Critical Week: Learn that dance

It's awards season, so I had two more virtual screenings this week accompanied by cast and crew zoom-style Q&As. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a faithful adaptation of the acclaimed August Wilson play, and it's somewhat overplayed and stagebound. But the actors are superb, including the late Chadwick Boseman (all other actors should abandon Oscar hopes this year) and Viola Davis. And Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes star in The Dig, an unusually earthy period film about a history-changing archaeological discovery. Without the accompanying Q&As, I also caught up with Soul, in which Pixar outdoes even themselves with flat-out awesome animation and a staggeringly deep story, and Steven Soderbergh's Let Them All Talk, in which a starry cast (Streep! Bergen! Wiest!) explores deep themes in an offhanded shipboard comedy.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Stand In • Alex Wheatle
Funny Boy • The Prom
Song Without a Name
ALL REVIEWS >

The final two episodes of Steve McQueen's unmissable Small Axe series screened: Alex Wheatle is a superb biopic about the awakening of an acclaimed novelist, while Education is an exhilarating drama that takes on racism in Britain's school system. Riz Ahmed is simply stunning as a drummer dealing with deafness in Sound of Metal. Tessa Thompson transcends the muted period vibe in the romance Sylvie's Love. And Sienna Miller shines in the moody odyssey Wander Darkly. 

I also caught up with two excellent foreign films: Funny Boy is a moving, gorgeously made drama from Sri Lanka by ace filmmaker Deepa Mehta, while Cocoon is a German coming-of-age drama that catches an intimate perspective. And there was also one film screened in a cinema, and the freaky British horror Saint Maud is definitely worth seeing on a huge screen with a rumbling sound system.

This coming week, I have two more screenings in actual cinemas: delayed blockbuster Wonder Woman 1984 and the true conspiracy drama The Mauritanian starring Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch. There's also Diane Lane in Let Him Go, Alicia Silverstone in Sister of the Groom, Alicia Witt in Modern Persuasion, the dance-based romance Aviva and the shorts collection The Boy Is Mine.

Critical Week: I need a hug

I've tried to get outside more this past week, simply because after three months lockdown is doing my head in. A few days out in sunny weather were a welcome break from watching movies at home. This week also brought word that film production will begin again in the UK at the beginning of July, around the same time cinemas will be re-opening with some level of social distancing. And we also found out that awards season is being extended by two months, with the Oscars set for April.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Young Ahmed • Da 5 Bloods
On a Magical Night • The Painted Bird
WORTH A LOOK:
The King of Staten Island
7500 • Babyteeth
FULL REVIEWS >

The biggest films I watched this week included the warm and gently comical The King of Staten Island, Pete Davidson's fictionalised autobiography costarring Marisa Tomei (above). Spike Lee's powerful drama Da 5 Bloods follows four Vietnam vets back to the battleground 50 years later on a secret mission. It's staggeringly timely, hugely involving and strongly pointed. And Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried star in the horror thriller You Should Have Left, in which a family's holiday getaway becomes very darkly haunted. It's a bit thin, but sharply put together.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in the German thriller 7500, a gritty, contained drama set in the cockpit of a plane that's hijacked. It's a little contrived, but very well-made, and Gordon-Levitt is excellent. Jesse Eisenberg stars in the German drama Resistance, which traces Marcel Marceau's involvement in the French Resistance during WWII. It's a great story, even if the filmmaking is somewhat standard. The indie American comedy horror Driven follows a cab driver who picks up a demon-slayer and spends the night trying to save the world. It's silly but very entertaining. And the Dardenne brothers' Young Ahmed is another fiercely well-observed drama, low-key and unnerving as it follows a teen who has fallen under the influence of an extremist imam in Belgium.

Among the movies to watch this coming week, there's Penelope Cruz in Wasp Network, Maxine Peake in Fanny Lye Deliver'd, Teresa Palmer in Ride Like a Girl, the comedy thriller Homewrecker, the dance comedy Feel the Beat, the French thriller Lost Bullet, and the sexual assault documentary On the Record.

Critical Week: Don't call me angel

It was another mixed bag of movies for me this week, with awards-worthy movies jostling for attention with the usual weekly releases. We had Elizabeth Banks' new take on Charlie's Angels, an entertaining but slightly off-balance mix of comedy and violence. Edward Norton wrote, directed, produced and stars as a detective with Tourette's in Motherless Brooklyn, a beautiful film that's also a bit indulgent. Chadwick Boseman stars in the cop drama 21 Bridges, which looks great but really needed a much better script. And Ophelia retells the story of Hamlet as a teen romance with great performances and production values, but little point.

Aaron Eckhart toplines the cop thriller In the Line of Duty, which is gritty and a bit predictable. Daniel Isn't Real is a fascinating psycho-thriller that never quite finds something to say about mental illness. The Amazing Johnathan Documentary is a riveting look into the comical magician's fatal heart condition and rather slippery life. And I was able to rewatch the beautifully made British independent drama Into the Mirror on a big screen at a cast and crew screening - great to see it projected instead of on a small screen at home, and really nice to meet the director and writer-actors.

This coming week I have a line-up of acclaimed arthouse movies to see, including Sterling K Brown in Waves, Jennifer Reeder's Knives and Skin, Helen Hunt in I See You, the Chinese thriller Long Day's Journey Into Night, the Brazilian drama Greta and Steven Berkoff in The Last Faust. I also have some more theatre, a special film archive event and the London Critics' Christmas party!

Critical Week: Stardust memories

It's been another random week of screenings, topped by a surprise Netflix release and a starry film premiere. The surprise was The Cloverfield Paradox, the latest loosely connected film in JJ Abrams' franchise. This one's a sci-fi thriller with some nicely deranged touches but a general air of randomness about it. The premiere was for Black Panther, Marvel's latest game-changer, a thumpingly entertaining adventure with a properly African sensibility and some wonderfully pointed themes. It's also swamped with too much digital extravagance.

Clint Eastwood's new film The 15:17 to Paris stars the actual three heroes who thwarted a gunman's attack on a train in 2015. They have presence, but the film feels meandering and pointless apart from the momentous 10 minutes. Becks is a beautifully written and performed story about a musician trying to rebuild her life, although it kind of chickens out in the final act. Just Charlie is a gorgeous British drama about a pre-teen who begins a male-to-female transition that's never simplistic or preachy. Revenge is a gleefully blood-soaked thriller about a woman turning the tables on three tough guys, although it kind of mixes its messages by fetishising her. The Canadian drama Sebastian has some charm, but is undermined by inexperienced filmmaking. And Ingmar Bergman's underrated, remarkably complex 1971 romantic drama The Touch gets a stunning digital restoration. And then there were these two...

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Fifty Shades Freed
dir James Foley; scr Niall Leonard; with Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson, Eloise Mumford, Rita Ora, Luke Grimes 18/US *.
Shot back-to-back with the second movie, this trilogy finale features the same dopey writing and directing, remaining resolutely superficial as a preposterous thriller without even a hint of suspense. It's a bit sexier, structured like a soft-porn romp as our heroes can't keep their hands off each other whenever the music kicks in. But the characters are so limp that the actors look like they were drugged and forced to speak this laughably awful dialog. The film opens as Christian and Ana (Dornan and Johnson) have a fantasy wedding, then bicker on honeymoon about going topless on a French beach. As a married couple, their biggest challenges are Ana's hot security guard (Brant Daugherty) and Christian's flirty architect (Arielle Kebbel), before Ana's surprise pregnancy causes some overwrought his-and-her melodrama in between the belt buckles, bubble baths and Ben & Jerry's. Meanwhile, Ana's psychotic ex-boss (Eric Johnson) launches a series of attacks that get increasingly ludicrous until a climactic showdown. All of this is so flimsy that it's difficult to remember why EL James' books created such a fuss in the first place. There's certainly no sense that these two people are in any sort of real-world relationship. In the original film, director Sam Taylor-Johnson and writer Kelly Marcel captured a zing of tension and a bit of deranged fun in the characters. But these sequels are wet noodles.

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Dropping the Soap
dir Ellie Kanner; with Paul Witten, Jane Lynch 16/US ****
The nutty backstage comedy is set among the cast and crew of the camp soap opera Collided Lives, and features as much bickering off-camera as on it. New producer Olivia (Lynch) is rattling everyone, manly lead actor Julian (Witten) is so deep in the closet that his leading lady (Suzanne Friedline) thinks they're engaged. The show's other female star (Kate Mines) is plotting to out him, but everyone is so caught up in their own worries that they barely notice. The scripts for these 10 episodes (each around 10 minutes long) are hilarious, packed with witty verbal gags and riotous interplay between the actors and their soap characters. It's also made with a snappy pace, a steady stream of funny cameos and a refreshing willingness to under-explain everything that happens. It's out on DVD/VOD, and well worth a look.

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There aren't many screenings next week, but I will catch up with Owen Wilson in Father Figures, the British horror The Lodgers, the Brazilian drama About Us and the documentary Saving Capitalism. It's also the run-up week for the Baftas on Sunday 18th February.

Critical Week: Of skirts and men

I caught up with the ancient-mythology epic Gods of Egypt this week (that's Aussie actor Brenton Thwaites above being tormented by a god-sized Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. There's definitely a lot of camp value there, and much of the snarky attitude is intentional. It's definitely smarter that most blockbusters, even if it is swamped by excessive effects work (hint: it's better on a small screen without 3D).

Aside from the Sundance Film Festival London, I had only three other movies this week, and it was a mixed bag: Elvis & Nixon recounts an absurd true story as a vehicle for Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey to chomp merrily on the scenery. There isn't much more to the movie that that, but it might be enough. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a rather darker true story from 1971, with eerie resonance in more recent headline news. It's a very well-made film, sober and pointed, with a terrific cast. And Outings consists of the first three episodes of a proposed British TV series that's unlikely to be commissioned. Basically an amusing but never funny gay variation on Sex and the City, the stories are good and the cast is fresh, but it's just too amateurish to appeal to broader audiences.

As usual this time of year, screenings are rather few and far between. The only one in the diary for the coming week is the London-set sequel The Conjuring 2. Other films might be forthcoming (and I have a few in the diary for the following week), but I'm looking forward to a bit of time to do other things for a change.

Critical Week: Shake your money maker

It feels like months since I've done a regular weekly blog entry! (It was 7th October.) After the one-two punch of London and Abu Dhabi film festivals, I'm back to normal for three weeks. In the three days since flying home from the UAE, I've only seen four films....

Get On Up is an ambitious biopic about James Brown starring the seriously talented Chadwick Boseman, although the film is a bit too fragmented to properly convey much insight into Brown's own genius. One of the year's most hotly anticipated films, Interstellar is Christopher Nolan's trip into space to seek a future for humanity, featuring strong performances from Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and others but a plot that wobbles badly in the middle. Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey?! is the latest instalment in the silly British Christmas musical series, as another new teacher (Martin Clunes) is tormented and ultimately won over by Marc Wootton's Mr Poppy and his ludicrously adorable students. And X+Y is a remarkable little British drama anchored by a powerhouse performance from Asa Butterfield as an autistic maths-whiz teen.

This coming week, I'll be watching the year's next blockbuster The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, plus Tommy Lee Jones' starry Western The Homesman, Wong Kar-wai's much delayed award-winning film The Grandmaster, the German drama Diplomacy, the French drama Eastern Boys, the Swiss drama The Circle and the Arab Spring documentary We Are the Giant.