Critical Week: What big hair you have!

A rather vicious bout with food poisoning derailed a few film screenings for me this week, leaving me feeling a bit like the Sun King on his deathbed in The Death of Louis XIV, an achingly slow-moving but mesmerising 18th century drama by Albert Serra. It also has a surprising underlying sense of humour to it, plus a lovely performance from Jean-Pierre Leaud. Terrence Malick's Song to Song is another gorgeous collage of a movie with a plot that was slightly less defiantly elusive than his more recent movies. It also has striking performances from Michael Fassbender, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchet and more. And Maudie is the warm true story of Nova Scotia painter Maud Lewis, sometimes a bit too quirky and quaint for its own good, but Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke add nice textures to their offbeat roles. And then there was this one...

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A Few Less Men
dir Mark Lamprell; scr Dean Craig; with Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall, Kevin Bishop, Ryan Corr 17/Aus *
Screenwriter Dean Craig's 2012 comedy A Few Best Men was painfully unfunny, only livened up by Stephan Elliot's subversive direction. No one expected a sequel. But here it is, and the three returning actors at least dive in with gusto. Even so, Craig's script is even more unbearably inane this time, proving that comedies need gags that have something to do with characters or situations. Here, the jokes are random, usually extended set-pieces involving death and/or bodily functions, all with a vile homophobic undertone. And the plot simply makes no sense. It starts where the first film ended, after the wedding of sensible nice-guy David (Samuel), whose idiotic and unlikely English buddies (Marshall and Bishop) are coping with the death of a friend. The hijinks ensue as they try to get the body back to London so camp mobster Henry (Corr) can bury his brother. But they crash-land their private jet and end up carrying the coffin across the Outback on a single day that would need to have about 72 hours in it (Henry flies from London to meet them in Perth while the sun is still in the sky). The actors just about emerge with their dignity intact, simply by never acknowledging how bone-chillingly awful this movie is. There are welcome antics from scene-stealers like Lynette Curran, Deborah Mailman, Shane Jacobson and Sacha Horler. And the closing credits outtakes at least hint they had some fun making it.

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This coming week we have Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the animated antics of Captain Underpants, the Morrissey biopic England Is Mine and the cleverly titled heist thriller The Vault.

Venezia 73: Holding it together on day 8

We're in the final stretch now, and the lack of sleep, long distances of walking, contrasts between hot sunshine and chilly air conditioning are all taking their toll. But the parties are starting up. Our jury decides on its winner today (still two more films to see), and the weekend will see a range of celebrations. Then next week it's back to work as usual. Anyway, here's what I saw on Tuesday (that's Natalie Portman, above, in my best of the fest so far)...

Jackie
dir Pablo Larrain; with Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard 16/US *****
Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain takes a clear-eyed approach to this fictionalised account of the days following JFK's assassination. Anchored by a pungent performance by Natalie Portman, the film digs deep into the complexities of grief, with glancing blows to celebrity culture and political expediency. Never slick or sentimental, its layers of resonance are hard to shake.

The Journey
dir Nick Hamm; with Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney 16/UK ***
Anchored by tremendous performances by Timothy Spall and Colm Meaney, this British drama imagines a real-life political conversation in the style of The Queen or Frost/Nixon. Even though it's simplistic and contrived, Colin Bateman's script is snaky and often very funny as it traps mortal enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness in a car for an hour or so. The resuly is entertaining, although it could have had a lot more bite.

Voyage of Time
dir-scr Terrence Malick; narr Cate Blanchett 16/US ***
Call this the logical next stage in the evolution of Terrence Malick: his swirling approach to natural history has eschewed even a hint of a plot to instead trace time from drifting bits of matter to, well, drifting bits of matter. With all of Earth's existence in between. It's often breathtakingly gorgeous, and there are some very clever touches. But it's also rather corny, and a bit obvious.

Paradise
dir Andrey Konchalovsky; with Yuliya Vysotskaya, hristian Clauss  16/Russia ***.
With a bold visual and structural style, Andrey Konchalovsky gives the Nazi deathcamp movie an eternal twist, exploring the actions and motivations of three distinct people in the face of unspeakable horror. It's a difficult film, somewhat simplistic in its morality and pushy in its themes. But it has a visceral power that can't help but strike a chord.