"The Professor And The Madman" - A Review by Mark Barry of the 2019 Farhad Safina Film starring Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Stephen Dillane, Natalie Dormer and Eddie Marsan - Now on BLU RAY...

"...Fly...On The Wings Of Words..." 

- The Professor And The Madman on BLU RAY -

As you sit through the engaging real-life-story movie that is "The Professor And The Madman" - you might well think - where was this fabulous film in the 2020 Oscars? Why was the entire world told that fatuous tut like Tarantino's "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" was worthy of our attention or even an Oscar for Brad Pitt? There are just so many choice roles in "The Professor And The Madman" that on any other year, it would have been garnished with nominations galore. Is it that in Hollywood, Mel Gibson is still a persona non grata? Well, be that as it may, this is without question the Australian actor and director's most accomplished work in decades...

Shot in Ireland and especially the older parts of Dublin (the truly gorgeous library inside Trinity College is featured to fabulous effect), I suspect that for many viewers, this beautifully realized movie is coming out of left field. Few have heard of it, let alone went to see it in a cinema. Based on a true story - principled Scotsman and Professorial multi-lingual scholar James Murray (Mel Gibson) is charged with forming an English Language Dictionary chronicling every word along with its history, meaning and literature reference - a task that has defeated snooty Oxford and Cambridge dons for decades - possibly even driven some of them stark raving mad.

But James Murray is different. He has armour and secret weapons. His wife Ada is his rock and their many children fill James with wonder, strength and even purpose (Ada is beautifully played by Jennifer Ehle of Pride and Prejudice TV Series fame). Murray is also in love with language and words to the point where he feels they may even be a route to the divine, love and that most difficult of all emotions in the mid 19th century - forgiveness.

Used on one third of the earth as a 'mother tongue' - Murray goes at the impossible task of finding and defining 'every' word and permeation of the English language with aid from his team of researchers led by Henry Bradley (Iain Gruffudd). But it soon becomes obvious why others have been driven to tears with such a task - smashed up every time against the rocks of 'proof' for even the simplest of words like 'art' or 'approved' - and that's just the 'A's'. But help comes from an unlikely source and a parallel story.

Possessed of a demon-infested and yet brilliant mind, Dr. William Minor is also drawn to the healing of literature. But while he was once a respected surgeon in the American Civil War, conflict and actions he was forced into (maiming a soldier deemed to be a deserter) have left his mind shattered to the point where in a frenzy of voices and illusions - he shoots dead a young man called Everett. This has left his young wife Eliza and her five children to destitution (Natalie Dormer excelling in a genuinely great part for the Games Of Thrones star). Dr. Minor (a seriously brilliant Sean Penn) is easily convicted and sent to prison – Eliza Everett initially glad to see him suffer.

Inside the correctional facility/lunatic asylum for the criminally insane that is Broadmoor in Berkshire, he meets Dr. Richard Brayn - a caring physician played by the stunning Stephan Dillane - also of Games Of Thrones and cruelly robbed of an Oscar for his exceptional work in the Churchill film "Darkest Hour". Determined to methodically help inmates rather than let them rot in cells, Dr. Brayn gives the mad but clearly intelligent American leeway that may indeed lead to his salvation – space, paper and books. And after a letter is found inside a book that has called on the entire English-speaking world to supply words and their meanings, the strange relationship with the Scottish Professor James Murray and the convicted-of-murder American Civil War surgeon William Minor begins – over an English book from Oxford.

Both Gibson and Penn are magnificent in this movie - not just good - but towering. Throw in the genuinely awesome humanity that Eddie Marsan of "Ray Donovan" fame brings to everything that he does (Eddie plays a guard called Mr. Muncie who takes pity on the madman and is instrumental as a liason) and a fantastically good Steve Coogan as an establishment friend to James Murray who can oil and circumnavigate the cogs of Oxford snoots malicious and vindictive towards the Scotsman (Anthony Edwards and Laurence Fox leading the doubters) - and you get an inkling of the kind of quality ensemble cast that is on offer here. There are at least six or seven more names I could mention...

Good as they all are though, the cast excels because the story and the writing that depicts this unusual tale is simply beautiful - a gorgeous script by Director Farhad Safina (credited as P.B. Shemran) and Todd Komarnicki (Safina wrote large swathes of both seasons to a Kelsey Grammer Mayor-of-Chicago TV Series I loved called "Boss"). Based on a 1998 book by Simon Winchester called "The Surgeon Of Crowthorne", the 2019 film "The Professor And The Madman" has heart and compassion and delights in language and its power to diffuse and even heal. And on it goes to the credits where photographs and achievements give further insight into these odd but earnest men and their achievements – Bear McCreary’s music lifting proceedings all the way to the end.

I loved "The Professor And The Madman" and I suspect many others will too. As the damaged man, Dr. Minor says, "...I can fly out of here...on the wings of words..." Good advice, I think. A really, really good movie and well done to all involved...

“21 Grams” on BLU RAY – A Review Of The 2004 Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Film

"…Forgive Me…"

21 Grams on BLU RAY

Like a freight juggernaut carrying the poisoned cargo of a screwed-up past and a tormenting temptation-filled-present - ex convict Jack Jordan is a train wreck waiting to derail yet again - only this time in spectacular fashion. At the hands of Preacher John (the ever stunning Eddie Marsan) Jack has at least discovered God ("Jesus gave me that truck...") but he seems to be slowly losing everything else - his freedom, his job and his family.

Mexican Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu had made the brilliant "Amos Perres" in 2000 and it went a long way to drawing in huge talent like Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and especially Benicio Del Toro (as Jack Jordan). Not conventionally structured - 2004's "21 Grams" uses the device of back and forward in time flashbacks to offer up a story of accidents and loss and extreme pain and how ordinary people cope with it (or not as the case may be).

The structure is odd and at times grating - but it brilliantly unfolds the story so you slowly twig what's happened and to whom. One minute Jack Jordan is clean-shaven happily waving to his friends by his pick-up - the next he's in a prison shower again with a towel around his neck (and he isn't trying to clear up his zits). Sean Penn's character Paul River's is wheezing on a ventilator while he sneaks a cigarette from a pill bottle stash in the bathroom in one scene - then is healthy and immaculately suited in the next scene as he ogles a woman in a swimming pool (Naomi Watts) he seems overly interested in for a married man. One moment he's raising a glass of wine with his friends celebrating an organ transplant that has literally saved his life - the next Paul is lying in a hospital bed looking battered with tubes in his mouth - ruminating on the size of the bodyweight you lose when you die (the film's title).

In between all of this we keep returning to a father (a brilliantly subtle Danny Huston) on his mobile to his wife. He is clearly not paying enough attention to his two young daughters giddily chasing a bird on the footpath ahead of him. As the three pass out of shot - leaves are blown ahead as a familiar-looking truck races past - and a few moments later (still out of shot) there's an ominous screech of tyres...

While Sean Penn is typically magnetic - the movie belongs to Benicio Del Toro who straddles it like a malevolent colossus. In the 'Making Of' the Director says you need only point the camera at him and magic will happen - worlds going on behind a glance. Yet somehow (and there are repulsive scenes with his family) Del Toro fills his tattooed enraged Jordan with such gravitas that you empathise with his gradual loss of faith rather than judge him. In one scene he begs a startled man to kill him - end his torment - and you don't for a second think that he doesn't really mean it.

But special praise should also go to the women who are simply astounding and in some cases act the showier male names off the frame. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Sean Penn's wife Mary Rivers obsessed with having a child even if their relationship is disintegrating - while Melissa Leo plays the wife of the God-obsessed Jack Gordon trying to keep him out of jail and her family together (both are simply superb). But it's Naomi Watts who blows you away. There is a scene where she has to go the hospital to check on her husband and two daughters only to be given unfathomable news. As a parent you physically shake and ache with her harrowing disintegration (she's that good). The only other times I've ever seen this sheer acting power is in "Bright Star" about the life of poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne that has Abbie Cornish give the same kind of mind-blowing performance (see review) and Marion Cotillard's unbelievable performance in the Edith Piaf biopic "La Vie En Rose".

With a 1.85:1 Aspect Ratio (the full screen is filled) 'adequate' best describes the BLU RAY picture quality. It isn't great by any stretch of the imagination featuring many indoor and night scenes with an ever-present pallor of grain. Shooting was all about feel and immediacy - and prettily framed suburbia was never going to be part of the equation. But I'd still say that the power of the watch quickly dissipates any qualms on that front. The only subtitle is English for the Hard Of Hearing.

There's also a great "In Fragments" Making Of where the Director gets all the cast and crew to throw red roses in the air at the start of shooting and white roses when they finish. Each of the principal actors get spots and they're praise and love of the work is palatable. Icing on the cake is Gustavo Santaoialla's stunning score of electric and acoustic heavy guitar strums (like a Mexican Ry Cooder). Gustavo also embellished "Babel" and "The Motorcycle Diaries" with the same emotion-tugging power.

Nominated for 2 Oscars and 5 Baftas - "21 Grams" is visceral cinema peopled with a plethora of actors giving 1000% to a script they know is hard-hitting yet somehow real world redemptive. Inarritu would go on to make the equally brilliant "Babel" and the seriously harsh "Biutiful".

In 2014 you can pick up the stunning “21 Grams” for five quid or less on BLU RAY - and that's a skydiver well spent in my book...

"Filth" - A Review Of The 2013 Film Now On BLU RAY.

This link will bring you to Amazon UK to buy this BLU RAY at the best price:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FL31TFQ

"…I Just Wanted To Say Thanks…"

Bravely Produced by Trudy Styler and Written & Directed with panache by Jon S. Baird (adapted from Irvine Welsh’s 2008 book) – "Filth" comes at you like a freight train with a bulldog strapped to its front that hasn’t eaten for four days.

Principal lead actor James McAvoy returns to his Scottish roots to play Bruce Robertson – a hideously arrogant scheming misogynistic chauvinistic detective in the Lothian Borders Police force (it was filmed mostly in Glasgow and Edinburgh with some scenes in Germany). As Bruce sits in his Police debriefing room – we get a running commentary from his twisted and vicious mind about the general uselessness of the work colleagues who surround him – each of which he’s going to royally shaft in order to achieve a promotion (even if some of them view him as a best friend).

There’s his young but still-learning partner in drug-busts Jamie Bell (a man with a challenged appendage in his trouser area and a serious Charly infatuation in his nasal cavities), Emun Elliott as a copper who has questionable sexual preferences (for Scotland that is), the pretty but snootily aloof Imogen Poots whose a lot more savvied than the men think and Gary Lewis as the amiable but rather clueless bobby on the beat and all-round good egg and family man. This seemingly hapless bunch are all overseen by John Sessions as police chief Bob Toal – a winging-it buffoon who would prefer to be suckering up to the literary set at the local Mason’s Lodge (superb performance from Sessions).

The story goes like this… A gang of thugs has murdered a young Japanese student in an underpass and whoever solves the case – gets the leg up the ladder. But what Bruce was once good at (detecting crime) now seems to elude him because he’s on a twitching hallucinogenic slide into mental and physical madness. His working day consists of snorting copious amounts of cocaine in the toilets of strip bars - swigging whiskey is his car from a polystyrene cup - masturbating to dirty videos in his unkempt alcoholic’s flat - eating junk food on the go and last thing at night making obscene phonecalls to the frustrated wife of one of his workmates (a fantastic performance by Shirley Henderson as Bunty). He’s even having kinky suffocation sex with the wife of a soppy bifocal accountant he’s befriended at the Lodge (yet another stunning scene-stealing turn by Eddie Marsan). Jim Broadbent is his Doctor prescribing him with ever more powerful tranquilisers but in his increasingly encroaching visions becomes a hideous physiatrist from a Doctor Who set with a protracted head and images of tapeworms on his office walls…

As you can imagine this river of human nastiness, untamed debauchery and society miscreants makes "Filth" all a bit hard to take – so why bother? Because both Welsh and Baird are better writers than that – they’ve imbibed their characters with back-stories that make you care – especially when it comes to the lead character who features in almost every scene of a book they said was un-filmable. Sergeant Bruce keeps seeing the coal-covered ghost of his younger child-brother whom he couldn’t save – and images of his sexily dressed mid-30’s wife (Shauna MacDonald) saying how great their love life is – when you suspect that she’s up and left and taken their 6-year old daughter with her. Inside Bruce is a river of rage and hurt that’s hurtling towards the precipice – and as he seems unable to stop - he simply blitzes those feelings away with a tide of narcotics.

A word has to be said about James McAvoy – his performance in “Filth” is magnificent in every sense of the word - wholly believable - and should have been Oscar-nominated despite the dark nature of the material. He portrays his character with full-on commitment. Bruce is in control one moment - scared shitless the next – tender in an instant to one woman then needlessly cruel to another. "Filth" is also very, very funny in a hugely un-PC kind of way – a rare and precious thing in films nowadays – and unashamed about it too. The talk John Sessions has with McAvoy about the Nancy-boy sexual orientation of one of his officers ("This Is Scotland for Gawd's sake!") and the scene where Eddie Marsan’s mild-mannered character gets slipped some speed in his lager in a nightclub is the kind of darkly brilliant stuff that will almost certainly develop cult status. And on it goes to more violence and more betrayal and more transgender jiggery-pokery…

But if was to nail one bit in the whole movie that shows how good the acting chops and writing is... There’s a scene where Bruce is exiting a florist and literally bumps into Mary – the widowed wife of a man Bruce tried to resuscitate in the street when everyone looked on and filmed his dying on their smartphones. Seconds earlier Bruce was physically and mentally vicious to a large sales girl inside the flower shop (pumping her on info about the murder) – but outside – he’s transformed. He recognizes Mary and knows that look on her face - her senseless and cruel loss bubbling under the veneer (a lovely turn by Joanne Froggatt who plays Anna Bates the ladies maid to Lady Mary in Downton Abbey). Suddenly his own pain surfaces and tears fill his eyes as she asks after him and thanks him for his kindness on the street that day. There are few actors who could portray such extremes so convincingly – where you can literally feel his hurt and devastation exuding through his pours and his subsequent need to get blasted again. My only misgiving is with the slightly jarrring and confusing ending - I would have preferreed it to have been more upbeat...

The BLU RAY image is a tale of two stories. In order to keep with the down and gritty feel of the drugs scene – the indoor shots are fast and suitably grainy – while the outside shots of the streets are immaculately HD. But the film is travelling so fast and the dialogue so filled with fire and expletives – "Filth" is not the kind of movie where picture quality is on your mind – ever.

The extras are good. There’s a feature-length Audio Commentary by Scottish Writer/Director Jon S. Baird, interviews with James McAvoy (10 minutes), Jon S. Baird (10 minutes) and Irvine Welsh (21 minutes), 4 Deleted Scenes, 7 Extended Scenes and a large number of very funny and informative outtakes featuring most of the actors and even Irvine Welsh as a reporter.

"Filth" won’t be everyone’s idea of a floral arrangement on Valentine’s Day and that’s for sure - but it’s a thoroughly ballsy British film, a brilliantly written and sublimely acted out parable that will stick in your craw for weeks after. Kudos to all who got it made and proof positive that Ireland, England and Scotland can produce world-class movies and actors who can roll with the very best of them.

Amazing and then some...