mike - Hollywood Authentic

November 1, 2024

Words by MATT MAYTUM

You know the film in which the charming, rich man pays a sex worker to spend the week with him and they fall in love? Well, Anora isn’t Pretty Woman. If you’ve seen any of writer/director Sean Baker’s previous movies – the best known being Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021) – you’ll know not to expect anything quite so conventional. Like those earlier works, Anora is another rounded, grounded look at a marginalised community in the US, but its scale and sweep marks it out as Baker’s boldest gambit yet, and amplifies its crossover appeal. Buoyed by winning the Palme d’Or (the highest accolade at the Cannes Film Festival) this summer, it looks set to be Baker’s first film to garner mainstream awards appreciation.

anora, lindsey normington, mikey madison, paul weissman, sean baker

That’s not to say that Anora falls into the category of Oscar bait. It’s as provocative as any of Baker’s previous features, with its stall set out from a tone-setting opening shot that slowly pans across a line-up of performances at the Manhattan strip club where Anora – call her Ani – makes her living. In a 180-twist on the Cinderella story, we follow Ani (Mikey Madison) as she meets a young, ultra-wealthy Russian Ivan or ‘Vanya’ (Mark Eydelshteyn), at her club. Private dances lead to paid-for sex which leads to a week’s company for $15,000 fee.

It’s a film of two halves, though your pulse will pound in both. Upfront, it’s the high-energy sex scenes and euphoric abandon that provide the momentum. Baker’s always been a superb, detail-focused world-builder, and here he neatly contrasts the superficial chintzy surfaces of Ani’s club and her working-class homelife in Brighton Beach with the jaw-dropping extravagance of Vanya’s NY abode and his hedonistic profligacy: there’s no illicit thrill he won’t throw money at, for the amusement of himself, Ani and his entourage of hanger-on pals. Sex, drugs and trips to Vegas are all on the cards, and it’s in Sin City where a chapel for Ani and Vanya awaits… For him, it’s ostensibly an easy way to extend his stay in the US, while you get the sense she’s happy to keep the party going. Despite the inherent frivolity of the union, it’s impossible to disregard their genuine chemistry.

But, in the second half of the reverse fairytale, the glass slipper smashes and Ani must walk through the shards. When Vanya’s oligarch parents get wind of his nuptials, they send right-hand man Toros (Karren Karagulian) and a couple of heavies (Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan) to enforce an annulment. When Vanya splits, Ani and her three captors have a long night ahead of them trying to find the runaway groom. For all the escalating tension – there’s a ticking-clock element sparked by the impending arrival of Vanya’s parents – it’s impressive how funny Baker keeps it throughout. Every character, no matter their circumstances, has curiously relatable problems or glimmers of unexpected humanity, to a Tolstoyesque degree.

It’s fitting that the two main characters go by dual names, as a literal representation of the contradictory facets that everyone embodies. Madison is very likely to find herself in the awards conversation after this breakout turn. Until now she’s been best known to film audiences for eye-catching supporting roles in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) and Scream (2022), but Anora is the definition of a star-making performance. Not only does she nail the physicality the character requires to be fully believable, and the specificity of her Brooklyn accent, but also gets Ani’s confidence and fluency in power dynamics, and fully embodies the joy, fear, despair and frustration that occur across the film’s roller-coaster trajectory, and she retains the capacity to knock the wind out of you when you least expect it.

Despite weighty themes of extreme socioeconomic disparity, transactional relationships, sex work and more, Baker’s film is never a slog, and remains propulsive and unexpectedly funny over it’s 139-min runtime. If Anora does end up being Baker’s ticket to awards glory, he’s won a seat at that table on his own terms.

Words by MATT MAYTUM
Anora is in cinemas now

Dispatches

RUMOURS

October 25, 2024

DISPATCH: RUMOURS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

Surreal political satire Rumours premiered at the Cannes Film Festival before travelling to TIFF and various festivals before landing in the UK’s capital this month at the BFI London Film Festival for a party hosted at Lasdun by Universal Pictures. Written and co-directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, it follows the seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at the annual G7 summit, where they attempt to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. But as night falls and their staff disappear the leaders discover their own fallibility and lack of agency – unless it’s a quick romp in the woods. The cast is as international as the characters: Cate Blanchett plays the German Chancellor, Charles Dance is POTUS (with an English accent, because – why not?), Nikki Amuka-Bird essays the UK PM and Alicia Vikander is the President of the European Commission who finds something mindbending in the mist…

Blanchett, Dance, Amula-Bird and their directors celebrated the UK bow of the film at a party attended by friends and colleagues. Greg Williams captured the fun…

cate blanchett, charles dance, evan johnson, galen johnson, guy maddin, nikki amuka-bird, rumours, philipp kreuzer

Rumours is released on 6 December

Screening Room

SALEM’S LOT

October 10, 2024

Words by MATT MAYTUM

You’re never too far away from a Stephen King adaptation. The prolific horror maestro is the most-adapted living author, and even Salem’s Lot has been made for the screen twice before (as TV miniseries in 1979 and 2004). It’s a relief then, that writer-director Gary Dauberman makes slick work of King’s doorstopper tome in this latest take on the vampire story.

gary dauberman, jordan preston carter, lewis pullman, makenzie leigh, salem’s lot

For anyone unfamiliar with previous incarnations, Salem’s Lot concerns author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), who returns to his childhood hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. Only, just before his return, an altogether more sinister resident has moved into the creepy house that overlooks this otherwise charming small town where magic hour seems to last all afternoon and the cops are rarely busy. But before Ben can rediscover his writing mojo and develop a romance with local realtor Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh), kids start going missing, patients with punctures to the neck are being treated at the hospital, and no one is quite ready to say the v-word out loud. Soon, several unlikely heroes are going to have to sharpen wooden stakes and assemble makeshift crucifixes as the unforgiving body count stacks up.

Salem’s Lot is classic King in several key ways, from the Maine setting to the writer protagonist and the snowballing sense of dread. The ’70s era is nicely realised via the production design, which has enough restraint to avoid parody. More than anything, the period setting spares the film from smartphones and the internet, creating an insular claustrophobia in the outwardly picturesque town of the title. While there’s the occasional sense of a bigger story being abridged for a cinema-friendly running time, credit goes to the cast for building a believable sense of community, and efficiently fleshing out past histories. Pullman (Top Gun: Maverick) is a likeable everyman with a troubled past, and there’s some genuine chemistry and sweet-natured banter between Ben and Leigh’s yearning-to-escape Susan. Plus, character actors like Alfre Woodard (as a no-nonsense doctor) and Bill Camp (as the teacher slotting the puzzle pieces together) add heft to archetypal roles. The child performances were always going to be key here, too, and Dauberman elicits good work from the younger cast members, putting an updated spin on the tap-at-the-window scene that was so chillingly memorable in the 1979 version.

Given that its influences stretch as far back as Dracula and Nosferatu – a mysteriously sheltered bloodsucker relocates to spread his malign influence, with the help of a converted servant – Salem’s Lot doesn’t have anything particularly new to add to the vampire canon. But Dauberman, who has previous King form as the writer of It (2017) and It: Chapter Two, brings a surprising sense of humour to proceedings. Not only is there plenty of knowingly witty dialogue, but the slick camerawork amplifies the fun of the set pieces. Whether it’s clever pans to induce jolts (or hide the goriest moments from view), inventive use of shadow as marauding vamps attempt to stay out of the sunlight, or just wickedly choreographed kills, it all adds to the sense that Dauberman knows what his audience wants, and is having a blast delivering it. By not taking itself too seriously, Salem’s Lot gives viewers permission to lean back and indulge in a bit of old-fashioned Halloween fun best enjoyed with a crowd.

Words by MATT MAYTUM
Salem’s Lot is in UK cinemas now and on Max in the US

Dispatches

GEORGE CLOONEY & BRAD PITT

September 27, 2024

DISPATCH: GEORGE CLOONEY & BRAD PITT WOLFS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

George Clooney and Brad Pitt have been working together since they first made Ocean’s Eleven in 2001 – sharing credits in the 23 years since on Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen and Burn After Reading. And the off-screen friends were looking for another opportunity to re-team when they were pitched Jon Watts’ original script, Wolfs. The story of two ‘lone wolf’ fixers who are assigned to the same clean-up job when a DA’s dalliance with a young man ends in accidental death, the comedy-actioner premiered at the Venice Film Festival to a standing ovation. Greg Williams traveled with the duo by boat as they attended a press conference and the premiere on Venice’s Lido.

‘We kind of figured there’s gotta be a good reason to get back in a film together, something we feel like we could build upon what we’ve done before,’ Pitt told journalists when he and Clooney discussed the project without their director who had caught Covid on the journey to the floating city. ‘But also, I gotta say, as I get older, working with the people that I just really enjoy spending time with has really become important to me.’

Pitt recalled that both he and Clooney immediately liked the first draft that Watts wrote and pitched to them, and was pleased that the verve of it was retained throughout production to filming in New York. ‘It’s never happened where someone presents you with an idea and you get a first draft of the script and that’s what you end up shooting.’

Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Jon Watts, Wolfs

As grouchy hitmen, Clooney and Pitt banter and squabble throughout a long night where they try to unravel a conspiracy – and their teasing affection was on display when they sat down for their press conference and, later, boogied to Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’ (a key track in the film) as the credits rolled in the Sala Grande. ‘There’s nothing good about it… It’s all a disaster,’ Clooney joked when asked about working with his 60-year-old friend. ‘He’s 74 and he’s lucky at this age to be still working!’

Wolfs is in select cinemas and available to stream on Apple TV+ now
Read our review of Wolfs here

Screening Room

THE OUTRUN

September 27, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

‘Britain is an island off Europe, Orkney is an island off Britain, Westray is an island off Orkney, Papay is an island off Westray…’ says Rona of the remote place she returns to in pursuit of rehabilitation in Nora Fingscheidt’s gorgeous, wild and meditative adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s 2016 addiction memoir. The Orkney-bred daughter of English parents (Stephen Dillane and Saskia Reeves), Rona has escaped the far-flung rock of her birth to Hackney for a biology degree and bacchanalian partying – which has tipped from hedonism to fiending. Booze has loosened her and allowed for city adventures and a romance with a doe-eyed boyfriend Paapa Essiedu, but it has also tightened its grip around her, making her a mean drunk as well as the victim of blackouts and violence at the hands of strangers. In Fingscheidt’s time-hopping poem to the forces of nature, the determination of survivors and the beauty of myth, Saoirse Ronan delivers a career-best performance that is unvarnished, brutal and, ultimately, beautiful and life-affirming.

nora fingscheidt, saoirse ronan, saskia reeves, paapa essiedu, stephen dillane, the outrun

nora fingscheidt, nora fingscheidt, saoirse ronan, saskia reeves, stephen dillane, the outrunsaoirse ronan, saskia reeves, stephen dillane, the outrun

Orkney and tiny island, Papay, are showcased to their full craggy, unforgiving majesty as Rona returns home from London, hoping that escape from the trigger will help her recovery. In flashbacks we unpick the moments that have led to this reckoning on the windswept ‘outrun’ of her father’s sheep farm. The slurred self-harm, the endangerment, the abuse of friends’ goodwill, the shame of nipping at hidden bottles of vodka in the bathroom with the tap on. Rona also narrates key memories and Orkney myths of monsters that have formed her. As she helps birth lambs, struggles to befriend other young people and spits vitriol at her religious mum, she also recalls the mental health episodes of her father and the estrangement from the boy she loved. Like the endangered Corncrake birds she attempts to track for the RSPB, her sobriety is an elusive, fragile thing and her path to the discovery of both turns out to be surprising.

nora fingscheidt, saoirse ronan, saskia reeves, stephen dillane, the outrun

Adapted by Fingscheidt and Liptrot, The Outrun is a bewitching celebration of healing with different timelines deftly denoted by Ronan’s dyed hair and bolstered by moments of stop-motion, still photography and nature footage (curious seals, boiling seas, raging storms). When lensing Rona’s drunken walks home, Fingscheidt employs woozy, disorientating focus to put us right inside the bottle with her, while at other times the camera is a serene watcher as Rona takes a wild swim in a briny bay. Equally multi-discipline is Ronan, toggling from utterly convincing messy drunk to shattered alcoholic, lost recoverer to flame-haired ‘selkie’ at one with the landscape. Her interior life is so easily read, whether it’s the way she lies to her professor, the apology she weepingly offers her mum or the way a tear of wonder slides from her eye as she watches the twinkle of the international space station pass across the Scottish heavens. The experience of watching her within this maelstrom of a movie is a visceral one, and should power her into the awards ring. A kind and essential movie for anyone trying to find the contours of their true self in a time of difficulty.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Outrun is in cinemas now

Watch

JOSH HARTNETT

September 20, 2024

Josh Hartnett takes Greg Williams to the pub.

Watch

NAOMI ACKIE

September 20, 2024

Naomi Ackie shows Greg Williams her imperfect painting.

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CATE BLANCHETT

September 20, 2024

Cate Blanchett talks to Greg Williams.

Screening Room

SPEAK NO EVIL

September 13, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Those who experienced 2022’s Danish horror of the same name may not wish to revisit the particular trauma of that movie, taking in mutilation, social discomfort and a bleakness that snatched breath. A disquieting hit at Sundance, Speak No Evil pitched a Danish couple against a Dutch couple – leveraging middle-class politeness to devastating effect. Now writer/director James Watkins recasts and re-sets the tale in Britain under the Blumhouse shingle, with a reserved American couple, Louise and Ben (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy), meeting a brash Brit duo, Paddy and Ciara (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi), on holiday in Tuscany. Both pairs have kids of a similar age and though they probably wouldn’t usually gel as friends, an alliance is formed and invites to weekends in the country are extended post-vacation. Despite Louise’s misgivings, the American family travels to a rustic farmhouse where Paddy flips from gregarious host to seething bully and back, and the kids discover something terrible in the basement…

james mcavoy, james watkins, mackenzie davis, scoot mcnairy, speak no evil

To discuss specifics of the horror is to spoil the experience of an incremental discomfort for audiences as social niceties are tested to the limit. At what point, Watkins asks throughout, would YOU say something? What inappropriate action, unpleasant comment, disregard of personal values would be the tipping point to cast judgement? As Paddy and Ciara display boorish, cruel and ultimately sinister behaviour, Louise and Ben are forced to confront the unspoken trauma hidden in their own marriage, as well as question their liberal credentials.

That tonal tightrope rests on the performance of Paddy, here essayed by McAvoy, bringing all his charming and venal charisma to the role – delightfully chummy one minute, a savage the next. It’s a monstrously entertaining turn in his hands and one that makes a revised ending work despite softening the nihilism and inhumanity of the original. It also allows more agency for Davies, playing a spikier version of the first film’s fussy wife, a woman who can, and will, bring her own barbarity to the fore when required. As a brisk, assured social horror (with plenty of vengeful tool use) Speak No Evil is a satisfying scare. But those that can bear the terrible sadness and appalling use of secateurs, should also seek out Christian Tafdrup’s urtext version. And hug your children twice as hard after watching either…

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Speak No Evil is in cinemas now

Dispatches

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

September 13, 2024

bettlejuice bettlejuice, catherine o'hara, jenna ortega, michael keaton, tim burton, winona ryder

DISPATCH: JENNA ORTEGA BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

With the Venice Film Festival marking the move of summer into Autumn, it’s perhaps fitting that a Halloween movie opened the 81st festivities. Thirty five years after Beetlejuice was first released, its sequel reunited the original cast alongside Jenna Ortega on the Lido’s red carpet – something director Tim Burton had never envisaged for a film he admits he doesn’t quite understand the success of. A quirky horror comedy starring Michael Keaton as a potty-mouthed, green-haired ghost who haunts the Deetz family when they move into a new house, it was the film that made a star of Winona Ryder (aged 15 when she filmed) and cemented a decades-long collaborative process between Burton and his two leads.

In the years since, Beetlejuice has become a cult classic and after the success of other legacy sequels such as Top Gun Maverick and Ghostbusters: Afterlife it was only a matter of time before ‘The Juice’ returned to haunted audiences anew. And on a balmy August evening Greg Williams joined the cast pre-premiere at their Venetian hotel as the film received warm reviews from critics tickled by the return to practical effects, a Ryder-Keaton re-run, Ortega’s snarky charm and the daft fun of Burton’s distinct signature touch.

‘Over the past few years, I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry, I sort of lost myself,’ the director admitted to journalists earlier in the day. ‘For me, I realized the only way to be a success is that I have to love doing it. For this one, I just enjoyed and loved making it.’ For Burton that meant working with Ryder, Keaton and Catherine O’Hara again. Having worked with Burton on other projects, Ryder felt safe to step into a new story with the director again. ‘My love and trust for Tim runs so deep and there was a sense of a certain playfulness and readiness to try things,’ she said, confessing that one of her favourite things about returning to the role of Lydia Deetz – not a TV medium and mother to a teenage daughter – was staring into Keaton’s eyes again. ‘It had been such a special experience the first one and just to be able to come back to it was just a dream come true.’

Burton calls Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ‘a weird family movie’ that examines the rifts between parents and children as Lydia returns to her original haunted house after the death of her father. Her teen daughter, Astrid, may not believe her mum can see dead people but she soon changes her mind after a run-in with a ghost and the afterlife. Burton credits some of his creative rejuvenation to making the first season of Wednesday with Jenna Ortega so she seemed the natural choice for the role of Astrid. Ortega – whose red-carpet custom Dior dress nodded to Lydia’s wedding dress in the original film – has had a similar fast rise to fame as Ryder and the two women bonded immediately on set, not only as mother and daughter but as actors who have become emo icons of their generation. ‘The way Winona and I got on was quite weird,’ Ortega says. ‘It was like we could read each other’s minds a little bit.’ Ryder was, she says, immediately warm and welcoming. ‘It was at a time where my career was taking a different turn. I didn’t realize that I needed that from somebody who could relate, but I did.’

Also along for the ride are Willem Dafoe as an afterlife detective who used to be an actor on a TV cop show, Monica Bellucci as Delores, a long-dead vamp with unfinished business with Beetlejuice; and Justin Theroux as Lydia’s odious boyfriend and manager.

Burton also brought SFX guru Neil Scanlon onto the project to ensure that the low-fi, fast and fun ethos of the first film was resurrected – so just like the original, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features tactile practical effects to add to the comedy and off-kilter vibe (the waiting room is rammed with ridiculous deaths via piranha, chimney, cats, sharks and hotdogs). The result, says Burton, is a movie very much in the spirit of the original and ‘a very simple emotional movie’ – one that gained a standing ovation post-premiere. ‘The Juice’ is very much loose.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now
Read our review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice here

Screening Room

ANORA

November 1, 2024

Dispatches

RUMOURS

October 25, 2024

Screening Room

SALEM’S LOT

October 10, 2024

Dispatches

GEORGE CLOONEY & BRAD PITT

September 27, 2024

Screening Room

THE OUTRUN

September 27, 2024

Watch

JOSH HARTNETT

September 20, 2024

Watch

NAOMI ACKIE

September 20, 2024

Watch

CATE BLANCHETT

September 20, 2024

Screening Room

SPEAK NO EVIL

September 13, 2024

Dispatches

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

September 13, 2024

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