Critical Week: Taking care of business

It's been another eclectic week for press screenings, cut short here in Britain by a four-day weekend to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee: 70 years on the throne. But the movies just keep coming. The biggest screening was for Elvis, introduced in person by Baz Luhrmann, Tom Hanks, Austin Butler and various other actors and producers. I absolutely loved the film, as Luhrmann uses his hyper-lush approach to dig for deeper meaning in Elvis Presley's life story.

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Also surprisingly deep, the romantic comedy Fire Island gives Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice a proper queer spin, and is notable for being unapologetic, hilarious and swoon-worthy. The animated feature The Bob's Burgers Movie is deadpan comical fun even for those unfamiliar with the TV show. And a bit further afield, the Indian drama Major recounts the true story of a hero of the 2008 Mumbai attack with sudsy melodrama and rah-rah patriotism, while the Rwandan musical fantasy Neptune Frost is so bracingly original that it gets deep under the skin even if its story is dreamy and enigmatic. And the shorts collection The Male Gaze: Fleeting Glances features seven sharply provocative films exploring awkward connections.

Everything gets much busier next week with Sundance Film Festival: London - I'm planning to see nine films there, and will cover them here as usual. The movies include Emma Thompson in I Love You, Leo Grande; Sterling K Brown in Honk For Jesus, Save Your Soul; Rebecca Hall in Resurrection; the British drama Brian and Charles; Finnish horror Hatching; volcanic documentary Fire of Love; and social justice doc Free Sol Choo Lee.

Critical Week: Brotherly love

It's been a meagre week, screening-wise, mainly because I've already seen virtually everything that's being shown to the press at the moment (thanks to autumn film festivals and awards-season screenings and screeners). I did manage to catch up with Owen Wilson and Ed Helms in Father Figures, which wasn't screened to the press, and now I know why. It's a bizarre mix of gross-out comedy and brotherly bromance sentimentality. Another set of fraternal twins feature in The Lodgers, an atmospheric Irish freak-out starring Charlotte Vega and Bill Milner as siblings keeping watch over their collapsing family manor by day, then hiding from marauding nastiness at night. It turns genuinely creepy when two interlopers upset the balance. There was also the sensitive Brazilian drama About Us, which has a ring of autobiography in its introspective exploration of a past, pivotal relationship between a filmmaker and an architect. And I watched this documentary to take part in a rather strong TV panel discussion...

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Saving Capitalism
dir Jacob Kornbluth; with Robert Reich 17/US ***.
One of those blood-boiling documentaries that leaves the audience feeling helpless, this film skilfully holds the attention with its disarmingly gentle tone and likeable central figure. Robert Reich was Labor Secretary under Clinton, and is now travelling around America to understand how average people feel about being squeezed by rising inflation and falling wages. He explains that this is happening because corporations are draining the system, shifting money from workers to top-tier executives while at the same time siphoning off tens of billions from the government in tax breaks and incentives, plus special laws and loopholes as the result of lobbying. Reich argues that this is just another form of regulation, promoting capitalist business with socialist hand-outs. It's hard to fault his logic, because he articulately states the case and backs it up with both clear facts and historical precedent. And filmmaker Kornbluth assembles this in a riveting, entertaining way. Most telling is that this same situation developed in the 1890s and was corrected with extensive limits on corporate power. But Reich admits this will only happen if voters stop putting populists in office and let government do its job to protect people from companies that are literally stealing money then blaming the government for the problem. And without limits on campaign donations, it's only going to get worse. No wonder so few people trust politicians. And no wonder the usual urgent plea to vote and protest feels like a drop in the bucket.

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SHADOWS ON THE STAGE
Strictly Ballroom: The Musical
Based on the 1992 sleeper hit movie, which launched Baz Luhrmann's career, this Australian stage musical is heading for the West End in March. At its launch event this week at the Cafe de Paris, we were treated to a few musical numbers by cast member Will Young, a fiery flamenco performance from veteran actor-dancer Fernando Mira, and lively speeches from director-choreographer Drew McOnie and Oscar-winning designer Catherine Martin. There was also more dancing from the show's stars Jonny Labey and Zizi Strallen and the company. It was a colourful morning, properly whetting the appetite for a show based on a film that lingers in the memory. I don't think I've watched it all the way through since it was in cinemas 25 years ago, so I'm looking forward to seeing this on-stage, with its mixture of deranged Aussie humour and pointed social commentary that feels even more timely today. And of course because it launched a global sequin-bedazzled ballroom craze that's stronger now than ever.
Previews begin at the Piccadilly Theatre on 29th March, more info is HERE.

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Screenings of new movies are still slow, but I have a few things in the diary over the next week, including Toni Collette in Madame, Taraji P Henson in Proud Mary, the Justin Chon drama Gook and the programme launch event for the British Film Institute's Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, which takes place 21 March to 1st April.

Critical Week: Follow your nose

In the New Year so far, there have been no actual press screenings, so my movies have been on the small screen. This includes a couple that were made for TV. Benedict Cumberbatch was back for Sherlock: The Six Thatchers, an enjoyable mystery that continued this sporadic series' drift into insufferably smug tricksiness. This includes Sherlock's obsession with Twitter, swiftly abandoned when the plot needs to move. Let's hope upcoming episodes are more focussed on solid storytelling and character development. I also finally caught up with the pilot for The Get Down, directed by Baz Luhrmann. It's a hugely engaging movie set amid the burgeoning rap scene in 1977 New York. There's plenty of whizzy style, as expected, but also a clever depth of character that developed nicely through the following five episodes. I also caught the financial thriller The Crash, which has a starry ensemble cast good enough to make the film watchable despite a startlingly dull script.

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My Scientology Movie
dir John Dower; with Louis Theroux, Marty Rathbun, Marc Headley, Andrew Perez, Rob Alter 16/UK ***.
British journalist Louis Theroux seems to fall into the Twilight Zone as he tries to make a balanced and open-minded, sympathetic documentary about Scientology. Despite never setting out to be combative, he keeps running into bizarre roadblocks, inexplicable reactions and aggressive resistance. Even the ex-members he talks to seem to be less than forthcoming. Some elements of this film don't work very well (such as all of the repetitive driving around or hiring actors to play prominent church members like Tom Cruise), but the film paints an intriguing portrait of an organisation that doesn't want any scrutiny at all - friendly or otherwise. And while Theroux goes out of his way to find the positive aspects of their beliefs and practices, Scientology's rather comically intimidating, incessant meddling ultimately makes it impossible for the audience to remain objective. Which of course ends up being the point.

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Before the Flood
dir Fisher Stevens; scr Mark Monroe; with Leonardo DiCaprio, Barack Obama, Ban Ki-Moon, Pope Francis, Elon Musk, Alejandro Inarritu 16/US ****
This documentary may be rather pushy, but then it's about what should be the most important issue facing humanity at the moment: climate change. The film follows DiCaprio as he travels around the world for two years as a United Nations messenger of peace, asking questions, talking with leaders and experts, exploring the situation from devastated boreal forests to melting ice caps to burnt-out jungles to the flooded streets of Miami. Scientists have almost never so wholeheartedly agreed on any issue, including what needs to be done to slow the changes and avert catastrophe. And yet idiots (most of whom are paid off by oil company lobbyists) continue to deny that this is taking place, unforgivably jeopardising future generations. This isn't about ignorance, it's about evil. And there's plenty we can do if we can muster up the will. This clear-eyed, beautifully assembled documentary is a bit gimmicky, but it carefully highlights the issue for anyone who wants to know the truth.

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Screenings start up again on Monday, and I have the James McAvoy thriller Split in the diary. There's also Ben Affleck's mobster drama Live by Night, the 60s-style thriller The Love Witch and a German drama called Jonathan.

Critical Week: And I feel fine

By far the most enjoyable press screening of the past week was the apocalyptic comedy This Is the End (with James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride, above). Reviews are embargoed for a couple of weeks so I can't say any more. We also had screenings of Baz Luhrmann's lavishly entertaining version of The Great Gatsby, which sharply captures the hollowness under the hedonistic excess. Then there was the underwritten British spy thriller The Numbers Station starring John Cusack, and Marlon Wayans' ghost-movie spoof A Haunted House, which is better than it looks but still a missed opportunity.

Further off the beaten path we had the fragmented British romance/drama/romp Spike Island, a choppy story about teen Stone Roses fans in 1990; the topical and deeply involving low-budget German drama The Visitor; and a 50th anniversary restoration of John Schlesinger's timeless British comedy Billy Liar, starring the fabulous Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie. It's simply wonderful - get your hands on a copy.

Just before it opens, the press will finally get to see the end of the trilogy with The Hangover Part III. I also have screenings of Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, the thriller Black Rock, Studio Gibli's From Up on Poppy Hill, the Canadian comedy The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mum and the French drama Atomic Age. And it's another long weekend here, so maybe I can carry on catching up with my stack of DVD screeners.