Tag: Margot Robbie

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Hollywood. 1969. Screen actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) has been reduced from former star of TV Western Bounty Law to villains in other serial episodes. He needs to do something to get his career back on track. His stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) acts as his driver and general handy man and is also a trusted friend and confident. As Cliff drives around the city, he sees hippie girls hanging out or thumbing lifts on the Los Angeles roadside, some of them as he will discover members of Charles Manson’s now infamous ‘Family’ cult. Rick’s next door neighbours on Hollywood’s exclusive Cielo Drive are celebrity film director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and his pregnant, rising star actress wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), although Rick has never met them.

Littered with pop culture references ranging from movie posters on billboards and titles on theatre marquees to clips from film and television, popular music from the period and even radio ads featuring Batman, Tarantino’s script mixes fact and fantasy, real and fictional characters. A part of it takes place in February 8-9 1969 then leaps forward to August 8-9 of the same year. The latter date is that of the real life Tate murders when members of the Manson Family broke into the Polanski/Tate home and killed everyone who was there, including the eight and a half months pregnant Sharon Tate. The Manson Family were living on the Spahn Movie Ranch, a former location for shooting Westerns owned by the now blind George Spahn (played in the film by Bruce Dern in an astounding turn). A little of Sharon Tate’s movie career is covered too, specifically The Wrecking Crew (Phil Karlsen, 1968) which is playing at a cinema that the actress visits.

Although the Rick Dalton/Cliff Booth characters and story are pure invention, they intertwine with more factually and historically based material. There’s an apocryphal sequence of Rick playing the Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) character in The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963) with DiCaprio cleverly replacing McQueen to interact with the other actors in otherwise genuine footage from that film. Booth gives flower girl Pussycat (Margaret Qually) a lift to the Spahn ranch hoping he might be able to visit his old boss whom he hasn’t seen for years. Tarantino has a lot of fun with all this, both on period Hollywood Studio lots and in the wider world of L.A. and beyond, at one point staging an impromptu fight between Booth and Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) when he was playing Kato in The Green Hornet.

The whole thing runs for the best part of three hours but never outstays its welcome. Tarantino here makes full use of his lengthy running time, packing in a riot of incidental visual and aural detail and allowing scenes to play out for just as long as they need. The whole thing is a love letter to Hollywood, to L.A. and to the tail end of the 1960s and is hugely entertaining. Pitt and DiCaprio make memorable onscreen buddies. Neither of them has ever been better. Nor, arguably, has Tarantino. The amazing cast to be found in its numerous, additional bit parts includes Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry, Timothy Olyphant, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Emile Hirsch, Michael Madsen, Zoe Bell, Scoot McNairy and Brenda Vaccaro. And the level of sheer background detail may make this a film you’ll want to return to again and again.

Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is out in the UK on Wednesday, August 14th. On Netflix on Wednesday, July 7th. Also available on other platforms.

Mary Queen of Scots

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This 16th century historical epic starts off promisingly enough in England with the imprisoned Queen Mary of Scotland (Saoirse Ronan) being taken out and beheaded. The rest of the film is a flashback covering events leading up to a rerun of this execution scene. Following the death of her 16-year-old royal husband the French Dauphin, 18 year old, Roman Catholic Mary comes to Scotland to rule as Queen surrounded by powerful male advisors, in which respect her position is not dissimilar to that of her Protestant counterpart Queen Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie) South of the border in England.

As Elizabeth is without heir to the English throne and showing no imminent sign of marrying, the English establishment fears Mary may remarry and produce a Catholic, Scottish heir to the Protestant, English throne. In the course of the narrative, Mary survives an ill-judged marriage to English nobleman Henry Stuart/Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden), the odd military uprising and various court intrigues before being captured and imprisoned by the English.

Unlike The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018), which wilfully and gleefully employed the merest bare bones of accepted historical fact as a springboard for compelling flights of fantasy and episodes of sexual intrigue, Mary Queen of Scots is much more po-faced even as it throws in, among other things, a gay affair between Darnley and a cross-dressing member of Mary’s court, an overwrought birthing scene with epic music to match and – moving towards the grimmer end of human behavioural excess – a marital rape scene. It also puts a couple of black actors into Mary’s and Elizabeth’s courts – the reign of Elizabeth I indeed saw Britain’s very first black community, yet there is no indication that they worked at court level.

In real life, the two Queens never actually met but the screenplay can’t resist having them do so – just like in Charles Jarrott’s rather more compelling 1971 version with Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth and Vanessa Redgrave as Mary. The relationship between the two women ruling the two neighbouring countries is however what drives the narrative, whether they actually meet or not. Mary is a creature of the heart, rejecting or accepting suitors for love (including pre-marital cunnilingus performed on her person by the persuasive Darnley) whereas Elizabeth advises admirer Robert Dudley (Joe Alwyn) as he tries to put his hand up her skirts that such things are not going to happen.

Elizabeth fights off the pox, which briefly threatens her life (and the succession) before coming to a realisation that, in a world of men, she needs to act like a man rather than a woman. To conceal the ravages of the disease after her recovery, the English queen regnant wears white face paint and sports a garish red wig, contrasting sharply with Mary’s unspoiled beauty – although of the two, it’s ultimately Elizabeth who survives. Mary gets far more screen time however.

The plethora of English and Scottish noblemen scarcely help make the convoluted plotting easy to follow while the script’s cramming of a considerable amount of material into its running length means that some promising elements race by without being given the necessary space to be explored, a cramping effect that also hampers the two lead actresses’ performances. That’s a pity, because the characters they play are truly fascinating historical figures who deserve better while the power play between them and the powerful men around each of them is rich material indeed which ought to be exploited much more effectively than it is here.

Mary, Queen of Scots is out in the UK on Friday, January 18th. On VoD on Monday, May 20th.

I, Tonya

Posted on by victorfraga

The biopic of the controversial figure skater Tonya Harding – who famously ordered an attack on Nancy Kerrigan in 1994, leaving her opponent with a broken link and unable to compete – is a divisive film. Kerrigan and other sportspeople criticised I, Tonya for condoning a very non-sportif attitude. The now retired 48-year skater from Massachusetts said recently that her rival from Oregon never apologised for her actions, which culminated in Harding’s banning from the sport.

Harding, on the other hand, is far more enthusiastic about the film, which is largely based on her very own views of the event (she consistently denies partaking in organising the attack, instead shifting the blame on her dysfunctional husband at the time Jeff Gilloly, played by a moustached version Sebastian Stan pictured just above). Harding sat in the audience and applauded the film, as it premiered in the US last year.

There are two ways of reading I, Tonya. Some perceive it as an apologia of violence and wrongdoing. Others perceived it a much-needed opportunity to redeem a talented young female who paid a very high price for making one single mistake. I’m more inclined towards the former. The director Craig Gillespie dodges accusations of condoning abuse by making it very clear from the very beginning of the movie that this is indeed a one-sided account, ie. Tonya’s version of the events. Tonya (played by the Oscar-nominated Margot Robbie) often breaks the fourth wall, and her defense often comes across tongue-in-cheek. Notwithstanding these devices, I couldn’t help but to feel that the ultimate message of the film is: “if you come from a broken home, it’s ok to be unscrupulous. It’s even cool “. I feel that, at least to a certain extent, the film banalises violence (both on the ring and at home). I, Tonya never raises questions. Instead it just provides convenient answers. Answers convenient for Tonya Harding.

From a filmmaking perspective, this is an impeccable movie and you will hardly get bored in the 120 minutes of the story. Robbie, who also produced the film, is simply marvellous, her beautiful eyes sparkling with ambition, fear and hesitation. She successfully incorporates several dilemmas. She comes from a disgraceful family background, with a profoundly abusive mother (played by the equally talented Allison Janney, pictured above), and yet she has to be graceful on the ice ring. It’s the battle of grace versus disgrace. Once banned from the sport, she also has to grapple with the horrific reputation earned, and somehow capitalise from it. The film soundtracks includes dirty gems such Siouxsie singing The Passenger, Devil Woman by Cliff Richard and even Dream a Little Dream of Me, delivered here by Doris Day. The music, the fast script and the performances will keep you entertained throughout.

I, Tonya came out in cinemas across the UK in February. It’s out on VoD in June.. This is not the only film about a figure skater released this year – don’t forget to check James Erskine’s The Ice King, about the late British skater John Curry.