Tag: Film Review

All the latest film reviews for LGBT themed films and others.

FILM REVIEW | I am Woman – Hear me Roar!

Rating: 4 out of 5.

An Australian singer, with a young daughter in tow, arrives in 1996 New York to make it as a singer. The woman’s name was Helen Reddy.

Yes, Helen Reddy the legend who sang such hits as “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”, “Delta Dawn” and “Angie Baby” and the iconic “I am Woman” started her career in NYC as a singer in a bar lounge. Thus begins the story of one of music’s greatest superstars in the new film I Am Woman.

Yes, she was sure a woman. And Reddy, who just recently passed away in September in Los Angeles, had it rough when she moved to NYC after winning a singing competition in Australia where the prize was a ticket to NYC and a recording contract. But with a suitcase and only $230 in her pocket, and with no recording contract, she was determined, and desperate, to make it on her own.

Besides hanging out with rock journalist Lillian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald), she also meets Jeff Wald (a fantastic Evan Peters who steals the movie), a young aspiring talent manager who becomes her agent and eventually husband, and he helps her get to the top. After their move to Los Angeles, Reddy’s singing career began, and continued to hit new peaks, where she became the first Australian singer to top the US charts, and even winning a Grammy award in 1973. But Wald had a cocaine habit, which eventually got worse and worse, and with Reddy not home a lot due to a Las Vegas singing residency, and with a new son to take care of, their relationship started to crumble, and eventually ended when Reddy found out Wald had made bad investments with her money.

However, I am Woman is the story of a woman, against all adversity, who was determined to make her dream come true. Reddy not only became the most successful female recording artist of her time, but she also broke stereotypes and led the way during the most crucial period of the women’s liberation movement. And she became a role model for what all women could achieve.

It’s an incredible story, made all the more real by director Unjoo Moon, who has very little experience in the directing world, and by Tilda Cobham-Hervey, who effectively plays Reddy, but unfortunately, it’s not an award-winning performance. It’s Peters’ performance who steals the film as her husband. But it’s also Reddy’s life and legacy that will most stick with you. What she had to do and what she accomplished, in a time when women’s rights were just a passing hope, and how perhaps her message through song and her voice really did help propel the feminist movement in helping to pass the equal rights bills across America.

IN CINEMAS AND ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS FRIDAY 9TH OCTOBER

9th October 2020
FILM REVIEW | Blackbird – A four-star weeper

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Susan Sarandon is amazing as Lily, a woman slowly losing her faculties and who has decided that at the end of a perfect weekend she will choose to die. The perfect weekend includes visits by her two daughters – Jennifer (an unrecognisable Kate Winslet) with husband Michael (Rainn Wilson) and their teenage son Jonathan (Anson Boon); dysfunctional Anna (Mia Wasikowska) and her female partner Chris (Bex Taylor Klaus). Also along for the ride is Lily’s best friend Elizabeth (Lindsey Duncan) as well as her loyal and handsome husband Paul (Sam Neill), who has always been by Lily’s side.

The family is not a perfect one – Jennifer has controlling issues while Anna has never been truthful and transparent about her life. Sure she’s in a same sex relationship but there’s been times where she’s fallen off everyone’s radar – but Lily is still proud of both of her strong daughters who she raised to be just like her. But as the clock ticks to the final moment we know is coming, there is some excellent family time around the house, including the emotional ‘Christmas Dinner’ they have which is Lilly’s last evening meal. There is also lots of tension when several unresolved issues are revealed.
‘Blackbird’ is hard to sit through – it’s very emotional and very real, but up until the end, when every truth has been told and every tear has been wept, Sarandon still holds the screen – and our attention. It’s one of her finest film performances.

Blackbird is now on Digital Download & DVD

1st October 2020
FILM REVIEW | Socrates – Tender and touching film about a young gay youth in São Paulo

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A young man tries to find his way in life after the sudden death of his mother in the new film Socrates.

Socrates, now in cinemas and streaming online, is an emotional and sad story of 15-year old Socrates (Christian Malheiros), who with his mom, a cleaner, live on the margins of society in a favela in São Paulo. His sick mom suddenly dies in their small apartment, and leaves Socrates alone, and crushed. Determined to make it on his own, he does everything he can to find a job to pay the rent, which is way overdue. He even tries to take over his mom’s job but, being underage, the boss says it is not possible. With nowhere to turn, he ends up getting a construction job, where he hauls equipment back and forth.

His co-worker, Maicon (Tales Ordakhi) picks a fight with him, but this is a distraction because Maicon likes Socrates, and suddenly (perhaps a bit too sudden), Socrates finds himself at Maicon’s apartment where they fall into each other’s arms and get it on. In light of this unbelievable plot point, Socrates still has to struggle to pay the rent and survive, and when his long lost father shows up to take him (as he is a minor), Socrates runs away. Things go from bad to worse when he is kicked out of the apartment and has nowhere to live. With no help from social services, and not wanting help from his father, and with Maicon busy with other responsibilities, Socrates fights to survive in a world that seems to be putting roadblocks in his way.

Executive produced by Academy-Award nominated Brazilian director Fermando Meirelles (‘City of God’), ‘Socrates’ brutally shows us what it’s like to grow up poor (and gay) in one of the worlds largest cities. Malheiros is superb as the downtrodden Socrates (he has won two film festival awards for his performance and won the ’Someone to Watch’ award at the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards), while other cast members hold their own. Directed by Alexandre Moratto working with a script written by himself and Thayna Mantesso, Socrates is a film you won’t easily forget.

And while the gay aspect of this film is unbelievable and a bit irrelevant, the story as a whole is about resilience, perseverance, and hope against all odds.

5th September 2020
FILM REVIEW | You’ve Been Trumped Too – the film Donald Trump doesn’t want you to see

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Trump built his Aberdeenshire, Scotland golf course in 2012, disturbing the land and making life hard for the people who didn’t want to sell their land to him. One of these people is 96-year-old Scottish widow Molly Forbes who the billionaire says reminds him of his own Scottish mother. She scoffs at this. She is no Trump lover, and neither is filmmaker Anthony Baxter. But Trump was cruel enough that he had her water supply cut off because the pipes to her water supply ran through his golf course property, so for five years Forbes, and her son and his wife who lived nearby, had no running water. In interviews with Trump himself and his son Donald Trump Jr., we see the Trumps pretend to care but in reality, they don’t, and actually lie to the cameras in true Trump style.

Filmmaker Anthony Baxter was arrested and thrown in jail when he first discovered the water supply to Molly and her family had been cut off by Donald Trump’s workers while constructing a luxury golf resort near Aberdeen. The charges were thrown out and the police forced to issue an apology. However Baxter is astounded to learn Molly and her son Michael – who Mr Trump branded ‘a pig’ – is still without a reliable water supply half a decade on.

However, when the film was completed, the Trump Organization threatened any cinema that showed it. The US distributor then pulled out – denying the film a proper theatrical release or broadcast. But now Journeyman Pictures is releasing the film worldwide.

You’ve Been Trump Too is a remarkable document of what we know about the man who runs America – he is a liar, crook and as Forbes, son Michael says – “full of bullshit.” It’s a film about the little people who stand no chance against the Trumps, especially against a man as evil and conniving as Trump.

You’ve Been Trump Too is the film Donald Trump doesn’t want you to see. Hopefully with the U.S. election coming up soon, the world will be rid of him.

You’ve Been Trumped Too is released on demand on iTunes, Amazon, GooglePlay, Journeyman VOD and Vimeo from 18th August.

Facebook: @youvebeentrumpedtoo
Twitter: @trumpedmovie

18th August 2020
FILM REVIEW | Dating Amber – Cute but predictable

Rating: 3 out of 5.

An engaging but ultimately flawed twink flick that reinforces the idea that you can only be openly gay in the big city, rather than remaining in the provincial community in which you grew up.

Dating Amber – Amazon Prime’s latest LGBT+ offering to coincide with Pride season. And it’s a cute film, if you’re into soft and gentle twinks being goofy and finding themselves in a sea of prejudice and misunderstanding.

Irish actor Fionn O’Shea is undoubtedly the star here. We’ve seen him before in Handsome Devil (2016), where he played a similarly confused twink alongside the beautiful Nicholas Galitzine. The only difference is that Eddie in Dating Amber is a more rounded and complicated individual than Ned Roche in Handsome Devil, who spends most of the film crushing over his rugby twunk dorm mate, Connor.

In all fairness though, Dating Amber is about two closeted teenagers, not just one. Lola Petticrew gives a strong performance as Amber—a frustrated but determined closeted lesbian who runs a side business renting out one of her mother’s caravans for schoolmates to have romantic liaisons.

Side by side, Amber and Eddie struggle with their sexuality in a hostile school environment and if it weren’t for the fact that both actors are so engaging, this plot premise would make a predictable film into a very predictable and frankly dull-as-ditchwater one.

But somehow O’Shea and Petticrew manage to pull through as their characters start dating one another as a ruse to throw off the incessant crowing from their homophobic classmates.

Trips to Dublin, late-night drug-fuelled escapades, and lies lies lies follow as these two try to convince everyone else, including themselves, that they’re straight.

Eventually, of course, the truth comes out, and Eddie ultimately finds his way. To London, in fact, where the promise of a fulfilling life for this ‘baby gay’ beams into Eddie’s sunny face.

A predictable outcome

What I wanted, though, was a less predictable and ultimately less deceiving ending. We’ve seen it before. A provincial gay boy who is closeted because of his misunderstanding community and family can only find freedom by escaping to the big metropolis.

The consequence of this is that as viewers, and as gay people, in particular, we internalise the assumption that rural, provincial communities are no place for ‘an out gay man’, as Little Britain’s Daffyd Thomas (Only gay in the village) used to tell us repeatedly.

Now, I grew up in a provincial rural village, admittedly in the 2000s, a decade later than this film is set. But, while there weren’t nuns on every street corner signing themselves each time they saw the local bum boy walk into the Co-op, it wasn’t easy. Rural communities tend to be built around heterosexual families and their needs, and there is intense pressure to follow suit. And I felt it.

I went off to university, to the great metropoli of Exeter, Leeds, and Leicester, but have I been any more fulfilled? There are opportunities that big cities present to LGBTQ people which are undeniably advantageous and, ideally, it doesn’t have to be either / or.

Yet Dating Amber makes it precisely into an either/or decision. Either you stay here and this place will kill you, as Amber explains to Eddie, or you go out there, to the big city, and find yourself and be happy.

The result is that rural communities are drained of the kind of social diversity that makes for more tolerant neighbourhoods, and being gay itself becomes synonymous with a kind of metropolitan and urban lifestyle that those of us who are more rural at heart find hard to bear.

What we need, then, are LGBTQ films, like God’s Country, that wrestle hard with the realities of being ‘the only gay in the village’, and where communities themselves go through a process of slow adaptation so that they become welcoming places for all sorts of people.

27th July 2020
FILM REVIEW | Stage Mother – A Gay Ole Time

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Jacqui Weaver is memorable as a mother who mourns the death of her son – a drag queen – in the terrific new film Stage Mother.

Maybelline (great name), married to very conservative Jeb (Hugh Thompson) who never quite accepted the fact that he had a gay son, goes to San Francisco to discover the life her son Rickey (Eldon Thiele) led. There she is met with scorn by her son’s lover Nathan (Adrian Grenier) who knew how Rickey never did quite get along with his parents. But she is also thrown aback to discover that her son owned a gay/drag bar, a bar that Nathan manages and which includes a bevvy of drag queens, among them the fabulous Dusty Muffin (Jackie Beat) and Tequila (Oscar Moreno).

Maybelline is lucky enough to be put up by her son’s friend and neighbour Sienna (a fierce and sexy Lucy Liu) with her adorable baby. It’s no real surprise and shock where the story takes us as the queens (including Mya Taylor – who was fantastic in Tangerine) warm up to Maybelline, who transforms their show (Maybelline is a choir director back in Texas) while at the same time transforming their lives. Will Maybelline sell and go back to her boring husband and life or will she add a bit of spice and magic to make the bar her own?

Weaver is wonderful as Maybelline – it’s a part that seems was tailor-made for her – it’s a perfect fit. At a bit over 90 minutes, there is a lot jam-packed into the film – smoothly directed by Thom Fitzgerald.

To say it’s a gay old time is an understatement. It’s instead a grand old time, and get ready for a very emotional ending.

‘STAGE MOTHER’ has arrived, ahead of its now earlier theatrical release across the UK and Ireland from Friday 24

24th July 2020
FILM REVIEW | The Prince – Very sexy and dramatic prison drama

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A young man is sent to prison for killing another man in The Prince – a film which is not your typical prison movie.

The Prince (El Principe), a homoerotic prison drama, out now, is set in a 1970’s Chilean prison. Jaime (Juan Carlos Maldonado), secretly in love with his best friend, in a fit of jealous rage stabs and kills him when he has a dance with another man. Then it’s off to prison for Jaime, 20, young, sexy and good looking – he’s going to be eaten alive in prison. Put into a cell with four other men, one of them named ‘The Stallion’ (Alfredo Castro) takes Jaime under his wing, and then some. They maintain an unlikely romance, while two of their other cellmates cop with each other. But not everything is black and white. A rival gang leader lives on the other side of the prison but’s in the showers, where they all shower together, and where the men are shown in all their glory, becomes dangerous territory.

’The Prince’ is raw, bold, brave, intense and explosive, and it seems to have come out of nowhere. In a country (Chile) where a film like this might not be acceptable – it’s a welcome surprise that it is as good as it is. Grainy looking to give it a completely dark and old look and feel about it, and with very good acting to match – Director Sebastián Muñoz has made a memorable hard-hitting prison drama that is very good and sexy. Hell, even the poster is hot!

Meanwhile, another young very good looking prisoner, who is the lover of the other leader, takes a liking to Jaime and pursues him like mad. But after an incident with The Stallion’s cat tension and rage build up in the prison where it’s every man for himself.

Available On-Demand on all major platforms and on DVD on 7th December

17th July 2020
FILM REVIEW | Welcome to Chechnya – A must see documentary

Rating: 5 out of 5.

David France is quickly becoming one of the best documentary filmmakers of our generation.

In 2012 he brought us the riveting How to Survive a Plague – about the early years of the AIDS epidemic and the ACT UP activists who fought for their lives. Then came 2017’s The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, about a well-loved drag queen and gay activist who was found dead off the West Side Piers in Manhattan in 1992. Now he brings us another important documentary for and about the LGBT community – Welcome to Chechnya.

The film follows David Isteev, who along with the Russian LGBT Network, helps gays and lesbians escape from Chechnya, a country where, in 2017, its government started a gay purge where over 100 men were (allegedly) detained and subject to torture, with many being murdered. This had kicked off because in February 2017 a gay Chechen man had been arrested for drug offences and arresting officers discovered contact information for other gay men on his phone. These men were caught, and they, in turn, turned over more names to the authorities, escalating to a point of crisis. But not only were these gay men subject to arrest and torture, Lesbians were also subject to the same fate.

In the documentary, David attempts, by all means, to free ‘Anya’ who is seeking help because her uncle has threatened to tell her father, who is a high-ranking Chechyan government official, that she is a Lesbian if she doesn’t have sex with him.

But the focus of this harrowing documentary is the Moscow safe house where these refugees are taken to temporary accommodation to play the waiting game until a country, any country, can take them in. The focus of the documentary is our hero 30-year-old Grisha. He was arrested and tortured in Chechnya but managed to escape, and left the country. But it left his family vulnerable to the authorities so they, in turn, were smuggled out of the country into a safe house.

Grisha is reunited with his boyfriend ‘Bogdan’ in scenes that are emotional and loving – these two men really care and love each other. But Grisha doesn’t want to remain silent and anonymous the rest of his life, he wants to come out publicly to expose the Chechnyan Government for the atrocities they inflicted on not just him but on perhaps what could be hundreds of victims.

The film also introduces us to the brave Olga Baranova, who helps the refugees in the safe house with any and all that they need. She is like a mom (she herself has a young son) to the occupants.

While Anya is successfully smuggled out of the country, she is placed in an apartment and told not to go out – but after three months it appears that she is getting extremely restless and very lonely.

Meanwhile Grisha and his family are quickly moved to another country after suspicious people knock on their door and threaten to come back the next day. It’s harrowing, and director France was very fortunate to have not only Grisha’s family but the others allow him to film them in, at times, situations that could’ve exposed them. Some airport scenes, filmed undercover, are nail biting.

All of the subjects in the film have had their faces digitally disguised to protect them. This is such the fear that they have. While Chechnya technically is a federal republic of Russia, it appears to have self and independent rule by Ramzan Kadyrov, who appears to have waged an operation to ‘cleanse the blood’ of LGBT Chechens. He is shown in interviews in the documentary denying there are any LGBT people in his country. But he is shown in a photo with Zelim Bakaev, a Chechen pop-singer, who, in August 2017 disappeared after going back to Chechnya to attend his sister’s wedding. His mother has demanded justice but the government has not even started an investigation. He is presumed dead.

France’s access to these people is just incredible. Also incredible is that over two years, the Russian LGBT Network has managed to resettle 151 people fleeing Chechnya, many of them coming through the shelter. Welcome to Chechnya is an important documentary not just for our community but for the world to know what exactly takes place in Chechnya to our own people.

Welcome to Chechnya

In Russian, Chechen and English with English subtitles
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Playing: 8 p.m. June 30 on HBO; also available on HBO Now and HBO Max BBC iPlayer.

8th July 2020
FILM REVIEW | Eurovision Song Contest The Story Of Fire Saga

Rating: 4 out of 5.

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST THE STORY OF FIRE SAGA – A big-budget comedy musical extravaganza about our favourite pan European gay as anything song contest with added Australia of course. A perfect very knowing made with love homage including all the clichés & idiocies from the 64-year-old event which of course this year was postponed due to the pandemic and replaced with a well-received online show including clips from this film.., but this movie partly makes up for the lack of the original this year. Available on Netflix.

Nutshell – Lars and Sigrit from a small fishing town in Iceland inspired by watching Abba sing “Waterloo” at the 1974 show become singers with big dreams of entering and winning Eurovision. With the aid of some fun pop songs, four of which have already charted in the UK for real, weird outfits ludicrous gimmicks and the help of some mountain elves the duo due to a plot twist taken entirely from a Father Ted episode get their chance to compete in the Edinburgh finals but it is anything but an easy ride not least as Iceland don’t really want to win as they cannot afford to host it the following year and also because of a smarmy Russian singer who is attracted to Sigrit.

Running Time – 123 Minutes – Cert PG-12.

Tagline – ‘Nobody Wins Solo’… a key to where the plot goes.

The Gay UK Factor – There are three membership requirements to be gay 1 a sexual attraction to your same-sex, 2 you must watch and study every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race and 3 You must worship at the pool of Eurovision. This film is as gay as Linsey Graham’s dress closet being stormed by Lady Gaga and Kylie for a World Pride party at the MET Ball. To help you also get continual commentary from Mr Graham Norton playing himself and for sex appeal the hottest thing to come out of Downton Abbey Dan Stevens in a chest exposing scene-stealing supporting role… but is he gay, well throughout the movie there are heavy hints although he is also pursuing Sigrit consistently but at the end when told ‘That he deserves to be happy’ he replies ‘Mother Russia does not agree’ meaning the country he represents has very well-known retarded anti-gay relationship views.

Cast – Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens, Piers Brosnan as the sceptical dad, Graham Norton, Demi Lovato and all your Eurovision winning stars that you can tick off as they cameo such as Neta, Conchita Wurst, Alexander Rybak, Jamala, Loreen…etc plus a number of new acts which could fit into any edition of the last few years.

Key Player – This is written, produced by and of course starring Will Ferrell who is a massive fan of the contest and what the contest means to our Continent as he is married to a Swedish lady. The love he has for the event and its intricacies like who votes for whom and everyone hating the UK so they will get zero points etc is evident throughout. Done in the same style and with the same humour as all his movies so you will already know what to expect in tone. He camps it up like crazy and has the most fun he has probably ever had and with the worst wig possible to boot. That said you will be hanging even more on the Dan Stevens scenes as he steals, robs and plain nicks the movie whilst everyone else is gluing their sequins on.

Budget – $35 Million but it looks glitzier. This is a Netflix original and with the likes of Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hanks and Spike Lee releasing their latest films exclusively on online platforms together with the likes of The Lady And The Tramp and Hamilton then Box Office is measured in a very different way from cinema ticket stubs. It is now all about new subscribers with Netflix alone adding 16 million new members in March of this year and Disney Plus being launched to spectacularly great figures it seems that film production and its money-making potential has entirely flipped across into a whole new exciting world.

Best Bit – 1.04 mins; As Eurovision aficionados will know to get through to the Saturday final a country has to successfully navigate one of the Two semi-finals. That is utilised in the movie to great effect as in all these types of films the main characters have to have a major setback before they get things together in the film’s climax here Fire Saga has the worst possible three minutes on stage in front of an audience you could imagine, it is cringeworthy and oh so funny.

Worst Bit – 0.07 mins; The two main villains here are lightweight to say the least. An underused Pierce Brosnan as the father has very little to do in an undercooked role and the head of the Finnish selection committee is as threatening as Alan Carr and Louis Spence in a fistfight. Yet in a movie like this, you don’t really need the drama just the acres of glitz, sparkle and neon matched by heavy doses of eternal hope and ambition.

Little Secret – Will Ferrell’s interest in the Eurovision Song Contest began when his Swedish wife Viveca Paulin took him to her cousin’s house in May 1999 and the family turned the competition on. He always spends his Summers in Scandinavia. Since then, he kept following it. In 2014, Ferrell travelled to Copenhagen, to watch the finale of The Eurovision Song Contest live in which Conchita Wurst was crowned the winner whom he met. He was given full access to the Lisbon finals in 2018 including all rehearsals and backstage access as research for this movie.

Further Viewing – Pitch Perfect’s 1-3, Sing, A Chorus Line, Sister Act 2, American Dreamz, Talladega Nights, Blades Of Glory, Get Hard, Step Brothers and anything involving the words Zoolander, Daddy’s, Home or Anchorman.

Any Good – This is great and is so happy it will provide the perfect tonic and lift for anyone in these strange times. It helps if you are not allergic to Mr Ferrell and also if you are an avid consumer of Eurovision you will get a lot more from all the knowing little asides. It has a wonderful feel about it and just wants to entertain with no wish or likelihood of winning Oscars and there is nothing wrong with that.

Many of the songs you wish were longer and you may want to buy the CD which is already Top 5 but most of all you will feel better for seeing it. It’s been a while maybe not since Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, Pride or Rocketman that we have had a fun gay film that just wants to make you feel good as opposed to all the wrist wringing queer kitchen sink struggles and dramas that usually pass for gay cinema.

‘Hello Edinburgh, we hope you are having a great night and we love your dress. Without further ado, it is 10 points to Russia but our 12 points go to … (Pause for added dramatic effect)… ICELAND’ !!!

4 STARS

7th July 2020
FILM REVIEW | The Ground Beneath My Feet – Intense

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Very intense and dramatic, The Ground Beneath My Feet is a pure psychological thriller that will mess with your head.

German with English subtitles, and released in Germany last year, the film follows Lola (Valerie Pachner), a very competitive business consultant. She tries to constantly outdo her co-workers, working very hard on a case that might take her to associate principal level. Lola, who gets by on 6 hours sleep, sleeps more in hotel beds than in her own bed and hits the exercise room at the crack of dawn for an intense workout. She’s having an affair with her boss Elise (Mavie Hörbiger), and she has a sister with mental and emotional problems and who is in a mental institution.

So to add to the pressure of her job and the illicitness of her relationship, Lola works like crazy to get a deal through the finish line, but she’s also struggling to visit her sister Connie (Pia Hierzegger) and needs to make decisions that impact her life, especially more so when Connie is released. It’s a lot to juggle, and Lola is constantly on the go go go, and even her co-workers worry about her lack of rest. But strange phone calls from a stranger who claims to be her sister, and strategic games that her co-workers play against her shows that Lola’s world is not as perfect and calm as she would like to believe it is.

Released to great reviews, and competed for the Golden Bear at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, Director Marie Kreutzer brings us a taut, nail-biting psychological thriller where Pachner is at the heart of it all and brilliantly takes her character through an emotional rollercoaster.

The Ground Beneath My Feet is available to stream or download from all major UK digital platforms – including Sky Store, Virgin Media, Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and the BFI Player.

3rd July 2020
FILM REVIEW | Tommaso – Going crazy in Rome

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Willem Dafoe gives one of his best performances as a film director struggling to come to terms with life.

Dafoe is the title character – ‘Tommaso’ – an older American ex-pat living in Rome. He is putting together a new film from his roomy apartment he shares with his young (29) Moldovan girlfriend Nikki (a stunning and very good Cristina Chiriac, and Director Abel Ferrara’s real-life wife) and their three-year-old daughter Deedee (Anna Ferrara – Chiriac and Ferrara’s actual daughter). Tommaso also teaches an acting class and is surrounded by young attractive wannabe actresses who literally throw themselves at him – He is definitely not short of female attention. He is also taking Italian lessons to learn the language better – though he speaks it pretty well, and attends alcoholics anonymous meetings – he used to be a drunk – and recounts stories to his fellow members about this wild and crazy days.

He seems to be settling down and is happy in his mid-life, but something just doesn’t seem right. Is it him? Is it his relationship with Nikki? Could it be the pressure of the new movie that he is putting together (which is very dark, and deals with death)? Why does he feel himself ready to unravel at any moment. And if he does, what’s going to happen?

This is Ferrara’s first dramatic feature since 2014’s ‘Pasolini‘ – which also starred Dafoe – and is easily his and Dafoe’s best collaboration to date because the subject matter works well for both of them. ‘Tommaso mirrors events in Ferrara’s life 16 years ago when he moved out of post-9/11 New York City to Italy where he, in his words, ‘got a girl knocked up.’

Dafoe, who has yet to win an Oscar (he’s been nominated four times) is superb. Dafoe will be honoured with a golden statuette one day – perhaps not for this film. But in ‘Tommaso,’ it shows that Dafoe is one of the best actors of our generation, and he’s getting better with age.

‘Tommaso’ is now available through virtual cinemas at Kino Marquee.
https://kinomarquee.com/tommaso

20th June 2020