Critical Week: Made for each other

Finally, we reach Oscar weekend after what has felt like an unusually long awards season. My predictions will be here on Saturday as always. Jesse Buckley looks like a sure thing to win Best Actress for Hamnet, and she has a very different film in cinemas right now, which I caught up on the day it opened: The Bride! is Maggie Gyllenhaal's ambitious reimagining of The Bride of Frankenstein, costarring Christian Bale, Annette Bening and Penelope Cruz. It's enjoyably outrageous, but also badly uneven. Screening this week just before it opens, Reminders of Him is a slushy romantic drama with Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers that lays on the sentimentality rather thickly. And the story is too simple to carry the emotional weight. But it looks great.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Everybody to Kenmure Street
The Love That Remains • Scarlet
PERHAPS AVOID:
How to Make a Killing
Reminders of Him
ALL REVIEWS >

Further afield, I caught up with Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers, a smart and thoughtful art-world comedy-drama with excellent roles for Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. Callum Scott Howells has fun chewing the scenery in the eye-catching Madfabulous, an involving and surprisingly moving tale based on a true story from the British aristocracy. And then there was Ferzan Ozpetek's lavishly gorgeous Diamonds, an involving multi-strand love letter to 1970s Italian costume designers. I also saw six movies in the Cinema Made in Italy season at BFI Southbank. 

Outside the theatre, I had a couple of Project Hail Mary experiences: After briefly meeting Ryan Gosling and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in London, I took a wonderful trip to the Pinewood Studios Creature Shop, where I got to meet Ryan's on-screen alien buddy Rocky, his vocal and puppet performer James Ortiz and creature maestro Neal Scanlan (full report with pics to come). Finally, there was also a live performance of Sam Morrison's witty one-man show Sugar Daddy at Underbelly Boulevard. It's basically about grief, but he's a gifted comic and he makes it very, very funny too.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Aneurin Barnard in Past Life, Irish drama Abode, German drama Miroirs No 3, the Marianne Faithfull doc Broken English, staying up all night to see the Oscars on Sunday night and watching lots of movies as part of the 40th BFI Flare film fest, which kicks off Wednesday on the Southbank with a documentary called Hunky Jesus. I'll also see a live performance of Where There Is No Time at Seven Dials Theatre.

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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C R I T I C A L    W E E K

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Listen • All My Friends Hate Me
Il Buco • Moneyboys • Swan Song
ALL REVIEWS >

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: Let your colours burst

Pride month kicked off this week, and I had my first few LGBTQ+ movies to watch. Showing at San Francisco's Frameline, Being Thunder is a remarkable documentary about Sherente Harris (above), a two-spirited Native American teen from Rhode Island who is challenging artificial gender roles. It's a gorgeously observant film worth looking for. Offbeat indie comedy-drama The Carnivores takes a loose, skilfully improvised approach as it tells the story of two Texan women with dog and relationship issues. And from Chile, My Tender Matador stars the great Alfredo Castro as a crossdresser who befriends a revolutionary in the Pinochet-era. It's moving and beautifully thought-provoking.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
A Quiet Place Part II • After Love
My Tender Matador • The Carnivores
Undine • I Am Samuel • Gunda
PERHAPS AVOID:
Introducing Jodea • Gully
ALL REVIEWS >

Closer to the mainstream, Flashback is a swirly thriller starring Dylan O'Brien in his meatiest role yet, although the supernatural elements kind of blur everything. An edgy drama set in inner-city Los Angeles, Gully features another terrific role for Kelvin Harrison Jr, although the movie is too fragmented to ever come into proper focus. The micro-budget comedy Introducing Jodea has some charm as it tells a story in the movie industry, but the cast and crew reveal their inexperience. And finally, I indulged myself in Friends: The Reunion, a couple of hours of shameless nostalgia that felt a bit contrived and over-structured. It was fun to see these six iconic actors in their less orchestrated reactions and interactions. And the celebrity fans were fun (Gaga! Bieber!), although they highlighted a number of recurring cast members who were oddly missing.

Films to watch this coming week both in cinemas and on screener links include Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical In the Heights, Aussie romcom Ellie & Abbie (and Abbie's Dead Aunt), horror comedy School's Out Forever, Spanish romance Carmen and Lola and Hungarian drama Treasure City.

Critical Week: Survival of the fittest

Awards season continues with nightly Q&As designed to focus voter attention on various films. I've been able to host a couple of these, which has been a lot of fun, chatting with actors and filmmakers around the world. Another group I vote in, the Online Film Critics, released its nominations this week. Beyond awards contenders, films I watched this week included Outside the Wire, a standard action-packed military thriller elevated by lead actors Anthony Mackie (as a robot!) and Damson Idris. From India, The White Tiger is a must-see blackly comical drama about a guy who leaves his low caste behind through sheer determination.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Are We Lost Forever
The White Tiger • Breaking Fast
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Exception • Imperial Blue
ALL REVIEWS >

It was an eclectic week of movies for me. From the US, Brothers by Blood is a growly, grim Philadelphia crime drama starring the always excellent Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman. From Sweden, David Fardmar's Are We Lost Forever is a gorgeously observed drama about a painful breakup. From Belarus, Persian Lessons is a fascinating true story of one man's survival during WWII, starring the terrific Nahuel Perez Biscayart. And from Denmark, The Exception is an intriguing thriller with big themes, although the filmmakers take a rather contrived approach to it.

I still need to catch up with a couple of this week's releases, including the acclaimed Mexican drama Identifying Features and the shorts collection The Male Gaze: Hide and Seek, plus the biographical documentary The Capote Tapes. And there are also some awards contenders: Radha Blank's prize-winning The Forty-Year-Old Version, the animated drama The Wolf House and the five shorts nominated in the London Film Critics' awards. 

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...