Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Robert Bierman, 1997)

Nine years after the black comedy How to Get Ahead in Advertising,  Richard E. Grant reprises playing a man working in advertising who suddenly becomes disillusioned with the point of it all and quits to try his luck at poetry. But since this is in the 1930s London of George Orwell's source novel, elements of the story mirroring episodes in the writer's own life, he soon ends up in financial freefall and squandering what little he receives from his new vocation on costly splurges to escape his self-created new prison, now one imposed by poverty rather than creative prostitution.

Grant was born for this role, with his natural gift for conveying neurotic mania, and Helena Bonham Carter as his put-upon girlfriend is a useful addition too. The dialogue is a constant shower of wit and the London of the period, even if conveniently polarised into just a downtrodden working-class world and an upper-class echelon, is still colourfully depicted. Being so much of its time, it probably doesn't achieve anything politically the way Orwell would have intended, but is great entertainment all the same. 

7/10

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver (Zack Snyder, 2024)

Snyder is making the most of his carte blanche from Netflix to blow tons of money on the next instalment of his own little version of the Star Wars franchise. It's all spent on explosives and CGI battle scenes, incredibly even more than the first time around, now that the tiresome business of minimal world creation and backstory is out of the way. Even the plot is recycled from the first part in an act of gratuitous auto-cannibalism, considering that its predecessor was shoddily cobbled together from the obvious Star Wars, Seven Samurai and Dune. So the same village that was previously squeezed for all the food it had now has to be defended against against a full-blown assault by the space Nazi baddies. And that's enough for two hours, apparently, once padded out with oodles of showy violence that requires no thought in terms of scripting. It goes without saying that no amount of damning reviews will kill this off and there's more to come.

3/10

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)

Lanthimos will never be content playing second fiddle in the deliberately provocative filmmaker game to Von Trier or Haneke. He's determined to be seen as actually clinically insane, and puts up a very convincing case. Naturally this is also lapped up by many as proof of his genius.

If you are prepared to be bombarded with scene after scene targeting every 'bourgeois' sensibility and regard for naturalism, Lanthimos gives you that in spades, even more here than before. Willem Dafoe (still on his deranged setting from The Lighthouse) plays a Frankenstein-type Victorian doctor who reanimates the corpse of a suicide using the brain of the foetus that she was carrying. The resulting woman named Bella, at first with the mind of an infant, soon discovers the delights of masturbation and the wider world outside the confines of the doctor's house, learning to talk in barrages of ornate synonyms, as she also learns about the cruelty of mankind and men in particular. As has always been obvious in the case of the director himself, she remains thoroughly autistic and this detracts quite severely from any sociopolitical point regarding the exploitation of women that one might want to read into her situation. The lavish sets, a fantastical steampunk melange of Art Nouveau, Baroque, modernist and Gothic, do make the film a visual feast, and the pitch-black humour at many instances also adds to the heady brew. But watching Emma Stone as Bella get shagged interminably by the paying male population of Paris hardly makes a feminist statement of note, even if her absolute commitment to the role shines through so clearly that her Best Actress Oscar was justly deserved.

Consider the entirety as what Terry Giliam or Wes Anderson would turn out if they had no self-control at all. Fascinating, but equally alienating.

6/10

Pieniä suuria valheita (Matti Kinnunen, 2018)

A separated former vicar arrives in a remote Finnish one-horse town with his young son and a ton of undisclosed baggage. They do not find it easy to settle in the closed community: the father is haunted by rumours about his past misdeeds and the son is systematically bullied at school. Thus it continues, until the message comes through that the only way out is to be honest at any cost.

This is a dyed-in-the-wool tenet of Finnish identity, much as making films that in no way advance the cause of the tourist industry is characteristic of their cinematic production. So, cheery it is not, but Time Out (better translated literally as 'Little Big Lies') does have a rewarding payoff, simply by remaining rooted in the reality of how people work.

6/10  

Hytti nro 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, 2021)

A Finnish archaeology student boards a train in Russia to Murmansk, where she intends to study ancient carvings in the local rocks. She is forced to share a sleeping compartment all the way there with a boorish Russian man and at first considers leaving the train, but then puts up with the duress when he shows signs of calming down.

Having set up the scenario from hell, that is the situation of being a solo western female traveller in barely post-Soviet Russia, surrounded by stone-faced officials and raging alcoholics in the middle of winter, this can go only one of two ways: to serve as a cautionary tale for anyone ever contemplating doing the same, or the less likely route, which is to show how love will find a way, no matter what it has to overcome.

One might guess after a while which option wins out. It can be seen as a Before Sunrise, but with all the picturesque scenery and sugar-coating taken out, and in some way this makes the denouement more rewarding.

It was made just before the war in Ukraine started in earnest, and this is fortuitous, both for logistical reasons and because, given the current emergency, it serves as yet another reminder of  both the individual humanity and national nihilism on the other side of the border. There isn't a causal link between these and the fact that Compartment No.6 shared the Grand Prix at Cannes with Farhadi's A Hero, and nor should we try to see one. It simply stands on its own merits.

7/10

Znachor (Michał Gazda, 2023)

Blandly translated for the English-language market as 'Forgotten Love', Znachor ('The Quack') is based on a hugely popular Polish prewar novel about a gifted and moral surgeon who is mugged after his wife has left him, presumed dead and wanders the country for 15 years stricken with amnesia, trying to remember even just his name. The one thing that he has not forgotten is his medical talent, and so he provides illicit care to the poor inhabitants of a rural village. Meanwhile, through a fantastical contrivance, his now adult daughter turns up in the same village to work at the inn. She then falls in love with the son of the domineering local countess and the course is set for a classic resolution, which can only be a happy ending.

Even when the novel was published in 1937, it would have been very old-fashioned in its themes and formulaic structure. It revolves entirely around social class and injustice, forbidden love and a fallen hero's quest, and would fit right into the milieu of the 19th century potboiler. Too many suspensions of disbelief are required. But besides that, it is beautifully shot, warmly humanistic and Leszek Lichota is a commanding presence as the doctor.

6/10

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, 2012)

Released from a mental institution into the care of his parents, a bipolar man is still dead set on winning back his wife, whose adultery had driven him over the edge. Along the way, which is full of bumps, he meets a spiky young woman with mental issues of her own and the manner in which they clash and make up repeatedly sends showers of sparks across the screen, as well as a rising certainty that they will end up together. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, despite their obvious age gap, make a magnetic couple, and Robert De Niro in support as Cooper's deeply superstitious and OCD-wracked dad completes a full house of people needing some calm in their lives. It's vibrant and sharp enough that not aspiring to profundity really doesn't matter too much.

6/10