The script of our first movie reviewed below has been written by Brum’s prolific wordsmith and Westside regular Steven Knight, with Angelina Jolie in the title role of soprano Maria Callas.
His Peaky Blinders movie was recently shooting in Gas Street Basin and the history-loving Knight has also penned the current second BBC series of SAS Rogue Heroes.
Do note that Maria is only screening in Westside at Cineworld Broad Street, with A Real Pain and Babygirl also on at Odeon Luxe Broadway Plaza, too.
Maria (12A, 124 mins). Heading in search of a third best actress Oscar nomination, Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted 2000) plays the world’s most famous opera singer Maria Callas towards the end of the soprano’s life in 1970s Paris.
The verdict: ☆☆☆
After Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021) this is Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s third biopic about one of the world’s most fascinating women. The difference is that his latest subject had a world class talent, not just a famous partner (though Maria’s flashback scenes here with Aristotle Onassis are especially good).
Like Larraín’s Diana biopic, Maria has been penned by Knight who again offers a more sensorial (and sometimes hallucinatory) interpretation than a story-driven approach to the end of the singer’s life, more than a decade after her real stage career had ended at Covent Garden in 1965.
As illustrated by the final credits’ archive, Jolie is terrific in the role which, after seven months of training, sees her voice blended with the opera legend’s own, and increasingly so towards the end.
Opera fans should love this exploration of what it might take to regain a life by recapturing former artistic glories. But the manner of Maria’s death following the decline of her star qualities means the non committed won’t need a box of hankies.
Maria is many things including empathetic, but it’s not meant to be a tearjerker and some might even lose patience. That the singer’s demise on 16 September, 1977 should open the film is one thing. That
there is no scope for anyone to even mention the loss of Elvis exactly a month earlier on
16 August is another.
A Real Pain (15, 90 mins). Two spiky, uptight New York cousins who share differences as well as a Jewish
grandmother go on a tour of Poland in her memory. The film explores love and loss as well as family history and introduces a range characters keen to learn more (one is a survivor of Rwandan genocide).
The verdict: ☆☆☆☆☆
Now 41, Social Network star turned writer-director Jesse Eisenberg is back on screen as David Kaplan, generously supporting a scene-stealing turn from Kieran Culkin as foot-in-mouth cousin Benji Kaplan.
Born three weeks apart to brother fathers, their gran left them money to visit Poland on what Benji calls a ‘geriatric tour’.
Feeling like a 1970s Woody Allen US movie that’s also very modern and European at the same time, A Real Pain is a Holocaust story that is as funny in terms of character relationships in the present as it is cleverly rewarding with deep respect to the past, all with performances to match.
Never feeling in the least bit ‘Art House’ boring, few movies are this good and so economical with their running time and financing… the budget was equivalent to a mere £2.5 million.
As the cousins’ British tour guide James (Will Sharpe) says: “In a couple of days I will be taking us to a Concentration Camp so… this may seem obvious but a word of warning, this will be a tour about pain. It’s also a tour… about the most resilient people.”
Babygirl (18, 115 mins). Being a chief executive, mother to lovely girls and married to a bearded hunk like Jacob (Antonio Banderas) apparently isn’t enough for Romy (Nicole Kidman). So when cheeky intern
Jacob (Harris Dickinson) begins to boss the boss, Romy starts to obey. And that’s with clothes on and clothes off.
The verdict: ☆☆☆
Just when you thought the titillating era of Fifty Shades of Grey was well and truly behind us, here’s a corporate work experience version directed by Halina Reijn (Instinct, 2019).
“I’ll do whatever you tell me to do,” says Romy, going all husky in front of Samuel. Dutch actress turned writer-director Halina wants viewers to end up “feeling closer to their authentic selves” when they leave the picture behind even if, presumably, that means going home to lick a plate of milk when on all fours.
Credit to Kidman for sharing so many intimate scenes with both Dickinson (whose accent grates after a while) and the relatively anonymised Banderas.
Anyone expecting this rare 18 certificate film to deliver unbridled raunchiness will be disappointed that even when Dickinson puts his foot down, the film stays firmly in second gear compared with last year’s Anora.
Back in the day, the greater spark of Michael Douglas took Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction to rather different levels of glossy excitement.
Your reviewer: Graham Young has been reviewing films for the media in Birmingham for the last 36 years, serving the Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post, Sunday Mercury, BirminghamLive and BBC WM. He was the 1996 Regional Film Journalist of the Year.
ENDS
