Finding Your Feet

(Warning: contains spoilers for Finding Your Feet)

There's something very pleasing about the fact that Finding Your Feet actually exists.  Britain seems to have a wealth of actors in their 60s and above, who are fit and well and keen to continue acting in lead roles in films, thank you very much.  We've seen that there's a market for it since The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel came along in 2011, leading to sequels and television shows.  America has recognised that there is significant market in the Silver Pound (Dollar, over there, I guess) since Grace and Frankie proved popular and is currently on it's fourth series.  It makes sense - older age leads to unique circumstances which mean you need to leave familiar surroundings and do something different.  That is a sure fire recipe for stories.

No feet in this picture.

Finding Your Feet tells the story of posh socialite Sandra (Imelda Staunton) who discovers her husband (John Sessions) has been having an affair with a family friend (Josie Lawrence) and moves in with her estranged hippie sister Bif (Celia Imrie).  She is quickly introduced to a new way of life (dating and flash mobs in central London) far away from her tennis clubs and silverware lifestyle of Surrey.  Dancing ensues.

The cast is tremendous - Imelda Staunton really fleshes out the character of Sandra, who has let so much joy escape from her life in order to look after her husband and her children - a joy she currently seems to have in her grandson - but that comes back in abundance once she gets over some of her uptightedness with Bif.  Celia Imrie, meanwhile, is in standard top form as Bif.  Saucy, no nonsense, always with a bit of a twinkle in her eye but can quickly dial up the drama when it's called for.  Timothy Spall is just never anything less than great as Charlie, who is struggling to cope with his wife who is in a care home with dementia, and who is becoming more and more agitated by Charlie - a man she recognises less and less.  They all meet regularly at a local dance class.

It's worth highlighting the cast for a lot of praise, because they really lift what is a pretty poor script.  A lot of the scenes are surprisingly short, and seem more at home in a sitcom than a film which leads to some odd pacing.  The script is heavy-handed in laboured one liners ("I divorced my last husband because of religious reasons - he thought he was God, and I disagreed", snarks Joanna Lumley, who is particularly poorly served in lines), full of lines that really could have been left to subtext - particularly given the quality of the cast.  ("I can fix anything, but I can't fix my wife's mind", weeps Charlie, screwdriver in hand).  The group decide to stage a flash mob for Age UK - "1 in 7 old people die of the cold", notes Lumley in another rather clunky moment.  Except we never see any possibility of that being true - we see older people aplenty, but they all seem to be warm, well fed, looked after, and financially solvent (Charlie has sold his house to pay for his wife's care home, and is now living on a houseboat, but this doesn't seem to be a concern for him or anyone around him).         

T shirts in December seem an odd choice when we're told 1
in 7 will die of the cold...

The sweetness is found in the smaller, unspoken moments - and again, that is testament to the cast rather than the script.  When Charlie decides to say goodbye to his wife, and tells Bif of his decision, Imrie responds wordlessly in such a way that relays that he is not the first in the group to have made this decision.  Ted (David Hayman) unexpectedly finds a part of the dance class hard, because the song used was the first dance at his wedding to his now-deceased wife - his grief at the moment, and comfort offered by Charlie is one of few examples of small moments, well done.

The other difficulty with this film is that it's trying a bit too hard to have its cake and eat it too.  It is a film that is specifically about age, but doesn't credit any of the characters with having any age related issues (all are mobile, physically and mentally well - with the exception of Charlie's wife who is just a plot device - surrounded by loving family and friends, stalwarts of their communities).  The only "symptom" of age that is discussed is that any of them might die at any moment, which seems somewhat reductive.  It is obvious that there is a market and a thirst for films with leading older actors.  It is also obvious that there is a wealth of actors eligible for those films.  So let's see films that better reflect this.  This genre has life in it yet, but has still to find its feet.

Feet!  Found them!

Additional thoughts, questions and comments:

• It was positive to see a tech savvy older generation on Facebook, YouTube, Skype and dating sites while texting and on phones - so why did the final act revolve around an unexpected letter when it was clear that time was pressing?  

• Kudos to the set designer who created Bif's flat - a whole life and personality perfectly described in a couple of square feet.

I, Tonya

(Warning: contains spoilers for I, Tonya)

It's taken a while to write this review, because I'm still not sure what I've watched and what I make of it.  Like The Usual Suspects it's not until you get to the ending that you realise that you're no further forward in fully understanding what exactly has gone on.

In real life, Tony Harding is an Olympic figure skater who (amongst other figure skating firsts) became the first American woman to successfully complete a triple axel jump in competition.  She was also, in some way, involved in an attack on Nancy Kerrigan - her team mate and rival.  This much is true.

Film is called I, Tonya.  That's definitely
true as well.

The film, I Tonya, is a fourth wall breaking, documentary style drama, with interviews from Tonya (Margot Robbie), her mother LaVona (Allison Janney), Tonya's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) and his friend Shawn Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser).  The story is about Tonya's figure skating career up until the immediate aftermath of the attack on Kerrigan, intercut with each character's recollections, contradictions and commentary on that footage.  Ice based drama ensues.

It's a difficult watch.  Where the trailer suggested a light and breezy account of a tough young woman overcoming the odds and winning over her critics, the truth is that there's little light and breezy about it.  It's a difficult watch as Tonya is repeatedly abused both verbally and physically, first by her mother and then by her husband.  By the end of the film we have watched her being struck repeatedly, stabbed and shot.  The hurdles are numerous - from the figure skating judges who are dismissive of her rock routines and rhinestones for not being "feminine" enough, to the authorities who seem uninterested in the crying, bleeding woman in the car as her husband is pulled over for speeding and don't seem to follow up on the repeated breaches of restraining orders.  Even her skating coach seems to ignore the fingerprint welts on Tonya's arms and yet another black eye.  Margot Robbie's prickly performance makes one thing clear - Tonya Harding can't win.  Everything is too stacked against her.  So she becomes difficult, and unlikeable, and abrasive.  And the hurdles get higher. After the Kerrigan attack, she is given 3 years probation, 500 hours community service, a $100,000 fine, stripped of her figure skating titles and banned for life from participation in figure skating in any form.  Comparatively, Eckhardt served 14 months in prison.  Gillooly served 2 years.  An incredulous Tonya notes, "Nancy gets hit once and the whole world shits.  For me, that's an everyday occurrence."

So what makes the difference?  Is it because she's a woman?  Partially - note the disparity in punishments between the men (who were there and carried out the attack) and Tonya (who wasn't there but may have been involved in some form of conspiracy).  Is it because she's not considered conventionally feminine?  Partially - "we also grade on presentation" notes a judge, evaluating Tonya's handmade costumes, meaning that although Tonya is technically the better skater, Kerrigan's artistic interpretation counts for more.  It's not enough to be good enough - you have to be pretty while you're doing it.  "She looks as though she chops wood every morning" notes one detractor.  "That's because she does chop wood every morning" snaps her mother.  Is it because nobody wants to be on her side because her mother makes it impossible to be friends with Tonya?  Partially - "Don't talk to her" yells LaVona at 4 year old Tonya.  "She's not your friend, she's your competitor".  Which seems to be how LaVona sees everyone in the world.  Is it because she's poor?  Partially - as Tonya is widely mocked for her fitness routine largely based on the montage from Rocky IV.  All of these things and more make Tonya Harding unlikeable to the outside world.  The world does not root for an unlikeable person.  The world generally tries not to engage with an unlikeable person.

No Tonya, you look fine...

And what of Tonya's abusers - what do they have to say for themselves?  That's an interesting series of interviews.  Gillooley carefully notes that Tonya didn't always tell the truth.  LaVona ignores all charges put against her and instead notes that her treatment of Tonya is what made her a winner.  "Tonya does best when she's angry" she claims, paying a stranger to hurl abuse at her daughter as she enters the ice rink for her latest competition (which Tonya goes on to win).
"And you", spits Tonya as she directly addresses the audience - "you're all my attackers too" - a charge that should have cut deep, after a lot of tonal flipflopping, and a shaky script is a bit of a jump that doesn't quite land.
I can't quite place why it doesn't quite work for me.  The constant fourth-wall breaking gets distracting, and breaks the tension rather than building it.  We don't see enough of Tonya in relation to the figure skating world, so it never really seems like she's out of place until someone deliberately says that she is.  And although we see the struggle of her relationships, we don't see the value of anything - we can't fully grasp that figure skating is her absolute everything until it is taken from her and Robbie has to painstakingly explain the consequence and unfairness of that to the audience.  And although we're invited to laugh along, we're mainly laughing at the horror of Tonya's situation, which is part of the issue to begin with.

The acting, particularly by Robbie and Janney needs to be commended.  Robbie plays a fine line of making Tonya as brash and sharp as possible, while making it possible to still root for her.  When Tonya is happy the audience is happy.  Janney is entirely deserving of her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and the closing shots of the real LaVona in her fur coat wearing, chain smoking, bird-toting glory are a sudden shocking realisation that Janney has turned in a note-perfect performance.  A sharper script would have helped this score higher for technical merit, but the artistic interpretation by the female leads are the real crowd pleasers.

Scary birds

Additional thoughts, questions, comments:

• Are we laughing with Tonya?  Or at her?  Or both?

• LaVona's bird - that really deserves to win some sort of acting Oscar (which actually exist - they're called the Pawscars)

• I wonder what Nancy Kerrigan's take on this is - hers is a voice oddly missing from the film.

Black Panther

(Warning: contains spoilers for Black Panther, Wonder Woman and general MCU)

Something new from the MCU - a film where the main protagonist isn't a white man.  Gadzooks, what is this brave new world?

Black Panther

Black Panther is set in Wakanda, a nation composed of 5 tribes in Africa built on meteorite called Vibranium.  With Vibranium, they advance in terms of technology, but disguise themselves as a Third World country in order to protect what they have.  King T'Chaka's (John Kani) death leads to the throne being taken by his son T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman).  He is challenged by Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), who provides a legitimate claim to the throne and gathers the support of a number of T'Chaka's key allies.  Power struggles ensue.
  
Black Panther, by its very existence, is going to have similar scrutiny levelled at it as Wonder Woman did last year.  Where Wonder Woman was the first non-male in a lead role (in either DC or MCU), Black Panther is the first* superhero film in the MCU to feature a black lead and predominantly black cast (apart from the Tolkien white guys Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis, and Stan Lee who turns up in a film as a stamp of MCU authenticity).  It's been a long time coming.  Wesley Snipes has been talking about trying to make a Black Panther movie since 1992.  Indeed, in 2005, the CEO of Marvel announced that Black Panther was one of ten Marvel films to be developed by the studio.  Over the past 12 years, it would seem that the film has been offered to various writers and directors (including John Singleton, Mark Bailey and Ava DuVernay) who have played with the idea and passed on it, perhaps not relishing the idea that all cultural expectation would weigh heavily on whoever made this film.

The final film was written by Joe Robert Cole (The People Vs OJ Simpson) and co-written and directed by Ryan Coogler (Creed), who accepted on the proviso that he could bring his own collaborators from different previous projects, rather than relying on the "in-house" Marvel creative team.

The result is glorious.  Having seen this film once, I already feel as though these are characters I have known for longer.  Each is well developed and realised, so that the decisions they have to make have weight and consequence.  Each has a distinct style and tone, which means that already the film has been embraced by fans and cosplayers (imperative in the geek culture).  Letitia Wright (Shuri) has been particularly singled out for praise as a teenage version of Bond's Q, but praise has generally been effusive for all the cast.

As with Spiderman: Homecoming before it, (and with a number of films already released in 2018), there was no real thing as the "good guys" and the "bad guys".  Both sides had their strengths and weaknesses, and both sides were understandable, which made tensions between lovers W'kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) and Okoye (Danai Gurira), or friends W'kabi and T'Challa more resonant.
A thing that I was particularly pleased about is that although the final battle did involve punching each other stupid, there were distinct boundaries at play so there was a real understanding of how this battle could be won and lost (Shuri used the underground trains to disrupt the Vibranium in the suits, so that T'Challa and Killmonger would be both be vulnerable when the trains were going past and could be harmed).  This is at real odds with most other superhero films where the bad guy dies for no other reason than because the script says so.

In terms of diversity, Black Panther is notable not only for it's portrayal of non-white culture, but also for it's portrayal of women.  From the Dora Milaje (the all female army of Wakanda) to Shuri, from Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) to Ramonda (Angela Bassett) these women are strong, smart and fierce, but also independent individuals drawn as separate unique people (rather than just some female bums on seats, filling up the ranks). 

Are you excited and a bit frightened?  That is the correct response.

In thinking about it, there's a load of inclusivity and a good chance that most people can find someone to identify with.  Man? Woman? Disabled? Able bodied? Tattooed? Ink free? Scarred? Unblemished? Bald? Hirsute? Masculine? Feminine? Androgynous? There's someone for everyone.  I have seen some criticism that a potential gay storyline (between Okoye and Ayo) wound up on the cutting room floor, which is reasonable in some ways.  In other ways, sexuality can be found in the subtext if you're looking for it - in the same way it can be found in Top Gun.  And although it is definitely a film representing black culture and black experience, it is not done in a way to make it isolating.  If anything, it feels welcoming and inclusive. 

Take my breath awaaaaaay... 

The concern and scrutiny now turns to Avengers: Infinity War.  The MCU have their own raft of usual writers, directors and producers which now must work with the Black Panther team to produce something that best serves both (or risks undoing all the good feeling that Black Panther has brought to the predominantly white, male MCU).  Black Panther and Wonder Woman have both proved there is a huge market and interest in non-white, and non-male leads and stories.  In the time it's taken you to read this review, Black Panther has probably made another eleventy million pounds (as of 5th March, it's grossed $899.9 million and is the fastest Marvel film to reach the $50 million mark).  No pressure, MCU, but Wakanda forever! 

Additional thoughts, questions and comments:

• So...all the heart shaped herbs are now gone, we assume?  How does the next Black Panther get their superpowers?
• Killmonger specifically states that each of the marks on his body represents someone that he's killed.  Is that specific to him, or is that what all those marks mean?  W'kabi has the same marks on his face, but do they represent people he's killed?
• Is it...a bit like The Lion King?

* Blade doesn't count.  Not in the MCU.  Sorry.

Oscar predictions 2018

Evening all

Well, no one could really have predicted the Envelopegate of 2017's Academy Awards, but I imagine this year's awards will have their own upsets.  I've seen as many of these as I can, and as such, here are my predictions.

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Gary Oldman - Darkest Hour

This one is pretty much nailed on.  Oldman has won every Best Actor gong going for his portrayal of Winston Churchill, and rightly so.  Sorry everyone else.  Not your year.

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Frances McDormand - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

This seems pretty certain too.  Great portrayal of Mildred Hayes, left grieving and seeking justice after the murder of her daughter.  Multi faceted character piece with no definitive rights or wrongs, and no easy solutions.  Some competition from Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water as the mute Elisa Esposito, but I think this performance secures McDormand's second Oscar.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Tough call between him and Woody Harrelson, but Rockwell edges it for exactly the same reasons as Frances McDormand.  Honourable mention for Christopher Plummer as a short notice replacement for Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Allison Janney - I, Tonya

Still getting my head around this film, but an absolutely vile performance from Allison Janney as the needling, abusive, bitch of a mother in I, Tonya.  Sorry Octavia Spencer - just edged out of this one.

Best Director
Guillermo Del Toro - The Shape of Water

For a film that goes into the Oscars with the most nominations this year, I don't think it will go home with many, but I do think it will get one of the Big Five.  Specifically, Best Director.  Every scene of that film is like a work of art.

Best Film Editing
Baby Driver

Typically Edgar Wright, the film is so precise.  Milliseconds faster or slower and this film would have been awful, but the editing in Baby Driver is both a science and an art.

Best Music (Original Score)
Alexandre Desplat - The Shape of Water

Best Music (Original Song)
I want it to be Remember Me from Coco, but I think it might go to This is Me from The Greatest Showman.

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Call Me By Your Name

Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

Best Animated Feature Film
Coco

I'd like to think that Blade Runner 2049 will pick up pretty much all the technical awards, as some sort of apology for the fact that the film itself isn't recognised for Best Film.

Leaving...Best Picture
Oh this is a tough one.  The two main contenders seem to be Three Billboards and The Shape of Water.  Between those two, Three Billboards edges it.  But...but...the Best Picture winners of the 2010s have more often than not been a surprise.  Moonlight won over La La Land, Spotlight won over The Revenant, Argo won over Lincoln, Birdman won over Boyhood.
I don't think it's Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, Dunkirk or Darkest Hour.
Horror films and fantasy don't win - the only exception to this has been The Return of the King.  So that should rule out The Shape of Water and Get Out.  But Get Out is having a resurgence in popularity, despite coming out well before awards season started.  And it did win the Film Independent Spirit Award - which has correctly predicted the Best Picture for the past four years.

I want The Post to win, and it should if the Academy want to make a political point.  But Best Picture is the only category which is decided by a First Past The Post voting system, which makes a winner by consensus trickier.  That said, it is a film about how the media are ace, and the Academy is a bit of a sucker for that.

Right.  Conclusions.  And these are surprising me even as I type...
Should win: The Post
Will win: I think it might be Get Out.

Gosh.  I'd have voted three times if I could...