Times 2 - UK (2020-12-11)

8 1GT Friday December 11 2020 | the times

film reviews

The Bee Gees: How Can

You Mend a Broken Heart

12, 111min

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L

eave it to Michael Bay. Other

film-makers have used

lockdown to contemplate time

(see Martin Scorsese’s short

for the BBC), to reflect on lost

lives (see Gurinder Chadha’s entry in

the Homemade lockdown anthology),

and to give us a good scare (see last

week’s horror Host). The blockbuster

kingpin and brutalist auteur behind

the Transformers franchise, however,

has swaggered into the pandemic

and given everything in sight a

good kicking. The result is this

high-octane action satire that was

Coronavirus: the blockbuster

Action supremo

Michael Bay is

back, but this time

he’s got a storyline,

says Kevin Maher

conceived and filmed in the summer

(production restrictions are hidden

by camera formats and narrative

invention) and which consistently

treads a delicate path between giddy

exploitation and provocative social

commentary.

Bay, acting as producer here, has

handed the directorial reins to

newcomer Adam Mason, who

effortlessly apes his mentor’s signature

style (primary colours, lens flare,

burning sunlight, square jaws and lots

of Swat teams) while providing some

much-needed storytelling clarity.

The setting is near-future Los

Angeles (in 2024), where the

coronavirus has mutated into the

ultra-lethal Covid-23 (which has a

mortality rate of 56 per cent —

stranger things.. .) and where we

busily ping between a plethora of

disparate characters on the make,

courtesy of hunky bicycle courier Nico

(KJ Apa from Riverdale). Nico, we

quickly learn, is one of a handful of

Los Angelenos who are immune to the

virus and thus derided by the envious,

furious populace as “muney scum!”

Martial law has been declared, and

Department of Sanitation kill squads

roam the streets warning potential

Covid patients, “If you attempt to

leave your house you will be met with

lethal force!” (And you thought the

rule of six was tough.) When Nico’s

girlfriend Sara (Sofia Carson) is

threatened with deportation to the

dreaded Q Zone (a squalid refugee

camp for infected Americans) he’s

forced to extort some high-value

“immunity passes” from rich socialite

Piper Griffin (Demi Moore). Which

is where the trouble really begins.

It’s patchy, admittedly — a character

in a warehouse who appears “ex

machina” doesn’t make any sense

— but it’s also audacious. And it’s

the first mainstream film to address

unapologetically, in every scene,

in every frame of film, our present

situation.

In cinemas and on Amazon, Apple,

Google and Sky Store

I’m Your Woman

15, 120min

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This atmospheric underworld drama is

about a mobster’s wife forced to go on

the run through rural Pennsylvania

when her husband mysteriously

disappears. Rachel Brosnahan, from

TV’s The Marvelous Mrs Maisel,

ditches her light comedy persona for

something tougher and more satisfying.

Her clueless, taciturn Jean is handed

a newborn baby by psychopathic

spouse Eddie (Bill Heck) in the

opening scene (he has “sourced” it

elsewhere), and her complicated

personal journey inevitably involves

a crash course in parenting while

bouncing between safe houses and

avoiding summary executions at the

hand of Eddie’s enemies.

It sounds wacky and Coen brothers

lite, yet the allure of the film is in the

seriousness with which the director,

Julia Hart, embraces the material. The

result is a meditative character

portrait interspersed with sudden jolts

of high-tension violence. KM

On Amazon

Steven Spielberg’s long-time producer

Frank Marshall directs this exhaustive

musical documentary about the

undulating fortunes of the fraternal

singing sensations the Bee Gees.

Unashamed to examine the

difficulties and intense competition

between the brothers Gibb, the film is

chockablock with eye witnesses and

testimonies, including from the last

living Bee Gee, 74-year-old Barry

Gibb, interviewed in his Miami home.

Expert opinion comes from high-

profile pop players, including Chris

Martin and Noel Gallagher. Yet the

film is at its most gripping when diving

deep, Behind the Music-style, into the

construction of classic tracks. At the

end, the poignancy of Barry alone,

surrounded by gold discs and still

grieving for his brothers Maurice and

Robin, is nicely underscored. KM

From December 13 on Sky

Documentaries, from December 14

on Amazon, Apple, Google and DVD

ALAMY

Demi Moore in

Songbird

Songbird

15, 90min

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American Utopia

12, 105min

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Margot Robbie, right, the charismatic

Oscar-nominated star of Bombshell

and Birds of Prey, is inexplicably

demoted to third banana status in

this tug-of-love melodrama about

a sensitive rebel growing up in

drought-stricken 1930s rural Texas.

Finn Cole, 25, plays 17-year-old

(when will Hollywood stop doing

this?) dreamer Eugene Evans, who

longs to escape the dust storms of

Childress County in a film that

impersonates the canon of Terrence

Malick so exhaustively that the novice

director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte must

be verging on copyright infringement

(see nature montages, sunset footage

and a whispering, meandering, mostly

pointless voiceover

from Lola Kirke).

Into Eugene’s

world steps wild-

card bank robber

Allison Wells

(Robbie). And before

you can say “Bonnie

and Clyde reboot”

Eugene locks her in

a shed. Yes, he keeps

her inside a hay barn

for most of the film

while he argues

with stepdad George

(Travis Fimmel)

about his destiny.

Eugene and Allison

eventually bond, snog and hit the road

for a climactic rampage, but it’s too

little too late in a movie that has

countless artful frames and not a

moment of authenticity. KM

In cinemas

A little dose of David

Byrne, unless you’re a

devoted Talking Heads fan,

can go a long way. His art

school mannerisms and

performance art persona

always, even in his heyday,

felt a tad tired. This new

Spike Lee-directed concert film,

however, is a revelation.

It’s a live recording, filmed in

Broadway’s Hudson Theatre last year,

of the 68-year-old singer-songwriter,

above, left, and 11 musicians stomping

delightfully through 21 tracks from his

oeuvre. In between ditties, Byrne

treats us to sprightly ruminations on

everything from Dadaism to television

to the possibilities

still promised

by American

democracy.

Lee injects the

material with a

vibrant, zippy

pacing (11 swooping,

spinning cameras)

that accentuates

the upbeat nature

of so many

chosen tunes

(choreographed

dance routines are big here).

It flags horribly near the end, where

Byrne insists on banging through

three middling numbers from the 2018

album American Utopia. But he’s smart

enough to end on a winner with a

gorgeous, life-affirming rendition of

Road to Nowhere. KM

From Monday on Amazon, Apple,

Google and Sky Store

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Dreamland

15, 98min

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