Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

Although there has been a renewed interested in women’s football recently, I should state that the timing of me finally watching Bend It Like Beckham, a film I have owned for at least a decade, is entirely coincidental. I just figured that it was time I actually checked it off the list. 

Directed by Gurinder Chadha, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Guljit Bindra and Paul Mayeda Berges, this is the tale of two young women who want to pursue their passion for playing football. Jesminda aka Jess (Parminder Nagra) comes from a traditional Indian family who are dead against the idea of her being so “unladylike”, while her friend, Jules (Keira Knightley), has more accepting parents. The two hope to do well enough in a tournament to attract the attention of a talent scout, but that involves Jess lying to her parents as they prepare for her sister’s big wedding day. I hope that event doesn’t clash with an important football game. And I hope the coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), doesn’t create any tension between our two leads.

Although it’s about football, Bend It Like Beckham isn’t really about that at all. It is, of course, but it also very much isn’t. It’s about finding something you love to do, connecting with people who support you in that, and moving into full adulthood while clearly communicating with your family as you set new boundaries and goals. It’s also about cultural differences, with Jess feeling the extra weight of the Indian family traditions that are supposed to inform her fate.

Both Nagra and Knightley are enjoyable in the main roles, although neither seem too convincing in the over-edited moments of action on the pitch. Nagra is the better of the two, a bit more believable throughout, and also given much more of the screentime. The focus is on her character throughout, with Knightley just a main supporting player, and she’s a great presence to spend time with. The same cannot be said of Meyers, someone I have rarely enjoyed seeing in movies. Maybe I have yet to see his best work, but he rarely feels natural and at ease in front of the camera, and his main plot strand here is easily the worst aspect of the movie. Shaheen Khan, Anumpam Kher, and Archie Panjabi are all very good, playing Jess’s mother, father, and sister, respectively, and Frank Harper and Juliet Stevenson are good fun as the parents of Jules. Ameet Chana is also very enjoyable, playing a good friend named Tony, and there is a small role for Shaznay Lewis that shows a potential she never had a chance to fulfil.

Nicely weaving between the more uplifting moments and the dramatic, happy to intersperse realism and honesty with flights of cinematic fancy, Bend It Like Beckham is an easy crowd-pleaser. The pacing is pretty great, there are decent tunes scattered throughout the soundtrack, and the third act has a sense of jubilation that stems from the double-whammy of the football dream and the gorgeous wedding celebrations. This may not be as good as Chadha’s debut feature, the superb Bhaji On The Beach, but it is arguably aimed at a wider audience looking for something cheerful and optimistic.

It may not top the league, in terms of either football films or British comedy dramas, but it’s certainly battling for a decent place in the table.

7/10

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Silent Night (2021)

If there's one thing we Brits can do it's exploit our civility and manners for entertainment purposes. And we have used that for many different movies, from classic murder mysteries to dark comedies, from the sci-fi horror of something like Prey (Norman J. Warren, 1977) to the unfolding dinner party with a big secret in Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948). This material has been mined by many other countries throughout the decades of cinema, but I like to think that they all stem from observations of British people in their home environment.

Silent Night, the first feature from writer-director Camille Griffin (who also casts all three of her sons in roles of varying importance), shows a group of seemingly well-to-do British people gathering at an isolated home for an evening of dining, drinking, conversation, and probably more drinking. It's a dinner party with a difference, that difference being the looming end of the world. 

While this is an interesting premise for a movie, and could have been a showpiece for any actor, Griffin stumbles due to a lack of tonal focus or consistency. She may have wanted to make something that weaves from comedy to drama to horror, but every one of the better moments just makes you wonder how many other ways the film could have played out in a much more satisfying way.

The main fault lies with Griffin’s script, especially when she doesn’t give anyone the kind of razor-sharp dialogue that the film craves. None of the main characters have the steel required to lift it up to a level of greatness. If this had been made fifty years ago with a main role for Bette Davis, THEN you have something closer to greatness.

Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode are the host couple, both doing well with what they are given (mainly being polite and attempting to put a brave face on things), and their three children (the characters played by Griffin’s children) include another star turn from Roman Griffin Davis, playing the most important person in the film. Lucy Punch, Annabelle Wallis, Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Lily-Rose Depp play the women, all with various approaches to their impending fates, and Sope Dirisu and Rufus Jones are the two male guests, supporting their partners as they deal with some unfinished business.

Things step up a notch in the third act, and the very end features a great little “punchline”, but the end result is more of an interesting, incomplete, almost-ran than an outright winner.

6/10

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Prime Time: Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (2012)

The directorial debut from Lorene Scafaria (who recently entertained audiences with the very enjoyable Hustlers), what you get here is a drama with some weighty themes that benefits enormously from a great script (written by Scafaria) and a pair of winning lead performances.

There's not long left. An asteroid is heading to Earth. The end is very much nigh. And things are made worse for Dodge (Steve Carell) when his wife leaves their car and just runs out of his life. So many people are taking the upcoming end of days as an excuse to cut loose and enjoy their time without real consequences, but Dodge just wants to connect with a special someone before it's too late. He ends up working towards this aim with a neighbour, Penny (Keira Knightley), and their journey takes some interesting turns, despite the knowledge that they're not going to have a happy ending.

We've seen films similar to this before. Someone finds out they don't have long to live, which in turn leads to them finally doing things they always wanted to do. The big twist here is that the new lust for wanting to make the most of a very truncated lifespan applies to pretty much everyone in the world. Many people indulge in a fair amount of hedonism, some riot, and some try to take control of their fate in other ways. Dodge actually acts quite normally, considering the circumstances. Although it may seem foolish, or like a missed opportunity, he is determined not to use the upcoming ELE to completely change how he lives his life. The biggest change he makes is being in the company of Penny, which is enough to lead to cause some serious repercussions.

Carell is superb in his role, no surprise to those who have enjoyed his dramatic work for a number of years now (he's as good with the drama as he is with the comedy, and I love his comedy work), and Knightley gives one of her best performances in a non-period film. The two work well together, an unlikely pairing made a lot easier to believe in thanks to the unusual circumstances that have led to them growing closer after a long time of not really taking any notice of one another. Connie Britton and Rob Corddry are a married couple viewing the limited time left as an excuse to be totally free, Adam Brody gets a few minutes of screentime, and you get some nice little turns from Melanie Lynskey, Martin Sheen, T. J. Miller, Gillian Jacobs, and quite a few other familiar faces.

Scafaria certainly doesn't feel like a first-timer here, directing with skill from her excellent script. This could easily have been either too light or too dark, making the casting of Carell in the lead role an extra risk, but she gets the tone perfect throughout. This manages to be bittersweet in the best way, providing a worthwhile journey for the main characters without letting viewers forget that, whatever happens, everything is still set to end when that asteroid hits.

Sweet, touching, different enough from many other movies you may have seen in this mould, Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is one to prioritise on your viewing list. Definitely watch it before humanity goes extinct.

8/10

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Yule Love It: The Nutcracker And The Four Realms (2018)

Here's another film that wants to tell you "the story you know" in a fresh reworking, allowing them to advertise it as "the story you think you know", or some such. It's a visual treat, in places, and you hear familiar musical refrains throughout, of course, but this take on The Nutcracker is ultimately a Christmas confection that looks sweet but has nothing decent at the centre of it.

Mackenzie Foy is Clara, a young woman who is upset on Christmas Eve, first by a gift left for her by her deceased mother, a puzzle egg that she can't figure out, and then by an argument with her father, stemming from her refusal to dance with him. But everything changes when Clara ends up being taken to a different world by Captain Philip Hoffman AKA The Nutcracker (Jayden Fowora-Knight). There are four realms, and Sugar Plum (Keira Knightley) tells Clara that they are all currently under threat of attack from Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren). Things happen. Characters fight. Everyone looks like they just lost a wrestling match with a Christmas tree.

Initially directed by Lasse Hallström, and then a month of reshoots were overseen by Joe Johnston, The Nutcracker And The Four Realms was a film I was looking forward to, despite the poor reception it had at the box office. I like both directors involved, I like a number of the main cast members, and you should know that I certainly like me a Christmas movie. The fact that this ended up so poorly handled is a surprise, because all of the elements would seem to be in place to make it quite the magical adventure.

The script, by Ashleigh Powell, isn't terrible, but is perhaps a shaky foundation upon which the movie rests. The plotting feels as if Powell was constantly wary of making sure that she checked off everything we would expect from the story, while she was also striving to make it feel a bit fresh. It turns out that trying to manage both isn't possible, at least not in this instance.

But a script that may lack some confidence can be overlooked while you are being treated to some razzle dazzle in the visual department. Weirdly, this looks nice throughout, but never fully embraces the look and feel of the season in the way that the main characters do. The costume designer knew what to do, but it seems that others were afraid of giving everything a sprinkling of magic and stardust. There's some, and it's good, but not enough.

Foy is a decent enough, if rather bland, lead. Fowora-Knight is the same. Thankfully, Knightley has a lot of fun in the role of Sugar Plum, and Mirren delights as Mother Ginger, simply because she's Helen Mirren. There are fun little roles for Omid DJalili, Jack Whitehall, and Richard E. Grant, while Matthew Macfadyen, Meera Syal, and Morgan Freeman portray the main adults that we see in the real world, with Macfadyen the father just hoping to dance with his daughter.

Ironically enough, this could work like so many Hallmark movies do, as something pretty to have on while you wrap presents and do other Christmas Day prep. But unlike those movies, it wasn't designed for that purpose. It was supposed to be one of those films billed as "a classic tale, reinterpreted for a new generation". And it isn't. It's just a slightly-below-average fantasy film.

4/10

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Mubi Monday: Colette (2018)

It seems that I am behind the times when it comes to Keira Knightley, having placed her in the "I tend to enjoy her but she's usually not that good REALLY" category some years ago. This may have all been because of the long shadow cast by her horrible turn in Domino, or maybe I just have such a bad memory that I forgot every time I'd actually praised her work while somehow remembering . . . that horrible turn in Domino. Look, it's basically all the fault of Domino. As long as that's clear, let's move on.

Anyway, let's get to Colette, a film in which Knightley plays the title role. She is a country girl when the film begins, until she moves to Paris with her husband-to-be (Dominic West). And this begins a series of fortunate and unfortunate events that eventually lead to Colette developing into the famous and celebrated writer that she remains to this day. Sadly, her writing is all published under her husband's name, because that was more appropriate for the time and he had a brand to sell. Colette causes quite the stir throughout France, and starts to enjoy it even more, especially as she begins to explore her sexuality. As society seems to work ever harder to restrict her and keep her "in her place", Colette finds more ways to ruffle feathers and ensure she cannot be ignored or silenced.

Many people have already commented on Colette being a film that feels incredibly timely right now (the battle for sexual equality rages on and men still seem to have the position of having value to their names that women rarely get) and it is. It's an interesting, passionate, film that condemns the treatment of the leading lady, and also the treatment of many others. But that isn't the only thing that Colette is putting under a magnifying glass. As Knightley and West play out their complicated love/hate relationship throughout the film, it's equally an interesting study of the way in which people choose to believe various fictions, be they myths about the differences in gender, the power of artistic creations, or choosing to hope that a horrible and abusive relationship is anything other than that.

Director Wash Westmoreland, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, sets everything out in a traditional way, picking out the most important moments from a life that must have had many highlights to choose from. The score may be a bit generic, for this kind of thing (in my view), but the camerawork is given one or two moments to shine, such as the sequence that allows it to glide through a crowded room alongside Colette as she takes in the various displays of excess and "sophistication".

Although the script is a good one, and there are a couple of brilliant speeches that Knightley must have read on the page with sheer delight at the prospect of getting to deliver them, it's the cast who raise everything up. In case you were in any doubt, Knightley is excellent. Really excellent. This may be the best performance she has given in her career so far, relishing a role that allows her to be strong, sharp, funny, eloquent, sexual, and generally downright inspiring. She's equalled by West, who manages to do so well in his role that it's only much later in the film that you realise just how shitty he has been to his wife for so much of their marriage. Neither speak French, or attempt an accent, despite the nationality of their characters, and nor do many of the other cast members, which is a decision made for the better. The environment is enough to remind you of where everyone is living, and the writing (the heart of the film) is shown to be in French, as it obviously would be, while characters sometimes read out the prose in English. Other important characters are played by Denise Gough, Eleanor Tomlinson, Julian Wadham, Al Weaver, and Ray Panthaki, and everyone fits well in the role they're given (although both Gough and Tomlinson ARE given certain specific accents, with the former faring much better than the latter).

Oozing quality from every frame, Colette is superior drama, bringing a slice of history to life and exploring some issues that resonate just as much today as they did back at the end of the 19th century. Despite the pretty, perhaps what some may even call quaint, packaging, it manages to make things more palatable to observe and mull over without ever feeling as if it has held so much back that it warps the reality that it is all based on.

8/10

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Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Jack Ryan. At first he was played by Alec Baldwin. Then Harrison Ford took over the role for a couple of movies. And then Ben Affleck was given a shot. Now it's the turn of Chris Pine, having been handed the role for a film that plays out as a bit of an origin story for our main character.

The story isn't exactly complex. After an opening sequence that shows Ryan involved in a helicopter crash that seriously injures his spine, we see him work towards his recovery and fall for the woman helping him back on his feet (Cathy Mullan, played by Keira Knightley). He's then recruited by Thomas Harper (a decent supporting role for Kevin Costner) to work for the CIA. He is supposed to work as a covert analyst, a job that will allow him to inspect financial transactions and use the information to bust any criminal activity, but ends up out in the field, in Moscow to be exact, when he has to follow up a bad feeling he has about Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh trying on a Russian accent).

Data analysis may not sound like the most exciting thing to base an action thriller on, I agree. Thankfully, that's only the springboard to launch Ryan into an entertaining adventure. The script, by Adam Cozad and David Koepp, stays true to the central character, despite the youthful make-over, with the focus on intelligence rather than strength or fighting ability (although, it must be said, the first big challenge for Ryan when he enters Moscow is a physical one).

As well as portraying the villain of the piece, Branagh directs the film. He has shown over the years that he can work with popular entertainment just as easily as he can work with Shakespeare, and he puts together a nice slice of entertainment here for those who enjoy cat and mouse scenarios. The opening sequences aren't exactly full of promise, but that's only a minor wobble. Things improve considerably once we get past the obligatory detailing of just how much inner steel Jack Ryan has.

Pine is an actor I've enjoyed watching for years now, and he slips into the role of Ryan comfortably enough. Knightley isn't as well-served by the script, although she tries her best in a role that adds up to little more than "love interest who may need extra protection when things start to get more heated". Branagh is a lot of fun, even if he dances in and out of moments that feel like parody. His villain is the kind of cool, intelligent, cultured individual often seen mentally sparring James Bond, and that's no bad thing when it's done as well as it is here. Costner also has fun, just in a different way. He's the typical mentor here, giving Ryan the details without ever bullshitting him, and also helping the young man when he's struggling to deal with incidents that he remembers from his own past experiences.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit may not have set the box office alight, but don't let that put you off. In fact, we should all know by now that box office figures are no sure-fire indicator of quality. The only reason I mention the performance of this movie here is to say that I hope we still get another instalment with these characters in place. I'd definitely see it, and I hope that others feel the same way.

7/10

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