Awards Season 2021: Directors' Guild Awards (DGA) Nominations

 

As promised, here's a quick update on today's DGA Awards nominations:

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film

Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)

Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)

David Fincher (Mank)

Aaron Sorkin (The Trial Of The Chicago 7)

Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Feature Film

Radha Blank (The Forty-Year-Old Version)

Fernando Frías de la Parra (I'm No Longer Here)

Regina King (One Night In Miami...)

Darius Marder (Sound Of Metal)

Florian Zeller (The Father)

The winners will be announced at the 73rd Annual DGA Awards on Saturday 10th April 2021.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Friday (12th March) is our next date for awards stuff, with the Producers Guild Awards naming their nominees. 

Review: Molly's Game (UK Cert 15)

Molly Bloom has had an extraordinary life- she was an Olympic-standard skiier who was accepted to law school, and- whilst working in an office- she got introduced to the world of high-stakes poker. She eventually ran exclusive poker games in Los Angeles and New York, before being arrested by the FBI. All this happened by the age of 35. Now, the story of this extraordinary life has been made into a film, starring Jessica Chastain as Molly. 

I think that it's only a matter of time  before Jessica Chastain gets an Oscar. She's a fantastic actress and she really gets under the skin of this fascinating, flawed character here. Fiercely determined to be the best at whatever she does, Molly takes the opportunity to learn all she can whilst arranging the poker nights for her entitled arsehole of a boss and when she finally usurps him and takes over the game herself- in a real punch-the-air moment, after he jealously fires her- she uses her charisma and contacts to elevate the game from a scuzzy backroom in a Hollywood bar to suites at the most exclusive hotels. How the wheels come off the business and she ends up indicted by the FBI is told in flashback as she prepares to stand trial. It's a truly powerful performance by Chastain who- even when Molly is at her lowest ebb- stands tall. 

Idris Elba is great as lawyer Charles Jaffey, who initially seeks to represent Molly at the arraignment hearing only but ends up taking her case (in a witty yet powerful sequence where he asks her bodyguard to switch places several times so he can get some answers). Jaffey is a principled man, eager to untie the knots around the case, and his exchanges with Molly really spark. He also gets an absolutely barnstorming speech towards the end of the film where he rips into the prosecuting attorneys on Molly's behalf. 
  
Other great performances come from Jeremy Strong as Molly's former boss who introduces her to the world of poker and gives a performance of deliciously entitled arrogance, and there's an intriguing cameo from Michael Cera who plays a slimy Hollywood star known as 'Player X' (widely thought to be based on Tobey Maguire). It's Player X's mocking phonecall after he selfishly dismantles Molly's Los Angeles game that inspires her move to New York, where her downfall begins.  

Molly's Game is the directorial debut of Aaron Sorkin (writer of The Social Network and Steve Jobs, and who also writes the screenplay here). The film is very stylish and stylised; there's a lot of on-screen visuals added to help with Molly's explanations of things (in the opening skiing section, for instance, or in one particularly important hand of poker). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if- like me- you're not massively au fait with poker. To be honest, you don't really need to be: anything important is explained (such as any of the terminology used). 

The script is tight, full of the usual Sorkin whipsmart rat-a-tat exchanges. It falls down in a couple of places- I had a nagging feeling towards the end that the film tries to pin Molly's actions (albeit subconsciously) down to 'daddy issues'. Molly has a fractious and combative relationship with her authoritarian psychologist father (a strong supporting performance by Kevin Costner) but the final confrontation between the two- where Molly has 'three years of therapy in three minutes' just before she has decide whether she's pleading guilty or not- felt to me like an attempt to wrap things up nicely. Despite this, both Costner and Chastain knock it out of the park with emotionally authentic performances. There's also a heavy reliance on Molly's voiceover to discuss people or scenes which sometimes feels a little laboured. Show, don't tell is the cardinal rule. The film is also long- at nearly two and a half hours- but no part feels like padding. 

That said, these niggles weren't enough to derail my enjoyment of and enthusiasm for the film. Take a seat at Molly's game; you won't regret it.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

Review: Steve Jobs (UK Cert 15)

When Steve Jobs died in 2011, he was lauded as a genius, the man who revolutionised home computing, a pioneer, a visionary. Even before he passed, his name was one everyone knew. There was a lacklustre (and unofficial) biopic movie released in 2013 starring Ashton Kutcher but this one is based on the official biography by Walter Isaacson, adapted for screen by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle.

The film focuses on three points within Jobs' profession career: the 1984 launch of the Macintosh, the 1988 launch of the NeXT and the 1998 launch of the iMac. Immediately before each launch, we see Jobs preparing to give his trademark speeches, pushing his programmers to deliver the goods, dealing with his Head of Marketing and trying to interact with the girl whom the courts declared to be his daughter (although he initially did not acknowledge her as such).

Michael Fassbender pulls off an amazing balancing act of getting you to admire Jobs whilst simultaneously wanting to punch him in the face. If this is what Jobs was really like, it's amazing that he ever got anyone to work for him: he's a complete control freak, an out-and-out ruthless bastard, a Machiavellian gameplayer, a supremely arrogant, condescending, egotistical bully- and yet utterly charismatic at the same time. There has to be something more there, otherwise he'd never have inspired such loyalty as you see in his Head of Marketing, Joanna Hoffman (who stayed with him for this entire period, even when he was out in the cold from Apple). 

Hoffman is played by Kate Winslet, who affects an Eastern European lilt to play the Polish-born Hoffman. She is the voice of reason, Jobs' anchor, his confidante and 'work wife' who deals with his demands with unflappable equanimity. Winslet's performance is strong, trading verbal spars with Fassbender and being one of the few who can stand up to him. Seth Rogen puts in a decent dramatic turn as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, pushing Jobs to acknowledge the team who worked on the Apple II in his newer endeavours. There are scenes between Wozniak and Jobs which have a real dramatic punch, especially the one where Wozniak tells Jobs 'you can be decent and gifted at the same time'.

Not all performances are as good as others, however, with Katherine Waterston's shrill and overbearing performance as Chrisann Brennan (the mother of Jobs' daughter Lisa) being particularly grating. I get that the character is supposed to come across as a bit flaky and annoying- trying to get Jobs to accept his paternal responsibilities when he still questions his paternity- but it's the one wrong note in an otherwise solid cast.

Sorkin's script is, as you would expect, tight and quick with lots of staccato punchy dialogue and flashbacks within the scenes. It's very play-like, the dialogue could easily lend itself to a stage adaptation. However, the script never really gets behind the spiky exterior- although it does attempt a last-minute redemption job with his relationship with Lisa which just about works. Do you really get to know more about Jobs the man? A little. For instance, I didn't know that he was adopted and I didn't know he had a daughter. So you get to know more about his biography (for want of a better word). But the psychology doesn't run very deep- the film implies that a lot of Jobs' controlling personality came down to the fact that he was adopted, which is mentioned a lot- and he remains relatively inscrutable.

This is certainly a superior movie to the Ashton Kutcher one and the performances- especially those of Fassbender, Winslet and Rogen- are very strong. However, I think you'd have to have a specific interest in Jobs to really enjoy it.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez