Episode 11 Film 2015

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Spielberg and Hanks reunited with tense

Is there any outcome here where I'm not either detained or shot?

Head over heels - Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara star as 50s lovers

Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch star in violent crime drama

Plus we'll take a look at Pixar's latest offering The Good Dinosaur.

And joining us is the always animated, Tim Robey.

First up is Steven Spielberg's Cold War drama, Bridge of Spies.

In surprise casting, Tom Hanks stars opposite British

stage actor Mark Rylance, caught up in an East-West spy swap.

An American pilot was flying a spy mission over the Soviet Union,

taking pictures of installations. He was supposed to be flying so high no

Russian missile could shoot him down. Buff they had a missile and

they shot him down. They took a praise -- him prisoner. He remained

there for quite a long time. We've got a Soviet Spy. Years before, the

United States, a Soviet Spy was arrested and defended in court all

the way up to the Supreme Court by a lawyer that was assigned to the

case, that's who I play. I'm an insurance lawyer. Have you

represented many accused spies? This will be a first for the both of us.

The United States had a spy. The Russian has a pilot. Can we exchange

them somehow and by way of a lot of cloak-and-dagger. He was making

photographs from 70,000 feet when he was shot from the sky. People in my

country consider this an act of war. Tell me that you're not going to be

in any dangerer in Give me something to hold on to. I don't even care if

it is the truth. I'm doing this for us.

I'd never seen anything like this before. It's not completely

predictable. That's one of the reasons that I was attracted to

this. I didn't want the outcome, the end. We know there's going to be

some kind of two story lines that will converge. But how the

procedural part of Bridge of Spies evolves with the defence of the

accused Soviet Spy, that's where the mystery is. How did we do? In there?

Not too good. Apparently you're not an American citizen. That's true.

And according to your boss, you're not a Soviet Citizen either. Well,

the boss isn't always right. But he's always the boss. Stephen with

this film has particularly focussed on the people. It's a human story.

That's what is fascinating about. It it's why a lot of us watch a lot of

old films and enjoy them. There's more time for you to indulge

everyone's fascination with human beings. He's a threat to all of us,

a traitor. Cold War thrillers have been an interesting genre for human

behaviour. There are issues resolving around lit secrets and

intimacies. Do you never worry? Would it help? We all knew of Mark

and understood that here was this brilliant talent and I found him to

be very compelling character. It made me want to listen and wait for

him to deliver whatever the next emotional beat was. Standing man.

Standing man. It's a lot of noise and there's a lot of talk and a lot

of muse nick movies. Sometimes they're not nearly as powerful as

the silence, just waiting to see what's going to happen. I'm not sure

I want to pick that up. Tom as an actor is so fluid and natural. When

you put it that way it's an honour to be asked. Writers do seven, eight

drafts. Tom takes the line and doesn't change it. But he says it so

conversationally. It feels like he's making up the words when he goes

along. He doesn't change the dialogue, he says what is written

for him. But he has a way of presenting it to us that feels like

it's a friend talking to a lot of friends. Everyone deserves a

defence. Every person matters. What do we deserve - do you know how

people will look at us, the family a man trying to free a traitor? Don't

go Boy Scout on me. Definitely stay away from the wall. Cross it and

you'll be shot. A lot of people doesn't want this exchange to ever

take place. We're so familiar with Spielberg for so long. You forget

what a ninja master of a film maker he can be. The opening shot in

Bridge of Spies is so perfect. There's a moment where Mark Rylance

is a Russian spy, painting a self-portrait. He looks in the

mirror back to the canvas. It's a perfect opening for a spy movie.

Then three or four minute sequence where he's going about his business

as a spy. No dialogue. All you hear is a ringing phone. He picks it up,

doesn't say a word. Just gets on with his day. It's a spy movie that

is in love with the idea of being a spy movie. You don't need to be such

a strange herbert as me making notes to see this film is just impeccable.

Wow, go on. I'm too scared to speak. Mad is what I was missing.

Methodical. I like it. It's good. It's solid. It's Spielberg indulging

his obsession with war again. All his films seem to be about war these

days. He made five about the Second World War, War Horse and Lincoln. He

was saying the American Civil War was kind of fought in the courtroom

as much as on the battlefield. Here he's doing a similar thing, but

saying the Cold War as a bunch of guys in coats shivering, standing in

East Germany waiting for something to happen. That's more or less the

ending of the film. It's perfect the image of that bridge at the end is

beautiful and perfect. We do spend a lot of time waiting to get there.

It's quite ponderous along the way. A whole lot of time. I had forgotten

how brilliant that beginning was, there's a chase and there's Mark

Rylance, magnificent, even when he doesn't speak. Hi just has to be

there. Then there's what, eight hours, nine days... The Cold War

itself was a bit longer. Talk about the film. I'm not sure I loved it as

much as youment You clearly don't. No. It embraces the cliches of the

spy movies. It's a movie that has no shame about having chase scenes

through rain soaked streets and conversations with people who don't

exist and the conversations never took place. It does all that stuff

with aplomb. The look of cold scepticism on your face. I thought

maybe I was watching a film just about a man who had a cold. We

confuse the Cold War for that. Possibly I would like to be in that

meeting, "Should I have a cold? I didn't dislike it. And Spielberg, I

feel like I'm being unfaithful. Whatever you've done with Claudia,

wow. I feel bad. But it's too, Mark Rylance is brilliant, Hanks is

brilliant. Rylance nails it. He's magisterial in this part. It's like

he's playing a poker game and hasn't told anyone else they're doing it

and he's winning. He holds everything back. Cohen brothers is

there with his lines. They've made this character an emblem of mystery.

There are amazing double acts. Rylance and Hanks are the double act

on screen. There's a saying in boxing, styles make fights. And if

films too. Rylance disappears. You don't see him. You just see a

strange, tough, little question mark of a man on one side of the table.

On the other, a great movie actor, Tom Hanks can't ever leave his Tom

Hanksness behind. One actor disappears inside his character, one

that is the great every man. That's fascinating to see. You have this

other double act, the Spielberg connection with the Cohen brothers.

They're vital to this. Spielberg likes his rousing scores and he

likes his hymns to America. The Cohens come in and there's a twist

of lemon, prick things a bit. It's great. I'll ask you this, answer

truthfully, was it tense for you at any point? It lacks tension. It has

wit but it lacks the momentum. I feel that Spielberg let himself down

slightly. I still feel tense now just thinking about it.

Director Todd Haynes work stands out from the Hollywood mainstream.

In Far From Heaven he put the spotlight on married gay men

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are the star-crossed lovers.

What's your name? Therese. And yours? Carol. It really is a classic

love story. What makes a love story memorable on film, which of the

lovers are we rooted with as viewers and why? Thank you. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas. I like the hat. It has a timeless feel. It's about the

volcanic, exciting, heart-stopping, painful feelings of falling in love

deeply and truly. Would you like to come visit me this Sunday? Yes. An

older woman w, a child, in a fairly loveless marriage. And a young shop

girl who fall in love. Carol? I miss you.. So it's the fallout from that.

Obviously in the 50s, such a love was not only frowned upon, it was

illegal. This is really about the early 1950s. Obviously, this is a

kind of love that would disturb or challenge the Status Quo at the time

and does so for both women. It shouldn't be like this. I know.

Carol is such a true love story. Were there love stories in the past

that you drew from? When I thought of it first off and for people who

know the film, I'm sure many British viewers would, was Brief Encounter.

You know, it's the story of two very middle class, familiar subjects,

each settled in their own marriages and how they find each other and

have this infatuation, upsets the sort of order and reliability of

their lives, even just the structure of it, the way this conversation

between the two central characters gets interrupted at the beginning of

the film. Laura, what a lovely surprise... You don't know who they

are yet. You don't know whose story it is yet. These are the questions

that interruption poses. We do something similar in the structure

of Carol. Is that you? What do you know. We're so obsessed in 2015 with

text, with what's said, but I'm often fascinated by whats not said.

I really should run. Are you sure? Of course. Of course, subtext, it's

fantastic stuff to play with as an actor. Because it means that you can

create characters or -- who are enigmatic and mysterious which draws

in an audience. You two have a wonderful night. Every sign, every

little gesture is subject to interpretation. Does this woman love

me back? What is this love even comprise itself of since there's no

real social, cultural example TV that she knows of. Make sure the

loaf's on his way. Back in a flash. Throughout your career, you've been

closely associated with Julie Ann Moore, and now Cate Blanchett. Can

you imagine putting the two of them together in a film. My God, it would

explode. I've been so lucky. I've worked with such amazing women and

certainly Julie-Ann Moore I was associated with early on.er Frank?

It called for a different kind of acting outside the language of

naturalism. Something very, very specific, in this case, based on and

inspired by the Mella drama, the high Mella drama era of Hollywood

film making in the late 50s. More recently I've had two

extraordinary experiences with Cate Blanchett. I doubt very much I would

have gone with lunch with him. You are always the most beautiful woman

in a room. I love Todd, he has the hunger of a student film-maker, able

to work on a shoestring and passionate, but the visual landscape

he creates, if you see Far From Heaven it is this jewel-like Douglas

Sirk homage, and you think OK, that's what we are going to do in

Carol and then he presents an entirely different palate working

with a whole load of visuals from female photographers in the 50s

unlike a very different take on the same aesthetic will stop he is

endlessly creative. I admit, I am drawn to the frame that various

moments in the past provide the present. And action!

In a way it sort of gives the viewer this sort of slight distinction

between where we are now and what we are looking at, to kind of draw some

of their own conclusions about the contemporary moments, and also how

far we may or may not have travelled from that moment in the past. I want

it and I will not deny it. You may have got the impression I

slightly like this film, I've been banging on about it since me and

I've reached the point where every time I mention it I feel like a

parody of myself, one day I will shut up but everybody must see it,

it is wonderful. We're lucky to have it now, it's the only featured Todd

Haynes has made this decade, he's chosen the right time with this

cast. He's been trying to make this film for 20 years since the

screenwriter drafted it in the 90s and it never came good and we

finally have it and with his Erick Thohir will control and hand all

over it. He's just the master of this stuff. -- directorial. The way

it breaks with sadness all the way through, every scene with these

women when we are willing it to happen and hoping it will and we

know the problems they are facing and the obstacles between them. It

is glorious and heartbreaking and great and everyone needs to see it.

It is so beautiful, isn't it? It's a phenomenal time machine and

as the credits roll, you think 2015, because you were so immersed in the

50s and it's interesting how he did that, the production design, the

brand of cigarettes, the hair design. And the costumes! It is

perverse to talk about this film and not get too Cate Blanchett and

Rooney Mara. It's about the extras as well, one of the weather films

comes to life, in a period drama you will often have a solitary extra

standing in the corner wondering whether they have the role of the

corpse in the CSI and they are done up and it feels incredibly stilted

and artificial. You know that just out of shot there is a man in a

fleece and people with walkie-talkies and having Starbucks.

Todd Haynes, I guarantee he will have gone to the extras, 25 to 30

people in the scene, everyone will have something the character is

doing, even if it is a nonspeaking part. They are on a mission. They

will go to see the dentist, pick up dinner, they will be going to have

an affair. That means that when Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett come

out onto the street in New York it feels alive and real and almost like

documentary. He has got that from the photographs as they were saying,

from the era, from the paintings from people like Edward Hopper, tiny

figures in the background that would pop up in those paintings. Cate

Blanchett and Rooney Mara, how different they look and their

energies together, how the older woman is pretending not to be

vulnerable and it seems to be in charge but she is not because her

life is falling apart and Cate Blanchett manages to do those two

layers, she is kind of controlled and flirty, and kind of seems to be

the queen of her domain, but actually underneath it she is

absolutely distraught. Meanwhile, Rooney Mara plays her role as

someone who has not discovered herself yet, waiting to be brought

out of herself forced up she is extraordinary. I've never liked

Rooney Mara as much as this. She threw herself into it emotionally

the best and I think she is great. Anyone who appreciates in a film

what it is to have perfect colours balancing each other and come

plummeting each other in every frame I think will get a lot out of this,

it is a film to go back to again and again. The layers, I know this

sounds hilarious, but the cutlery, the wallpaper, the drapes, her

skirt, what they eat. Now I only ever want spinach and poached eggs

and a Martini, it sounds odd but watch the film. It is the dynamic,

Cate Blanchett looks at home in the 50s, as an actress, this golden age

of Hollywood, it makes sense for her to be in the 50s. You could imagine

Oscars awards and Cate Blanchett would be alongside those actors from

the 50s. It is like gonzo from the Muppets, there is a line in the

script that may have been taken from the book. She says what a strange

girl you are, flung out from the space. One of the beta full line is

that the screenwriter realised he has to have in the screenplay. It is

very economical, very pared down. Cate Blanchett says everything is

obsessed by text, it is what they say. It is a love story, so,

located. Not just about finding each other and being happy, it has so

many layers. And the chemistry, you don't have a film this good by

having one good performance, not even two, it has to be three or

more. As soon as their eyes cross across the department store you are

aware something is going on. There is not a sexless couple. It is a

real love story with heartbreak and sex and all the points in between.

Next, Black Mass, starring an almost unrecognisable Johnny Depp

as Boston gangster Whitey Bulger. I need to know everything you know

about your former boss and now fugitive James "Whitey" Bulger. In

the beginning Jimmy was a small-town player. He's a very smart,

disciplined man. Black Mass tells the story of two brothers in the

city of Boston in the 1970s and 80s, one is the most notorious criminal

in the city's history, played by Johnny Depp. Look at his face! His

brother is the most powerful politician in the city played by

Benedict Cumberbatch. Joel Edgerton's character is one of the

heads of the FBI who brings Johnny Depp in as an FBI informant. I can

help you, Jimmy command you can help me. He gives him a Licence to Kill.

The idea they are from the same womb, these two political polar

opposites came into being, it is fascinating and Shakespearean. It is

some great drama. God help us. Why has nobody nailed "Whitey" Bulger?

He seems to be involved in every crime and the bureau says he is

clean. What has Bulger done? What has he done? Everything. I want to

see a man who is extremely cold, calculating and violent, who could

be humourless with his mum, tender with his girlfriend. The biggest

challenge is because it is a true story there are so many victims in

the victim's family. It is still very fresh so my aim was not to

trivialise or glamorise the events. It was done in an unflinching

manner. Johnny is probably one of the most

famous people in the world so we had to make him look as much as "Whitey"

Bulger as possible. Johnny has dark brown, almost black eyes and

Whitey's eyes were big and blue and extremely piercing, so piercing that

people would have a difficult time maintaining eye contact with him.

You're welcome. I think when the film is good, and

it is sometimes very good, it lives up to its title, it is essentially a

horror movie and when it is at its best Johnny Depp makes your skin

crawl in a way he has not done before. He's playing a character

somewhere like every psycho in a pub who threatened to blast somebody

over a spilled point, there is something authentically queasy about

him, certain points when you can smell him, the cheap cologne and bad

breath, the sense of rotten in him. In those moments the film works

brilliantly. There are other times where I would not say it goes as far

as glamorising violence, as the director said, but it wants to

introduce you to this exciting young director called Martin Scorsese,

those moments I feel I have seen those films and I don't necessarily

need to see another version of them, no matter how wonderful Johnny

Depp's contact lenses are. I absolutely loved it and didn't think

I would. Often these things are about expectations, I thought it was

going to be so bad. There are some parts that are excessively violent,

but he is terrifying. Family times have you seen somebody when you

think, oh no! Who you never want to cross paths with? I resist the kind

of film this looks like sometimes, the gangland biopic, about a dude

who killed lots of people and has the FHM reader lad appeal which I

don't like but this film fails on that and does not have truck with

it. It has gone more in the horror direction and instead of trying to

tell us what the real "Whitey" Bulger was like, which is not

interesting, it decides he's not really human, at least 50% snake,

he's like this weird creature. Folder mort. He does not grow or

evolve as a biopic would normally have him do. Johnny Depp is still

doing essentially a 1 note performance but it's a brilliant

note all stopped it is not this brilliant new career direction he's

gone in when he's going to show real acting again, he's doing sort of the

great stunt performance, but the thing that keeps the film inflow

beyond him is the fact everyone else around him is good. Except Benedict

Cumberbatch. The Boston accident is not great. He's only in two seems.

It is interesting casting, because Johnny Depp even fits this role. Men

who are made of sausage meat in sweaty dry nylon. Because of the

kind of character he's playing, the one good man in Boston, it makes

sense to have this fine boned English man. I don't think is meant

to be that good, he's trying to be that caught in the middle. Joel

Edgerton is very good. Joel Edgerton is extraordinary. He almost has as

much green time as Johnny Depp and he goes on a journey with his

character, he has to sell himself out he becomes a ridiculous parody a

strutting peacock that the FBI think is a laughing stock. He's very funny

and squirmy and a bit stupid. He plays the character bit dim and all

of these things work. And also what I love is the change is slow. There

is the scene with his wife, where she goes, you are walking

differently. You can see it happen. The female roles in this kind of

film can often be real windowdressing. But both Dakota

Johnson and Julianne Nicholson who plays his wife both put up some

fight, they have really good scenes and even Temple, who is jail bait,

does it well. Peter Sarsgaard, on the film is threatening to come in

to a low zone, you wonder how much cocoa has been done. I just wish

there was less latex and he looks like Mars attacks at times and that

is not what they were going for. Next is The Good Dinosaur,

Pixar's latest. Arlo, a young dinosaur, sets out to

find his lost family with the help of cave boy toddler, Spot.

Family. Yes, that's your family. It's about a young boy becoming a

man, it's a survival story where Arlo is going through these

tribulations but being helped out by this friend, Spot, and achieves

things he never thought possible. In our story we flipped the concept of

the boy and the dog where the boy is the dinosaur and the dog is a little

human boy. Come here, Spot! You are the cutest thing. Spot steals the

movie in some ways. He's this little animal but you do see humanity in

the character. Jack Reacher protected you. Why? -- that

creature. Visually trying to find the boy inside Arlo in terms of how

to do it would be difficult. If you threw them out in the nature we

created you would say you are an animal, eat the leaves and drink the

water but we pushed elements you can empathise with, he's still that kind

of growing kid. Hey, you are a great kid. His knees are not bully and his

eyes are bigger and when he is thrust out there who feels like a

stranger out there wondering if he can survive.

Wow. LAUGHTER

I loved Jurassic World but at the same time we were trying to do

something different. A lot of dinosaur movies, the ending is

always being attacked by a monster or a carnival and we were pushing

for something emotional. -- carnivore. What?

I'll let you guys start. Yes, well, I mean Pixar, two films of the year,

unusual. Inside Out was the A side, clever, conceit, funny. This is

definitely not that. It's something else. It's sort of... Depressing?

I'll go with that. You really hate it. It's like a vegan, pacifist,

hippie love-in. It's not that. Because I'd like to see that. I like

those things about it. The other thing I thought about it was that

you don't get much plot. You don't get plot. No. He's doing the same

thing. So he keeps doing the same thing. If there is a plot, you go he

doesn't like that, then he does it again. It's an odyssey. It's not!

You get an add lessent dinosaur tripping and looking into the sky.

That sounds fantastic. Which film due see. He didn't just feed me

something weird before it. There were bits that you love about it.

Because he's so young and sweet and will attract small people,

five-year-olds, then it's a very sad film. I don't really understand.

He's a dufus. I like a dufus but he's uncredibly unlucky and it's

repetitive. I don't think it's depressing. My ten-year-old son saw

it and found it depressing. It's the amount of peril here. For modern

Pixar, there are super communities who could take over humanity.

There's are hyperrealistic breaths of wind through the feeds. I liked

the fields. Yeahs it's not -- yeah it's not - The baddies aren't scary

enough, but it's just sad. There is peril. It reminds me of Incredible

Journey and kids find that really hard to deal with. I've seen kids

burst into tears and wailing. It's a bit with this. Real kids might find

it, three and four-year-olds attracted by the cute face. They'll

not understand. Film of the week. Carol. Carol of Spies. Carol.

Playing us out tonight is David Lean classic, Dr Zhivago,

Now it's being re-released in cinemas nationwide,

part of the British Film Institute's Love Season.

Thanks for watching. Sorry to the dinosaur. Night-night.

Get in. Come. How many? All of us. Not

enough room. There's got to be room. It's all right I have to bring our

sledge. This train can't wait. There are important people on it. You

start, I'll catch you up. We'll see you.

Hurry! For the sad old earth

must borrow its mirth,