Critical Week: Hold that thought

I'm even busier this week as the date approaches for the 44th London Critics' Circle Film Awards, which I am organising on Sunday. So much to organise, including the slippery business of wrangling celebrities. But the ceremony and party are going to be great. Meanwhile, the big movie this week was Matthew Vaughn's Argylle, in which Henry Cavill plays a suave super-agent living in the mind of novellist Bryce Dallas Howard. The idea is clever, but the film is far too busy, loud, violent, twisty and long to work properly. Still, some colourful moments and a great cast (Sam Rockwell, Samuel L Jackson, Ariana DeBose) make it almost watchable. The animated adventure Migration is a lot more fun, gorgeously animated and packed with great characters thanks to screenwriter Mike White (of The White Lotus fame).

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Zone of Interest • Skin Deep
American Fiction • Disco Boy
How to Have Sex • Blue Giant
ALL REVIEWS >

Further afield, the drama Shayda centres closely on the experiences of an abused Iranian wife seeking shelter in Australia. It's beautifully acted, involving and hugely emotional. The Japanese animated jazz-infused drama Blue Giant is packed with a spectacular imagery and music, and a strongly engaging story. And the dark drama Pornomelancholia is the thoughtful, naturalistic story of a young man who wants to become a pornstar in Mexico. I also got the chance to revisit my best film of 2023, Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers, as it finally opened in UK cinemas last weekend. It hit me in a very different way the second time - astonishing filmmaking that I will revisit again.

This coming week I'll be watching the biopic One Love: Bob Marley, the thriller Out of Darkness and the drama Hoard, among other things and getting some sleep.

Screen: April TV Roundup

I'm always amazed at how watching an episode or two every now and then adds up so quickly: these are the shows I saw over the past few months in between the movies and stage shows. I use TV as an amuse bouche to reset my brain between work, which is why I won't watch anything based around death (I avoid shows about detectives, doctors, lawyers or cops). I'm also not a huge genre fan, but I do get into some fan series now and then...

W H A T   A   D R A M A

The Mandalorian: series 3
Folding this show's narrative in line with other series is showing some strain, as writers abandon what made it so special to begin with. No longer a series of little adventures, it's now a big, overly complicated mega-plot with random action beats and far too much murky conspiracy-mongering. Plus stunt cameos. There are still small joys to be found, thankfully. And it does eventually bring story threads together in a meaningful, even exciting way. But Disney's cinematic universe-building has snuffed out this show's charm. (Disney). 

Star Trek - Picard: series 3 
This show gets bigger with each season, and this one sends Patrick Stewart's ageing admiral on an epic adventure as he takes on old but newly fearsome foes, all while being a fugitive from Starfleet justice. Over these episodes, he reassembles virtually the entire cast of The Next Generation (as well as the score), which is thrilling even without the enormous action set-pieces they are thrown into. The plots are properly mind-bending, which may make us long for more simplicity. But the show's ambition is impressive and hugely satisfying. (Paramount)

His Dark Materials: series 3
Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels come to their on-screen conclusion with a remarkable faithfulness to the material. Impressively produced to a high standard, this fantastical story reaches a powerful, startling conclusion. The excellent ensemble cast is led by the terrific Dafne Keen and Will Parry, as two young people pulled into a parallel-world adventure. And where it goes is remarkably mature, never speaking down to teens in the audience. It of course helps to have the likes of James McAvoy and Ruth Wilson on board. (BBC)

Welcome to Chippendales
Skilfully written by Robert Siegel, this series centres on the pioneering male-stripping venue and its shocking history of murders and suicides. It boldly takes on the American dream with complex, surprising results. And it features stellar performances from Kumail Nanjiani as businessman-founder Steve Bannerjee, Murray Bartlett as his creative genius cohort Nick Dei Noia and Annaleigh Ashford as Steve's brilliant wife Irene, plus ace support from the likes of Juliette Lewis, Robin de Jesus and Andrew Rannells. The show also cleverly mixes pitch-black elements with 1980s glitter. (Hulu)

Extrapolations
Ambitious and smart, this show challenges the viewer to think about the future as the episodes skip years ahead in time, from the 2030s to 2070. Loose connections along the way are clever, as are observations and conjecture. Although there are some undercooked elements, most notably the tech (clear glass screens look cool but are ludicrously impractical) and fashion. And some of the science sounds a bit iffy. But the stories have a strong kick to them, and the terrific A-list cast finds moving emotions along the way. (Apple)

Pretty Baby:
Brooke Shields
There's an astonishing honesty to this two-part documentary. A model virtually from birth, Shields was sexualised by the media from a very young age, treated as either a slut or a goody-goody, and never allowed to be either a complex person in her own right. She speaks openly throughout, accompanied by interviews with family and friends and an excellent archive of photos and footage. Through all of this, Shields is articulate and never afraid to explore even the darkest chapters of her life, from rape to postpartum depression. Which leads to a powerfully insightful conversation with her daughters. (ABC)

I T ' S   C O M I C A L

Beef
Steven Yeun and Ali Wong star in this pitch-black comedy about two angry people whose road rage incident blossoms into a full-on family feud. As it gets messier and messier, the show is sometimes very hard to watch, but the characters are so vivid that we can't look away. The writers sometimes push things into cartoonish territory, but the terrific cast keeps it grounded, including ace supporting players Joseph Lee, Young Mazino, David Choe and Maria Bello. Watching this is a harrowing experience, but it's packed with insight into human nature. (Netflix)

Shrinking 
Jason Segel brings his hangdog brand of comedy to this smart sitcom about psychologists who take their personal issues to work. As a recent widower with a sparky teen daughter (Lukita Maxwell), Segel is as likeable as ever. And his banter with colleagues Harrison Ford (who's hilarious) and Jessica Williams is a lot of fun. Coming from the team behind Ted Lasso, the tone is warm and gentle, which can leave scenes feeling like they need some edge. But the characters get increasingly endearing over the course of these 10 episodes. So it's good news that more are coming. (Apple)

That 90s Show
Rebooting That 70s Show with a new era of nostalgia, the writers cleverly bring back most of the original cast in cameo appearances, but centre around returning scene-stealers Kurtwood Smith and Debra Jo Rupp, now dealing with the antics of their granddaugher (Callie Haverda), who makes charming idiot friends while visiting for the summer. Most jokes and sight gags are the same, but by shifting everything by two decades there's a whole new perspective, plus an endless supply of things to make fun of. And the new characters are great. (Netflix)

History of the World: Part II 
Mel Brooks' 1981 movie History of the World: Part I finally gets a sequel. And it's as uneven as ever. Once again, all-star cameos populate the sketches, which usually simply take a historical event and overlay it with jokes based on either Jewishness, social media or both. It's not particularly clever, and some sequences are too silly to elicit a laugh, but it does have enough witty moments to make it worth a look. And some recurring performances are memorable, from Wanda Sykes as a sassy Shirley Chisholm to Jay Ellis as a super-cool Jesus. (Disney)

Unstable 
Rob Lowe teams up with his son John Owen Lowe to play, yes, father and son in this over-goofy sitcom set in a biotech company. Written by Lowe Jr, the script cleverly and mercilessly pokes fun at Lowe Sr, who plays a handsome-genius scientist who, working with his nutty scientists, might be able to save the planet from climate change. Each character is so broadly ridiculous that they're not particularly believable, but they're fairly hilarious, and well-played by Sian Clifford, Aaron Branch, Rachel Marsh, Emma Derreira and Frank Gallegos. (Netflix)

Young Rock:
series 3
Dwayne Johnson continues mining his childhood for amusing anecdotes, and it's beginning to look like he will never run out of material. Not only is he a lot of fun in the framing scenes with Randall Park (and Dawnn Lewis in this season), but the actors playing his younger self (Adrian Groulx, Bradley Constant and Uli Latukefu) continue to grow on us. They also continue to grow up, which adds an extra zing to the overall narrative arcs. The little sermons tucked inside each episode are corny, but they add to the charm. (NBC)

Abbott Elementary: series 2
This sitcom is never as sharp or original as it could be, but it's hugely watchable thanks to its smart setting in an underfunded state school populated by teachers who love their jobs. The chemistry between the cast members keeps it engaging, even if the will-they-won't-they situation between Quinta Brunson and Tyler James Williams never quite builds up steam. And some token characters feel oddly underdeveloped. But Janelle James is hilarious as the scene-stealing principal, and Sheryl Lee Ralph is a national treasure. (ABC)

The Conners:
series 5 
This extremely long-running sitcom, which began as Roseanne in 1988, continues to take on current issues with unapologetic honesty, finding earthy humour in unexpected places while deeply developing each of its lively characters. The ensemble cast is as strong as ever, and it's a rare series that has allowed the shape of the family to grow and change over the years, reflecting real life through an astute and refreshingly amusing perspective. Which allows comments about things like fractured politics and the rising cost of living to have real bite. (ABC)

I   G I V E   U P

Poker Face: This is a very well-made show, with clever writing and a terrific cast made largely of scene-stealing guest stars. But I'm simply not a fan of series that hinge around murders, and barely made it through three episodes. (Peacock)

Marie-Antoinette: Sharply written and produced, this show struggles to feel like anything new amid a sea of more inventive period costume dramas. It has terrific wit, and a solid Euro-cast, but it never quite held my interest. (BBC)

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Mrs Davis, Schmigadoon (2), Ted Lasso (3), Dave (3), Succession (4), The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (5).
COMING SOON: Citadel, Bupkis, White House Plumbers, The Afterparty (2), The Other Two (3).

Previous roundup: DECEMBER 2022 >

Critical Week: Dress to impress

Lockdown rolls on, with another random batch of movies to watch this week. I'm always hoping there will be a gem hidden in there somewhere. The weather has been glorious in London, so I ventured out for a picnic one day, seeing friends (at a safe distance) for the first time in two months. It kind of gives you hope that this will all end someday. Meanwhile, one of this week's movies, the action comedy The Lovebirds, offered some ideas about how to dress to spice up those Zoom meetings. It's a dopey bit of fluff, but kind of just right for these times, and Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae make a unexpectedly terrific duo.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
I'm No Longer Here • Snowpiercer
Only the Animals • End of Sentence
The Man Standing Next

John Hawkes and Logan Lerman are another solid double-act in End of Sentence, an engaging father-son road movie set in Ireland. Mario Van Peebles makes the B-movie crime drama A Clear Shot almost worth watching, plus the fact that it's based on a real hostage event. But it's very cheesy. There are no big-name actors in the sweet romance Angelfish, but it's charming enough. The French mystery thriller Only the Animals is expertly directed by Dominik Moll with an excellent ensemble cast and a twisty, involving plot. From Korea, The Man Standing Next is a riveting, exceptionally well-made thriller about the real-life assassination of the Korean president in 1979. From Thailand, Krabi 2562 is a moody experimental doc about the collision of past and present in a tourist city. And The Uncertain Kingdom is a collection of 20 short films addressing current issues in Britain (nine of them were screened to the press in January, and I saw the other 11 this week). Specially commissioned, the fascinatingly varied clips were made to explore the wake of Brexit, and have an additional resonance amid the pandemic chaos.

I have a rather long list of movies to watch over the next week, so we'll see how many of these I get around to: Dakota Johnson in The High Note, Sebastian Stan in The Last Full Measure, Luke Wilson in Guest of Honor, Willem Dafoe in Tommaso, the small-town drama To the Stars, the horror thriller The Dinner Party, the German drama The Collini Case and the documentary Homosaywhat.

Critical Week: Who you gonna call?

It's been a strange summer at the cinema, without a break-out hit. Disney and Marvel continue to rake up most of the box office cash, but nothing particularly outstanding has emerged quite yet. Meanwhile, it's been another eclectic week at the movies for me. Jim Jarmusch's wry zombie thriller The Dead Don't Die has his usual all-star cast, including Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny and Bill Murray (above), plus a particularly hilarious Tilda Swinton. It's charming, dryly funny and too sardonic for mainstream audiences. And then there's the studio action-comedy Stuber, starring Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista, who provide some charisma to help paper over the fact that the movie isn't particularly funny or thrilling.

Gurinder Chadha is back with her British feel-good drama Blinded by the Light, a scrappy but likeable movie set in the late-80s with a Bruce Springsteen song score. Summer Night is an equally loose American comedy-drama about a small townful of entangled characters. Even more independent, the twisty British-Dutch thriller AMS Secrets heavily channels Hitchcock's Psycho in its luridly stylised plot. From Mexico, Always Say Yes is an inventive odyssey about a young country boy in the big city. It's seriously explicit, but also insightful and disarmingly sweet. There was also the shorts collection The Male Gaze: The Heat of the Night, featuring six rather dark dramas about masculine sexuality from around the world. And I had a chance to see one of my all-time Top 5 films on the big screen in a new edit. Every edit of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now has been a masterpiece, and he says that this summer's pristinely digitised release is his "Final Cut".

Coming up this next week, we have Disney's remake of The Lion King, the animated adventure Playmobil: The Movie, Willem Dafoe in Opus Zero, the British immigrant drama My Friend the Polish Girl, the Mexican drama The Chambermaid, and the French drama Hidden Kisses.

Sundance London: Do the right thing

The fifth Sundance Film Festival: London kicks off tonight at Picturehouse Central, and the next four days will feature 14 feature films and 15 shorts, plus some revived classics. It's a great chance to see movies that are just a bit off the beaten path and then mix with the filmmakers and cast members too - and Picturehouse is a great place to hang out! Here are my comments on four films, with more to come over the weekend...

Crown Heights
dir-scr Matt Ruskin; with Lakeith Stanfield (pictured above), Nnamdi Asomugha 17/US ***
A powerful true story is recounted skilfully as this drama spans 21 years in the life of a man wrongfully accused of murder. Writer-director Matt Ruskin has several urgent things to say about the American judicial system, although his approach chronicles the events like a well-made TV docudrama rather than building a proper cinematic narrative arc. This leaves us feeling informed but not hugely involved, but it's essential that this story is told.

The Big Sick
dir Michael Showalter; with Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan 17/US ****
With a network of complex, realistic relationships, each with its own trajectory, this film feels rather long and somewhat tonally jarring for a comedy. It veers from snarky humour to giggly romance to some very bleak emotions as it goes along, but the themes it explores are powerfully resonant. And they give the film a surprising kick that echoes long after the credits roll.

Marjorie Prime
dir-scr Michael Almereyda; with Lois Smith, Jon Hamm 17/US ****
A rather talky script and lofty themes make it obvious that this film was adapted from a stage play (the playwright is Jordan Harrison). It's the kind of movie that holds the attention simply because it touches on so many big ideas in ways that spark thought. It's too brainy to be emotionally involving, but it's a bracing exploration of memory that carries a real wallop. It might even change the way you define your relationships.

Bushwick
dir Cary Murnion, Jonathan Milott; with Dave Bautista, Brittany Snow 17/US 1h34 **.
This busy thriller unfolds in unexpected ways as it propels us along with the characters through an inventive premise. But it's all a bit haphazard, with uneven writing and acting and a gnawing sense that there isn't much of a point to all the carnage. Still, it's a ripping little action movie that refuses to let its low-key production values get in the way of its big ambitions.

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CRITICAL WEEK
The only non-festival movie I've seen in the past week is Wonder Woman, which I really loved despite the too-digital climax. Sundance London continues over the weekend (watch for more updates here and full reviews on the site). Screenings coming up next week include the Tupac biopic All Eyez on Me and Tom Cruise's The Mummy reboot.

Critical Week: Just chilling

Press screenings are starting to crank up again after an early-May lull, perhaps because so many big movies are coming up. Although it's likely to quiet down when most London-based journalists (not me, thankfully) decamp to Cannes 17-28 May.

I enjoyed catching up with the Sundance hit The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani's autobiographical comedy, which cleverly depicts multi-cultural America with its awesome ensemble cast. The indie road comedy Folk Hero & Funny Guy was also enjoyable, starring the superb Wyatt Russell and Alex Karpovsky as childhood pals with a surprisingly complex relationship. But of course this week's biggest movie was Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott's skilfully made sequel/prequel, which plays out almost like a reimagining of his original 1979 sci-fi horror classic. It's uneven, but entertainingly scary.

A bit further afield, the British-made drama Interlude in Prague focusses on some lusty intrigue for Mozart as he wrote Don Giovanni. It's very nicely shot on location, and the story is involving if a bit dry. Spark is a lively animated adventure with an all-star voice cast, but the animation isn't quite up to big studio standards. Eric Stoltz makes his feature directing debut with Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk, a sharply observed comedy-drama that tackles some big themes (religion! sex!) without flinching. And Tomcat starts out as a gentle relationship drama before morphing into something dark and boldly disturbing, which is perhaps unsurprising since it's an Austrian film.

Blockbusters begin arriving over the next week, including the Baywatch movie, Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and the Schumer-Hawn adventure Snatched, plus the acclaimed Chinese drama I Am Not Madame Bovary and the documentary Machines.