A Real Pain – funny and moving with Culkin excellent

Jesse Eisenberg’s film about mismatched Jewish-American cousins taking an organised Holocaust trip across Poland in honour of their recently-deceased grandmother, who had survived the camps, manages to be irreverent, funny and profoundly moving.

Benjie is a boisterous drifter with strong opinions and no filter. David is a neurotic who works hard selling online ads, loves being with his wife and their young son, and is already homesick on their flight from New York.

Their tour guide is James, while their fellow visitors are recently divorced Marcia, Elogue, who survived the Rwandan genocide and later converted to Judaism, and Mark and Diane from Ohio, who are recently retired.

From the start of their tour, Benji acts up, persuading the group to pose ridiculously in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument for photographs, taken on their phones by the embarrassed David.

The next day, on a train journey to Lublin, he explodes angrily that nobody else seems to have noticed the incongruity of their being Jewish, in a first-class carriage, traveling through former Nazi-occupied Poland.

Is the title of A Real Pain a reference to Benji or more about the pain of personal struggle, of personal grief, of collective trauma and of survivor guilt? Eisenberg – who also stars in the film – made it in part about the last of those, in relation to his own experiencing of being a “third-generation survivor”, when some of his ancestors died in the camps.

There’s also nods to the problems of trauma tourism.

It’s also a story about the migrant experience – not only of those Jewish people whose ancestors reached the US, but also of Elogue and James, who is a Northern English philosemite of Asian extraction.

Given the comedic nature of elements here, it’s a sensitive, touching and thought-provoking film.

Cinematographer Michał Dymek deliberately moved away from any sort of stereotypical Western idea of Warsaw being post-Soviet era gloomy. The soundtrack is almost entirely piano music by Polish virtuoso Chopin, played by classical pianist Tzvi Erez.

Eisenberg is excellent as the socially-insecure David, but it’s Oscar-winning Kieran Culkin who steals the show as Benji – not only in his manic moments, but also in revealing the pain that he lives with.

Will Sharpe as James is very good, but generally speaking the rest of the cast don’t really get enough screen time to make a huge impact, with the exception (just about) of Kurt Egyiawan as Elogue and Jennifer Grey as Marcia.

Now available to stream and comes in at a tight 90 minutes.

Anora – no shock as to why it's won big

A rom-com that takes a darker turn, director, writer, producer and editor Steve Baker’s mega award-winning Anora tells the story of the titular character, who prefers to be known as Ani. A stripper at a club in Brighton Beach, an American-Russian part of Brooklyn, she is introduced to a young Russian, Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov, the 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch, because she can understand Russian.

He is supposed to be in the US studying, but this spoiled brat spends most of his time partying and playing video games. When he and Ani hit it off, he asks if he can pay her to be his girlfriend for a week. She agrees and, with some of his friends, they fly to Las Vegas.

While there, Vanya expresses disdain for his parents and Russia, and then impulsively asks Ani to marry him. Despite her initial disbelief, she agrees and they wed before returning to New York, to the mansion Vanya has been living in.

But word gets back to his parents and they set off from Russia, having ordered his Armenian godfather/US babysitter, Toros, to arrange an annulment and hold Vanya for return to the motherland. Ani, on the other hand, has no intention of simply quitting.

This is not Pretty Woman. For one thing, it’s no happy-ever-after fairy tale – it’s a lot grittier and doesn’t play with tropes about ‘poor’ sex workers who need saving. It’s Baker’s second feature about sex workers after Tangerine and he never treats them with any sense of moral judgmentalism. On top of that, it never makes sex work look sleazy/pornographic.

Also, Ani can do charming, but she’s not afraid to spit venom, use violence and not simply acquiesce to the demands of others.

Filmed with a nod to 1970s New York crime dramas, Drew Daniels’s cinematography has a look that entirely matches its subject. It rolls in at 139 minutes (long for me), but never feels over-stretched. The final scene is a wallop to the guts.

Mikey Madison won the best actress Oscar a week ago – and it’s not hard to see why. She gives this everything she’s got and is spiky, funny and charming by turns. It’s a nuanced performance that leaves us wondering – at least to a degree – about her motivations.

Mark Eydelshteyn is very good as the spoiled Vanya, as are Karren Karagulian as Toros, and Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan as two hoods that he hires.

Absolutely no surprise that this has done so well on the awards circuit – and well worth a watch.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Capote – another grown-up film worth watching

In November 1959, in Holcomb – a place that apparently even most Kansans don’t know of – the Cutter family (farmer Herb, wife Bonnie and their teenage daughter, Nancy, and son, Kenyon) were murdered in their farmhouse.

Seeing a report about this in the New York Times, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, actor and socialite Truman Capote is instantly fascinated by the case and tells New Yorker magazine editor William Shawn that he’s going to write about it.

He travels to Kansas with childhood friend Harper Lee as both company and to help facilitate contacts. Shortly after they arrive in town, police arrest two suspects. Perry Smith and Richard Hickock stand trial, are found guilty and sentenced to death.

Capote decides that his work will be a book – a non-fictional novel – and he finds ways to gain contact with the men in prison, particularly Smith, gaining his confidence and finding out about his life, not least by finding a better lawyer for their appeal than they had for their initial trial. But what he really wants to know is what happened that November night and Smith won’t say.

\Released in 2005, Capote is based on Gerald Clarke’s 1988 book of the same name, is directed by Bennett Miller from a screenplay by Dan Futterman and enjoysh cinematography by Adam Kimmel that beautifully contrasts the glistening New York that Capote inhabits with the wide-open spaces of rural Kansas.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe for his performance, has Capote’s voice and mannerisms down pat, with his narcissism clear and his motivations far from it. There is a cynicism to his Capote, but also a vulnerability – perhaps partly down to his homosexuality and effeminism.

Clifton Collins Jr is very good as Smith, as is Catherine Keener as Lee. Bob Balaban gives a nice turn as Shawn, as does Bruce Greenwood as Capote’s long-time partner, John Dunphy.

Coming in at an unrushed (but never dragging) 114 minutes, the pace allows the characters and relationships to develop. The violence is minimised in terms of what you actually see on screen, but never otherwise. This is more very good, grown-up drama, and currently available on Amazon Prime in the UK.

Doubt is a superbly acted, intelligent, grown-up drama

Popping up on Netflix as I looked for something to watch this afternoon, Doubt is a 2008 film that was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, adapted from his 2004 Pulitzer and Tony-winning play, Doubt: A Parable.

Set in 1964, a year after the assassination of JFK and not long after Vatican II pledged that it would drag the church into the 20^th century, it takes place in a predominantly Irish-American parish in the Bronx, where cheerful Father Flynn is the priest of St Nicholas’s Church.

As he preaches about a community of doubt – particularly in light of the previous year’s assassination – Sister Aloysius, the principal of the connected school, prowls the aisles, admonishing children who aren’t paying enough attention.

This sets up the central confrontation in the piece – that of the modernising priest who wants to be friends with the children and their families, and the nun who entered the convent after being widowed in WWII and is very much of the old order.

But after witnessing a fleeting encounter between Flynn and one of her pupils, Aloysius tells her fellow nuns to be on the watch for anything suspicious and report it to her. Some days later, naïve Sister James eventually tells her that a week earlier, Flynn had called her in class to ask for one of the boys – Donald Miller, the school’s sole black pupil – to be sent to see him at the rectory.

When he returns to class, he is acting strangely and has alcohol on his breath. Aloysius has no doubts about what is happening. James is full of them.

The film’s is quietly paced and gives great time to flesh out the characters. It ultimately leaves the audience to decide whether Aloysius is correct. Do we have doubts too or her certainty?

The central cast is superb. Meryl Streep is a fierce Aloysius, Philip Seymour Hoffman a charming Flynn who can be threatening too, and Amy Adams takes the naïve James and gives her some real complexity. With only a single scene, Viola Davis is outstanding as Mrs Miller, Donald’s mother.

All four gained Oscar nominations: Streep for best actress and the others in the best supporting categories.

A seriously intelligent, grown-up drama, it’s well worth 104 minutes of your time.

The Great Escaper – gentle and powerful

Back in 2014, the year of the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Royal Navy veteran and care home resident Bernard Jordan hit the headlines because he had left it too late to get included on an official trip to the commemorations in Normandy. So he decided to make his own way there – encouraged by his wife Rene.

This is the film of his ‘great escape’, written by William Ivory and directed by Oliver Parker.

Without the knowledge of anyone – except Rene – he left the care home they lived in together and made his way to France on his own. On the way, he was ‘adopted’ by Arthur, an upper-class RAF veteran with his own bucketload of personal demons from the war.

Initially reported missing, with police and others alerted, Bernard’s story caused a media hoo-ha and saw him dubbed a ‘hero’, with newspaper headlines across Europe.

‘The great escapee’ was how the mainstream news media dubbed him – but it is not indicative of what this film version of the story reveals.

There are arguably issues about how well all the flashback sequences of Brendan and Rene’s relationship work, but there can be no complaints about how the contemporary relationships are portrayed.

Though personally, I think that Will Fletcher and Laura Marcus, as the WWII versions of Bernard and Rene do really good jobs.\This is a really sweet film – not least because Michael Caine as Bernard and Glenda Jackson (in her final role) as Rene – are simply fabulous, but because it really catches at the sense of grief and PTSD suffered by veterans of all generations.

Shout outs also to John Standing as Arthur and Danielle Vitalis as a care home worker.

It is, in the second half, a blubathon. But not in an exploitive way. Just so moving – not least in a scene where Bernard, who wouldn’t buy German produce at the beginning of the film, encounters a German veteran from the D-Day landings.

When I say it’s a “blubathon”, it’s not mawkish. It addresses, in a nuanced way, the trauma that those young men suffered then – and in the years after.

This is a gentle, yet very powerful film. Streaming now on Sky.

Going on a bear hunt with Paddington in Peru

The Paddington ‘threequel’ sees the Browns and Paddington travel to Peru to visit Aunt Lucy at the Home for Retired Bears, after the Reverend Mother in charge there writes to Paddington to tell him that Aunt Lucy is seriously missing him.

But when they arrive, it’s to the news that Aunt Lucy has disappeared. Paddington persuades the family to mount a search for her, which they do by hiring a riverboat owned and skippered by one Hunter Cabot, along with his daughter Gina, and head into the jungle.

Of course, this being Paddington, this bear hunt doesn’t go smoothly.

With Paul King once again at the helm, having also co-written the screenplay – along with Mark Burton and Jon Foster for this outing – it is a charming watch, though feels a little flatter and shorter on the gags than for Paddington 2. That said, the second film set an incredibly high bar.

There is fun to be had spotting nods to other films – not least The Sound of Music and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Where it is significantly helped is in the involvement of Olivia Colman as the Reverend Mother and Antonio Banderas as Cabot, both of whom turn in delightfully arch performances.

I was surprised that I didn’t feel it ‘wrong’ seeing Emily Mortimer as Mary Brown, with Sally Hawkins not wanting to reprise the role again. Otherwise, Hugh Bonneville is back as the risk-averse Henry Brown, along with Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin as Judy and Jonathan Brown, and Julie Walters as Mrs Bird. Carla Tous catches the eye as Gina.

A very pleasant way to spend a gloomy Saturday afternoon – and make sure you watch ALL the way to the very end.

Philomena – Dench and Coogan in heart-rending, heart-warming drama

Time for more catch-up cinema – this time, Philomena, the 2013 adaptation of Martin Sixsmith’s book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee from director Stephen Frears, which by and large sticks to the true story that Sixsmith wrote about.

In 1951, after becoming pregnant, Irish teenager Philomena Lee (Sophie Kennedy Clarke) is sent by her father to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, where she gives birth to a baby boy, Anthony. Forced to work in the abbey laundry, she has limited contact with her son, before the nuns give him up to a wealthy American couple for adoption.

Fifty years later, Jane, the daughter of the now retired nurse Philomena, spots journalist and former Blair government advisor Martin Sixsmith at a party and suggests to him that he investigate. Initially put off because it’s a “human interest story”, he changes his mind after meeting Philomena.

With a screenplay by Jeff Pope and Steve Coogan (who also co-produced), and coming in at a tight 98 minutes, Philomena is an examination of a multitude of themes: grief and loss, sin and guilt, anger and forgiveness, faith and hypocrisy, and snobbery.

The central characters are nuanced and the film rests squarely on the shoulders of its two stars – Coogan himself is excellent as Sixsmith, while Judi Dench is simply outstanding as the elderly Philomena, in a performance that understandably earned her a seventh Academy Award nomination.

It is a deeply moving film, but never mawkish, includes moments of humour, plenty of good for thought and is ultimately heart-warming.

Very much worth watching and available to stream in the UK on various platforms.

A Man Called Otto is beautiful

So, another little revisit – but of a film I didn’t review at the time. A Man Called Ott0 is a 2022 Hollywood remake of a Norwegian film of a Norwegian novel – A Man Called Ove, which was originally penned by Fredrick Backman.

It transposes the story to the US, to a small community, where 63-year-old widower Otto is in deep distress after the death of his wife six months before, and has become a total curmudgeon in the time since.

 

However, his plans to join her are disrupted by the arrival of new neighbours – the joyful and heavily pregnant Marisol, her inept husband Tommy and their two small children.

 

And slowly but sutely but surely, he is drawn back to life.

 

Sometimes I need a life-affirming, sweet (not cloying) film, and I want a great big mug of hot chocolate of a movie to comfort me.

 

This is far from flawless – and some of it feels a bit contrived – but it is also a joy in terms of how humane and emotionally intelligent it is, not least in terms of the impact of trying to deal with grief. It’s also very funny in places.

 

So, while neither Marc Foster’s direction nor David Magee’s screenplay are perfect, Tom Hanks turns in a lovely performance as Otto, and is supported not least by Mariana Treviño as the absolute force of nature that is Marisol.

It’s absolutely up there with my Mrs Harris Goes to Paris comfort movies.

Kneecap: A craicing political movie about Ireland

Saturday evening – and what better than catching up with another film? In this case, writer and director Rich Peppiatt’s 2024 Kneecap, about the real-life rise of Belfast’s Irish-language hip-hop trio of that name and starring them as themselves.

It starts in the late 2010s in Northern Ireland/the north of the island of Ireland, where there’s an ongoing political issue of having the Irish language being accorded the same rights as the Scottish and Welsh languages in their respective parts of the UK.

Post-Good Friday, working-class lads Liam and Naoise are essentially estranged from society and living in a world of drugs and raves. As children, they had learned to speak Irish Gaelic from Naoise’s father Arlo, a Republican who then went on the run to avoid arrest, thereby refusing to accept his own parental responsibility.

Liam has been keeping a diary, in Irish, which amounts to a sort of poetry. When he’s arrested by the NI police, having been at a rave, and refuses to answer any questions in English, Irish speaker and music teacher JJ O Dochartaighn is called to translate.

Ó Dochartaighn realises that Liam has real talent and, as a musician himself, invites the lads to his own improvised studio in a garage, where they record a track.

However, even as the trio gains in popularity, it faces real threats from Republican factions, the Northern Irish police and assorted others.

Perhaps surprisingly, the central trio – Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, as themselves, are really excellent, with nice turns from Simone Kirby as Naoise's mother, Dolores, Michael Fassbender as Arlo and Josie Walker as a detective.

Shot in an anarchic fashion, with no shortage of swearing, lots of drug use, plus nudity and sex, it's very good and very funny indeed. Not really my kind of music, but very enjoyable.

If you only see Heretic for Hugh Grant, that's more than good enough

I don’t mind a spot of on-screen horror – just not the slasher variety. Give me the likes of Peter Medak’s 1980 The Changeling, Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Silence of the Lambs, Mike Flanagan’s 2019 Doctor Sleep, Jordan Peele’s 2019 Us or last year’s Parallel from Kourosh Ahari.

To clarify further – I don’t mind a bit of violence on screen, but in-your-face gore and slasher stuff is a no-no for me, whether it’s horror or not. It’s not limited to that genre either. I entirely understand that the likes of Deadwood and The Sopranos are top-notch, serious TV dramas, but I could only ever watch them in small amounts because the violence (both spoken and enacted) was too much for me – and that was before I’d even heard the word ‘triggered’!

The trailer for Heretic, from joint directors and writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, had intrigued me, but I wasn’t sure enough that it wouldn’t descend to a degree of slasher mode, so didn’t catch it at my local cinema, where it only seemed to have a quite limited run.

Last weekend, I decided to give it a go via streaming. I’m very glad I did, because it absolutely fits into what I can enjoy.

Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes – confident in her faith and her evangelisation – and Sister Paxton (rather less so) are following up leads on potential converts and, as a winter storm breaks, visit the home of one Mr Reed, who has expressed an interest.

A middle-aged Brit living in a slightly remote – and very weird house that appears to combine both an Escher reality and a 1940s (or earlier) aesthetic – he assures them that (vital for female Mormons) his wife is baking blueberry pie in the kitchen so they won't be alone with a man, which covers the church’s rules of what company a female is allowed to be in.

When he goes to the kitchen, the women find that the front door is locked and that they have no phone signal.

Reed slowly ensnares them into a discussion of religion in general, within which he becomes increasingly aggressive. He then offers to show them a ‘real resurrection’.

Heretic is good because it takes its subject – religion – reasonably seriously in a philosophical sense. It doesn’t belittle the missionaries or their religion (or religion as a whole) and it allows them to stand up for it. Now I’m not religious, but I appreciate that.

The script allows for some really interesting looks at how you stay true to a belief – days later, I am still analysing the ending.

Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes and Sophie East as Sister Paxton are excellently played, nuanced characters, but Hugh Grant is sublime as the demonic, yet-suave, Mr Reed.

Really worth watching this, in my view.

Wicked – wickedly good

Well, the film year started with a surprise – a BIG surprise! Wicked was far, Far, FAR better than I expected. I’m arguably a bit of a Wizard of Oz puritan, having played the Munchkin mayor in a girls’ grammar school stage version back in the 1970s, and then, the following decade, the Wicked Witch of the West herself in a quality non-pro production.

So I am rather attached to the ‘original’. Except, what is The Original? I’m also rather fond of the wonderful graphic novel versions of Frank L Baum’s Oz books by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young, which straight away reveals that I am prepared for adaptation and development of source material.

And besides, the iconic 1939 film with Judy Garland was ‘based’ on Baum’s book – it wasn’t a faithful version of it.

But something about the idea of Wicked (what little I had bothered to find out about it) had prevented me ever feeling a desire to see it on stage. Possibly because, by and large, I’m not a fan of many modern shows. Gimme Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, Bart and, of course, Sondheim.

However, as the film release neared and the hype built, I realised that Cynthia Erivo was playing Elphaba (The Wicked Witch of the West) – and I seriously rate she as an actor and singer.

The late OH and I caught her first two films at the cinema. They were released in reverse order, so we saw Bad Times at the El Royale (her second film) in early autumn 2018 and were blown away. Hence our going to see what was actually her first film, Widows, a short while later – which we also massively too (it’s got the magnificent Viola Davis too).

Last year, I finally caught up with Harriet, where she starred as anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman. Whatever faults the film has, her performance is not one of them.

And in 2022, she gave a solo Proms concert – which you can watch here. 

I then discovered that the show had come from the pen of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman. Another connection. In my time as a theatre critic, I reviewed two of Schwartz’s shows – The Baker’s Wife (penned in 1976, but I saw it in 1989 in the West End) and Children of Eden (1991). Both had very short runs.

 

In the case of the former, I still have the double album soundtrack. It wasn’t helped by director Trevor Nunn casting his wife as the female lead, but it was helped by Alun Armstrong being the male lead. I continue to regard it with real affection.

 

In the case of the latter … one of the worst musicals I’ve ever had the misfortune to see (with the possible exception of a Robin Hood show, theh exact title of which I can’t remember, and which seems to have been erased even from Google entirely).

 

My intrigue levels rose. Perhaps this might be worth seeing?

 

On the basis of the length – well over two-and-a-half hours – and because screenings were being packed, including by fans who apparently wanted to sing along, I decided to wait for it to stream. Well, it’s available to buy or rent on Sky now.

 

Briefly, it’s the first half of the stage show, which gives a back-story to Elphaba. Was she always wicked? How did she become wicked? We get act two in November.

 

I really enjoyed it. It’s lush to look at, with a steampunk aesthetic in places. The music holds up far better than I expected. Erivo is fabulous – and I was really pleasantly impressed with Ariana Grande as Galinda (later, Glinda, The Good Witch), who I essentially was only really aware of because of the Manchester terrorist bombing – that is some vocal range she has!

 

Then, of course, you have Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum, with Peter Dinklage topping the voice talent credits.

 

The stage musical premiered in 2003. It is astonishingly current in its themes as the world faces a new Trump presidency and we see the increasing rise of the far-right in so many parts of the world. It’s great entertainment – but it also has a really serious message about othering and more, and why we end up with authoritarian regimes,

 

But then I’ve spent years saying that musical theatre can often do what mainstream, populist theatre won’t do in such a sense. Make the attacks on democracy simple and clear to understand. This does it.

 

And all hail Elphaba!

A look at 2024 in films

Since 2024 is now history – and since I watched more films then than in any previous year of my life – it seemed like a good idea to look back on what I appreciated most.

Most were seen in cinemas, but a few here I saw for the first time either on disc or by streaming.

So in no particular order, other than chronology of viewing …

The first big hitter of my viewing year was Poor Things (above). Given that I saw it twice in eight days, that’s probably a clue as to just how much of an impact it – not least for Emma Stone’s wow of a performance.

Next on this ‘best of’ list is The Holdovers (just watched again as part of the actual festive season).

In some ways, such a small film, but it’s a bittersweet heart-warmer, with three cracking performances at the heart of it.

Next up chronologically is Blue Velvet, which I had never seen before – indeed, I’d avoided it largely on the basis of how that iconic scene with Dennis Hopper made it look horrific. But my niece had given me a copy as a present, so I decided to give it a go – and was surprised to find it vastly better than I had been expecting.

Perfect Days (left) is an absolute gem from Wim Wenders, following a toilet cleaner in Tokyo (and thus giving the German auter, with an astonishing performance from Kôji Yakusho.

I am grateful to a friend, who is also a film reviewer, for inviting me to be his second ticket for a Soho preview.

As with Downfall, one viewing is enough, but Zone of Interest is a really important work that probes the attitudes of Nazis toward the industrial murder of the Holocaust. It's arguably interesting how we define cinematic horror. This wouldn't fit a conventional narrative of how we define a 'horror film', I don't think – it is generally very calm and avoids physical, on-screen violence (that's what you hear in the background) – but it is, without doubt, utterly horrific, and very important for that.

By complete contrast, I also watched My Neighbour Totoro for the first time (my third Ghibli after The Boy and the Heron on Boxing Day the previous year). It is an utter joy. Indeed, I saw it again, later in the year, at a cinema during an anniversary re-release.

A similar catch-up viewing came with Mädchen in Uniform, an extraordinary piece of Weimar cinema, where Prussianism meets lesbianism in a girls’ school. It was a fascinating discovery for LGBT+ History Month.

Another personal discovery came with Rashomon, having only ever previously seen Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

April brought the charm of Robot Dreams (left), the subtle, affecting and sensitive Monster, and the stranger than strange Evil Does Not Exist – the most enigmatic ending of all time? – all of which have stuck with me since.

Summer saw the taut sexiness of Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, Crossing, from Georgian-Swedish writer and director Levan Akin – a tale of a retired Georgian teacher who travels to Istanbul in search of her missing trans niece and, in complete contrast, Kensuke’s Kingdom, the hand-drawn adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book.

Another piece of catch-up cinema that really grabbed me was A Taste of Honey, with Dora Bryan in majestic form as the horrifying mother and Rita Tushingham extraordinary on her screen debut.

Finally, my film viewing year was effectively bookended by another cinema outing that I repeated in short order, with Conclave (left), a cracking piece of entertainment, aimed squarely at an older audience, and one that has been very successful.

I made it past the 100 films in a year for the first time ever  – after re-totting and double-checking between a personal list and the Letterboxd app, it came in at 103.

It’s interesting to see how many of my choices have appeared in some of the lists I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks or so. Obviously, a lot of this is down to personal taste etc, but I was surprised that Monster didn't seem to be getting any mentioned – only to discover that was initially released in 2023 and appeared on a number of top 10 lists at the end of that year.

I also feel quite chuffed at the variety of films – not only in this list, but in my list for the whole year. I feel I’ve really taking my viewing habits to new levels. So here's to 2025’s viewing! 

Inspiring call for LGBTQI people to be authentic

Admittedly I started it in December, but New Year’s Day found me with the mental space to read 230 of its 287 pages, so filing this as the first read of the year really does count.

Life as a Unicorn – Amrou Al-Khadi’s memoir, first published in 2019, is the story of a non-binary, gay, British-Iraqi writer, actor, drag artist and filmmaker, and their struggles to find a way to live as their authentic self.

 

While their parents are not fundamentalist Muslims – in the sense that (much, if not all) Western media likes to portray Muslims – they still inherited a belief from quite early in their childhood that their queerness was going to send them to a fiery hell.

And what signs they gave off in terms of that queerness, their parents policed heavily.

 

Indeed, there are elements of this where Amrou’s story is like reading that of any dissenter in a dictatorial society, where they are being observed and reported at every turn.

 

How they eventually come through this is inspirational and deeply moving.

 

As a white, essentially middle-class English person, I clearly cannot appreciate the racist elements of Amrou’s experience, but there’s a huge amount from the homophobic aspects of their story that I felt that I could relate to (I was blubbing at the end) and also to the religious aspects, given my background.

 

For those who don’t already now, my father was an ordained, evangelical Methodist clergyman, who was homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, antisemitic, misogynistic … and just about every other kind of phobia that suited a white, English exceptionalist, cis, straight, male Christian (even though he’d come from an essentially Cornish peasant background).

 

I have thought for some time that, if I had ever come out to my parents, I would have been exposed to some form of conversion therapy. Indeed, I arguably was – being taken, in my early teens, to four evangelical ‘crusade’ meetings within a couple of weeks, with the explicit intention of being ‘converted’ – ‘born again’. And of course, it happened. The emotional blackmail of it was too much to eventually resist.

 

Life as a Unicorn is ultimately a wonderfully uplifting read about how to live as your own, authentic self. The section about marine life is staggeringly informative – I learned so much!

 

Al-Khadi is also absolutely spot on about the patriarchy, throughout the world and across cultures. It’s not just misogynistic, but also homophobic and transphobic. It’s no coincidence that we see the far right in Britain and the US, from Badenoch to Trump, engaging in ‘culture wars’ and taking particular aim at trans people and drag culture.