Critical Week: Duelling divas

Two of the biggest movies this week were released online, so I watched them in my heatwave-warmed home rather than a nicely air conditioned cinema. Charlize Theron takes on a villainous Uma Thurman in The Old Guard 2, a sleek sequel that carries on the saga of a team of immortal mercenaries. But it bogs down in the mythology before a cliffhanger ending. Much stupider, and therefore a lot more fun, is Heads of State, starring John Cena and Idris Elba as bickering leaders of the US and UK forced to work together to save Nato. The starry supporting cast includes a scene-stealing Jack Quaid and hilariously sparky Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Heads of State
Jurassic World: Rebirth
ALL REVIEWS >

David Cronenberg's dark mystery The Shrouds is packed with intriguing ideas and striking imagery, plus churning performances by Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger. It's also gets more enigmatic as it goes along. And Sam Riley is terrific as a scruffy surfer-like tennis pro in Islands, a provocative drama that inventively subverts its thriller-like plot and characters who never speak the whole truth. All in gorgeous Canary Islands locations. I also caught a couple of live shows: my favourite-ever Edinburgh Fringe act triumphantly hit London for one night only with Otto & Astrid: The Stages Tour at Jackson's Lane, and another iconic duo returned to London after 17 long years with Kiki & Herb Are Trying at Soho Theatre Walthamstow.

This coming week we have James Gunn's new take on Superman, Nick Offerman in Sovereign, Maxine Peake in I Swear, the Dardenne brothers' Young Mothers, Spanish comedy-drama The Other Way Around and a live performance of R.O.S.E. at Sadler's Wells.

Critical Week: Killer heels

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Amid growing covid-related issues in the UK, London-based critics have had our first press screening of 2022: a masked-up full house enjoying pre-film cocktails, popcorn and photo ops before watching the globe-hopping action movie The 355 on a huge Leicester Square screen. The movie has its moments, thanks to the far above-average cast (above are Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o and Diane Kruger), although the lazy script and choppy-shaky action scenes let it down rather badly.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
A Hero • Writing With Fire
Licorice Pizza • Ailey
Munich: The Edge of War 
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Other films seen this week were an eclectic bunch. Minyan is a thoughtful, insightful drama set in 1980s Brooklyn as a teen struggles with the tension between his tight Russian-Jewish family and his newfound homosexuality. From Kosovo, Hive is a superbly understated true story of a woman taking on her sexist society. Mads Mikkelsen is terrific as a burly soldier in Riders of Justice, an unusually smart and engaging Danish variation on the Taken vengeance formula. Quentin Dupieux is back with another endearingly bonkers adventure, Mandibles, about two chuckleheads who find a gigantic housefly. And from Spain, More the Merrier is a multi-strand comedy set around a club for swingers. Sometimes very sexy, the film struggles to escape from the usual prudish attitudes.

This coming week I'll finally catching up with Ben Affleck in The Tender Bar, Shawn Ashmore in Free Fall, the Swiss drama La Mif, and the documentary Taming the Garden.

Critical Week: Odd couple

One nice thing about the films I've seen this week is that I haven't needed to write long reviews for each one. So here are shorter comments on the movies I've caught up with over the holidays so far, starting with the one pictured above (that's Will Smith with, yes, Joel Edgerton)...

Bright
dir David Ayer; with Will Smith, Joel Edgerton 17/US *.
Perhaps there was something interesting in Max Landis' script for this fantasy cop thriller, but director David Ayer brings his usual sledgehammer approach, obliterating any character nuance or plot intrigue with a barrage of bullets, explosions and relentless machismo. The one decent twist in the tale is badly telegraphed from the start, and it's all so blunt that it leaves the actors lost. Smith can survive this kind of thing with his wits, but Edgerton's excellent acting chops are swamped by his excessive makeup. This eliminates any chance of proper camaraderie as they play human Ward and orc Jakoby, cops partnering in a parallel reality Los Angeles in which a psychotic elf (Noomi Rapace) is plotting to resurrect a dark lord, but first needs to track down her missing wand, which can only be touched by a bright like the young Tikka (Lucy Fry), whom Ward and Jakoby have rescued. Along with endlessly dull mythology in the dialog, scenes are packed with incoherent chases, shootouts, fights and lots of magical nonsense. Even the solid cast, which includes Edgar Ramirez, Jay Hernandez and Margaret Cho, can't save this one.

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Raw

dir-scr Julia Ducournau; with Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf 16/Bel ****

A chillingly original take on the coming-of-age story, this French drama takes a series of almost outrageously gruesome twists and turns. There's a dark undercurrent of meaning here, but writer-director Julia Ducournau seems mainly interested in freaking out the audience with some extreme femininity. It's the story of teen Justine (Marillier), who is enduring a particularly painful week of hazing as she starts veterinary school, following the footsteps of her big sister Alex (Rumpf). A strict vegetarian, the worst thing for Justine is being forced to eat a bit of raw meat. And she's horrified to discover she now has a craving for meat, including the human kind. Ducournau kind of taunts the audience with unfinished scenes and lots of waking up unaware of what happened the night before. But the film is gleefully grisly and darkly provocative. A true original.

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Aquarius

dir-scr Kleber Mendonca Filho; with Sonia Braga, Zoraide Coleto 16/Br ***.

Brazilian filmmaker Mendonca isn't terribly subtle with this over-long drama about the clash between old-world humanity and present-day commercialism, but the film has a loose energy that makes it worth a look. And Sonia Braga shines in the central role. She plays retired journalist Clara, a woman who has had a long, full life then finds herself the last occupant of the seaside apartment block in Recife where she raised her children with her late husband. Now she's the only thing stopping the developers from knocking down the building so they can construct a gleaming tower in its place. But she has no intention of going, so simply gets on with her life, spending time with her friends, children, grandson and a favourite nephew, continuing her lifelong bond with housekeeper Ladjane (Coleto) and enjoying her extensive, eclectic music collection. All of this meanders a bit, and the final act feels both heavy-handed and oddly unfinished. But watching Braga is sheer joy.

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Jane

dir-scr Brett Morgen; with Jane Goodall, Hugo van Lawick 17/US ***.

Using a treasure trove of unseen footage from the early 1960s, this documentary traces the life and pioneering work of Jane Goodall. It's fascinating to watch her as an untrained 26-year-old head into the wilds of Tanzania with only her innate curiosity and patience to work with. She was specifically selected for those qualities - and for her lack of scientific education - and as a result her observations of chimpanzees told the world things no one ever knew, in the process changing the definition of what it means to be human. This may not be a particularly original observation, but filmmaker Brett Morgan assembles this doc beautifully, making the most of the footage skilfully shot by Goodall's husband Hugo van Lawick. And since it's narrated by the luminous 83-year-old Goodall herself, it's full of pointed personal commentary. Her life journey is moving and important.

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The Work

dir Jairus McLeary, Gethin Aldous; with Brian, Charles, Dark Cloud 17/US ***.

There's rather a lot of navel gazing in this involving documentary about a group of men working through their deep-seated issues in a California prison support group. Intriguingly, the film follows several non-inmates as they join the prisoners in Folsom and find themselves right in the middle of the cathartic experience. All of these men have serious issues with their fathers, expressed through their lives in a variety of ways. And how they confront them varies from man to man, sometimes through baring the soul and sometimes through making the struggle a physical one. Each of them is in tears at some point. It's all rather intense, and extremely over-serious. But it's also a remarkably honest look at the way masculinity is expressed in American culture. And it's shot in a strikingly observational way that gets very, very personal. It's a view of male identity that's rarely if ever seen on-screen.

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I also watched the superb Irish drama Sanctuary and the acclaimed German thriller In the Fade starring Diane Kruger, as well as a couple of Christmas films, including the Victoria Christmas movie, Sarah Jessica Parker in The Family Stone (2005) and Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays (1995), which I'd never seen before.

And there are a few more films I need to see this coming week, before the final round of voting in a couple of awards, and also just to wrap up my year - things like Angelina Jolie's First They Killed My Father and the British dramas Lies We Tell and Journey's End. If I have time....

Critical Week: Join the jet set

Diane Kruger and Bryan Cranston are terrific in The Infiltrator, based on the true story of federal agents infiltrating the Colombian drug trade in the mid-80s. And then there's Jonah Hill and Miles Teller getting involved in the illicit arms trade in War Dogs, a lively and too-violent comedy from the director of The Hangover. The week's other heavy hitter was also a true story, although it's from the 1860s. Free State of Jones is a long, important and perhaps too-earnest drama starring Matthew McConaughey as a southerner who rebelled against the Confederacy.

And then there was the British post-apocalyptic thriller The Girl With All the Gifts, a terrific premise with an excellent cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close, Paddy Considine and talented newcomer Sennia Nanua. The third film in the series, The Purge: Election Year continues the rather anachronistic anti-violence preachiness alongside gratuitous grisly horror. 400 Days is an uneven low-fi thriller starring Brandon Routh and Caity Lotz as astronauts preparing to go to Mars but ending up somewhere entirely different. And Liebmann is an involving, offbeat German drama set in France, as a guy moves to a rural town to escape his past, but it of course catches up with him.

This coming week I have screenings of Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper, the animated adventure Kubo and the Two Strings, the action mayhem of Kickboxer: Vengeance, the arthouse thriller Under the Shadow, the acclaimed festival film The Clan and the horror romp We Are the Flesh.