anyone wasn't American?

The movie isn't bad and director Pablo Larrain skilfully blends archive material with re-enactments but it’s really not very entertaining and drags at times. A wider focus, perhaps covering more of Jackie Kennedy’s later life, would have made things much more interesting.