The big awards season screening this week was for James Cameron's sequel
Avatar: Fire and Ash, shown to us in all of its 3D glory. It's certainly an epic experience, with eye-catching action and increasingly realistic motion-capture effects. Although the story felt a bit familiar, as if that matters. Michelle Pfeiffer leads the charge as a bedraggled mum in the Christmas comedy
Oh. What. Fun., which enjoyably riffs on the full range of holiday comedy classics. There were two animated movies:
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants is another frantic and very silly undersea romp, while the Japanese epic
Scarlet uses distinctive imagery in its involving underworld twist on
Hamlet.
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Other awards offerings included Jim Jarmusch's Venice-winning
Father Mother Sister Brother, a lovely family-connections triptych with a superior cast including Cate Blanchett and Adam Driver. Fred Hechinger and Sebiye Behtiyar are excellent as young people who fall for each other in the warm, funny, emotional
Preparation for the Next Life. Jonathan Majors goes very deep indeed as a bodybuilder in the delayed drama
Magazine Dreams, impressively written and directed by Elijah Bymun. There were two documentaries: the chilling
Cover-Up profiles journalist Seymour Hersh in a career exposing government misdeeds, while
Folktales is a warmly involving look at a Norwegian high school that specialises in dog sledding.
Beyond film, I attended the outrageously lavish premiere of Fallout season 2, attended by the cast and crew (see below). And I also managed to fit in three seasonal stage performances: Ebony Scrooge at Sadler's Wells East, the panto Beauty and the Beast at Charing Cross Theatre and The Great Christmas Feast in West Kensington.
Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Jack O' Connell in
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Joel Edgerton in
The Plague, Rosamund Pike in
Hallow Road, Rose Byrne in
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Josh O'Connor in
Rebuilding, plus a live performance of
The Fit Prince at King's Head Theatre, and probably a bit more, all before flying out to see my family in California for the holidays.
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