Critical Week: You look marvellous

After a few days in France, I'm back in action in London, with a mercifully relaxed screening schedule for a change. Raindance Film Festival started here this week, but I'm observing that from a distance this year. Meanwhile, it looks like we're finally in line for some summery weather, so I hope to get out a bit more too! As for the films I've watched, easily the most unforgettable was the Cannes sensation The Substance, which stars Demi Moore as an actor in search of eternal youth in the most nightmarish road imaginable. It's unflinching, crazy and rather brilliant. Russell Crowe is back in demonic mode for The Exorcism, an oddly unscary horror movie that never takes advantage of its witty film-within-a-film premise. And the animated adventure The Imaginary is gloriously hand-drawn, with a wonderfully involving, emotional story, even if it feels a bit old fashioned.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Green Border • Kinds of Kindness
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Exorcism
ALL REVIEWS >

I also watched the Aussie war drama Before Dawn, which stars Levi Miller as a young guy who travels from the sunny Outback to muddy World War I France. It's skilfully well-made, but not particularly inventive. From Canada, Queen Tut is a hugely involving and strikingly well-played drama about a young guy from Egypt who finds his voice through Toronto drag queens. And Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Nash'at put his life on the line to make the stunning doc Hollywoodgate, in which he observes Taliban leaders taking back power. It's unmissable. I also spent a few days at the Annecy Film Festival, where I spent time with the creative team who are making The Wild Robot (MY REPORT IS HERE), and I managed to see two films in my "spare" time...

Rock Bottom
dir-scr Maria Trenor; prd Alba Sotorra 24/Sp  ***.
A Spanish-Polish coproduction in English, this animated musical drama is based on the life of singer-songwriter Robert Wyatt and his partner Alfreda Benge. It's animated in a hand-drawn style using rotoscoped movement from actors, which gives it an eerie real-world feel even as things get rather psychedelic. The story traverses from a drug-infused party in early 1970s Manhattan back to swimming naked amid the rocks around Majorca, hinging on a momentous moment that completely changed Wyatt's life. Writer-director Maria Trenor creates a lovely music-infused vibe that pulls us in, augmented by vivid visual flourishes that are often dazzlingly colourful and imaginative.

The Birth of Kitarō: The Mystery of GeGeGe
dir Go Koga; voices Toshihiko Seki, Hidenobu Kiuchi 23/Jpn ***
Based on the darkly fantastical manga, this prequel story tells a bizarre story set in the 1950s as a businessman heads to a strange isolated village to settle a complex issue, but finds himself in the middle of a wildly bonkers mystery involving supernatural beings. While the animation is artfully rendered with a staggering attention to detail, the story is tricky to follow for the uninitiated, and things move so briskly, with so many colourful characters and inexplicable goings-on that it's not easy to keep up. Fans on the other hand will love the complexity of the storytelling, especially as it tackles some big social issues in rather bleakly inventive ways.

This coming week I'll be watching Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One, Julianne Nicholson in Janet Planet, the Indian action thriller Kill, and the art film Dance Revolutionaries, plus the stage show Standing in the Shadows of Giants. I also have a lot of TV to catch up on before Dorian Awards ballots are due on Monday.

Critical Week: Mask up

The weather in the UK has broken all records, unbearably hot temperatures for a nation that has so little air conditioning. Thankfully, I was able to escape to cool theatres and cinemas! And the warm weather is continuing, so I'll be on the look out for ways to avoid the sweatiness. Films this past week included the Austen-style period romance Mr Malcolm's List starring Freida Pinto and Sope Dirisu. It's engaging but feels very gimmicky. And then there was Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, a surprising remake of Blazing Saddles as an animated kid-friendly romp set in feudal Japan. It's silly fun, perhaps too messy for children, but fans of the original will enjoy the references, including Mel Brooks voicing a new take on his original role.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Big City • My Old School
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time
ALL REVIEWS >

A little further afield is the British historical drama Prizefighter, about 1800 boxing champ Jem Belcher. It's simplistic, but is boosted by having Russell Crowe and Ray Winstone in key roles. Katie Holmes writes, directs and stars in the pandemic romance Alone Together, which is warm and engaging, and also predictable. The comedy-drama The Shuroo Retreat, follows a journalist to a wacky self-help weekend, with results that are funny and remarkably complex. The British romantic drama You Are My Sunshine is clearly a labour of love by inexperienced actors and filmmakers. It's awkward but has its moments. And there were two more selections of shorts in the Girls Feels series: Forces of Nature and Skin Deep, taking bold, insightful looks at young women coming of age.

Films to watch this coming week include the animated adventure DC League of Super-Pets, Juliette Binoche in Both Sides of the Blade, Will Poulter in The Score, Billy Porter's comedy-drama Anything's Possible and the horror thriller Hypochondriac.

Critical Week: Road rage

It's been nearly five months since my normal everyday schedule ended abruptly, and I had a couple of firsts this week that make it feel like there may be light at the end of this long tunnel. I went to a restaurant with table service (outdoors on a gorgeous evening), and on only my third trip into Central London I had my first press screening in an actual screening room (with severe distancing measures). The movie on that big screen was Unhinged, a vicious thriller with Russell Crowe that arrives in cinemas next week.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Most Wanted
Stage Mother • Myth
FULL REVIEWS >

Other movies this week were an above-average mix, including the ripping true story Most Wanted, a Canadian drug-case drama starring the excellent Antoine Olivier Pilon and Josh Hartnett; the wrenchingly personal drama Retaliation, about the fallout from child abuse starring a raw Orlando Bloom; the gritty immigrant drama American Fighter; the ambitiously offbeat hybrid of WWII action and a haunted house in Ghosts of War, starring Brenton Thwaites and Skyler Astin; the corny but topical childbirth comedy Babysplitters, starring Community's Dani Pudi; and the clever guerrilla filmmaking comedy-drama Myth.

My list of films to watch over the coming week includes the animated comedy Animal Crackers, Patrick Stewart in Life With Music, Bella Thorne in Infamous, the indie romance Around the Sun, the backstage TV comedy Casting, the horror movie The Vigil, the arthouse film Last and First Men and the intriguingly titled doc Pornstar Pandemic.

Critical Week: The tipping point

A trio of star-powered movies screened to UK critics this week, starting with George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Jack O'Connell in Money Monster, a ripping thriller that's also a knowing satire of both the media and the banking world. X-Men: Apocalypse rounds off the First Class trilogy with a big, crowded, effects-heavy action movie made entertaining by the presence of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and a solid supporting cast. And Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe go comical for The Nice Guys, an enjoyable noir romp set in a groovy 1977 Los Angeles. Speaking of which, I caught a documentary about the period...

Elstree 1976
dir Jon Spira; with David Prowse, Jeremy Bulloch, Paul Blake, Angus MacInnes 15/UK ***.
Star Wars fans won't want to miss this rather low-key but fascinating documentary about a group of extras, bit players and performers hidden in costumes working at London's Elstree Studios in the summer of 1976 on the movie that changed cinema forever. It's fun to hear how they had inklings that this might be a bit better than the B-movie they were hired to work on, and their reminiscences about being on-set and having the saga take over their lives afterwards are fascinating. Iconic characters include Darth Vader (Prowse), Boba Fett (Bulloch) and Greedo (Blake), and the doc includes plenty of backstage film and snapshots, plus spot-the-extra clips of other background artists. It's a bit too gentle to really thrill audiences, but it's a terrific document of the lesser-known aspects of such a game-changing movie.

There were also three smaller independent films this week: Rosif Sutherland is terrific in the gripping but slightly contrived River, about a volunteer doctor in Laos who finds himself running for his life. A TV presenter is haunted by his past in the Canadian drama Steel, finding healing in a young man who seems perhaps a bit too perfect to be true. And Godless is a relentlessly low-key drama about two brothers coping with grief while also coming to terms with a deep secret they've held between them for years.

Screenings in London are slow this week, with everyone decamped to Cannes. But we will be watching a couple of effects-based action epics - Warcraft: The Beginning, and Gods of Egypt - plus last year's Cannes-winning performance by Vincent Lindon in Measure of a Man. I've also got a few more theatre trips lined up.

Shadows on the Stage: Like father like son

The Sum of Us
scr David Stevens • dir Gene David Kirk
Above the Stag Theatre, Vauxhall • 9.Sep-4.Oct.15

The plucky Above the Stag Theatre deploys its now-expected professionalism in this revival of David Stevens' award-winning 1990 play, which was adapted into the 1994 film starring the great Jack Thompson and a young Russell Crowe. Not only are all four of the cast members well up to the challenge, but the set designers have outdone themselves to create a detailed Melbourne home in a very tiny space, plus a terrific last-act transformation.

Set in the late 1980s, the story centres on Harry (Stephen Connery-Brown, above left), a widower who lives with his 24-year-old rugby player son Jeff (Tim McFarland, right), more like odd-couple flatmates than father and son. Harry is slightly too supportive of Jeff's gay sexuality, encouraging him to get out there and find a man to love. When Jeff brings home the shy nice guy Greg (Rory Hawkins), Harry's enthusiastic acceptance is a bit much at a time when Greg is unable to even mention sexuality to his own parents. Meanwhile, Harry has registered with a dating service, through which he meets Joyce (Annabel Pemberton), the first woman he has gone out with since his wife died a decade earlier.

The play features continual to-audience monologs that reveal the complexity of Harry's and Jeff's inner thoughts. It's a mannered device that slightly diminishes the strong camaraderie between the characters, but it continually offers pungent insight between the lines. Connery-Brown is particularly strong as Harry, a cheerful guy who just wants his son to feel free to be himself inside his own home. And while Hawkins sometimes over-eggs Jeff's cheeky attitude, he's a likeably complex young man who realistically feels just as trapped by his father's encouragement as Greg does by his father's cruel bigotry. Both Hawkins and Pemberton bring all kinds of edges to their smaller roles.

Most significant is how the play uses honest interaction mixed with internal soul-searching to explore the impact we have on each other, generation to generation, as we search for our own happiness. No one wants to go through life alone, but perhaps it's even more difficult to watch someone we love fail at romance. Where this story goes is darkly surprising, both intensely moving and properly hopeful. And this astute production brings out the script's emotional kick in a way that feels organic and effortless.

Critical Week: Well well well...

UK critics had a chance to catch up with Russell Crowe's directing debut The Water Diviner this past week. It's a moving true story set in the aftermath of World War I, but its earnestness tries the patience. As does a somewhat gratuitous romantic subplot involving Olga Kurylenko as an impossibly gorgeous Turkish hotelier. The biggest film of the week was Insurgent, which held its world premiere in London before the only press screening on Monday. It's an improvement on the original, with stronger characters, terrific acting and even more impressive visuals.

Critics were also treated to a lively morning screening of the hilarious DreamWorks animated romp Home, and an evening screening of Liam Neeson's latest action movie Run All Night, which was better than expected. Stonehearst Asylum is a nutty mental institute thriller by Brad Anderson with an all-star cast that includes Ben Kingsley, Michael Caine, Kate Beckinsale and Jim Sturgess. Listen Up Philip is a funny and awkward comedy about writers starring Jason Schwartzman, Jonathan Pryce and the amazing Elizabeth Moss. Still is a low-budget British film that majors in moody set design and intense characters at the expense of personal involvement. And 3 in a Bed is an even smaller-budget British romance that proves that anyone can make a movie, including amateurs.

We also had some press screenings for the British Film Institute's Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, which kicks off on Thursday night at BFI Southbank. The opening film is I Am Michael, a bracingly open-handed drama starring James Franco and Zachary Quinto that's bound to spark a lot of discussion. And we also watched the director's cut of 54, Mark Christopher's 1998 disco-era drama that was eviscerated by the studio at the time and makes a lot more sense with key narrative elements reinstated. Great performances too from Ryan Philippe, Salma Hayek, Breckin Meyer and Mike Myers, plus a glimpse of a young Mark Ruffalo. I've seen a lot more BFI Flare movies already, and will be covering the festival here as usual.

Over the next week, BFI Flare will take up most of my time, but I also have screenings of Will Ferrell's Get Hard, the true thriller Kidnapping Freddy Heineken and a pair of somewhat self-explanatory docs: Altman, about the filmmaker, and I Am Big Bird, about the Sesame Street performer.

Critical Week: There's gonna be a floody-floody

This past week's big screening for London press was for Darren Aronofsky's biblical flood thriller Noah, which pretty evenly divided critics. While I admired Aronofsky's stunning time-lapse version of creation, I was a bit put off by the fact that these militant vegans wear leather accessories. The other big movies were Arnold Schwarzenegger's gritty cop drama Sabotage and the Emma Thompson-Pierce Brosnan rom-com heist romp The Love Punch, both of which I'm embargoed from discussing quite yet. I also had a chance to interview Arnie and Emma for those films - Arnie was surreally accompanied by British anti-comic Keith Lemon; Emma came with costar Celia Imrie. Both were charming.

Smaller films included Juliette Binoche's storming performance as a photojournalist in the complex Irish drama A Thousand Times Good Night, Kristin Scott Thomas' steely turn opposite Daniel Auteuil in the repressed French drama Before the Winter Chill, and a trio of terrific Guatemalan teens as youngsters trying to travel to California in the astonishingly well-made and rather bleak The Golden Dream. There were also two British comedies: Almost Married is a somewhat under-cooked stag night farce, while Downhill is a superbly telling and very funny doc-style road movie about four middle-aged men walking coast-to coast-across England.

This coming week's movies include Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff in The Motel Life, Gina Carano and Cam Gigandet in the action movie In the Blood, the offbeat drama Concussion, a new 3D animated version of Tarzan, the Lisbon gang thriller After the Night, and the superbly titled Swedish hit The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.

Critical Week: Caught in the act

This week's big press screening in London was for Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, which won a top award at Berlin last weekend and is far and away my favourite film of 2014 to date. It may only be February, but this is Anderson's most accomplished film yet, with a terrific ensemble including Ralph Fiennes and promising newcomer Tony Revolori and a story that's funny, scary and ultimately moving. Another pleasant discovery was Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, a dreamy horror movie starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien devouring men in Scotland - it's simply stunning.

The only other A-list film was much more problematic: A New York Winter's Tale (original title Winter's Tale) stars Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay and Russell Crowe in a magical romance that's infused with brutal violence. This week we also saw the low-key but inventive British black comedy 8 Minutes Idle, the uneven and undercooked German thriller The Passenger and the utterly charming doc A Story of Children and Film. And we saw another Berlinale entry, the oddly dull French biopic Yves Saint Laurent, worth seeing for the performances and, of course, super-stylish production design.

Sunday night in London, the British Academy Film Awards - better known as the Baftas - were held in the Royal Opera House, spreading out the trophies among the nominated films. 12 Years a Slave won best film and actor, but Gravity picked up six awards including British film and director. The host for the evening was Stephen Fry, who pretty much just recycled his knowing schtick from eight previous turns as host. It's time for fresh blood. The red carpet was awash in glamour, with Lupita Nyong'o, Amy Adams and Helen Mirren taking the fashion prizes. Mirren was the classiest winner, giving a witty, erudite speech as she accepted her Bafta Fellowship.

Screenings coming this week include the comedies Hairbrained and Southern Baptist Sissies, the offbeat Odd Thomas, the festival film Blue Ruin and something called 112 Weddings. I'm also in the midst of screenings for the upcoming London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival - full coverage of those films next month.

Critical Week: An actor's second skin

For me, the biggest event of the week was a visit to the V&A's Hollywood Costume exhibition, showcasing hundreds of iconic movie costumes - from the silent era up to this past year. It's a mind-boggling collection, and difficult to pick favourites. Obvious ones include gowns worn on screen by goddesses like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. But I really enjoyed the two Harrison Ford items - an expanded exploration of each item of Indiana Jones' costume, and the actual Han Solo outfit. There's also a superb section featuring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, and several round-table discussions between actors, costume designers and directors (for example: Tippi Hedren, Edith Head and Alfred Hitchcock "discussing" The Birds). Unmissable.

As for screenings, there were two big action movies - Arnold Schwarzenegger and Forest Whitaker in The Last Stand and Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe in Broken City - and a big weepy - Josh Duhamel in Safe Haven. Sorry, but I can't say anything about these films just yet - embargoes apply. I can, however, confirm that the two revival films I saw this week were wonderful: the 3D conversion of my favourite Pixar movie Monsters Inc and a big screen revival of A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor at their most achingly gorgeous. And I quite enjoyed the subtle, low-budget comedy The Men Next Door.

This coming week is pretty dominated by the 33rd London Critics' Circle Film Awards on Sunday night - I am the chair of the awards committee, so am thoroughly involved in organising the ceremony. It should be great fun as always - and I'll offer a full report. Screening-wise, we have James McAvoy in Welcome to the Punch, Pierce Brosnan in Love Is All You Need, and Alex Gibney's documentary Mea Maxima Culpa, among others.

Critical Week: Tiger taming

London critics have finally been able to catch up with some big awards contenders this past week, including Ang Lee's remarkable Life of Pi, a staggeringly beautiful film with rich, moving themes. Frankly it's difficult to believe that such a complex, delicate film made it through the Hollywood system. Even bigger is Tom Hooper's film of the long-running musical Les Miserables, with a powerhouse cast including Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried. It's a bit too much to fit in a movie, frankly, and rather exhausting. But also unmissable.

More award hopefuls appear in Hitchcock, an enjoyable, lightweight look at Alfred Hitchcock's battles to make Psycho. Anthony Hopkins plays the title role exactly like Hitch's screen persona, but Helen Mirren steals the show as his wife. There's probably no chance of awards attention for The Man With the Iron Fists, a messy 1970s-style kung fu romp cowritten, directed and scored by and starring RZA. Genre geeks might enjoy it, but not many others will. And finally there was the doc Ballroom Dancer, following a world champion's attempt at a comeback while he alienates everyone around him. Compellingly dark but not easy to watch.


This coming week I've got screenings of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher and Carlos Reygada's Post Tenebrus Lux, among other things. It'll also be voting time at the end of next week for a couple of critics awards - my own meagre contribution to the awards-season hubbub.