Can't you see we're enjoying the last great idyll of our lives?

Youth

(2015)

(SPOILERS) I greatly enjoyed Paolo Sorrentino’s last feature, The Great Beauty (or, La grande bellezza), in spite of its overt debt to Fellini, a director I’ve never really gotten on with. That same devotion is also evident in Youth, marked as it is by a series of surreal interludes, culminating in moviemaker Harvey Keitel surveying a field of starlets (all very 8½). It also exhibits the kind of beautified, musically sumptuous, existential sogginess of recent Terence Malicks, however; there’s a desire to grasp at the flighty meaning of it all, whatever that all may be, and thus all it ends up revealing is the limits of its maker’s philosophy, that he feels inclined to gorge himself so thoroughly on something so insubstantial. It’s fast-food for the soul, immaculately presented but near-devoid of nourishment.

But in terms of eye candy (and I don’t just mean Madalina Diana Ghenea), Youth is irresistible, and Sorrentino, as in The Great Beauty, has an enviable skill for marrying image with sound to emotionally exhilarating effect. When I first saw the trailer, I thought this might be one of those codgers-on-the-way-out pictures, like a more edifying (it couldn’t be less) Euro-version of The Bucket List. Rather, however, it simply concerns aging friends, composer Fred (Michael Caine, with a luxuriant wig and a – relatively – plummy voice) and movie producer Mick (Keitel), ruminating for two hours at a Swiss health spa, fretting about the aging process as Sorrentino filters distractions through the lens of their mortal thoughts.

So we have Rachel Weisz as Caine’s daughter, who, in one of a number of strange (but not, to be honest, overly endearing) manglings of real and fake, has her husband run off with Paloma Faith (playing Paloma Faith, and incorporating a rather rum pop video sequence to that effect), Paul Dano as an actor who sits in awe of Caine and eventually dresses as Hitler (just, because; well, no, he’s considering playing Hitler, but really, just because), an obese Maradona (but not played by Maradona: rather, the aptly named Roly Serrano), the impossibly voluptuous Miss Universe (Ghenea) and a Tibetan monk (Dorji Wangchuk) attempting to levitate.

The warning of how facile this actually is comes early on, as Fred tells a Tibetan monk ‘You won’t fool me. I know you can’t really levitate”; it’s self-evident that, before the show is over, we’ll see him doing exactly that. And presto. Mick is surrounded by a coterie of Hollywood screenwriters offering solutions for the end of his latest project, but none of this larky “business” is really clever enough to be endearing; Woody Allen knocked off Fellini far more effectively in Stardust Memories, and even Jane Fonda appearing to tell Mick how he’s past it barely stirs attention levels, apart from her being made up like Joan Crawford.

Sorrentino appears to be forever set on emotional potholing, but having forgotten his flashlight, he never gets very far before he needs to resurface. There’s a trite metaphor about a telescope (when you’re young, you see everything really close, and that’s the future; when you’re old, you see everything really far away, and that’s the past), and an even triter one in which Fred is asked, “Do you know what awaits you outside of here?” before being told “You”.

But, despite the rudimentary script, it’s difficult to entirely resist this confection. While Youth is very obvious, it’s never mean-spirited, and it’s always feast for the eyes and ears. In its way it’s as empty as your average Hollywood blockbuster, possibly more so, as it has unfulfilled pretentions towards deeper things, but taken purely on that surface level, it’s frequently exquisite.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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.

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.

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.

The Krishna died of a broken finger? I mean, is that a homicide?

Miami Blues (1990) (SPOILERS) If the ‘90s crime movie formally set out its stall in 1992 with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs , another movie very quietly got in there first at the beginning of the decade. Miami Blues picked up admiring reviews but went otherwise unnoticed on release, and even now remains under-recognised. The tale of “blithe psychopath” Federick J. Frenger, Jr., the girl whose heart he breaks and the detetive sergeant on his trail, director George Armitage’s adaptation of Charles Willeford’s novel wears a pitch black sense of humour and manages the difficult juggling act of being genuinely touching with it. It’s a little gem of a movie, perfectly formed and concisely told, one that more than deserves to rub shoulders with the better-known entries in its genre. One of the defining characteristics of Willeford’s work, it has been suggested , is that it doesn’t really fit into the crime genre; he comes from an angle of character rather than plot or h

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.

You tampered with the universe, my friend.

The Music of Chance (1993) (SPOILERS) You won’t find many adaptations of Paul Auster’s novels. Original screenplays, yes, a couple of which he has directed himself. Terry Gilliam has occasionally mentioned Mr. Vertigo as in development. It was in development in 1995 too, when Philip Haas and Auster intended to bring it to the screen. Which means Auster presumably approved of Haas’ work on The Music of Chance (he also cameos). That would be understandable, as it makes for a fine, ambiguous movie, pregnant with meaning yet offering no unequivocal answers, and one that makes several key departures from the book yet crucially maintains a mesmerising, slow-burn lure.

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.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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