Unlike The Wham! Song, 'Last Christmas' Might Not Stay Stuck In Your Head

LAST CHRISTMAS

★★

From the moment that you read the title Last Christmas, you’re going to have that Wham! song stuck in your head. So, Paul Feig’s twee-as-fuck Christmas movie trifle doesn’t skimp on said Wham! song: it’s there for the opening title card, it’s there as incessant recurring jingle, and it’s there at the big-concert-where-every-character-in-the-movie-comes-together finale, sung by a colourful cast of kooky characters. Oh, and, the movie actually literalises the first line of the song, but that’s a whole other story.

There’s plenty of other George Michael songs shoehorned into the movie; though this isn’t a continuation — following Yesterday and Blinded By The Light — of hanging whole movies on one musical act’s canon pop songs. Based on a script co-written by co-star Emma Thompson (who delivers a non-specific “Yugoslavian” accent herein that will make you wince), it’s a pretty shameless attempt at cracking the perennial Christmas movie playlist, peddling a host of rom-com clichés and a wildly-misguided twist.

Emilia Clarke gets a plum, post-Thrones leading lady role as stereotypical rom-com heroine: she’s a klutz (pratfalls ahoy!), she constantly embarrasses herself, her personal/professional/romantic life is a mess, and she’s prone to self sabotage, often via alcohol. She’s so relatable! All that’s missing is a leading man with an impressive jaw, so into the frame wanders Henry Golding, the kind of guy who rides a bike, doesn’t have a phone, is incredibly neat and a little holier than thou. She makes jokes that he’s got “serial killer” vibes, but he’s too handsome to distrust; we’ll follow him anywhere, on any Manic Pixie Dream date — Charming alleyways! Secret gardens! Clandestine ice skating rink break-ins! — he’s got up his sleeve.

The narrative is one of personal rehabilitation; the third act devoted entirely to Clarke making amends. Early on, she’s damned by others —“the most selfish person in the world” and “bit up herself” being two judgments — but, by the end, she’s volunteering at a soup kitchen, staging a charity Christmas concert, and going through a montage of gift-giving apologies. There’s added movie morality in thrown-into-the-mix B-plots about immigrant parents and Brexit, which are delivered with brevity and abandoned with abruptness.

If Last Christmas succeeds in any fashion — and perhaps it does, barely — it’s due to Clarke’s charisma, the way she can sell both the hijinks and the hurt beneath, make an audience care whether she gets her life back on track. There’s no explanation as to why she loves George Michael’s music, what it means to her, or to the greater culture. Instead, it’s just dressing on a standard seasonal rom-com, even if the title track seemingly inspired this whole thing.

FORD V FERRARI

★★★  

Ford v Ferrari is the cinematic equivalent of Apple’s old ‘Think Different’ campaign. It forwards a narrative lionising renegades and rebels, those who buck convention and refuse to follow a culture of corporate committee thinking. Yet, at the same time, it’s essentially just an advertisement, a glorious shrine to the might and power of the Ford Motor Company.

The rebels, herein, are bankable movie stars. Christian Bale plays an English race car driver and mechanic who cares not for your marketing plan or American positivity; the kind of renegade who’ll — mechanically speaking — call a spade a spade. Matt Damon is a true cowboy, not just in his defiant spirit, but in his gleaming belt buckles, big hat, and doing-a-Tommy-Lee-Jones-impression Texan accent.

They’re the unlikely duo — the original odd couple! — who, when not fighting, figuratively and literally, must team up for an against-all-odds sporting mission: trying to halt the dominance of Ferrari at the 24-hour Le Mans car race in the 1960s. In England, this movie is known as Le Mans ’66, but, in Australia, we get the very American title, which echoes the brand-building narrative. Having tried to buy Ferrari only to be rebuffed, Ford sets out to beat them at their own game; All-American mettle out to stick it to European smugness. The antagonist of the picture turns out to be the enemy within, though, with Josh Lucas playing a (likely fictionalised) Ford suit who’s the human embodiment of corporate lackeyism.

The resulting film is a gleaming, $100mil, 152-minute piece of corporate machinery; something glibly entertaining but rarely inspiring. James Mangold, last seen piloting the superhero tearjerker Logan, is out to make a very accessible, middlebrow movie. One where plot points and motoring logistics are spoken aloud, and often repeated for anyone struggling to keep up; where every emotional/comic beat is hammered home by Marco Beltrami’s on-the-nose music; and where most of the directorial concern is in capturing the races, making things loud and hurtling and exciting.

By the time the climactic race arrives, the audience has no choice but to be on Bale’s side: he’s funny, odd, has an attractive wife and charming child; he’s a good dad just trying to put food on the table. Set against all the anonymous drivers inside the competing cars, he’s clearly our guy. Ford v Ferrari tries to make it a story lionising him, and the hard working, outside-the-box-thinking men who made this feat of engineering happen. But there’s only so far it can go when its title is literally a pair of corporate logos.

PAIN & GLORY

★★★★ 

For many filmmakers, drawing on their own life suggests a lack of inspiration; for Pedro Almodóvar, it’s utterly inspired. For his 21st feature film, the legendary Spanish auteur — now 70 years old — casts Antonio Banderas as a director, and makes a movie exploring this character’s life. Befitting Almodóvar’s late-period picture, it’s an astonishingly complex, yet still sleek bit of screenwritten construction; interlocking narratives and multiple timeframes braided into an elegant melodrama.

But, like a cop on a revenge mission, this time it’s personal. Here, what the filmmaker is going through — dealing with failing health, reconciling with the films of his youth, drawing on his childhood for new inspiration — is what Almodóvar is going through. And, when the camera pulls back to reveal a film crew in the final frame, in that old self-reflexive new-wave gesture, it doubles down on the sentiment.

Banderas is playing the on-screen stand-in for Almodóvar, but there’s echoes of their old collaborative relationship in the central drama. This is the eighth film they’ve made together, but actor and director were estranged for 22 years; and, in turn, within the narrative, our central filmmaker has become estranged from a hot-headed actor (played by Asier Etxeandia) he made films with in their punk-rock youth. The two pick up on their old friendship, dabble in heroin, and work on a theatre monologue. That eventually leads Banderas to a fated reunion with the old lover (Leonardo Sbaraglia) who this monologue was actually about; this theatrical text, like the movie, exploring distant, painful days of drugs and youth and folly, and the ramifications still felt late in life.

This reunion scene, where old lovers are brought back together is incredible: full of heart and warmth, and both the wisdom and the deep melancholy of again. It’s as emotional and effecting as anything Almodóvar has ever done; something that shows how personal, and human, Pain & Glory is.

Of course, being an Almodóvar joint there’s leaps around in time, devotion to other artworks (characters sit down to watch Lucrecia Martel’s The Holy Girl; Rosalía shows up as a 1950s washerwoman singing a banging folksong on the banks of a river), maternal figures, sentimental queerness, the sense that this story is creating, and encompassing, an entire narrative world. If there was no personal connection, at all, to this narrative, Pain & Glory would be a wonderful film. But there is, and it’s strong, and it only makes the movie stronger.