Norma, you've got the biggest mouth in this mill!

Norma Rae

(1979)

(SPOILERS) What a dreary cartload of issue-led laboriousness. Worthy subjects may make for worthy movies (or they may not), but there’s absolutely no guarantee they’ll make interesting ones. And when you attach Martin Ritt to them (post-‘60s, at any rate), you’re almost guaranteed a comatose result. Norma Rae is one of those pictures that would be entirely, rather than just mostly, forgotten, if it wasn’t for it bagging Sally Field an Oscar for playing the title character. And it isn’t even that “You really like me!” Oscar either.

If you want to make starchy political subject matter riveting, give Warren Beatty a call. This, though, telling of the unionisation of a cotton mill in a North Carolina town, has earnestness up the wazoo, and feels slightly patronising to boot, as Norma charts an Eliza Doolittle course of becoming socio-politically aware while weighed down with a good, simple southern girl accent that would set her in fine stead for playing Forrest Gump’s mom a decade and a half later.

Everything surrounding Norma’s rise reeks of stolid cliché, from the uncompromising organiser (Ron Leibman) to the kindly-but-straightforward beau (Beau Bridges). It’s easy to rag on about simplistic Hollywood formulas, but for all the drama this elicits it could almost have done with an infusion of that Jerry Bruckheimer spirit (since the standard response to those suggesting this kind of picture is a wee bit lacking is to go and watch a Michael Bay movie, on the shortly to be deceased imdb comments boards at least), or a touch of Taylor Hackford in An Officer and a Gentleman mode. Anything to snap it out of its somnambulant self-importance.

Very occasionally, Norma Rae threatens to become interesting (it seems to be inching towards suggesting over-protective dad Pat Hingle is over- other things too, but then decides to forget about it). Field would go on to make two more movies with Ritt no one remembers, and we’re now at a point where no one quite remembers why they really liked her either. Just being based on a true story (of Crystal Lee Sutton) doesn’t automatically warrant respect, and as far as tales of undaunted activism in the face of oppressive bosses and hazardous working conditions go, Silkwood a few years later is vastly superior, right down to Meryl dousing herself in blue collar intonations.

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

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Prepare the Heathen’s Stand! By order of purification!

Apostle (2018)
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Vampire Academy (2014)
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Venom (2018)
(SPOILERS) A 29% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes can't be wrong, can it? To go by the number of one-star reviews Sony’s attempt to kick-start their own shred of the Marvel-verse has received, you’d think it was the new Battlefield Earth, or Highlander II: The Quickening. Fortunately, it's far from that level of ignominy. And while it’s also a considerable distance from showing the polish and assuredness of the official Disney movies, it nevertheless manages to establish its own crudely winning sense of identity.

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Tomb Raider (2018)
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(SPOILERS) Perhaps surprisingly not the lowest grossing of last year's Best Picture Oscar nominees (that was Call Me by Your Name) but certainly the one with the least buzz as a genuine contender, subjected as Phantom Thread was to a range of views from masterpiece (the critics) to drudge (a fair selection of general viewers). The mixed reaction wasn’t so very far from Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier The Master, and one suspects the nomination was more to do with the golden glow of Daniel Day-Lewis in his first role in half a decade (and last ever, if he's to be believed) than mass Academy rapture with the picture. Which is ironic, as the relatively unknown Vicky Krieps steals the film from under him.

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A Star is Born (2018)
(SPOILERS) A shoe-in for Best Picture Oscar? Perhaps not, since it will have to beat at very least Roma and First Man to claim the prize, but this latest version of A Star is Born still comes laden with more acclaim than the previous three versions put together (and that's with a Best Picture nod for the 1937 original). While the film doesn't quite reach the consistent heights suggested by the majority of critics, who have evacuated their adjectival bowels lavishing it with superlatives, it's undoubtedly a remarkably well-made, stunningly acted piece, and perhaps even more notably, only rarely feels like its succumbing to just how familiar this tale of rise to, and parallel fall from, stardom has become.

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
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