I think Kim Jong-un is pretty sexy.

The Rewrite

(2014)

Hugh Grant doesn’t really need to work much if he doesn’t want to, so it’s probably this fact that keeps him off scree rather than a desire to limit the exposure of his “brand”. If asked, he would probably indulge a spot of Boris Johnson-esque toff bluster about how no one really wants to see him everywhere and it’s in their own best interests, while secretly enjoying all the attention. But the harsh truth is, Grant has reached his mid-50s, and he may also be questioning how long he can continue to pull off the self-effacing, stammering, moderately charming English chappie. It's an essentially youthful type. That rather droll persona, the one who swears like a trooper but does so endearingly, and manages to be extremely rude to people without really meaning it. Hugh may not attract the audiences he did in his prime, but few do. If you like Grant, The Rewrite will probably do nicely. It’s undemanding, fitfully funny, and features just enough gags revolving around the Hollywood moviemaking machine to make it seem vaguely self-aware.

The last time Grant was on screen he played a cannibal (the time before that he voiced a pirate captain for Aardman), and next he’ll be playing Waverley in The Man from UNCLE, so accusing him of resting on his laurels is only really fair with regard to leading man duties. The Rewrite knows that particular persona as clearly as it did in his last three collaborations with writer-director Marc Lawrence (Two Weeks Notice, Music and Lyrics, Did You Hear About the Morgans?) When Lawrence directs, he directs with Hugh, or so it appears so far. It isn’t exactly De Niro and Scorsese, but it will do. Lawrence has an ear for Grant dialogue, so Hugh’s often funny.

Here Hugh’s Keith Michaels (Richards?), a fading Hollywood screenwriter who won an Oscar a decade and a half earlier (for Paradise Misplaced, a suitably silly sounding tale of angels who send the wrong soul to hell and attempt to retrieve him), but whose career now amounts to people at airports telling him he wrote their favourite movie. In desperation he takes a teaching gig at unglamorous Binghamton University, an upstate New York college (and the town from whence Rod Serling hails).

Keith’s view of teachers is remorselessly low (“They’re frustrated losers who haven’t done anything with their own life so they want to instruct other people”) and he proceeds to show off a winning line in flagrant irresponsibility upon his arrival. He shags the first student he lays eyes on (Bella Heathcote), insults the Austen-loving head of the ethics committee (Allison Janney), chooses his students on the basis of looks, and adjourns his class for a month as he doesn’t believe writing can be taught. Despite this, Lawrence could have upped the dastardly side further without worrying about losing sympathy. Grant is forever the fecklessly amiable clod who we’ll get behind in the end, and Keith’s really only moderately naughty, and bashfully apologetic when he’s done bad.

Still, there are enough occasions of classic Grant delivery mode to satisfy. He drunkenly digs himself a hole when holding forth about the preponderance of movies with kick ass girls, and how it would be empowering not to have a movie about a kick ass girl, “Or better yet, a movie where a girl gets her arse kicked”. The screenwriting gags are fun enough too (I particularly liked the student suggestions for the inevitable Paradise Misplaced 2, something Keith swore off when he was still young and believed in himself; “Maybe instead of going to hell this time they go into space”). Lawrence also inevitably plunders the idea that everyone wants to write a movie script; even Keith’s nemesis has a screenplay idea.

Just to ensure there’s a veneer of substance, Lawrence incorporates a debate on whether one either has talent or one doesn’t, but its conclusions are left tentative (Keith’s great success is a student who needed no tutorship, and yet he comes around to loving his job). Hugh’s learning curve is wholly typical of this type of movie, maybe even a little more rote than usual; of course he will fall for single mum Marisa Tomei. Of course he will learn to be responsible. Of course he will reconnect with his son. I have no objections to an easy-going romantic comedy, but this one is so fait accompli, one wishes there was a little more bite somewhere.

The supporting cast go through their paces responsibly but with little sustenance. JK Simmons is the faculty head who can’t stop weeping whenever he thinks of his daughters (as laboured as it sounds, but Simmons is a pro), Chris Elliott, unusually, plays a weirdo teacher (with a Shakespeare fixation and a dog called Henry IV). Next Big Thing Heathcote is both cute and appropriately abrasive when scorned (unlike everyone else she still hates Hugh at the end).

The rest of the class are a predictably quirky (so not really), including the miserable girl, the airhead, and the Star Wars obsessive. While the threat of Keith being dismissed for shagging a student ensures a vague level of conflict, the romance with the always-likeable, chipmunk-adorable Tomei treads water. As does The Rewrite generally, it will do, but Lawrence should probably have persevered over a couple more drafts.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

You think a monkey knows he’s sitting on top of a rocket that might explode?

The Right Stuff (1983) (SPOILERS) While it certainly more than fulfils the function of a NASA-propaganda picture – as in, it affirms the legitimacy of their activities – The Right Stuff escapes the designation of rote testament reserved for Ron Howard’s later Apollo 13 . Partly because it has such a distinctive personality and attitude. Partly too because of the way it has found its through line, which isn’t so much the “wow” of the Space Race and those picked to be a part of it as it is the personification of that titular quality in someone who wasn’t even in the Mercury programme: Chuck Yaeger (Sam Shephard). I was captivated by The Right Stuff when I first saw it, and even now, with the benefit of knowing-NASA-better – not that the movie is exactly extolling its virtues from the rooftops anyway – I consider it something of a masterpiece, an interrogation of legends that both builds them and tears them down. The latter aspect doubtless not NASA approved.

Drank the red. Good for you.

Morbius (2022) (SPOILERS) Generic isn’t necessarily a slur. Not if, by implication, it’s suggestive of the kind of movie made twenty years ago, when the alternative is the kind of super-woke content Disney currently prioritises. Unfortunately, after a reasonable first hour, Morbius descends so resignedly into such unmoderated formula that you’re left with a too-clear image of Sony’s Spider-Verse when it lacks a larger-than-life performer (Tom Hardy, for example) at the centre of any given vehicle.

He doesn’t want to lead you. He just wants you to follow.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) (SPOILERS) The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit , if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts , there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and each subsequent sequel to the first prequel has succeeded only in drawing attention to its prosaic function: keeping franchise flag flying, even at half-mast. Hence Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore , belatedly arriving after twice the envisaged gap between instalments and course-correcting none of the problems present in The Crimes of Grindelwald .

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

You’d be surprised how many intersectional planes of untethered consciousness exist.

Moon Knight (2022) (SPOILERS) Now, this is an interesting one. Not because it’s very good – Phase IV MCU? Hah! – but because it presents its angle on the “superhero” ethos in an almost entirely unexpurgated, unsoftened way. Here is a character explicitly formed through the procedures utilised by trauma-based mind control, who has developed alters – of which he has been, and some of which he remains, unaware – and undergone training/employment in the military and private mercenary sectors (common for MKUltra candidates, per Dave McGowan’s Programmed to Kill ). And then, he’s possessed by what he believes to be a god in order to carry out acts of extreme violence. So just the sort of thing that’s good, family, DisneyPlus+ viewing.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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