Perfect Candidate

We watch the film ‘Perfect Candidate’ on the Modern Films website with a commission going to Broadway Cinema. It was a pain to stream though but we finally got it working from my Macbook to our Roku box.

Maryam (Mila al-Zahrani) is a young doctor in a Saudi Arabian hospital. We see her struggling to treat a man who has an arm injury because he refuses to be examined by a woman and he demands a male doctor, even though she is the most qualified medic available.

She is also concerned about the state of the road that leads down to the hospital but nobody in authority is interested in getting it fixed.

Maryam lives at home with her sisters, Selma (Dae al-Hilali) and Sara (Nora al-Awadh), and her father Abdulaziz (Khalid Abdulraheem). He is a respected musician who is struggling to get over the death of his wife and goes on tour with his band to take his mind off her.

While he is away, Maryam tries to take advantage by flying to a medical conference in Dubai where she hopes to put herself forward for a better job. However when she gets to the airport she is refused permission to fly because her father has failed to renew her travel permit and without his permission, she can’t fly.

She tries to see an official, who also happens to be her cousin, to get this rectified but she can’t even get an appointment with him. His secretary tells her he’s only seeing those who are signing up to be candidates to be a local councillor. So in order to see him, she signs up as a candidate herself. However, even when she sees him he still won’t budge on her permit.

Having signed up as candidate she decides to go ahead with it and armed with a googled checklist of how to win an election, she launches her campaign despite having no chance because she is female. 

We then get a lesson on political life in Saudi, particularly if you’re a woman, where the gender divide denies women a voice. Yet Maryam manages to get her political speech heard because she doesn’t focus on women’s rights like they all expected her to and instead turns her attention to the damaged road outside her hospital. This doesn’t improve her chances of winning but she does at least win that argument and the road is fixed.

Vivarium

Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are a young couple desperate to get on the housing ladder. They wander into an estate agency staffed by Martin (Jonathan Aris), who looks like he’s just come straight off the set of Book Of Mormon.

Even though it isn’t at all what they are looking for, he persuades them to visit a new housing development called Yonder. Yonder is Suburbia on speed with its rows of identical houses with their identical white picket fences and identical manicured lawns.

They are shown around No 9 which is like a show house with everything ready for a couple to move in and complete with a spare bedroom ready for child number one.

When Martin simply disappears, Gemma and Tom can’t wait to make a run for it but they discover that escape is not possible. Every road leads back to No 9 and after driving around until it gets dark, they run out of petrol right outside No 9.

The next day, Tom climbs on to the roof where he sees nothing but more identical houses, so they decide to follow the sun to find a way out. They walk across identical garden after identical garden, always climbing over the identical fences using identical white plastic chairs. When they finally find a house with some lights on, it’s No 9. 

They discover that a box is left outside the house every day containing food and other provisions. The same food and provisions, day after day. Then one day the box has a baby inside it with a note saying, 'Raise the child and be released'.

If you assume that by merely having entertained the ‘dream’ of suburban living ‘sold’ by the estate agent and subsequently found themselves trapped in it then the last thing they should now do is to agree to raise the child. After all, why would you move to suburbia in the first place if the next step wasn’t to have a child to occupy that spare bedroom?

Out of compassion (I guess) they accept the child, thereby trapping themselves more deeply because having the child piles further demands on them. The way Tom and Gemma deal with those demands is by reverting to stereotypical gender roles.

Gemma cares for the ‘Omen’ child or at least tries to reason with it, as it grows at the rate of a dog and screams at the top of his lungs until it gets what it wants. While Tom digs because it makes him feel like he's doing something, and that is what men do.

As the child grows up into a Martin clone it all ends rather brutally as, with their roles affectively fulfilled, they are 'released' but not before we get an insight into other couples doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same trapped environment.

I thought it was a fascinating film, in the vein of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. A film about the treadmill of life, that life itself is a trap.

Where many films these days are remakes or sequels any film that dares to be different should be applauded. Vivarium gets a standing ovation from me.

Misbehaviour

Misbehaviour takes us back to the 1970 Miss World contest in a time when the contest was a very big thing. It was a British success story that was covered by the BBC and beamed around the world. Although the contest continues to this day, it is much more under the radar and this film probably marks the point at which opinion started to turn against it.

The competition was founded and run by London businessman Eric Morley (Rhys Ifans) and his wife Julia (Keeley Hawes). In 1970 they persuaded Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear) to return to compare the show again even though his wife Dolores (Lesley Manville) has still not forgiven him for having an affair with Miss UK who won the competition in 1961, the last time Hope hosted. You do have to feel sorry for Michael Aspel (Charlie Anson) who was the main host of the 1970s show but was shunted aside so that Hope could compare the finale.

As the film shows, the 1970 contest was disrupted by protests from the fledgling Women's Liberation Movement. One of the ringleaders was Sally Alexander (Keira Knightley), a mature history student from a decidedly a middle-class background whose mother Evelyn (Phyllis Logan) was a big Miss World fan and who just wished her daughter would stay at home to be a good parent to her daughter.

Frustrated by the amount of sexism at university, Alexander eventually teams up with Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley), the leader of a feminist group who all hang out together in a commune making protest signs, writing graffiti and grumbling a lot but not much else. Alexander attempts to lick them into shape.

Together they plan an invasion of the Miss World ‘cattle market’ which is to be held at the Royal Albert Hall, where they find another more sinister protest threatening to upstage them. Earlier the same day, a bomb exploded under a BBC broadcast truck parked outside the venue. This was planted by an anarchist extremist group known as The Angry Brigade who had already been responsible for several small scale bomb attacks in the UK.

Bob Hope was mid-way through his repertoire of sexist jokes when the women started hurling flour bombs and fruit at the stage ensuring the Women's Liberation Movement claimed most of the evening's headlines.

However, a lot of the contestants didn’t agree with the sentiments of the protesters. To many the show allowed underprivileged women to realise their dreams and it also gave ‘woman of colour’ a chance to shine. Even if South Africa had to quickly come up with a second contestant to ward off anti-apartheid campaigners such as Peter Hain. Alongside their white contestant Jillian Jessup (Emma Corrin) came Pearl Janssen (Loreece Harrison, competing as ‘Miss Africa South’.  

Significantly, the winner was to be Grenada’s Jennifer Hosten (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who became the first black winner, with Miss Africa South taking second place. The hot favourite Miss Sweden Maj Christel Johansson (Clara Rosager) came only 4^th. This wasn't without its own controversy with the president of Grenada Eric Gairy on the judging panel.

Misbehaviour turns out to be quite an engaging drama which is quite educational and scores highly on the post-film Googling scale.

1917

It is 1917 in the British trenches and the German army appear to be in withdrawal but aerial reconnaissance has revealed that they are in fact lying in wait for a British attack. Two British soldiers, Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and William Schofield (George MacKay) are called upon by General Erinmore (Colin Firth) to carry a message by hand, because field telephone lines have been cut, to Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) of the Devonshire Regiment. The message will instruct Mackenzie to call off the scheduled attack because it would jeopardise the lives of 1,600 men. Blake has been chosen because his brother Joseph (Richard Madden) is one of these men.

With time short, the men leave the trenches and cross No Man’s Land which is a sea of bodies, dismembered limbs and dead horses until they reach the abandoned German trenches, which they find are booby-trapped. A tripwire is triggered by a rat and the explosion nearly kills Schofield but Blake rescues him.

They then reach at an abandoned farmhouse from where they witness a German plane being shot down. They drag the injured pilot from the plane before it explores but the ungrateful pilot stabs Blake. Schofield shoots the pilot but can't save Blake and has to carry on alone.

After hitching a lift with another British convoy, Schofield then has to cross a bombed out canal bridge into the ruins of Écoust-Saint-Mein where he comes under fire from a German sniper. In the ensuing fight the sniper is killed and Schofield is knocked out cold. When he regains consciousness he heads off through the bombed-out French town under heavy fire.

It is rather unbelievable that he manages to dodge so many bullets before stumbling into a basement where he has time for a social call with a French woman (Claire Duburcq) and her child while I am literally screaming at him that he has a battalion to save.

Eventually continuing on, Schofield is again repeatedly shot out before escaping by jumping into a river where he amazingly avoids drowning despite being swept over a waterfall. Suddenly it's all gone a bit Indiana Jones.

The river spit him out on to a riverbank which by some amazing coincidence is where the Devonshire Regiment are having a singalong before heading to battle. Schofield manages to creep up on the Regiment without anyone noticing as they seem to have neglected to post any guards.

In one sense director Sam Mendes has made an epic film that looks great, is really dramatic and that puts the audience right in the middle of the action. It would also have been nail-biting stuff if you didn’t know for sure that Schofield would make it to Blake’s brother once Blake himself had met a grisly end. The only other problem really is that I just don't buy the plot at any price.

Jojo Rabbit

Jojo Rabbit is a comedy, yes a comedy, about a 10-year-old boy and his imaginary friend called Adolf Hitler... Not going to work is it? Well, maybe.

Firstly it’s a bit of a shock that this storyline even made it on to the big screen what with people’s sensitivities these days even though making fun of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler is nothing new. Hello Mel Brooks. That was back in the 60's when World War II was a lot fresher in the mind but the world was lot less snowflake then.

Taika Waititi wrote the film, financed it, directed it and plays Hitler himself. I hope he lands some sort of award at the Oscars. I mean what more does a guy have to do.

The film is set in the dying days of the Second World War and follows Johannes 'Jojo' Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) who in his youthful naivety, and because he’s a big fan of swastikas, signs up for the Hitler Youth. His local camp is run by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), a one-eyed drunk who is clearly miffed at no longer being allowed out on the battlefield.

While Jojo clearly dreams of becoming a war hero it's not really in his makeup and he gains the nicknamed 'Jojo Rabbit' when he fails to prove himself by killing a rabbit in one of the films least endearing scenes. He then blows himself up with a hand grenade, at which point he is assigned the more sedate task of handing out leaflets.

All the time he is ‘advised’ by his imaginary friend, a rather camp caricature of Hitler, while his father is MIA on the Italian Front and his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) is busy working for the resistance.

It turns out his mother is also hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), in the attic. She is a former classmate of Jojo's sister Inge who has died of flu. Jojo is horrified when he discovers her and threatens to hand her in to the Gestapo until she points out that his mother would be executed for hiding her. Instead the pair start to get on which infuriates Imaginary Adolf as Elsa gradually picks away at the years of brainwashing that Jojo has received.

When Jojo writes a propaganda book on the Jews for Klenzendorf she feeds him crazy stories about the Jews having special powers. Meanwhile Jojo forges letters to her from her fiancé Nathan, telling her that Nathan wants to break up with her.

When the Gestapo discover her she pretends to be Inge and gets away with help, surprisingly, from Klenzendorf. Jojo is relieved but then later that day, finds his mother has been hanged in the street in a remarkably understated scene. Then as news breaks that the Allies are closing in, Jojo sees his school friends in the Hitler Youth being hurled into battle as a final desperate last act.

It’s certainly a different approach to Hilter and the war. Waititi’s film seems to deliberately sidestep addressing the evils that he shows you and instead lets it wash over you. Yet he still makes a point, I think, about how easily such evil thoughts and ideals can breed in a nation. Which is a very relevant point today with nationalism reappearing around the globe. Whether it’s the right approach, I’m not sure.

Last Christmas

Of course Christmas (if it is still Christmas) wouldn’t be Christmas without a dodgy film. I’m talking about ‘Last Christmas’ but it is true that there might be even dodgier possibilities. Broadway is closed today, so we are at our local Showcase instead.

We are introduced to Kate (Emilia Clarke), or Katarina to give her the name she dare not speak, who came to UK with her family as refugees from the former Yugoslavia when she was child. Her day job is as an elf in a Christmas store working for a woman called Santa (Michelle Yeoh). That’s not her real name... although Kate seems to think it is.

Kate is also an aspiring singer and a George Michael fan who is perennially homeless after falling out with almost everyone she shares accommodation with by either breaking all their possessions or killing their pets. Instead she becomes adept at sofa surfing which isn’t terribly compatible with her liking of one-night stands.

She could of course go home to her family but she finds them overbearing, particularly her mother Petra (Emma Thompson), even though they all rallied around her when she was very ill the year before. Thompson also co-wrote the script but isn’t terribly good at an East European accent.

Things start looking up for Kate when she meets Tom (Henry Golding) a man who is always looking up at the beauty of the world, even if he won’t let her surf on his sofa let alone share his bed. Tom works as bike courier and volunteers at a homeless shelter where the other volunteers have never met him. To Kate’s dismay Tom proves maddeningly elusive and even keeps his phone at home in a cupboard but inspires her to sort out her life and be new nice to people even after inadvertently outing her sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) as a lesbian to her own family.

The film is inspired, as the title suggests, by a certain song penned by George Michael and also features many other songs by him. The entire premise lies behind interpreting the lyrics ‘Last Christmas I gave you my heart’ literally and it is how quickly you latch on to this which enables you to work out who Kate’s new friend actually is. Some may say that the film does this 'classic' track a disservice but I'd say it gets exactly what it deserves.

As I was expecting a straightforward RomCom-By-Numbers I was rather pleasantly surprised by the film. It is neither particularly romantic nor much of a comedy although it does have a few moments that make you smile. Mostly its humour tries to be politically correct but somehow ends up being completely the opposite.

It isn't even all that Christmassy, save for a festive Covent Garden setting, and it is perhaps for all these reasons (and Clarke’s amazing eyebrows) that I rather liked it. Yes it’s sooo trashy but then Christmas itself is inherently trashy and false. Clarke herself is brilliant and will no doubt use this film as a steppingstone to bigger and better things.

There is a rather unnecessary subplot about post-Brexit xenophobia but it never really goes anywhere as if a lot of the scenes to do with that ended up on the cutting room floor. While its pro-immigration message is somewhat undermined by using two Londoners in Clarke and Thompson to play immigrants. Yet it is good to see an attempt to depict migrant families in a mainstream film.

Little Women

This is apparently the 7^th film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and like the previous six it isn’t a film for which I am anywhere near the target audience. Also, for me, doing Little Women yet again demonstrates exactly why cinema is often so dull at the moment e.g. endless repetitions of the same thing. If it’s not that it’s sequels... and/or the constant overuse of the same actors and actresses e.g. here we are again getting to watch the terrifically competent Saoirse Ronan.

Clearly studios think we don’t want originality and sadly they may be right judging by how packed it is in Broadway tonight. Not that they seem to enjoy it very much. The moment the end credits roll everyone silently disappeared without a word to anyone. No interest in the cast list, the music, the locations (ok, clearly we’re both film geeks) and no debate about the film unless they’re all rushing to the pub to do it. We start our debrief in the cinema and carry it on later in the bar.

Do you need to know the plot? Because it’s fair to say there are very few surprises. Despite this version by Greta Gerwig being a ‘modern’ version it’s still about a group of sisters whose lives revolve around getting themselves married off while ditching any career aspirations they may have had along the way. 

It is true that they now make it abundantly clear that this is their own personal economic decision and they have licence to slap away any suitor’s attentions particularly if they’re called Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) while proclaiming they’d rather ‘write’ or ‘paint’ or something else rather than get married before giving everything up to get married.

So the artist (Florence Pugh as Amy) doesn’t become an artist, the musician (Eliza Scanlen as Beth), or was it an actress, doesn’t become a musician and the author (Saoirse Ronan as Jo) only becomes an author by writing about the artist not becoming an artist, the musician not becoming a musician and the author changing the ending so that she too gets married. It is true that the housewife (Emma Watson as Meg) gets everything she wants.

The other thing is the flashback scenes... I know it’s not cool these days to make a movie that is linear but the flashbacks were quite ridiculous as they basically involved the same cast dressing slightly differently, tying their hair back and giggling a lot more. At times it was incredibly difficult to work out which period of their lives we were in. One moment we’re at Beth's funeral and then the next we’re at Meg's wedding where Beth is in attendance.

All I can say is thank heavens for Florence Pugh, who I could watch all day long.

At the end my partner confesses she was fighting back a tear or two. Of frustration I assume.

Roll on version eight.