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: Size matters

There were two rather underwhelming sequels to see this past week, neither of which came with very high expectations. Kickboxer: Retaliation is the middle part of a rebooted trilogy starring Alain Moussi and the original star Jean-Claude Van Damme, plus assorted massive meatheads. It looks great, so it's a shame so little attention was paid to characters or story. And then there's the Maze Runner trilogy finale, The Death Cure, with its somewhat messy mythology and bland characters. The film has its moments, but never quite comes to life.

Two small British films at least tried something original. Lies We Tell is a rather choppy crime thriller set in Yorkshire starring a mopey Gabriel Byrne. And Gholam is a riveting, slow-burning London thriller starring the excellent Iranian actor Shahab Hosseini. Even further afield, I enjoyed seeing a big-screen press preview of the restored version of Ingmar Bergman's witty film of Mozart's The Magic Flute. And I watched all of the episodes for the snappy, clever web series Dropping the Soap, which is out soon on dvd. As the title suggests, it's a backstage soap opera spoof. And I also greatly enjoyed this doc, which I needed to see for awards voting purposes...

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Bombshell
dir-scr Alexandra Dean; with Diane Kruger, Robert Osborne 17/US ****
Based around the discovery of a lost interview recorded on cassette tapes in 1990 when she was 76, this documentary traces the extraordinary journey of movie siren and brainy inventor Hedy Lamarr from her childhood in Austria to her reclusive old age in America. Along the way, she shared the screen with all of Hollywood's biggest stars as the most beautiful woman in movies. But she was always aware that no one took notice of her intelligence. "Any girl can look glamorous," she said famously. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid." And now it emerges that Lamarr had a secret life of curiosity and scientific ambition, including a working friendship with Howard Hughes and conceiving the idea that would lead to modern communications systems like wifi and bluetooth (the US government never paid her for her patent, which the doc claims would amount to some $30bn today). She also built the first ski resort in Aspen, which was stolen from her by a vindictive ex-husband. Filmmaker Dean assembles this beautifully, using Lamarr's own voice and a wealth of footage and stills. It's a gripping film, packed with emotional kicks and an inspiring final message from Lamarr herself, reminding us that when the world treats us badly, we should give our best anyway.

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Much of my time has been spend working on the impending Critics' Circle Film Awards on Sunday night - I'm the chair, so haven't had much spare time to catch up with press screenings. Maybe next week. I've got the Bruce Lee biopic Birth of the Dragon in the diary, as well as the Helen Mirren ghost story Winchester.

LFF 10: Close with a bang

And that's it. The 60th BFI London Film Festival came to a close tonight with the red carpet UK premiere of Ben Wheatley's Free Fire. Most of the cast were on hand (that's Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Michael Smiley, Enzo Cilenti, Jack Reynor and Cillian Murphy, above), and I'm sure the party was a lot of fun. Not that I'd know: in the 19 years I've been covering the LFF I have never been invited to a festival party. But never mind - it's about the films for me, and here are some final highlights from Sunday...

Free Fire
dir Ben Wheatley; with Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley 16/UK ***.
With a bracingly simple premise and a screen full of hilariously quirky characters, Ben Wheatley plays a jazz riff on Tarantino in this riotous shoot-em-up. The plot may be under-defined and only barely developed, but the actors are having so much fun adding various shades of comedy and intensity to their roles that they keep the audience chuckling from start to finish.

Mascots
dir Christopher Guest; with Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr 16/US ***.
Using his improvisational mock-doc style, Christopher Guest takes on the world of sports mascotery. As in films like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, Guest's gifted ensemble provides a constant flow of verbal and visual gags, playing up the wackier aspects of this subculture. There's nothing particularly new here, no innovation to the format, but the movie is consistently hilarious.

The Salesman
dir-scr Asghar Farhadi; with Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti 16/Irn ****
Here's yet another almost overpoweringly perceptive everyday drama from Asghar Farhadi, putting a normal couple through a series of events that push them to the breaking point. The plot centres on unexpected conflicts that provide challenging comments on both morality and forgiveness. This is a subtle, personal film that holds the audience in its grip, unable to work out where it might be going next.

The Last Laugh 
dir Ferne Pearlstein; with Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman 16/US ****
Like The Aristocrats, this documentary explores the boundaries of what's appropriate in comedy. The specific topic here is when it's OK to crack a joke about a tragic event, specifically something as big and horrific as the Holocaust. What makes the film worth a look is how director Ferne Pearlstein strikes such a remarkable balance between the views of comics and survivors.

And finally, another film I saw in Venice was the Golden Lion winner The Woman Who Left, the riveting, nearly 4-hour drama by Lav Diaz. It was a last-minute addition to the London programme.

Critical Week: Life of the party

Chris Rock's comedy Top Five had great reviews in America last year, and has finally screened to UK critics ahead of its opening here this week. It's thoroughly hilarious, if a bit of an inside joke. Blake Lively stars in the fantasy-drama The Age of Adaline, very well-made but ultimately rather corny. Gugu Mbatha-Raw gives another thunderous performance in Beyond the Lights, a simplistic but engaging drama about the music industry costarring Nate Parker and Minnie Driver. And the mystery-thriller remake The Loft is packed with twists, turns, surprises and revelations, even if it never amounts to much and doesn't offer too much depth for fine actors like James Marsden, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eric Stonestreet, Karl Urban or Wentworth Miller.

Further afield, there was a screening of the long-shelved feature animation Dino Time, a lively story with substandard imagery and a starry voice cast that includes Jane Lynch, Melanie Griffith and Rob Schneider; Albert Maysles' beautifully made doc Iris, about 93-year-old eccentric fashion icon Iris Apfel; and the murky and sexy but obtuse apocalyptic Argentine love triangle What's Left of Us.

Coming up this week are screenings of Tom Hardy in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, the comedy A Royal Night Out, Idris Elba in Second Coming, the indie drama Everyone's Going to Die, British horror Unhallowed Ground, Oscar-nominated animation Song of the Sea and Spanish serial killer thriller Marshland. There's also a special press screening of the Orson Welles doc Magician to launch the BFI's Welles season, and an art gallery screening of Eleanor starring Ruth Wilson.

Sundance London: Day 4

And so it winds to an end, the second Sundance Film & Music Festival dragged me out to the O2 every day for the past week to see some very good films indeed (and a few only ok ones). My 5 best of the festival are In a World, Blood Brother, God Loves Uganda, The Kings of Summer and History of the Eagles Part One. Here are a few final notes...

Upstream Color
dir Shane Carruth; with Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth 13/US ***
Carruth is back with an even more challenging film than Primer, eschewing traditional narrative to create a sensual thriller based on visual and audio textures. But there's not much in the way of coherent plot or characterisation. It's a bit infuriating, as it indulgently refuses to coalesce into something focussed, but as a cinematic experience, it's pretty fascinating. It centres on a woman (Seimetz) who is robbed with the use of a trance-inducing worm. When she wakes up afterwards, she has a strange connection to a cyclical system involving pigs, a sound recordist and the other people who have been robbed this way, including a man (Carruth) she falls in love with. We never really have a clue what's happening, but the film is gorgeously shot and edited, with a stunning sound mix. And in the end, it's more like an eerily emotional David Lynch thriller than Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, which it strongly resembles.

A.C.O.D. 
dir Stu Zicherman; with Adam Scott, Richard Jenkins 13/US ***
There's a strong autobiographical feeling to this comedy, in the sense that the filmmaker is using it to work out his own issues as an Adult Child of Divorce. Yes, it feels like an act of therapy rather than an actual organic comedy. Fortunately, it has a strong cast of comedy experts who make it both funny and engaging. Scott stars as a guy terrified by the thought of his brother (Clark Duke) getting married, because it means their feuding parents (Jenkins and Catherine O'Hara) will be in a room together. So he turns to his childhood therapist (the magnificent Jane Lynch) for help, and discovers that he was the subject of a book as a child. And now she wants to write about him again as an ACOD. The dialog is snappy and often hilarious, performed to perfection by an up-for-it cast who know how to deliver a punchline. So it's a bit annoying that the plot itself feels so contrived, cycling through the expected situations on the way to the expected conclusion. The cast includes Amy Poehler, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ken Howard and Jessica Alba. Yes, really.

The Inevitible Defeat of Mister & Pete
dir George Tillman Jr; with Skylan Brooks, Ethan Dizon 13/US *** 
A strong story helps make up for this film's somewhat pushy tone, as it features young actors who are simply too sophisticated for their characters. But it's still thoroughly engaging, winning us over with its open-hearted approach and the tenacity of people living in such a difficult situation. Mister (Brooks) is a 14-year-old whose junkie-hooker mother (Jennifer Hudson) goes missing at the beginning of the summer. Saddled with Pete (Dizon), the 9-year-old she was babysitting, Mister decides they can survive alone for the summer and make it to his August audition for a role in a TV series, which will of course solve all his problems. As they panhandle for survival, they seek help from a wealthy friend (Jordin Sparks), a pimp (Anthony Mackie) and a homeless veteran (Jeffrey Wright), all while trying to avoid a ruthless cop (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Yes, the cast is impressive, but the script is extremely constructed, and the young actors are a bit too good to be true. But the story is important, and the film wins us over with its genuine emotional depth.

The Summit
dir Nick Ryan; with Pemba Gyalje, Cecilie Skog 12/Ire ***
This strikingly well-made documentary about a harrowing real-life incident lets itself down by taking a too-ambitious approach to the narrative. Filmmaker Ryan chops the story up in an attempt to build suspense, but ends up making it very difficult to engage with the chain of events. In August 2008, 11 climbers died on K2 in one of the deadliest days in mountain-climbing history. But what happened was a mystery, and the facts weren't revealed until three family members travelled to Pakistan to talk to Sherpa Gyalje to fill in the gaps. Frankly, the story is thrilling enough without being told in such a circular fashion, and intercutting it with Walter Bonatti's account of the first K2 ascent in 1954 leaves both stories feeling incomplete. Which is frustrating since the film looks absolutely amazing, seamlessly mixing archive footage and photos with dramatic recreations shot in the Swiss Alps. The cinematography (by Robbie Ryan and Stephen O'Reilly) is spectacular, and the interviews with survivors are deeply moving.

Sundance Shorts
There were nine short films in this programme, including the prize winner - and easily the best in the collection: William Oldroyd's Best is a brief little film that packs a whole world into its single scene. A clever idea impeccably executed by a strong cast and crew.  Other stand-out clips included the hilarious cat-breeding comedy The Date from Finland, the blackly amusing horror comedy The Apocalypse, and the intriguing stop-motion doc Irish Folk Furniture. There were also two films that attempted to show stereotypical men as human beings: The Whistle quietly follows a beleaguered Polish football referee, while the slightly preachier Black Metal centres on a death-rock singer blamed for a tragedy.