Critical Week: And they called it puppy love

It's been another busy week in awards season, with screenings every night and lots of films to watch at home on links during the day. I also somehow have to find time to write about them all. It was great to catch up with festival breakout hit Pillion, Harry Lighton's offbeat romance starring Harry Melling (above) and Alexander Skarsgard. It's notorious for its dominant-submissive sexuality, but is actually a rather sweet and moving drama. By far the biggest movie was the European premiere of Wicked: For Good and I got to meet Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, along with director Jon Chu, at a reception before the screening. Unsurprisingly, the film is spectacular, much darker and more emotional than the first part. I also saw two gorgeous animated adventures: In Your Dreams is a fabulously colourful trip into the imagination, and Arco skilfully uses hand-drawn style anime to tell a pointed story from the future.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
In Your Dreams
Arco • Jay Kelly
Night of the Juggler
ALL REVIEWS >

At another starry awards screening, Kate Winslet presented her directing debut Goodbye June, alongside costars Toni Collette, Timothy Spall, Andrea Riseborough and Johnny Flynn, plus gifted young screenwriter Joe Anders (who happens to be Winslet's son). It's a funny and moving ensemble film. The Broadway cast of Merrily We Roll Along, including Tony winners Daniel Dadciffe and Jonathan Groff, features in a superbly filmed stage performance of Stephen Sondheim's powerful exploration of art and friendship. 

A bit further afield, Tom Blyth stars in the perhaps too-snappy investment banking comedy Bull Run. Jorma Tommila is back for the entertaining and outrageously grisly Finnish action sequel Sisu: Road to Revenge. The Danish drama Sauna is a darkly thoughtful romance. Hong Kong drama Valley of the Shadow of Death, explores grief and redemption in an involving faith-based story. From Argentina, 300 Letters deconstructs a romance in ways that are sexy, funny and moving. And I finally caught up with the breakout animated hit KPop Demon Hunters, which is a lot of bright-hued fun, packed with great music. On top of all of that, I attended the seriously epic UK premiere of the first episode of Stranger Things season 5.

Coming up this next week, I plan to watch Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme, Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee, Nicolas Cage in The Carpenter's Son, Emma Mackey in Ella McCay, June Squibb in Eleanor the Great, British-Nigerian drama My Father's Shadow, Iraqi drama The President's Cake, French drama Nino and Taiwanese drama Left-Handed Girl, plus a premiere screening of Landman season 2.

Critical Week: Always say yes

After wrapping up the first SXSW London festival over the weekend, I had a flurry of screenings to keep me busy this week. This included the action comedy Deep Cover, with Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed as improv comics on police business in the London underworld. It's ridiculous but a lot of fun. Even more absurd was the silly action romp Shadow Force, rescued by the sheer charm of Kerry Washington and Omar Sy as parents with secret black ops skills, pulled back into the mayhem. The tired premise nearly sinks it, but the actors make it watchable, including a villainous Mark Strong.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Tornado
Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf
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The week's other big screening was the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, which looked amazing on a huge Imax screen. While not strictly necessary, the film is still rousing enough to be worth a look. Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff star in the romantic comedy A Nice Indian Boy, which is funny, engaging and delightfully pointed. The French romcom Jane Austen Wrecked My Life takes a low-key approach to its engagingly astute story of a blocked writer. Shakespeare's classic is reimagined as a lavishly produced pop musical for Juliet & Romeo, simplifying things in the process, but remaining entertaining too. And the clearly low-budget independent drama Franklin centres on two aspiring actors in Los Angeles as they navigate career and love-life issues.

I also attended the premiere of the third season of Squid Game, which included a terrific on-stage Q&A with stars Lee Jung-Jae, Lee Byung-hun and Park Gyuyoung, plus creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. And the dance show Inside Giovanni's Room, based on the landmark James Baldwin novel, was simply gorgeous at Sadler's Wells East.

This coming week will be rather busy with the Pixar animation Elio, Scarlett Johansson in Jurassic World Rebirth, John Travolta in High Rollers, Harry Melling in Harvest, Naomi Ackie in Sorry Baby, Leonie Benesch in Late Shift and the Tunisian drama Red Path, plus the first week of movies at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival and the annual opening night cabaret for the London Clown Festival.

FLARE 3: Apples and oranges

On these mid-week days during the 28th BFI Flare film festival, I take a bit of a break from the festivities, watching films without indulging in the parties! I have to build my strength for the weekend that's coming, right? Here are some more programme highlights...

C.O.G.
dir-scr Kyle Patrick Alvarez; with Jonathan Groff, Denis O'Hare 13/US ***
Based on a David Sedaris essay, this isn't so much a coming-of-age story as an odyssey in which a young man takes himself apart and tries to reassemble himself into something new. It's warm and full of darkly suggestive shadows, but filmmaker Alvarez never gives us the puzzle pieces that would make it resonate... FULL REVIEW >

Age of Consent 
dir-scr Charles Lum, Todd Verow; with Kurt Striegler, Guy Patrick Irwin 14/UK ****
This hilariously deadpan doc opens the door on something most people would describe as obscene, exploring London's original fetish club The Hoist. But the filmmakers expand beyond the bar itself to grapple with legal issues in the UK and the impact of HIV and Aids on the gay subculture. And of course the bigger issue of a personal pursuit of happiness. Since 1996, The Hoist has offered Londoners a German-style industrial bar, and the filmmakers take us on a tour of the empty venue (with rather explicit cutaways showing us what goes on here). Each person interviewed talks in a matter-of-fact way about their job, their personal experiences and how society has slowly shifted around the venue, perhaps hinting that its days are numbered. The ultimate message is that we should enjoy our liberty while we have it. Which is a more provocative and far more important statement than we expect from a witty 88-minute documentary about a leather bar.

Big Words 
dir-scr Neil Drumming; with Dorian Missick, Gbenga Akinnagbe 13/US ***.
This sensitive, straight-talking drama is packed with strong comments on issues that are both deeply personal and hugely important in society. Without coming to any glib conclusions, filmmaker Drumming and his adept cast tackle the kinds of things most men are terrified to talk about. So while it's an engaging story, it's also pretty strong stuff. Set on election day in November 2008, the film follows three men who have lost touch with each other for 15 years. Formerly in a rap group together, they've never properly dealt with their feelings about what broke them apart. And it takes some outsiders to help them both confront each other and move on. Performances are raw and natural, with energetic spikiness (Yaya Alafia is particularly engaging as a brainy stripper who relentlessly challenges Missick's down-at-heel lyricist). All of this is perhaps a bit too on-the-nose, but the approach constantly challenges our preconceptions.

Rosie
dir Marcel Gisler; with Sibylle Brunner, Fabian Kruger 13/Swi ****
An intriguing exploration of past regrets and bad decisions in relationships, this Swiss drama drags on as it tells its story, but remains introspective and involving. And it has a lot to say about facing up to the truth and allowing yourself to move on with life. Rosie (Brunner) is a feisty woman who, after having a minor stroke, is suddenly back in the life of her busy children. Lorenz (Kruger) is a single gay novelist struggling to write something as brilliant as his debut, while Sophie (Judith Hoffmann) has a difficult husband and teen son to deal with. Most of Rosie's care falls to the 39-year-old Lorenz, who travels regularly to rural Switzerland from his home in Berlin. It takes quite a long time for each of these characters to realise what they really need to do to make their lives work, and the plot kind of meanders in circles before it finds focus in the final scenes. But it's thoughtful and introspective, with some surprisingly tough, darkly moving scenes along the way.

BEST OF YEAR:
Blue Is the Warmest Colour
dir Abdellatif Kechiche; with Adele Exarchopoulos, Lea Seydoux 13/Fr ****.
Food, art and sex are the three elements of life in this evocative French drama, which takes a generous three hours to tell its story. This is an almost unnervingly honest film that holds us in rapt attention, shaking us even if we have nothing in common with the characters. Because it's about something much deeper than what's on screen... FULL REVIEW >

Critical Week: A song for Frank

London critics got a chance to catch up with this year's Sundance sensation, Lenny Abrahamson's Frank, starring Michael Fassbender wearing a giant papier-mache head. Yes, it's as offbeat and arty as it sounds, but also surprisingly warm and endearing, with terrific performances from Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scoot McNairy. The other big movie was Hossein Amini's subtly involving and very twisty thriller  The Two Faces of January, starring Viggo Mortensen, Kristin Dunst and Oscar Isaac, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel.

Only slightly further afield, C.O.G. is a dark, introspective drama starring Looking's Jonathan Goff as a guy trying to run from his own shadow. Khumba is an engaging, colourfully animated South African feature, with a somewhat compromised plot about a geeky zebra. Cheap Thrills is an escalating exercise in finding the audience's breaking point - a very clever, hard-to-watch black comedy. Awful Nice is an awkwardly written comedy with some telling observations. And The Punk Singer is a lively, insightful doc about feminist punk, centring on the iconic Kathleen Hanna.

The big films screening this coming week are the Marvel sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the TV show reunion Veronica Mars and the black comedy A Long Way Down. There are two Irish films - Brendan Gleeson in Calvary and Andrew Scott in The Stag; the Indonesian action-sequel The Raid 2; Chiwetel Ejiofor in Half of a Yellow Sun; the black comedy How to Be a Man; the animated adventure Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return; and something called Patema Inverted.

On the Road: Frozen, alone and fearsome

After only watching two films in the past two weeks, I had a bit of a flurry this weekend in Los Angeles, starting with Disney's new animated movie Frozen, about two sisters (voiced by Kristen Bella and Idina Menzel) struggling with what seems to be a family curse. Based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, the plot has some real weight and the characters are unusually strong, offering a strong twist on the usual Disney formula . Although the filmmakers couldn't resist filling the screen with silly jokes and comic relief characters, the animation is gorgeous and the themes are handled with a refreshing lightness,

I also had a couple of awards-consideration screenings on Saturday, my first two in Los Angeles. Both were pretty harrowing films, for different reasons. First was the true thriller Lone Survivor, in which Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Taylor Kitsch and Emile Hirsch get into serious trouble on a mission in Afghanistan. It's riveting and exhausting, and a bit too rah-rah heroic for its own good. But it's also electrically charged and sharply well made. Second was the dysfunctional drama August: Osage County, starring Meryl Streep as a fearsome matriarch who locks horns (and then some) with her equally tetchy daughter Julia Roberts. The ace ensemble includes Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ewan McGregor, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson. And the insights from playwright/screenwriter Tracy Letts are startlingly honest. It sometimes feels hugely over-dramatic, but every scene strikes a nerve.