By BRUCE DENNILL
Wonder Wheel / Directed by Woody Allen / PG13
Mile 22 / Directed by Peter Berg / 18LV
Lady Bird / Directed by Greta Gerwig / 16DLS
Midnight Sun / Directed by Scott Speer / PGDL
Home Again / Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer / PG
My Cousin Rachel / Directed by Roger Michell / PG
It’s difficult to completely separate Woody Allen the artist from Woody Allen the alleged sexual predator, but in the case of this drama about the interwoven lives of four protagonists living and working in Coney Island, his reputation doesn’t need to come into it. It’s just not a great film. As the carefully chosen Variety shoutline on the cover states: “There are moments that leave you breathless.” But there aren’t many. And “breathless” is perhaps too strong a term. Kate Winslet as Ginny continues a long tradition of leading ladies in Allen’s films – brittle, tormented, often angry – and does so with her trademark intensity, making the character real, if not particularly likeable. Justin Timberlake is likeable, but comes across as a Golden Era Hollywood archetype (not unreasonably, as the piece is set in the Fifties) – appealing but not relatable. Gangsters are looking for Carolina (Juno Temple), the estranged daughter of Humpty (a terminally grumpy Jim Belushi), and that thread allows for a touch of conflict that goes some way to giving Wonder Wheel some energy. Overall, though, this is just slow. Well-lit and easy on the eye, but low on stimulation.
The bromance between director Peter Berg and leading man Mark Wahlberg continues, in almost exactly the same vein as every other collaboration between the two. These films include the brutal Lone Survivor, oil rig disaster flick Deepwater Horizon, Boston Marathon bombing-focused drama Patriots Day and the Netflix release Spenser Confidential, all of which require Wahlberg to be brave and get hurt a lot, often while carrying and firing large guns. In Mile 22, he is in charge of a secret government agency in which a similar turn of events is all but guaranteed. Exactly what the agency is responsible for is as vague as much of the plot here, but nobody involved even tries to make the plot the selling point. What keeps viewers’ focus is the action: two-thirds of the film and utterly relentless, both in intensity and pace. Indonesian actor Iko Uwais is on board purely for his astonishing physical abilities and does improbably athletic things that his American counterparts can’t hope to keep up with. Berg’s trademark choppy, tight editing and enough aggression to make a wolverine seem laid-back ensure that it’s hard to look away, and that your response will involve shaking your head at another spectacularly violent interaction.
Saoirse Ronan is a formidable actress, winning a Golden Globe for this performance in Lady Bird and having four Oscar nods already by the age of 26. For this piece, released when she was 23, she played years younger to become the teenaged title character, who is smart, creative and funny, but hamstrung by circumstance. She is being brought up by a single mother (Laurie Metcalf), a nurse who works double shifts to make enough to support the pair of them. She doesn’t fit in at school, with her best friend (Beanie Feldstein) also a social outlier and her relative maturity at odds with her desire to connect with those around her. Greta Gerwig’s script rounds out her characters well, giving them depth and allowing for the story’s humour – both gently tragic and uproariously funny – to be sophisticated and accessible. Ronan is superb, completely lost in her character, and Metcalf is a perfect foil, harried and intense, but clearly full of love for her challenging offspring. This is a droll, moving comedy-drama that hits the mark both ways – to the teenagers who can see in Lady Bird aspects of themselves and their own quests for a defined identity, and to the parents who know how complex this journey is and how much energy and insight is involved.
A sort of a concept Hallmark movie, teen romance Midnight Sun never allows its veneer of cheesiness to overwhelm its story. The story is unlikely – Katie (Bella Thorne) is a young woman on the brink of adulthood who cannot go outside during the daytime, as sunlight activates a rare condition she suffers from and exposure could be lethal. During a night-time outing, with the backing of her supportive single-parenting dad (played by the affable Rob Riggle, whose goofy charm is similar to the generally hilarious Patrick Warburton), she connects with Charlie (Patrick Schwarzenegger), a boy she’s noticed and been attracted to from the safety of the tinted window of her room. This triggers all the usual desires for companionship and love that anyone her age is experiencing, with the complications that come with not having any previous experience the expression of such emotions. What happens from there is predictable, sweet and sad – and enjoyable to watch, thanks to engaging performances, Thorne’s impressive screen presence and how effortlessly Patrick Schwarzenegger avoids the legacy of his surname and presents his own persona and style. A pleasant surprise.
Home Again is a romantic comedy that does an awful lot wrong and yet somehow comes out ok. It involves a woman named Alice (Reese Witherspoon), who is turning 40 and newly separated from her husband (Michael Sheen). In this uncertain space – a new era of her life dawning in many ways – Alice is tentatively open to trying new things, and in a less than conventional move, she allows three young men to move into and rent the cottage on her property. Developing relationships with them can’t be avoided, and neither can the inevitable raised eyebrows. It’s a set-up that works because loneliness is complex and horrible and universal and desperate and it makes people do funny things (as in strange, but also as in humorous). Witherspoon makes Alice approachable and accessible but also brittle and always potentially overwhelmed. And Sheen is nasty and caustic and easy to dislike, but also understandably unbalanced by what is happening to the woman he thought he knew. The film doesn’t have the sophistication of the many rom-coms with similar budgets and A-list leads, but it has enough openness and universality to make it pleasing viewing.
Based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier, period piece My Cousin Rachel (set in the 1830s) examines the intrigue within a well-to-do family based in Cornwall. The link between the older generation – an ailing guardian – and Phillip (Sam Claflin) the young, orphaned heir to the estate (and the guardian’s cousin) is another cousin, Rachel (Rachel Weisz). She was married to the elder man at the time of his possibly suspicious death, and then arrives at the door of the estate to engage with the younger when the legal ownership of the estate comes into question. It seems, superficially, that Rachel – gorgeous and desirable and clearly aware of her effect on the men she is close to – must be manipulating the situation, her eyes on the prize of the valuable estate. But the narrative clouds the issue enough to cast doubts on everyone’s intent which, perhaps counter-intuitively, does the film no favours. Weisz, relative to everyone else on screen, has a presence no-one else can match, but her character’s actions never quite make sense, either as a sultry villain or as a misunderstood innocent. So, while the piece is magnificent to look at, it never satisfies as a chronicle of what really unfolded for the family.