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.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

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

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

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.

I’m just the balloon man.

Copshop (2021) (SPOILERS) A consistent problem with Joe Carnahan’s oeuvre is that, no matter how confidently his movies begin, or how strong his premise, or how adept his direction or compelling the performances he extracts, he ends up blowing it. He blows it with Copshop , a ’70s-inspired variant on Assault on Precinct 13 that is pretty damn good during the first hour, before devolving into his standard mode of sado-nihilistic mayhem.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

When we have been subtle, then can I kill him?

The Avengers 6.16. Legacy of Death There’s scarcely any crediting the Terry Nation of Noon-Doomsday as the same Terry Nation that wrote this, let alone the Terry Nation churning out a no-frills Dalek story a season for the latter stages of the Jon Pertwee era. Of course, Nation had started out as a comedy writer (for Hancock), and it may be that the kick Brian Clemens gave him up the pants in reaction to the quality of Noon-Doomsday loosened a whole load of gags. Admittedly, a lot of them are well worn, but they come so thick and fast in Legacy of Death , accompanied by an assuredly giddy pace from director Don Chaffey (of Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts ) and a fine ensemble of supporting players, that it would be churlish to complain.

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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