The Nest - 2020 film review

One can look at The Nest in different ways. On the one hand, you might argue that it's a 1980s drama that brims with potential but ultimately peters out. On the other hand, you might counter that it captures human behaviour subtly and compellingly, and is mature enough to avoid the simplistic. I'm in the latter camp. This is, I think, a really good film.

I was drawn to it partly by the presence in the cast of Jude Law. His raffish, unreliable charm is, in his best performances, utterly convincing and never more so than here. He is Rory O'Hara, a charismatic trader with a gift of the gab. But it rapidly becomes clear that he's economical with the truth and before long we start to wonder if he's a full-on fantasist. 

Rory is married to Allison (Carrie Coon), an equestrian trainer. They have a son together (Ben) and she also has a teenage daughter (Sam). They are living in New York and it all seems pretty idyllic. But warning signs flash when, at the start of the film, Rory says he wants to move back to Britain to pursue a great opportunity and we learn that he is temperamentally restless - and in charge of the family finances.

They do move to England, and take a tenancy of a baronial manor. Rory rejoins his old boss Arthur (a terrific cameo by Michael Culkin) but the children are unsettled. Carrie Coon is excellent and there's alos a great cameo from Anne Reid, whom I still think of as Val Barlow in  Coronation Street. At different times the film teeters on the edge of psychological suspense, satire, family drama, horror, and the supernatural. We expect something terrible is going to happen...well, no spoilers here. It's definitely worth watching The Nest for yourself. 

Sleuth

The 2007 re-make of Sleuth is, unlike many re-makes, by no means a waste of time. For a start, the script is by the late Harold Pinter, who adapts the famous stage play by Anthony Shaffer with verve. The original film version starred Laurence Olivier as the novelist, Wyke, and Michael Caine as his young rival Milo. Now Caine plays Wyke and Jude Law is Milo.

Caine and Law have both played Alfie, and I noticed that Pinter managed to include ‘What’s it all about?’ as one of the lines – a nice joke! They both do a good job here, with Caine especially impressive. I really do like him as an actor.

Shaffer’s original play had quite a bit to say about the detective story form. Pinter largely abandons this, which is perhaps a pity. Shaffer co-wrote three very clever Golden Age mysteries himself, in the 50s. His co-author was his twin Peter, better known for Equus and Amadeus.

Overall, a fairly short, stylised and snappy film. The basic story may be familiar, but this version is distinctive enough to be worth watching. And you get the impression Caine and Law enjoyed themselves.

Sherlock Holmes - the movie: review

I wasn’t sure whether I would care for Guy Ritchie’s 2009 movie version of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert J. Downey Jr and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson. And for sure, it’s a film that will have purists wincing, as many liberties are taken with facts and the Holmes canon. Anachronisms abound and the casting of Holmes seemed like a gamble.

And yet, I must say that I enjoyed the film. I do think that film and TV adaptations of crime stories deserve to be judged on their own merits, even if I loved the original on which they were based. The real failures are those, like the recent The Secret of Chimneys, where it’s impossible to see what the point of the new version was.

Here, for all its quirks, the story was exciting and the visual effects quite brilliant. The plot involved the villainous Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong was credibly nasty in the part) who seems to be able to use occult powers with a view to taking control of the British Empire and then the world as a whole. What a cad!

The cast did a good job, with a nice take on the Holmes-Watson relationship, even if Conan Doyle would have been amazed at the re-inventing of Mary Morstan and Irene Adler. But then, the great Basil Rathbone films which first turned me on to Sherlock when I was very young were also far removed from the originals. I liked them, and slightly to my surprise, I liked this movie too.