Triangle of Sadness (15)

****

Of the many qualities that Swedish director Ostlund (Force Majeure, The Square) possesses, the one that I treasure most is that he does a terribly good post-screening Q&A.

Trust me, that’s very rare. Every other director or producer or star waffles on about influences and themes and the film’s importance; Ostlund just enthuses about interesting stuff he's read online or seen on YouTube.

His inspiration is not other films, but life. With Ostlund, you can take his Triangle of Sadness because you know it won't be an Oblong of Obtuseness or a Parallegram of Pomposity. Still, maybe a little subtlety wouldn’t go amiss.

A satire about the super-rich, power structures and the use of "beauty as currency," ToS is going for obvious targets and in a fairly obvious way. It starts in the world of fashion and then shifts to an exclusive luxury yacht cruise that serves as a microcosm of iniquitous capitalist society.

Our conduit is a couple: male model Dickinson (a marvellous study in chiselled gormlessness) and Instagrammer influencer Dean. On the yacht, they mix with arms dealers, a Russian fertiliser millionaire and a drunken captain (Harrelson) who quotes Marx.

This is, famously, the film in which a lot of rich people start throwing up. I wouldn’t mention that normally but they’ve stuck it on the poster so I don’t think it counts as a spoiler. And there is no denying that it is a glorious comic setpiece combining Mr Creosote from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life and the beans campfire scene from Blazing Saddles.

It’s the cheery lack of subtlety and the skill of its execution that makes it so funny. It stands out perhaps a little too much as the highlight of a film that is consistently entertaining, but overly direct and without the daring and flair of Ostlund’s previous films.

These days we are all apparently incredibly angry all of the time about everything. As we should be. There is no subterfuge or nuance in today's world so what is the point of sly, deceptively devastating humour? Go big, go broad, go hard. Ostlund’s approach makes sense, though ultimately I doubt ToS will prove any less futile than three decades of Have I Got News For You.

Directed by Ruben Ostlund. Starring Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Zlatko Buric, Dolly De Leon, Vicki Berlin and Woody Harrelson. In cinemas or streaming at Curzon Home Cinema. Running time: 149 mins.

All Quiet On The Western Front (15)

****

Some people want to fill the world with anti-war films, and what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know? Because here we go again.

The 1930 Oscar-winning Hollywood adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel about the futility of trench warfare in WWI, essentially set the format for the anti-war movie.

After showing five youngsters gleefully enlisting in 1917, this loose adaptation largely concentrates the events of the novel into the days before the armistice in November 1918. This is the third big-screen version but the first in German, and Berger's film makes for a spectacular compendium of war-is-hell scenes - from Saving Private Ryan to 1917.

It demands to be seen on a big screen, but if you are reading this in the paper its limited theatrical release is already over. Appropriately for a film on a war notorious for dragging on way beyond there was any point to it, Berger’s film reaches a stage where it seems to have come to a natural conclusion and delivered all its dramatic ironies, but then just keeps going.

Directed by Edward Berger. Starring Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic, Moritz Klaus and Daniel Brühl. In German and French with subtitles. In Selected cinemas. Streaming on Netflix from 28th October. Running time: 147 mins. 

Doctor Who Am I?

**

In the nineties, screenwriter Matthew Jacobs outraged British Doctor Who fans by writing the ghastly American TV movie which had a new Doctor (McGann) kissing a girl and being revealed to be half human. Now he comes dangerously close to outraging their American counterparts with this documentary about him tentatively trying to embrace the world of fan conventions.

Though the narrative calls for him to humbly engage with a group of people who mostly hated his work, Jacobs has a keen ego. He finds it difficult to disguise his sense of superiority to these cosplaying fanatics with their portable, self-assembly Tardises, and hero worship of anybody connected with this sixties British kids' show.

The film offers a relatively insightful look into the world of fandom, a supposedly niche, underground activity that is taking over the world. The fates of massive corporations are linked to the fans’ reception of their latest offerings. Comic Con is now one of the biggest events in the movie calendar, much more so than Cannes. I envy their devotion. The Chibnal/ Whittaker axis - the Truss/ Kwarteng of British sci-fi - severed my attachment to the show.

Directed by Matthew Jacobs and Vanessa Yuille. Featuring Matthew Jacobs, Paul McGann, and Daphne Ashbrook. In cinemas running time: 80 mins.

Go to http://www.halfmanhalfcritic.com/ for a review of the Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray release of David Lynch’s lost masterpiece, Lost Highway.