Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 05 July 2020

A White, White Day takes place in Iceland but it could arguably be set in any country. It delves into the universal themes of death and grief.  For the first 70 minutes or so, it’s a patient/slow observational drama centred on an elderly man.  When talking to a therapist, he simply describes himself as a “father, grandfather, policeman and widower.”

It’s that later noun which is most key. Ingimundur (Sigurddson) is still coming to grips with the unexpected death of his wife in a car accident.  Taking time off from work, he’s now pouring his energy into home renovations while also spending time with his inquisitive 8-year-old granddaughter and his soccer playing friends. 

Just like the lead character, the film seems somewhat directionless during the opening two acts. We’re watching short, fragmented moments in the life of an ordinary guy.  He revisits old home movies.  He moves a small boulder which has fallen on the road.  He reads a scary bedtime story to his grandchild.  You wouldn’t be alone in asking yourself the question - what’s the point and where is this all going?

It’s alluded to during the early stages but the tension finally ratchets up when Ingimundur confronts a younger man who he suspects had an affair with his wife.  His suspicions were aroused when looking through library books and old photos passed on by his wife’s work colleague following her death.  It’s a personality shift that will come as a surprise.  We’ve gotten to know Ingimundur as a quiet, docile man but now he’s consumed by rage and will stop at nothing to get the answers he seeks.

Iceland doesn’t have a huge movie industry but they’ve produced some great stuff in recent years including Rams and Woman at War.  It’s an intriguing country given their isolated location, cold temperatures and small population (just 364,000 people).  The most memorable sequence in the film occurs at the very start.  We’re treated to a lengthy time lapse that highlights the country’s beauty and how it changes depending on the season and the time of the day.  It reaffirmed my desire to visit one day.

Unfortunately, the film’s meandering nature struggled to hold my early interest.  We’ve seen so many films around the world that deal with grief and there’s nothing here that offers a fresh, different perspective.  It’s only scratching the surface when it comes to character development and I wasn’t won over by the finale’s sudden change of pace and its big revelations.

Selected as part of the International Critics’ Week section of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, A White, White Day struggles to make an impression.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 09 March 2020

Queen & Slim is a tale of crime, grief and morality… that begins with a Tinder date.  Slim (Kaluuya) swiped right and sent through a message.  Queen (Turner-Smith) took a few weeks to respond but, in need of company after a disheartening day at work, agreed to meet up.  They eat at a cheap diner, engage in a little small talk (sparks aren’t exactly flying), and then he gives her a lift home.  That should have been the end of their association.

It’s during that car ride that Slim is pulled over by a police officer on a quiet, desolate street for failing to make a turn signal and “driving erratically”.  Slim disagrees and there’s an increasingly tense exchange between the pair.  When Queen gets out of the car and tries to film their discussion on her mobile phone, a series of rash decisions forever change their lives.  The police officer shoots Queen in the leg (thinking she was reaching for a gun and not her phone) and Slim responds by taking the officer’s gun and killing him.

There’s not a lot of time for logical thought.  Instincts kick in and, realising they’ve killed an officer with no witnesses to corroborate their version of events, Queen and Slim jump back in their car and flee.  Their goal is to travel roughly 1,000 miles from Ohio to New Orleans to visit Queen’s seedy uncle and lay low for a while.  Adding to their complications is the fact they have no money and their mugshots have been broadcast across the country on regular news broadcasts.

The two lead performances deserve praise.  Daniel Kaluuya, who earned an Oscar nomination two years ago for his unforgettable performance in Get Out, goes through a raft of emotions as Slim.  The adrenalin is pumping as he drives across the country while dealing with the realisation he could be incarcerated for life or never see his family again.  Similar thoughts flood the mind of Queen (played by excellent newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith) but she’s also grappling with painful events from her troubled childhood.

39-year-old director Melina Matsoukas has forged a career in music videos (she’s won two Grammy Awards) but despite a long-time wish to transition, she’d struggled to find the right script to begin her feature film career.  Any hesitations were dispensed when she first read Lena Waithe’s screenplay and realised it was a “beautiful love story” about two people who would not have come together if not for a shared trauma.  It’s a heavy tale but Matsoukas is not afraid to use comedy at opportune moments.  Given a significant chunk of the movie takes place inside the car while on the road trip, I was also impressed by the mix of angles utilised by cinematographer Tat Radcliffe (Pride).

While I enjoyed the film’s vibe, it’s guilty of pushing its themes too hard.  There’s a bunch of scenes where fellow African Americans help them avoid capture but these interludes become repetitive.  A throw-away line about the dead police officer previously killing black people is superfluous (audiences are already on the side of Queen and Slim) and a closing sequence of people looking at TV screens is unnecessary.  The biggest head scratcher is a sex scene interwoven with a police riot (involving a kid we hardly know or care about).

On the whole though, there’s a lot to like about Queen & Slim and it’s important to see African American women (both writers and directors) getting the chance to create stories for the world to engage with.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 22 March 2020

Writers have a lot of creative licence when it comes to animated features.  They aren’t limited by what visual effects artists can generate or by what stunt people can achieve.  Think of the strange world in Spirited Away or the odd-looking characters in The Triplets of Belville or the lovable toys in the Toy Story franchise.  It’s hard to believe such memorable, distinctive imagery could have been crafted if live-action techniques were used.

That said, even I was a little puzzled by the curious domain used in the latest Pixar film, Onward.  It’s a world filled with centaurs, unicorns, mermaids and fairies and yet, despite the fact these creatures have magic abilities, they’ve forgotten (I think?) how to use them because they now rely on technology to go about their daily lives.  It doesn’t make much sense but I’m guessing it’s a metaphor for today’s world and the way scientific advances have many jobs and tasks obsolete.

If you think that’s odd, wait until you hear what the film is about.  16-year-old Ian (Holland) and his elder brother, Barley (Pratt), are two elves who have been raised almost entirely by their widowed mother (Louis-Dreyfus) after their father passed away many years ago.  Using a long-forgotten magic spell and a special gemstone, they attempt to bring their late father back to life for a period of 24 hours but regrettably, it all goes pear-shaped.  Only the “bottom half” of their dad regenerates and so they’re forced to interact with a confused pair of legs that cannot see or hear them.  It’s weird stuff.

What follows is an adventure whereby Ian and Barley go on a lengthy road trip to find another gemstone which they can use to complete the spell and see their “full” father.  They mingle with an assortment of creatures along the way including a stifled manticore (Spencer), a pixie bikie gang, and a bunch of police officers.  It’s anything but smooth sailing and tension grows between the two brothers with each passing hour.

The film’s worthy messages are easy to discern.  It’s about complex sibling relationships and the ways in which loss and grief connect us.  It was inspired by the real-life upbringing of writer-director Dan Scanlon.  His father died when he was just 1-year-old and so the only way he could get an appreciation of his dad’s life was through pictures, home movies and stories relayed by other family members.

I struggled to buy into the film’s concept and the torso-less figure that socialises with the two brothers.  It’s a jagged narrative that doesn’t flow smoothly from scene-to-scene.  I could also see younger audiences becoming confused at times.  Despite its flaws, the film comes together for a powerful, emotional climax in the final 10-15 minutes that may see a few tears shed.  The wait is almost worth it.

With a voice cast including Tom Holland, Chris Pratt and Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Onward isn’t as memorable as other Pixar classics.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 March 2020

A family is holidaying at a luxurious European ski resort.  They’re eating lunch at a restaurant with a raised outdoor deck.  A controlled avalanche is set off from a nearby mountain.  The fast-moving wave of snow comes hurdling towards the restaurant.  The husband runs from the table and leaves his wife and two children behind.  The avalanches pulls up just short.  The husband returns and pretends nothing has happened.  The rest of the family realise the matriarch’s first reaction in a life-threatening situation was to abandon them.

If you want to see this movie… check out the 2014 Swedish release Force Majeure.  Directed by Ruben Östlund (The Square), it is a beautifully shot, brilliantly told dark comedy about a family which briefly disintegrates following the aforementioned events.  Don’t just take my word for it.  The film won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and earned a best picture nomination at the European Film Awards (losing to Ida).

I realise why you take great foreign language movies and remake them for English speaking audiences but I’m not sure there’s a single element of Downhill that is the equal of the original film.  It’s a boring, hollow, simplistic movie that lacks the nuance and darkness that made Force Majeure so great.  There’s no point watching it if you’re familiar with its predecessor (even if you’re not, I’d probably advise not to go).

Will Ferrell (Anchorman) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) have great comedic talent but have been miscast in their respective roles.  Ferrell appears to rehashing the goofy, meek father figure role that he played in Daddy’s Home.  Louis-Dreyfus is asked to screw up her face and make an awkward expression every time the camera looks her way.  You never truly feel the tension and pent-up emotions they should be experiencing.

Academy Award winning writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (The Descendants), along with co-writer Jesse Armstrong (In the Loop), have “dumbed down” the source material and in doing so, the film’s themes and impact have been lost.  The best example is the inclusion of Australian actress Miranda Otto (The Lord of the Rings) as a sex-crazed concierge with an over-the-top European accent.  It’s silly stuff that belongs in a Saturday Night Live sketch as opposed to a biting comedy about troubled family dynamics.  The same applies during a scene where the family confront the resort’s safety team.

Something got lost in translation because Downhill is a vastly inferior remake.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 10 March 2020

At the film’s world premiere in Toronto last September, Oscar nominated director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) lamented that “you see hundreds of war films, but you’ve never seen what happens to the families left behind.”  That’s a slight generalisation (many war films do offer a family perspective) but I can see his point given this story is told solely from the perspective of a group of women in Britain while their husbands are off serving in Afghanistan.

Some may already know the true story on which it’s based.  The idea began in 2010 when two women from North Yorkshire started a small choir.  It was intended to be a support mechanism for women looking to pass the time while their spouses/boyfriends were on overseas deployment.  Similar choirs were formed across the country and they came together as part of BBC television show, The Choir: Military Wives, which first aired in November 2011.  A month later, they released a single which went to #1 on the UK Single Chart over the Christmas period.

Military Wives is a semi-fictionalised version of events.  It opens with two very different women, Kate (Scott Thomas) and Lisa (Horgan), being charged with the responsibility of organising social activities at their military base.  Kate is sophisticated, controlling and formal.  Lisa is the exact opposite.  It’s not hard to see the awkward tension between the pair as they squabble over the tiniest details when planning get-togethers for the local women.

They ultimately settle on the choir idea and, if you’ve seen your fair share of feel-good flicks, you should know what to expect.  There’s the initial nerves and reluctance from the group.  There’s the singer who doesn’t realise how beautiful her voice is.  There’s the arguments over which songs to use.  There’s the big performance at the end (complete with a few hiccups in the hours leading up to it).  They’re plot devices we’ve seen used before in films such as As It Is in Heaven to Pitch Perfect. 

I tired of the goofy, repetitive tiffs between Kristen Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan (who feel like they’re overplaying their characters at times).  Thankfully, screenwriters Rachel Tunnard and Rosanne Flynn push for a more dramatic layer in the second half with several interesting subplots involving the theme of grief.  It leaves a stronger mark than the choir stuff in the sense that it’s more emotional and less clichéd.  We get to see these people open up and act like real humans.

Military Wives has been compared against the likes of Calendar Girls, Brassed Off and The Full Monty and so if you’re a fan of those, this might put a smile on your face (and maybe a tear down the cheek).