Raindance: Take your shot

The 33rd Raindance Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday with the world premiere of the British drama Heavyweight and a properly epic afterparty at with special honours were presented to screen icons Celia Imrie and Jason Isaacs. The festival runs over the next 10 days with a flurry of independent films. I'm trying to limit how many I watch, aiming for one per day. So here are the first two...

Heavyweight
dir-scr Christopher M Anthony; with Jordan Bolger, Nicholas Pinnock 25/UK ****
Unfolding in real time and largely in a single room, like a stage play, this British boxing drama has a propulsive pace as it traces the run-up to a championship bout. Writer-director Christopher Anthony keeps the tension high with edgy dialog, beefy performances, prowling camerawork and a churning underscore. The sheer machismo on display is perhaps a bit exhausting, but it's balanced by a terrific sense of underlying emotion.

A Cell Phone Movie
dir-scr Will Sterling; with Will Sterling, Tessa Glanville 25/US ****
As the title indicates, this meta-comedy was shot on a mobile phone. It looks great, skilfully filmed in wide-screen and sharply well-edited too. Actor-filmmaker Will Sterling is a charming lead, and the comedy is warm and off-the-cuff, with a continual stream of witty gags about trying to make a no-budget movie. Even more engaging are the thoughtfully serious sequences that dig deeper into the characters and situations.

Full reviews of festival films will be linked here in due course: SHADOWS @ RAINDANCE >

~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~
C R I T I C A L  W E E K

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Red Path • 28 Years Later
Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf
ALL REVIEWS >

This week I got to attend the glamorous world premiere of Jurassic World: Rebirth, with the full cast and crew in attendance, including Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali. And the film is great fun. The new Pixar animation Elio is an enjoyable if familiar space romp, but it's packed with dazzling touches. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are back with 28 Years Later, a superbly ripping addition to the franchise. John Travolta stars in the wobbly but watchable caper comedy High Rollers. Harry Melling and Caleb Landry Jones lead the cast of Scottish period weirdness Harvest, which struggles to make its point. Writer-director Eva Victor stars with Naomi Ackie in the beautifully written and directed Sorry, Baby, putting a truthful spin on a big event. Leonie Benesch is excellent as an overworked nurse in the expertly shot Swiss drama Late Shift. And the properly stunning Tunisian drama Red Path tells a riveting true story with power and emotion. I also attended the opening night cabaret for this year's London Clown Festival

This coming week there are many more films at Raindance, plus Brad Pitt in F1, Dylan O'Brien in Ponyboi, the indie comedy Rent Free, the French comedy Colours of Time and the Colombian drama Salt Water, plus the premiere for Lena Dunham's TV series Too Much and three live performances: Quadrophenia at Sadler's Wells, Jonah Non Grata at Soho Theatre and Botis Seva's Until We Sleep at Sadler's Wells East.

Critical Week: I need a place to hide away

I landed back in London last weekend and dove back into the thick of it, having missed several press screenings while I was travelling over the past few weeks. One of this summer's higher profile films, Danny Boyle's rom-com Yesterday has a simple premise (what if everyone forgot about the Beatles except for one guy - played by Himesh Patel, above with James Corden) and plays out as a loving ode to the greatest pop music of all time. It's also funny and romantic. On the plane, I caught up with Sebastian Lelio's Gloria Bell, his own sparky English-language remake starring the fabulous Julianne Moore as a rather too-glamorous middle-aged woman grappling with life, love and independence.

Off the beaten track, Being Frank is a quirky comedy starring Jim Gaffigan as a man whose teen son discovers he has two families. Surprisingly, he remains likeable through it all. Deep Murder is a pastiche whodunit set within a porn movie. It's very funny, nasty and not remotely sexy. The British independent film Bait is an earthy drama about fisherman clashing with tourists, shot gorgeously on grainy 16mm black and white film. A Season in France is a dark and involving French drama about asylum seekers that maintains a hopeful tone even when things get rather hopeless. And Bulbul Can Sing is a strikingly naturalistic drama from India about three young teens trying to be themselves in a constrictive rural setting.

Coming up, I have a very late catch-up with Men in Black: International, which opens tomorrow. It'll be a busy week, as I'm also seeing Toy Story 4, Aubrey Plaza in the reboot Child's Play, the Aussie comedy Swinging Safari with Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue, Joanna Hogg's acclaimed The Souvenir, dystopian British drama Division 19, the South African musical Kanarie, the refugee drama Amin, Asaf Kapadia's documentary Diego Maradona and the Pride-themed doc Are You Proud?

Critical Week: Muscle power

There were two big decades-later sequels screened to critics in London this week. XXX: Return of Xander Cage returns Vin Diesel to his extreme-sports spy 15 years after he last played him. The movie is just as preposterous, but thankfully has a sense of humour about it. And T2 Trainspotting is a 20-year reunion for the cast and crew of the cinema-changing Scottish drama. Danny Boyle cleverly adapts the film's kinetic style to a new middle-aged vibe, with a resonant running theme about the nature of nostalgia and growing up. And Viceroy's House is Gurinder Chadha's personal account of the independence and partition of India in 1947 (more about the film closer to the release date).

We also got to see John Waters' "lost" 1970 black comedy Multiple Maniacs in a restored digital projection. It looks fantastic, and is jaw-droppingly unmissable - outrageous even after all these years. And I also caught up with a timely HBO documentary...

---

Bright Lights
dir Alexis Bloom, Fisher Stevens; with Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher 16/US ****
Warm and intimate, this documentary traces the close relationship between mother and daughter Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. Anchored largely by Fisher's wry ongoing commentary, the film traces the careers of both actresses, as well as their private lives. It reveals that these two were tight friends who supported each other through the ups and downs of their lives with earthy humour and a fascinating balance of realism and optimism. It's a beautiful portrait of both women, and it also offers a bracing look at the life of Hollywood royalty over the past half century or so. From Carrie's astonishing singing talent to Debbie's unrequited passion to protect Hollywood's legacy, there's plenty in this movie that makes it an important document. But it's also emotionally moving, especially poignant following their deaths. Notably, the film was completed more than six months earlier. A must see for fans of Hollywood's golden age, from Singin' in the Rain to Star Wars.

---

This weekend I have been consumed with my role as chair of the 37th London Critics' Circle Film Awards, the fifth year I've organised the event. The star-studded ceremony is on Sunday at The May Fair Hotel and I'll have a full report with photos here as soon as possible. I also have screenings this coming week of Mindhorn, Spaceship, The Odyssey and Who's Gonna Love Me Now. I know nothing about any of them.

Critical Week: Beardy men unite!

That's Vin Diesel in the photo above. Yes, really. He's going a rather decent Tom Hardy impression in the olde worlde scenes in his new franchise hopeful The Last Witch Hunter, which was screened to London press on Monday only a couple of days before it opens in cinemas. Whether that franchise materialises depends on the audience's appetite for a batty supernatural thriller that mixes Game of Thrones with Underworld. But it got a lot of laughs from the critics!

Most of the films I watched over the previous week were London Film Festival offerings. Some of these have release dates coming up, including Danny Boyle's exhilarating Steve Jobs starring Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet; Jack Black in the manic comedy-horror romp Goosebumps; Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford in the true journalism drama Truth; the artful, surprisingly moving documentary The Fear of 13, about a man on death row; and Jafar Panahi's Taxi Tehran, his superbly mischievous third film as a banned filmmaker in Iran.

Tomorrow comes the first press screening of one of the year's most anticipated movies, Sam Mendes' Spectre, starring Daniel Craig as James Bond. I've also got the British comedy A Christmas Star in the diary, as well as Josh Duhamel in Lost in the Sun and the pre-apocalyptic Mexican buddy movie Velociraptor. I'm also planning to binge watch the entire old series of David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks in preparation for a press trip to The Owls Are Not What They Seem, a themed cafe-club night in a secret London location. Watch this space for a full report!

LFF 12: Sail away

The 59th London Film Festival came to an end this evening with the gala screening of Steve Jobs. But before that, Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier (above) walked off with the award for best film. Annoyingly that was one of the films on my need-to-see list that I didn't manage to see (it's impossible to see everything).

Once again, the LFF proved itself a rather harsh atmosphere for the press - unlike most festivals in the world, we have to pay dearly for our accreditation, and there are no parties, no freebies, just lots of great movies, usually showing five at a time so you have to choose carefully what you see. It's pretty exhausting, but the programme is an excellent compendium of the year's top festivals, so it's a great way to catch up. Here are the prize winners, my favourites, and a couple more highlights...

LFF AWARDS 2015:

Best Film: CLEVALIER
Doc (Grierson Award): SHERPA
First Feature (Sutherland Award): THE WITCH
BFI Fellowship: Cate Blanchett
BFI Ambassador: Tom Hiddleston

MY BEST OF THE FEST:

1. CAROL
2. ROOM
3. VICTORIA
4. TANGERINE
5. STEVE JOBS
6. TAXI TEHRAN
7. TRUMBO
8. OUR LITTLE SISTER
9. THE CLUB
10. A BIGGER SPLASH

Special mention: FROM AFAR. THE LOBSTER. THE ENDLESS RIVER. TRUMAN. QUEEN OF EARTH. SUFFRAGETTE. GRANDMA. THE FORBIDDEN ROOM. HE NAMED ME MALALA. YOUTH.

Steve Jobs
dir Danny Boyle; with Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet 15/US ****.
Whether this film is an accurate portrait of the eponymous Apple founder is frankly irrelevant. This is a storming example of the power of cinema to tell a story with complexity and invention. Every element works together to carry the audience through the narrative using just three key scenes that would actually play well on-stage. But the way it's shot and edited adds layers of depth... MORE >

Goosebumps
dir Rob Letterman; with Jack Black, Dylan Minnette 15/US ***
Like Jumanji on steroids, this action-horror romp packs the screen with animated mayhem swirling around an established comedian and a cast of plucky kids. The breathless pace holds the attention, boosted by surprisingly sophisticated gags peppered all the way through. But while working overtime to keep the audience entertained, it undermines every serious point it pretends to make... MORE >

Critical Week: Don't read that book!

The week's biggest screening was Evil Dead, a remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 classic about a group of young people who find a sinister book in a cabin in the woods and unleash all sorts of nasty horror. This version has some very nice touches, and gore-hounds will absolutely adore it. We also caught up with Danny Boyle's twisty, gleaming, enjoyably over-complicated hypnosis thriller Trance, starring James McAvoy; Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in the amusing but pointlessly overcomplicated comedy Identity Thief; Bryan Singer's epic-sized fairy tale action movie Jack the Giant Slayer, in which a lively cast rescues us from digital overload; and Jim Sturgess and Kirstin Dunst in the fantasy-romance Upside Down, which is strong on ideas but short on logic and story.

A bit further off the beaten path were Bernardo Bertolucci's perceptive and remarkably youthful Italian drama Me and You; the astonishing, essential British doc We Went to War, which catches up with Vietnam veterans after filmmaker Michael Grigsby (who sadly died last week) first documented them in 1970; and an intriguing but annoyingly indulgent French actor-director encounter in Unfaithful.

This coming week we have the action sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the comedy 21 and Over, Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan in Byzantium, Eric Bana and Olivia WIlde in Deadfall, the American indie Four and the Filipino-Malaysian drama Bwakaw.

Olympics Day 1: Rule Britannia

Filmmaker Danny Boyle did the UK proud last night with an opening ceremony that managed to reflect the nation's history, culture, arts and personality with artistry, humour and spectacle. From the gorgeous set pieces depicting this "green and pleasant land" as well as the devastation of empire and industry, the show pivoted into moments that were absurd (Daniel Craig parachuting into the stadium with the Queen), ridiculous (Mr Bean trying to play along with Chariots of Fire) and sublime (massive appearances from British children's literature characters like Mary Poppins, Lord Voldemort, the Queen of Hearts and Cruella DeVil).

There was a lot of music - perhaps a bit too bewildering in its swirling melange, and Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude was a bit anti-climactic. But it was great to see nods to Britain's social heritage, from women's rights to labour unions to the National Health Service. And the cauldron, combining flames representing each participating nation, is simply breathtaking.

Today saw the doling out of the first gold medals, and China emerged with surprise victories in swimming and shooting to top the medals chart. There's a lot more tomorrow, including the start of the diving competition. And I get to see my first live event tomorrow - volleyball at Earl's Court.