The week's even starrier offering was Ben Is Back, starring a superb Julia Roberts as a mother who spends 24 hours trying to protect her teen son (the always excellent Lucas Hedges) while he's on a break from rehab over Christmas. The plot is a little corny, but the relationships are beautifully played.
Further afield there was Paolo Sorrentino's Berlusconi fantasia Loro, a 2.5-hour odyssey that's packed with magic even as it wears us out. Iceman is about a Neolithic man on a quest for revenge after his clan is massacred. It's strikingly well-made, although the plot is rather blunt. Bruce!!!! is a comedy that suffers badly because its hero (played by writer-director Eden Marryshow) is an insufferable jerk. And there were three docs: Last Breath is a riveting, skilful mix of real footage and recreations to create a thriller about North Sea divers. Silvana profiles the queer Swedish rap sensation with terrific intimate footage that almost breaks the surface. And everyone was talking about this one...
Leaving Neverland
dir Dan Reedwith Wade Robson, James Safechuck, Joy Robson, Stephanie Safechuck, Laura Primack, Lorraine Jean Cullen, Chantal Robson, Shane Robson
release US 3-4.Mar.19,
UK 6-7.Mar.19
19/US C4 4h00 ***
After premiering at Sundance, this controversial and compulsively watchable documentary arrives in two parts. It's assembled in an unflashy style, with archival film, snapshots and some new drone footage framing interviews with the now 40-ish Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who knew Michael Jackson when they were young boys and now claim that he sexually abused them. The first half is a little unconvincing, as they feel oddly scripted and director Dan Reed pointedly omits key facts, such as that Robson and Safechuck are working together to sue the Jackson estate for millions. So the film's depiction of them coming out in the open separately for benevolent reasons will ring hollow to sceptics. In the second half, the interviews with their mothers, wives and siblings bring things into sharper, more emotive focus, especially as they talk about why they waited so long to speak up. Even after testifying in earlier trials that nothing happened, their psychological situations make sense, which gives the doc a compelling power. And Reed's camera work is skilful, sharply well-edited together to tell the story in a clear-eyed, chronological way that pulls the viewer in. It's what he leaves out that niggles, and not just that Robson and Safechuck are seeking to make a fortune here. There's no mention of the years-long police investigations into Jackson that completely exonerated him. And no one outside the Robson and Safechuck families is on the record, even though there are many who tell different stories. It's a horrible thought that these two men may be making up these allegations, especially as it's so important that these cases are taken seriously. But films this explosive need to be watched with a critical eye, and the story behind the scenes is important.
Coming up this next week, we have Jordan Peele's Us, Anna Paquin in Tell It to the Bees, Jafar Panahi's Three Faces, the Argentine coming-of-age drama A Trip to the Moon, and the documentary Making Montgomery Clift.
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