Sundance London: Keep dancing

Sundance Film Festival: London is back in its usual slot this year, after two disrupted editions. This is a slightly odd festival for the press, as they pack all of the industry screenings into two days before the actual events kick off. Which leaves us feeling like we're finished before anything begins. So I've already seen 10 of the 13 films in the programme, and I'll be catching a couple more at public screenings with cast and crew members in attendance at Picturehouse Central. The actors and filmmakers turned up last night for the opening film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Here are comments about that one, and a few others, plus my usual Critical Week below... 

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
dir Sophie Hyde; with Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack 22/UK ****
If you can get into this film's theatrical vibe, there are several very strong themes woven through the narrative that make it deeply involving. Essentially three scenes featuring two people in a room, the stagey set-up is echoed in the heightened dialog, which pointedly takes on several big issues. The observations are insightful and sharply important, as are the bravely transparent performances from the two lead actors.

Watcher 
dir-scr Chloe Okuno; with Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman 22/Rom ***.
Writer-director Chloe Okuno creates a superbly unsettling atmosphere in this quietly suspenseful thriller about an American in Romania. The film knowingly plays on the feeling of being a foreigner unable to communicate in an unknown place, while generating scares by twisting a range of cinematic cliches in intriguing directions. It's a shame there's not much more to the film, but it definitely gets our hearts pumping a bit faster.

Free Chol Soo Lee
dir Julie Ha, Eugene Yi; with Chol Soo Lee, KW Lee 22/US  ***.
While this documentary traces a true story in a rather straightforward manner, the important subject matter makes it worth a look. Chol Soo Lee's experience was shocking and sad, but also carries elements of redemption and complex humanity. And it highlights a rarely explored aspect of underlying racism in the American justice system. These ideas emerge strongly, even as the filmmakers remain more focussed on the compelling personal narrative.

We Met in Virtual Reality
dir-scr Joe Hunting; with Jenny, Dust Bunny, IsYourBoi, Toaster 22/UK ***
This extraordinary documentary was somehow shot virtually, as filmmaker Joe Hunting takes the audience into various digital environments to meet people who interact there. It's an extraordinary film, and remarkably personal as it hones in on relationships within VR communities, often spilling out into the real world as well. It's a great introduction to a virtual world, although newcomers may find it tricky to engage with the film's perspective.

Full reviews will be on the site soon. For more information, visit SUNDANCE LONDON >

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I've only seen four non-Sundance films in the past week - and each is opening this week in the US or UK. I was unable to attend the single press screening of Jurassic World: Dominion, so caught up with it at a local cinema. It's funny, thrilling and packed with witty nods in various directions, a superb summer blockbuster. The award-winning Italian drama Il Buco is a masterfully assembled exploration of historical progress; the doc A Sexplanation is a witty look at why Americans are so obsessed with sex, and also afraid of it; and Baloney documents rehearsals and performances of a San Francisco queer burlesque with warmth and insight.

Aside from Sundance, this coming week I'll be watching the Pixar prequel Lightyear, Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz in Official Competition, Ethan Hawke in the horror thriller The Black Phone, the British drama It Snows in Benidorm, the restored Satyajit Ray classic The Big City and the theatrical version of the doc George Michael: Freedom Uncut.

Critical Week: Men in skirts

It's the hottest week in Britain since record keeping began (a couple of hundred years ago), so sitting in a cool cinema is a nice alternative to my sweltering home! We had a press screening of what is likely to be this week's biggest new movie: Horrible Histories: The Movie - Rotten Romans, which transfers the popular book and stage series to the big screen with an all-star cast of British comics (Lee Mack is leading the charge in the pic above). The film is resolutely silly, like a family-friendly variation on the classic Carry On romps. It's also very funny, and actually recounts some real history.

There were a couple of highbrow indies: Sienna Miller and Christina Hendricks are terrific in American Woman, a grim slice of working-class life that's beautifully shot and played. Tye Sheridan and Jeff Goldblum make an offbeat duo in The Mountain, a surreal and very dark drama about mental illness and social failings. From Mexico, The Chambermaid is a riveting drama about a hotel cleaner in which very little actually happens. Arthouse audiences will love it. And from the Netherlands, Dust is a sensitive, gritty teen drama that takes a hard look at an awkward coming-of-age. There was also this doc...

Illuminated
The True Story of the Illuminati
dir-scr Johnny Royal • narr Johnny Royal
with Josef Wages, Adam Kendall, Reinhard Markner, Olaf Simons, Clyde Lewis, Teresita Arechiga, Eric Bertolli, Brian Butler
release US 30.Jul.19 • 19/US 1h16 ***

Unveiling the most notorious secret society, this documentary is so over-serious that it's both dry and borderline comical. But it's packed with resonant detail. Featuring to-camera interviews with a variety of historians and experts, the film is an eye-opening journey into this unseen world, including re-enactments of its initiation rituals and secret handshakes.

The Illuminati was founded in May 1776 in Bavaria by Adam Weishaupt to improve humanity by accelerating the Enlightenment, deeply Christian but opposing superstition, church influence in government and abuse of state power. Weishaupt is an intriguing figure, and the film dives into his background, as he read forbidden books that explored the dangers of giving too much power to the Catholic Church, which suppressed ideas that threatened its authority. Weishaupt was the first non-Jesuit allowed to teach law at Ingolstadt University, so he made a lot of enemies. His goal was to develop intellect, striving for perfection on earth (he originally called the group the Perfectibilists). By combining elements of Freemasonry the movement spread, and the film covers key turning points until the group was dissolved in 1785 due to internal divisions and official opposition. Oddly, the film never mentions how the Illuminati excluded Jews and women, leaning toward wealthy, young, pliable men. But they also promoted equality among classes and forbade slavery.

Filmmaker Johnny Royal narrates in a flat voice, while filling the screen with lushly produced slow-motion dramatisations of a variety of creepy rituals in candle-lit rooms. Combined with the articulate interviewees, this helps the film feel like more than merely a reading of the Wikipedia page. Details about rival secret societies are hugely intriguing, including the way the Freemasons (not the Illuminati) established the United States. Indeed, conspiracies today ignore the real history, conflating various secret orders. Instead, it's the big philosophical ideas and the historical narrative that make this film gripping.

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Coming up this next week, we have screenings of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, Pedro Almodovar's acclaimed Pain & Glory, the Spanish political thriller The Candidate, the French-German thriller Transit, and two animated movies: the sequel The Angry Birds Movie 2 and the fairy tale Charming.

Critical week: Take the cake

Blockbuster screenings this week included the animated comedy-adventure The Secret Life of Pets, from the team behind Despicable Me. It's a lively, funny romp that isn't quite as original as it could have been. The 20-years-later sequel Independence Day: Resurgence provides plenty of big-scale entertainment. But it can't quite live up to memories of the first film, because of its rushed story and a lack of snappy wit. And the action-bromance Central Intelligence gives Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart roles that are enjoyably against type, including plenty of hilarious dialog.

Out of the mainstream, Key and Peele's action comedy Keanu is likeably engaging when it's witty and a bit harder to take when it's violent, but the eponymous kitten makes it irresistible. And the clever British doc Notes on Blindness uses professor John Hull's recordings, lip-synched by actors, to explore his adaptation to a life without sight. It's beautifully assembled, but somewhat gloomy.

With screenings slow at the moment, I had time for a variety of cultural activities outside the cinema. Pietro Mascagni's opera Iris (pictured right) was staged at Holland Park's open-air theatre on an enjoyably large scale. The story is rather simple, and the sets and costumes are head-scratchingly anachronistic, but the music is lovely and the cast is excellent. I also attended the Sicily exhibition at British Museum, a fascinating look at European history from the perspective of an island that has been pivotal from the ancient Greeks to the Roman Empire. And then there is The Bunyadi, an all-natural pop-up restaurant serving a tasting menu cooked without electricity - in earthen bowls on hand-hewn tables to diners who are only allowed to wear bathrobes and nothing else (crucially, no phones) - and wearing the robes is optional within the bamboo-screened booths. The food is fresh, delicious and inventive, and the service is engaging, but the price is very steep.

This coming week there are screenings of two sequels, the animated adventure Finding Dory and the magical thriller Now You See Me 2, plus Thomas Vinterberg's acclaimed drama The Commune and a post-release screening of the award-winning immigration doc Fire at Sea at the East End Film Festival. And for non-film offerings, I've got two plays, a circus cabaret and a day at Wimbledon. Plus a variety of parties to celebrate/commiserate the result of Britain's in/out EU referendum on Thursday. Reports to come...