The Cineskinny 2018 Issue 1

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N0 2 | 21 – 24 FEB

Sat 24 Feb, Cineworld, 6.15pm | Sun 25 Feb, Cineworld, 1pm

Not Horsing Around Rising talent Charlie Plummer speaks to us about his knockout performance in Andrew Haigh’s downbeat road movie Lean on Pete, using acting to cure his shyness and just missing out on being Spider-Man

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espite having just watched Lean on Pete, it requires a double-take to recognise the film’s lead, Charlie Plummer, as we pass him in a private members’ club’s reception before our interview.

Not because the 18-year-old American actor looks all that different in person from the 15-year-old boy (named Charley) he plays in Andrew Haigh’s low-key

drama; save for having grown a few inches taller in the interim between making the movie, and his wispy blonde locks a few inches longer, he looks exactly as he does in the picture. It’s the sanguine fashion in which Plummer carries himself that throws us off for a second.

Where Charley the character is closed up tighter than a clam, Charlie the actor, who’s wearing a floral silk shirt and black cords, is gregarious and at complete ease with himself as he leans back in his chair and nonchalantly answers questions like a seasoned pro. And he’s smiling too, something he wasn’t called on to do often in Lean on Pete. It comes as a surprise, then, when Plummer tells us he initially

Interview: Jamie Dunn got into acting to cure his crippling shyness.

“When I was about nine or ten, my parents basically just encouraged me to do a community theatre play,” recalls Plummer, “just to help with my confidence and public speaking and all that.”

Not only did his ego get a boost, he discovered his passion as well. “For whatever reason acting just clicked with me, it just became the most enjoyable thing on the planet and it was like this high that I’d never experienced before.”

How did his parents – actor Maia Guest and television writer-producer John Christian Plummer – react to this epiphany? “Ha, not well. They were like ‘no, no, don’t do that.’” Aside from it being continues…

>> such a cutthroat profession, what were their concerns? “I think they were wary about me being a child actor, you know, especially in film. It just has such a bad history, whether it’s abuse or that the kids just grow up to be arseholes.”

How could they object when he’s turning in performances like the one in Lean on Pete? Plummer recalls first receiving the script. “After I read it I told my mom I need to be part of this. I just love, love, love the characters, and I especially love the central character.”

“ Part of who I am as an actor, my instinct is probably not what a lot of big studios search for” Charlie Plummer It would be hard not to warm to Charley. He’s a sweet kid who finds himself in a series of terrible predicaments. He lives a somewhat chaotic lifestyle with his well-meaning but ill-equipped father (Travis Fimmel), who’s closer to a big brother than a parent. Charley finds a second father-figure of sorts in Steve Buscemi’s cantankerous horse trainer Del, who takes the boy under his grizzled wing and puts him to work at his stables. But in truth Charley is more enamoured with Del’s overworked racehorse Lean on Pete, who’s a few bad races away from a

Mexican slaughterhouse.

One might assume Lean on Pete follows in the well trodden hoofprints of other equine yarns of children bonding with horses (War Horse, National Velvet, Black Beauty), but this is a more rough-hewn tale and avoids sentimentality at every turn. While life is no picnic for Charley and Pete at the start of the movie, things get much tougher when they take to the open-road on an ill-advised cross-country adventure.

Plummer’s immediate reaction after falling in love with the script was to catch up with writer-director Andrew Haigh’s previous work. “I remember watching 45 Years soon after reading the script and my mom was in tears watching it with me, and she was like, ‘You are so lucky that you get to work with this guy.’” The young actor clearly feels the same way: “I feel so grateful that Andrew trusted me with the role, because he’s at the top of his level as a director and makes the kind of films that I really appreciate and love, so to be a part of it was just so meaningful for me.”

The performance Plummer gives in Lean on Pete is knockout, never straining for our sympathy but getting it anyway. He has something of a young River Phoenix about him, both in his delicate features and in his casually naturalistic acting style, which draws you closer to the screen as if to make out his faintly whispered dialogue. Phoenix’s signature film, it turns out, is one of Plummer’s favourites. “My Own Private Idaho is a real reference point for me, especially for Lean on Pete. I think a similarity between the two is that you really get to sit with the characters and really will spend minutes with them just sitting.

There will be silence, there will be no music, you’re

really just spending time with the person.”

Plummer seems perfectly suited to Andrew Haigh’s cinema of delicate grace notes or the kind of dreamy films in which Gus van Sant used to specialise. “Part of who I am as an actor, my instinct is probably not what a lot of big studios search for,” Plummer admits, “and if they do, I’m not even sure if I’d be the right fit…” He quickly adds, though: “but I’m open to anything.”

He’s certainly not averse to more high octane cinema. We’re speaking to Plummer in October 2017 and he enthusiastically mentions his next role will be as a teenage John Paul Getty III in Ridley Scott’s kidnap thriller All the Money in the World. “I can’t wait to see it,” beems Plummer. “The trailer’s out, it’s looking really great.” Little did Plummer know that just six weeks before All the Money in the World’s release, co-star Kevin Spacey would be quickly expunged from the movie by director Ridley Scott and replaced by veteran Canadian actor Christopher Plummer – no relation. Suffice it to say, despite the young actor’s very fine performance as the kidnap victim, it was slightly overshadowed by the Spacey revelations and the hasty reshoots.

Plummer also missed out (or dodged a bullet, depending on your take) on worldwide fame when he narrowly lost the role as the world’s favourite teenage superhero and youngest Avenger. “I struck out on Spider-Man,” he laughs when we ask about his screen tests with Robert Downey Jr to play the web slinger, “so I don’t know if they’d invite me back into that universe anytime soon. There’s always Batman, I guess. He’s cool.” With Plummer’s quiet on-screen intensity, he’d knock the Dark Knight right out of the park.

R E VIE WS Wonderstruck  Director: Todd Haynes Starring: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Oakes Fegley, Amy Hargreaves, Millicent Simmonds

Based on the book by Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck is set across dual timelines in 1927 and 1977, and follows the lives of two tenacious youngsters, both of whom are deaf. Mysteries (some entertaining, others tedious) are in abundance as the children’s lives are drawn closer together in this tender and innocent movie, but the plot contrivances detract from the overall strength of the narrative; this is a film of many beautiful parts rather than a cohesive whole.

Thu 22 Feb, GFT, 5.45pm Fri 23 Feb, GFT, 3.15pm

The mood is that of whimsy and fantasy, yet here the magic is somehow more mundane. These aren’t children with powers or gifts (as tends to be the default in modern children’s fiction), but average kids with a dog-eared determination to find answers about where they belong in the world. Haynes maintains their perspective throughout, even keeping the camera locked at mid-height, framing passers-by from the worldview of a child.

Certainly this is the director’s most mainstream movie to date, but don’t be fooled: Wonderstruck is very much a kid’s movie for adults, shot through the lens of an adult’s nostalgia for childhood. [Joseph Walsh]

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Sat 24 Feb, GFT, 6pm | Mon 26 Feb, GFT, 3.45pm

Let the Sunshine In 

Director: Claire Denis Starring: Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Philippe Katerine, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Alex Descas, Paul Blain

It’s impossible to predict what a new Claire Denis film will be like – you just know it’s going to be something special.

After plunging us into the depraved depths of Bastards in 2013, she returns with her warmest work since 2008’s 35 Shots of Rum. The seductively loose and sensual Let the Sunshine In stars Juliette Binoche as Isabelle, a divorced artist looking for love and connecting with a variety of men – a neurotic young actor, a persistent ex, a taciturn stranger from the countryside – who are all destined to frustrate and

A Prayer Before Dawn 

disappoint her in a variety of ways.

It’s essentially a romantic comedy, but filtered through Denis’ unique artistic sensibility. Once again working with the cinematographer Agnès Godard, the French filmmaker brings a ravishing tactility and sensuality to the film. Let the Sunshine In is unusually verbose for a Denis picture, with a couple of long monologues that are expertly delivered, but Godard’s camera is always alert, and long conversations are enlivened by the way our view swings from one

participant to the other. Despite all this talk, however, Denis still pulls off a few of her trademark scenes of wordless transcendence, with a slow dance set to Etta James’ At Last being one of this film’s standout moments.

At Last becomes something of a theme song for Let the Sunshine In, and it might match the cry that went up from cinephiles when we heard that Denis and Binoche, these two icons of contemporary French cinema, were finally collaborating. Binoche is at

her unmatchable best here, bringing incredible nuances and a tangible depth of emotion to every single scene. One might expect a 95-minute romantic comedy unfolding in vignettes to be a lightweight work, but Let the Sunshine In is empathetic, perceptive and moving in its exploration of 21st century love and sex. It’s a wonderful film from one of the best directors working today, and the final scene – which will pin you to your seat until the last credit has rolled – is one for the ages. [Philip Concannon]

Fri 23 Feb, GFT, 6pm Sat 24 Feb, GFT, 11pm

Vithaya Pansringarm, Panya Yimmumphai

What must it feel like to be thrown into a prison in Thailand, where you can’t even speak the language and you know that your life isn’t worth a damn to the convicted murderers around you? Billy Moore knows how it feels, and by the end of A Prayer Before Dawn you might think you have a pretty good idea as well.

Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s adaptation of Moore’s autobiography spends much of its first hour simply making us experience the infamous Bang Kwang Central

Prison, with Sauvaire’s use of real ex-cons as extras adding to the film’s intimidating atmosphere. With much of the Thai dialogue going unsubtitled, the film forces us to share Billy’s disorientation, but Joe Cole’s intensely physical performance – a mask of bravado hiding his panic and fear – keeps us riveted.

The second half of A Prayer Before Dawn has a more conventional shape, as Billy uses Muay Thai boxing to fight for his life and freedom, but David Ungaro’s invigorating cinematography and the bruising sound design ensure every moment feels painfully authentic. [Philip Concannon]

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Illustration: Raj Dhunna

Director: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire Starring: Joe Cole, Pornchanok Mabklang,

TOP FIVE

week one

Groundhog Day 22 Feb-3 Mar, Flat 0/1, 6pm This existential comedy about a weatherman (Bill Murray) stuck in a time-loop screens every day of the festival, in the same venue, at the same time.

“ Calls to mind two of cinemas great humanists, Richard Linklater and Yasujirō Ozu” Columbus 

Thu 22 Feb, GFT, 3.35pm Fri 23 Feb, CCA, 8.15pm

Director: Kogonada Starring: John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey, Michelle Forbes, Rory Culkin

Columbus is a film heavily focused on architecture, with formalism at the forefront of its aesthetic. By no means though, is this a cold exercise. Instead it calls to mind two of cinemas great humanists, Richard Linklater and Yasujirō Ozu. A string of conversation-heavy

encounters between a man and a woman prove life-altering (à la Linklater), particularly when it comes to their notions of familial relationships and whether or not to keep their lives on hold for their commitments to their parents (à la Ozu).

The aforementioned woman and man are Casey (Richardson), a recent high school graduate and architecture-nut who’s trying to decide her next life step, and Jin (Cho), who’s visiting the eponymous

Indiana city to attend to his father, a Korean architecture scholar who collapsed on the college grounds and is in a coma.

While everyone in Columbus does fine work, including Parker Posey as Jin’s father’s colleague, Richardson is a revelation, conveying an ocean of burning passion. She’s the beating heart of this warm, quietly devastating drama that has plenty to offer for those open to something subtle. [Josh Slater-Williams]

Fri 23 Feb, Cineworld, 8.45pm | Sat 24 Feb, Cineworld, 3.30pm

“It’s like if American Psycho and Heavenly Creatures had a beautiful sociopathic child” Thoroughbreds 

Director: Cory Finley Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Olivia Cooke, Anton Yelchin

Thoroughbreds sees the electrifying duo of Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy play Amanda and Lily, two upper-class teens and former childhood friends in

suburban Connecticut, reunited when Amanda’s mother pays Lily for some tutoring. Rumoured to have euthanised her family’s horse, Amanda is an intelligent,

self-aware psychopath; the more emotive Lily finds her a fun confidante with whom to exchange acerbic quips. Their rapport soon intensifies to where they jokingly discuss killing Lily’s odious stepfather (Paul Sparks). But then the jokes lead to a very real plan.

A muscular debut from writer-director Cory Finley, Thoroughbreds is a sharp social satire that blends dark comedy with quasi-horror flourishes, while also serving a portrait of female friendship that’s strangely touching. It’s like if American Psycho and Heavenly Creatures had a beautiful sociopathic child.

And this is not just a case of talented actors – including the late Anton Yelchin in his final released film – relishing a screenplay packed with zinging dialogue; Finley demonstrates a skill with heightened sound design, in particular, that most veteran directors of contemporary thrillers lack. [Josh Slater-Williams]

Another Day at the Office 23&24 Feb, Former College of Building & Printing, times vary Two iconic office-set movies from 1988 – Die Hard and Working Girl – screen in the perfect venue: an office block.

Mm + Sacred Paws 24 Feb, Tramway, 7.30pm The SAY Award-winners provide a live score to Margaret Salmon’s poetic speedway motorcycling doc.

Larry Cohen Night 24 Feb, GFT, from 8.40pm Unofficial double-bill celebrating the great B movie director: new doc King Cohen screens, followed by Cohen’s razor-sharp consumerism satire The Stuff.

Dawn of the Dead + Treasure Hunt 25 Feb, secret location, 5.30pm George A Romero’s living dead masterpiece is screening somewhere in Glasgow tonight, and it’s your job to discover where.

Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival: Editor-in-Chief Rosamund West Editor

Jamie Dunn

Designer

Silvia Razakova

Picture Editor

Sarah Donley

Digital Editor

Peter Simpson

Sales

George Sully

Sandy Park

Illustration

Lucy Kirk

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