Critical Week: A big bromance

I've been taking it a bit easier this week, catching up after the film festival. But there have been a few screenings to attend. First there was the mammoth sequel Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, screened to the press in Imax. Essentially a cartoon with a few humans running around in the margins, this is a movie that will make die hard fans happy, but others might be wise to steer clear. Meanwhile, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway have a lot of fun layering on insinuating intrigue in Mothers' Instinct, a Hitchcock-style slow-burn thriller that's thoroughly entertaining.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Beautiful Game
Disco Boy
PERHAPS AVOID:
Godzilla x Kong
ALL REVIEWS >

Even better is the British feel-good drama The Beautiful Game, about a homeless football team. Thankfully, the on-pitch action is kept in check for more character-based comedy and drama. Liam Neeson and Kerry Condon are terrific in the gritty thriller In the Land of Saints and Sinners, set during the Troubles in 1970s Ireland. And the French drama Ama Gloria takes a child's eye view for a slice of life with a couple of momentous moments along the way.

This coming week I'll continue catching up on things, and I have screenings of Scoop, The First Omen, Woody Allen's Coup de Chance, If Only I Could Hibernate and Someone Like You.

Critical Week: On top of the world

Christmas was a quiet one for me, as I tested positive for covid right before the holidays. I had no symptoms beyond a mild sniffly cold (which I probably would have had anyway), but I have had to isolate for a week and wait for a negative test. So I used the time to catch up on a few awards-season movies that I'd missed, including the French animated adventure The Summit of the Gods, a thrilling story about mountaineering with seriously spectacular imagery (find it on Netflix). The drama Mass centres around a conversation about a tragedy between four people, played by the superb Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton and Reed Birney. It's riveting and powerfully provocative.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Licorice Pizza • Titane
The Tragedy of Macbeth
ALL REVIEWS >

From Germany, the disarming comedy I'm Your Man stars Maren Eggert as a woman living with a robot (Dan Stevens) who has been designed as her perfect man. It's funny and hugely charming. From India, the documentary Writing With Fire follows a group of fierce female journalists who are making a huge impact on their nation. The Last Days of Innocence is a collection of four expertly made short films about that moment when childhood is interrupted by real life. And among the TV series and favourite old films I've been watching, I saw Last Train to Christmas, a fiendishly clever fantasy satire starring Michael Sheen that starts as a goofy comedy and becomes something surprisingly thoughtful.

Coming up this next week, my first in-person screening of the new year will be the action thriller The 355 with Jessica Chastain and Lupita Nyong'o, and I have more awards contenders to catch up with, including the Kosovo drama Hive and Mexico's Prayers for the Stolen.

Critical Week: Is it raining?

Happy New Year from now-outside-the-EU London! Days have been blurring together over as I watch movies, go for walks and eat, and not a lot else. I'm still catching up on awards-season titles as voting deadlines approach. It's a tricky business, deciding which ones are worth the time and which can perhaps be skipped. As a critic, I hate not to give everyone a fair shake, but I do have to set priorities. Among the ones I watched were the quirky Irish romantic-comedy Wild Mountain Thyme, with Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan and Christopher Walken. Odd casting aside, it's warm and funny. Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman are on top form in the sharply well-made drama The Father, based on a stage play. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
We Can Be Heroes • DNA
Pieces of a Woman 
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Blackout 
ALL REVIEWS >

There was also Michelle Pfeiffer, terrific alongside the always-watchable Lucas Hedges in the black comedy French Exit. An all-star cast including Dan Stevens, Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher and Judi Dench star in an entertaining if not particularly needed remake of Noel Coward's nutty comedy Blythe Spirit. Jack O'Connell and Olivia Cooke star in the swirling, sensual, sad romance Little Fish. And Kelly Reichardt's First Cow is one of the best bromances in recent memory, following two men in 19th century Oregon.

Much less demanding, Robert Rodriguez's colourful kids' superhero movie We Can Be Heroes is an energetic guilty pleasure. And then there was this eclectic trio: Savage is a gritty, violent story of gang life in New Zealand; DNA is a heartfelt French film looking into a woman's Algerian roots; and from Russia, The Blackout: Invasion Earth is an ambitious alien-attack epic that's messy but still spectacular. Finally, I caught up with two awards-worthy docs: an inventive exploration of grief and mortality in Dick Johnson Is Dead and a powerful look at disability rights history in Crip Camp.

I'm still catching up on contenders over the next week, as both the London and Online critics groups are casting nominations ballots next week. And I also need to watch a few films that are coming out over the next few weeks. It's a mixed bag that I haven't quite defined yet. 

Critical Week: Run away and join the circus

The lockdown continues to slowly ease in Britain, with most museums and cinemas reopening this week. Watching a movie in a mask isn't great, but it's great to see movies on a big screen again. And in addition to a press screening (with others coming up), I also attended a press launch for a museum exhibition. Even so, it's about time we had a silly animated circus adventure to take our mind off all of this. Animal Crackers isn't a great movie, but it's lively, colourful and wacky enough to do the trick.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Shadow of Violence • Casting
Summerland • The Vigil
PERHAPS AVOID:
Unhinged
FULL REVIEWS >

There were also some mid-range movies punching above their weight. Dave Franco's directing debut The Rental is a ripping thriller about a weekend getaway gone very wrong. Survive the Night is a clunky home invasion horror with a stone-faced Bruce Willis. Summerland is a skilfully made exploration of unexpected human connections with a terrific Gemma Arterton. And Life With Music is a rather sudsy drama about nostalgia starring Patrick Stewart and Katie Holmes.

Further from the beaten path, The Vigil is a stunning horror thriller rooted in Hasidic Jewish tradition, while Casting is an inventive improvised German comedy-drama about an attempt to cast a movie. There were also two docs: Pornstar Pandemic is an unstructured collection of footage in which adult actors talk about how they're coping with lockdown, while 2015's Scrum looks at the lives of players on Sydney's gay rugby team. And there's also a collection of four superb football-themed shorts from the UK, Germany and France called The Male Gaze: Strikers & Defenders.

I have one press screening in the diary this coming week, for Seth Rogen's An American Pickle. And on my list to watch at home, there's Roberto Begnini in Pinocchio, Gillian Jacobs in I Used to Go Here, the ensemble thriller What We Found, the horror fantasy Peripheral, the fantasy adventure Mortal, the Algerian memoir Papicha and the dark Guatemalan's drama La Llorona.

Critical Week: In at the deep end

Passing the 100-day mark in the London lockdown, this week also included my birthday, so I took it a little easier as far as screenings were concerned. There was also continually shifting ground relating to the reopening of UK cinemas. Most are now waiting another month, and won't open until August, because both the cinemas and the distributors need as much capacity for seating as possible in order to pay the bills. Press screenings are much less likely, because these are usually tiny rooms with very few seats, so it's looking like online viewing links will be the only option for us for awhile. I miss going to the movies for a communal experience. But even film festivals are bypassing press screenings, moving everything to streaming. So this may become a permanent change, but I hope not.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
A White, White Day
Four Kids and It • Cut Off
PERHAPS AVOID:
The F**k-It List
FULL REVIEWS >

As for the films I watched this past week: The F**k-It List is a well-acted teen comedy-drama (Eli Brown, above, is particularly good), but it's full of badly contradictory messages that sound great but are actually very dodgy. Will Ferrell's passion project Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga really should be more sharp-edged than this. But as an homage to the annual competition, it has some iconic moments of its own, and a great soundtrack. And Four Kids and It is a lively family adventure with some quirky comedy that nicely subverts any sentimentality. It's not terribly complex, but is enjoyable while it lasts.

Further afield, Cut Off is a strikingly well made thriller from Germany with a superbly complicated plot and the always terrific Moritz Bleibtreu. Midnight Kiss is a strongly written slasher comedy about a group of friends on holiday in Palm Springs over New Year when a killer strikes. Black Magic for White Boys is a close-to-the-knuckle freeform comedy with some provocative racial overtones. And for my birthday I revisited a favourite from 1987, that gloriously snarky fairy tale for adults The Princess Bride. Bliss.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Charlize Theron in The Old Guard, Garrett Hedlund in Burden, Tobias Menzies in Carmilla, the romcom Desperados, the thriller Parallax, the comedy Saint Frances, the Japanese musical We Are Little Zombies and the doc Mucho Mucho Amor.

Critical Week: Nose to nose

I've had a line-up of events and stage shows this week, rather than movies, which makes a very nice change. I only saw three films: The Call of the Wild is based on the Jack London novel about a dog's adventure in the Yukon, with a human cast including Harrison Ford, Omar Sy (pictured) and Dan Stevens. There is no dog cast, as that's Terry Notary in digital motion capture. The film is a lovely adventure but you can always tell that it's not a real dog.

There are actual horses in Dream Horse, based on the true story of a syndicate in a small Welsh village that raised a thoroughbred champion against the odds. Toni Collete leads an eclectic cast in an earthy, crowd-pleasing charmer. And Rosamund Pike stars as Marie Curie in the biopic Radioactive, which recounts the earth-changing scientist's life with some ambitious but distracting flourishes. And because I had the time, I revisited Parasite in a cinema packed-out with a paying audience, and loved it all over again. I originally saw it at a small press screening in September.

Outside the cinema I had the fringe theatre play Undetectable at the Kings Head (already reviewed) and the extremely starry press night for Message in a Bottle (review incoming), a thrilling dance performance staged to Sting's memorable songs and pointedly themed around the refugee experience. There was also a lively launch event for the new production of the Hairspray musical, which opens in April at the Coliseum starring Michael Ball and Paul Merton. I attended the Critics' Circle National Dance Awards, which was a terrific ceremony packed with luminaries from the dance world, including Cats star Francesca Hayward, who was named Best Female Dancer for her work with the Royal Ballet. And finally, the British Film Institute hosted the launch of the 34th edition of BFI Flare, London's LGBTIQ+ film festival, another lineup of great cinema that runs 18-29 March at BFI Southbank. The event included the lively annual launch party, complete with a seriously yummy cake designed to match the festival artwork (see below). This is my 22nd year covering this festival.

There's a bit more stage to come this week too, plus press screenings of The Invisible Man with Elisabeth Moss, Colour Out of Place with Nicolas Cage, Villain with Craig Fairbrass, Scott Graham's drama Run, the noir thriller Blood on Her Name and the romcom Straight Up.

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It’s the annual #BFIFlare cake! A particularly delicious one, I should add. Tonight’s was the programme launch for the festival’s 34th year.

A post shared by Rich Jack Cline (@ukcline) on Feb 18, 2020 at 2:53pm PST

Critical Week: Scary monsters

It's a third short week this spring here in Britain, so there have been fewer than usual screenings. But I did manage to catch up with Colossal, the genre-defying movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis. It's funny, scary, harrowing and very well-made. And then there was Sleepless, an almost painfully predictable cop thriller livened up by an adept cast that includes Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney and Scoot McNairy.

A hybrid crime thriller and arthouse drama, Away is a small British drama starring Timothy Spall and Juno Temple as two desperate people who meet in Blackpool. It's nicely shot and acted, but jarringly edited. And Last Men in Aleppo is the prize-winning documentary about the White Helmets, rescue workers in war-torn Syria. Skilfully shot on the ground during the fighting, it's utterly devastating to watch, and urgently important.

Screenings coming up this week include Ridley Scott's Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant, the comedy The Big Sick, the action movie Stratton, the road movie Folk Hero & Funny Guy, the period drama Interlude in Prague and the animated adventure Spark.

Shadows on the Screen: Spring TV roundup

Here's what I've been watching on television over the past few months, simply to escape from the movies, which are of course work for me. This is fun...

Big Little Lies

An offbeat style of TV from Jean-Marc Vallee with a strikingly starry cast, this series may take a fairly standard approach (unpicking the brittle undergrowth beneath an outwardly perfect community), but the Northern California setting adds a bold visual touch, and the A-list actors bring their A-game. Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Adam Scott and Alexander Sarsgaard are all excellent as prickly, deeply flawed people trying to show their best sides to everyone around them, including their hilariously precocious children. The way the scripts teased us with a murder was very clever, leading to a seriously heart-stopping finale. So bring on the next season.

Feud

A lively exploration of the rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, this series is so camp that it's hard not to love every moment. Whether it's all true is irrelevant, as the actors gleefully chomp on the scenery. Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon are superb in the lead roles, adeptly supported by Judy Davis, Alfred Molina and Stanley Tucci, plus Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kathy Bates in juicy side roles. It's a colourful romp through 1960s Hollywood, cleverly playing up the way the industry changed in the decades both before and afterwards. The Oscar episode was simply heavenly, and it'll be interesting to see if they can outdo that in the few episodes still left to go.

Taboo

Tom Hardy stars in (and with his father created and wrote) this series for the BBC, which takes a decidedly offbeat approach to the whole concept of the period drama. Dark and grimy, it's a clever collision of free-spirited adventure and cruel corporate greed in a very repressed early 19th century London. It's a period of history that's rarely depicted on-screen, so the entangled plot threads are genuinely fascinating, even if the show is relentlessly gloomy (it's virtually shot in monochrome). Hardy is excellent in the central role as the enigmatic explorer who takes on the system, with an imperious supporting performance from a dastardly Jonathan Pryce. A second series is coming.

Legion 

I've been turned off by all other superhero TV series this year, but was urged to take a look at this one. And the inventive approach of creator Noah Hawley (Fargo) certainly piqued my interest. These eight episodes were an action-packed rollercoaster of psychological thrills and more visceral nuttiness. Even so, the kaleidoscopic narrative fragmentation is a little off-putting, continually throwing the audience out of anything terribly engaging emotionally. And excessive gunplay always bugs me. But Dan Stevens is simply fantastic, giving a staggeringly textured performance at the centre. And any show that deploys the great Jean Smart and Aubrey Plaza to maximum effect gets my vote. 

The Get Down

Baz Luhrmann's dazzling series is a thrilling fictionalised drama using real people from the emerging hip-hop movement in 1970s New York. The characters are strikingly vivid, specifically a group of teens who find themselves caught between their parents, gangs, politicians and their love of music. As the central character Ezekiel, Justice Smith is magnetic - a rising star getting ready to go supernova. Luhrmann gives all of this an impressionistic mythological sensibility that feels earthy and authentic and also wildly fantastical. The first six episodes last summer were exhilarating, and six more are due this spring.

When We Rise 

Gus Van Sant and Dustin Lance Black revisit Harvey Milk-era San Francisco in this eight-part series, which traces some 50 years in the gay equality movement. Shot with an almost documentary realism, the series centres on four survivors who served as consultants for the series: Cleve Jones, Roma Guy, Ken Jones and Cecilia Chung. This means that scenes are based on first-hand accounts, which makes the deeply personal storylines much more powerfully involving. It's all a bit earnest and worthy, but that's only because the themes are so big. Thankfully, everything is grounded in these real people, and the cast recreates them beautifully, especially Austin McKenzie and Jonathan Majors as the young Cleve and Ken (Guy Pearce and Michael K Williams adeptly play them in later years).

Insecure

This 8-part half-hour comedy series has a strong cast and terrific characters, although the series title is a big problem, as it perpetuates the stereotype of the seemingly strong woman who is actually crippled by insecurity. It also seems to portray turning 30 as some sort of magical moment of maturity or seriousness - another cultural myth that really needs to be debunked. Otherwise, this show is beautifully written and played with a snappy sense of humour. Relationship issues feel bracingly realistic, and the actors are all superb, especially creator Issa Rae and Jay Ellis.

Deep Water

This four-part Australian TV series centres on Bondi Beach detectives (Yael Stone and Noah Taylor) who discover inexplicable links between a present-day murder and a series of unsolved hate-crime killings from the late 1980s, which the police ignored at the time. The show has a soapy emotional flair that sidesteps authenticity in lieu of flashy plot points, hot potato themes and shifty suspects. So it's a rather standard television procedural, overloaded with characters and shocking revelations. But the underlying issues tough on things that haven't improved as much as we'd like to think they have in the past 25 years. And it's strikingly well shot, with engaging performances.

BACK FOR MORE

Sherlock: Series 4

With its sporadic episodes, this show has been drifting in an increasingly smug direction for awhile now. It's still strikingly well acted, and produced to a very high standard. But the inventive visuals are increasingly gimmicky, and the further the plots drift from the Conan Doyle stories, the less interesting or engaging they become. This incarnation of the detective won us over with clever adaptations of original stories to modern settings. But the mysteries in these episodes are merely tricksy and self-satisfied, and the show seems to be riding on Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman rather than deploying them as the characters. We'd like more, but please get back on track.

The Man in the High Castle: Series 2

I wasn't planning to return to this show, but there wasn't anything else on at the time. The cast is strong enough to maintain the intrigue, especially Luke Kleintank, hugely sympathetic as Joe, a young guy on a complex journey into his Nazi roots. And Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa beautifully underplays Tagomi's increasingly dark odyssey. But the plotting is increasingly cheesy, with lots of melodramatic revelations and ironic twists, plus an extension of the parallel timeline premise that never quite came into focus. By the end it was a bit difficult to get excited about much of what happened. So whether I watch the next season will probably again depend on alternative programming.

Tracey Ullman's Show: Series 2

The expert mimic continues to lampoon both modern culture and celebrity figures with this brisk sketch comedy. Some of the segments are inspired, mainly those that address some aspect of society that's flatly ridiculous anyway. Other things feel a bit tired; as clever as they are, the ongoing alternative sagas of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith should have been abandoned in lieu of new targets. As this season went on, it dragged badly. A few moments of sharp invention kept it moving, but without a complete reinvention, I doubt that I'll be back for a third series.

ONGOING

Girls: Series 6

The final season of Lena Dunham's groundbreaking series sends her character into yet another unexpected adventure: pregnancy. It's the bold writing and acting that make this show so exceptional, a willingness to go places movies and TV shows never go, with characters who are complex, flawed and often darkly unlikeable, and yet also easy to identify with. And laugh with. While Dunham quietly takes Hannah in some offbeat directions, there are more colourful arcs for Marnie (Allison Williams) and Elijah (Andrew Rannells) this year. Without ever being flashy or gimmicky, this has been a clever deconstruction of the sitcom. And with only a few episodes to go, it's impossible to predict where we'll leave these hot-mess characters.

Homeland: Series 6

Like some sort of reboot, this series cleverly threw a massive shift into the premise, bringing Claire Danes' Carrie back to America as a private citizen getting involved in a political mess involving her former CIA bosses (the great Mandy Patinkin and F Murray Abraham), her former colleague (Rupert Friend) and the president elect (Elizabeth Marvel). The last season in Berlin was thrilling, but this one has a whole new level of intensity to it, grounding the action in everyday reality, even as it echoes other shows like House of Cards and Scandal. And there's such a strong sense of righteous anger running through it that it's unmissable.

Mom: Series 4

Despite the too-enthusiastic live audience, this show is still worth watching simply for Alison Janney's impeccable characterisation, and Anna Faris is also excellent. Most surprising is that it's a silly comedy that indulges in the expected jokes and pratfalls surrounding family and friends, but underscores everything with seriously dark touches, mainly as it explores the central characters' various addictions. It doesn't seem like this was initially envisioned as a 12-step sitcom, but that's where it has ended up, and it's what makes it worth watching.

Jane the Virgin: Series 3

I came late to this bracingly well-written pastiche of Latin telenovelas, but I have since caught up to the present, travelling through the twisted knot of entwined narratives. It's broadly silly, and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious in its deliberately messy plotting, but the characters are allowed to deepen and evolve, which gives the show a surprising dramatic kick. It also lets actors like Gina Rodrigues, Andrea Navedo, Yael Grobglas and Justin Baldoni find unexpected edges in their characters.

Schitt's Creek: Series 3

Frankly, after the first season it was unclear how the writers could keep this comedy going, and there were times when it felt like a stretch. But Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are so funny in the main roles, impeccably supported by Dan Levy, Annie Murphy and Emily Hampshire, that you'd watch them all sitting around chatting about the weather. So it's nice that the plot is actually going somewhere rather interesting, finding interesting things to say about a family of millionaires stranded in small-town America.

Coming up: I'm looking forward to more of Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Veep, Fargo, Grace and Frankie, House of Cards, The Get Down and hopefully some new discoveries.

Critical Week: A bit of a giggle

Well, that photo certainly isn't very indicative of Terence Davies' new film A Quiet Passion, the Emily Dickinson biopic that screened for London-based press this week (it also featured in last October's London Film Festival). A gloomy but strikingly realistic period film, it's livened up by the crisp performances of Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle, and it features lots of Dickinson's wonderfully evocative poetry, but it's pretty grim stuff. There was also a much bigger movie, Disney's remake of the 1991 classic Beauty and the Beast, which stirs live actors into the now photo-realistic animated fairy tale. It's still a hugely engaging story, and the actors and filmmakers add superb subtext, but fans of the original may find it unnecessary.

The best film of the year so far is the Oscar-nominated doc I Am Not Your Negro, which inventively reframes the race issue as the overall history of America. A stunning film, beautifully adapted from James Baldwin's words. We also had the slickly made, action-packed Korean period thriller The Age of Shadows, the grim but inventive British rural drama The Levelling, the astute and moving Chilean drama You'll Never Be Alone, and the serious-themed Italian road comedy A Little Lust.

Coming up this next week, we have Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale in The Promise, Charlie Hunnam and Tom Holland in The Lost City of Z, Dax Shepard and Michael Pena in CHiPs, and the Finnish comedy The Other Side of Hope. Also, the 31st BFI Flare kicks off on Thursday with the world premiere of the true British drama Against the Law. Look for comments on that film and lots of others in regular updates over the next two weeks.

Critical Week: Groovy baby

One of the more anticipated films of the year is Jimi: All Is By My Side, a biopic about Jimi Hendrix written and directed by 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley. The film actually premiered in Toronto last year (alongside 12 Years a Slave), but it was only shown to the UK press this past week. It's bold approach is bound to get an intriguing response when it opens, and not just because the then-25 Hendrix is played by 40-year-old Andre Benjamin.

The other big-name film screened this week was A Walk Among the Tombstones, a gritty mystery thriller starring Liam Neeson an Dan Stevens (comments are embargoed for now). We also caught up with two more festival films: Mr Turner is Mike Leigh's astonishingly fresh and inventive painter biopic starring the Cannes-winner Timothy Spall, and '71 is an episodic but riveting Northern Ireland thriller that's also the latest in Jack O'Connell's full-on assault on cinema, following Starred Up and preceding Angelina Jolie's Unbroken.

With London's FrightFest coming this weekend, there have also been a few horror movies to watch. Life After Beth is a superb comical twist on the zombie genre starring Aubrey Plaza as a teen who doesn't know that she's come back from the dead. Allelulia is a chillingly involving take on the Lonely Hearts Killers from Belgian filmmaker Fabrice Du Welz starring Lola Duenas and Laurent Lucas. And Found is an unnerving and oddly moving hybrid between the coming-of-age and slasher horror genres. Finally, as part of the terrific Dennis Hopper photographic exhibition at the Royal Academy, we had a chance to catch one of his films on the big screen. So I of course chose his lesser-known The Last Movie (1971), a crazed collage set among a film crew shooting a Western in Peru. It's challenging and seriously worth a look for cinephiles.

This coming week we have a very late screening of Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Marion Cotillard in the Dardenne brothers' Two Days One Night, Helen Mirren in The Hundred-Foot Journey, the British football movie United We Fall and more horror in The Mirror, among other things.