BELFAST

 Jamie Dornan     Caitriona Balfe     Jude Hill

Ciaran Hinds     Judi Dench     Lewis McAskin

            This new film admirably directed by Kenneth Branagh is notable for its black and white screen (cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, who also filmed Locke) and poignant events going on in Belfast in 1969, the beginning of Northern Ireland’s 30-year “Troubles.”  Highlighting a typical family living in the region, the film depicts torn loyalties and dilemmas about what citizens could/should do.  

            Most of the drama centers around young Buddy (Hill) whom everyone knows and cries out to as he walks down the street.  We see much of the drama through his most expressive eyes.  His father works out of town and is gone for periodic stretches, so it is up to the wife/mother (Balfe) to hold the family together, albeit with the loving (sometimes humorous) support of grandparents played by Ciaran Hinds and Judi Dench.  Who wouldn’t love those grandparents(!), particularly given that they have a warranted skeptical view of the world they live in.  

            The big dilemma posed for the family is whether to remain in Belfast where both parents’ families have lived since the parents were toddlers, where everyone in their neighborhood knows them and looks out for the kids, or whether to move to London where their standard of living would be much improved.  This was apparently a common issue for so many in Northern Ireland during that time.  The film captures well the violence in the area and threats to residents to join one side or the other.

            Branagh’s direction is expert and sure with the overall tone of the picture, the cast, and the decision to go with a black and white view, both visually and metaphorically.  Jude Hill as the young son appears to be destined for great things in his ability to express naturally so much of what Buddy was experiencing.  I liked in this movie that children are depicted in a way most of us would recognize—thoughtful but still child-like.  The actors playing the adults—Caitriona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Ciaran Hinds, and Judi Dench—are quintessential performers who will always capture our interest.  They’re entertaining to watch in whatever roles they play.

            It was also great to see a movie that is less than two hours long.  Certain events could have been extended to draw out the emotional impact (as so many filmmakers do nowadays), but I appreciated the meaningful brevity in this instance.  

 

The “Troubles” in Ireland are portrayed in a skilled rendition of what happened to individuals and families caught up in the conflict.

 

Grade:  A                              By Donna R. Copeland

TENET

John David Washington    Robert Pattinson    Elizabeth Debicki     Kenneth Branagh    

 Michael Caine     Diimple Kapadia     Denzil Smith

     Tenet has all the hallmarks of a blockbuster—established filmmakers, actors, and a riveting story with themes of mind-ripping, intriguing, violence.  It certainly does all that.  What it doesn’t do is give the viewer time to reflect on any current, compelling issues that we should be concerned about nowadays, or probe personal relationships that make them seem to matter.  It’s more of an almost formulaic activation of tropes seen many times before.  This version seems to have been intended to tease us with time travel, frustrated love, and heroic battles between the hero and unrecognized/mysterious adversaries.

     The unnamed protagonist (Washington), a CIA agent, is recruited to match wits with a terrorist, Sator (Branagh) intent on destroying the world.  The first task is to actually come in contact with the man, not a direct route.  The Prospect meets Sir Crosby (Caine) for lunch who informs him cryptically about Tenet, a shadow organization attempting to save the whole world from destruction.  The Protagonist will be a part of that effort in his new assignment.  To achieve his task, the Protagonist tries at first to go through the wife of the infamous Russian Oligarch, Andrei Sator, Katherine “Kat)  (Debicki), an art dealer.  But this is with the intrusion of a fellow agent Neil (Pattinson), who appears and re-appears as a helper and, seemingly at times, a foe.  

In due time, the protagonist has a clear picture of what he is up against, in terms of arms dealers, their facilitators, and a world-wide plan.  

     Typical of writer/director Christopher Nolan, he plays around with time; and in this case, time inversion, which the evil Sator is trying to perfect for his own use.  It allows for something dropped to jump back up in one’s hand and cars to travel backwards on busy freeways—lending high-tension moments to the plot, along with well choreographed hand-to-hand combat and mental/physical cruelty.  More thrilling is a reverse bungee jump up the outside of a skyscraper.  (In a filmmaking aside:  The two actors start the jump, then stuntmen take over without a noticeable cut in the frame.

     Adding to the excellence in craft, Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematographic feats maintain breathless action, accompanied by Ludwig Goransson’s always apt score. John David Washington is coming into his own as an actor earning action-figure status.  He mixes the heroic with sincerity and credibility, which adds to his appeal.  The stately Elizabeth Debicki plays Sator’s wounded wife with grace and expressive femininity, using her beautiful eyes to break through her mystique and help make her sympathetic.  Kenneth Branagh succeeds in filling his character with narcissistic loathsomeness making him easy to hate.  Bollywood’s well known star Dimple Kapadia does an admirable job in portraying a complex, woman with power.

     For Fans of Christopher Nolan Tenet will likely be satisfying and fun; others, as I did, may find it somewhat tedious to follow and feel impatience at the prolonged combat scenes.

 

Go on a time-inverted journey in Christopher Nolan’s newest thriller.

Grade:  B-                                    By Donna R. Copeland 

ALL IS TRUE

Kenneth Branagh     Judi Dench     Ian McKellen     Kathryn Wilder     Jack Colgrave Hirst

     Not so much rings true (I don’t think) in this fantasy written by Ben Elton and directed by Kenneth Branagh—also its star—but it is interesting.  All is True deals with the period immediately following the fire that destroyed the Globe Theatre, primary venue for William Shakespeare’s plays. Immediately after, Shakespeare retired and never wrote any more.  

     The film shows Shakespeare (played by Branagh) returning home and planting a garden, although, admittedly, he was not very good at it.  In settling back in with his wife and two daughters—one of whom is married—Shakespeare is presented as being glad to be home, devoted to his family, and still grieving the loss of his son Hamnet at age 11.  In this drama, Hamnet’s twin, Judith (Wilder) reveals her own story of how the child died. 

     Most of the drama delves into the hypothesized dynamics of the Shakespeare family, in which William’s wife Anne (Judi Dench in predictably fine form) voices her resentment about his extended absences and other affections he has expressed in his poems.  She is cranky, but mostly forgiving.  His daughter Judith (Wilder) echoes her mother, but her complaints have an additional edge; she is convinced that her father values his dead son over his daughters, particularly her.  The Shakespeares’ daughter Susanna is married to a Puritanical physician, and it’s implied that he takes a self-righteous, accusatory stance on most issues.  The movie shows Judith eventually marrying after she and her father resolve their conflicts, although it is not under the best of circumstances.  All is True suggests that both daughters were involved in local scandals.

     I found the film rather strange in its presumed knowledge of history and its attempts to be currently relevant.  For example, the film clearly conveys its respect for Shakespeare, but it also comes down hard on male privilege and upper class self-entitlements, as well as absent fathers out to make their mark on the world.

     Not being a Shakespearean scholar, I was constantly wondering how much the film is based on historical fact.  Elton and Branagh include any number of hypothetical interactions and events that may veer far from the truth, however plausible they might be.  In this respect, I’m opposed to dramatic liberties taken by filmmakers who seem to go off on their own tangents, simply to entertain/thrill audiences.  On the other hand, if the screenwriter is a real scholar, and makes educated guesses about, say, how it was for Shakespeare to “come home”, I’m a bit more forgiving.

     At any rate, for aficionados of the period and Shakespeare, the film is likely to be entertaining.  For those not particularly interested in historical details and atmosphere, you can skip it.

An unusual look at William Shakespeare and imagining his life in retirement.

Grade:  B-                                    By Donna R. Copeland

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Kenneth Branagh     Penelope Cruz     Willem Dafoe     Judi Dench     Johnny Depp     Michelle Pfeiffer

Daisy Ridley     Leslie Odom, Jr.     Josh Gad     Derek Jacobi     Olivia Colman

            Murder on the Orient Express should be an exciting, engaging, production of a beloved author’s work (Agatha Christie).  Kenneth Branagh, more acclaimed as an actor than a director, fills both roles here, but is not exemplary in either, and perhaps the script (Michael Green) bears some of the responsibility.  A good detective story subtly plants clues, explicates the detective’s reasoning process, and guides the reader along in the story.  But the story here comes across as too convoluted to make sense.  I found a number of problems in this production, foremost being Branagh as Poirot, a role stamped in my mind as a David Suchet character.  Although Branagh attempts to convey the preciseness and impressive deductive abilities of Poirot, these simply do not come across clearly; they’re too English (rather than Belgian), and rather than a neat mustache, Branagh sports what looks like a gray rag across his upper lip. 

            Many of the first scenes on the inside of the train are hazy, dark and difficult to discern what is taking place, despite the work of talented production designer, Jim Clay, and cinematographer, Haris Zambarloukos. 

            The fault cannot be in the stars; the cast for this film being a large group of highly accomplished actors, including Branagh, along with Penelope Cruz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Odom, Jr., Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley, and Olivia Colman.  Johnny Depp is on the screen only briefly, but plays his role well.

            The plot adheres loosely to the novel, in which a group of passengers board the Orient Express in Istanbul bound for numerous European stations along the way; but the train derails in a storm, and the passengers are stranded until repairs can be made.  During this time, a murder is committed, and with Poirot on board, he is called upon to solve the case, despite his being on holiday.  Earlier, he had been approached by the victim, asking for his protection, because the man was convinced that someone was out to kill him.  The man wants to prevent a murder (his) before it happens.  Poirot refuses for reasons he states very clearly.  When the murder does take place, Poirot must solve the crime, which is the only intriguing part of this film, but delivered in a way that is hard to follow with the flurry of names and historical events.

This film seems to be a big miss for an Agatha Christie story.

Grade:  D+                                    By Donna R. Copeland

DUNKIRK

Mark Rylance     Tom Hardy     Kenneth Branagh     James D’Arcy     Cillian Murphy    

Harry Styles     Fionn Whitehead     Barry Keoghan     Aneurin Barnard     Tom Glynn Carney

     Chaos reigns in the thick of battle, which Dunkirk exquisitely illustrates.  Christopher Nolan (writer/director) knew that it was critical to show the defense and evacuation in air, on the sea, and on land, and that cutting back and forth among these arenas was essential to a realistic account of the operation.  In 1940, before the U.S. entered the World War II, Germany had separated the northern Allied forces from the French forces in the south, and hoped to wipe out the Allies at Dunkirk.  In response, the Allies came up with an ambitious plan to evacuate their 330,000 troops from Dunkirk and transport them to England. 

     We are there as two young British soldiers (Whitehead, Bernard) find themselves in a throng on the beach waiting for British destroyers to pick them up.  German flyers saying, “We surround you” litter the beach, which is being periodically strafed, and when the two soldiers see a wounded man on a stretcher who needs to be carried to a waiting ship, they pick him up and run toward the ship.  There is chaos, and after much difficulty, they get him to the boat, only to have the boat bombed, and they have to figure out how to survive.  Nolan will get back to them time and again.

     Another arena is the air, where Farrier (Hardy) is an ace pilot on a Spitfire determined to shoot down every German fighter plane he sees.  And he sees and blasts many that we see go down and drown in the sea.

    The naval officers are waiting impatiently for British destroyers to show up, but they’re delayed, and other boats loaded with servicemen keep getting blown up, with the passengers who aren’t killed by the blasts jumping into the roiling sea.

     One of the more entertaining and uplifting—although also horrifying at times—segments in this film has to do with a private boat in the area requisitioned to rescue fallen troops in the sea.  The captain of this ship is Mr. Dawson (Rylance), who epitomizes the Wise One.  He rescues troops thrown into the sea, and instructs his son on board about PTSD (which had not yet been identified), boating, and simple human kindness.

     Stand-outs among the actors are Rylance as a brave and noble soul, Hardy as an ace pilot who is able to convey so much even with a mask covering his face, and Murphy as a crazed pilot rescued from atop his wrecked plane in the ocean.

     This is an extremely difficult film to watch, in that almost every scene is tension-filled with life-threatening struggles.  It’s not always clear what exactly is happening or what is being said by the characters.  The cinematography by Nolan’s favorite, Hoyle Van Hoytema, is brilliant in instilling a “You are there” experience in the viewer.  Likewise, Hans Zimmer’s score suffuses every scene with high emotional valence.

     For a fitting coda, Nolan includes excerpts of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s actual speech following the Battle of Dunkirk, underscoring the British spirit of never giving up:  “We shall go on in the end…we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.  We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

From the air, on the land, and in the sea, the battles wage on relentlessly.

Grade:  B                                    By Donna R. Copeland