THEGAYUK

Category: Film

  • FILM REVIEW | Last Straight Man

    But will he remain one, if Lewis gets his own way?

    It may be every gay man’s dream to sleep with a straight man and it’s even hotter when he happens to be your best friend too. Closeted Lewis has always had a secret crush on his best friend Cooper but has never ever let on until the night before Cooper is about to marry his girlfriend and the two-man have just drunk a wee too much at the stag party and their conversation turns to sex. All the other guys have left and as Lewis and Cooper start to clear up the hotel room where the party had been held, the talk gets dirty and personal. Well-endowed Lewis is keen and Cooper is curious and so the two end up in bed together after discovering that they both love blowjobs.

    Next day Cooper gets up and goes and gets married and lives happily ever after with his wife. Until the same time next year that is, and the two men meet up back in the same hotel room and take up where they left off. This anniversary tryst becomes an annual date in their calendar and for one night a year Lewis, previously self-identified as bi-sexual, transitions into gay, and straight Cooper still refuses to accept that he is anything else even though he lets Lewis penetrate him as he insists that they never kiss.

    What is clear though is over the next 12 years that they are both very much in love. With each other that is. One year Cooper tries to fight his feelings and refuses to show up for their date, claiming he doesn’t want to put his marriage at risk, and then in a later year when he has not only overcome his resistance, is imploring Lewis to f**k him as hard as he can. It just so happens that he may have left it too late as perpetual bachelor Lewis finally has a boyfriend and is anxious not to do anything that may jeopardise his new relationship.

    In this very likeable boy-lit movie it is interesting that although this may have started out as Lewis’s crush, it is, in fact, Cooper who is living out his fantasy. As their relationship develops it makes both men question their feelings and emotions and they learn that they cannot be easily defined in a conventional way as they accept their love for each other. It’s helped with very convincing performances from the two handsome leads Scott Selland Mark Cirillo who look comfortable in and out of the clothes.

    Be warned though before you get to the scenes of these two hunks thrashing around naked, you have to sit through the scary opening moments of the movie when the stag party stripper insists on pushing her mammoth naked breasts way to close to the camera. And I won’t even tell you about her party trick where she can pick a coin up by her … well, you can imagine.

    This cute wee drama is entertaining and amusing, although trust me, Cooper really is anything but ‘the last straight man’.

     

    by Roger Walker-Dack

  • FILM REVIEW | The Rewrite

    ★★★★ | The Rewrite

    I have a confession to make – I’m a sucker for a good old-fashioned rom-com. Cary Grant? Yes please! Doris Day? Just my cup of tea! Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan? I’m in heaven!

    Give me star-crossed lovers and a little “will they, won’t they” and I’m a happy bunny.

    And this vehicle for Hugh Grant gives you just that. It’s not earth-shattering, it’s not life-changing, it doesn’t answer the meaning of life but it is funny, it is warm and it is actually a good story.

    Hugh Grant plays a once successful Hollywood screenwriter, one who seemingly had it all, wife, son, glittering career, wit and charm to boot, but then, as these things will, they fade.

    The career stalls, film work dries up, the wife moves on to someone more successful and takes the son with her, and the charm and wit only go so far when your fast approaching fifty and broke.

    This is where his wise-cracking agent comes in, offering work at a small college on a screenwriting course, and off Hugh goes.

    A little far fetched, but this is a Hollywood movie, not real life. Stick with it as we watch Hugh go through the ups and downs of campus life, and also through a student or two…

    He finds his mojo for writing amongst his students, but learns quickly that the film industry is still as fickle and maybe, just maybe his future lies elsewhere.

    Hugh Grant gives his usually good performance, where he basically plays himself, Marisa Tomei plays one of his older students and puts in a solid performance playing her elfin self, and Allison Janney gives a poker face performance as a gargoylesque Jane Austin fanatic faculty member.

    I liked this film a lot, I didn’t love it and here’s why. There was something slightly creepy about a 50-year-old sleeping with students, and at times, you look at Hugh and think, is this it? What else can you do? He is starting to look out of place in this type of film, too old to be running after 18-year-olds.

    But until something else comes along, I do still enjoy him in these roles, and can’t wait to see where he goes next as he has mentioned in interviews that he wants to direct – but none of this detracts from this film, I’d see it again, and give it 4 stars!

  • FILM REVIEW | The Face of Love

    ★★★★ | The Face of Love

    You glance at the cast list and think that at last, Hollywood is acknowledging good actors who happen to be a little older than Channing Tatum. The 3 leads here are Annette Bening, Ed Harris and the late Robin Williams in a slightly left of centre love story.

    It goes like this, Annette Bening plays Nikki, an LA housewife and mother, who loves her husband, architect Ed Harris. The first part of the film shows this love while it films them on vacation for their 30th anniversary in Mexico until tragedy strikes.

    Widowed, Nikki does what you imagine anyone in that position does, they exist, get up, breathe, eat, sleep and try to form some kind of life without that special someone but without any meaning and this film shows that lack of purpose so well.

    That is until, on a whim, she drops by her favourite art gallery in LA, an old haunt from her pre-widow days and she spots a doppleganger; the spitting image of her late husband and that’s where the film goes into uncharted territory.

    I’ve read some online reviews of this movie and they aren’t kind, but I found it endearing and felt an empathy with Nikki and her web of lies as she’s negotiating a relationship with someone who looks like and to all intents and purposes is her late husband; but with a penchant for hats and less fake teeth (watch, you’ll understand)!

    Robin plays the third wheel – a neighbour, who lost his wife and has a crush painful on Nikki – a crush that comes to the surface when he makes a move and is, politely, thwarted due to Nikki’s sudden involvement with her late husband’s double!

    Her live away daughter’s reaction is a treat when she first, accidentally, meets her mother’s new lover – worth watching just for this.

    This is a lovely, delicious, silly and far-fetched movie – a Saturday afternoon treat, make yourself some popcorn, pour a wine and indulge kind of thing.

    Suspend disbelief as someone once said and enjoy.

  • FILM REVIEW | I Am Yours

    ★★★ | I Am Yours

    Newbie Norwegian filmmaker Iram Haq’s new drama is based on her own life and her struggle as a woman caught between two cultures. Struggling actress Mina, a second-generation immigrant, is an attractive 27-year-old divorcee who shares custody of her 6-year-old son with her ex-husband, a successful architect, and his new wife who can barely contain their disapproval of Mina and her rather flighty life.

    Even her hypocritical mother, the matriarch in their traditional Pakistani family, cannot stop criticising her daughter every time they meet. ‘What a fine man, imagine if he were still a member of this family’ she intones about her ex-son in law. Mina’s only joy, asides from her son, comes from her all her sexual liaisons with a slew of unsuitable men. When they sense her neediness, they all use this an excuse to manipulate and abuse her.

    This comes to a head when she meets Jesper a Swedish filmmaker visiting Oslo. He is quite the charmer and so Mina chooses to overlook that he is both self-centered and extremely passive/aggressive when it comes to the relationship that they fall into too quickly. She goes to great lengths to please Jesper in whom she has invested all her hope even to the point that doing so may jeopardise the one stable thing in her life i.e. her relationship with her son.

    The same time that Mina eventually appreciates that Jesper can not/will not make any commitment to a relationship especially when he realises he has to compete with a 6-year-old child for her attention, her mother comes to visit cap in hand to admit that her own perfect marriage is not what it seemed after all.

    It’s an impressive first feature from 38-year-old Haq and was selected to be Norway’s’ Official Submission for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar Nomination. She cast the movie very well with convincing performances from her two leads: Amrita Acharia a Norwegian/Ukranian/Nepalese actress best known for playing Irri in the Game of Thrones and Ola Rapace who was in Skyfall but is better known for being the ex-husband of Noomi Rapace.

  • FILM REVIEW | Pelo Malo (Bad Hair)

    ★★★★★ | Pelo Malo (Bad Hair)

    The opening scene of the extraordinary refreshing movie reveals a very reluctant Marta cleaning a luxury apartment aided and abetted by Junior her 9-year-old son who she has dragged along, as she cannot afford a babysitter.

    She’s annoyed as she feels that this work is beneath her but has to do it anyway as she is unable to get re-hired in her Security Guard job that she was suspended from for some unspecified reasons. Marta lives with her two children in a decaying tower block housing project in one of Caracas’s poorest working class areas and it’s a daily struggle simply trying to make ends meet and get enough money to feed the family.

    This is not the only reason why this attractive, but sullen, young woman looks angry all the time, as she is constantly battling with Junior, who even at this very early age, she suspects may have homosexual tendencies. The boy’s best friend is a potty mouth girl and he prefers to play with her dolls rather than pitch in with the other boys on the Estate and join their rough-horse games. Not only that but as he has inherited from his father (since departed) an unruly mop of curly hair, he is desperate to have it straightened in time for the obligatory photograph he needs to start High School next time.

    It’s yet another reason to continue the running spate with his mother who can barely disguise her loathing for her eldest child, and who chooses to use all her motherly love on the baby instead. However, Junior’s paternal grandmother, who has no real love for her ex-daughter in law, is happy to indulge her grandson. She has an ulterior motive though as she would like him to come live with her so that he will be around to take care of her when she gets older. She helps Junior experiment straightening his hair and even makes him an outfit to wear for the photograph. It’s based on one that his favourite pop idol wears but when the end result looks too girly for him, he starts to fight with his grandmother too.

    Junior is too young to understand what he is feeling and his fawning admiration for handsome teenager Mario who runs a news kiosk could, of course, be just a schoolboy crush, but Marta has already decided that it is unhealthy and is the reason that her effeminate son is developing into something that she so obviously finds abhorrent. She also knows that as the adult in this situation she has the power and the ultimate control and it’s what she will use to get her own way.

    All this family drama is played out against the rapidly changing political instability in Venezuela that is pushing this family (and so many others) into an uncertain future and making sheer financial desperation become a major factor in shaping people’s beliefs and standards. The odd thing that in this patriarchal society Marta is clinging to this outdated attitudes, which are rank with homophobia even though the job that she is so desperate to recover for herself is one that is traditional, a very masculine occupation.

    It is nevertheless a wonderful melodrama that even with the futility of the embittered mother’s position she still wants to fight the natural development of her child even though he obviously has no idea of what he is even happening to him and his sexuality. Samantha Castillo as Marta, and a complete scene-stealing turn by Samuel Lange Zabrina as Junior enhances it with a stunningly realistic performance.

    It won writer/director Mariana Rondón the major award at the prestigious San Sebastián International Film Festival but the main reason that this excellent movie deserves our attention is because she chose to tackle the very sensitive subject of budding sexuality, and in an environment/culture that is facing such turmoil right now anyway.

  • FILM REVIEW | American Sniper

    ★★★★ | American Sniper

    Add American Sniper to the list of good Clint Eastwood movies.

    While it’s not his best film ever (see Unforgiven and J. Edgar) nor his worst film (see the recently poorly received Jersey Boys), it’s a loyal and factual re-telling of the true story of Chris Kyle, a member of the elite Nave SEALS. He was the most lethal sniper in the history of the US Military, having 160 confirmed kills. He was also a husband and the father of two children, but being the best sniper and serving his country were the most important things in his life.

    Kyle (played valiantly and accurately by Bradley Cooper) in the beginning of the film is a ranch hand in Texas. His life doesn’t amount to much, especially after he finds his girlfriend in bed with another man. But after injuring his arm, he decides to join the navy. His commitment for his country becomes embedded in him after the catastrophic events of 9/11. After months of gruelling training, he and his team are sent to Iraq to fight the enemy. And they are tasked with some of the most dangerous missions in the military. This includes heading directly into enemy territory and looking for a man called Shiekh Al-Obodi (Navid Negahban), one of the leaders of the Taliban.

    Kyle serves four tours, in between each one going home to be with his family but getting the pull to serve again. He’s urged against it by his pretty wife Tanya (an amazing Sienna Miller). Even the birth of his two children doesn’t keep him home. He continues increasing his sniper kill tally, which includes women and children who threaten to kill US soldiers. Kyle is also determined to kill a man called Mustafa (played by Sammy Shiek). Mustafa is a Syrian shooter who had competed for his country in the Olympics. He’s also killing the insurgents (the Americans on the ground). Kyle is determined to kill him as he has killed one of his fellow soldiers. The film then becomes a cat and mouse story to dramatic effect, where Mustafa aims to shoot the soldiers but Kyle aims to shoot him. It all culminates in an amazing shootout between the US soldiers trapped on a rooftop in Sadr City while the enemy comes in from all sides, all in the midst of a massive sandstorm. It’s one of Eastwood’s best film sequences I’ve ever seen.

    However, American Sniper doesn’t end there. Kyle, after getting shot in the massive shootout, returns home, but has a hard time rejoining society, and his wife has a hard time getting connected with him. He’s a changed man, but seems to slightly recover after he starts helping soldiers at a local veterans hospital and also helps to train them on weapons and combat tactics to lift their spirits. American Sniper would’ve had a better impact if the film ended after the shootout in Sadr City. This last bit of the film seems to be tacked on to tell the rest of Kyle’s story.

    Cooper plays Kyle to great effect, however, he’s a bit too old to be playing Kyle in his younger years. But Cooper is believable as a soldier during the war, he holds his gun and interacts with his fellow (younger) soldiers very well. It’s a performance that has just won him a nomination for the Best Actor Oscar. Miller is the standout of the film, she’s excellent as Tanya – it’s the best performance of her career. And while American Sniper looks and feels like a good film, the last ten minutes don’t need to be there. American Sniper is adapted by the book of the same name by actor turned-screenwriter Jason Dean Hall. Kyle was shot and killed in Texas in 2013 by a 25-year old Marine Corps Veteran, a veteran he was trying to help.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    After my recent visit to Auschwitz, watching a film about The Holocaust might not seem like such a great idea. However, I remember this film coming out in the cinema, and wanting to watch it – but never quite got round to it. ★★★★★

    And thanks to the wonders of Netflix, I have now seen it – and wept! The film is based on the book by John Boyne, and follows the adventures of an 8-year-old boy, Bruno. The son of a high-ranking Nazi, you don’t really get a sense of what his father does and it doesn’t seem to impact on his son and his friends as they play at being pilots (remember using your arms as wings, running around pretending to be a plane?)

    The only sing that something is odd is when his father gets a promotion and this upsets Bruno’s life, shifting his mother, sister and father to an undisclosed location. The new house is beautiful, very modern for the 40s and lots of rooms to play in, leaving Bruno to choose his bedroom and the view of the “farm”. When questioned, his father finally explains to his wife the true nature of the new posting. The odd smell… the strange hired help.

    And then Bruno goes exploring and encounters the boy in the striped pyjamas, Shmuel. This is where this film comes into its own; the viewpoint of an 8-year-old. In their world, nothing’s nasty, nothing’s fatal, in their world food is found, no-one starves, lost relatives can be found, someone on the other side of a fence can still play games, lying doesn’t have major consequences, summer is endless and life is beautiful.

    Or is it?

    Whilst we see what is happening around them, their own wide eyed world view is based on what is in front of them, no wider picture, nothing bad happens. And that’s what makes this film unique, the two main characters are children and we see things through their eyes.

    When Shmuel loses his father, Bruno offers to help and a simple plan is put in place… with consequences. I wont spoil it for you, but stock up on tissues.

    The two main characters are amazing in this film, understated performances and totally believable. Asa Butterfield who plays Bruno is all wide eyed Arian with an 8-year-old’s simplistic world view. He has all the benefits of being of the right genetic stock, and still doesn’t understand just yet what’s going on, whilst his family can see the other side and his mother suffers a near breakdown when she realises whats going on.

    Jack Scanlon plays Shmuel and is so believable, they caught him at the right time, skinhead with missing teeth, he excels in the part as a camp inmate. The script is pitch perfect, the costumes spot on and the sets are believable, having seen the wooden stables the Nazis used to house inmates in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the bunks use to house 2 or 3 inmates at a time, this really is faultless.

    Watch this film if you can, read the book, then read up on the subject – get an understanding on this subject. Visit the Holocaust Educational Trust site and support their work: www.het.org.uk

    Available to buy from Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | Erebus: Into The Unknown

    ★★★★ | Erebus: Into The Unknown

    In 1979 257 people perished in an Air New Zealand flight in which an aircraft slammed into Mount Erebus in Antarctic, becoming one of the world’s worst air disasters.

    The flight was a sightseeing excursion that left Auckland in the morning and was expected to return that evening. Sightseeing tours were a new and exciting breakthrough in the world of air-based tourism. Passengers were treated to breath-taking views, being wined and dined as a sub-zero, frozen world passed seamlessly beneath them.

    When the DC10 aircraft failed to return alarm bells started to go off and operation Overdue was mounted. Within hours the lives of thousands of people would be changed forever, in New Zealand’s worst aviation accident to date. The nation was in shock for 200 of its citizens that died. Countless families, friends and a nation mourned for those lost on the inhospitable mountain side.

    In this film, the story focuses on eleven ordinary police officers who were called upon to retrieve the shattered bodies of those victims. Eleven ordinary men who faced an extraordinary harrowing and life-changing battle against the bleak, forbidding landscape that forms Mount Erbus experiencing mass death on a massive scale.

    Operation Overdue was the New Zealand police operation to lead a recovery operation. The first of these officers left from Christchurch on the 29th November 1979. It included the Chief Air Accident Investigator, Ron Chippindale, who led the site investigation, and the New Zealand Police search and rescue coordinator, Inspector Robert (Bob) Mitchell, who led the recovery operation. Just 11 New Zealand Police officers were selected from squads that included members of the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team and Search and Rescue. Accompanying these men was a handful of mountaineers. By the 10th of December, their job of recovering, bagging and repatriated bodies was complete. The DVI managed to recover 114 intact bodies, 133 bags of human remains and countless personal belonging back to the victims’ families.

    Using a mix of archive and re-enactment, Directors Peter Burger and Charlotte Purdy have created a powerful documentary that uncovers the power of the human spirit. That even against the greatest odds, courage can overcome fear.

    Although short, this documentary film manages to capture the emotional rollercoaster faced by those directly involved with the disaster.

  • FILM REVIEW | Big Eyes, A Radical Departure For Burton

    ★★★ | Big Eyes

    In a rather radical departure from his last few very edgy movies acclaimed director Tim Burton has opted to make a biopic about Walter Keane the infamous plagiarist who in the 1950s claimed that his wife’s populist art was his own work. It’s a colourful lightweight drama that never gets dark even when Keane’s trickery is exposed, thanks mainly to the entertaining performances of its stars Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.

    The movie opens with a blond-wigged Margaret Ulbrich leaving her unseen husband and taking just Jane her young daughter, a suitcase and a handful of her artwork. Her destination is San Francisco’s new trendy hotspot North Beach but getting a job as a newly single mother is not easy and so she supplements her income at the furniture factory where she works by setting up shop at an outdoor art fair. Her signature style of painting forlorn looking children with enormous soulful eyes doesn’t attract many sales but it does attract the attention of the garrulous older man in the next booth who is pitching his pictures of street scenes of Paris.

    A compulsive womaniser, Walter Keane turns on the charm for Margaret and she, still feeling vulnerable and lonely after her recent separation, agrees to go out on a date with him. The couple hardly know other when Margaret receives a letter from her husband’s lawyer threatening to sue for custody of their child, and so she accepts Walter’s spontaneous marriage proposal to safeguard her chances of holding onto Jane.

    After they return from a romantic wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii, Walter starts hawking their art around town and despite the fact he is a sharp fast-talking salesman, the best deal he can come up with is renting a couple of walls in a Jazz club to display their work. His Montmartre street scenes are totally overlooked but when the club patrons spot Margaret’s soulful eyed children and want to buy them all, he claims that they are all his own work too.

    Margaret is somewhat infatuated with her new husband who she credits with giving her a new lease of life, so when she discovers the lie she goes along it. She is persuaded by Walter that having a man as the artist, is the only way to successful sell the art. He also manages to charm everyone into helping him make this new venture so successful including the San Francisco Examiner reporter Dick Nolan who plants stories about Walter and the art in his newspaper’s society pages.

    As their success explodes all Margaret has to do is stay at home and churn out more paintings in complete secrecy as even Jane, now a teenager, must not be allowed to know the truth. When Walter hits on the notion of printing cheap poster copies of Margaret’s kitsch art the public cannot enough of them, and one of the very few dissenting voices is that of the New York Times Art Critic John Canady who denounces them to the world.

    When his sheer greed turns Walter into a real menace, then Margaret finally packs up her suitcases once again and flees with her daughter, but this time to Hawaii. It takes Walter a year to track her down and when he calls her bluff about exposing him as a fraud, she finally goes public with the fact that she is the real artist. A supremely over-confident Walter immediately denounces these claims in the Examiner, but for once he has misread Margaret who is no longer frightened of him, and so she promptly sues him and the newspaper for slander.

    The judge clears the newspaper of any liability at the Trial but when the rest of the proceedings degenerate into a public squabble between the couple, he deems the only way to resolve the true authorship of the Art is that both of the Keanes paint a picture there and then.

    The chemistry between Waltz as the obnoxiously charming con-man and Adams as the pretty put-upon vulnerable Margaret with her fine Christian morals is what makes this story seem so believable even when it’s hard to even begin to conceive that all this appalling art could have resulted in amassing such a fortune. Burton makes this adaption of this true story an incisive commentary on how early 1960’s society even in a consumer-driven California still had these impenetrable expectations of what women could do.

    This easy going movie will hardly rank as one of director Burton’s best but it is reasonably entertaining and easy on the eye and to that end we should give credit to the design team for the locations, the sets and costumes that were all so perfect down to the last detail.

  • FILM REVIEW | Wild, Witherspoon Shines With Talent

    ★★★★★ | Wild

    After her cancer-ridden mother died just aged 45, Cheryl Strayed fell to pieces. Heavily in debt and with her marriage disintegrating she developed an obsession for sleeping with countless strangers and an addiction to heroin. Her solution to finding a path to recovery and do some major soul-searching was deciding to hike alone the entire Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) that stretches some 2663 miles from California right up into Canada.

    The stunning scenic route takes in some extreme terrain such as the unforgiving heat of Mojave Desert and the deep snowdrifts of the Sierra Nevada. Even though the rigours of the PCT has defeated many experienced hikers, completely green newbie Cheryl was convinced that she nevertheless would succeed. However, on day one, she could barely lift her heavy backpack that she had stuffed it with too many things that she would eventually realise were unnecessary for this arduous journey.

    As she starts the long hike northward Cheryl discovers that as she can barely manage 5 miles per day, she will never walk anything like the whole distance in the 3 months she had estimated. She also quickly discovers that she has the wrong gas for her primus stove so her diet now has to consist of cold mushy oatmeal and dried fruit. Racked with pain and a body full of red sores and a pair of bloody feet, Cheryl has to fight hard not to give into her inner voice that keeps telling her she can quit anytime.

    With only the occasional rattlesnake and her well-worn poetry books to keep her company and relieve the tedium and the agony, she can hardly contain herself when she finally encounters a fellow hiker en route even though the advice he imparts to her both encourages and scares her rigid at the same time. By now it has really dawned on her that she is woefully unprepared for such a massive undertaking. The only thing that seems to sustain her besides her sheer stubbornness, is a real need to ‘find’ herself again.

    Director Jean-Marc Vallee armed with a script by Nick Hornby fills the journey based on Cheryl Strayed’s own memoir with flashbacks of her tumultuous and troubled past which help us understand her determination to make this trip work. Bobbi her working class mother had suffered at the hands of a physically abusive husband which somehow never dented her sheer optimism and just before her untimely death she had gone back to college to get the education she had missed out on as a child. The bond between Bobbi and Cheryl, who was just 22 years old when her mother died, was the most important thing in both these women’s lives and the reason why the death propelled Cheryl so quickly into a downward spiral.

    When Cheryl reaches the first town along the PCT which is a resting place for all hikers, she retrieves a care package that her ex-husband has mailed c/o the local Post Office. She also discovers that word has got out about her and her oversized backpack has been nicknamed ‘The Monster’ but it also elicits advice on how to discard half its contents to make it more practical.

    As a lone woman on the Trail, Cheryl feels very susceptible and she views every man as a potential predator. One is a harmless roving reporter for the ‘Hobo Times’ who riles Cheryl up for insisting on calling her a hobo. Another is a kind farm worker who offers her a hot meal and a shower, and she even comes across a male hiker dipping naked in a stream who cannot get his clothes on quick enough when she appears. Her encounter with two hunters is however quite scary, but with quick thinking on her part Cheryl soon scrambles for safety.

    The stunning setting makes this heartbreaking journey such a visual treat, and the story of self-preservation of this doggedly determined troubled soul is one that will resound with so many people on so many levels. Reese Witherspoon, the movie’s star and producer optioned Cheryl Strayed’s book even before it was published and topped the NY Times Bestseller List as a vehicle for herself and to kickstart her career that has been in the doldrums since her Oscar win in 2005. It paid off big time as she totally immersed herself in the role and gave an impressive career-best performance as Strayed (even though she was 12 years older than her, and even odder still, just 9 years younger than Laura Dern who was electrifying as Bobbi her mother).

    The movie is bound to do more than just make us appreciate what a talented actress Ms Witherspoon really is, as it is also bound to inspire lots of other lost souls to buy themselves a pair of hiking boots and attempt this near-impossible journey, and maybe cause a ‘traffic jam’ or two along the P.C.T. in the future.

  • FILM REVIEW | Inherent Vice, Expecting Boogie Nights, you will be disappointed

    ★★★ | Inherent Vice, Expecting Boogie Nights, you will be disappointed

    The reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon is known for his dense and complex novels which he has never allowed to be adapted into movies, until now that is. When ‘Inherent Vice’ his seventh novel was published in 2009 the dust jacket proclaimed that it was ‘part-noir, part-psychedelic romp’.

    The piece is set in 1970 and unkempt Doc Spotello a Private Eye sporting big mutton chops and as usual in a dope-fuelled haze, is in his Gordetta Beach hangout when Shasta Fay Hepworth one of his ex-squeezes turns up unexpectedly to ask for his help. She wants him to track down her secret lover, big-shot land developer Mickey Wolfmann, who’s vanished. Shasta is worried that Mrs. Wolfmann who has her own lover, wants to commit her husband to a loony bin but before Doc can even start investigating, Shasta disappears too.

    When Doc gets on the case he heads out to Channel View Estates, Wolfmann’s latest cheesy housing development, and en route pops into a sex parlor there looking for one of the owner’s bodyguards who he thinks will be able to help him. As he gets ready to leave Doc is knocked out, only to wake up much later next to the body of the dead bodyguard, a burly Nazi-loving biker, and he is instantly accused of murder by the cops.

    Doc gets out of this particular mess as his old nemesis Det. ‘Bigfoot’ Bjornsen knows he is innocent but nevertheless he and the FBI press him into helping them locate Wolfmann and a missing musician Coy Harlington who they all want to talk to as well. And looming over everything is the ‘Golden Fang’ that Doc has been warned to avoid. What this is he is never quite sure, and neither are we. At first it appears it is maybe a blacklisted movie star’s personal sailing vessel, or one that belongs to an Indo-Chinese drug cartel. Or it may even be the name of a syndicate of tax-dodging dentists fronted by a coke-snorting Dr. Feelgood.

    Both Wolfmann and Hartigan are found but by this time the plot is so convoluted that we have no chance of making head of tale of it unless we are as perpetually stoned as Doc is. What makes this ‘haze’ so enjoyable however is the inspired and zany delicious humor that is always a strength of Anderson’s films, plus some rather wonderful performances from a fine cast led by Joaquin Phoenix as Doc. Phoenix brings his hallmark manic manner to the role and is excruciatingly wonderful as he totally lives a part that is so tailor-made for him.

    Fine turns too from Josh Brolin as Bigfoot, a barely recognisable Benicio Del Toro as a Lawyer, Owen Wilson (who is always happy when he is stoned) as Coy, and delightfully over-the-top performance by Martin Short as Dr Feelgood.

    If like me you were expecting this to follow on from Anderson’s 1997 breakthrough movie the sensational ‘Boogie Nights’ set in this same period, you will be disappointed as it’s simply not in the same league. It is however still a joy to watch and appreciate his highly personal stylised approach to filmmaking as he revels in a period and culture that he has such empathy with. Just make sure you read the novel first, and maybe take a puff or two as well.