Critical Week: Walking in a winter wonderland

The holidays are descending upon us, as seen by those out-of-the-office email "gone for Christmas" bouncebacks. But year-end work for film critics is in full swing these days, with a steady stream of awards announcements in the news and best/worst of year pieces beginning to pop up everywhere. In a final flurry of screenings for the year, we had two of this week's big releases: Mufasa: The Lion King is a prequel animated in the photoreal style of the 2019 remake and directed, somewhat surprisingly, by Barry Jenkins. It looks great, but the story and tone feel rather awkward, while the songs are oddly unmemorable. But fans will enjoy it. Fans will properly love the sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which rights several wrongs about part 2 with a funnier script and more clowning goofiness centred around Jim Carrey's nutty Robotnik and, this time, his mad-scientist grandpa (also Carrey). Yes it's very silly.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Count of Monte-Cristo
Vengeance Most Fowl
Babygirl • The Brutalist
ALL REVIEWS >

Because I'm between voting deadlines, I've taken it a bit easier with the awards contenders this week, only seeing three. I've also needed to spend rather a lot of time readying the London Critics' Circle nominations to be announced. My catch-up movies this week: Andrea Arnold's Bird, a strikingly powerful fable that mixes gritty realism with magical realism, with terrific performances by Barry Keoghan and Nykiya Adams as father and daughter. The Count of Monte-Cristo is a lavish new French adaptation of the classic Dumas novel that, at nearly three hours, feels both epic and snappily paced. It's a real treat. From Denmark, The Girl With the Needle is more demanding, but it's a proper stunner, an involving, intensely moving story about a young woman battling the system. It's shot gorgeously in early 1900s period style (silent movie-style black and white, but with sound).

This coming week I have several films to catch up on, and it will depend on the time available to watch them. Movies on this rather eclectic list include The Day the Earth Blew Up, The End, Love Lies, Ghostlight, The Six Triple Eight, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, 2073, Sugarcane and Robert Zemeckis' Here. Happy Christmas!

Critical Week: A family affair

It's been a rather thin week for screenings, or maybe I'm just out of the loop because I've been pre-occupied with organising the Critics' Circle Film Awards. The biggest movie I saw was The Odyssey, the French biopic about Jacques Cousteau starring Lambert Wilson, Pierre Niney and Audrey Tautou. It's beautifully filmed and acted, but lacks narrative coherence. The others were independent British oddities: Mindhorn is a somewhat uneven pastiche thriller about an actor asked to re-inhabit his 1980s TV cop character to solve a real murder. It has a terrific cast including Julian Barratt, Russell Tovey, Steve Coogan and Kenneth Branagh. And Spaceship is a swirly arthouse drama about a teen who may have been abducted by aliens, although the plot never quite makes any sense. And then there was a four-hour thriller released next week on DVD in the UK...

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Deep Water
dir Shawn Seet
scr Kym Goldsworthy
with Noah Taylor, Yael Stone, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Craig McLachlan, Danielle Cormack, Ben Oxenbould
16/Aus SBS 3h40 ***.
This four-part Australian TV series may feel somewhat melodramatic, but it taps into some darkly relevant themes. When a Muslim man is found murdered in his flat overlooking Bondi Beach, detective Tori (Orange Is the New Black's Yael Stone) and her partner Nick (Noah Taylor) begin to discover inexplicable links to a series of unsolved murders from the late 1980s. But these were hate crimes involving gay victims, and the officials simply turned a blind eye at the time. The show is assembled with a soapy emotional flair that kind of ignores authenticity in lieu of flashy plot points, hot potato themes and shifty suspects. This makes it feel like a rather standard television procedural, complete with far too many characters to keep straight and lots of shocking revelations. But the underlying issues are solidly engaging, touching on things in society that perhaps haven't improved as much as we'd like to think they have in the past 25 years. And it's strikingly well shot, with engaging performances from the skilled cast.

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This coming week we have screenings of another rather thin, offbeat collection of movies, including the British boxing drama Jawbone, Cristian Mungiu's award-winning Graduation and the doc All This Panic.

Venezia 73: Staring out at day 3

Frankly, it isn't easy to spend all day in a cinema when the weather is this spectacular - and when you can see the beach from the press workroom. But this is life at the 73rd Venice Film Festival: watch movies and write about them, and if time allows gawk at the stars in press conferences or on the red carpet. Here on the Lido there are two other urgent requirements: finding food and wifi, neither of which is remotely easy. Here are more recent films (and that's Amy Adams again, above) ...

Nocturnal Animals
dir-scr Tom Ford; with Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal 16/US ***.
For his second film as writer-director, Tom Ford takes on an ambitious, three-sided story that's a romantic drama, violent thriller and darkly internal odyssey. Of course it all looks gorgeous, designed and edited to perfection. And it's packed with terrific moments that hit us right between the eyes with intensity and emotion. But some elements outshine the others, which throws things somewhat off the balance.

Frantz
dir Francois Ozon; with Pierre Niney, Paula Beer 16/Fr ****.
French filmmaker Francois Ozon tackles another genre with this historical drama, which has shades of Haneke in its multi-layered story of forgiveness and redemption. Shot in black and white with moments of blossoming colour, the film harks back to period war dramas due to the visual style and the way the story evolves. But of course, Ozon puts his own subtle spin on everything. And the result is darkly moving.

Summertime [L'Estate Addosso]
dir Gabriele Muccino; with Brando Pacitto, Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz 16/It ***
Bright and energetic, this Italian-American drama is packed with likeable characters and perceptive observations. But it's somewhat cursory in the way it approaches both the characters and story, full of picturesque montages with beautiful people in gorgeous locations. And while the core message is strong, the plotting feels rather random.

The Last Things [Le Ultime Cose]
dir-scr Irene Dionisio; with Fabrizio Falco, Roberto De Francesco 16/It ***
While this gentle Italian drama taps nicely into the zeitgeist, it seems to focus more on situation than the people who are caught up in it. The characters each have a journey to follow, and writer-director Irene Dionisio observes them without ever quite getting under their skin. Still, there are some strong moral dilemmas that pull the audience in. And the way it highlights a culture of desperation is haunting.

Coming up: Jude Law in The Young Pope, Dakota Fanning in Brimstone, James Franco's In Dubious Battle...