On the road: Take the plunge

Being away for the holidays, I've prioritised hanging out with family and friends over work - so I'm a bit behind with everything apart from food! But I've managed to watch a few films here and there. Just out in cinemas here in the US, The Plague stars Joel Edgerton as a boys' water polo coach who seems either unable or unwilling to tackle the horrific bullying on the team. It's strikingly well made, with a terrific central performance by young Everett Blunck. 

The gentle drama Rebuilding features yet another excellent role for Josh O'Connor as a Colorado rancher trying to start over after a wildfire. It's quietly powerful. Ron Howard's Eden tells the true story of Europeans trying to find paradise in the Galápagos in the 1930s, with a cast that includes Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney and Ana de Armas. The cast makes it watchable even when it gets rather soapy. The documentary The Perfect Neighbor is assembled from body-cam footage as Florida cops teal with a messy situation that escalates until someone dies. It's hard to watch, but important. I also caught up with a few pulpy movies from recent years, including the cat-and-mouse thriller Carry-On in which Jason Bateman terrorises security agent Taron Egerton in Los Angeles airport. It's seriously stupid, but fun. Mel Gibson plays an action-oriented Santa in Fatman, an uneven mix of comedy and violence that never comes together. Walton Goggins is seriously intense as the baddie; Marianne Jean-Baptiste (yes, really) shines as Mrs Claus.

Over this next week, I'll be watching a few more contenders before ballots are due in various awards. I'm also flying back to London, so will no doubt catch up with some gems (!) on the flights. Before that, I will be finalising year-end lists of my best and worst from 2025 - watch this space...

Critical Week: Watch the hands

Actual in-person screenings were back with a vengeance this week, after a recent slow stretch. And yes, it was great to settle into proper cinemas and screening rooms to watch movies on a big screen where they belong. Especially a film as visually astounding as Everything Everywhere All at Once, which stars Michelle Yeoh as a middle-aged woman thrown into parallel-reality craziness. Thankfully, the filmmakers remember that this is about real human emotions rather than wacky science. The big screen also helped with the lavishly designed Downton Abbey: A New Era, a return to the upstairs-downstairs drama with an enormous ensemble of likeable characters, each of whom somehow gets some good screen time. It's just what's expected, which is both comforting and a bit boring.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Casablanca Beats • Firebird
The Feast • Vortex
ALL REVIEWS >

Elsewhere, Mark Wahlberg tells the inspiring true tale of boxer-turned-priest Father Stu. There's only a slight rough edge to what should be a more complex story. Sophie Marceau is terrific in I Love America, a gentle comedy about a French filmmaker who moves to California. And the Moroccan drama Casablanca Beats bristles with life as a rapper teaches a group of lively, politically engaged students to create music.

A little further afield, Nick Cave lets the cameras watch as he and Warren Ellis create music in the gorgeously shot documentary This Much I Know to Be True. Robert Bresson's masterful 1959 morality tale Pickpocket gets a pristine big-screen restoration. And the documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch just about makes sense of the clothing brand's horrible history of employment prejudice, while completely missing the point of why the clothes were so popular (and perhaps aren't so much now).

This coming week features another long weekend, and I'll also be watching a range of films including Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the Irish coming-of-age drama The Quiet Girl, the Danish black comedy Wild Men, the chilean romance The Sea, the Iranian drama Atabai, and the Palestinian bombing doc Eleven Days in May.

Critical Week: Take a load off

Bigger movies continue to turn up at the box office each week, signalling a return to the pre-lockdown pattern of one blockbuster per week. And press screenings are also getting a bit more colourful as a result. We had two big screenings this week, starting with the Nicolas Cage pastiche action comedy bromance The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which is even more fun than expected. Going full-method as himself, Cage and up-for-it costar Pedro Pascal dive fully into the ridiculous story, and they keep the audience right with them. There was also Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, the third chapter in the whizzy but oddly uninvolving Harry Potter prequel franchise. This one is much more momentous, and the actors (notably Jude Law and Mads Mikkelsen) make it worth a look. I also caught up with Michael Bay's latest over-the-top action thriller Ambulance, a choppy but very entertaining ride through Los Angeles with the superb Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen and Eiza Gonzalez.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Compartment No 6 • Small Body
Poppy Field • Cow
PERHAPS AVOID:
Agent Game • Sonic the Hedgehog 2
ALL REVIEWS >

Further afield were the by-numbers spy thriller Agent Game, which has a strong cast (Dermot Mulroney, Jason Isaacs, even Mel Gibson) but rarely rises above its cliches. French actor-filmmaker Valerie Lemercier's Aline is a fictionalised biopic about Celine Dion, and it's as bonkers as you hope it will be. From Ireland, You Are Not My Mother is a stylish dramatic horror that properly gets under the skin. And from France, Anais in Love is a sunny, chatty comedy-drama that recounts an awkward coming of age.

For this coming week I have no press screenings in the diary, but I do have some links to watch at home, for films including Eva Longoria in the comedy Unplugging, James Duval in the comedy I Challenger and the Japanese triptych Sexual Drive. I also hope to see Alexander Skarsgard in The Northman, most likely buying a ticket for a regular cinema.

Critical Week: Dress to impress

With another long weekend, it's been a shorter than usual week of screenings. But I still kept pretty busy. The biggest release screened to the press, barely before it opened, was The Hustle, a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson. As a comedy it's rather weak, but has some funny moments all the way through. There were also two British period biopics. Tolkien is an impeccably produced look at the early life of JRR Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult), although it's a bit dry since it takes place before he wrote anything. The Professor and the Madman follows the tenacious work of James Murray (Mel Gibson) to define the English language and produce the first Oxford English Dictionary, with the help of an in-patient at Broodmoor asylum (Sean Penn). Despite the troubled production, it's a fascinating story, strikingly well acted.

Further afield we had the moving, dark British indie drama Last Summer, about young teens in small-town Wales dealing with a wrenching community crisis. And the even darker American indie drama Just Say Goodbye takes on teen suicide with a perhaps too-provocative story about friendship and parenthood. We also caught the superb documentary XY Chelsea, which closely follows whistleblower Chelsea Manning between two incarcerations. It's involving and even inspiring, taking on those who label her a traitor. And since it's finally out for streaming/etc in the UK, here's a longer take on this doc I saw a few weeks back...

Fahrenheit 11/9
dir-scr Michael Moore; with Michael Moore, Timothy Snyder, Jenifer Lewis, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg 18/US 2h08 ****

Michael Moore was one of the only pundits who predicted the Trump presidency. So this long but watchable and important doc opens with the massive upset of election night 2016, from Clinton supporters' pre-voting revelry turning into gloom to the shocked faces of Team Trump, which clearly didn't expect to win. From here, Moore spins back to look at how Trump accidentally got into the race while trying to increase his profile in contract negotiations with NBC. His racist comments backfired (NBC fired him), but he touched a nerve with a segment of the American public. Masterfully manipulating the media, which was making a fortune from covering his antics, Trump had a long history with Russian mobsters and the media leaders taken down for abusing women. Moore also documents his overt racism and misogyny over many decades, all of which was public knowledge. Similarly, his treasonous behaviour since taking office has also been out in the open.

As usual, Moore connects this to his hometown of Flint, Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder (a Trump buddy) declared a fake emergency to essentially privatise the poor, black city, callously poisoning it then covering up the escalating disaster. This takes up a good chunk of the film, and rightly so. Back to the main topic, Moore's dissection of the US electorate is fascinating: the truth is that liberal '60s values reflect the average American today; the Republicans have only won the popular vote in one presidential election in the last 30 years ("You can't call it a democracy if the person who wins the most votes doesn't win"). Moore also covers the fraud among the Democrats, such as how anyone who breaks from the centrist line is suppressed (as was Bernie Sanders), and how in many ways Obama paved the way for Trump. So it was no wonder people were willing to break the system with a protest vote.

Finally, Moore dives into gun control in the wake of the Parkland shootings an teens who refused to sit quietly and accept "thoughts and prayers". The salient point here is that candidates are representing their donors, not the voters. And Moore's most powerful message is that we need to ignore attempts to divide us against each other, rise up and create the government we deserve. History tells us that the US is becoming less democratic and more despotic by the day. So this film's carefully documented conclusions should chill us to the bone.

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This coming week, we'll be watching Keanu Reeves in John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, Julianne Moore in Gloria Bell and the documentaries Apollo 11, General Magic, The Lavender Scare and Nomad. Plus a couple of stage shows, just for a change of scenery.

Critical Week: Never surrender

It was a disparate collection of movies this past week. The most obviously prestigious one was Darkest Hour, which chronicles the first month of Winston Churchill's first term as UK prime minister. It's a lavishly made film, anchored by a bullish performance from Gary Oldman. At the other end of the spectrum, Daddy's Home Two reunites Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell (plus Mel Gibson and John Lithgow as their dads) for a holiday comedy that's amusing without doing anything very new. More ambitious, The Dinner features strong performances from Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall, although the film might be too tricky for its own good.

There were also three more true stories. Josh Brolin and Miles Teller lead the firefighting drama Only the Brave, which gets a little too caught up in its heroic machismo. Colin Firth stars in the sailing adventure The Mercy, a riveting tale with an enigmatic core. And The Man With the Iron Heart is a great story of the Nazi resistance, thrown out of balance with its duelling plot-strands starring Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O' Connell and Jack Reynor.

I'm travelling over the next week or so, and not sure what I'll be able to catch up with along the way. Targeted films include Justice League, Wonder, Thank You for Your Service, The Disaster Artist and The Current War. I'll be posting comments whenever I can...

Critical Week: It's raining films

24th Raindance Film Festival is underway in London, wrapping up on Sunday. I always struggle to catch many of the movies at this festival, as it runs right through the press screening schedule for the London Film Festival (which runs 5-16 Oct). I was able to attend Raindance's opening night gala, including the feature Problemski Hotel (above), an involving, artful exploration of refugees in Europe, and the short The Nation Holds Its Breath, a witty Irish comedy about a young man conflicted by the fact that his first child is being born just as Ireland makes it to the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time in 1990. There were also two ambitious low-budget sci-fi thrillers: from America, Shortwave is somewhat overcooked but very atmospheric, and from Britain, Worm is a skilful stunner about teleportation.

Aside from London Film Festival screenings (more on those next week), there have also been screenings of normal releases to catch up with. These have included Emily Blunt in the adaptation of the bestseller The Girl on the Train, an edgy emotional thriller; Tim Burton's new extravaganza Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an enjoyable but over-packed fantasy; Mel Gibson's solid return to lead acting in Blood Father, a gritty but somewhat simplistic vengeance/survival thriller; and People You May Know, a dark but hopeful drama about navigating friendship and romance.

There were also a collection of movies based on true stories: David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike are excellent in the racially charged 1950s drama A United Kingdom; Luke Treadaway stars in the lightly comical exploration of homelessness and addiction in A Street Cat Named Bob; the shattering Polish drama The Innocents is about a convent recovering from the horrors of WWII.

This coming week, I have a few more Raindance movies while screenings for London seriously heat up as the festival itself gets underway. There's also the animated adventure Storks, the British comedy Burn Burn Burn, the horror thriller Train to Busan, the Spanish drama The Ways of Man, and the documentary Life, Animated.

Venezia 73: It's a battle on days 6 & 7

Working at a film festival can be exhausting. Not only do you see three or four films every day, but you need to find time to write about them all as well. And also perhaps meet your normal work deadlines at the same time. Plus, you're in a strange city, searching for food! And also since it's a new place you want to take some time off and explore. Well, here at the 73rd Venice Film Festival, on Tuesday I finally had a chance to take the water bus over to the city's famous main islands - my first visit ever. I've travelled all over the world, but nothing prepared me for the thrill of Venice! After a three-hour walk in a rather enormous, convoluted circle, I'm in love with this city (and happy that it's only a cheap flight rom where I live). Then I was back on the boat across the lagoon to see more movies on the Lido. Here's what I saw yesterday and this morning (that's Andrew Garfield, above)...

Hacksaw Ridge
dir Mel Gibson; with Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington 16/Aus ****
With this big-hearted war epic, Mel Gibson uses warm, glowing drama and smiley corniness to distract from the harrowingly gruesome battle sequences. This means that most scenes are hard to watch for a variety of different reasons. But at the centre, this is a genuinely rousing story of real-life courage. And the war scenes are unusually riveting.

The Bad Batch
dir-scr Ana Lily Amirpour; with Suki Waterhouse , Jason Momoa 16/US **
For her second feature, Ana Lily Amirpour has a big, bold idea that's like Mad Max descending on Burning Man. But it isn't post-apocalyptic: it's a reflection of right-wing attitudes that are sweeping the globe, marginalising anyone who doesn't fit the status quo. So it's frustrating that the film is so difficult to engage with. Characters are cool and dispassionate, dialog is stiff and the pacing is uneven.

Tommaso
dir-scr Kim Rossi Stuart; with Kim Rossi Stuart, Camilla Diana 16/It **.
Like a cinematic mid-life crisis, this is an almost overpoweringly self-indulgent comedy-drama from Italian filmmaker Kim Rossi Stuart.  Not only is his central character an annoying, infantile jerk, but the film itself is simplistic in its themes and obvious in its metaphors. It's breezy enough to be watchable, but only just.

Heal the Living [Réparer les Vivants]
dir Katell Quillevere; with Tahar Rahim, Anne Dorval 16/Fr ****
Openly emotive and darkly resonant, this French drama quite literally centres on matters of the heart. It's beautifully assembled and acted on various fronts. And even if filmmaker Katell Quillevere  sometimes drifts closely toward sentimentality, the movie remains a clear-eyed portrait of a group of people facing various sides of a life or death battle.

A Woman's Life [Une Vie]
dir Stephane Brize; with Judith Chemla, Jean-Pierre Darroussin 16/Fr ***.
An intriguingly deconstructed life story, this 19th century adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant novel plays out over some 25 years pivoting on emotions rather than plot. This makes it intriguingly compelling, even if the loose filmmaking, cool performances and impressionistic editing keep everything somewhat aloof. But it has powerful things to say about human nature, especially how we as individuals perceive the world around us.

Upcoming films include Pablo Larrain's Jackie, Terrence Malick's Voyage of Time: Life's Journey, Andrei Konchalovsky's Paradise and Nick Hamm's The Journey.

Critical Week: Mel's got a gun!

London critics were last week treated to a screening of Mel Gibson's new action romp, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, which isn't even being released in cinemas in the USA (where it's going straight to video with the title Get the Gringo). It's a mess, but fans of gratuitous, mindless violence will probably enjoy it. Speaking of mindless, filmmaker Todd Graff kind of wastes both his premise and cast in Joyful Noise, a church choir comedy starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton that's silly and warm but in dire need of some proper sass.

In the prestige department, we had director James Marsh's cool, steady-handed IRA thriller Shadow Dancer, starring Andrea Riseborough and Clive Owen; the cool, rather dull futuristic romance Clone, with Matt Smith and Eva Green; and the cool, sleekly unsettling Colombian thriller The Hidden Face. And there were three docs as well, including the comprehensive theatrical edit of the thoroughly entertaining Woody Allen: A Documentary, the hugely endearing real-life adventure Mission to Lars, and the harrowing privatisation horror-doc Catastroika.

This coming week we have another very late press screening of Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, just a few days before it opens. We'll also see the ensemble rom-com What to Expect When You're Expecting, the acclaimed horror The Innkeepers, the British comedy Fast Girls, the animated feature Top Cat: The Movie, the Nazis on the moon romp Iron Sky, the Japanese drama Mitsuko Delivers, and a documentary about Ping Pong.