Critical Week: Take a break

Tube strikes have paralysed London this week, so the only films I've seen are those I could watch on links at home. I braved the bus one day to get to the theatre, a grisly journey involving flustered crowds, pouring rain and nightmarish traffic. But there were plenty of movies to watch. Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor star in the understated romantic drama The History of Sound, which requires patience but has a lot to say. Denzel Washington reteams with Spike Lee for Highest 2 Lowest, a provocative thriller with a moral dilemma at its heart, reimagined from a Kurosawa classic.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Islands • Spinal Tap II
The History of Sound • Dreams
ALL REVIEWS >

Screening at Toronto Film Festival, Christy is a biopic about boxing champion Christy Martin. It's the usual story, but Sydney Sweeney is excellent in the title role. Michael Chiklis goes back to college in The Senior, based on the relentlessly inspirational true story of a 59-year-old who returns to play college football. The superb Adam Bessa stars in Ghost Trail, a complex, powerfully moving story about Syrian refugees in Europe. And the Hong Kong remake of Richard Linklater's 2001 drama Tape is seriously riveting exploration of perspective and memory.

I also attended the stage show Murmuration: Level 2, a mesmerising mix of music and movement. And I published my September TV Roundup featuring Chief of War, Wednesday, Smoke and much more.

Films screening this coming week include Harris Dickinson's Urchin, Marion Cotillard in The Ice Tower, Cillian Murphy in Steve, Mike Figgis' making-of documentary Megadoc and three festival favourites: The Love That Remains from Iceland, Two Prosecutors from Ukraine and Romeria from Spain.

Critical Week: Into the sea

While the Cannes Film Festival continues in the South of France until this weekend, I've been keeping busy here in London with an eclectic collection of screenings. Most unusual was the Chinese animated adventure Deep Sea, which is dazzling to look at even if the story feels a bit busy. It's definitely worth seeing on the biggest screen possible.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Hit Man • Solo
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
In Flames • Kidnapped
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Garfield Movie
ALL REVIEWS >

Last Friday I attended the UK premiere of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, attended by the cast and crew. Anya Taylor-Joy is terrific in the steely title role, and the film boasts terrific action sequences even if it feels a bit thin. Jennifer Lopez stars in the sci-fi thriller Atlas, which is fairly simple but enjoyably packed with very cool tech. Greg Kinnear stars in two movies I watched this week: alongside Isla Fisher in the silly but cute family fantasy comedy The Present and opposite Terry Chen in the inspirational and relentlessly preachy fact-based drama Sight. And from Canada, the drama Solo is a gorgeously observed character study set in the drag scene. 

After seeing Hit Man last week, I thought I should perhaps catch up with Glen Powell's last hit, the romcom Anyone But You, which is deeply goofy but also sunny, charming and sometimes even a bit sexy. On stage, I also watched the superbly provocative musical comedy drama Piece of Me at Camden People's Theatre.

This coming week I'll be watching Jessica Lange in The Great Lillian Hall, Anthony Hopkins in Freud's Last Session, Richard Armitage in The Boy in the Woods, Francois Ozon's The Crime Is Mine, Palestinian drama A House in Jerusalem and the doc The Pilgrimage of Gilbert & George. 

BFI Flare: Be yourself tonight

One of my favourite festivals each year, the 38th edition of the British Film Institute's Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival kicked off last night with the European premiere of Layla. Over the next 10 days, BFI Southbank is transformed into a lively space with a range of events, club nights and conversations alongside screenings of some of the most diverse movies on earth. Many of these films are impossible to see anywhere else, so I always look forward to discoveries. And it's also fun to reconnect with the gang of "Flare Friends" who gather annually to celebrate this important aspect of the industry. Here's the first collection of highlights, with my usual Critical Week report down below...

Layla
dir-scr Amrou Al-Kadhi; with Bilal Hasna, Louis Greatorex 24/UK ****
With wonderfully loose authenticity, this breezy British drama hones in on the often contradictory nature of being human. Writer-director Amrou Al-Kadhi refreshingly resists creating characters who are easy to pigeon-hole, and the situations don't resolve themselves in the tidy ways we have grown to expect on-screen. Instead, the film has some strong things to say about how our self-image is a key factor in our work and relationships. And even more importantly, it's a relentlessly charming movie.

The Summer With Carmen
dir Zacharias Mavroeidis; with Yorgos Tsiantoulas, Andreas Labropoulos 23/Gr ****
An astutely written and directed meta comedy about the nature of filmmaking, this Greek film playfully pokes fun at both itself and low-budget queer movies. Multiple layers of narrative feed together inventively to explore family relationships, friendships, romance, lust and even pet ownership for a group of 30-something guys. And as it knowingly grapples with issues of loyalty and masculinity, the film is warm, funny and very sexy... FULL REVIEW >

Silver Haze
dir-scr Sacha Polak; with Vicky Knight, Esme Creed-Miles 23/UK **.
Beautifully shot like an artful fly-on-the-wall doc and played with remarkable authenticity by a fresh cast, this film is watchable as an observant slice of life. Writer-director Sacha Polak captures the rhythms of British working class situations with plenty of energy, although the plot is so slim that this could have been an effective 20-minute short. There's also a problem with the naturalistic dialog, which is difficult to hear... FULL REVIEW >

Calls From Moscow
dir Luis Alejandro Yero; with Dariel Diaz, Daryl Acuna 23/Cub ****
Shot fly-on-the-wall style, this sharply well-made film follows the lives of four young Cuban men who are living in limbo in wintry Moscow. They have travelled there with hopes of bettering life for themselves and their families back home by hopefully moving into the European Union. But they're stuck here without documents, and being queer in Russia isn't easy. Filmmaker Luis Alejandro Yero takes an unusually artful approach, revealing inner feelings  through overheard conversations, music and silence.

Chasing Chasing Amy
dir Sav Rodgers; with Sav Rodgers, Kevin Smith 23/US ***.
Kevin Smith's 1997 comedy Chasing Amy stars Ben Affleck as a comic writer who falls in love with a lesbian played by Joey Lauren Adams. It's been considered problematic for its gender politics, but filmmaker Sav Rodgers found it inspiring because of its honest depiction of openly queer people. So he made this documentary both to say thank you and to understand why the movie generated so much controversy... FULL REVIEW >

Full reviews will be linked on Shadows' BFI FLARE PAGE >

For festival information, BFI FLARE >

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C R I T I C A L  W E E K

Outside the festival, I also watched Sydney Sweeney as a nun in the delightfully gruesome and camp horror thriller Immaculate; Bill Skarsgard in the mayhem-packed hyperviolent action comedy Boy Kills World; Cate Blanchett as a nun in the gorgeous, powerfully involving Aussie drama The New Boy; Caleb Landry Jones in Luc Besson's enjoyably bonkers but somewhat empty thriller Dogman; Emile Hirsch in the rather messy a psychological thriller State of Consciousness; and the complex, delightful queer romance Glitter & Doom. Live on-stage, there was the gifted New York City Ballet at Sadler's Wells, pointed drama Blue at Seven Dials Playhouse, and Company Wayne McGregor's fascinating Autobiography at Sadler's Wells.

Coming up this week are the blockbuster sequel Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Australian drama Limbo, Irish drama Baltimore. On stage at Sadler's Wells, there's UniVerse, a second Wayne McGregor show, as well as the medieval re-enactment performance Assembly Hall.

Critical Week: Too cool

The weather in London has been diabolical this week, more wintry than spring-like with grey skies, rainshowers and weather that's oddly cold for this time of year. So not too bad for moviewatching. I enjoyed Ben Affleck's new film Air a lot more than expected, but then I wasn't expecting much for a movie about trainers. It's a sharply well-written drama about Nike's creation of the Air Jordan brand, and has terrific performances from Affleck, Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis and more. And the new adaptation of the roleplaying fantasy game, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, was also a pleasant surprise: a rare blockbuster that's colourful, funny and thoroughly engaging. Thankfully it takes its cues more from The Princess Bride than Marvel or DC. I wrote reviews of it for three different outlets.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Chrissy Judy • Summoning Sylvia
Dungeons & Dragons
ALL REVIEWS >

Further afield, Summoning Sylvia is a riotously silly horror comedy about a group of camp friends in a haunted house, but it has serious undertones that give it unexpected weight. Missing is a well-made thriller told through computer screens (it spins off from Searching), gripping even if the story holds no water at all. A verbatim adaptation of a recording, Reality is the riveting re-enactment of the arrest of a whistleblower, starring a superb Sydney Sweeney. Cairo Conspiracy is a strikingly involving mystery about government interference in religious leadership in Egypt. Of course, exiled filmmaker Tarik Saleh had to shoot it in Turkey and Sweden. And the lightly futuristic Japanese drama Plan 75 is a thoughtful meditation on mortality that's not particularly easy to watch, understandably. 

This coming week is mercifully slow after the past few months. I'll be watching Taron Egerton in Tetris, the Norwegian black comedy Sick of Myself, the Moroccan drama El Houb, the addiction doc Blue Bag Life, and the biographical doc Little Richard: I Am Everything. I also have a theatre show and museum exhibition to check out (reviews here soon).

Critical Week: Fairy dust

London finally enjoyed a late-summer heatwave this past week - not baking hot, but sunny skies and warm weather lured what looked like everyone out into the city. That'll likely have a knock-on effect on cinema box office if it continues through this weekend. Otherwise, things have been a bit quite for critics, as the Venice Film Festival continues and Toronto Film Festival kicks off. The programme for October's 65th London Film Festival was launched this week, and there are several bit titles from Venice, Toronto and Cannes in there. Meanwhile, here in London I caught up with two high-profile Amazon releases: Camila Cabello makes a strong acting debut in Cinderella, a musical comedy that's silly but entertaining. And Justice Smith gives a welcome grown-up performance in The Voyeurs, which starts as a Hitchcockian thriller but contrives itself into something unnervingly bleak.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Servant • Respect • Boy Meets Boy
The Collini Case • The Capote Tapes
ALL REVIEWS >

Smaller films includes Small Engine Repair, John Pollono's adaptation of his own play about three men on a mystery mission that swerves from edgy comedy to pitch-black thriller; Dating & New York is a twinkly romantic comedy about millennials trying not to fall in love (no surprise what happens); Iceland Is Best is a quirky and strangely muted British-made, Iceland-set comedy about teens with dreams; Death Drop Gorgeous is a messy but rather hilariously grisly slasher comedy set in a drag club; and The Collini Case is an excellent German courtroom drama that uses a fictional story to explore a shockingly true situation.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching the filmed stage musical Come From Away, British drama A Brixton Tale, British comedy Pirates, horror thriller The Djinn, social media satire The Influencer, Norwegian comedy Ninjababy, Second World War drama Natural Light and Bruce LaBruce's Saint-Narcisse.