Critical Week: Campfire stories

The new year has kicked off in London with rather a lot of wind and rain, which makes me want to shelter indoors rather than going out to see any movies. But screenings are starting up again this week, so I'm venturing out into the cold and damp. Meanwhile, movie awards season is cranking up another gear with more voting deadlines and the completely revamped Golden Globes coming on Sunday night. I voted in them again this year, so will be curious to see who wins, although I'll have to wait to read about it on Monday as no one broadcasts the ceremony in the UK.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Memory • Scala!!!
ALL REVIEWS >

Filmwise, I watched the timely near-future thriller The End We Start From with Jodie Comer (pictured above with Benedict Cumberbatch) as a new mother in a flooded Britain - the perfect movie to watch on a very rainy day! The odyssey plays cleverly through emotions and perspectives rather than action or plotting. Bricklayer is a preposterous action thriller set in Greece with Aaron Eckhart and Nina Dobrev, directed by explosion-master Renny Harlin. The loose-limbed thriller He Went That Way follows two men on a 1960s road trip. It's a bit awkward but nicely played by Jacob Elordi and Zachary Quinty. And I also watched the five intriguing shorts nominated for the London Critics' Circle Film Awards.

This coming week I'll be watching the new adaptation of the stage show Mean Girls: The Musical, the thriller You Can't Stay Here, London-set drama Silver Haze,  Chilean drama The Settlers and the documentaries Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer and The Disappearance of Shere Hite.

LFF: Find your feet

And that's a wrap on the 67th London Film Festival. I enjoyed taking a slightly less involved approach this year, seeing lots of great movies without trying to see everything I wanted to see. There are still several big titles I need to catch over the coming months before awards voting deadlines, so I have lots to look forward to. The closing night party was great fun too. Here are some final highlights, including the closing film The Kitchen. My favourites are below, along with the award winners...

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
dir Sam Fell; voices Thandiwe Newton, Zachary Levi 23/UK ****
After their great escape in the 2000 classic, the gang returns for an impossible mission. Every moment in the film is packed with throwaway gags, sharp comedy and thrills that riff on heist and action movies. Of course, Aardman's attention to detail shines in the painstaking stop-motion animation, as characters and sets overflow with personality. And the film reminds us to find the bravery to do the right thing.

Poor Things
dir Yorgos Lanthimos; with Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe 23/UK *****
Taking on another fantastical story, Yorgos Lanthimos grounds and deepens this wildly stylised fable with darkly provocative themes. It may be visually extravagant, often going wildly over the top with full-on performances from a daring cast of excellent actors, and yet everything remains grounded in sympathetic emotions. So what the story is saying about polite society becomes almost revolutionary, encouraging us to go against the grain and speak the truth.

The Kitchen
dir Kibwe Tavares, Daniel Kaluuya; with Kane Robinson, Jedaiah Bannerman 23/UK ***.
Set in the near-future, this British film combines elements of comedy, drama and thriller to tell the warm story of a father-son relationship between a man and a teen boy. It's a bit repetitive and takes its time getting to the point, but the characters are beautifully written and played, and the film is directed with understated skill by first-timers Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya. Brimming with energy, it's engaging and entertaining, with a sharp point.

Chasing Chasing Amy
dir-scr Sav Rodgers; with Sav Rodgers, Kevin Smith 23/US ***.
Kevin Smith's 1997 comedy Chasing Amy stars Ben Affleck as a comic writer who falls in love with a lesbian played by Joey Lauren Adams. It's been considered problematic for its gender politics, but filmmaker Sav Rodgers found it inspiring because of its honest depiction of openly queer people. So he made this documentary both to say thank you and to understand why the movie generated so much controversy.

All full festival reviews will be linked to Shadows' LFF PAGE >

RICH'S BEST OF THE FEST

1. 
   All of Us Strangers
2. Poor Things
3. The Zone of Interest
4. The Eternal Memory
5. Robot Dreams
6. In Restless Dreams
7. May December
8. In Camera
9. Saltburn
10. Tiger Stripes

Honourable mention: Nyad, Samsara, Totem, The Lost Boys, Fingernails, Shortcomings, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, Anselm, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

OFFICIAL LFF AWARDS

• Best Film: Evil Does Not Exist
• Sutherland Award for First Feature: Mika Gustafson for Paradise Is Burning 
• Grierson Award for Documentary: Bye Bye Tiberias
• Audience Award: tbc

Critical week: The artistic process

As Britain begins to lock down again to weaken a second wave, I had one in-cinema screening this week, and also one live (outdoor) theatre performance. Otherwise, my life continues to be online. There were two special press screenings on Netflix sponsored by the American Film Institute, with added Q&As after the films. Over the Moon (pictured) is an animated adventure with a Chinese setting, gorgeously designed and unusually imaginative. The Q&A featured director Glen Keane and actors Ken Jeong and Cathy Ang. The Boys in the Band is a remake based on the landmark 1968 play, a superbly observed black comedy set in the New York gay subculture with an excellent all-star cast, all of whom participated in an unusually raucous Q&A, including Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells and Matt Bomer.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Boys in the Band • The Glorias
Summer of 85 • Eternal Beauty
FULL REVIEWS >

This week's other big-name movie was Julie Taymor's insightful and bracingly original biopic The Glorias, starring Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander (and two others) as Gloria Steinem at two points in her life. Sally Hawkins stars in Eternal Beauty, an offbeat drama about life trauma that's cleverly written and directed by actor Craig Roberts. And my one real press screening was for the Irish drama Herself, which features a superb central performance by cowriter Clare Dunne as a single mother pressured from all sides.

There were two funny-creepy independent black comedies: Scare Me, in which the terrific Aya Cash (see the current season of The Boys) and actor-filmmaker Josh Ruben try to terrify each other, and Say Your Prayers, in which two hapless religious siblings botch a hit on an atheist. And there were also two docs: the insightful I Am Greta offers a remarkably detailed portrait of climate activist Greta Thunberg, while The Painter and the Thief beautifully chronicles the unusual relationship between an artist and the junkie who stole her paintings.

Films this coming week include Robert De Niro in The War With Grandpa, as well as Making Tracks, From the Vine, The Wanderings of Ivan and Song Lang. And virtual press screenings begin for the London Film Festival as well, so I already have several in the diary, including the opening film, Steve McQueen's Mangrove, plus Riz Ahmed in Mogul Mowgli, Evan Rachel Wood in Kajillionaire, the horror hit Relic, Honeymood, Siberia and I Am Samuel.

Critical Week: London's burning

London was the centre of the Star Trek universe last week with the first press screenings of JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, an epic press junket at City Hall looking over the river at the skyline (not burning in real life but glistening in the spring sunshine) and a mammoth world premiere in Leicester Square. I attended two press screenings and hugely enjoyed the film both times. It's definitely one for the fans, as those who don't know the back-story will struggle to understand the significance of the plot and characters, but the cast is terrific. Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban and Alice Eve were all on great form at the press event.

Also last week, we had Paul Walker in the rather implausible but involving Johannesburg road thriller Vehicle 19, Tim Roth and Jack O'Connell in the darkly comical British crime thriller The Liability, Alexey Balabanov's violent and pointed black comedy The Stoker, and the Belgian-Turkish culture clash drama-romance Mixed Kebab. I also planned a Madeline Kahn marathon over the long weekend with friends who had never seen her best work. We thoroughly enjoyed the genius of What's Up Doc and Young Frankenstein, but the warm sunshine tempted us to put off Blazing Saddles for another day. Frankly, those are three films I could happily watch on a loop.

This coming week, we have Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, the uber-reunion sequel Fast & Furious 6, Michael Shannon in The Iceman, the animated adventure Epic, the German fable The Wall, the acclaimed doc Blackfish, and a second attempt to see the Brazilian doc Tropicalia after a projector issue cancelled last week's screening. I also still have to see those reissues: Theorem, The King of Marvin Gardens and Billy Liar - let's hope for bad weather this weekend!