Boiling Point (2022) review

 This 2021 British release is six years too young to appear on IMDB's 2015 edition of the top 1000 films of all time.

Andy (Stephen Graham) is a head chef of a top London restaurant during one busy service. We get a day in the life both he and his team including his sous-chef Carly (Vinette Robinson) and the Maitre-D Beth (Alice Feetham.)

Boiling Point is a one-take film. There aren't any cuts anywhere, as such it has a brilliant energy that keeps the film so engrossing to watch. Day-in-the-life films could have the tendency to be boring or repetitive but that was far from the case here. The action always remained urgent and immediate.

In many ways, it stayed true to what it must be like to work in a kitchen. Thankfully, I never have done, but I have heard the stories. I know that it is a stressful, fast-paced environment. That is especially true of Boiling Point where personalities clash and some big mistakes are made.

Stephen Graham was excellent as the over-stressed head-chef juggling a nasty divorce and his intense job. Meanwhile, he is hiding a dark secret. He is a brilliant actor who is so versatile. This is the same man who plays a gangster in Boardwalk Empire, a soldier in Band of Brothers, a white nationalist in this is England and a prison office in Time.

Yet he can't take all the credit, as there were no weak links in the cast. Boiling Point succeeded b making all its characters interesting. Even though some have more screentime than others, I found myself caring about all of Andy's kitchen brigade from the porters to the pastry chefs.

And we also see the struggles of the front-of-house staff as waitresses Robyn (Aine Rose Daly) and Andrea (Lauryn Ajufo.) have to deal with the rudest (and in Andrea's case) racist customers. For many service staff who deals with these Karens on a daily basis, I'm sure these scenes hit far too close to home. And these customers were Karens to the extreme from telling Andrea how to pour wine and demanding that their roast lamb be cooked well done when it is traditionally served rare.

Meanwhile, there are other customers - or, rather, influencers with ten thousand followers who think they're too good for the restaurant's elegant menu, instead asking for steak and chips. Maitre'D Beth is only too happy to oblige which only puts more stresses on the kitchen. There's so much going on that there is never a dull moment. It's all a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

And that comes in Carly's evisceration of Beth. Both actresses shone especially Alice Feetham who is forced to keep herself from crying despite having her arse handed to her. It's a brilliant little scene.

And that is a perfect way to summarise Boiling Point. Think of it as a ten-course tasting menu where we have a collection of little dishes that wouldn't be much on their own, but come together to create a delicious meal.

Help review

 Help is too modern to be on the top 1000 films of all time, but I'm reviewing it as it touched me so profoundly.

Sarah (Jodie Comer) is a directionless, young woman just starting work in the Bright Sky care home in Liverpool. There she quickly befriends Tony (Stephen Graham) who has early-onset dementia. But their world comes crashing down when the Covid-19 pandemic hits.

I've spent the last six years working in care homes. I worked in a care home all throughout the Covid era, so this film hit close to home for me. A little uncomfortably close. It was a raw, unflinching and visceral look at how the adult care sector was completely forgotten. No, not forgotten. Abandoned. Nobody cared about us. But Help honed in perfectly on what makes a care home a care home. There are the relationships between the staff and the residents, as well as the residents and their families. We see the residents enjoying poetry, meeting sheep and having a Christmas party. The authenticity was brilliant. But it also focussed on the stress that carers are under. It really is a thankless job.

Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham were terrific as the two leads. When Sarah begins, she is lost and directionless, but she quickly finds herself. She is a hard worker and a good carer. Comer was brilliant. She bought the role to life. I know many hard-working carers just like Sarah. Graham was also fantastic, as can only be expected from an actor of his calibre. Like Sarah he is lost. Some days he knows who he is and others he doesn't. But this touches upon a very important, but little-known aspect of dementia. People have a variable capacity. Some days they can be lucid and others not so much. If you'll permit me to be a little un-pc, they're not crazy loons all the time.

Graham played the role with a great subtlety. Tony is a quiet, but powerful character. Most importantly, he is human and never reduced to a gross caricature. Tony and Sarah's relationship was at the heart of this film. And this all culminates in a breath-taking 26-minute 1-take shot where Sarah is working a hellish night shift. With all her colleagues sick with Covid, she is forced to work a double and take care of all her residents by herself. One resident becomes particularly sick, and when it becomes clear, nobody is coming to help, Sarah enlists Tony to help her. It was heart-in-the-mouth action that was stunningly shot and acted. Comer and Graham's performances had literal tears running down my cheeks. That is saying something.

I may argue that the film peaked here. Perhaps this is where it should have ended, as the second half felt like a strange addendum that had been lazily tacked on. Tony is established as a flight risk, constantly trying to return home to his long-dead mother. When he tries escaping one too many times, the manager drugs him up to his eyeballs. Sarah protests this blatant abuse, but she is promptly fired. She goes rogue and breaks Tony free. They intend to self-quarantine at the seaside, before trying to send Tony to a different facility.

This is all well and good, but it felt incredibly disjointed. It didn't seem to match the first half at all, and it also lacked a lot of the same tension and immediacy. Writer Jack Thorne originally wanted to solely focus on the daily life of a care home, before he was convinced to write about Covid-19. I wonder if this was a latent idea that he tried and failed to shoe-horn into an otherwise faultless film.

Nonetheless, Help is a near perfect film. It was a damning indictment of how the adult social care sector was forsaken during the pandemic. Coming out in 2021, it is too new to make it onto the top 1000 list, but it has earned its place on any future lists.