SYNOPSIS: “Young Woman and the Sea,” a new period sports drama starring Daisy Ridley and now streaming on Disney+, is the true story of the “Queen of the Waves,” American swimming champion Gertrude Ederle. Her story of triumph includes winning a gold medal at the 1924 Olympic Games, and later, becoming the first woman to swim the twenty-one miles across the English Channel.
CAST: Daisy Ridley, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Stephen Graham, Kim Bodnia, Christopher Eccleston, Glenn Fleshler. Directed by Joachim Rønning.
REVIEW: A classic underdog sports movie, “Young Woman and the Sea” is a handsomely mounted and passionately performed biopic. Old fashioned in the best of ways, it leans into its inspiring, against all odds story with crowd-pleasing vigor.
Told in chronological order, there aren’t many surprises in the retelling of Ederle’s story, but the portrayal of resilience and perseverance in the face of the era’s sexism, and the physical demands of the sport, make for good family viewing.
Physically and emotionally, Ridley convinces as Ederle. Her ocean swimming scenes, shot in amid fierce currents and chilly temperatures in the English Channel and the Black Sea, translates the swimmer’s struggle, and the drama of the event, to the screen in a way that shooting against a green screen in a pool simply could not. Her blue lips, the treacherous black water, and whatever lies bneath, become characters in her struggle as the viewer is immersed in the journey.
As Ederle, Ridley is a mix-and-match of determination, kindness and tenderness. It’s a bit hagiographic, but suits the movie’s old school tone.
Dusted lightly with schmaltz, “Young Woman and the Sea” is predictable, but its sheer pluckiness and eagerness to uplift earns it a recommendation.
Early on in “I Am Woman,” the Helen Reddy biopic now on digital and on demand, the Australian singer, played by Tilda Cobham-Hervey, passes a subway advertisement that sets the tone for the test of the movie. A housewife holds a bottle of ketchup and with a look of surprise says, “Even I can open it!” as Reddy makes her way to a meeting with a dismissive record industry twit.
Melbourne-born Reddy’s plainspoken anthems for a generation of women kicked open doors in a sexist industry and while she never says, “Even I can open it,” about a bottle of ketchup or anything else in the film, it’s clear from the start she has no doubt that she can.
Based on Reddy’s memoir “The Woman I Am,” the movie begins in 1966 when the Beatles ruled the charts and record labels were not interested in “girl singers.” Single-mom Reddy and her young daughter land in New York on the mistaken belief that a record deal was awaiting. It wasn’t but Reddy was, well, ready for success. A polished singer and performer, she just needed a break. That came in the form of Jeff Wald (Evan Peters), an ambitious music biz insider who becomes her manager and husband. When he puts down the coke spoon long enough to focus on Reddy’s career, he manages to land her a record contract. The resulting album, 1971’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and it’s number one hit “I Am Woman” established Reddy not only as a creative force but also as a figurehead of the era’s feminist movement.
“I Am Woman” follows the standard 1970s “Behind the Music” biopic formula. From struggling artist to chart topper, with all the sexism, drugs and rock n’ roll—OK, make that easy listening rock—you expect from a showbiz tale writ large. Add to that some on-the-nose soundtrack decisions—”You and Me Against the World” warbles in the background as Reddy and her music journalist pal Lillian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald) are trying to make a dent in the music business and, the even heavier-handed “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady” adorns a scene of marital discord—and you have the makings of corny musical melodrama.
What sets it apart from the pack is a charismatic performance from Cobham-Hervey and some nicely rendered musical numbers.
In a breakout performance Cobham-Hervey captures the spirit of Reddy, a talented everywoman who fought against workplace harassment and discrimination to achieve success. She’s charismatic but brings a certain kind of effortlessness to role, a hard to define quality on display in her first in-studio scene. She’s having a hard time performing to a room of disinterested hard rock producers until Wald suggests she pretend she’s on stage. As the nerves settle Cobham-Hervey brings Reddy to life, allowing the strong, invincible singer to emerge. (Chelsea Cullen provides Reddy’s singing voice.)
Equally effective is the montage that introduces the title song. Intercutting Reddy’s performance with news footage of Equal Rights Amendment rallies and women’s liberation protests, director Unjoo Moon creates a picture perfect portrait of the time, showing us, not telling us why the song was then, and remains, such a powerful statement.
“I Am Woman” is an entertaining, if conventional biography of a woman who was anything but conventional.
Don’t let the word ‘hotel’ in the title of Dev Patel‘s new film trick you into thinking it’s another entry in his lighthearted “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” series. “Hotel Mumbai” is a harrowing retelling of the terrorist attacks on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in November 2008.
The film begins with 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organisation based in Pakistan arriving in Mumbai. They split into small groups and soon reports of armed gunman rampaging through the city hit the news. They shoot up Mumbai’s main rail terminal, a café and other hotspots, guided by an ideologue who has convinced these young jihadists that paradise awaits if they do the job by spreading terror.
Director Anthony Maras builds tension by cutting between the chaos in the streets and the measured, elegance, of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel where Arjun (Patel) and Chef Hemant Oberoi (Anupam Kher) work among the 500 staffers who keep the place running like a fine tuned watch. It’s the kind of place where the bathwater is always exactly 48° and, as the staff says, “the Guest is God.”
Soon a small group of the terrorists invade the “otherworld luxury” of the Taj, indiscriminately slaughtering guests and staff alike. Inside the strong willed Chef and Arjun help the guests survive the siege, which lasted almost three days. With the closest Special Forces army 800 miles away in New Delhi the understaffed and unprepared local police must take action. “If we stay in here and wait,” says one cop (Nagesh Bhonsle) looking at the carnage from the street, “there will be no one left.“
There are many moving parts in “Hotel Mumbai.” We follow the sprawling cast—including Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi as an upscale couple staying at the hotel—in various parts of the hotel as they fight for their lives. Despite some boiler-plate flourishes—cell phones that run out of juice at the worst possible time etc— Maras crafts an edge-of-your-seat thriller that puts you in the middle of the action. With so many characters it can be hard to stay invested in them all but the horror of the situation becomes more visceral with every loud gunshot on the soundtrack.
“Hotel Mumbai” is a nicely executed thriller that looks beyond the terror to focus on the resilience of the human spirit in the face of surreal adversity.
