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20 STAY-AT-HOME MOVIES TO SEE YOU THROUGH SELF-ISOLATION

3/23/2020

Stuck indoors thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic? Fear not! I've got you covered. Sticking strictly to movies available on the streaming and download services I own, here's my picks of what to watch at home...

20. Military Wives (2020) (Google Play/Curzon Home Cinema)

12A, 112 Mins

Director Peter Cattaneo finally makes a bonafide cult hit worthy of his ‘The Full Monty’ (1997). This dramatisation of the true story behind the Military Wives Choirs combines feelgood sentiments about music uniting people with the dark spectre of relatives at War. Kristin Scott-Thomas and Sharon Horgan deserve special plaudits for choral prowess, but also for their hot n’ cold chemistry. Have tissues at the ready as this one’ll leave you bawling!

19. The Invisible Man (2020) (Google Play)

15, 124 Mins

The scariest things are the things you don’t see. It’s that idea that this contemporary update of H.G Wells’s classic uses as the basis for both a superior chiller and a deeply sensitive commentary on the invisibility of Domestic Abuse. Elizabeth Moss is excellent as the abused spouse stalked by her “invisible” partner.

18. Emma (2020) (Google Play)

U, 125 Mins

Autumn De Wilde’s revisionist reimagining of Jane Austin’s classic lacks the California scorch of ‘Clueless’ (1995) (also based on ‘Emma’) or indeed Colin Firth’s drool-worthy chest from Andrew Davies’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1995). However it does deserve applause for making Austin cinematic. Owing more to the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ weirdness of Lewis Carroll, this is a witty, whimsical adaptation bursting with bare bottoms, cantankerous dialogue and popping pinks, yellows and greens. Anya Taylor-Joy might also be the definitive Emma Woodhouse.

17. When Harry Met Sally (1989) (Netflix)

15, 96 Mins

The infamous “I’ll have what she’s having” restaurant scene has undoubtedly left a naughty mark on Rob Reiner’s “friends with benefits” classic. Shame really because it’s actually a terrifically accessible film for couples, friends and, yes, friends with benefits of all ages that explores why exactly men and women can’t just be pals. Billy Crystal is good, but the real star is Meg Ryan who is a genuinely magical screen presence.

16. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2020) (Curzon Home Cinema)

15, 122 Mins

Classical costume tropes get a rock n’ roll makeover in Celine Sciamma’s spellbinding period romance about a female artist who falls for her titular subject. It’s a saucy deconstruction of the female gaze, a coolly contemporary musing on beauty from the eye of the beholder and an ecstatic expression of passion through art. Most of all, the film features the scariest singing sequence in living memory...and I include in that ‘Midsommar’ (2019).

15. And Then We Danced (2020) (Curzon Home Cinema)

15, 112 Mins

If you’re looking for dance sequences that look like bullet-dodging action set-pieces, this is the film for you. Never has dancing looked more extravagant and exciting. However this Georgian drama isn’t a case of style over substance. It beautifully tells the story of a man who becomes infatuated with a fellow male dancer and must keep this relationship secret in his ultra-conservative country. Like in ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ (2020), art becomes passion. In this case, the art is dancing.

14. Bacurau (2020) (Curzon Home Cinema)

18, 132 Mins

A rural Brazilian village comes under attack from American tourists in this hypnotic and deeply weird Sci-Fi Western from Brazilian film-makers Kleber Mendonca-Filho and Juliano Dornelles. A film which takes the basic inside vs. outside, DIY defences concept of ‘Straw Dogs’ (1971) and pumps it up with strange, surreal and slightly scary undertones about the shifting power of Western influences, the resentments nursed by Brazil’s indiginous people against Portuguese colonial rule and the very real dangers of consuming Shrooms dipped in cow dung. One of the best things I’ve seen this year.

13. Uncut Gems (2020) (Netflix)

15, 135 Mins

I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but Adam Sandler was robbed of an OSCAR for his chameleon performance in Josh and Benny Safdie’s gleefully excessive antihero drama. It’s a gurning, grinning, trash-talking portrayal that takes everything that is so creepy and loathsome about Sandler and cranks them up to “eleventy” crazy. All while injecting a smidgen of sympathy for the poor jeweller he plays racing against the clock to retrieve an expensive gem he purchased to pay off his debts. Sandler is ably backed by a 135 min anxiety attack of a movie that - through a sensory assault of cinematography, editing and music - thrusts audiences deep into the extremities of the central character’s lifestyle.

12. The Irishman (2019) (Netflix)

15, 208 Mins

After nearly 30 years experimenting with religion, billionaires and the history of cinema itself, Martin Scorsese returned to the Mob roots that he made his name in with this 3 and a half hour gangster epic. Morally murky antiheroes? Steampunk editing? Garrote-slashing violence? Potty-mouthed Italian American dialogue? This has all America’s greatest film-maker’s most kinetic flourishes, but also an unexpected sense of mournful melancholia when it comes to gangsters growing old. Worth Netflix subscription alone for seeing Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci on-screen together again.

11. Goodfellas (1990) (Netflix)

18, 139 Mins

When it comes to most viewer’s bets for best Martin Scorsese movie, ‘Goodfellas’ (1990) regularly battles it out for the top spot with ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) and ‘Raging Bull’ (1980). It’s certainly the most accessible of the film-maker’s holy trinity of classics. A straightforward, sprawling gangster saga clogged to the brim with profanity, violence and moral grey areas wide enough to fill the Grand Canyon. Henry Hill’s rise and fall from grace truly established Marty as the master of the Mob movie.

10. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) (Netflix)

12A, 558 Mins

I've cheated a bit by awarding three films one slot here, but the fact is all three of the epic 'Lord of the Rings' films need to be seen to be believed. Peter Jackson risked ruining his and J.RR Tolkien’s legacy with the bloated and boring ‘The Hobbit Trilogy’ (2012-2014), but his first trio of big screen renditions of the novelist’s stories have a scope and scale unseen in modern movies today. With sweeping battles, fantastically physical effects and an abundance of appropriately adult fantasy, ‘The Lord of the Rings Trilogy’ (2001-2003) is film-making on a magnitude that matches David Lean.

9. Reservoir Dogs (1992) (Netflix)

18, 99 Mins

I’m constantly accusing Quentin Tarantino of being a hack and an overrated director. And yet I absolutely love ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992). In fact, I love ‘Reservoir Dogs’ so much that I expect too much of him and everytime he lets me down it genuinely breaks my heart! This stripped down, simplistic thriller has all the trademarks of the cinematic genius Tarantino is widely regarded as. The fantastically quippy dialogue, ultra-stylized violence and pop cultural overdrive has never cut sharper than it does here. Moreover - at a lean and mean 99 mins - it’s free of the bloat and baggage that bogs down so much of his work. The non-linear narrative is an ingenious sleight of hand and the film will always hold a place in our hearts for introducing us - via an ear slice - to ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’.

8. Jaws (1975) (Netflix)

12A, 124 Mins

With record-breaking Box Office intakes of $470.7 million (the then highest grossing movie of all time), Steven Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’ (1975) is now widely considered the world’s first summer blockbuster. It’s worth remembering, though, that this low-key, $9 million B-movie wasn’t always a behemoth; marred by production problems such as going over budget and past schedule. Whether you agree with its blockbusting status or not, there’s no question that 'Jaws' is a superb horror film; feeding our life-long fears of the deep by suggesting rather than showing its shark’s presence. Again, the scariest things are the things we don’t see…

7. The Lion King (1994) (Disney Plus)

U, 88 Mins

Forget the limp-as-lettuce, “live action” remake (also on Disney Plus), the original ‘The Lion King’ (1994) is arguably Disney’s greatest triumph. Why? Well not least because it’s beautifully animated - hand-drawn simplicity trumping weightless CGI any day, but also because it has real emotional bite. You don’t have to be a child to cry like Victoria Falls at Mufasa’s death. Neither do you have to be to be scared s**tless by Jeremy Irons’s sinister Scar. Taking the basis of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and adding lions into the mix, Disney create their darkest and most mature work to date. With Hakuna Matatastic songs, it’s really grrrrrrreat.

6. The Incredibles (2004) (Disney Plus)

U, 115 Mins

Pixar’s ‘The Incredibles’ (2004) is the ‘Citizen Kane’ of animation. There, said it. The film is sensitive in its suburban portrait of Bergmanesque domesticity, slick n’ sexy in its Bondian spy spoofery and arguably one of the top 5 superhero films of all time. Most extraordinary, though, is that it looks, feels and breathes like a fully-textured “film” in every shape of the word. One with the depth and breadth of a Lean epic and moral dilemmas worthy of Shakespeare and Machiavelli. Something very few animated efforts have come close to mastering.

5. Great Expectations (1946) (BFI Player)

PG, 118 Mins

There are too many Dickensian adaptations to count, but none come close to topping David Lean’s seminal rendition of the writer’s - pardoning the pun - bleakest novel. The 1946 film adaptation works on every level: As a social commentary, a period romance, even as a surrealist farce (you want talking cows? Look no further...). Yet the movie cuts meatiest as a slice of full-blooded Gothic horror - Pip’s visit to the graveyard still chills me to the bone. The performances are uniformly excellent, but it's Martita Hart's Miss Havisham and Finlay Currie's Magwitch who really remind audiences of Dickens’s taste for the grotesque.

4. The Great Escape (1963) (Netflix)

PG, 172 Mins

Detailing the 1944 Great Escape from German POW camp Stalag Luft III, John Sturges’s World War II classic succeeds as both an inspirational history lesson and a strapping boy’s brigade adventure. The build-up to the titular event is a masterclass in ultra-masculine bromance. Meanwhile women will swoon over Steve McQueen whose blonde, blue-eyed buffness looks especially rugged when clambouring on top a Triumph TR6 Trophy; committing - during the famous jump scene - arguably the most impressive stunt ever filmed. Has inspired everything from England Football to ‘Chicken Run’ (2000).

3. Gone with the Wind (1939) (BFI Player)

PG, 232 Mins

It may be the highest grossing movie of all time adjusted for inflation (a whopping $3,713,000,000 total), but Victor Fleming’s Civil War masterpiece has far from aged well. Critics still can’t decide whether the movie’s “romanticisation” of slavery is racist or not. Have a watch to see if you can figure it out for yourself because I really can’t. In the meantime, just be swept away by the spanking Technicolor visuals, gorgeous Old South scenery and heartbreaking performances from Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. The latter of whom looked so beautiful against the setting sun of her “God is my witness!” monologue.

2. La Dolce Vita (1960) (BFI Player)

12A, 175 Mins

Dubbed “the greatest film ever made” by Nicholas Winding Refn and “the film that conquered the world” by Martin Scorsese, ‘La Dolce Vita’ (1960) celebrates both its 60th anniversary and the centenary of Director Fedrico Fellini in 2020. It’s easy to see how this Italian classic warrants such bold statements from two of the greatest film-makers of modern times. As well as being elusively shot in dream-like monochrome, the film remains the essential portrait of post-War Europe’s ever-changing, un-PC attitudes; giving birth to the modern word “Paparazzi” and - in Marcello Mastrioanni - a metaphor for Fellini’s affection and revulsion for the philandering excesses of 60s Rome. I still view Marstroanni and Anita Eckberg’s level-headed meeting in the Trevi Fountain as symbolic of the subversion, progression and equality Fellini was pushing for in that unequal era.

1. The Seventh Seal (1957) (BFI Player)

PG, 96 Mins

Finally, for my No.1 spot, I’ve gone for a mini-masterpiece from Ingmar Bergman. ‘The Seventh Seal’ (1957) regularly and rightfully ranks as one of the 10 greatest films of all time. It’s 2nd among my personal favourites and - with the movie automatically available to BFI Player subscribers - there's no better film on this list. Max von Sydow is blistering as the ice-haired Swedish Knight hoping to cheat his own demise via a chess game with the personification of “Death” himself (a truly terrifying Bengt Ekerot). For me, ‘The Seventh Seal’ is physical proof of the magic of Bergman's storytelling. The blend of fantasy and fact, religion and history, comedy and horror has never shone brighter. It may not have the Technicolor sweep of ‘Gone with the Wind’ (1939) or the “sweet life” of ‘La Dolce Vita’ (1960), but there’s something for everyone in the movie’s macabre madness as well as weighty questions over Godly existence and penance for our sins.

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TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG (2020) FILM REVIEW

3/1/2020

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*****

18, 125 Mins

Antihero origins story discomforts and dazzles together.

At the beginning of 'Goodfellas' (1990), Ray Liotta's Henry Hill mutters the immortal line "all my life all I wanted was to be a gangster". In 'True History of the Kelly Gang' (2020), you could almost imagine George McKay's Ned Kelly subverting that Freudian quote with "all my life I wanted to be an outlaw". This movie is - like 'Goodfellas' - very much the story of a hot-headed young man burning with toxic masculine rage and baffling ambitions for a lifestyle of glamourized crime. It's also the only movie where Martin Scorsese, Batman and Spaghetti Westerns can be mentioned in the same sentence!

While not particularly well-known on British shores, Ned Kelly remains one of Australia's most famous figures. To the authorities, he was an outlaw, a bushranger, a gang leader and convicted police murderer. To the masses, however, he could be seen as the country's Che Guevara or Jesse James. A hero who waged war against British colonial rule. He's someone with an icy influence on cinema as a whole - the world's first dramatic feature film was, of course, 'The Story of Ned Kelly' (1906). Since then, there have been nine big screen renditions of the man's story. The most famous include 1951's 'The Glenrowan Affair' where Australian rules footballer Bob Chitty played the morally ambiguous outlaw. Mick Jagger even starred as him in Tony Richardson's 'Ned Kelly' (1970) which was not the best received version. All before the late Heath Ledger in the 2003 film of the same name.

Australian film-maker Justin Kurzel frankly couldn't be a better fit to cut to the dark, bloody heart of the Kelly backstory. 'True History of the Kelly Gang' is adapted from Peter Carey's Man Brooker prize-winning novel, but Kurzel is the real auteur here. His 'Snowtown' (2011) - a ruthlessly rough retelling of the Snowtown murders - was one of the best films of 2011. I also absolutely loved the director's bloodthirsty spin on 'Macbeth' (2015) which still stands as one of the strongest Shakespeare adaptations. More recently Kurzel turned his hand to 'Assassin's Creed' (2017) - a shot at breaking into the mainstream. That wasn't bad at all. If anything, it was one of the better video-game movies, but was panned by critics and proved a massive Box Office flop.

Now 'True History of the Kelly Gang' sees Kurzel revelling in his passion for the sweary, salacious and savage. Both his most accessible and finest film to date, the key to its appeal is the mixture of populism and psychology. First and foremost, this is a Western drooling with the energy, elegy and elan of Sergio Leone's 'Dollars Trilogy' (1964-1966). Something which will immediately draw in an older audience brought up on these classics as strapping Saturday matinee entertainments.

It has all the big, blastin' Wild West tropes - PING! PAM! POW! shootouts, galloping horses, handguns strapped to the belts and gold-toothed men in cowboy hats grumbling "AHHH!". Served alongside these generic stereotypes is slicin' violence to have you squirming baloney. Take the 18 certificate seriously because one moment had me going "oooooh", "arrrrrgh" and "isssssh" like an overprotective parent when one character bites off another's ear.

This is some of the nastiest on-screen guts, gore and grue I've seen in years. However none of it is ever sensationalistic or stylized in the manner of Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez. The camera strives to recreate the tooth n' claw trimmings of 19th century Australia with harrowing visual reminders that this is a world where women were raped, ethnic aboriginals slaughtered and Irish beaten to the pulp as convicts. The movie's also not shy of its own savagery. Particular gross-out highlights include a zoom-in on a cow's chopped-off leg. With raw flesh and blood rarely looking so unapatising, such a snippet will truly make meat-eaters want to go vegan!

You'll equally find yourself going "CRIKEY! THAT'S GOTTA HURT!" whenever someone (and by someone I mean almost everyone!) gets blasted to smithereens and all these atrocities take place against the most alien and outlandish of landscapes akin to the Martian rouges of 70s Sci-Fi productions. There's panoramic sweeps here comparible with Kubrick with the cinematography vast and sprawling, but also minimalist and minute. For example, you'll get a landscape shot of the Outback complimented by a Malickian close-up of a cactus swishing and swashing in the wind.

Needless to say, 'True History of the Kelly Gang' is beautiful, but bloody and brooding in its aesthetic. The scorchin' hot Western sun is what will innevitably bring in the crowds because there's always a market for cowboy action, but what's most interesting is the psychoanalytical stuff. Beneath the pulp of the film's violence and shootouts, this is a razor-sharp character study of a young man shaped by the obscenities of his upbringing. Where previous depictions of Ned Kelly have faltered in their attempts to glorify him as some sort of Australian Robin Hood hero, this taps into the propensity for nastiness that made him tick.

A scene early on will have you watching through your fingers when the young Kelly (a terrific child performance from Orlando Schwerdt), first of all, shoots Charlie Hunnam's brutish constable in the leg before being forced to put a pistol to Russell Crowe's head. Crowe is better than he's been in ages as Harry Power - a beefy, intimedating bushranger who took the young Kelly in as his teenage accomplice. Throughout this segment, I genuinely believed the young boy might pull the trigger. A harrowing encapsulation of a youngster's early exposure to violence that really drives the central character's descent into criminality.

It's also the kind of childhood trauma that would push anyone over the edge. And here was where I saw shades of Christopher Nolan's 'Batman Begins' (2005). The same suggestion that childhood trauma is the tipping point for a youngster's transformation from scared, innocent child into vicious vigilante exists in this movie. In fact, the whole film could be read as a superhero or, should I say, antihero origins story. By the end of it, Kelly has almost gone through a personality switch and become a twisted symbol for blurred morality.

You're never sure whether you should love or loathe Ned Kelly. Say what you want about British Colonial rule, the majority of atrocities carried out by the Kelly gang - robbing from civilians and killing police - were morally reprehensible. Not only does this film have moral grey areas wide enough to fill an entire season of 'Game of Thrones' (2011-2019), but, at its heart, is one simple idea.

Not in a long, long time has one idea run so firmly and fluidly through the core of a motion picture. It's a kind of "mommy dearest" thread of a matriarchal figure and her protege. In this case, it exists between Ned Kelly and his mother Ellen (Essie Davis). She's his rock. She's the reason he pursues the life of a bushranger and is taken in by Harry Power. In any other hands, such a relationship should suck sentimental. In Kurzel's bruised palms, though, this partnership is every inch twisted and oedipal; prodding the knife into the heart-strings that should be being tickled with the suggestion that, for all Kelly's swaggering macho glaze, he was also essentially a big ole' mommy's boy.

In these two roles, George McKay and Essie Davis play this chemistry sublimely. The former remains such a riveting screen presence by virtue of having the scariest eyes ever - all bouncy, buoyant pupils that simply scream unhinged and maddening. He's absolutely brilliant as Mr. Kelly; getting deep beneath the skin of the falsely idolized renegade and letting audiences understand that he wasn't such a great hero after all. However he's not the star of the movie. That honour lies with Davis who is dynamite as Ellen Kelly. The momsy vital organ of the piece that delivers the killer blow to our antihero's fragmented psyche.

'True History of the Kelly Gang' is a film with bang for your buck blasted out of a shotgun by its Spaghetti Western pretences. A film with stomach-churning violence entirely necessary to capture the extremities of the era. It has - pardoning the pun - beef to level out the bang in the titular antihero's childhood traumas. And, at the centre of it all, you have the strangest, most disturbing "mama's boy" double-act which encapsulates the movie's throbbing arteries.

All this builds to a spectacular finale with the Kelly gang trapped and surrounded in a barn by Ku Klux Klan-like, white gown-wearing officers that actually evoked 'Straw Dogs' (1971). It's amazing how many movies recently have drawn upon Sam Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch in Cornwall" shocker for their third act. Think of 'Birds of Prey' (2020) earlier this month which put a carnivalesque, funhouse spin on the concept of home-made, DIY defences. 'True History of the Kelly Gang' has this and so much more. I loved it.

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20 STAY-AT-HOME MOVIES TO SEE YOU THROUGH SELF-ISOLATION

​20. Military Wives (2020) (Google Play/Curzon Home Cinema)

12A, 112 Mins

19. The Invisible Man (2020) (Google Play)

15, 124 Mins

18. Emma (2020) (Google Play)

U, 125 Mins

17. When Harry Met Sally (1989) (Netflix)

15, 96 Mins

16. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2020) (Curzon Home Cinema)

15, 122 Mins

15. And Then We Danced (2020) (Curzon Home Cinema)

15, 112 Mins

14. Bacurau (2020) (Curzon Home Cinema)

18, 132 Mins

13. Uncut Gems (2020) (Netflix)

15, 135 Mins

12. The Irishman (2019) (Netflix)

15, 208 Mins

11. Goodfellas (1990) (Netflix)

18, 139 Mins

10. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) (Netflix)

12A, 558 Mins

9. Reservoir Dogs (1992) (Netflix)

18, 99 Mins

8. Jaws (1975) (Netflix)

12A, 124 Mins

7. The Lion King (1994) (Disney Plus)

U, 88 Mins

6. The Incredibles (2004) (Disney Plus)

U, 115 Mins

5. Great Expectations (1946) (BFI Player)

PG, 118 Mins

4. The Great Escape (1963) (Netflix)

PG, 172 Mins

3. Gone with the Wind (1939) (BFI Player)

PG, 232 Mins

2. La Dolce Vita (1960) (BFI Player)

12A, 175 Mins

1. The Seventh Seal (1957) (BFI Player)

PG, 96 Mins

TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG (2020) FILM REVIEW

*****

18, 125 Mins

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20. Military Wives (2020) (Google Play/Curzon Home Cinema)

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DVD OF THE WEEK

Shrek Ultimate Collection (DVD)
(U, 4 Films)

TV MOVIE OF THE WEEK

Inside Out (2015)
(U, 102 Mins)
Sun May 9th, 3.05pm, BBC1