#peter cattaneo

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[moorheadthanyoucanhandle]

NATURAL HORN KILLERS

Now playing in the multiplexes:

Death of a Unicorn--Paul Rudd plays Elliot, a lawyer, who is enroute to the home of his megarich employers, where he's on the verge of a massive promotion. With him is his sullen daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega), perfectly well aware that she's being used as a prop to show what a good family man Elliot is, to help him clinch the deal. They're both still bereaved over the recent death of his wife.

Driving up a mountain road to the remote home, Elliot hits and injures what appears for all the world to be a baby unicorn. Just as the creature is establishing a psychic bond with Ridley when she touches its horn, Elliot bashes it in the skull, meaning to put it out of its misery, and also to get the hell to the meeting for which he's already late.

They carry the body to the palatial home in the back of their rental SUV, but if you guess that their encounter with single-horned magical equines isn't over, you'd be right. The movie takes off from its literal-minded opening into a satire of the wealthy, their bottomless capacity to self-justify, and the similar capacity for toadies like Elliot or the rich family's manservant Griff (the excellent Anthony Carrigan)--to justify enabling them. The employers, you see, are in the pharmaceutical biz, and they--Dad Richard E. Grant, Mom Tea Leoni and cloddish son Will Poulter--soon realize that the creature's horn is a virtual panacea offering a cure for cancer, among other miraculous properties.

Written and directed by Alex Scharfman, Death of a Unicorn is strikingly funny and exciting. It also carries a tinge of sourness, but this is true of most satires. Rudd's obsequious, cowardly character is deeply unlikable for much of the film's length, but this is offset because, of course, Rudd himself is one of the most naturally likable actors on the planet.

In the same way, Scharfman offsets the (justified) bitterness of the satire with monster-movie elements--even some gore--and a dash of New Age mysticism. And he plays fair by the rules of these genres. It's also nice to see unicorns rescued from My Little Pony-style cutesy insipidity, and depicted as badass.

The Penguin Lessons--From horned horses to flightless birds: here's the second movie in less than a year set in South America and based, however loosely, on the real-life friendship between a foundling penguin and a bereaved aging man. Last summer we got My Penguin Friend, with Jean Reno. Despite Reno's undeniable star presence, some gorgeous scenery and the endearing title character, this new effort is a big improvement.

Steve Coogan plays Tom Michell, a cynical, lazy, emotionally shut-down English professor at a private school for upscale Argentine boys in Buenos Aires in 1976. On a weekend in Uruguay, he's walking on the beach with a beautiful woman he's met dancing, and they come upon an oil-slicked Magellanic penguin. 

Mostly to impress the woman, Michell takes the poor creature back to his hotel and they clean him up. Things don't work out with the woman, but Michell finds himself stuck with the penguin, smuggling him back into the school and trying to keep him a secret from the strict Headmaster (Jonathan Pryce). Eventually the bird, dubbed "Juan Salvador Gaviota"--the Spanish name of Jonathan Livingston Seagull--becomes a classroom teaching aid and a beloved mascot.

Juan Salvador also triggers a spiritual reawakening in Michell, who connects through him with the family of a cleaning lady at the school. The Junta has just taken over, and people are being "disappeared" off the street in broad daylight; Michell finds himself unable to remain apolitical.

Despite a couple of Monty Python references early on--the Pythons had a long and noble history with penguins--this Brit film isn't a broad comedy. At the beginning we're told that "This story is inspired by real events," whatever that may mean; the script by Jeff Pope is based on a memoir by the real-life Michell. Directed by Peter Cattaneo of The Full Monty--one of the very best poignant Brit comedies--The Penguin Lessons has laughs, but it's also character-driven and melancholy; in the long run it could fairly be called a tearjerker.

It's hard to imagine the movie working as well as it does with anyone but Coogan in the lead. As in the terrific Philomena (2013), he plays an elaborately ironic, acerbic poseur whose reserve is gradually and reluctantly broken down by a guileless fellow being; the penguin serves almost as well as Judi Dench in this role. But Coogan never gets sappy. He lets the marvelous bird melt us, then he dries the movie out again.

[cappedinamber]

The Full Monty (1997)

Directed by Peter Cattaneo

Cinematography by John de Borman

[milliondollarbaby87]

The Penguin Lessons (2024) Review

In 1976 Englishman Tom Michell is hired to work as a teacher in a very divided Argentina, when everything breaks out he ends up travelling with the school St George’s College closed and rescues a penguin from the beach. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Continue reading The Penguin Lessons (2024) Review

[bob-the-movie-man-film-reviews]

One Mann's Movies Film Review of "The Penguin Lessons". Pleasant and comical but rather light-weight movie fare. 3/5.

[kubelictitles]

¡Que suene la música! (Peter Cattaneo. 2019)

Military wives

[hauntingsoundtracks]

The Full Monty, directed by Peter Cattaneo

Rock 'n' Roll (Part 2), Gary Glitter

[thepeoplesmovies]

Watch The Penguin Lessons First Trailer Starring Steve Coogan

Lionsgate Films have released the official UK Trailer for dramedy The Penguin Lessons starring Steve Coogan and a penguin! Set for a release for Easter 2025 directed by Military Wives filmmaker Peter Cattaneo. The Penguin Lessons is based on a true story and based on the the memoirs written by Tom Michell of the same name. We head back to the 1970’s Argentina and British school teacher Tom…

[danbusler]

Susan Cattaneo at The Extended Play Sessions

A night of epic sings by Susan Cattaneo at The Fallout Shelter

Susan Cattaneo and her band at The Extended Play Sessions – Fallout Shelter in Norwood, MA 0n July 8, 2023.The group features Susan Cattaneo, Peter Moore, Andy Santospago, Joe McMahon, and Chris Anzalone.This was a night of epic songs from this group of top musicians who just delighted the Fallout Shelter.

[featherxquill]

Documenting the epic enemies to lovers rivals to friends journey of Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan in Military Wives (dir. Peter Cattaneo, 2019)

[proto-language]

The Full Monty (1997, dir. Peter Cattaneo)

"Well, give us a chance. I bet even Madonna has difficulty getting her shoes and socks off."

[hayaomiyazaki]

some new additions to my google drive recently ◠ ◡ ◠

lanscape in the mist (1988) dir. theo angelopoulos

the full monty (1997) dir. peter cattaneo

gormenghast (2000), complete series

the romance of astrea and celadon (2007) dir. éric rohmer

the personal history of david copperfield (2019) dir. armando iannucci

belle (2021) dir. mamoru hosoda

[popentertainment-moviereviews]

THE PENGUIN LESSONS (2024)

Starring Steve Coogan, Björn Gustafsson, David Herrero, Jonathan Pryce, Julián Galli Guillén, Aimar Miranda, Nicanor Fernandez, Hugo Fuertes, Joaquín Lopez, Miguel Alejandro Serrano, Ramiro Blas, Florencia Nocetti, Micaela Breque, Romina Cocca, Alfonsina Carrocio, Tomás Pozzi, Vivian El Jaber, Juan M. Barreiro and Gera Maleh.

Screenplay by Jeff Pope.

Directed by Peter Cattaneo.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 110 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Although it is made up of a few disparate – and seemingly incompatible – movie storylines, The Penguin Lessons is a sweetly charming movie that holds together well as a whole. The film has the inspirational teacher vibe of The Dead Poets Society, mixed in with cute penguin antics like Happy Feet, as well as the tragic dealings with a South American dictatorship like I’m Not Here or Kiss of the Spider Woman.

And it’s based on a true story, which makes the differing plot strands both more believable and more unlikely, all at the same time.

Steve Coogan – at his most sardonic – as British ex-Pat poetry teacher Tom Michell, who takes a gig in a Argentinean soon after the takeover of an oppressive military takeover of the country in 1976. Suffering from culture shock, an inability to reach his students, personal depression and lack of motivation, his life is sort of spinning out of control.

Everything changes when he is on the beach and finds a stranded penguin and saves it. To be perfectly honest, Michell only saves the bird to impress a woman he had met. (It doesn’t work.) However, even if he couldn’t connect with the lady, he starts a surprising connection with the penguin. The animal bonds with him, and between its unwillingness to let Michell leave and draconian local ordinances, he is forced to bring the penguin Juan Salvador (he is named after Juan Salvador Gaviota, the Spanish translation of the then-popular novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull) back to the school with him and try to hide him in his quarters.

Of course he is quickly found out – first by two cleaning ladies at the school, then by his students, and finally by the schoolteachers and headmasters. When the younger of the two maids, who have become quite fond of the penguin, is taken hostage by the government one afternoon – Michell is nearby and doesn’t help – his political consciousness is awakened. He tries to help find the girl, putting his life on the line.

He is also bemused to find the students are tickled by the penguin, and with Juan Salvador in the class they are more open to listening and learning. In the meantime, through his odd (but strangely adorable) pet, Michell learns to care for people and animals himself.

It makes for a surprisingly affecting feel-good film – if it is possible to have a feel-good film which closes with a chyron discussing 30,000 political prisoners who disappeared and were never seen again.

Still, The Penguin Lessons is sweet and funny and works better than it had any right to.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 28, 2025.

[captain-kaou]

Favorite First watch of October (2024):

Evil Dead (2013)

Fede Álvarez

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Drew Goddard

Strange Days (1995)

Kathryn Bigelow

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Wes Anderson

Gladiator (2000)

Ridley Scott

Smile 2 (2024)

Parker Finn

The Full Monty (1997)

Peter Cattaneo

Freaks (1932)

Tod Browning

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Garth Jennings

···

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)

Peter Lord

[byneddiedingo]

Ben Schnetzer in Pride (Matthew Warchus, 2014)

Cast: Ben Schnetzer, Joseph Gilgun, George MacKay, Faye Marsay, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, Russell Tovey. Screenplay: Stephen Beresford. Cinematography: Tat Radcliffe. Production design: Simon Bowles. Film editing: Melanie Oliver. Music: Christopher Nightingale. 

The success of The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997), a movie about unemployed steelworkers who become male strippers, seems to have inspired a new genre of feel-good movies about the struggles of the British working class. And Margaret Thatcher's union-breaking efforts during the 1984 coal-miners' strike has become the nexus for a series of films in the same spirit. The year before The Full Monty, there was Brassed Off (Mark Herman, 1996), about how the brass band staffed by unemployed coal miners helped raise spirits after their pit was closed. There was Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry, 2000), about a striking miner's son who wants to become a ballet dancer. Like The Full Monty, it became a hit stage musical. Unfortunately, once you have a string of movies like these, you also have a formula to follow, which Stephen Beresford's screenplay for Pride, in which a group of gays and lesbians in London decide to raise funds to support striking Welsh miners, does almost to the letter. It's based on a true story, and the results are amusing and heart-warming, but a feeling of déjà vu works to prevent your feeling that you've seen anything fresh and surprising. What it has going for it is a beautifully committed cast, with some familiar old pros -- Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Andrew Scott, and Dominic West -- and a few fine newcomers, particularly Ben Schnetzer, an American actor who launched his career in Britain. (An interesting reversal, considering the number of Brits, including West in The Wire and The Affair, along with Andrew Lincoln in The Walking Dead, Matthew Rhys in The Americans, and Hugh Dancy in Hannibal, who have found their careers flourishing in American television.) The film capitalizes on anti-Thatcher sentiments while downplaying the contemporaneous arrival of the AIDS crisis. There is a scene in which the group's leader, Mark Ashton (Schnetzer), encounters a former lover (a cameo by Russell Tovey) who is obviously ill, and a revelation that Jonathan Blake (West) was diagnosed with the disease several years earlier, but these are incidental to the main plot. The movie manages to avoid spoiling the feel-good mood by revealing only in the credits sequence that Ashton died at the age of 26 in 1987; Blake, however, is still alive.

[fictionfromafar]

The Murder Of Anton Livius by Hansjörg Schneider

The Murder Of Anton Livius 

By Hansjörg Schneider

Translated by Astrid Freuler

Bitter Lemon Press

Publication Date: 15 June 2023

It is far from a welcome start to the new year for Peter Hunkeler, Inspector of Basel City criminal investigations department. He is woken early in the morning and called to a gruesome crime scene. An elderly local man known as Anton Livius has been found shot and hung up in a garden allotment on the edge of the border city of Basel. While Livius lived in the city, the allotment is located on French territory adding an additional complication to Hunkeler is not allowed to investigate there. This means he has to form an uneasy cooperation with an Alsatian Inspector Bardet who appears keen to find a quick resolution to the murder case.

This is third instalment of the Inspector Peter Hunkeler series, and like the earlier novels, it immerses the reader in the complexities of the local cross-border community. Featuring a different translator, Astrid Freuler certainly does not alter the flow of the story which features some elements of humour, not least in Hunkeler's interactions with collegues on both sides of the border. Dogged and determined to get at the truth, Hunkeler tries to find out as much as he can about the victim, about whom little of his life is known. Over 80 and originally from Germany, what brought Anton Livius to Basel and who had reason to kill him? 

Focussed largely on dialogue, Hunkeler begins to build a picture of the man's personal life. While the neighbouring allotment holders are reluctant to reveal it, the detective discovers that the victim was smuggling meat across the border from Alsace into Switzerland. The one who found the body, Ettore Cattaneo, did not participate in this deal as he held a long term grudge against Livius which is of particular interest to the French police. 

Hunkeler however wishes to leave no stone unturned and is convinced that the roots of the story run far deeper. Gradually he learns more about the history of Alsace which has been incorporated into the Greater German Reich in 1940, In the years before its return to French control after the second world war, well over one hundred thousand young men from Alsace (and Lorraine) had been conscripted into the German armies against their will. The clues that Hunkeler encounters take him into a discovery of some almost forgotten secrets from this dark period. 

The Murder Of Anton Livius can be enjoyed as an introduction to Schneider's work and would appeal to those readers who like a story where clues emerge gradually as dead ends are steadily ruled out. The stronger historical element to this story provides a contrast to the previously published novels by Schneider, The Basel Killings and Silver Pebbles which had greater focus on wider geopolitical issues. While much of the book features conversations between Hunkeler, his follow police officers, French counterparties and those he encounters during the investigation, it is the deductions and follow up work obtained from these that I enjoyed most and would hope to see expanded in subsequent stories.

Many thanks to Bitter Lemon Press for an advance copy of The Murder Of Anton Livius and to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inclusion on the blog tour. Look out for other reviews of this book on the blog tour as shown below: 

Inspector Hunkeler is summoned back to Basel from his New Year holiday to unravel a gruesome killing in an allotment garden on the city’s outskirts. An old man has been shot in the head and found in his garden shed hanging from a butcher’s hook. Hunkeler must deal not only with the quarrelsome tenants of the garden but with the challenges of investigating a murder that has taken place outside his jurisdiction, across the French border in Alsace.  The clues lead to the Emmental in Berne, and then events from the last weeks of the Second World War in Alsace come to light, the wounds of which have never healed in the region.

Hansjörg Schneider lives in Basel and began his professional career as a journalist and essayist. He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed plays and of the bestselling Hunkeler crime series, now with ten titles published. 

Astrid Freuler lives in Lidney, Gloucestershire. She is a young translator from German and has published translations of non-fiction and fiction, including the crime thriller A Shadow Falls by Andreas Pflüger.