Critical Week: Up against the wall

London is gearing up for Sunday night's Baftas (aka the British Academy Film Awards), which sends awards season into its final lap before Oscar night in three weeks. I still have a few nominees to catch up with (namely documentaries), and I will be rooting for underdogs while watching the ceremony on TV on Sunday ... then congratulating them in person at the after-party. As for movies watched this past week, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is an energetic and very scrappy sci-fi action comedy starring Sam Rockwell as a man from the future trying to recruit a team of sceptics to prevent an AI apocalypse. It's a lot of messy fun even if it doesn't quite hang together.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Kokuho • The Secret Agent
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Wasteman • Cold Storage
A Private Life
ALL REVIEWS >

Even messier is the crazy alien invasion mayhem of Jimmy and Stiggs, which was home-made by actor-filmmaker Jeff Begos. It's riotously yucky. And then there were the slick thrills of Scare Out, a spy thriller from China that has too much choppy dialog for its own good. But Jackson Yee and Zhu Yilong are terrific leads. From North Macedonia, DJ Ahmet is a wonderfully involving comedy-drama about the collision between sparky youth and old world tradition. And the gorgeously shot documentary Underland explores human fascination with travelling below Earth's surface. Speaking of underground, I also attended an immersive premiere for the second season of the Disney TV series Paradise, elaborately held in a network of caverns under Waterloo station (see below). And I was at the programme launch party for the 40th BFI Flare, a favourite festival that I have covered for 30 years.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Neve Campbell in Scream 7, the Lithuanian drama The Activist, the acclaimed one-man psychological thriller Disremember and the documentary Palestine Comedy Club. I'll also attend Netflix's big party after the Baftas on Sunday night and a special screening premiering Bridgerton Season 4 Part 2.

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Critical Week: Take the wheel

It's been another week of movies here, and I'm enjoying how things are back to a relatively normal schedule after months of intensity. The biggest movie this week was an online feature: Ghosted is an engaging action romcom that reteams Ana de Armas and Chris Evans. Rather a lot mopier, To Catch a Killer stars Shailene Woodley as a troubled cop pulled into an FBI investigation into a mass-shooter. It's dark and timely, but feels somewhat undercooked.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
A Thousand and One
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
PERHAPS AVOID:
Padre Pio
ALL REVIEWS >

The best surprise this week is The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan, a familiar story sharply well told with a first-rate French cast and properly thrilling action. The latest in the franchise, Evil Dead Rise is never very scary but will please fans with its outrageously excessive gore. And then there's the inventive and hugely engaging Filipino comedy I Love You Beksman, which kicked off the Queer East Fest in London on Tuesday. 

Outside the cinema, I loved the Nederlands Dans Theater programme at Sadler's Wells. And this was my first year attending the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards as a voting member (I am a member of the Critics' Circle Theatre Section, in addition to being chair of the Film Section). These awards are great fun, held at @sohoplace, the first new theatre built in the West End in 50 years. And most winners were in attendance, so it was great to celebrate them.

This next week I'll be watching the biopic Big George Foreman, Jay Baruchel in the story of BlackBerry, Kate Bosworth in Last Sentinel, the Greek drama Broadway, the Swedish comedy RSVP and the dance art film Transparent.

Critical Week: Ask tough questions

London has been shifted back into severe third-tier restrictions. But cinemas are closed again, as are theatres and restaurants (all places where it's easy to remain distant), but inexplicably not shops, schools, gyms (where it isn't). Thankfully, I had a few actual cinema screenings in between lockdowns, including Kevin Macdonald's superb The Mauritanian, starring Jodie Foster (above) along with Tahar Rahim, Shailene Woodley and Benedict Cumberbatch. It's the powerful true story of a Guantanamo detainee. An even bigger screening was WW84 (that's the film's only title on-screen), the Wonder Woman sequel, which was screened to us on the huge BFI Imax screen. It's a lot of fun, if a bit messy in the final act. What a shame that it can't open in London cinemas as planned this week.

 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Education • The Prince
American Utopia
PERHAPS AVOID:
Come Away • Modern Persuasion
ALL REVIEWS >

Steven Soderbergh's all-star comedy Let Them All Talk is also good fun, with a lively ensemble led by Meryl Streep improvising dialog while sailing from New York to London. And George Clooney dons a Santa beard to save the world in The Midnight Sky, which isn't a Christmas movie: it's a smart sci-fi adventure that's intriguing and moving.

Alicia Silverstone is terrific in Sister of the Groom, a likeably odd concoction that feels like it should be a romcom but is actually a serious family drama. Alicia Witt leads a nutty ensemble in Modern Persuasion, a present-day take on Jane Austen that's actually another rather corny romcom. From Argentina, The Weasels' Tail is a madcap play on old-world cinema glamour defending itself from corporate sharks. From Mexico, I Carry You With Me is a beautiful drama about connections between people and cultures. And The Boy Is Mine is a collection of five well-made shorts from five countries, each tackling an aspect of youthful masculinity.

This coming week I have another eclectic bunch of films to watch, including the Roald Dahl biopic To Olivia, Celia Imrie in Love Sarah, Rupert Everett in The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, the Kiwi drama Savage, the Swedish drama Are We Lost Forever, the Mexican drama Identifying Features and probably a few more awards season contenders, as they're coming in by the minute.

Critical Week: Locked in

Having passed the one month mark of being in isolation here in London (plus 10 days in California before that), the days are beginning to blur together. I wanted to cook some food to liven things up, but the shops are still missing some basics - for example, not one of the many grocery stores around me has any flour in stock. I badly need to add some variety to my culinary routine, and am enjoying being creative. Otherwise, the days are a blur of watching movies, writing about them, watching TV shows, then more movies.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Moffie • Circus of Books
PERHAPS AVOID:
Radioactive • Crisis Hotline
We Summon the Darkness

The week's biggest film for me was The Willoughbys, an energetic animated adventure comedy about a quirky group of siblings trying to make up for deadbeat parents. It's colourful, very funny and packed with nice little emotional moments. Shailene Woodley, Jamie Dornan and Sebastian Stan are terrific in the romantic melodrama Endings, Beginnings, which never quite builds a head of steam as a woman mopes through her indecision about which man is right for her (neither is). Wagner Moura is excellent in the biopic Sergio, tracing the life of an important UN figure with real insight and some skilful filmmaking. And Alexandra Daddario leads the grisly horror romp We Summon the Darkness, which has some fun 1980s nods but little to make it memorable.

For more adventurous viewers, these are streaming: Cuck is well-made, involving and deliberately provocative pitch-black drama about a guy whose right-wing views push him over the edge; Ghost is gorgeously shot on an iPhone to add a thoughtful angle to the usual British crime drama; Crisis Hotline is an uneven but thoughtful dramatic thriller about a helpline caller threatening murder; from Russia, Why Don't You Just Die is a funny-but-pointless wildly violent black comedy about a group of people trying to kill each other for a variety of reasons; and the excellent documentary Circus of Books tells the fascinating, involving story of a traditional Jewish family that ran an unlikely gay porn business.

Films on my list to watch this coming week in lockdown include Sally Potter's The Roads Not Taken with Elle Fanning and Javier Bardem, Jeffrey Wright in All Day and a Night, Jamie Chung in Dangerous Lies, the rodeo drama Bull, the road comedy-drama Vanilla, the horror thriller The Shed and the Israeli drama 15 Years.

Critical Week: Light up the night

My favourite press screening this week was for Pawel Pawlikowski's Cannes-winner Cold War, a black and white Polish drama that's quite simply a masterpiece. A companion piece to his Oscar-winner Ida, it's a smart, complex love story spanning 50s and 60s Europe. On a much bigger scale, the spin-off sequel Ocean's Eight has a new cast of A-list actresses and another twisty but very easy caper plot to play out. It's mindless fun.

Smaller films had some edge to them. Adrift is a harrowing true story of survival at sea starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin. The Escape is an involving and very personal marriage drama starring Gemma Arterton and Dominic Cooper. And Alex Strangelove is a refreshingly original take on the gay teen comedy, avoiding cliches to find this generation's perspective on the topic.

More offbeat films included Stanley: A Man of Variety, an experimental mental hospital freak-out in which Timothy Spall plays all the roles. Happiness Adjacent is a low-budget romantic-comedy set on a Los Angeles to Mexico cruise, but it makes some provocative observations. And Al Berto is a Portuguese period piece about idealistic artists who think their nation is freer than it is after the revolution.

This coming week I have two American indie dramas: the edgy romance Golden Boy and the pointedly topical At the End of the Day. And there are also four films from the London Indian Film Festival: Bradford-set comedy Eaten by Lions, offbeat family comedy Venus, mother-son drama My Son Is Gay and filmmaker doc Bird of Dusk.

LFF 9: No sudden movements

The 60th London Film Festival heads into its final day with a flurry of starry red carpets, interview events and rather a lot of challenging movies (that's Dog Eat Dog above). The festival awards were handed out tonight to films I was unable to see, simply because of the sheer number of movies showing (it's been impossible to see about a third of my want-to-see list). Certain Women took the competition award, Julia Ducournau won the Sutherland Award (first feature) for her film Raw, the Grierson Award (documentary) went to Starless Dreams, and Steve McQueen was awarded the BFI Fellowship. Some highlights from Saturday...

Dog Eat Dog
dir Paul Schrader; with Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe 16/US ***
Paul Schrader goes all John Waters on us with this super-trashy crime comedy populated by a bunch of trigger-happy knuckleheads. It's violent and utterly absurd, and yet every scene is quietly saying something important about America's badly dysfunctional justice system. Still, the message isn't particularly easy to hear over the gunfire.

Snowden
dir Oliver Stone; with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley 16/US ****
Oliver Stone tackles another iconic figure in this urgent, robust biopic, which skilfully maintains an even keel while digging into a touchy political subject. Was Edward Snowden a patriot or a traitor? That's the question that haunts every frame of this film, and Stone does his best to let the audience make up its own mind.

Staying Vertical [Rester Vertical]
dir-scr Alain Guiraudie; with Damien Bonnard, India Hair 16/Fr ***.
Bold and full-on, this parable from Alain Giraudie has a wilfully absurd story that gets increasingly symbolic as it goes along. This is a provocative exploration of the creative process, likening it to giving birth and nurturing a particularly fussy infant while threatened from various sides. And it's underscored with a jaded sense of humour that keeps things lively, plus a central character who is oddly sympathetic.

La Noche 
dir-scr Edgardo Castro; with Edgardo Castro, Dolores Guadalupe Olivares  16/Arg ***.
An experimental drama set on the dark side of Buenos Aires, Edgardo Castro's debut film is audacious and challenging in just about every way. But while the lack of a proper narrative structure will leave many viewers lost, there's a raw honesty to the movie that carries an unexpected emotional punch. And he also has some important things to say about a generation of people whose lives have been derailed by a new economic and political reality.

And another film I saw in Venice that's part of the LFF programme is Emir Kusturica's nutty Bosnian War comedy-drama On the Milky Road, costarring Monica Bellucci.

Critical Week: Pandaemonium

Surprisingly, one of the best films screened to London press in the past week is the animated sequel Kung Fu Panda 3, which takes the saga of reluctant hero Po to a satisfying climax with wit, action and real emotion. Other sequels this week include the visually impressive third Divergent adventure Allegiant, which reverts to explanatory dialog and essentially pointless action. And Gerard Butler's lively follow-up action romp London Has Fallen is absolutely preposterous but thinks it's edgy and real.

It was also a mixed bag for prestige dramas this week. Tom Hiddleston is superb as Hank Williams in the choppy biopic I Saw the Light. Michael Shannon reunites with Jeff Nichols for Midnight Special, a blockbuster story cleverly told as an arthouse drama. Reese Ritchie and Freida Pinto are solid in the uneven Iran-set British drama Desert Dancer. And the ambitious Italian mob drama Suburra beautifully brings its complex plot strands together.

Documentaries included a fascinating look at a corner of cinema history in Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn and the perhaps slightly too academic but harrowingly important The Brainwashing of My Dad. And I also caught up with Mexican Men, a collection of five visceral short films by Julian Hernandez and Roberto Fiesco.


Coming up this week, we have Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins, JJ Abrams' alien-attack spin-off 10 Cloverfield Lane, Russell Tovey in The Pass, Tom Sturridge in Remainder, the British gaming action thriller The Call Up, Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog and the photographer doc Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures.

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: Teach a boy to fish...

Critics caught up with Stephen Daldry's Slumdog Millionaire-style adventure Trash this week. It's a lively romp about three teens who make a surprise discovery while scavenging in the Rio dump. It's entertaining even if it feels badly contrived. The Wedding Ringer is a unexpectedly hilarious comedy starring Josh Gad as a groom-to-be who hires fast-talking Kevin Hart to be his best man. Thankfully it has a sharp sense of character and some very funny writing.

Gregg Araki's White Bird in a Blizzard feels oddly tame compared to the filmmaker's previous work, but it has a dark edge to it that holds the interest, even if the teen-girl set up (Shailene Woodley coming of age as her mother Eva Green goes missing) feels a bit overcooked. But it has a terrific sting in the tail. We'll Never Have Paris is an awkward rom-com starring Simon Helberg as an annoying guy trying to win his girlfriend (Melanie Lynskey) back after he botches the proposal. But he's so unlikeable that he clearly doesn't deserve her. And Hinterland is a microbudget British drama about two old friends (Lori Campbell and writer-director Harry Macqueen) who run off to Cornwall for two days to re-bond. Or something. It's so vague that it's hard to tell, but it looks great.

This coming week we have the much-delayed Jupiter Ascending (screening to press only a day before it opens), the Oscar-nominated The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Bernard Rose's The Devil's Violinist, the blackly comical horror Suburban Gothic, the real-life horror The Town That Dreaded Sundown, the topical teen romance Boy Meets Girl and the acclaimed documentary The Overnighters.

Critical Week: Weep-o-rama

London critics have been able this week to catch up with the much-hyped weepy teen romance The Fault in Our Stars, although our comments have been embargoed until it opens in Britain next week. Pushed to top of this week's US box office chart by teen-girl fans of the novel, the movie stars Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort (above). Also just out in the US and opening this week in the UK, The Sacrament is a fictionalised retelling of the gruesome events at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. Despite its tired found-footage stylings, it's involving and unnerving. Yet another shaky-cam movie, Earth to Echo is a teen-boy adventure that strains to capture the magic of three classics that are always worth watching again, regardless of your age: E.T., Stand by Me and The Goonies.

Further afield, we also caught Nicole Kidman and Mark Strong in the erratic Memento-meets-50 First Dates thriller Before I Go to Sleep Home, Emily Browning in the enjoyably offhanded Scottish musical God Help the Girl, Toby Jones in the urgent but uneven teen immigration drama Leave to Remain, Naya Rivera in the effectively creepy thriller Home, Diane Kruger in the too-wacky French rom-com A Perfect Plan, and the involving, fable-like Palestinian drama When I Saw You. But the most important film of the week was the finely crafted doc We Are Many, about how governments ignored the largest protest in human history in February 2003 and invaded Iraq anyway. But the lingering fallout from that day has changed the world.

I also was able to attend the launch event at the British Library for The Good Inn, a graphic novel created by Pixies frontman Black Francis, author Josh Frank and artist Stephen Appleby, all of whom were on hand to talk about their surreal story, which involves the early history of film in Paris. So at the event, they screened two early classics that inspired the project: Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon and Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou. A terrific evening!

This coming week's films include Clint Eastwood's movie of the hit stage show Jersey Boys, Jon Hamm in the baseball-cricket drama Million Dollar Arm, Maxine Peake in the British psycho-thriller Keeping Rosy, the acclaimed Argentine drama Wakolda, and two docs: exploring Russian discrimination in Children 404 and art and senility in The Man Whose Mind Exploded.

LFF 2: Live in the now

The 57th London Film Festival continues at venues all around the city, plus red carpet events in Leicester Square tonight, as filmmakers and stars brave the chilly drizzle. Here are some highlights...

The Spectacular Now
dir James Ponsoldt;  with Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley 13/US ****
Credit to these filmmakers for creating an adolescent comedy-drama that feels bracingly raw and honest. And their willingness to go places most movies shy away from gives the actors a chance to create fresh characters who are engaging even when they do stupid teenager things... [full review to come]

Adore
dir Anne Fontaine; with Naomi Watts, Robin Wright 13/Aus ***.
Infused with a sense of sun-kissed physicality, this drama has a provocative premise that would be hard to take if it weren't shot so beautifully and played with such offhanded authenticity by the solid cast. And despite the Australian surf-community setting, the film has a refreshingly grown-up European sensibility... FULL REVIEW >

Mystery Road
dir Ivan Sen; with Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving 13/Aus ***.
Writer-director Sen captures a vivid sense of life in the Australian Outback in this rural Wild West-style drama. And he cleverly undermines the film's thriller-like plot with low-key pacing and a refusal to indulge in genre cliches. The problem is that this makes the film almost inert, as it never generates even a hint of suspense... [full review to come]

Child's Pose
dir Calin Peter Netzer with Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache 13/Rom ***.
Romanian filmmaker Netzer takes a strikingly intimate look at the layers of control within families and society. And while some of the details are a little heavy-handed, witty touches and rippingly honest acting hold our attention. As does the unusually intimate, urgent filmmaking... [full review to come]

The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies
dir Wiktor Ericsson; with Joseph Sarno, Peggy Steffans Sarno 13/Swe ***.
Leave it to a Swedish filmmaker to find the important social relevance in the 1960s sexploitation movies of the legendary Joseph Sarno! But that's exactly what this documentary manages to do while exploring the filmmaker's lengthy career, his enduring marriage and the history of cinema itself since the 1960s... [full review to come]