Hello, and happy Thursday! It’s time for the Geeky Brummie film roundup – each week, we take you through the upcoming cinema releases and why you should be excited about them. This week: an iconic British singer and some angry American soldiers…
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these films. All of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Back to Black
The life of Amy Winehouse had some incredible highs and lows and was tragically cut short far too early, all of which make it ripe material for filmmakers. We have already had the 2015 documentary Amy, which received huge critical acclaim but was criticised by the Winehouse family for painting them, and Amy, in a bad light. Now we have Back to Black, which has the backing of the Winehouse family but is getting much more mixed reviews from critics.
Although it’s ostensibly a biopic, the narrative of Back to Black is framed around the songs of the eponymous album, crafting a semi-biographical story based on Amy’s lyrics as much as her life. The album was largely written about her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, and a lot of the criticism (which is mainly coming from tabloid newspapers) seems to be that the result casts a somewhat rose-tinted lens over his character. Whether that affects your enjoyment of the movie probably depends on how invested you were in Amy’s personal life when she was alive – I can imagine people who followed the celebrity gossip magazines more closely than I did getting angered by this.
The actress playing Amy is Marisa Abela, who has had very few major roles before now – she played ‘Teen Talk Barbie’ in the Barbie movie but I haven’t seen any of her other credits. It’s an incredibly brave move for a relative unknown to play such an iconic figure, especially one who most people will have clear memories of to compare her to. Amy had both an exceptional singing voice and a big off-stage personality, so capturing both of those in the same performance can’t have been easy. The reviews I’ve read generally agree that she has done a very creditable effort on both counts. Fielder-Civil is played by Jack O’Connell and Amy’s father is played by Eddie Marsan, who are both very dependable actors too.
I’m not entirely sure who to recommend this to – if you’re not an Amy Winehouse fan then you probably won’t be interested, and if you are an Amy Winehouse fan then the liberties with the truth might rankle you. But if you do have any interest in seeing the film, don’t let the reviews put you off – the negative ones don’t seem to be coming from a particularly objective place, so give it a watch and make your own mind up.
- Back to Black on IMDB
- Back to Black on Rotten Tomatoes
Civil War
I went to a preview screening of Civil War earlier in the week. The premise is that America is in the closing stages of a modern civil war, after the states of Texas and California formed the so-called Western Forces to rebel against Washington. Their armies are gradually advancing on the capital while the president (played by Nick Offerman) issues official statements claiming that his side is on the verge of victory. The story focuses on a group of journalists, led by Kirsten Dunst’s photographer Lee, as they travel from New York to Washington hoping for one final interview with the president before his regime collapses.
Given the state of American (and world) politics at the moment, I was expecting this to lean heavily into the divide between the right and left wing. Instead, Civil War side-steps any comment on what caused the war to break out, besides vague hints that the president (clearly cast more from the Trump mould than Biden) has been a bit of a tyrant. The film, like the press group that it follows, is largely objective when it comes to the politics, and is far more interested in the effect that this war is having on the people of America. The best and worst of humanity is on display, with a whole lot of characters occupying the wide grey area in between. Some of them are passionately fighting for a cause. Some of them are fighting to stay alive. And some of them have clearly just been waiting a long time for an excuse to start shooting people. Jesse Plemons (who is married to Kirsten Dunst) plays a particularly unpleasant man, which must have made for a tense journey home after his scenes were shot.
The director Alex Garland wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later, in which Cillian Murphy famously wanders through an empty London that’s been devastated by a plague of zombies. It was a chilling scene because it was such an unfamiliar vision of such a familiar setting. Civil War takes a very similar approach but ramps it up to devastating effect. Warzones are so frequently seen on the news as faraway hellscapes that make you glad to be safe at home. The sight of New York and Washington converted into brutal battlegrounds is genuinely quite terrifying. Gunmen patrol the rooves of every tower block, tanks rumble down empty high streets, sports pitches are converted into refugee camps, and roads are barricaded with heaps of family cars. I saw the film in Imax, where every gunshot felt like it was right by my head. The reporters are constantly in the thick of the action, and seeing it through their lens (sometimes literally) gives it the uncomfortably realistic feel of a real-life war report. You can’t shake the feeling that a) this scenario is a lot more plausible than you’d like to think it is, and b) if it ever did happen your chances of survival would be pretty low.
All of this is brilliantly sold by the cast. Kirsten Dunst’s character is a lot more serious than I’m used to seeing her, and you can feel the experience of years of war correspondence weighing her down. Her reporting partner Joel is played by Wagner Moura, who is probably best known as Pablo Escobar in Narcos – he is very likeable here, masking some real vulnerability with light humour and warmth. They are joined by the great Stephen McKinley Henderson’s veteran reporter Sammy and Cailee Spaeny’s eager rookie photographer Jessie. Spaeny, who was very impressive in the title role in Priscilla, is great again here – her expression oscillates between grim determination and utter horror as Jessie’s desperation to follow in Lee’s footsteps places her in increasingly harrowing situations.
This is a difficult watch, but it is also compelling, thrilling and perfectly executed. If you’ve got the stomach for it then I thoroughly recommend it.
- Civil War on IMDB
- Civil War on Rotten Tomatoes
Bleeding Love
The second film this week named after a song title, Bleeding Love tells the story of an estranged father and daughter, played by real-life father and daughter Ewan and Clara McGregor, taking a road trip to try and rescue the daughter from her addictions.
I’m not particularly familiar with Clara McGregor, but it’s hard not to like Ewan and it looks like he’s having a great time working with his daughter. They clearly have some good chemistry – when he sees her singing along to Leona Lewis at the end of the trailer he seems to react with genuine excitement. It’s hard to tell whether this sort of casting is a clever use of pre-packaged chemistry, stunt casting, or just plain nepotism. However, Clara also co-wrote the script, and the fact that she was involved behind the camera suggests she was the driving force in getting the film made the way it was, which I think is a good sign.
This sounds like a sweet little indie film which is unlikely to hold many surprises but will nevertheless be a pleasant couple of hours, albeit with some emotional plot threads around dealing with addiction.
- Bleeding Love on IMDB
- Bleeding Love on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
War. Huh. What is it good for? Epic cinema, that’s what – my film of the week this week is Civil War.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Monkey Man
- Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire
- Dune: Part Two
Trailer of the week
This is a new feature of the film roundup making its debut today – each week I’ll pick one trailer that’s been released since the last post and preview it here to whet your appetite for something a little further off on the horizon. This week has brought us the first trailer for Joker: Folie a Deux…
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