Critical Week: Take on the world

As Britain continues to strain against the ongoing lockdown restrictions, it seems like all of my friends have already had the vaccine, but I'm still waiting. It's now looking like cinemas won't open until mid-May at the earliest, so these online screenings will just have to do for now. Another film that really should have been seen on the big screen was Disney's animated adventure Raya and the Last Dragon, which looks breathtaking however you see it as it spins an energetic, involving and ever-so-familiar tale. Less successful is the strained attempt to "update" Tom and Jerry with a half-hearted human-based plot. Sticking to what made the cartoons work might have been a good idea, but what do I know?

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Notturno • Moxie • Justine
The Truffle Hunters
White Colour Black 
ALL REVIEWS >

More grown-up films this week included the legal drama Foster Boy, a rather formulaic film with Matthew Modine based on a powerful true story; the bonkers French mystery Keep an Eye Out, a police pastiche with a hilariously black sense of humour; the true-life disaster epic Fukushima 50, chronicling Japan's near catastrophe in the wake of the 2011 earthquake/tsunami; and the artfully involving odyssey White Colour Black, in which a British photographer explores his roots in Senegal. There was also this virtual screening as part of the London Indian Film Festival...

Evening Shadows
dir Sridhar Rangayan; scr Saagar Gupta, Sridhar Rangayan; with Mona Ambegaonkar, Devansh Doshi, Ananth Mahadevan, Arpit Chaudhary, Sushant Divgikar 19/India 1h42 ****

The standard coming-out story is given a nice spin in this warm-hearted Indian drama, which centres on a mother-son relationship. It's a strong depiction of how a conservative culture piles expectations on young people and accepts endemic sexism and homophobia. Filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan carefully reveals compassion under the cruelly bigoted surfaces, creating a vivid portrait of the enormous issues that face women and queer young people in communities that are ruled by hatred.

After four years away, Kartik (Doshi) returns home for a family event, then is surprised by his harshly controlling father Damodar (Mahadevan) with a prospective bride and more criticism about his career as a photographer. No wonder he chooses to live in Mumbai and keeps his boyfriend Aman (Chaudhary) a secret. When he comes out to his loving mother Vasudha (Ambegaonkar), she struggles with what to do with this information in such a close-minded corner of India and with such a dogmatic husband.

The actors are terrific even if the characters are a bit schematic: Kartik is relentlessly smiley, while Damodar shouts angrily at everyone and rails against news stories of the Supreme Court's imminent ruling on whether homosexuality should remain criminalised (under a law brought in by British colonialists). In the middle, Ambegaonkar shines as a woman working through her feelings. The coming-out sequence is beautifully played with honest big emotions. So even if the film sometimes feels rather melodramatic, it touches on some real nerves and grapples with darker, often unmentioned issues in society. And it leads to a staggeringly strong confrontation.

 LONDON INDIAN FILM FESTIVAL • 28.Feb.21

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Coming up this next week, I have the British immigrant romance The Drifters, the dark American romance Luz, the Australian drama Sequin in a Blue Room and the German fantasy Undine.

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Critical Week: Sleep tight

It's been a relatively quiet week, screening-wise, partly because the bigger studios have decided to stop showing their larger releases to the press. For example, this week's remake of Hellboy had no press screenings at all. And we're beginning to wonder what will happen with some rather important upcoming blockbusters. Thankfully, the smaller films and mid-sized ones are still available for us write about. This week I caught up with Neil Jordan's bonkers horror thriller Greta, starring Isabelle Huppert and Chloe Grace Moretz (above). It's nutty and entertaining. I also watched Tessa Thompson and Lily James in the gritty, powerful rural drama Little Woods.

My favourite film this week was the concert doc Amazing Grace, filmed in 1972 and only just released, revealing the awesome Aretha Franklin in all her gospel-infused glory. Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich is a riotously grisly 80s-style slasher movie about an army of killer Nazi puppets. It's both hilarious and seriously nasty. No Chocolate, No Rice is a micro-budget comedy from Washington DC, a bit clunky but full of great ideas and likeable characters. And the sparky, beautifully assembled German documentary Beauty & Decay, catches up with three punk-art stars from the early 1980s in Berlin today.

This coming week we have Zac Efron in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Julianne Moore in Bel Canto, Robert Pattinson in High Life and the offbeat animation Doozy. I've also got a couple of events, and possibly another stage performance to cover.

Sundance London: Build a happy home

The 6th Sundance Film Festival: London kicked off on Thursday night at Picturehouse Central. This brief festival only runs for three days, as the Park City festival programmers bring 13 films and two programmes of shorts to London audiences. Annoyingly, I had already planned a holiday for the first half of this week, so I missed all of the press screenings and will be unable to see virtually all of the films as I usually do. I'll have to make due with those I've already seen, and the ones I can catch at busy public screenings over the weekend. Here's the first set of highlights from this year's programme...

Hereditary
dir-scr Ari Aster; with Toni Collette, Alex Wolff 19/US ****.
Writer-director Ari Aster makes his feature debut with a boldly original premise that builds involving character drama as it thoroughly freaks out the audience. The horror climax may be somewhat hysterical, but the journey there features first-rate acting from the entire cast, plus skilfully controlled filmmaking that creates a terrifying experience that's both darkly emotional and delightfully bonkers.

First Reformed 
dir-scr Paul Schrader; with Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried 17/US ***
Paul Schrader once again takes a provocative look at religion in America in this dark and twisty drama that has all kinds of repercussions in today's headlines, from climate change to extremism. Anchored by very strong performances, the film gets increasingly intense as it continues, implying in unmistakable ways that it's headed for something awful. Although Schrader himself seems unsure about where he wanted it to go... FULL REVIEW >

The Miseducation of Cameron Post 
dir Desiree Akhavan; with Chloe Grace Moretz, John Gallagher Jr 18/US ****
There's an almost eerie honesty to this teen drama, which makes it feel bracingly current even though it's set 25 years ago. With naturalistic performances and a topic that has become uncomfortably timely all over again, the film worms its way under the skin. Based on a novel by Emily Danforth, director-cowriter Desiree Akhavan gives the film an autobiographical tone, which adds a proper kick of resonance.

Films That Made Me
Three filmmakers whose work is featured in the Sundance London programme have selected the movies that inspired them. And they are introducing special screenings at the festival...

• Debra Granik (Leave No Trace) presents Celine Sciamma's stunningly original, moving and insightful coming-of-age drama Girlhood (2014) from France... SHADOWS' ORIGINAL REVIEW > 
• Desiree Akhavan (The Miseducation of Cameron Post) brings Morvern Callar (2002), Lynne Ramsey's bleakly brilliant drama starring Samantha Morton... ORIGINAL REVIEW > 
• Jennifer Fox (The Tale) chooses Tarnation (2004), Jonathan Caouette's astonishing kaleidoscope of an autobiographical documentary... ORIGINAL REVIEW >

Critical Week: Ladies who lunch

While many of my colleagues are in Cannes, I've been here in London catching up on lots of movies. Bigger titles included Book Club, which stars Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen as women who find new spark when they read Fifty Shades of Grey together. It's lazy but amiable enough. And then there was Deadpool 2, in which Ryan Reynolds reprises his irreverent superhero for another anarchic adventure. It's a lot better than the overrated first film, very funny but less smug and more complex.

Nicole Kidman goes enjoyably punk in John Cameron Mitchell's How to Talk to Girls at Parties, a punk sci-fi romance that's bursting with scruffy energy but struggles to maintain its oddball plot. The Sundance hit The Miseducation of Cameron Post stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a teen sent to gay therapy camp. It's strikingly realistic with terrific performances and an important theme. The American indie caper romp Carter & June is energetic but far too misogynistic for its own good. And the British indie thriller Welcome to Curiosity weaves a few plot strands together in ways that are colourful but ultimately flimsy.

There were also two films from Mexico: A Place to Be is a sensitive fact-based drama that explores immigration issues from unexpected angles, while Boy Undone is a gripping amnesia thriller with a romantic emotional core. And there were also two star-packed docs: in McKellen: Playing the Part, Ian McKellen recounts his life and career with honesty and insight, while 50 Years Legal features a range of noted figures (including McKellen of course) talking about the history of gay rights in Britain.

The big screening this coming week is, of course, Solo: A Star Wars Story. Looking forward to that. Also in the diary: Travis Mathews' drama Discreet, the street-life doc Hooked, Paul Wright's collage doc Arcadia, the film producer doc The Fabulous Alan Carr, the Mongol Derby doc All the Wild Horses and a restoration of The Beatles' animated romp Yellow Submarine.

Critical Week: Team America to the rescue

London-based critics caught up with Michael Bay's Benghazi thriller 13 Hours this week. It's skilfully assembled with a strong cast, but bombastic and frustratingly simplistic. There was also a very late press screening for The 5th Wave, the latest teen-dystopia thriller. Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, it's a lot better than anyone expected. And then there was Ride Along 2, a lazy sequel reuniting Ice Cube and Kevin Hart for a new buddy-cop action-comedy in Miami.

Charlize Theron and Tye Sheridan are terrific in the creepy thriller Dark Places, which loses its way in melodramatic excess. Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room is one of the sharpest, most original horror thrillers in recent memory, propelling the audience into an unnervingly realistic nightmare. British filmmaker Stephen Fingleton is getting awards for his debut post-apocalyptic drama The Survivalist, a strikingly well-acted, inventive film that kind of gets stuck in its own rut. The Spanish animated moon-race adventure Capture the Flag makes up for its low-tech imagery with a quick-paced story and witty characters. And the understated Brazilian drama Aya Arcos makes up for its super-low budget with realistic, involving characters. I also caught up with a movie that doesn't seem to have a UK release planned at all...

Stonewall
dir Roland Emmerich; with Jeremy Irvine, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers 15/US *.
Director Emmerich really needs to stick to those big, tongue-in-cheek action movies he's so famous for (like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow or my personal guilty pleasure 2012). His last foray into "serious" filmmaking was the appalling revisionist Shakespeare bio Anonymous (2011), and now he has made this even more insulting drama about the roots of the gay pride movement. The film was criticised for not telling the whole story, but that's not the worst thing about it. The problem is that the movie is an endless stream of misguided cliches and trite moralising. There isn't a single scene that rings true, and it's not the fault of the actors (they're actually rather good, including Irvine in the focal role). Not only does Emmerich flatten each dramatic moment with awkwardly pushy direction, but Jon Robin Baitz's script rings false, trivialising what should be some darkly personal events and leaving real-life people lurking pointlessly around the edges of a narrative that tries to be the story of Everyman (or more accurately, every young white man). Please stick to blowing up the White House, Roland.

Coming up next week: Julianne Moore and Ellen Page in Freeheld, Adrien Brody in Backtrack, Blythe Danner in I'll See You in My Dreams, the animated romp Oddball and the Penguins, the cycling doc Battle Mountain, and the Israeli horror movie JeruZalem.

Critical Week: Race against time

This post is rather late in the week for one simple reason: I was getting ready to go on holiday and forgot to add "blog" to my to-do list. Working as a freelance offers all kinds of freedoms and work satisfaction, but it also means that I don't get paid vacations; if I go away, I have to do all my work in advance for the time I'm gone. Otherwise I end up working when I should be lounging on a beach with friends!

Anyway, the big film the week before I left was If I Stay, screened very late to UK critics in the week of release. It's had fairly lacklustre reviews, but I thought it was a lot more realistic and involving than the summer's other teenage tearjerker The Fault in Our Stars. It's also just as manipulative emotionally and aimed almost exclusively at prepubescent girls. Leads Chloe Grace Moretz (above) and Jamie Blackley are both terrific.

Also before escaping from Britain, I caught up with Grand Piano, an intriguing, nicely shot and edited mystery-thriller with Elijah Wood; Jackhammer, a relentlessly idiotic male-stripper comedy featuring "where is he now" actor Jamie Kennedy; Luna, Dave McKean's mesmerisingly beautiful and utterly impenetrable British exploration of relationships and emotions; the meandering ensemble drama Turtle Hill, Brooklyn, which feels a bit stagey but has some strong characters; the four-part anthology Eroddity(s), which borders on soft porn but also touches on resonant themes and is actually rather sexy; and the essential documentary Two: The Story of Roman & Nyro, about an utterly normal loving family that breaks all the rules of what we call "normal".

The film I'm most looking forward to now that I'm back in London (after a week in southern France) is The Wizard of Oz remastered in Imax 3D.