Ink (UK/Fra/US) (wiki)
Way back in the black and white days of 1960, a young Rupert Murdoch (Guy Ritchie), fresh faced and determined to make his mark, seduces an equally young Larry Lamb, then a frustrated journalist at the Daily Mirror to come aboard his newly bought newspaper, The Sun. Murdoch's bold ideas for making papers entertain as much as inform sat uncomfortably with Lamb who wanted something different, but wasn't sure what. Still, he came aboard on the offer of being an editor at long last, and quickly went about poaching people he knew from other proprietors up and down Fleet Street. The job spec? Completely turn around the boring, staid Sun that was haemorrhaging readers and turn it into something new, something exciting. Give the dusty old newspapers, their comfortable journalists and formulaic content a right good kick up the arse.
Danny Boyle's new film paints Murdoch through the 60's and 70's as quite a sympathetic figure and a force for good at least in the early days. A deliverer of a much needed breath of fresh air, clearing out those who had got complacent with their views, not the tyrant media mogul and pornographer-in-chief that he would be known for as the 80's came around. Instead he portrays Larry Lamb's formative years as those whose ambition and willingness to drag the paper places where others feared to tread as both a genius and terrible thing to do, surpassing even Murdochs' own pallet for lewd angles and ideas. Only in the last few minutes of the film do we get a rather heavy-handed suggestion that these years were the genesis of what would take us through the next 50 years of sleaze, scandal, right through to the fake news and alternative facts of the current day. Murdoch certainly had a hand in it, but I don't think we can quite credit him with that; and he would see it more as a compliment if we did.
But that little bit isn’t enough to spoil a very slick, smartly written piece that feels very Boyle in tone. It should be out on general release in the new year. Do be aware though, this is one of the first of probably many in the coming years that has small elements of generative AI in its production, for which it has been criticised; so if you have a hard pass for that, you might want to skip. 7.5/10
Wicker (UK/Aus/US) (wiki)
In a somewhat altered England a few hundred years ago, a lonely Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) lives a lonely existence, catching bass and tench, getting her fingers deep into their guts and ripping them out, and selling what remains to the residents of the local village, who are all too familiar with the stench that precedes her arrival.
Laughing off the mocking and jeering only works so much and she calls upon the local basket weaver (a part inevitably played by Peter Dinklage), a mysterious resident with his fair share of rumours circulating what he gets up to in his free time, to make her a husband. How it happens is left to the imagination, but a fully formed Alexander Skarsguard made from wicker awaits her at the alter a month later.
In a world where the wife is a possession, and has to put up with whatever her appointed man possesses, this pure of heart beefcake with an audibly creaky appendage stirs all sorts of feelings in the villagers; the men suddenly not so complacent with their performance and the women thinking maybe they could do a bit better. Rumours abound not in part to the many screams of desire coming from the fisher house every night. Naturally, such a situation is going to come to a head, and it's the jealous minded Tailor's wife who shows the seeds of destruction.
Wicker is funny but doesn't scrimp on the more heartfelt side of a lonely woman finding love at last. The novelty of someone getting seen to by a glorified basket is handled well enough to let us suspend our disbelief for a while and treat it what it is, a tale of love, albeit one that hammers home the 'men rubbish' trope a bit clumsily in places. 7.5/10
Prosecution (DE) (review)
Seyo Kim is a young Korean woman living in Germany and trying to establish herself as a criminal prosecutor, a bit green gilled but spunky, she remains positive in the contribution to the justice system even in the face of the 80% rate of cases dropped. She specialises in racially motivated cases.
One day, she finds herself being questioned, having been victim to a frightening targeted attack where she is knocked from her bike and had Molotov cocktails thrown at her. A miracle she wasn't badly burned, she saw little of her attackers, and gets to experience the frustrations first hand of a legal system that frustrates her every turn to find the truth.
Not that it will stop her - Seyo in her anger fuelled obsession with justice, pushes and breaks boundaries that though understandable, undermines her case and threatens her career, and those around her who she drags into her plans.
Prosecution is a film about a lot of things to do with German society; it's undercurrent of racism within the police and justice systems, the wider, more overt xenophobia towards minorities in the public at large, and the slow resurgence of Nazism as we drift further from the memories of the Second World War; the frustrations of a democratic society whose rules must accommodate the rights of people who may have unpleasant views but do not break the law, and the lives of people who are bruised and broken while those wheels slowly turn. It's a powerful, intimidating film exposing a side of Germany the country would rather not turn it's head to see, but an important one nonetheless. 8/10
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