Critical Week: Holding on...

I've been enjoying hanging out with family in Southern California, not worrying about the rather iffy weather, which turned downright nasty just in time for me to trek across town to see Dune: Part Two on the Warner Bros lot (which was cool - see Insta post below). It was quite surreal to be feeling so wet and soggy while watching such a dry and sandy movie. But of course I loved it; Denis Villeneuve's imagination and attention to detail being this dense story to life in constantly surprising ways. Each shot looks simply spectacular, and the powerhouse acting ensemble gets a lot to do as well.

I also caught Lisa Frankenstein in a cinema, directed by Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin) from a script by Diablo Cody. It's a bit of a messy concoction, but is packed with genuinely hilarious dialog and up-for-it performances from a strong cast that includes Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano and Carla Gugino. Its 1980s setting offers some strong gags as well.

Ethan Coen's Drive-Away Dolls opens this weekend, so I plan to catch that in a local cinema. I am also asking around for contacts for a Kung Fu Panda 4 press screening here, as it opens the week I return to London. There may be some other things that pop up along the way, and I do have some screener links to watch, but am reluctant yo give up family time for that.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rich Jack Cline (@ukcline)

Critical Week: Keep an eye out

Battling an eight-hour jetlag from Seoul, I dove straight back into action with screenings and deadlines here in London. It'll take awhile before I feel normal, but I'm getting there. And it's nice to have some intriguing films to fill the space between blockbusters. For example, Shortcomings is a terrific comedy with a superb Asian-American perspective, starring Justin H Lin and Sherry Cola as friends grappling with their own flaws as they seek romance. And then there's Tom Cruise's seventh franchise entry Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, a thunderously entertaining action thriller that holds the attention for nearly three hours with epic stuntwork and a knotted if absurd plot. From Germany, the drama Afire astutely explores the artistic sensibility in an offbeat tale set in a holiday home next to a forest on fire. And from Belgium, Easy Tiger is an almost silent drama about a man trying to work out his own nature.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Damned Don't Cry
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning
Afire • Amanda
Name Me Lawand • Easy Tiger
ALL REVIEWS >

I saw five films on four flights halfway around the world: Return to Seoul is a gorgeous drama about a Korean-American girl trying to come to grips with her ethnic identity; Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson team up for the corny but enjoyable action comedy The Man From Toronto; Adam Driver finds himself in Earth's distant past in the derivative but enjoyable dinosaur thriller 65; a Spanish water polo team battles trite internal rivalries as they head to a rousing gold-medal Olympic match in The Final Game; plus a revisit to a favourite musical Hairspray. Back in London, I also attended the lively press night for Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing.

Coming up this next week are Margot Robbie in Greta Gerwig's Barbie, Cillian Murphy in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus in You Hurt My Feelings, Greta Lee in Joy Ride, the thriller The Dive and the docs Kokomo City and Bobi Wine: The People's President. I'll also attend a couple of events at Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival (reviews here soon).

Critical Week: Take my hand

As Venice Film Festival wrapped up and Toronto Film Festival kicked off, things are heating up here in London, with the 65th London Film Festival press screening schedule starting next Monday morning. I'm looking forward to catching up with the big titles from Sundance, Cannes and Venice over the next few weeks - both at in-person screenings and using online links. But more and more screenings are taking place in cinemas now, and the biggest one so far was Dune: Part One on Britain's largest Imax screen. Frankly, movies don't get much more momentous, or jaw-droppingly satisfying, than this. Essential to see on a huge screen.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Duke • Little Girl
Everybody's Talking About Jamie
ALL REVIEWS >

Other movies I watched this week included the filmed version of the hugely engaging, life-affirming stage musical Come From Away, the rather uneven but urgently pointed British drama A Brixton Tale, the remarkably thoughtful horror drama The Djinn, the loose and rather nutty social media comedy-thriller The Influencer. Even further afield, there was Bruce La Bruce's latest provocation, the superbly intriguing Saint-Narcisse; the stylised and remarkably involving Norwegian pregnancy comedy-drama Ninjababy; and the earthy, intensely provocative Hungarian war drama Natural Light.

In the coming week, I already have six screenings in the diary for London Film Festival (which starts on October 6th). In addition, I'll be watching the Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark, Dev Patel in The Green Knight, Ben Whishaw in Surge, the horror thriller Gaia and the shorts collection Parental Guidance.

Critical Week: It's all coming back to me

The pandemic continues to affect releasing schedules. Even with twice as many movies in need of cinema slots, studios are being unusually tenuous in getting movies out to audiences. This week, the two biggest releases were only screened once to the press, a few days before the films opened. Even though the films are finished and sitting on shelves waiting to go into cinemas, studios are more protective than ever, which means they're effectively killing any chance at word of mouth. This is obviously why some major releases have stumbled recently, but no one is saying this. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Annette • Underground
Censor • Sabaya
PERHAPS AVOID:
Rare Beasts
ALL REVIEWS >

The biggest release this week is Reminiscence, in which Hugh Jackman uses sheer charm to sustain a futuristic plot that's full of gaping holes. And costars Rebecca Ferguson and especially Thandiwe Newton help too. The other big UK release is Snake Eyes, again rescued by its lead actor Henry Golding, even though the GI Joe action movie's script isn't up to much. A lot more intriguing, and much more challenging, is the darkly satirical show-business musical Annette, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. It's a movie that could only have come from the minds of musicians Sparks and filmmaker Leos Carax.

Less mainstream, Underground is a French-Canadian drama that astutely unpicks issues of masculinity, and Demonic is a gritty horror film from Neill Blomkamp that almost works. The American indie The Land of Owls is a sensitive, occasionally insightful look at relationships. A new French animated version of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days is very quirky, and more fun than it should be. And seven filmmakers contribute segments to The Year of the Everlasting Storm, exploring the impact of covid lockdowns in ways that are witty, pointed and hauntingly personal.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Elijah Wood in No Man of God, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Powder Keg, sci-fi thriller The Colony, Beau Knapp in Mosquito State, and the horror films Bloodthirsty and Knocking.

Critical Week: Fooling no one

It's been a busy week in the press screening rooms this week, and I saw a few films that have been among my favourites of the year so far. Sundance award winner American Animals (above) is a stunner, a true heist thriller that happily breaks genre rules. Performances are terrific, and Bart Layton's direction is masterful. And Mission: Impossible - Fallout was a very pleasant surprise, easily the best in this six-film series, and the most satisfying action blockbuster of the summer. Tom Cruise even manages to deepen the iconic character he first played 22 years ago.

Playing on our social media culture, Searching is an inventive thriller that is viewed on various screens, yet is also taut, moving and packed with superb performances. Jon Hamm is excellent in The Negotiator (aka Beirut), a gritty and very well-made thriller set in the chaos of early-80s Lebanon. Hot Summer Nights features another solid turn from Timothee Chalamet, but the film itself is too hyperactive and grim to be the pastiche it seems to want to be. And the documentary King Cohen is a joy for movie fans, especially lovers of cult movie guru Larry Cohen.

There were also three small British films: Apostasy is simply excellent, a fair-minded depiction of a crisis within a family of Jehovah's Witnesses that makes us think about our own belief systems. Strangeways Here We Come is an uneven black comedy about a group of neighbours who concoct a murderous plan. And Possum is a somewhat pretentious arthouse thriller about a man with the creepiest ventriloquist dummy in movie history. Finally, the American web-series Paper Boys has been compiled into an involving, nicely flowing little feature about young people trying to start their lives in San Francisco.

This coming week I'll finally catch up with Ant-Man and the Wasp, plus the comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, offbeat WWII adventure The Captain, coming-of-age drama Brotherly Love, horror comedy Fanged Up, French WWI epic The Guardians, Italian mystery A Sicilian Ghost Story, Portuguese horror The Forest of the Lost Souls, anime fantasy Mirai, and the doc The Eyes of Orson Welles.

Critical Week: Sister act

It's been nice to only see three films in the three days after the film festival ended (rather than three or four a day). The main event was an epic press screening of Thor: Ragnarok, which is surprisingly funny all the way through while also being packed with eye-catching energy (especially the scene-stealing Cate Blanchett, above), even if the whole Marvel thing is feeling oddly stale, perhaps because there is no suspense left in the formula. But it's a lot of fun. I also caught up with The Snowman, Michael Fassbender's serial killer thriller based on the Jo Nesbo novel, which has deservedly had terrible reviews across the board. There is a huge range of talent on both side of the cameras, yet the script is a mess. And on the smaller side, I caught the British thriller B&B, which touches on some big topics (mainly bigotry) with strong characters and a genuinely unsettling plot. I also had some time for the theatre...

---

Young Frankenstein
at the Garrick Theatre
Mel Brooks adapts his own classic film (one of my all-time favourites) into this rather nutty musical, which opened in the West End last week. It's basically the movie with added songs that stretch out some of the more iconic moments, and the characters are all played by a skilled singing-dancing cast exactly like their big screen counterparts. Perhaps the film is so indelible that there's no other way to play these roles - they wouldn't be as funny it they didn't hark back to the great Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman. The material is robust enough to handle this transition - the film's best jokes are still funny on stage. And the emotional kick is here too, even if it's somewhat diluted by the extra razzle dazzle. I'll probably go see it again.

---

Graeme of Thrones
at the Charing Cross Theatre
The subject up for satire is obvious, but this fringe show takes an amusingly fresh approach that is actually poking fun at fringe shows themselves. The three-person cast is up for quite a lot of riotous silliness, with physical slapstick, wordplay and lots of sight gags. Their rendition of the series' opening titles is impeccably ridiculous. Fans of the TV show will get all of the jokes, which include spoilers right up to the latest season. And there are plenty of gems thrown in all the way through for a wider audience, especially the performance art pieces that come out of nowhere with their delirious absurdity. Some of the humour strains a bit, but most gags hit the target astutely. And by the end, the sloppy "let's put on a show" vibe means that we're rooting for all three of these scruffy actors (plus one game audience member) to claim the Iron Throne.

---

Coming up this next week, we have Nicolaj Coster-Waldau in Shot Caller, Domhnall Gleeson in Crash Pad, British thriller Palace of Fun and Aussie coming-of-age drama Teenage Kicks.

Critical Week: Mr Cool

Don Cheadle's passion project Miles Ahead was screened to UK critics just as it was released in the US. It's a strikingly impressionistic biopic, avoiding the usual structure for a more kaleidoscopic approach that's visually impressive and emotionally tricky. Natalie Portman is terrifically steely in the Western Jane Got a Gun, which kind of loses track of its characters as it becomes more focussed on the action violence. Oddly, both films costar Ewan McGregor.

Also this week, Kevin Costner stars in Criminal, a fiendishly entertaining bit of high-concept action set in London. Rebecca Ferguson is solid in two roles in the rather moody Cold War romance Despite the Falling Snow. And Nicolaj Lie Kaas and Fares Fares are back for another cold case in the astutely well-made if oddly un-resonant The Absent One.

Even more interesting was the lunch I attended on Thursday at which the Critics' Circle presented Maggie Smith with our annual award for Services to the Arts, voted on by all six sections of the circle (film, theatre, music, dance, art, books). It was a lively event, and a very rare chance to hang out with the national treasure that is Dame Maggie, who was on great form. Alas, I didn't get up the nerve to tell her that I first saw her in person on-stage at a taping of The Carol Burnett Show when I was only 13!

Coming up this week: Disney's live-action remake of The Jungle Book, the British thriller Hard Tide, the British comedy Adult Life Skills, Peter Greenaway's Eisenstein at Guanjuato, the Bollywood blockbuster Fan and the American politician documentary Weiner.