Critical Week: Always say yes

After wrapping up the first SXSW London festival over the weekend, I had a flurry of screenings to keep me busy this week. This included the action comedy Deep Cover, with Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed as improv comics on police business in the London underworld. It's ridiculous but a lot of fun. Even more absurd was the silly action romp Shadow Force, rescued by the sheer charm of Kerry Washington and Omar Sy as parents with secret black ops skills, pulled back into the mayhem. The tired premise nearly sinks it, but the actors make it watchable, including a villainous Mark Strong.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Tornado
Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf
ALL REVIEWS >

The week's other big screening was the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, which looked amazing on a huge Imax screen. While not strictly necessary, the film is still rousing enough to be worth a look. Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff star in the romantic comedy A Nice Indian Boy, which is funny, engaging and delightfully pointed. The French romcom Jane Austen Wrecked My Life takes a low-key approach to its engagingly astute story of a blocked writer. Shakespeare's classic is reimagined as a lavishly produced pop musical for Juliet & Romeo, simplifying things in the process, but remaining entertaining too. And the clearly low-budget independent drama Franklin centres on two aspiring actors in Los Angeles as they navigate career and love-life issues.

I also attended the premiere of the third season of Squid Game, which included a terrific on-stage Q&A with stars Lee Jung-Jae, Lee Byung-hun and Park Gyuyoung, plus creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. And the dance show Inside Giovanni's Room, based on the landmark James Baldwin novel, was simply gorgeous at Sadler's Wells East.

This coming week will be rather busy with the Pixar animation Elio, Scarlett Johansson in Jurassic World Rebirth, John Travolta in High Rollers, Harry Melling in Harvest, Naomi Ackie in Sorry Baby, Leonie Benesch in Late Shift and the Tunisian drama Red Path, plus the first week of movies at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival and the annual opening night cabaret for the London Clown Festival.

Critical Week: Fun in the sun

The sunshine finally emerged in London this week, which won't bode well for this week's box office as everyone takes advantage of the weather. It's also not great for film critics who spend more time than most in darkened basement screening rooms. At least one of the films this week was bright and summery: Two Tickets to Greece is a French road trip movie about two old friends island hopping in the Cyclades. It's watchable because of stars Laure Calamy and Olivia Cote (above), plus the always incandescent Kristin Scott Thomas. There was also this week's blockbuster Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which has markedly upped the impressive digital effects and performance-capture work, but feels more formulaic than the previous trilogy.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
La Chimera • Aisha
ALL REVIEWS >

Less flashy was the British drama The Almond and the Seahorse, which features Rebel Wilson in a rare serious role in a story about the repercussions of brain injury. The Image of You is a feverishly trashy thriller with Sacha Pieterse and Parker Young, a proper guilty pleasure. Lazareth is a gripping but somewhat overserious post-apocalyptic thriller with Ashley Judd. Hazard is a raucous action comedy from Poland, an enjoyably messy guilty pleasure with an emotional core, And Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is a fiercely impressive action thriller from Hong Kong with a vivid narrative and fabulous characters. I also caught rather bonkers and thoroughly crowd-pleasing The Opera Locos at the Peacock theatre.

This coming week I'll be watching Ryan Reynolds in IF, Chris Pratt in The Garfield Movie, Daisy Ridley in Young Woman and the Sea, Lena Dunham in Treasure, Elizabeth Hurley in Strictly Confidential and the horror thriller In Flames. I'mm also watch Dave Hill's stand-up show Caveman in a Spaceship.

Critical Week: Monumental

Screenings have been a bit slow in London during the Cannes Film Festival, so it's perhaps appropriate that I saw two French films this week. Romain Duris plays the eponymous tower-building character in the biopic Eiffel, which injects Hollywood-style melodramatic romance into a fascinating story. And Juliette Binoche is wonderful as always in Between Two Worlds, an earthy doc-style drama about a journalist who joins a community of very low-paid workers.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Luzzu • Cop Secret
The Perfect David • 18½
ALL REVIEWS >

There was also the offbeat Watergate thriller 18½, about two people who discover a copy of that "accidentally erased" tape. It's witty and very clever. And from China, Boonie Bears: Back to Earth is the eighth movie in a 10-year franchise, but only the first to get a UK release. It's a strikingly well-animated romp involving bears and aliens, with some terrific action set pieces and a surprisingly big story too. I also caught up with these two recent streaming releases...

Senior Year
dir Alex Hardcastle; scr Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli, Brandon Scott Jones 
with Rebel Wilson, Sam Richardson, Angourie Rice, Mary Holland, Zoe Chao, Justin Hartley, Chris Parnell, Jade Bender
22/US Paramount 1h51 ***
Refreshingly, this comedy never aspires to be anything more than a goofy romp that keeps us smiling and occasionally laughing. Slick and bouncy, the film's chirpy attitude makes up for a string of cheap jokes and a lack of anything substantial under the surface. The story centres on Stephanie (Wilson), who has just woken up after 20 years in a coma following a cheerleading accident. Now at 37, she wants to finish high school, again as head cheerleader and this time as prom queen. There are the obvious gags about about how the world has changed since Stephanie's heyday, including of course mobile phones, social media and Lady Gaga. Her best friend (Holland) is now the principal, the boy (Hartley) she loved is married to her nemesis (Chao), and the friend (Richardson) who had a secret crush on her is for some reason the school librarian. It's annoying that the writers never dig any deeper, because there's scope for a more layered comedy here. Instead they fall back on simplistic plotting, buckets of sentimentality and oddly vague nostalgia. But because the movie is so happily superficial, it just about does the trick as mindless entertainment.

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers
dir Akiva Schaffer; scr Dan Gregor, Doug Mand
with Andy Samberg, John Mulaney, Will Arnett, KiKi Layne, JK Simmons, Seth Rogen, Keegan-Michael Key, Eric Bana, Dennis Haysbert, Tress MacNeille
22/US Disney 1h37 ***.
Intriguing reviews made me want to check out this new take on the iconic Disney chipmunks, set in a world where cartoon characters live alongside live-action people. Filled to the brim with cameos, it's a meta-comedy about the movie business. Years after their act broke up, Chip and Dale (voiced by Mulaney and Samberg) have gone their separate ways. Chip is selling insurance, while Dale has had "CGI surgery" and wants to reteam with Chip for a reboot of their 30-year-old hit TV show. Along with wildly inventive effects, witty sight gags and a surprisingly strong mystery plot involving bootleg cartoon characters, the film is a steady stream of hilarious pop culture references. There's even a trip to Uncanny Alley, where everyone has those creepy "Polar Express eyes". A deeply irreverent attitude infuses this film, which makes the barrage of gags unusually sharp and surprising, and the action sometimes feels thrilling too. But it's the character details that make this riotous romp unusually involving. 

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Things remain a bit quieter than usual next week as far as screenings go, but I have one rather big film, Baz Luhrmann's epic biopic Elvis, plus a few to watch at home, including the award-winning Italian drama Il Buco, the burlesque doc Baloney, the comical doc A Sexplanation and the shorts collection The Male Gaze: Fleeting Glances.

London Film Fest: Camping it up

Well, today was my first semi-meltdown at the 63rd BFI London Film Festival, as I shockingly skipped two screenings to come home and get some work done instead, the result being that all of the films mentioned below link to full reviews. But today I reached my limit; there's always a point during a festival when you say to yourself, "I don't actually need to watch every film on my want-to-see list." Well, I did start at an 8am screening this morning, which is a bit extreme no matter what the film is (it was Noah Baumbach's wrenching Marriage Story). It's also been raining off and on, and that has a way of wearing you down as you trudge from screening to coffee to screening to coffee. It can't be much fun for those walking red carpet at the big evening gala screenings. But then I don't see the stars, I only see the movies. And here are some more highlights...

Jojo Rabbit

dir-scr Taika Waititi; with Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie 19/Cz ****

Making a comedy about Nazis may be rather risky, but actor-filmmaker Taika Waititi strikes a clever balance between silliness and sadness with this provocative coming-of-age tale. The film is solidly well-made, with a terrific cast of comical geniuses romping through the scenery. So while the mood change from wacky to serious feels abrupt, the central story's pathos strikes a chord.... FULL REVIEW >

Abominable

dir-scr Jill Culton; voices Chloe Bennet, Albert Tsai 19/Chn ***

The script for this animated adventure is oddly unambitious, recycling themes and action beats to tell a predictable story that contains no real tension. Thankfully it looks terrific, mainly due to spectacular settings that create a travelogue around China. So if the character design and big set-pieces lack imagination, at least there are some nicely engaging situations that keep it lively.... FULL REVIEW >

Monsoon

dir-scr Hong Khaou; with Henry Golding, Parker Sawyers 19/UK ****.

Director Hong Khaou continues on from the delicate beauty of Lilting with this gentle, finely crafted exploration of personal history and identity. Set in Vietnam, it also centres around a death, but this time as a window into the past as the central character quietly allows his lost connection with his roots to wash over him and change him. It's a stunner of a film packed with moving moments.... FULL REVIEW >

Rialto

dir Peter Mackie Burns; with Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Tom Glynn-Carney 19/Ire ***

Dark and very moody, this Irish drama excavates the life of a married man in his 40s who is grappling with issues relating to his job, family and sexuality. It's a little too mumbly and mopey to engage properly, and perhaps too deliberately pointed as well (it's based on the stage play Trade). But it's so intimately directed by Peter Mackie Burns that it can't help but be moving... FULL REVIEW >

Real

dir-scr Aki Omoshaybi; with Aki Omoshaybi, Pippa Bennett-Warner 19/UK ***.

There's an everyday authenticity to this British drama, capturing very present-day pressures on normal people who are trying to get their lives in forward motion. Actor-filmmaker Aki Omoshaybi has created a warm, involving spin on the kitchen sink tradition. While the situations are grim, the people in this film are very easy to identify with, especially as they're so relentlessly likeable.... FULL REVIEW >

Don't Look Down [Haut Perchés]

dir-scr Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau; with Geoffrey Couet, Francois Nambot 19/Fr ***

Like a stage play, this film puts five characters in an apartment and watches them over the course of a single night as the talk to each other. French filmmakers Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau use deep colourful lighting to give the film a lush look and feel, and each of the cast members has a vivid sense of physicality. This is a seductive, mysterious little film that pulls the audience in.... FULL REVIEW >

Links:

Shadows LONDON FILM FEST homepage (full reviews will be linked here) 

Official LONDON FILM FEST site 

Critical Week: Dress to impress

With another long weekend, it's been a shorter than usual week of screenings. But I still kept pretty busy. The biggest release screened to the press, barely before it opened, was The Hustle, a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson. As a comedy it's rather weak, but has some funny moments all the way through. There were also two British period biopics. Tolkien is an impeccably produced look at the early life of JRR Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult), although it's a bit dry since it takes place before he wrote anything. The Professor and the Madman follows the tenacious work of James Murray (Mel Gibson) to define the English language and produce the first Oxford English Dictionary, with the help of an in-patient at Broodmoor asylum (Sean Penn). Despite the troubled production, it's a fascinating story, strikingly well acted.

Further afield we had the moving, dark British indie drama Last Summer, about young teens in small-town Wales dealing with a wrenching community crisis. And the even darker American indie drama Just Say Goodbye takes on teen suicide with a perhaps too-provocative story about friendship and parenthood. We also caught the superb documentary XY Chelsea, which closely follows whistleblower Chelsea Manning between two incarcerations. It's involving and even inspiring, taking on those who label her a traitor. And since it's finally out for streaming/etc in the UK, here's a longer take on this doc I saw a few weeks back...

Fahrenheit 11/9
dir-scr Michael Moore; with Michael Moore, Timothy Snyder, Jenifer Lewis, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg 18/US 2h08 ****

Michael Moore was one of the only pundits who predicted the Trump presidency. So this long but watchable and important doc opens with the massive upset of election night 2016, from Clinton supporters' pre-voting revelry turning into gloom to the shocked faces of Team Trump, which clearly didn't expect to win. From here, Moore spins back to look at how Trump accidentally got into the race while trying to increase his profile in contract negotiations with NBC. His racist comments backfired (NBC fired him), but he touched a nerve with a segment of the American public. Masterfully manipulating the media, which was making a fortune from covering his antics, Trump had a long history with Russian mobsters and the media leaders taken down for abusing women. Moore also documents his overt racism and misogyny over many decades, all of which was public knowledge. Similarly, his treasonous behaviour since taking office has also been out in the open.

As usual, Moore connects this to his hometown of Flint, Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder (a Trump buddy) declared a fake emergency to essentially privatise the poor, black city, callously poisoning it then covering up the escalating disaster. This takes up a good chunk of the film, and rightly so. Back to the main topic, Moore's dissection of the US electorate is fascinating: the truth is that liberal '60s values reflect the average American today; the Republicans have only won the popular vote in one presidential election in the last 30 years ("You can't call it a democracy if the person who wins the most votes doesn't win"). Moore also covers the fraud among the Democrats, such as how anyone who breaks from the centrist line is suppressed (as was Bernie Sanders), and how in many ways Obama paved the way for Trump. So it was no wonder people were willing to break the system with a protest vote.

Finally, Moore dives into gun control in the wake of the Parkland shootings an teens who refused to sit quietly and accept "thoughts and prayers". The salient point here is that candidates are representing their donors, not the voters. And Moore's most powerful message is that we need to ignore attempts to divide us against each other, rise up and create the government we deserve. History tells us that the US is becoming less democratic and more despotic by the day. So this film's carefully documented conclusions should chill us to the bone.

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This coming week, we'll be watching Keanu Reeves in John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, Julianne Moore in Gloria Bell and the documentaries Apollo 11, General Magic, The Lavender Scare and Nomad. Plus a couple of stage shows, just for a change of scenery.

Critical Week: Saluting the holidays

I only had three screenings in my final week of the working year, but then I was rather busy with getting the London Critics' Circle Film Award nominations announced - a terrific event. The films I caught included Pitch Perfect 3, which is being billed as the curtain call for the a cappella franchise, and definitely shows the strain in coming up with something for these talented women to do. It's a shame to go out with such a whimper after the seriously great first two movies. All the Money in the World is notorious for director Ridley Scott's last minute decision to scrub star Kevin Spacey from the movie and replace him with Christopher Plummer. But perhaps future viewers will be able to enjoy this superb true thriller without the baggage. It's one of Scott's best films, a taut drama with terrific performances from Michelle Williams, Charlie Plummer and indeed Christopher Plummer. And Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel also brings some baggage with it, but is notable for Kate Winslet's staggering performance as a desperate housewife in 1950s Coney Island. It's also shot and lit gloriously by veteran cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. And I also caught up with this little gem...

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Faces Places [Visages, Villages]
dir Agnes Varda, JR; with Agnes Varda, JR 17/Fr ****
This quirky documentary teams up 88-year-old filmmaking icon Agnes Varda with 33-year-old artist JR as they travel spontaneously around France taking large-format photos and wallpapering them onto various enormous structures. Watching this is a delight, as these two lively figures spar with each other and explore the nature of art and culture. Agnes talks about her life and friendships, and constantly teases JR about the way he hides from the world, obscuring his name and personal life, and even his eyes behind sunglasses. And the people they photograph along the way capture a spark of life in very clever ways that have a big effect on onlookers. Powerful pictures include workers on different factory shifts reaching out to each other, wives of dock-workers towering above them, and Agnes' eyes and toes on train cars. There is also a clever sense of history, with vintage images posted on appropriate surfaces. It's all a little meandering, and sometimes rather too clever to accept as just a random sequence of encounters. But the way it touches on French culture, the history of cinema and larger issues like globalisation is deeply involving.

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This coming week will be a chance to watch several screeners of films that were nominated in various awards I vote in. On my list are the docs Jane and The Work, the foreign films Raw and Aquarius, and late-in-the-year releases like Irish drama Sanctuary and German thriller In the Fade.

Critical Week: The pitch is back

For critics, one of the most anticipated films of the year was Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel to the surprisingly amazing 2012 comedy. So of course the highlight of the week was the press screening of the follow-up, which surpassed expectations (again), reuniting the Bellas for another hilarious adventure. The other big movie this week was of course Avengers: Age of Ultron, which has provoked a bit of a mixed response. But I'm looking forward to meeting them all at the press junket today!

We also caught up with Thomas Vinterberg's sumptuous version of Far From the Madding Crowd, starring Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge and Michael Sheen (I interviewed Carey and Matthias last week for this film). Lower profile films included Nia Vardalos as a seriously annoying mother in the otherwise decent comedy Helicopter Mom; the clever and occasionally scary computer-screen teen slasher horror Unfriended; the scruffy indie British caper comedy Taking Stock starring Kelly Brook; the corny and very childish Euro-animation Two by Two; the nicely moody gay mystery-horror Drink Me; and the superbly blood-boiling political doc The Emperor's New Clothes, by Russell Brand and Michael Winterbottom.

Screenings this coming week are a bit thin, but include Michael Fassbender in Slow West, Simon Pegg in Kill Me Three Times, the German drama West, the Hungarian drama Land of Storms, and the controversial world premiere doc A Sinner in Mecca, and the public action doc We Are Many.

Requisite Blog Photo: Smoking gun

Critical Week: Pitch-slapped

The most raucous screening last week was for the musical comedy Pitch Perfect - it's rare to hear film critics laughing so loudly all the way through a film. It stars Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson as members of a very competitive a capella university singing group. Less hilarious was goofy infertility comedy The Babymakers, which has a terrific lead couple in Olivia Munn and Paul Schneider but gets lost in a lame caper subplot. The tense British horror-thriller Tower Block also has a terrific cast led by Sheridan Smith, Russell Tovey and Jack O'Connell, but falls apart due to a hole-ridden script.

Foreign-language-wise, we had Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner Amour, a staggeringly well-observed drama about a couple facing their mortality; Xavier Dolan's Toronto award winner Laurence Anyways, an ambitious gender-bender starring the terrific Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clement; and the genial Swedish political rom-com Four More Years. There was also one doc: Hungarian Rhapsody, which includes rare interviews with Queen followed by a gorgeously shot film of their 1986 Budapest concert. And I caught up with two classics: Pier Paolo Pasolini's stunning version of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Steven Spielberg's timeless adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was simply fabulous to revisit on the Imax screen.

This coming week we have Mike Newell's take on Great Expectations, Liam Neeson in Taken 2, the Ferrell-Galifianakis comedy The Campaign, the Aussie crowdpleaser The Sapphires, the animated horror-comedy Hotel Transylvania, the Polish hip-hop drama You Are God and the British indie drama Love Tomorrow. And on Monday morning, press screenings begin for the 56th BFI London Film Festival (10-21 Oct), so I'll be catching up with the likes of the comedy Celeste & Jesse Forever, the Cannes-winner The Hunt, and the doc West of Memphis, among many others.