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BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

September 13, 2024

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

Words by JANE CROWTHER

The juice is, once again, loose. Tim Burton returns to his 1988 horror-comedy for the opening of this year’s Venice Film Festival for unapologetic fan service and warm-fuzzies. Having admitted to becoming disillusioned with the film industry before deciding to revisit the ‘ghost with the most’, Burton throws all of his trademark quirks into a movie that features cameos, wacky needledrops, stop-motion and tactile practical effects to nostalgic effect.

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

Catching up with Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, complete with goth chopped fringe) decades after she first met so-called bio-exorcist, Beetlejuice, as a teen, this legacy sequel from the producer behind Top Gun Maverick, mines audience affection for the weird and wonderful original by lovingly repeating the journey. So TV psycho Lydia is called back to the New England haven of Winter River when her father dies (in an animated, comedic fashion) along with her step-mom (Catherine O’Hara), cynical teen daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) and odious boyfriend/manager, Rory (Justin Theroux). Lydia and Astrid have a strained relationship, not least because Mom’s slimy romantic interest is always trying to be a ‘dope dad’ figure, but their familial bonds are put to the test when Astrid meets a local boy and when Beetlejuice’s past comes back to haunt him – forcing him to plague the Deetz family again. Along for the helter-skelter ride are Willem Dafoe’s Neitherworld detective, Monica Bellucci’s corpse bride and an army of shrunken headed minions led by tremulous ‘Bob’… 

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

Keaton and Ryder seem to have hardly aged since the original and fall back easily into step with him growling fourth-wall-breaking Beetlejuice one-liners and her looking delightfully bewildered. While the script may not seem quite as subversive as its predecessor, the film really takes flight when logic is abandoned and frivolity is honoured. Keaton literally spilling his sloppy guts, sucking influencers into their phones and making the entire cast sing and dance to Richard Harris’ bonkers 1968 single Macarthur Park (and yes, an oozing, green-iced cake is present) is a hoot, a couple of segments featuring stop-motion Saturn sand worms tickle and a daft character death genuinely upsets (the film is dedicated to their demise). Fans wanting more of the waiting room get it – plus a built-out ever-after universe featuring dry cleaners, immigration halls, subway stations and call centres inhabited by people who have died ridiculously. There’s disco dancing, a Richard Marx nod, a disquieting offspring and a goofy ending that leaves room for more. Might we want another visitation? If it’s brisk, disposable, self-aware silliness like this, then we’ll likely take a ticket and get in line.

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

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now

KEVIN COSTNER

September 10, 2024

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, Kevin Costner, Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller
hollywood authentic, venice dispatch, venice film festival, greg williams
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, Kevin Costner, Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller

DISPATCH: KEVIN COSTNER HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 2
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

Kevin Costner wasn’t meant to be in Venice. The original release plan for Chapter 2 of his sweeping Western series, Horizon: An American Saga meant that the actor/director would not have been able to attend the film festival in the floating city. But like all things Costner seems able to manifest, the release date changed and festival director Alberto Barbera asked the Californian to bring his epic oater to Venice where Costner was mobbed by fans during a standing ovation at the premiere.

‘It’s been a perfect experience, really,’ Costner tells Hollywood Authentic of the way things turned out, not least because he brought his 17 year-old son, Cayden, along for the ride. The four days the duo spent at the festival turned out to be a teaching moment about the nature of resilience and the ability to get things done despite roadblocks. ‘He’s seen me labour over the course of this movie. For his entire life he’s known that I’ve talked about this thing,’ Costner says of his son. ‘And then to see me not let go of the opportunity, and the hope of it, and to actually go out and make two of them – he was able to see the culmination of that. It’s a weird thing when you look at your dad, I think, and see suddenly this movie playing, and the people standing and clapping for it. I think, maybe, he saw something in not letting go of a dream, and that you keep pushing.’

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, Kevin Costner, Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, Kevin Costner, Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller

It’s a drive and self belief that makes him something of a pioneer in the wild west that is the Hollywood studio system… ‘I don’t see that correlation because there’s people that hide behind corporation momentum, and look at numbers,’ he says. ‘They wouldn’t survive out in the West. That’s a whole other corporate mentality that allows you to be cutthroat.’ Costner, who plays lone gunslinger and cowboy Hayes Ellison in the films seems cut from the same cloth as his character; a resourceful man who has a definite destination in mind. ‘Maybe my individualism is what you’re looking at,’ Costner acquiesces, ‘and then I’m kind of a unicorn in my own business, by using my money. I don’t like doing that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t even know why I do that. But when I do, I do a lot of sharing of work that could be revisited and revisited. And I certainly think Horizon qualifies as that because I promise you: if you watch it a second and a third and a fourth time, you will see something new.’ 

Hollywood, and Costner’s fans, await to see if the unicorn manifests chapters three and four of his saga. Our bet is that he will…

Costner certainly has form in not letting go of dreams – his 1990 revisionist western Dances With Wolves was considered a folly by critics yet the actor pressed on and saw the film a crowning success which went on to win seven Oscars. The same is true of Horizon – a saga Costner has long imagined as an epic four-parter and put his own cash into when studios didn’t share his vision. He’s made two chapters of the tale with plans to continue filming three and four later this year. ‘I don’t fall out of love that easily,’ Costner laughs of his decades-long drive to make the movie he dreamt of. ‘I don’t pretend to be the last say on this subject. I don’t try to be a person who’s trying to reinvent the western. I just simply want to go at it historically, and apply human behaviour to the themes that I think tell the story.’

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, Kevin Costner, Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 will be released later this year
Read our review here

KODI SMIT-MCPHEE

September 8, 2024

alfonso cuarón, kodi smit-mcphee, disclaimer
hollywood authentic, venice dispatch, venice film festival, greg williams
alfonso cuarón, kodi smit-mcphee, disclaimer

DISPATCH: KODI SMIT-MCPHEE DISCLAIMER
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

‘I should have stayed in my seat,’ Kodi Smit-Mcphee smiles when he recalls premiering Alfonso Cuarón’s new Apple+ limited series Disclaimer on the Venice Film Festival red carpet directly before the premiere of Maria, in which he also stars. In Disclaimer, based on Renee Knight‘s 2015 bestseller, Cate Blanchett plays an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Catherine Ravenscroft, who’s past comes back to haunt her when she receives a novel in the post. Told via three different perspectives and two different time periods, Smit-Mcphee plays the  directionless son she shares with Sasha Baron Cohen. In Pablo Larrain’s biopic of Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie, he appears as the personification of her sedative medication who manifests as a TV reporter questioning her in the week of her life. ‘’I’m literally named Mandrax, which is this suppressant kind of medication that she takes. It’s these therapeutic conversations that she’s ultimately having with her subconscious – but with me,’ he tells Hollywood Authentic when we sit down overlooking the Grand Canal in the St Regis Hotel. Both projects gave him the opportunity to work closely with powerhouse actors in Blanchett and Jolie. ‘It was great in the sense of just how generous and giving and safe and comforting these women are. I really feel like both took me under their wing, and made me feel welcomed and good. And a couple of Angelina’s sons were also on set. So I hung out with them quite a bit. They were really beautiful as well.’

alfonso cuarón, kodi smit-mcphee, disclaimer

Venice hosted two red carpets for the premiere of the seven-part Disclaimer – the cast photographed on both occasions by Greg Williams – and for Smit-Mcphee coming to Venice gave the actor the chance to spend time with co-stars he didn’t meet during filming as their characters’ timelines didn’t cross on-screen. He and Leila Geroge, who plays the younger Catherine, and Louis Partridge – who essays a young man who has a life-changing impact on her – compared notes on filming as Smit-Mcphee spent six months filming on sets in London (and adopting an English accent) while George and Partridge filmed for seven weeks in Italy. 

For George the role required the actor to play two very different versions of the character as well as perform key explicit scenes with Partridge. The part required her to go to some dark place. ‘I use music quite a lot for when I have to shift into another place emotionally. Different playlists for different things, and that just immediately triggers something for me,’ she says. And the intimate scenes were an additional challenge. ‘It’s really important, of course, to have an intimacy coordinator so that everyone feels that there’s someone that they can go to, and feel safe. So there’s that side of it – the technical side of it. The other side of it is just getting to know [Partridge], and feeling safe with the person as a friend. We had so much time in Italy before we did those scenes. We’d go to each other’s trailers before we’d do something like that, and be like, ‘How are you feeling about the day?’ Communication and check-ins. And then just being able to let it go. Just leave it behind.’

leila george, disclaimer
leila george, disclaimer

‘It was kind of like a dance. It was all rehearsed,’ Partridge agrees. ‘And so, in some ways, it was more helpful to be in your own space, and occasionally checking in. Because we knew what we were about to do. And then, at the end of the day, we’d have a little dance, and shake it all off.’

Smit-Phee laughs that he enjoyed digging into playing a ‘grubby, homebody kind of teen’ as Blanchett and Baron Cohen’s son. As for working with Blanchett as his mum, he says: ‘Cate makes you question your abilities in the best way because she can go from this beautiful, light-hearted, joking fun in between takes. But then when she needs to go into something dark and heavier, it’s almost as if there’s a switch. But of course, there’s not a switch. It’s a great deal of work she does to develop these characters and get into these moments. But, my God, it looks like magic.’

The resulting work in Disclaimer is ‘so powerful’ and will prompt important conversation, says Partridge. He’s just completed work on Noah Baumbach’s new film and is currently filming Guinness, the story of the stout dynasty, playing Edward Guinness. ‘It’s brilliant, I’m loving it,’ he enthuses. ‘Do I get a lifetime’s supply of Guinness now? It wasn’t in my contract. That was a mistake, perhaps…’

alfonso cuarón, louis partridge, disclaimer
alfonso cuarón, louis partridge, disclaimer
alfonso cuarón, louis partridge, disclaimer

Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October
Read our review of Disclaimer here

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 2

September 7, 2024

horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, kevin costner

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Kevin Costner’s sweeping saga charting the disparate lives intertwined through the often brutal expansion of the 19th century American west continues to focus on the experience of women on the frontier. Picking up events and storylines immediately after the first film (viewing that is required to understand the interwoven narrative threads), the tale of desert town Horizon is told via the wagon trains, cowboys, first nation tribes, pioneers, chinese tradespeople, sex workers and the moneymen in Chicago selling plots of land – and dreams – in an unknown region. Graves are prominent in every story…

ella hunt, horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, kevin costner, sam worthington, sienna miller

Having been widowed in the first chapter, Frances (Sienna Miller) navigates a new life for her and her daughter, understanding that though she is resilient and resourceful, it is the protection of men that will inform their future. Meanwhile, on the dusty wagon train plodding across dangerous territory, snobby Brit Mrs Proctor (Ella Hunt) discovers both the venality and usefulness of male companions as she makes her way solo, her priggish ways broken into a new kind of defiance. Three put-upon sisters working for their Pa test the limits of their independence, while the on-the-run sex worker (Abbey Lee) helped by Costner’s stoic Hayes Ellison continues to evade the Sykes brothers. And the matriarch and granddaughter of a Chinese lumber company and teahouse are instrumental in building a settlement from canvas dwellings to a homestead community.

horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, sienna miller
horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, sam worthington

Costner and other male stars are integral to events but designed as it is (a planned four-part saga), their stories will have room to develop in later instalments. While Hayes Ellison was key in part one, he takes a back seat here, keeping his counsel at a horse breaking camp until his temper frays to thrilling effect with a bar room shootout. As a rich tapestry of tales destined for the long haul, Chapter Two could feel unresolved to some, but if viewed as a halfway point in a robust series, it hits emotional highs. The story of Mrs Proctor is particularly affecting as she is terrorised by Douglas Smith’s Sig, her despair galvanising in the cool waters of a river – a baptism for a new life and attitude. Miller also makes an impression with two key speeches; one explaining the options open to her to Sam Worthington’s cavalryman, another parsing the need for sisterhood in a cruel climate.

Costner’s shootout aside, it’s a quieter, more contemplative instalment, setting up high plains wagon chases, skirmishes with first nations and dead shots from the backs of horses (seen in the end reel preview of Chapter Three). And the scenery… lensed with a sweeping score, Costner understands the lexicon of Westerns and provides numerous moments that will make aficionados’ hearts soar. 

ella hunt, horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, kevin costner, sam worthington, sienna miller

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 will be released later this year

SOPHIE WILDE & HARRIS DICKINSON

September 5, 2024

sophie wilde, babygirl
hollywood authentic, venice dispatch, venice film festival, greg williams
sophie wilde, babygirl
harris dickinson, sophie wilde, babygirl

DISPATCH: SOPHIE WILDE & HARRIS DICKINSON BABYGIRL
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

As she looks out of Venice’s Grand Canal wearing a 16Arlington dress teamed with Church brogues, actor Sophie Wilde contemplates her ‘surreal’ 13 months which started with the release of Australian horror hit Talk To Me in July 2023 and culminated with her attending the premiere of one of the buzziest movies at the city’s film festival this year, Babygirl. Wilde attended the red carpet in a Loewe custom look with archive Cartier jewellery from the year she was born. A special moment for the Sydney-bred actor who has been pinching herself since the rave reviews for Talk To Me. ‘We all knew we’d made something special, and that it was something that we were all super-proud of. But for it to have this international response was totally beyond our comprehension. It’s interesting that one project can really shift so many things in such a dramatic way. I’ve signed with US agents and interesting roles are coming my way. So it’s definitely been a shift.’

sophie wilde, babygirl
harris dickinson, sophie wilde, babygirl

One of those roles is Babygirl. Telling the story of a CEO (Nicole Kidman) who embarks on an affair with her younger intern (Harris Dickinson) and explores the spectrum of female desire, the erotic drama sees Wilde play an executive assistant to Kidman. She is a key player in a chess game of power moves. ‘It’s definitely a very interesting conversation that Halina is playing with,’ Wilde says, ‘in the sense of women of different generations, and how they approach their womanhood. And their relationship to power and progression.’ 

Wilde was sent the script after impressing Reijn with her work in Talk To Me and was immediately hooked on the project after a meeting with the writer-director. ‘I think Halina’s a literal genius. She’s amazing,’ she ethuses. ‘She’s curated such an incredible film. I think what was interesting to me was the characters. They all felt incredibly infallible. There was a sense of moral ambiguity around everyone which I really liked. It was like, no one was right or wrong. It was just complex, like human beings are, and how relationships are.’

harris dickinson, sophie wilde, babygirl
harris dickinson, babygirl
harris dickinson, sophie wilde, babygirl

The gig also offered the opportunity to work with Kidman, who Wilde describes as ‘very much an Australian icon’ and a trailblazer for Antipodean talent breaking into Hollywood. ‘Watching someone like Nicole work is such a privilege. She’s honestly such a master of her craft, and such a powerhouse. I feel like I’ve very much grown up watching her films – Moulin Rouge is literally one of my favourite films. So it’s amazing to be able to work with someone who’s been such an inspiration. And to have someone of her calibre just there, supporting you, and backing you, and championing you – it’s really special.’
Babygirl is very much the kind of work Wilde wants to do going forward, she says. ‘There’s something so interesting about doing smaller, auteur-driven work that is very character-driven.’ Before she arrived in Venice Wilde finished shooting Watch Dogs, an adaptation of the video game which she describes as unlike anything she’s done before. And then there’s the possibility of her returning to Talk To Me 2. ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ she teases. ‘All I know is that I find it exciting, that range of creative spaces you can enter.’

Babygirl is released in cinemas later this year
Read our review of Babygirl here

DANIEL CRAIG

September 4, 2024

hollywood authentic, venice dispatch, venice film festival, greg williams
daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

DISPATCH: DANIEL CRAIG QUEER
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

Well before Bond, Daniel Craig impressed with his range and bold choices (which he then brought to the iconic franchise), but his raw, funny, vulnerable and ultimately transformative performance in Luca Guadagnino’s fever-dream adaptation of William S Burroughs’ autobiographical Beat generation novel is masterful and deserving of awards nominations.

Paying a boozy heroin addict in desperate love with a young man (Drew Starkey) in fifties South America – Queer impressed and shocked in equal measure when it premiered at Venice Film Festival in the main competition. Burroughs’ explicit book translates into a trippy, romantic voyage with erotic sex scenes in the hands of Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes and Guadagnino, showcasing Craig at the height of his powers as he cruises the streets of Mexico City and struggles with all of his character Lee’s addictions: love, lust, drugs, the search for a higher plane…  With costumes by Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson, an anachronistically cool soundtrack (Prince, Nirvana, New Order) and gorgeous sets built in Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios, Queer is a sensory delight that asks questions about love, life, death and everything in between. Little wonder it was snapped up for distribution by A24. ‘If I wasn’t in this movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it,’ Craig says of the project. ‘It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there.’ 

Though he’s known Guadagnino for years and wanted to work with him ‘for a long time’, Queer finally offered the opportunity for collaboration. Craig and Guadagnino worked together in the key casting of Starkey as former US-serviceman Allerton, the locus for Lee’s attention. They saw the Outer Banks actor early in the process and returned to him despite seeing hundreds of other potentials. Required to dance with each other throughout the film – physically during a trippy sequence in the Amazon, as well as emotionally and sexually – Starkey and Craig worked together for months before production on choreography and movement to nail the connection between the two men.

‘There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set,’ Craig told journalists when he arrived on the Lido. ‘You’re in a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and as real, as natural, as we possibly could. Drew was a wonderful, beautiful, fantastic actor to work with, and we had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.’

The resulting scenes are striking as much for their eroticism as they are for their tenderness, with Craig bringing a moving sensitivity and humour to his portrayal of a man who is light years away from the assured swagger of James Bond – even if Guadagnino does have him sip a cheeky vodka martini (or two) during one drunken scene in a hat tip to his most recent role. ‘One of the characteristics of the great actors that you love and see onscreen and are affected by, I would say is the generosity of approach, the capacity of being very mortal onscreen,’ Guadagnino said at the Venice press conference. ‘Very few are, and very few iconic legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen, and one of them is Daniel.’

daniel craig, rachel weisz

Queer is released in cinemas later this year
Read our review here


JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX

September 4, 2024

joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

Four primary-coloured umbrellas: the first sign that Joker: Folie à Deux is going to be different. Very different. The sequel to Todd Phillips’ Joker, the film that radically reinvented Batman’s nemesis from the DC Comics universe, this continues the story of Arthur Fleck, the wannabe stand-up who winds up on a murder spree in Gotham City. Now in Arkham Asylum, he’s being transported across a rain-drenched courtyard when up pop the umbrellas, held by the guards. Singin’ In The Rain? Well, they soon will be.

Reinventing the film as a musical, Joker: Folie à Deux takes old standards like ‘That’s Entertainment’ and The Carpenters’  ‘Close To You’, slipping them into the narrative, as Arthur shifts, in his mind at least, from comedian to all-round entertainer. Joining him centre stage is Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), better known to fans as Dr. Harley Quinn (traditionally, the Joker’s love interest in DC lore). Here, she’s been committed to Arkham by her mother for arson; she even sets a communal prison room on fire, allowing her and Arthur to get some brief alone time to spark their obsessive romance.

joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips
joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips

Lee is obsessed by Arthur, his murderous actions inspiring her just as they do the thousands of deranged followers that line the streets with ‘Free Joker’ posters – ‘he’s not sick, he’s perfect’ she insists. With the title a French-language reference to a shared mental insanity, the film is something of a twisted love story, as an affection-starved Arthur goes looking for love. Complementing this, the narrative also follows Arthur as he stands trial, his lawyer (Catherine Keener) using the defence that he has a “fragmentation” in his personality, that Joker is entirely separate from Arthur. To dodge the death penalty, Fleck needs to convince that Joker does not lie just below the surface, but with a baying mob outside and Lee feeding his alter-ego, which aspect of him will triumph?

Back in the role that won him an Oscar in 2020, Phoenix once again fully inhabits the part, physically and emotionally. Just the sight of his protruding shoulder blades, gaunt face and cadaver-like chest will make you shiver; but more than that, it’s another masterclass in conveying trauma and mania. The flourish of Joker is incrementally hinted at with the twirl of a jacket or a barking laugh, later unleashed to full tap-dancing, snarling bravado in colour-pop dream sequences and desaturated courtrooms. Alongside him, Gaga further cements her status as a performer of note; not only does she handle the songs adeptly, as you’d expect, but she gives a resonant turn as a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

Once again, Phillips conjures a grim, grimy and grey Gotham, a world so dirty you feel like scrubbing your hands afterwards. And while the film may boast less fiery intensity than the first, the bold choice to twist a prison movie and courtroom drama into a Hollywood Golden Age musical has to be admired. In the words of Al Jolson, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM
Joker: Folie à Deux releases in cinemas 2 October

QUEER

September 3, 2024

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino returns to another beloved book with an intense gay romance at its centre with Venice Film Festival buzz-generator Queer; adapting’ Beat icon Wiliam S Burroughs’ unfinished autobiographical novel tracking his time in Mexico City and South America during the fifties. Starring Daniel Craig as ‘gentleman of independent means’ and heroin addict, Lee, as he wrestles with love for a young man (Drew Starkey) who ‘obliges’ him with sex, Guadagnino puts his particular swoony stamp on Burroughs’ raw, explicit prose. 

Divided into chapters and crafted from Queer and other Burroughs’ works as well as aspects of his real life, Queer begins with Chapter 1: How Do You Like Mexico? – a portrait of crumpled, mezcal-swilling ex-pat Lee as he looks for love in gay scene bars alongside his unlucky friend Joe (Jason Schwartzman, a rumpled delight) and the so-called ‘green lantern boys’. While outwardly he seems to be having fun as he lurches from bar to bar and picks up men, Lee searches for something more profound. As he listens to the hapless Joe’s misadventures with hook-ups, Guadagnino has him flicker transparently like a ghost, becoming insubstantial, incomplete. He wanders the streets in slow-mo soundtracked by Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ (linking Lee’s sensitivity to Cobain’s as well as their shared drug of choice) and takes one night stands back to a seedy motel that looks like a Hopper painting.

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

It’s during these boozy wanderings that his eyes meet over a cock fight (of course) with handsome ex-US serviceman Allerton. An experienced cruiser, Lee is tilted off-balance by Allerton – a man whose sexuality he struggles to read and who makes him a blushing, awkward, giggling suitor. The duo hang out, watching Jean Costeau’s Orpheus and drinking until Lee can bear the tension no more. In a speech lifted directly from the text, Lee confesses his ‘proclivities’. Allerton, as slinky as a big cat, agrees to accompany him home and a complex love affair begins that starts with an erotic sex scene and travels to Ecuador and the Amazon jungle for hallucinogenic drug trips and dark nights of the soul.

That Daniel Craig can do more than Bond is well established but his performance here might startle those most comfortable with him in impeccable suits seducing women – and Guadagnino gives him a couple of cheeky vodka martinis to sip on in a nice nod to his famous role. But this is Craig flexing all his career muscles; sozzled and soulful, vulnerable and nuanced, he paints a universal portrayal of the lovelorn, the disconnected. There’s a delightful pathos and humour he brings to scenes where he begs Allerton to meet him halfway in running headlong into love and lust. And in sexual moments he radiates a tenderness and yearning that gives greater depth to scenes tabloid newspapers will no doubt have a field day with.

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

Building out on Naked Lunch’s centipede as a motif, the drugs trips of The Yage Letters and the author’s thoughts from his Last Words, as well as incidents from his real life (his wife’s accidental shooting is represented in party tricks and dream sequences), screenwriter Justin Kuritzes and Guadagnino create a lurid study of one man’s interior life. Filmed entirely at Cinecittà Studios, the locations are rendered in a vintage postcard feel that’s like a memory and the anachronistic soundtrack takes in Prince and New Order to give further elasticity to the idea of reality. This is a just a version of a fifties moment in time, intended to be like the magic mirror in Cocteau’s Orpheus or the high promised by Lesley Manville’s feral botanist who provides Lee and Allerton with the yage cocktail deep in the jungle; a reflection. ‘It’s not a portal’ she tells them. The same is true of Queer – it’s a comedy, a love letter, a travelogue, a heroin withdrawal account, a trip, a study of an artist… depending on your own proclivities.

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Queer is in cinemas now

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

September 2, 2024

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature length film boasts his expected vibrant reds, strong female performances and a discourse on life/death; but in transposing his signature style to a chilly New York there’s a fresh austerity and overt Sirkian sensibility also at play. The result is a vibrant and life-affirming treat as well as a battle cry against climate change. 

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Inspired by Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar explores our relationship to death (both personally and environmentally) via two old journalist friends who once painted the town red as magazine writers and who reconnect when author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) learns war reporter Martha (Tilda Swinton) is terminably ill. Suffering from stage 3 cervical cancer, no-nonsense Martha has tired of her gruelling treatments and is now at peace with the idea that she ‘deserves a good death’. Ingrid, by comparison, has just written a novel exploring her terror of dying, so when Martha asks her to be in ‘the room next door’ of a gorgeous rental house when she commits euthanasia, she’s both honoured and horrified. 

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Within a soaring melodrama score and colour-pop production design, Moore and Swinton discuss the pleasures of life (books, writing, birdsong, movies), shared experiences (John Tuturro plays the eco-warrior lover both women have shared) and the depletion of self caused by the ravages of illness. As Martha reaches her end, she looks back to her past – to the war experiences that have shaped her and the conception of the daughter she’s estranged from, told in flashbacks with a luminous Esther McGregor playing young Martha.  
There are moments of great visual beauty as expected from an Almodóvar film; pink snowflakes drifting over a Manhattan skyline, Moore and Swinton lying side by side on pistachio-green and cherry-red sun loungers, the lush tones of an autumn garden. And in the hands of such accomplished actors, the emotional magnificence also gleams; Swinton reciting poetry and the dialogue to John Huston’s The Dead as a tear slips from her eye, the way Moore reacts to a closed red door. Though Swinton playing her own daughter may jar for some, it works in a film that champions the idea of leaving the world with the next generation in mind, and reminds us all to be grateful for the small wonders of everyday life. After watching this the world may look all the more vivid on leaving the dark of the theatre…

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Room Next Door releases in cinemas later this year

WOLFS

September 1, 2024

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

Words by JANE CROWTHER

When a married New York DA (Amy Ryan) finds herself in a sticky situation – a dead hook-up in a penthouse suite – she calls the number of a man whose function is clean-up jobs. As the body of the boy she’s picked up in the lobby lies among shattered glass after bedroom hijinks, the voice on the line assures her he’ll take care of her problem. 

Enter George Clooney’s nameless lone wolf, an anonymous man with a body bag and a grumpy demeanour. ‘Nobody can do what I do,’ he insists. As he sets about his task, there’s a knock at the penthouse door: Brad Pitt’s fixer has also arrived. Dressed similarly and touting the same skill set, it seems Clooney’s not the only hitman in town – and now both of them are mixed up in a mess that reaches further than the luggage trolley of a high end hotel.

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

The whys and wherefores of plot are immaterial in a film that understands the main attraction is seeing real-life buddies zing off each other as two grouchy middle-aged mystery men forced to work together when a standard job takes an unexpected turn. Suffice to say, drugs, cartels, shootouts, gangster weddings and a dopey business student (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) are involved as the duo try to unravel a conspiracy overnight and in the process discover a grudging respect for each other.

Written and directed by Jon Watts as an amiable Ocean’s II, the appeal of Wolfs is the built-in chemistry between Pitt and Clooney as they banter and bitch through Chinatown foot and car chases, Croatian dance routines, and an interrogation in a hideous rent-by-the-hour hotel room. Their overlapping chatter plays like jazz, the result of years of off-screen friendship and the experience to inhabit these roles effortlessly.  Both actors have fun with their age, leaning into gags about bones cracking, needing Advil after some strenuous gunslinging and struggling to read pager messages without their glasses. Clooney’s car playlist is also a nice boomer dig; he listens to Sade’s Smooth Operator as he drives to a job.

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs
amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

It’s a tough gig for Abrams to steal any focus as the third wheel, a daffy teen who fancies a bit danger and ends up with the equivalent of a two killer dads (who might ice him but will also tell him to eat with his mouth closed), but he makes a lively impression – not least in a practical effect when he leaps over a moving car in tighty-whities and tube socks.

Clooney and Pitt clearly had a hoot making the film and the door is left open for more of the same if audiences also have a laugh. Abandon plot logic and Wolfs is daft fun with a rat pack vibe..

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Wolfs releases in cinemas 20 Sept before transferring to Apple TV+

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