Movies by Mills (November 2018) by Brian Mills

CONTENTS Page 3 4-7 8-11

Editorial The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Wildlife

12-15

Arctic

16-19

The Guilty

20-23

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead

24-27

Roma

28-31

Sometimes Always Never

32-35

The Old Man And The Gun

36-39

Beautiful Boy

40-43

Happy as Lazzaro

44-47

John McEnroe:In the Realm of Perfection

48-51

The Green Fog

52-55

The Kindergarten Teacher

56-59

Only You

60-63

The Sisters Brothers

64-67

Wildlife – Interview

68-71

Cinema Retrospect First Man review.

Poster.

PHOTO CREDITS: OCEAN FILMS: 1,4,7,72 ICON FILM DISTRIBUTION: 8,10,11 WARNER BROS:12,14,15 SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT: 16,18,19 NETFLIX: 20,22,23,24,26,27 IMAGE.NET:6,26a,30,31,32,34,35,40,42,43,44, 46,47,48,50,51,52,54,55,56,58,59 TIM P. WHITBY – Getty Images 2018: 26a,30a,36,38,39,64,66,67 JOHN PHILLIPS – Getty Images 2018: 26b,27,32,52,54,55 20th CENTURY FOX: 34,35 ANNAPURNA PICTURES: 60,62,63 UNIVERSAL PICTURES INTERNATIONAL:70,71

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We would like to thank the following for their invaluable help: Nikki Aslant, Sam Ross, Rob Deacon, Lucy Fleet, Hannah @ DDAPR.COM Claire Leach, Fabrice Ouakinine, Georgie Rennie, Jacob @Premiercomms.com Chiara Ciccolini @Organic-Publicity.Co.uk Molly Goring, Keir Waller @ Strike-Media.com Hannah Farr @ Curzon.com Jake Garriock @ Curzon.com Josh Samonini @ Fox.com Elizabeth Benjamin regarding “They’ll Love Me When I’m Plus the excellence and efficiency of the BFI Delegate

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Tatum, Holy Gregory Beasley

Dead”. Service Centre Team.

EDITORIAL Welcome to our special BFI London Film Festival Edition with coverage reviews of 15 films which were screened at the National Film Theatre, South Bank and the Central Picturehouse, Piccadilly. There were Gala Screenings, Special Presentations, Official Competition, First Feature Competition, Documentary Competition, and Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Experimenta, Family, Treasures from the Archive sections – something for everyone. Over 277 films screened at the biggest film festival in the UK. Our cover feature review is Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Among the other films reviewed are Roma, Happy as Lazzaro, The Old Man And The Gun, Only You, Wildlife, John McEnroe – In The Realm of Perfection, The Kindergarten Teacher, Sometimes Always Never, Arctic, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.

Plus, there is a review of Damien Chazelle’s First Man which was outside of the festival and is currently on theatrical release. Enjoy the read

Brian Mills Magazine Editor

Paul Ridler Magazine Designer

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THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE Directed by Terry Gilliam Starring: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellen Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko You crazy peasant. You think you can hide from me. We shall have such crazy adventures together. - Don Quixote

Toby, a disillusioned advertising executive becomes pulled into world of time jumping fantasy when a Spanish cobbler believes him to be Sancho Panza. He is unable to tell dreams from reality, while the old cobbler believes he is Don Quixote. Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth, a film that changed the hopes and dreams of a small Spanish village forever. Terry Gilliam has never given up on his dream to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and at last here is the film, but he still has problems because the film still seeks a UK distributor. It is not of course the first time that a film has faced serious problems in completing it and distributing due to financial difficulties: Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, a documentary about the film called They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is reviewed in this issue. And Terry Gilliam’s Lost in La Mancha is a documentary about trying to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and all the problems that befell it. Even a screening of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote seems a miracle, but thanks to The BFI London Film Festival, that miracle happened on the 16th, 17th, and the 20th of October. The verdict is that the film was worth waiting to see. The film is an adaptation of the classic book by Miguel de Cervantes and the storyline goes through four narratives: 1: The shoot in Spain where director Toby (Adam Driver) is attempting his own adaptation of the book. 2: A decade earlier when Toby arrived in Spain and shot a low budget black and white version. 3: Toby’s journey with the star of the first film as they escape a series of accidents. 4: A dream world where characters from each of the storylines converge. The resulting film is magnificent.

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Eavesdropping on Cannes where the film received a long-standing ovation. What was it like working with Terry? Terry really gave us the opportunity to be a big part of the script and we had a chance to participate in the creative process. - Joana Ribeiro (Angelica) I’m very happy to be working with Terry. I’m just happy to be working at my advanced age. It was wonderful. We’ve got quite a long history now, going back to “Brazil”, “The Brothers Grimm” and finally Terry has expressed that he put a lot of obstacles in the way until I was old enough to play Quixote. But it was a great experience.

- Jonathan Pryce (Quixote) He was old enough to bring his own eyebrows, beard and moustache. That’s why he got the job. Cervantes and Quixote were brilliant. In his writing he was so funny. It was about society and hopefully we got a bit of that into the film. Working in Portugal, I was forced to work with some Portuguese actors and finding my angel Joana and The Convent of Christ, The Knights Templar. An extraordinary building, it was actually the money that they took out of France and they built The Convent of Christ. Adam was cheap and available, and he was working in London. Amy, my daughter, got us together. We met in a little pub in Hampstead and here was the guy who didn’t look anything like how I thought Toby should look. Nothing about him was like Toby and suddenly I thought I had the right man. - Terry Gilliam You’re on this set. There is no preparation or idea that you have is quickly gone away. When a goat is staring at you and the sheep are going the wrong way, you’re going to have to trust Terry and the other actors you’re around. You try to be as unprepared as possible. Toby is a tourist who can play around with people’s ideas and leave. The town is inspired, but if they don’t have an avenue to put it… - Adam Driver (Toby) I think for me one of the sins of Toby was a man of talent who ends up selling dog food and toilet paper rather than than making films with ideas and I felt he had to pay the price. Thought he is punished quite a bit, He comes out as a decent human being in the end and he’s got a girl by his side. A girl who is playing Sancho Panza. Cervantes didn’t write this. The major question has been, will the film get international distribution? Distribution is OK and it will be released in many countries very very soon.

- Mariela Besuievsky (Producer)

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Toby (Adam Driver) and Don Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

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Toby (Adam Driver) in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Toby (Adam Driver) and Don Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

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WILDLIFE Directed by Paul Dano Starring: Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould. You know what they call trees in a forest fire? Fuel. You know what they call trees left up when the fire goes by? They call them the standing dead. - Jeanette Joe (Ed Oxenbould) witnesses his parents’ marriage falling apart after his mother finds another man. The book which the film is based on was a best-seller and really moved Paul and inspired him. It captured something from family that he loved and liked; that creativity and love in our lives. It is also one of the greatest sources of struggle we will have in our lives and the film captures that duality in a loving way and a difficult way too. Paul Dano had to take an internal life and make it into an image or an action, then when Paul wrote to him, gave him a great gift right away, and said, my book is my book and your picture is your picture. It would not benefit any of us, if you just tried to make the book. So right away, Paul and Zoe were given the keys to freedom. I’ve wanted to make a film for a very long timed. I almost thought about going to film school but I started acting and sort of already doing that, so I tried doing something that was away from that and English Majored, so reading a book called “Wildlife” by Richard Ford who was a wonderful American writer and pretty from the first sentence, I knew the book was going to mean a lot to me. The story is about a family moving to a new town, looking for a better life and what happens when it falls short of a better life. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jerry the father, Carey Mulligan plays Jeanette the mother and Ed Oxenbould their son. The film takes place in 1960. Jerry loses his job at a golf course and the family struggles to make ends meet. Jeanette becomes the breadwinner by teaching swimming lessons. Jerry decides to make money by fighting forest fires. The forest fires take on a symbolic character of their own. Dano has the camera pan up a mountain to show the destruction. This is primary Joe’s story of being an observer to seems to be the destruction of his parent’s lives – and his too. 8

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This is a very impressive directional debut by Paul Dano and we can expect him to get behind the camera again in the not too distant future. Let us not forget that Dano’s partner and co-writer and executive producer on the film, Zoe Kazan, is a talented actress in her own. As for Ed Oxenbould, his part requires him to express facial feelings, which he does admirably. Ultimately, this is a film that you will hear about and would be advised not to miss.

The part I was most excited about was working with the actors and I was surprised how much I loved working with them, which sounds a silly thing to say because I am actor, but I was really sort of mystified by what these guys were doing. Suddenly I understood why people love actors so much. I thought they’re my film. The love from the director to an actor is kind of insane to have these guys and Jake and Bill Camp. I was very lucky that they gave me their trust, so that I was actually able to work with them from behind the camera. - Paul Dano

I wrote a first draft that was quite long and not in a screenplay format. I secretly thought it was pretty good and I gave it to Zoe and said I know it’s not good, just read it and she just pulled it apart and we got through about five pages of notes before we said, that’s enough of that. - Paul Dano And then I said, I think you should let me rewrite it because you don’t know what you’re doing yet. He had never written anything before, so he agreed to that. I did a pass on it and we just passed drafts back and forth for about three years. - Zoe Kazan

And we wrote together and talked, daydreamed. - Paul Dano

Because we had these other lives as actors. One of us would go away for a job and the other would take the lead on writing for a little while and it was very organic, we worked together many times and the writing together was easier than acting together. - Zoe Kazan

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Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) and Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) in Wildlife.

Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Joe (Ed Oxenbould) in Wildlife. 10

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Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) in Wildlife.

Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) in Wildlife.

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ARCTIC Directed by Joe Penna Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thelma Smáradóttir. It was 2 o’clock in the morning at Cannes and it got a 10-minute standing ovation, which was an incredible reception for a first film especially. - Joe Penna I fell in love with the story of the big difference between surviving and being alive, which I thought was a heart-breaking, beautiful way of telling a story, then I realized I wasn’t talking too much, and I realized it was cold and it was a little too late. For me, it was a gift, but for the crew, it was much worse. Imagine you can’t make any footprints, but you have to get all this equipment around, and you can’t drive any car, and car tracks or anything like that. But it’s Iceland. This crew; there’s nothing like it. They come in all sizes, but they’re the strongest people in the world. - Mads Mikkelsen A plane crashes, there is one survivor Overgård (Mikkelsen) who uses his skills and bare resources to survive and immediately scrapes out a huge message in the snow of S.O.S. The long-awaited rescue draws near but when it does a blizzard brings the chopper down, killing the pilot and seriously injuring a young woman passenger, played by Icelandic actress Maria Thelma Smáradóttir. Now, Overgård faces another problem: two people to save against impossible odds. One small blessing is that the plane wreckage provides a means of shelter as well as providing a few utensils. He fishes too and is exalted when he catches a large trout. He keeps telling the young woman after stapling together a gaping bleeding wound that she has, that everything will be OK, but it is false optimism and he is faced with the choice of the lesser of two evils: remain in the relative safety of his encampment at the site of the down plane, and wait for the remote chance of rescue, or start a potentially deadly trek through the snowy wastes for possible salvation at a base camp. Mads Mikkelsen is outstanding as always, putting everything into the role. The essence of manliness, which really needs to be for the 12

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character’s part, is perfect for Mikkelsen. He is quite used to playing people in difficult situations. In the film The Salvation, a western set in the 1870s, he was cast as a Danish immigrant who has been waiting for years to bring his wife and son to the United States. When he finally succeeds, moments after their arrival they fall victim to a horrific crime. Out of grief and despair he kills the perpetrator. His actions unleash powerful forces. His victim’s brother is the ruthless Colonel Delarue who terrorises the town of Blsck Creek and who will stop at nothing to avenge his brother. Mikkelsen must transform himself from a peaceful settler to fearless warrior to save the town and find peace. Like the role in Arctic, Mads Mikkelsen adapts easily to the circumstances that he finds his character in. It is also the smallest details where his craft as an actor can be seen; sourcing for food, carefully packing the fish he has caught in, in ice, side by side. Checking radio signals and of course embarking on the seemingly impossible trek across the cruel landscape. Joe Penna, the director, started out with Mystery Guitar Man on You Tube and garnered over 3 million subscribers…and what is that all about? Let Joe explain. I make videos out of random objects, and making animated videos and other Stuff, stop motion. Fun, doing clones and other kind of tricks. I like working with friends of mine. Sometimes with my audience. And what is the mystery? The mystery is that I have a completely new Show every Thursday. But now Joe Penna is a film director too and has every right to be proud of Arctic, for it is his first film. Mads had every right in trusting his senses in taking on the lead and believing in Joe Penna’s natural talent to write and direct this film that got the tough approval of a Cannes Film Festival audience, giving it a standing ovation. Arctic won over Cannes and it will win over you too. Some have criticised the ending for being too Hollywood but they have missed the point. Because what the film is saying in the last moments is to be ‘True to yourself and love one another’ ARCTIC is not due for UK release until spring next year.

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OvergĂĽrd (Mads Mikkelsen) in Arctic.

Joe Penna on the set of Arctic.

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Mads Mikkelsen and Joe Penna setting up a shot for Arctic.

Joe Penna preparing to shoot a scene for Arctic.

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THE GUILTY Directed by Gustav Möller Starring: Jacob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Johan Olsen Hello? Is this Iben? Have you been drinking? Damn it – who is with you? - Jakob A police officer assigned alarm dispatch duty enters a race against time when he answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman. Asger has been demoted to work as a police dispatcher after he had shot a man while on patrol. He claims it was in self-defence and is awaiting the verdict. This is a taut thriller with the action taking place off-screen, allowing our imagination to visualise what is happening when he hears screams and children’s voices and crying. The centre-piece of this dramatic narrative is Asger played by one of the screens finest actors – Swedish-born Jacob Cedergren who is always the focus of our attention. The camera is trained on him the majority of the time and as he gets deeper and deeper into trying to save the woman Iben, from the increasingly horrific things happening to her children and to her by her ex-husband, Asger stays on, so determined is he to help her. Her call has been made from a white van in which her kidnapper is driving and taking her to an unknown destination, which Asger attempts to locate the headed destination and the backtrack to the possible circumstances of her abduction – a trail that leads to a horrifying domestic unrest. Asger’s face becomes a canvas of expressions and his eyes betraying the turmoil of what he is fearing to happen tomorrow with the verdict if all goes against him. It perhaps helps him to divert his concentration by going beyond his call of duty to help and even solve the case of kidnapping before him without realizing how he can get his mojo back.

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Though you don’t see Iben, you can visualise the anguish and pain she is going through by a trembling tone with our mind filling in the spaces. Like Asger, the audience tries to give every bit of support they can to help Asger….we are on his side, even when he dismisses an overdosing caller by telling him that it his own fault before despatching help for him. The film makes good use of close-ups, twitchy eyes, headsets, computer screens, and the tools that an emergency despatcher would use. You wouldn’t expect a film set in real time, across two small adjoining rooms, would have such space, but it does. The title can be applied to multiple characters in this unhappy narrative. The Guilty is first and foremost a character study of a man’s desperate need to prove himself an able and reliable human being and in so doing convince himself that he is a good cop. The premise of the film came about when I stumbled across a YouTube clip with a real 991 call and I was gripped by the suspense of it, by the fact that I had seen images only listening to sound the real-like fascination started when I realized that everyone would see different images and these could be the premise of a film working with the audience’s imagination, with everyone in their own way experiencing their own unique film and from that me and my co-writer started doing research, going to Despatch Centres in Denmark and through that we found the idea for the character. We met police officers, there against their will, you could say and then naturally you could think the most dramatic thing. What would be the worse thing for someone to be put here and that led us to interviewing police officers that had shot in the line of duty. So, it started with a little idea and then research came and then the story.

There you have the steps that the director/co-writer took to make an undoubtedly gripping and, in many ways, unique thriller.

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Jakob (Jacob Cedergren) in The Guilty.

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Jakob (Jacob Cedergren) in The Guilty.

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THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD Directed by Morgan Neville Featuring: Orson Welles, John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Steve Ecclesine Let us raise our cups to our crazy and beloved profession – to the movies. - Orson Welles A documentary about a film that Orson Welles declared would be his greatest movie, but one that never was completed because he died before it wrapped. Foreseeing this, he asked Peter Bogdanovich to complete it. The film was The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston, Susan Strasborg, Peter Bogdanovich, Orson Welles. This documentary shows Welles to be a jester and perhaps hits on the real reason of its seemingly mishmash of ideas – that it was about making a film about not making a film – that Welles never intended to make The Other Side of the Wind. Movies are a lie and the picture was the ultimate lie, he said. In this cleverly edited documentary, Morgan Neville shows clips from the unfinished film which has his real-life friend John Huston play a film director named Jake Hannaford making a film which no one seems to know what its about. We see Susan Strasberg on the set in the guise of a film critic and undoubtedly based on The New Yorker film critic’s Pauline Kael. Neville opens the documentary in black and white with Alan Cumming at a reel-filled edit bay. It is the late 1960s and Welles is lacking funds to make a movie and still in the shadow of Citizen Kane, still considered to be the greatest film ever made. He had an idea which had been brewing for years and now was the time for him to make it, but as usual he had no complete screenplay, no full cast, and no outside funding. It involved a mythic, exiled filmmaker’s 70th birthday around which acolytes and sycophantic gathered. We are privy to see clips of the making of the film within a film: Jake Hannaford, the Ernest Hemmingway of the cinema. A film journalist, Julie Rich, is trying to get to ask him some questions: I just want to know what he represents. Another voice from someone called Brooks 20

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Otterlake, played by Peter Bogdanovich: The man is just infested with disciples. I’m the apostle. Just like me and God. How can you tell us apart? – Hannaford. Is that the inside of a movie? asks the reporter. Yes, says a voice from the shadows, The Other Side of the Wind. Can you tell me about the movie? We don’t talk about the movie, replies Hannaford. Do you know what this movie’s about? Well, actually no. Neville gathers together an odyssey of chaos, inspiration, and impasses, it all makes for an amusing, carefully edited use of all manner of Welles footage from movies, outtakes, television shows. The list of witnesses and collaborators is numerous, from well-known to the unseen, their recollections and analyses sometimes differing, but always intuitive. You leave with the indelible impression of a larger-than-life figure and genius, sensing the inevitable arrival of death. Ultimately it leaves one wanting more and more of Welles. Though difficult to work with and a perfectionist, Welles loved movies and those who made them. He was a legend in his own time. Famously remembered for interrupting a radio broadcast with a Newsflash that Martians had landed and causing people to believe it and evacuating their homes. Playing one of the screens greatest characters – Harry Lime and writing one of most famous lines from a movie…In Italy for 30 years under The Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but that produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. Then came Citizen Kane. Filmmakers have been inspired by it ever since. And what we have with Neville’s documentary is a cinematic appetiser to see a Welles’ film that though incomplete but now restored and ready to see and worth waiting for. In Neville’s film, we see great snippets laced with humour like when towards the end a man appears carrying cans of film and looking to the camera says:

Well, here they are. If anyone wants to see it. Oh, yes, we do. Thank you, Morgan. Thank you, Peter. And most of all. Thank you, Orson.

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Shot of clapperboard.

Orson Welles in a behind the scenes shot on the set of The Other Side of the Wind. 22

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Welles and crew on the set of The Other Side of the Wind.

Welles on location for The Other Side of the Wind.

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ROMA Directed by Alfonso Cuarón Starring: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey A story that chronicles a year in the life of a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s.

A monochrome masterpiece from Alfonzo Cuarón. This film is one that you will experience in body and soul. The story centres on a housemaid who works for a bourgeois family and is mainly viewed through the eyes of Cleo from the very beginning of the film when she is scrubbing the driveway where the family dog has messed. During the time that we witness her life, we see how she suffers and toils endlessly, her name always being called and is expected to be in earshot to carry out another duty. In twelve months, much will happen: the master of the house will move out, Cleo will be seduced, abandoned by her boyfriend, give birth to his child. We witness the birth, the understanding of her employer, compassion, love. Cleo’s fear that she may have to leave, but the she loves the children that cares for…and they love her.

Wealthy landowners celebrate at a New Year’s Eve party, drinking and singing, while campesinos extinguish a forest fire while Cleo trudges through the muddy streets of a poor neighbourhood. Scenes like these are juxtaposed to create contrast and irony. A strange symbolic relationship develops between her employer and Cleo, the mother referring to Cleo as “a member of the family”. They take care of her during her pregnancy. Beautifully photographed and acted, the film is one that will take up residence in your heart. For Yalitza who plays Cleo, it is her first film and her performance is quite spellbinding.

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For Alfonso Cuarón, director of Gravity, it is the summit of his career and it reaches its peak due to the story being based on the women who raised him with love and tenderness. What was it like to be part of this extremely emotional film? The first time I was in Venice, I ended up in tears, I got very emotional. It’s rather strange to see yourself on screen. You’re not used to it, but I couldn’t have imagined all that work. everything was done with…everything the director did. It was magnificent. He put his all into the work. - Yalitza It was a very beautiful surprise because we didn’t know what we were filming really. We didn’t know what the shots were going to look like. So, when I saw it, it was like watching this amazing work of art with a great heart and very personal. So, it brought me to tears. - Marina There is already talk that Yalitza will be nominated for an Oscar? I thank them for thinking that. I don’t know. I have no acting experience. It’s the first film I’m in and, well for me, it’s already a joy to be here and meet so many people. But also be able to get to know this medium. - Yalitza

And, Nancy, what were your thoughts on a film that everybody is talking about? Incredible, marvellous because this all began with a dream of wanting to explore, but never imagining the magnitude of the project. - Nancy Let the final words come from the director Alfonso Cuarón. When the idea manifested, I had three pillars and when things manifest like that, you don’t question those pillars. One was to be the story of Cleo. The other one was the process of approaching this was going to be through memory and lastly it was going to be in black and white. The process of doing this film was intellectual or rational. It was just allowing consciousness to walk free. I think the preparation like everything else is not the 12 years, but your whole life experiences that lead you to any moment that any enterprise that you approach. Probably I could not have done this before because I didn’t have the emotional tools to approach the subject matter. At Venice Roma won The Golden Lion Award for Best Film. Whether it wins an Oscar come next March, it has already won the hearts of every cinephile that has seen it and it will certainly win yours. Thank you Alfonso for making it.

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Alfonso Cuarรณn directing a scene from Roma.

Antonio(Fernandez Grediago) & Sofia (Marina de Tavira) in Roma

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Alfonso Cuarรณn. Photo: John Phillips/Getty images.

Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) in Roma

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SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER Directed by Carl Hunter Starring: Bill Nighy, Sam Riley, Jenny Agutter, Alice Lowe. Whenever you make a decision, whenever you choose, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s another universe somewhere, where you made an opposite choice. - Alan This is a film about the game Scrabble and the obsession that the protagonist Alan (Bill Nighy) has with the game and the problems it causes with his son who finds it irritating that his Dad wants him to join him in his habitual pursuit. Games have often been used as narratives for films. Quite recently we had the film Puzzle which was about jigsaw puzzles and originally opened at Edinburgh Film Festival. It was about a woman named Agnes, taken for granted as a suburban mother, discovers a passion for jigsaw puzzles which unexpectedly draws her into a new life and consequently a new relationship. Bill Nighy gives a winningly deadpan performance as the Merseyside tailor whose eldest son Michael who walked out on a game after a particularly heated game, never to return. Years later, Alan and his other son Peter (Sam Riley) continue the search for Michael while also trying to repair their own strained relationship. This is a very scripted film by Frank Cottrell Boyce and adroit direction by Carl Hunter. A visually enhanced film and production design help to keep the filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s focus on the shifting moods of the family who seem to have a wide vocabulary of words yet ironically have great difficulty in using them when away from the Scrabble board. Bill Nighy has no parental influence in going into films, though he does have a daughter who is an actress. In recent years Bill Night has appeared in some worthwhile and highly acclaimed films. A made-to-measure role for him was Ambrose in Their Finest, co-starring Gemma Arterton. Nighy plays Ambrose in a story set in 1940 during in London during the Blitz when a makeshift cast and crew make a film to boost the morale and warm the hearts of the British people and how a young woman finds her voice amidst the mayhem of war and the movies. 28

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Sam Riley really claimed star-status when cast in the film Control which was directed by Anton Corbijn. The film was about the story of the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis with Riley giving a career-best performance as the suicidal lead singer. Control documents the relationship with both his wife and his girlfriend. It also looks at his constant battle with epilepsy, his relationship with his wife and girlfriend, and the successful tours that he had with his band, Joy Division. There is an excellent score by New Order as well as classic tracks from David Bowie, Sex Pistols and Joy Division. Sam Riley’s performance in Sometimes Always Never is excellent and like the whole film deserves to be seen. Jenny Agutter, a fine performance enhances the film, and it was good to see her seemingly relishing her supporting role in this often quirky but undoubtedly entertaining film. She is still remembered for her roles in The Railway Children and Walkabout. And how would the director of Sometimes Always Never, Carl Hunter sum up the making of the film? It’s a story about a father and son who don’t get on too well and that is because, later we find out, there was an older son who disappeared two years earlier over a game of Scrabble. So, the job of the film is really to repair the father and son relationship and possibly find the missing child from years ago. The idea initially came from a short story and I wanted to make it into a film. Frank wrote the script and then for years it nearly got made and then didn’t and then did. I wanted to make it because I wanted to make a film that was optimistic and that was important to me. The film isn’t really about Scrabble, it is a film where you are looking at a family that don’t communicate but are obsessed with words and that intrigued me. We had a casting agent that I would talk to at a great length and I was asked on a wish list who would you have playing the Dad? Bill Nighy. And to my absolute joy, Bill took the job. Working with Bill is a very pleasant experience because he is such a brilliant actor. And that, if you didn’t know already, is absolutely true, it will be worth seeking the film out to experience the craftmanship of Bill Nighy.. worth the price of admission alone.

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“Sometimes Always Never” World Premiere. Photo: Tim P. Whitby 2018 Getty Images.

Alan (Bill Nighy) in Sometimes Always Never. 30

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Alan (Bill Nighy) in Sometimes Always Never.

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THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN Directed by David Lowery Starring: Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek. What did you say you do? - Jewel Well, that’s a secret. - Tucker And why is that? - Jewel Well because if I told you, you probably wouldn’t want to see me again. - Tucker Who said I was going to see you again? - Jewel Would you? - Tucker Based on the true story of Forrest Tucker and his audacious escape from San Quentin at the age of 70 to an unprecedented string of heists that confounded authorities and enchanted the public. We meet Tucker as he, politely, shows his gun to a bank teller and gives a reassuring smile, thanks her politely and walks away with a briefcase full of money. He drives away, changing cars and, as he heads to his safe house, stops on the highway to help a damsel in distress. Her name is Jewel (Sissy Spacek). It is the start of a romance. If we eavesdrop at TIFF Press Conference, we will get to hear the film’s director explain how the film came about. I like to colour outside the lines a little bit and so I thought rather than follow the traditional beats of a cops and robbers movie, what if we tried to do something different, a little bit more and I still wanted to honour the genre. Once again, I’ve made a bank robbing movie where you don’t see the bank robbery except for one. - David Lowery

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What attracted Robert Redford to the story? It just appealed to my senses. I’ve always been attracted to the idea of outlaws from the time I was a kid and I’ve played this out a lot in my work and this just followed suit. Another attraction for me was the attraction of the relationship between Casey Affleck and me. What he represented was the predator and I represented the prey and that’s always attracted to me. I’ve always been attracted to the idea, the dynamic between predator and prey because the prey knows that the predator is going to come after him and the predator knows that he is eventually going to get him, but in that context, there is a mutual understanding which becomes almost like a friendship where you understand each other. It’s okay, I know what’s going on here, so maybe we can enjoy it and that’s how I felt about Casey’s character. This outlaw is a very happy man and he is very upbeat. He enjoyed what he was doing and he had fun doing it. So, in that sense he is a little bit different to some of the outlaws I’ve played. He spent his whole life locked up and the times he broke out. Some of the other outlaws I’ve played, they’ve done what they’ve done because they were against the law, against society. He is not against anything, he’s happy having a good time. He was asked the question: Do you rob banks for a living? No, he said. I rob banks because I’m living. There is a difference in that. I love the idea, just it was his idea of living and I thought that was so unusual for a story to tell and a wonderful character to tell it with. A guy who robbed banks because he loved robbing banks, but he also got caught every time he robbed a bank and he went to prison every time he robbed a bank and he escaped every time he went to prison. But he was always happy, so I thought, now that’s a very interesting film and I’d like to do that.

“I’m often wondering what I’m doing and where I’m going. I just think of myself as that little kid I was. Now would he be proud of me?” - Tucker “Well, is he proud of you, that little boy?” - Jewel “Well, he’s getting close every day.” - Tucker

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Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) in The Old Man and The Gun

Jewel (Sissy Spacek) and Tucker (Robert Redford) in The Old Man and The Gun 34

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Robert Redford

David Lowery (Director) photo: John Phillips - Getty Images 2018

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BEAUTIFUL BOY Directed by Felix Van Groeningen Starring: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney Why don’t we just have lunch and talk. We can do that right? Please. You think that you have this under control. - David Sheff I understand why I do things, it doesn’t make me any different. You’re just embarrassed because I was like, you know. I was like this amazing thing, like your special creation or something. And you don’t like who I am now. - Nic A father watches his son on a downward spiral into drug addiction. The film travels backwards and forwards in time, learning that Nic (Timothée Chalamet) is a product of a previous marriage which gave his father (Steve Carell) full custody of the boy. Once Nic drifts into drugs, his father goes to any lengths to save him, though it may be too late. This film holds up well when comparing it to other drug addicted movie narratives mainly due to its visual explicitness and the fine performances of Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell. Prior to this, Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine in The Man with The Golden Arm was the top of the genre. What was it like for the stars of the film and the Director? He is like a father figure to me now, in the best possible way, but I’m a huge fan of “The Office” and I went back after we shot this movie and like it’s going to be weird to watch now and it was like: those are my parents! The story is very serious. We had levity on the set, certainly when it came to do the scenes. - Timothée Chalamet One of the tings I loved about the two books and about the film that it was based on: the books “Beautiful Boy” and “Tweak” by David & Nic Sheff, is that they are unrelenting. They’re very honest. I think we set out to have a representation of those books and a very honest and truthful way and show these people as accurately as we could. - Steve Carell 36

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The first day I arrived on set was to say hello and have costume fittings. The cameras were rolling, and I got on the other line. I was off-camera for the first phone-call. I heard Steve’s voice and I just started crying and I felt so close to this person. There is a disconnect. I guess the one challenge; the film is set in a bygone era in terms of cell phone life. We were using those period cell phones. We actually couldn’t get the signal that time. - Amy Ryan And what about the traumatic scene between Steve and Timothée in the diner?

I think it was reasonable, we did about twenty takes. I think for them it was incredibly exhausting. It was the way to get all the interaction and it was crazy to see actors connecting that well, when the characters are trying to connect. - Felix Van Groeningen There was a camera on Steve’s side and on my side. So he could use the same takes. Usually you shoot someone’s coverage first and the other person. I thought of the importance of actually taking each other in, in that scene. The scene is almost the form of the arc of the movie in some ways, like: “Yeah, Dad, I love you and the love I’ve always had for you. It’s a thing I’m sort of addressing and it shouldn’t affect our relationship. - Timothée Chalamet The film is based on two books by David and Nic Sheff, their memoirs about what they went through, their ups and downs of struggling with addiction. The Sheffs allowed me into their lives to make the film. I hope what the audience will take away from this film is empathy for the characters. Addiction doesn’t discriminate, it can happen to anyone. It is a disease, and this is what I learnt from the book and I thought it was an important message to get out. It is a family who believes in unconditional love and they come to terms that there are no easy answers when it comes to addiction. - Felix Van Groeningen On the soundtrack of the film, which is now available, there is the song by John Lennon: Beautiful Boy.

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Steve Carell and TimothĂŠeChalamet Photo: Tim P. Whitby - Getty Images 2018

Steve Carell, Felix Van Groenigen, TimothĂŠeChalamet. Photo: Tim P. Whitby. Getty Images 2018 38

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Steve Carell. Photo: Tim P. Whitby. Getty Images 2018

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HAPPY as LAZZARO Directed by Alice Rohrwacher Starring: Adriano Tardiolo, Sergio Lopez, Alba Rohrwacher I’m calling about a missing boy. Someone important, a Marquis. - A young woman This is the tale of a young peasant named Lazzaro, who is so good that he is often mistaken for being a simpleton, and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by imagination. Life in their isolated pastoral village Inviolata is dominated by the terrible Marchesa Alfonsinade Luna, the Queen of Cigarettes. A loyal bond is sealed when Tancredi asks Lazzaro to help him orchestrate his own kidnapping. This strange and improbable alliance is a revelation for Lazzaro; a friendship so precious that it will travel in time and transport Lazzar in search of Tancredi of the past. His first time in the Big City, he is like a fragment of the past. Lost in the modern world. Happy as Lazzaro is both written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher, of the films Corpo Celeste and The Wonders previously, the first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year in Competition. At times the film doesn’t make much sense until things begin to fit together and the naivety of Lazzaro and pure innocence reaps the cruelty and disbelief of a world that lives in fear and acts accordingly with violence. It is a horrifying ending but unfortunately a statement about the times in which we live. It is a folksy tale with an endearing protagonist set in 1980s central Italy. A wealthy noblewoman takes advantage of her estate’s isolated location to extend the practice of sharecropping years after it was abolished, keeping her unpaid laborers in ignorance about their rights in the outside world. Drawing on this atrocious scandal, it evokes an eerie ambiance. Through the eyes of the young peasant Lazzaro we witness his acts of goodness and good faith in a greedy torturous society that has no room for someone like Lazzaro.

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In the case of this film, first of all we thought about the context, the story we want to talk about the end of the world. We wanted to depict the shift from and middle-ages to a different time, a very apocalyptic era. This story was enriched, enlightened by the arrival of Lazzaro. Lazzaro as a character gains increasing importance as the story goes by. The idea was to depict a way of being. You have the physical character of Lazzaro who is a peasant, who cries, who laughs, who is happy when others are happy and helping others and the same time, you have how he views the world. The possibility of kindness lies at the heart of this film which quickly disappears and comes back. In a sense Lazzaro is the way he is, the way he looks at the world. He is sort of timeless. He goes through time and beyond time. He keeps coming back to question us as though he we had to make a choice as well in terms of kindness. I wanted to depict a world that changes, which at the same time, remains the same. We exploit other human beings. - Alice Rohrwacher – Director I think films are an education. At the end, the film is very deep, very moving, very emotional. The idea is to adopt a new family and to me, it is very beautiful to be here with wonderful political film. The idea is how we can learn how to love each other, rather than killing each other. I believe that the screenplay here is quite splendid. It is a timeless film. It is showing how people can be extremely cruel in the face of innocence. Just such an easy way out. I think this film also talks about power. Power is wielded and what other human beings do. People always want to be in power. It is like a lesson we can learn as human beings. - Sergio Lopez – Actor Preparing for the part consisted in understanding the character. It took a lot of time. I had to rehearse a lot. I needed to get to know this character really well and that was an ongoing process. I really learnt to identify with the character as we were filming the various scenes. We kept discovering new facets of the character, new personality traits, every time I read through the screenplay. - Adriano Tardiolo – Actor Fellini, Pasolini, I carry these masters in my being. One couldn’t help but mention The Taviani Brothers, and others. Ermanno Olmi who died not so long ago and should be added as well. I think the kind of cinema that I like fills my mind, not conscious memories but sub conscious and these memories well-up from time to time and I discover things while working at the same time. - Alice Rohrwacher – Director

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Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) in Happy as Lazzaro.

Tancredi (Tommaso Ragno) and Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) in Happy as Lazzaro. 42

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Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) and Antonia (Alba Rohrwacher) in Happy as Lazzaro.

Tancredi (Tommaso Ragno)and Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) in Happy as Lazzaro.

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JOHN McENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION Directed by Julien Faraut Starring: John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl I think it would be easier if people realized what I think is, you do your job and I’ll do mine, rather than me just complaining for the hell of it. - John McEnroe A documentary that not only captures the behaviour of one of the greatest tennis players of all-time, but also McEnroe’s conduct on court. At times you will want to shout at the screen at the utter determination to win and blaming the umpire for calling shots that McEnroe believes were on the live, time and time again. He voiced his objections not only against the officials but the ever annoyance he had against his major bete noir – the photographers – both on and off court. For McEnroe they were the ultimate distraction to his game, and in their case his racket became a weapon. The film is narrated by actor Mathieu Amalric at the French Open Championships on the red clay court of Roland Garros in 1984 when McEnroe played against Ivan Lendl. It was nail-biting stuff to watch for both the match and the tantrums of McEnroe. When I walk out on court, I become a maniac…Something comes over me. - McEnroe In the Realm of Perfection is also a tribute to cinematographer Gil de Kermadec’s footage which was shot decades ago and is displayed perfectly here by director Julien Faraut. He uses Almaric’s voiceover sparingly but with the upmost effect. What is produced is a record of a tennis champion showing the passion, anger, the emotive behaviour who matched himself against numerous opponents besides the player that was on the other side of the net to him: the umpire, linemen, judges, photographers, spectators, the ball, but most of all himself and the demons that played the game within him. What did McEnroe consider to be the most important quality in a tennis champion? I would have to say desire, staying in there and winning matches when you are not playing that well. - McEnroe 44

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And how did the film’s director Julien Faraut assemble all the footage which started by endless researching? I work for the National Sports Institute which is a complimentary institute which comes under the Institute of Sports and I’m responsible for a very small cinematheque of archival films that are technical, even films of competition from the 1940s to the 1980s. And I’m really responsible for evaluating the films and then trying to process them in a way so that they become intelligible which they are not in the form that they are in.

As a viewer, I am sometimes frustrated in those kinds of archival films of stock footage that become so standardised and have been seen everywhere and I really think you have to take an approach that has more fantasy to really revitalise it. And usually when these kinds of films are made, they start with a kind odd piece of idea, so for example, you might have a film w here you want to demonstrate male domination or immigrants, so what happens then, you are going to look for those kinds of films to illustrate the you’re looking at. So, when you’re looking at our kind of films, you come across the things that you didn’t know were there. For example, Warren Spain. You may not be expecting it and when you come across the film, you’re going to think how you’re going to use those films. In my case, I have a very continual relationship of the archives I’m working with because normally what you see is that archives are used to support the ideas, but here it was the archives themselves that provoked the idea. So, that really generated my interest. So, each time I opened another reel, I had another idea. I worked on this film for three years and during that time the editing process was very important. So there are these parts which were interwoven and interrelated and so those very small reels you see at the beginning, there is no continuity in them. When you look at them, you really have no idea which competition they’re showing. So it was really something I had to look through very carefully. Once you see the documentary you will appreciate the importance and labour that Faraut put into the film and appreciate and understand it was worthwhile both as a document and wonderful piece of entertainment, and you really don’t have to be a tennis aficionado to like it.

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John McEnroe in John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection.

John McEnroe in John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection. 46

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John McEnroe in John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection.

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THE GREEN FOG Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Gulen Johnson Featuring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Julie Christie, Doris Day, Louis Jourdan, Vincent Price, Alfred Hitchcock, Giancarlo Giannini, Candice Bergen, Momoe Yamaguchi, Michael Douglas, Anthony Franciosa, Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Karl Malden, Steve McQueen, Jeff Bridges and more. An archival collection of film clips from TV Shows and films shot in and around San Francisco and a love letter to the Hitchcock classic Vertigo which starred James Stewart and Kim Novak. There is only one scene from Vertigo which shows Stewart’s hands gripping a ledge. Still considered by many cinephiles to be Hitchcock’s greatest film, it told of an acrophobic detective (Stewart) hired to trail a friend’s suicidal wife (Novak). After the detective successfully rescues her by a leap in the bay, he finds himself becoming obsessed with this beautifully troubled woman. Vertigo is one of cinemas most chillingly romantic films, a fascinating myriad of haunting camera angles shot among some of San Francisco’s renowned landmarks. A film that is a must-see for serious filmgoers. The film has been numerously imitated homaged and reworked by Brian De Palma in Obsession, Spielberg’s Jaws, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys. Guy Maddin has stated that he doesn’t expect the film to been given a wide-release and it is definitely not for the average cinemagoer but an arthouse audience. Its major problem is that it is a mishmash of movie moments some which are showing characters just staring at each other and speaking incoherently.

The novelty of the film is really seeing how many films and actors you can recognize and the films the films that they are in. Though this is 48

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a distraction, it does make you think how you would like to see some of the films again or finger-through your DVD collection to watch and see things you never noticed before. I’ve never bought that cliché that you should take people out of the narrative, take people out of that dramatic illusion. I’m more of a person who loves his grandmother. I’m thinking when a grandmother sits at the foot of your bed and tells you a bedtime story, you get absorbed into the story, notice her style of telling a story. Some parts you should tell badly, other parts charmingly. You’re totally sucked into the story. You’ve been scared, moved, engaged, and the every now and then you notice your grandmother has a dental whistle or her nose hair or that she’s getting pretty wrinkly and that she’s sitting on your foot, and the you go back into the story. I am one of those filmmakers that likes to show the grandmother.

Guy Maddin’s body of work is impressive. He is a natural film buff and has spent hours upon hours watching films. His many interests and obsessions are reflected in his work. Canadian born, Maddin’s first film was produced through the Winnipeg Film Group and was a haunting family fable called The Dead Father. His second film became a cult hit, Tales from the Gimli Hospital. The film played for months as a midnight movie in New York City and led the way to his delirious movie, Archangel, which is a story of amnesiac lovers skirting the northern frontiers of World War 1, and its release brought Maddin the U.S. Society of Film Critics prize for Best Experimental Film of the Year. This triumphant film was his first film in colour and was a story of repression and unnatural couplings called Careful. It was screened at the Toronto Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival and New York. In 1995, Maddin created a short filmic prose-poem based on the work of Belgian charcoalier Odilon Redon. It was organised by the BBC who also invited such directors as Jonathan Demme, Jane Campion and Tim Burton. The resulting production won a Special Jury Citation at the Toronto Film Festival and played festivals from New York to London to Telluride, Colorado. The same year, he was the recipient of the Telluride Medal for Life Time Achievement at the festival. He is the youngest person ever to have been awarded this honour. Two years later he made his biggest budget film to date: Twilight of the Ice Nympths, the shooting of which is documented inn the Noam Gonick’s film Waiting for Twilight. Maddin has also made several Short Films, few of which have been seen. In 200, along with other notable Canadian filmmakers. Maddin was commissioned to make six-minute “prelude” for the Toronto International Film Festival in celebration of their 25th anniversary. The resulting short film, The Heart of the World, was proclaimed by many festival-goers and critics to be the best film of the entire festival and became the most acclaimed film to date of Maddin’s career. It won a special award from the National Society of Film Critics as the best experiment-al film of the year and won the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival for best narrative short and was voted one of the best films of 2001 by both J. Hoberman OF Village Voice, and A.O. Scott of the New York Times.

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Image from The Green Fog.

Image from The Green Fog. 50

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Image from The Green Fog.

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THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER Directed by Sara Colangelo Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gael García Bernal, Michael Chemus I’ve asked Jimmy to recite some of his poems at a poetry reading. - Lisa The premise is looking at a teacher who becomes fascinated and consequently infatuated with a five-year boy in her class who is well beyond his years which she discovers by overhearing him recite poems seemingly to himself. We become entranced and inspired by the young boy’s genius, and Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) the boy’s teacher, begins to nurture Jimmy (Parker Sevak) which leads to her becoming obsessed with the child. But there are problems, not with Jimmy, but with Lisa. Her home life is anything but normal. Her children refuse to sit down and eat dinner with the rest of the family, one would rather spend her time using Instagram to further her once potential photographic career. Alarm bells sound when Lisa begins to fret about her life, despite having a loving and trusting husband, she is straying and is unsure of where she is going in life, and then realises that Jimmy could be the answer to all her anxieties about herself. Suddenly her behaviour changes and her fixation on Jimmy increases and begins to break all the rules. She starts writing down every poem he recites and uses them to impress the poetry class she attends. Jimmy is now paramount in her life and she sees nothing wrong with spending so much time with him. What suddenly seems a harmless interest in helping a talented child becomes an alarming awareness that Lisa is abusing her rights as a teacher and her contact with the child by touching him, taking him where others cannot see him and gradually acting to the point of obvious discomfort to the child. Her actions result in Jimmy’s father withdrawing him from the kindergarten. Predictably her breakdown comes when she realises that she has lost control of Jimmy but also of herself. 52

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The film itself is a disturbing experience. How did Maggie Gyllenhaal see her character and the story? It was like nothing I had read before, impossible to categorise it, still feel it’s very true in the final part act. Is it a horror movie, is it a thriller or is it like a kind of French movie? What is it? I think it is new and that is one of the tings that to comes to me about it. It is imaginary and it was very important to me and our other producers and Sara and I were all mothers of young children and I had a child exactly the same age as Parker, so, I was very in touch with how vulnerable a five-year-old is and I didn’t want him to feel for one second that his boundaries were crossed in the way the character boundaries are crossed, so we kept it really technical. So, Sara or I were like on our knees and saying, ‘Next time I clap my hands, you’re going to look over here and you’re going to say “I don’t want to go”. And he sort of look and said: “I don’t want to go”. And you’re going to sing it like the way I’m going to sing it. So in a way, we kept it really technical. You can’t ask a five-year -old, like: “Could you go deeper with your experience?” They don’t understand that. Sometimes we shot it like a documentary. We would have a lot of lines and have them across the room and you really wouldn’t know the camera was on him. The thing about Parker is that he is very smart, and he is not a performer. Sometimes you see a five-year-old and they’re already performing themselves, but that’s not Parker. The ending is designed and doesn’t say, here’s your antagonist, here’s your protagonist. Now you can chill out, we’ll take care of this for you. It really doesn’t. You don’t know whether you’re supposed to be on her side or not. If your heart is breaking for her, is there something wrong with you. It constantly shifts. It’s like a roller-coaster, you can get on it or off of it, and then you think okay, it’s going too far, you’re on the other side until the very end. I think it does leave you having to thin k for yourself, which I do think people like to do. Of course, it’s nice to chill out sometimes and I’ll think for you and watch a movie, but I think humans like to be challenged and think for themselves than being told. - Maggie Gyllenhaal The more ambiguity excited me, and it felt very new and fresh and I think I’m excited it because it was an adaptation of an Israeli movie. I was very excited to take what is a very beautiful story and really anchor it on a female point of view and hopefully tell a really challenging and complicated story about a woman who has been a care taker for twenty plus years and has been feeding and feeding others. She wants to be found and is creatively starved and wants desperately to be part of a creative process. - Sara Coleangelo

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Maggie Gyllenhaal. Photo: Getty Image 2018

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Carolina Herrera. Photo: Getty Image 2018 54

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Maggie Gyllenhaal. Photo Getty Image 2018

Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Jimmy (Parker Sevak) in The Kindergarten Teacher.

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ONLY YOU Directed by Harry Wootliff Starring: Laia Costa, Josh O’Connor, Peter Wright. When two rising stars come together in a romantic drama are instantly attracted to each other on a New Year’s Party in Glasgow you hope that the relationship will last. The couple are Elena and Jake played by Laia Costa and Josh O’Connor. For screen romances to work they have to be believable and in this film the realism is so real that you feel that you really are watching a pair of lovers and are privileged to observe them and their highs and lows. Everything is going well for them and they adore each other and then Jake wants to start a family and that is when the problems begin. Jake and Elena keeping trying for a baby and then Elena begins to believe that she is infertile but still they keep trying and it seems she is constantly seeing other mothers we their young ones and arguments begin to set in between her and Jake. For the first time their relationship begins to strain and snap. Elena’s father advises them that this happens and not to blame themselves. While Jake blames himself and thinks it was a stupid idea after so many failures of conception. Only You premiered at LFF and it was the first feature for director Harry Wootliff and a very impressive one for her. Laia Costa is quite amazing as Elena. She really established herself as an actress with a fine future when she made Victoria, an adrenalinepacked heist thriller set on the streets of night-time Berlin that features the technical feat of being shot in a single, unbroken take. Victoria, a young woman from Madrid, meets four local guys outside a nightclub in the early hours of the morning. Sonne and his friends are Berliners who try to show her the real side of the city. But when the group are suddenly forced to repay a debt for a member of the city’s criminal underworld the night quickly spirals out of control.

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Now once again Laia Costa has another brilliant film to be proud of, in the character of Elena. Let us hear her take on her character and the film in general and working with director Harry Wootliff. I think the relationship is two people who fall in love and they suddenly have a big commitment and they are very different people. How sometimes some stuff may be difficult to handle and to understand how you stick together and how you try and make it work. I think they’re very different. I mean like Jake, Josh’s character, he has the perfect idea of what love means and I think Elena on the other hand, she was not expecting to fall in love and expecting to go for a family. So, she was more like not trusting commitments that much. So this situation puts them in very different places. But still they are so much in love. So, it’s a very interesting story to see. I think now everybody is going to love it so much. We couldn’t rehearse a lot because we had no time. We worked together three days before shooting with a weekend in the middle, but we talk a lot with Harry. I think we were skyping like twenty pages and then another Skype with twenty more pages and that was very interesting to me because I realised a lot of stuff that I was not understanding my role of Elena. Harry is so smart, so easy-going and she was able to reach and give you the right indications or send you the right material. So you could get what was happening with your emotions with the context with this story. So we talk quite a lot before we get onto set and right on set. That Friday before we started shooting on the Monday, we were all on the same page and it was going to be okay together. So we were kind of like calm after we met together. And what was Harry Wootliff’s take on the movie? I wanted to tell a very intimate real relationship story that was also uplifting because they’re a flawed couple and any couple is a flawed couple. So, I also wanted to have at the heart of it, the problem they are facing of not having a child. I think they were incredibly trusting of me. I was wholeheartedly delighted with the casting. So, I completely trusted their instincts. I think there was an amazing chemistry between the three of us. On set, we shot in chronological order for the all the scenes they have in their flat. So, the story of them getting together and breaking up was shot chronologically in that location and I think that we really helped as well. I think it is a taboo subject and I think in some way a woman is always often made to feel that they’re at fault. They didn’t meet the right person earlier enough or they focused on their career. I wanted to tell a very unjudgmental story. They really put you into the shoes of a couple going through the experience. - Harry Wootliff

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Jake (Josh O’Connor) and Elena (Laia Costa) in Only You.

Matthieu de Braconier, Laia Costa, Harry Wootliff, Tristan Goligher, Guest, Claire Mundell and Josh O’Connor. Photo: Stuart C Wilson 2018 Getty Images. 58

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Josh O’Connor, Harry Wootliff, Laia Costa. Photo: Stuart C Wilson 2018 Getty Images

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THE SISTERS BROTHERS Directed by Jacques Audiard Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, John C Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed We have enough money to stop for good. - Eli To stop what? - Charlie To stop killing people - Eli Yeah, right - Charlie The film opened at the Toronto International Film Festival to a very warm reception. It is the first feature of Jacques Audiard to be made in English and it is a Western too, but a Western with a difference because it is a comedy too, a black comedy at that because the brothers to which it refers, are killers. Where the comedy comes in, is that they are a little crazy and Joaquin Phoenix and John C. O’Reilly are that. If you are looking for a straightforward Western, you will be disappointed. It breaks the rules in every way it can, while delivering violence, confusion, and a not-too-sure where this is taking me and whether it is worth bothering to find out. This has a narrative that offers a very bloody tongue-in-cheek to the genre. The leads are particularly good, but it is not enough to save the film or warrant the critical accolades it has received. Audiard’s direction fails to raise the stakes of the western and show it in a new inspiring light which I hoped it might when a director accepts the challenge of tackling a genre new for him, unlike Sergio Leone who made a series of brilliant westerns which surpassed all expectations and became known as ‘spaghetti westerns’ – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite. The Sisters Brothers will not give birth to a French franchise of ‘coq au vin’ westerns. There could have been a great comedy here, and I couldn’t help but think what would have emerged if someone like Mel Brooks had been at the helm. Alas, not to be.

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The storyline follows the brothers who crave money and attention at every chance they get. Reilly appears more comfortable in the saddle than Phoenix, yet they still are believable as kin. The humour comes at the expense of their victims and may be at times unsettling to watch. The story is simple enough, a big shot named The Commodore (Rutger Hauer) a wasted performance if ever there was one, hires the brothers to kill a foreign outsider prospector by the name of Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed) for stealing. As protection, he takes on lawman John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) setting off a pursuit of miles and time. The upturn of the sequence is that it allows us to view vast tracts of unspoiled land. The trek moves from heavily wooded Oregon down along the California coast to San Francisco. A keen-eyed cinephile will notice that at the halfway point the Sisters arrive at the Pacific and recalls flashes of the interlude of the Oceanside in Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks. “This place is Babylon” exclaims Eli, as he investigates the luxury of the fancy hotel they have booked in at; flushed toilets, gold-trimmed restaurants and to him, the novelty of a toothbrush and paste, which he tries to understand the use thereof, to an amusing effect. During this sequence, Eli proposes leaving the Commodore and go out on their own “We have a chance to get out” he tells his unconvinced brother, creating a rift that leads the tale to the inevitable rendezvous with violence. What ensues is quite unsettling and includes a sickening scene of amputation.

And what did Joaquin Phoenix like about the story that made him want to do it? It just felt something unique and different. When I think of westerns, I always think of characters who are stoic and there was something about these characters who had these vibrant personalities and I think there was something interesting about that. I wanted to work with Jacques and John. I wasn’t doing anything else. And Riz Ahmed, what appealed to him? I really enjoyed playing the character. I got to learn a lot about what was going on at the time in America. It was a very idealistic moment. Communes were set-up and it was like communism before communism. Those people coming from Europe and starting these idealistic Utopian society. I learnt a lot about that. It resonated with what is happening in California. Now a different kind of gold rush is happening with a different kind of people. In Silicon Valley, we will save the world with our technology and it felt very today. And John C Reilly? We had a diplomatic dilettante in Toronto. The French The American mafia over. My wife Alison Dickey and I, with “Rust & Bone” and we went to this restaurant. It during the day, but we got them to open it. We sat in empty restaurant together. It really was like a mafia something. It was the beginning of a great thing.

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mafia came over. Jacques was here was open this summit or

Eli (John C Reilly) and Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) in The Sisters Brothers.

Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) in The Sisters Brothers. 62

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John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) in The Sisters Brothers.

Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed) and John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) in The Sisters Brothers.

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WILDLIFE INTERVIEW WITH PAUL DANO & ZOE KAZAN AT PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL ON TH SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER PAUL DANO Wildlife is Paul Dano’s first film as a director. Paul is a New Yorker. Amongst his films:

Little Miss Sunshine, played a Nietzsche-reading teen who has taken a vow of silence.

Ruby Sparks, co-starring with Zoe Kazan. He is a writer suffering from writer’s block who creates a beautiful fictitious character named Ruby who inspires him. Not only does this bring his work to life but also brings Ruby to life.

Love & Mercy, a bio-pic of The Beach Boys with Paul as the leader of the group Brian Wilson in the past and John Cusack in the present. Youth. As an actor named Jimmy Tree. He is stopped by a little in a shop who tells him that she recognises him from a film.

Q: A:

What was it like being the other side of the camera? Really hard, but I had beautiful people around me. One of the best parts was collaboration, getting the best out of everybody and working with the crew and the actors, getting into a routine. It’s hard to fully comprehend. You learn your parents had past lives, they struggled, they die and, things are different you wake-up.

With regard now that you are a director, has that inspired you to look at great directors or were you already inspired by other directors and if so, which ones?

Well, a big turning point for me was discovering Foreign Cinema: Bresson, Ozu, Melville. There’s was a whole language I didn’t know about.

Q: A:

And when did you start looking at these films? When I was…around the twenties. American Independent film, when I was about sixteen.

Comment: Paul, it shows. Thank you.

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ZOE KAZAN Her parents are both writers. Her father Nick is also a director, known for The Notebook. Her grandfather was Elia Kazan who directed the classic On the Waterfront, which starred Marlon Brando. A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, The Last Tycoon. Amongst her twenty-two films is Me & Orson Welles in which she played Gretta Adler. The film is about a 17-year-old kid who dreams of making it big in the New York theatre and by chance meets the youthful Orson Welles.

And of course, Zoe is the co-writer of Wildlife and has been in a relationship with Paul Dano since 2007. They have a daughter named Alma who was born at the end of August 2018.

Now that Paul has directed his first film, has it inspired you to direct your own film?

Paul and I have had for a long time an interest in filmmaking, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think there is an aspect where I feel the need to step behind the camera in that way.

Are there any genres that you would like to do that you havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t done before?

Genres? Well, there are always parts that you would like to do.

What was it like working with the Coen Brothers on The Ballad of Buster Scraggs?

A: Q:

It was a dream.

Well, the story is told from his point of view and looking back on his childhood.

How challenging was it for you to write the character of the son in Wildlife?

Comment: Thank you, Zoe.

*WILDLIFE

is released in the UK on 9th November.

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UK Premiere Wildlife. Zoe Kazan & Paul Dano. Photo: Tim P. Whitby 2018 Getty Images.

Paul Dano. Director & Co-writer. Photo: Tim P.Whitby 2018 Getty Images. 66

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Paul Dano. Wildlife â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Directional debut. Photo: Tim P. Whitby 2018 Getty Images.

Zoe Kazan Wildlife Co-writer & Exec Producer. Photo: Tim P. Whitby 2018 Getty Images.

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CINEMA RETROSPECT FIRST MAN

Directed by Damien Chazelle Starring: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke We have to fail down here, so we don’t fail up there. - Neil Armstrong

I wanted the whole film to reflect what it was like going on these missions, so that we’re inside the space craft. So, we tried to make you feel the claustrophobia, use sound, see what you see, but also what you don’t see. Restrict the point of view and really put the viewer in a totally immersive experience and so that they feel like their launching into the air. They feel like their hovering in space. This is a man who I think was foraged through failure and loss. He was not this kind of born icon. He was necessarily this All- American born hero. Damien Chazelle With First Man Damian Chazelle wanted to do something that was the opposite of La La Land just as La La Land was a complete opposite to Whiplash. It was also the first time that he had done something that was not directly personalised from his own life experiences. Like most kids he had a passing interest in space travel but more interested in movies than anything else. However, he was interested in turning dreams into reality. He wanted to get a sense of the work involved in becoming an astronaut, things which movies often overlook: the grimy sweaty hands, vomit-stained shirt. When he first saw one of the capsules, it was less gilded than he had imagined it. He wanted to show how claustrophobic it was in a spaceship. The whole point of the story that Chazelle wanted to tell was to look at things that we never noticed before.

Once again Ryan Gosling is the star of the film, after heading the cast of La La Land. What were his reasons in picking him again? 68

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He has some of Neil Armstrong’s obsessiveness and determination to get things right. In between takes he’d be huddled off with one of the astronauts we had on set, asking: “Did that look OK?” “Was it this button or that button?” “For the next scene I have to pull the RCS switch – do you pull them fast or slow?” He is just like a hawk for all those things. When Chazelle is not making films, he enjoys reading, watching films, listening to music. He also loves visiting places like London or Paris and walk the city and loves the idea of the flaneur, the street walker, just wandering, he has said, can be so inspiring. Which is really like his films – always inspiring.

TRADEMARKS OF DAMIEN’S FILMS *Impromptu Songs *Complex Tracking Shots *Rapid-Fire Edit *Whip Pans *Characters Defined by Their Ambitions *Domestic Realities.

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Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) & space crew in First Man

Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) in First Man. 70

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Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) in First Man.

Janet Armstrong (Claire Foy) in First Man.

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