On the road: Take the plunge

Being away for the holidays, I've prioritised hanging out with family and friends over work - so I'm a bit behind with everything apart from food! But I've managed to watch a few films here and there. Just out in cinemas here in the US, The Plague stars Joel Edgerton as a boys' water polo coach who seems either unable or unwilling to tackle the horrific bullying on the team. It's strikingly well made, with a terrific central performance by young Everett Blunck. 

The gentle drama Rebuilding features yet another excellent role for Josh O'Connor as a Colorado rancher trying to start over after a wildfire. It's quietly powerful. Ron Howard's Eden tells the true story of Europeans trying to find paradise in the Galápagos in the 1930s, with a cast that includes Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney and Ana de Armas. The cast makes it watchable even when it gets rather soapy. The documentary The Perfect Neighbor is assembled from body-cam footage as Florida cops teal with a messy situation that escalates until someone dies. It's hard to watch, but important. I also caught up with a few pulpy movies from recent years, including the cat-and-mouse thriller Carry-On in which Jason Bateman terrorises security agent Taron Egerton in Los Angeles airport. It's seriously stupid, but fun. Mel Gibson plays an action-oriented Santa in Fatman, an uneven mix of comedy and violence that never comes together. Walton Goggins is seriously intense as the baddie; Marianne Jean-Baptiste (yes, really) shines as Mrs Claus.

Over this next week, I'll be watching a few more contenders before ballots are due in various awards. I'm also flying back to London, so will no doubt catch up with some gems (!) on the flights. Before that, I will be finalising year-end lists of my best and worst from 2025 - watch this space...

Critical Week: Sucker punch

There were three big movies screened to critics this week. Liam Neeson takes on the lead role (as the son of Leslie Nielsen's iconic character) for the reboot/sequel The Naked Gun, which is flat-out hilarious. And as wonderfully stupid as we hoped it would be. Pedro Pascal leads the action reboot The Fantastic Four: First Steps, alongside Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bacharach. Groovy visual stylings and superbly character-rooted comedy make it thoroughly engaging. And Sam Rockwell is back for the animated sequel The Bad Guys 2, which is just as funny and action-packed as the first movie. With some terrific new characters and bigger set-pieces. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Dying • The Bad Guys 2
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
ALL REVIEWS >

Further afield, Fiona Shaw and Katherine Waterston are as good as expected in the mother-daughter drama Park Avenue, which is involving but elusive. Even more the evasive, Gazer is a stylised mystery thriller that intrigues but never quite pays off. Slovenian drama Little Trouble Girls is also somewhat slippery in its coming-of-age story about a teen choirgirl. 

Much more gripping is Love, the second chapter in the Oslo Stories Trilogy, which features fascinating characters on offbeat journeys. I also loved watching the 100-year restoration of Eisenstein's silent masterpiece Battleship Potemkin, with a new score by the Pet Shop Boys. I'd never seen it on a big screen, and it looks and sounds gorgeous. It also feels thoroughly modern. Finally, I attended a special 3D premiere of the new trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash, which looks properly epic. The film itself comes out in December.

This coming week I'll be watching the horror thriller Bring Her Back, British road movie The Ceremony, Dutch coming-of-age drama Young Hearts, the final chapter of the Oslo Stories Trilogy, Sex, and the Ukrainian documentary 2000 Meters to Andriivka. I'll also attend the premiere of the second season of the Netflix show Wednesday.

Critical Week: Signature move

Awards season is in full swing now that the actors strike has ended, and I've had a couple of nice Q&A screenings this week (see Insta for pics). Big year-end movies are beginning to appear too. Zac Efron, Harris Dickinson, Jeremy Allen White, Lily James and writer-director Sean Durkin came along to present The Iron Claw, their astonishingly involving, powerfully moving true drama about a family of wrestlers. And Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby and Ridley Scott were on the red carpet for the Leicester Square premiere of Napoleon, a first-rate epic biopic about the French leader that looks properly amazing on the biggest screen possible. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Rustin • Saltburn
May December
ALL REVIEWS >

Meanwhile, Colman Domingo is excellent in the biopic Rustin, about the unsung Civil Rights organiser. Alexander Payne's The Holdovers is a 1970s-style wintry delight starring Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph. Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick are fierce in the harrowing Aussie Outback thriller The Royal Hotel. Taika Waititi's true-life comedy Next Goal Wins is a gently witty story about the world's worst football team, starring Michael Fassbender. Jesse Eisenberg turns into a meathead for Manodrome, a very dark drama that doesn't always work but gets us thinking. From New Zealand, the drama Punch is thoughtful and moving. Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron is even more spectacular than expected. Godzilla Minus One is a beefy prequel set in post-war Japan. The doc American Symphony finds surprising emotion while following Jon Batiste as he composes an orchestral piece. And the Powell and Pressburger classic The Red Shoes is even more dazzling in a new restoration. I also caught up with this one...

Dance First
dir James Marsh; with Gabriel Byrne, Fionn O'Shea 23/UK ***
While director James Marsh adds considerable visual flourish to this imaginative biopic about Samuel Beckett, there's a nagging feeling that the story is incomplete, as if it is skipping across the surface of a darkly complex figure. So while the script and performances add nuance in the characters and relationships, everything feels eerily out of reach. Thankfully, superb performances as Beckett from Gabriel Byrne and especially Fionn O'Shea give the film layers of insight and context. 

Films this coming week include Disney's new animated feature Wish, Michael Mann's Ferrari, Tilda Swinton in The Eternal Daughter (a full 15 months after I missed the screening in Venice!), Mexican thriller Lost in the Night, Australian drama A Stitch in Time, deep-fake doc Another Body and arthouse cinema doc Scala!!!, plus LoveTrain at Sadler's Wells and Connor Burns: Vertigo at Soho Theatre.

Venezia79: Happy families

The 79th Venice Film Festival continues to lay out starry red carpets, as I spotted Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Zen McGrath (pictured above), plus Vanessa Kirby and writer-director Florian Zeller out there today. I also took advantage of a long gap between two films to head off to the beach for awhile. It was nice to just stroll in the sand and lounge in the shade for a couple of hours. There's just one big premiere left, Ana de Armas in Blonde tomorrow, as the global festival attention shifts to Toronto. But there are still plenty of movies showing on the Lido here. Here are some more highlights...

The Son
dir Florian Zeller; with Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern 22/UK ***
After The Father, writer-director Florian Zeller adapts another of his complex family-centred plays for the big screen, this time a story about a troubled teen and the hoops his parents and stepmother jump through trying to help him. It's a dark story, with only very rare moments of lightness as the characters struggle with ideas they can't quite comprehend, largely because no one can. Clinical depression is an important topic to dramatise, although it means that the plot needs to retain a nagging level of uncertainty.

Dreamin' Wild
dir-scr Bill Pohlad; with Casey Affleck, Noah Jupe 22/US ****
Remaining in musical mode after 2014's Love & Mercy, filmmaker Bill Pohlad tells the true story of how Don and Joe Emerson's eponymous album became a hit some 30 years after it was recorded. It's an involving movie with strong characters, sharply shot and edited to the rhythms of these brothers' soulful-teen tunes. And while the film has a tendency to lean into the sentimental nostalgia, it also offers some knowing insight into family relationships. And it's likely to give birth to a whole new generation of fans.

Saint Omer
dir Alice Diop; with Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanga 22/Fr **
There's a terrific story at the centre of this French drama, and it's woven in with some powerful themes and clever juxtapositions. But filmmaker Alice Diop never manages to get out of her head as she puts this onto the screen, so the chilly, inexpressive scenes remain stubbornly out of reach. But it's sharply well shot, and the courtroom drama that the story revolves around is genuinely riveting, stealing focus from the loosely undeveloped plot thread that is clearly meant to be the film's main thrust.

The Damned Don't Cry [Les Damnés Ne Pleurent Pas]
dir-scr Fyzal Boulifa; with Aicha Tebbae, Abdellah El Hajjouji 22/Mor ****
Grounded and earthy, this Moroccan drama finds resonance in a complex relationship between a woman and her teen son. It's the kind of film in which the audience has to work to discover the deeper truths about the events depicted on-screen, with secrets carefully revealed by writer-director Fyzal Boulifa. The story feels bracingly realistic and impossible to predict as it cycles through events that are hopeful and darkly troubling. And this authenticity in the story and characters bravely takes on the system.

Lord of the Ants [Il Signore Delle Formiche]
dir Gianni Amelio; with Luigi Lo Cascio, Elio Germano 22/It ***
Big and melodramatic, this Italian period drama is so locked into its 1960s style that it neglects to provide much insight on its hugely important central topic. This means the film says essentially the same things that were said at the time, even if they weren't shouted loudly enough. It's the true story of a court case in which a gay university professor was tried for plagio, manipulating a student. The injustice is horrific on several levels, and filmmaker Gianni Amelio sharply depicts this. But the dialog waffles through far too much poetry and metaphor.

Full reviews will be linked at Shadows VENICE FILM FESTIVAL page, eventually!

A Year in Shadows: 2021

Featured on 52 covers were the Oscars, Bafta rising star Bukky Bakray and 50 films, in order of appearance: Pieces of a Woman, Blithe Spirit, The White Tiger, Dig, Malcolm & Marie, Judas and the Black Messiah, I Care a Lot, The Mauritanian, The US vs Billie Holiday, Cherry, Minari, Zack Snyder's Justice League, Chaos Walking, Godzilla vs Kong, Wild Mountain Thyme, The Mitchells vs the Machines, Oxygen, Sound of Metal, A Quiet Place Part II, After Love, The Father, In the Heights, F9, No Sudden Move, Black Widow, Space Jan" A New Legacy, The World to Come, Jungle Cruise, The Suicide Squad, Free Guy, Snake Eyes, The Nest, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Respect, Everybody's Talking About Jamie, The Green Knight, No Time to Die, The Harder They Fall, The Last Duel, Dune, Last Night in Soho, Spencer, Belfast, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Encanto, Boxing Day, Being the Ricardos, Spider-Man: No Way Out, The King's Man, The Tragedy of Macbeth.

TRIVIA ALERT!

The most covers: Emily Blunt (three shared) and Tom Holland (one solo, one shared, one as Spider-Man).

On two shared covers: Jamie Dornan, Ralph Fiennes, Vanessa Kirby, Zendaya (one shared, one as the voice of Lola Bunny).

The most crowded: The Suicide Squad (17), Boxing Day (15), Encanto (13).

Solo on one cover: Adarsh Gourav, Anya Taylor-Joy, Audra MacDonald, Daniel Craig, Dev Patel, Henry Golding, Jennifer Hudson, Joanna Scanlon, Jodie Comer, Kristin Stewart, Max Harwood, Melanie Laurent, Riz Ahmed, Rosamund Pike, Ryan Reynolds, Simu Liu.

Sharing one cover: Aja Naomi King, Alan Kim, Aml Ameen, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Ramos, Ben Affleck, Bukky Bakray, Carey Mulligan, Carrie Coon, Celeste O'Connor, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Daisy Ridley, Dan Stevens, Daniel Kaluuya, Denzel Washington, Djimon Hounsou, Don Cheadle, Dwayne Johnson, Edgar Ramirez, Ezra Miller, Finn Wolfhard, Florence Pugh, Frances McDormand, Gal Gadot, Gemma Arterton, Henry Cavill, Han Ye-ri, Harris Dickinson, Idris Elba, Isla Fisher, Jack Whitehall, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Jesse Plemons, Joel Kinnaman, John Cena, Jodie Foster, John David Washington, Jordana Brewster, Jude Hill, Jude Law, Judi Dench, Kathrine Waterston, LaKeith Stanfield, LeBron James, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Leslie Mann, Logan Kim, Margot Robbie, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Mckenna Grace, Melissa Barrera, Michelle Rodriguez, Millicent Simmons, Nathalie Emmanuel, Nicole Kidman, Noah Jupe, Noel Kate Cho, Olivia Colman, Oscar Isaac, Paul Giamatti, Paul Rudd, Ray Fisher, Rebecca Ferguson, Regina King, Rhys Ifans, Robbie Gee, Scarlett Johansson, Sheyi Cole, Shia LaBeouf, Stephen Dillane, Steven Yeun, Tahar Rahim, Timothee Chalamet, Tyrese Gibson, Vin Diesel, Youn Yuh-jung, Zazie Beetz.

Appearing as animated characters they provided the voice for: Abbi Jacobson, Angie Cepeda, Bob Bergen, Carolina Gaitan, Danny McBride, Diane Guerrero, Eric Bauza, Gabriel Iglesias, Jeff Bergman, Jessica Darrow, John Leguizamo, Maria Cecilia Botero, Mauro Castillo, Maya Rudolph, Michael Rianda, Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Rhenzy Feliz, Stephanie Beatriz, Sylvester Stallone, Wilmer Valderrama, Zendaya ... mostly as humans, but also as a duck, rabbits and a manshark.

While many cover films were seen in 2020 and had their releases delayed until 2021, only one unused draft from 2020 was reworked: A Quiet Place Part II.

And there were only two drafts that were never used: Without Remorse in May and The Lost Daughter in December. They were discarded when late-arriving press screenings came through for The Mitchells vs the Machines and Spider-Man: No Way Home, respectively.

Critical Week: Joy to the world

Happy Christmas from locked-down London! I had a barrage of timed awards-consideration screening links this week that changed what I was planning to watch. This meant that I saw quite a few contenders, and the common adjective to describe highbrow movies this year seems to be: "dour". Thankfully, each has something to recommend in it, usually strong performances that lift the tone. And some of these films have been wonderfully upbeat too.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK: 

One Night in Miami • Soul 

Promising Young Woman 

News of the World • AK vs AK 

The Dissident • Luz 

ALL REVIEWS >

Hugh Bonneville stars in the Roald Dahl biopic To Olivia (above), a downbeat film that's beautifully played by its cast, including Keeley Hawes as Dahl's wife, the actress Patricia Neal. Tom Hanks gives yet another wonderful performance in Paul Greengrass' earthy Western News of the World, matched by a fierce turn from the wondrous Helena Zengel. Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston yearn for each other in the aching period drama The World to Come. Jude Law and Carrie Coon find cracks in their high-flying life in the insidious 1980s drama The Nest. Sophia Loren shines brightly in the terrific Italian comedy-drama The Life Ahead. Diane Lane and Kevin Costner have a happy life in Let Him Go, until they really, really don't.

There were also a few guilty pleasures this week. Gerard Butler stars in the catastrophic comet strike thriller Greenland, which is far more entertaining than expected. Hilary Swank is downright nasty in Fatale, a dopey noir-style semi-erotic thriller. And Bollywood superstar Anil Kapoor takes on director Anurag Kashyap in the clever pastiche action comedy AK vs AK.

Indie movies included Steven Yeun leading a terrific ensemble in the acclaimed drama Minari, about a Korean family in Arkansas; Boaz Yakin's swirling gender-bending dance-infused drama Aviva; the naturalistic, finely observed immigrant drama Farewell Amor; and the fiercely artful surreal thriller The One You Feed. From Colombia, Luz: The Flower of Evil is a wonderfully stylised horror packed with bonkers touches. And there were two seriously intense documentaries: The Dissident traces the horrific assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudis in Turkey, while the thriller-style Welcome to Chechnya following activists trying to rescue young gay people hunted down in Russia.

I'm taking a few days off from movies around Christmas. Then I'll dive in and watch Judi Dench in a new all-star version of Blythe Spirit, Michelle Pfeiffer in French Exit, the comedy Freshman Year, the Greek drama Apples and the Italian documentary The Truffle Hunters. Others are bound to pop up before voting deadlines close in soon.

Critical Week: Dancing in the aisles

Being awards season, there are quite a few screenings that include a Q&A with the cast and crew - all held virtually this year. I had three of these this past week: Promising Young Woman is a vicious, blackly comical thriller with a terrific Carey Mulligan (pictured above with Bo Burnham). It's sharply pointed and darkly entertaining. The Prom is a glittery musical concoction from Ryan Murphy starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, Andrew Rannells and Kerry Washington, among others. It's over-the-top in many ways, but has nicely serious undercurrents. And Pieces of a Woman is a very dark drama starring Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf. It's involving and beautifully put together, but rather grim.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Red, White and Blue
Nomadland • Ammonite
Falling • Black Bear • Host 
PERHAPS AVOID:
Buddy Games
Love, Weddings & Other Disasters 
FULL REVIEWS>

Otherwise it was the usual eclectic bunch. Drew Barrymore has both lead roles in The Stand In, a comedy that's not as silly as it looks, knowingly skewering show business myths. This week's Small Axe movie by Steve McQueen is the breathtaking Red, White and Blue, starring John Boyega as a young cop with a conscience. Viggo Mortensen writes, directs, stars in and composes the score for Falling, a pungent drama about a man dealing with his senile, increasingly bigoted father (a terrific Lance Henricksen). Parallel is a crowd-pleasing sci-fi concoction with a twisty plot and a hint of thematic depth, while Muscle is a gritty British drama that takes an unsettling dive into toxic masculinity. There was also Jack and the Beanstalk, a deliciously hilarious traditional British panto shot in back gardens during the pandemic. And The American Boys is a collection of six sensitive coming-of-age shorts, all very well made.

I have a lot to watch over the coming week, including the final two Small Axe films Alex Wheatle and Education, Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal, Tessa Thompson in Sylvie's Love, Sienna Miller in Wander Darkly, Laura Dern in Trial by Fire, and acclaimed foreign titles Funny Boy, The Weasel's Tale and Cocoon. I also have an actual physical catch-up screening of the British horror Saint Maud. Yes, cinemas are open again, again.