Thursday 6 January 2022

Critical Week: Killer heels

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Amid growing covid-related issues in the UK, London-based critics have had our first press screening of 2022: a masked-up full house enjoying pre-film cocktails, popcorn and photo ops before watching the globe-hopping action movie The 355 on a huge Leicester Square screen. The movie has its moments, thanks to the far above-average cast (above are Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o and Diane Kruger), although the lazy script and choppy-shaky action scenes let it down rather badly.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
A Hero • Writing With Fire
Licorice Pizza • Ailey
Munich: The Edge of War 
ALL REVIEWS >
Other films seen this week were an eclectic bunch. Minyan is a thoughtful, insightful drama set in 1980s Brooklyn as a teen struggles with the tension between his tight Russian-Jewish family and his newfound homosexuality. From Kosovo, Hive is a superbly understated true story of a woman taking on her sexist society. Mads Mikkelsen is terrific as a burly soldier in Riders of Justice, an unusually smart and engaging Danish variation on the Taken vengeance formula. Quentin Dupieux is back with another endearingly bonkers adventure, Mandibles, about two chuckleheads who find a gigantic housefly. And from Spain, More the Merrier is a multi-strand comedy set around a club for swingers. Sometimes very sexy, the film struggles to escape from the usual prudish attitudes.

This coming week I'll finally catching up with Ben Affleck in The Tender Bar, Shawn Ashmore in Free Fall, the Swiss drama La Mif, and the documentary Taming the Garden.


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