Critical Week: A new friend

These have been busy days with a variety of events and lots of errands before I travel over the coming weeks. But I caught up with two terrific all-audience movies that have been showing up at festivals and will likely feature at awards time. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is the loveable Aardman duo's first film in 15 years, and it's a pure joy. It's so much fun, in fact, that I can't imagine how it could be any better if it tried - a barrage of terrific verbal and visual gags, pastiche moments and a superb thriller-style plot. And then there's the Latvian animation Flow, which is a bit rough-looking but also utterly mesmerising as it follows the astonishing adventures of a cat as its world is flooded.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Last Dance
All We Imagine As Light
ALL REVIEWS >

And then there was this season's big awards movie, Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, a four-hour epic (including an intermission) about an immigrant architect (Adrien Brody) in mid-20th century America. It's riveting and powerfully pointed. Daniel Craig is fully immersed in an unusual role for Luca Guadagnino's Queer, based on the William Burroughs novel about sex and drugs in Latin America. It's a stunning film, if a little enigmatic. And Isabelle Huppert is at her understated best in Hong Sang-soo's loosely observational drama A Traveler's Needs. I also attended the UK premiere performance of the exhilarating Exit Above at Sadler's Wells.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be visiting friends and family in Southern California, and I'm sure to see some awards screenings before my ballots are due. There's also the question of what I might watch on the plane! I'll be posting about the movies as I see them...

Critical Week: Movie night

I've started off the new year catching up on things I had hoped to see last year, including three acclaimed foreign-language titles that have been in this year's awards conversation. From Spain, Alcarras is a lively, remarkably authentic drama about a family facing a big change. From Pakistan, Joyland is a proper stunner about a young couple straining against a society full of expectations and restrictions. From Brazil, Mars One is a lovely, loose drama about four family members who have their own distinct dreams.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Till • Piggy • Alcarras
Mars One • Women Talking
ALL REVIEWS >

Two films coming out this week are The Enforcer, a skilfully made thriller with an under-developed plot, anchored by a terrific Antonio Banderas as a growly mob heavy. And the mystery thriller Exploited is enjoyably lurid even if it's awkwardly assembled.

I also caught up with Disney's latest animated adventure Strange World, an enjoyably colourful romp that feels a bit simplistic in its themes. A sequel to the guilty-pleasure hit Enchanted, Disenchanted has lots of great songs but a story that feels rushed and, well, all wrong. The British period whodunit See How They Run creates an enjoyably witty vibe but strains to engage the audience. The animated romance Entergalactic looks fantastic, and has some nice underlying themes, but ultimately sticks too close to the genre rules. And then there was The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, a throwback to those vintage TV specials. It's nutty and entertaining, and offers some terrific scenes with favourite characters, but it's never quite as bonkers as we hope it will be.

Movies I'll be watching this coming week include the horror thriller M3gan, Jim Parsons in Spoiler Alert, Nicolas Cage in The Old Way, Gillian Jacobs in The Seven Faces of Jane, and catch-up screenings of Cha Cha Real Smooth, Broker, The Swimmers and others.

Venezia79: Star power

Things are clearly winding down at the 79th Venice Film Festival, with only two more days of premieres at hand. Everything is feeling even quieter today with the news out of Britain about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, so I know I will be returning to a very sombre city. Meanwhile, the festival carries on. I spent a few hours yesterday at the Venice Immersive island, taking in six virtual reality productions (more on those later). And my jury met last night to discuss the 19 films contending for this year's Queer Lion (we announce our winner tonight). Here are some movie highlights...

Blonde
dir-scr Andrew Dominik; with Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody 22/US ****
Andrew Dominik takes a very big swing at the life of Marilyn Monroe, and frankly he'd have been crazy not to do so. It may be reductive to define one of the most iconic stars of all time by her unresolved daddy issues, but this is a complex biopic that takes on several pungent themes head-on. The film is charged with energy and passion, ambitiously visual and anchored by a fiercely layered performance from Ana de Armas. It also has strong things to say about celebrity culture, even as it relentlessly deals in myths.

Call of God
dir-scr Kim Ki-duk; with Abylai Maratov, Zhanel Sergazina 22/Kyr ****
The late Kim Ki-duk only just finished this offbeat romance before he died from covid. It’s an extraordinarily personal riff on how love can be so much like a dream, and occasionally a nightmare. Set in Kyrgyzstan and shot mainly in black and white, the film uses its surreal set-up to keep the audience’s expectations at bay, sending a young couple on a passionate odyssey that seems to encompass years in just a few days. And the film radiates with the idea that love is worth the pain. And that maybe the pain is essential.

Bread and Salt
dir-scr Damian Kocur; with Tymoteusz Bies, Jacek Bies 22/Pol ***
Bracingly shot in observational style, this Polish drama gets up close to its characters even as it neglects the narrative. It's an often harrowing depiction of a small town where young people think it's cool to deal in racism, bigotry and bullying. And the thoughtful central character draws us in, even if his journey remains stubbornly off-camera. Writer-director Damian Kocur has a terrific eye for real-life interaction, so the film has power as a document of a place and time. But stronger storytelling might have made it involving and moving.

Beyond the Wall
dir-scr Vahid Jalilvand; with Navid Mohammadzadeh, Dayana Habibi 22/Irn ***
Unlikely to be screened in its home country, this Iranian drama is a remarkably disturbing depiction of a harshly oppressive police state. But writer-director Vahid Jalilvand doesn't take a straightforward approach, blurring present action with flashbacks and other cutaways to create a more sensory approach to the situation. It's all played at a rather arch volume, including the quieter scenes, where more nuanced performances might have made it easier to identify with the characters. But the film is also bold and chilling.

Full reviews will be linked at Shadows VENICE FILM FESTIVAL page, eventually!

Critical Week: On a night like this

As Britain experiences a heatwave during the final week of Wimbledon and the start of the Euro-2022 women's football championship, it's perhaps a bit unlikely that people will be abandoning the sunshine for cinemas. Although Thor is likely to have some pull, smaller films will suffer. And the weather looks like it will continue like this for a couple of weeks (yay!). I saw two very big movies on the big screen this week. The riotously action-packed The Gray Man pairs the fabulous Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans as duelling, scene-stealing hitmen, while Ana de Armas (above) almost walks off with the whole film. Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson and Taika Waititi are back for Thor: Love and Thunder, Marvel's first slapstick action comedy. It's a lot of fun, even if the formula is as stale as ever.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Brian and Charles • Cop Secret
The Railway Children (1970)
ALL REVIEWS >

Adrien Brody is terrific in the redemption thriller Clean, although the script (which he cowrote) never has something original to say. The offbeat British drama All Is Vanity is very odd indeed, a great idea that struggles to have some impact. Alan Cumming leads the doc-drama hybrid My Old School, a fascinating and remarkably involving account of an epic deception. And two collections of short films explore issues of identity and sexuality in inventive, sometimes superbly provocative ways. Both Boys on Film 22: Love to Love You and Girls Feels: Into the Blue are well worth a look.

Coming up this week, I'll be watching Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing, Juliette Binoche in Both Sides of the Blade, the Jordanian drama The Alleys, the trans activist doc Donna and the shorts collection Girls Feels: Force of Nature.

Critical Week: The right stuff

It's been another odd collection of screenings for London critics. Julianne Moore and Ellen Page (above) give their usual storming performances in Freeheld, a true story about legal equality that feels a bit simplistic even with such strong characters. Chris Pine and Casey Affleck are excellent as quiet heroes in The Finest Hours, the true story of a 1952 ocean rescue that's told on an impressively grand scale. The British comedy Dad's Army brings the iconic 1970s TV series to the big screen with a terrific A-list cast but almost no comical energy. I'll See You in My Dreams is a nice but mopey and inconsequential romantic drama starring Blythe Danner, Sam Elliott and Martin Starr.

Further afield, Adrien Brody stars in Backtrack, a ghostly Aussie thriller that gets increasingly ridiculous as it goes along. Also from Australia, Oddball and the Penguins is the relentlessly charming and surprisingly important story of a big sheepdog that finds a new calling. From Greece, the acclaimed drama Xenia insightfully explores issues of immigration, community and sexuality through the eyes of two lively brothers. Battle Mountain is a properly inspirational doc about Scottish cycling champ Graeme Obree and his attempt to break a world record at age 48. And Peccadillo's latest collection, Boys on Film 14: Worlds Collide, features nine edgy, inventive short films from around the world, many dealing with political issues like class, homophobia and HIV.

Among this coming week's offerings, we have Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool, the Oscar-nominated Mustang, Freida Pinto in Desert Dancer and the Canadian drama Love in the Time of Civil War.

Critical Week: Man candy

This week's big press screening was for Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, the male-stripper drama based on the experiences of Channing Tatum (pictured above with costars Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello and Matthew McConaughey). As if the film's heterosexual emphasis wasn't enough, the UK distributor screened the film to us after showing the England-France Euro2012 first-round match in the cinema, so it smelled like a locker room in there. Alas, comments on the film itself are embargoed for a couple of weeks.

Keeping with the theme here, we also saw heartthrob Robert Pattinson's new film Cosmopolis, a Cannes entry directed by David Cronenberg that's sleek and intriguing but ultimately impenetrable. Cillian Murphy stars in Red Lights, an increasingly strained supernatural debunking thriller costarring Robert DeNiro and Sigourney Weaver. Adrien Brody stars in Detachment, a ranty drama from Tony Kaye about the education system. And from Australia, we had the corny slapstick farce A Few Best Men with rising-star hottie Xavier Samuel.

And to appeal to our minds, we saw two potent docs: Searching for Sugar Man is a fascinating story of a forgotten Detroit musician whose failed recording career wasn't quite as disastrous as he thought, since he was bigger than Elvis and the Stones in South Africa. And Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry vividly chronicles the life and work of the charismatic, outspoken Chinese artist who is notoriously in trouble with his own government.
 

This coming week, London critics are watching Keira Knightley and Steve Carell in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Jean Dujardin and Michel Hazanavicius' next collaboration The Players, the Jo Nesbo thriller Jackpot, the Cannes-contending anthology 7 Days in Havana and the acclaimed Mormo-youth drama Electrick Children.

Finally, I'm heading to Scotland on Monday for the 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival (18 June-1 July), so the blog will reflect what I'm watching there on a daily basis over the next couple of weeks.

Critical Week: Wanted dead or alive

Two big press screenings for UK critics this week. First was Rock of Ages, the 80s power-ballad musical starring Tom Cruise (above, yes really), Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand. Our comments are embargoed until next weekend. And then there was Ridley Scott's eagerly anticipated Prometheus, which was only shown to the press the day before it opened in UK cinemas. The studio needn't have worried: everyone is loving the film, which isn't quite the Alien prequel everyone expected but is hugely entertaining and visually stunning, especially in Imax 3D.

The only two of my online screeners I managed to get to over the rainy long weekend were Detachment, Tony Kaye's overly bleak exploration of the education system starring Adrien Brody, and Neon Flesh, a Spanish black comedy thriller that looks amazing but never makes much sense out of its fragmented plot.

Otherwise I've been keeping up with TV shows, including the final episodes in this series of Mad Men, which just keeps getting more insanely intense episode by brilliant episode. Will anyone be standing at the end? Meanwhile, Game of Thrones is struggling to bring all those plot strands to some sort of conclusion - I never feel like I get enough of any of them. Comedy-wise I'm loving the first series of Veep, enjoying the second series of Episodes and still making my mind up about the self-indulgent but funny Girls.

This coming week London critics twill be watching, among other things, Channing Tatum in Stephen Soderbergh's stripper comedy-drama Magic Mike, Robert Pattinson in David Cronenberg's urban drama Cosmopolis, Cillian Murphy and Robert DeNiro in the Spanish drama Red Lights, Olivia Newton-John in the Aussie comedy A Few Best Men, and the documentaries Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and The Imposter.