Rooney Mara

La Cocina

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Julia and Pedro head to head in silhouette

If you’ve seen the TV show The Bear then you’ve seen a good chunk of La Cocina, a hothouse drama set in a fast-paced New York restaurant kitchen. New York makes a difference – more illegal workers. And La Cocina is more explicit than The Bear about its racialised pecking order, though it’s a very uneasy order and prone to break down when the orders pile up. Estela (Anna Díaz) is our introduction to this semi-familiar world, a wetback from Mexico wandering lost around New York until she finds what she’s looking for: The Grill in Times Square, the sort of high-volume eatery that knocks out fish and chips, pizza, pasta, burgers, plus … Read more

Women Talking

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Jessie Buckley and Judith Ivey

Women Talking could have got a lot of dramatic mileage simply by telling the story of what happened rather than what happened next. But it opts for the latter, a daring ploy that eventually yields results, though there are moments on the journey when it looks like it’s not going to make it. Here’s what happened. In a devout, modernity-shunning Mennonite community in Bolivia between 2005 and 2008 a number of women and girls started waking up mornings to discover they’d been raped in their sleep. The youngest of the 151 victims was three, the oldest was 65. The community elders suggested that Satan was responsible, or one of his demons or possibly … Read more

Nightmare Alley

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Stan and Zeena

2021’s Nightmare Alley isn’t based on the 1947 film noir of the same name, so we’re told by various venerable authorities. Tell that to the judge. Even if it genuinely is a bona fide and honest reworking of the same source material, William Lindsay Gresham’s smash 1946 novel, even a quick look at the 1947 movie is enough to convince anyone that this Nightmare Alley has seen the older one, taken notes and then studied them hard. This extends to the casting choices. These start with Bradley Cooper as the grifter who starts out as a nobody in a carnival, works his way to the top of showbiz with a mentalist routine, over-reaches … Read more

The Social Network

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Rooney Mara and Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network

It’s often said that Kids Today can’t concentrate, that they don’t love words the way their parents did. Well, they flocked in the droves to see The Social Network, an old fashioned, plot driven, very talky film that seems aimed at people capable of mastering fine detail, people with an almost legal mindset. Regardless of the true state of the ADHD generation – isn’t it obvious that anyone who sits and plays a computer game for hours on end demonstrably has no problem with concentrating? – The Social Network tells the story of one of its generation’s figureheads, for good or ill: Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder. In particular it spins on the relationship … Read more

Side Effects

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Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum in Side Effects

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 February Damages for thalidomide children, 1968 On this day in 1968, the High Court in the UK presided over a settlement to 62 children born with deformities caused by the drug thalidomide. Thalidomide had been first marketed in 1957 in West Germany as a sedative and was later sold over the counter as a cure for morning sickness in pregnant women. Within months there was a huge increase in the number of babies born with missing and deformed limbs, deformed eyes, bowels, and hearts. Around 40% of these children died. The story repeated itself in the UK, Australia and New … Read more