Sundance: Make some noise

I completely missed last years Sundance Film Festival: London, because I was attending another festival at the time, so I'm enjoying getting stuck into the 11th edition of this mini festival, which shows a handful of highlights from January's festival over four days at Picturehouse Central, complete with filmmaker Q&As. The festival kicks off tonight with Kneecap, which goes straight in as one of my very best films of the year. Here are brief comments about that one and a few others. Plus Critical Week below...

Kneecap
dir-scr Rich Peppiatt; with Naoise O'Caireallain, Liam Og O'Hannaidh 24/Ire *****
An energising blast of fresh energy, this Irish comedy-drama fills the screen with characters who feel almost overpoweringly full of live. Rich Peppiatt writes and directs with an engaging urgency, propelling the audience through the narrative alongside these scrappy people, while at the same time making nuanced comments about important themes, personal issues and thorny political situations. This makes it an essential film for anyone worried about the future... FULL REVIEW >

I Saw the TV Glow
dir-scr Jane Schoenbrun; with Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine 24/US ***.
This surreal film is tricky to categorise, which is perhaps its greatest strength. It features elements of a coming-of-age drama and a wildly colourful sci-fi pastiche that's centred around a rather nutty vintage TV series. It's shot beautifully, with a gorgeous sense of light and colour straight from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun's imagination. And this moving and rather darkly powerful story explores how it feels to live outside of mainstream society, never quite knowing how to fit in. 

Sasquatch Sunset
dir David Zellner, Nathan Zellner; with Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough 24/US ***.
Defiantly offbeat, this is one of those one-off experimental movies that could only come from an extremely curious filmmaker. Make that plural, as brothers David and Nathan Zellner follow a bigfoot family over four momentous seasons. There's no dialog, although the creatures communicate with gestures, grunts and other noises. The film has a wonderfully deadpan sense of humour, even as the story turns dark and emotional. And the result is both involving and memorable.

Your Monster
dir-scr Caroline Lindy; with Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey 24/US ***
Mixing comedy, horror, romance and personal drama, this film by its very nature has an uneven tone. At least it's consistently enjoyable and engaging, recounting a funny-freaky narrative that takes on bigger themes surrounding loneliness, ambition and empowerment. But much of the story and many of the bigger moments feel a bit gimmicky due to the way they play on perceptions and fantasies. This means that the ideas resonate even if the characters and situations don't. 

Handling the Undead [Håndtering av Udøde]
dir Thea Hvistendahl; with Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie 24/Nor ***.
A meditation on grief and letting go, this film is steeped in Scandinavian gloom; it couldn't be much bleaker if it tried. And filmmaker Thea Hvistendahl certainly tries. Essentially a zombie arthouse movie, the script isolates three families in their singular experiences, dealing with the death of a loved one followed by an uncanny resurrection. The downbeat nature of the story means that this is not an easy film to watch, and it holds its nerve by never offering much hope. 

Never Look Away
dir Lucy Lawless; with Margaret Moth, Christiane Amanpour 24/NZ ****
With a quick pace and a blast of rock-chick energy, this biographical documentary about no-nonsense warzone journalist Margaret Moth is both entertaining and compelling. As a gifted camera operator with a larger-than-life persona, it seems odd that her story hasn't been told before. Actor-turned-director Lucy Lawless skilfully fuel the narrative with Moth's distinctive energy, which is reflected in interviews with colleagues, partners and family members, as well as her staggeringly unblinking footage.

My Sundance London reviews will be linked on the website's FESTIVAL PAGE >

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C R I T I C A L  W E E K

This week's big press screening was a UK gala for Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which sparked a party atmosphere before the barrage of Will Smith/Martin Lawrence action mayhem on an Imax screen. The plot is as inane as expected, but the stuntwork is solid. There was also the smart and enjoyably bristly comedy-drama Reverse the Curse, written, directed and costarring David Duchovny; the British road story Cottontail, a moving look at family connections; the extremely quirky and entertaining fairy tale-style children's adventure Riddle of Fire; the achingly slow but sharply observant British drama Sky Peals; and the gorgeously shot Belgian drama Here, about two beautifully underplayed immigrants.

There will be more Sundance movies until Sunday, and then I am off to France for a few days at the  Annecy International Film Festival, which specialises in animation. So it's appropriate that I will also be watching Netflix's Ultraman: Rising and Pixar's Inside Out 2 on very big screens.

Critical Week: Driving home for Christmas

I seen many films this week, largely due to work required prior to the announcement of the London Critics' Circle Film Awards nominations yesterday. This involved compiling my own ballot, then counting all the others that came in, tabulating the results, giving nominees a heads-up, working on a press release and preparing the announcement event, which was hosted by young actors Ellie Bamber (Willow) and Fionn O'Shea (Handsome Devil) at the May Fair Hotel as a low-key Christmas party. The nominations are listed HERE if you're interested in comparing them with all the other awards spiralling around at the moment.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Living • Corsage • Women Talking
ALL REVIEWS >

Now things are calming down for the holidays. Whew! Of the films I saw this past week, the most ambitious was Noah Baumbach's White Noise, a busy and somewhat unfocussed comedy-drama about a family dealing with a range of big issues. The cast is excellent, led by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, and it ends with a fabulous burst of choreography. Will Smith plays a real-life historical icon in Emancipation, set at the end of the Civil War as an escaped slave faces brutal trackers and ends up fighting on the battlefield. It's ambitious and admirable, but the themes get a bit lost. Christian Bale leads the cast of Scott Cooper's moody period mystery The Pale Blue Eye, playing a detective who works alongside a young Edgar Allan Poe (a superbly wide-eyed Harry Melling) to investigate a murder at West Point in 1830. It's mesmerising but ultimately a bit thin. And the animated adventure The Amazing Maurice, based on the Terry Pratchett novel, has some wonderful thematic depth beneath the usual slapstick wackiness and slick digital imagery.

This coming week I will continue to catch up with movies before writing up my year-end lists. There's quite a pile-up of these, and I have a list of about 10 priority titles, plus eight more if-time ones. A couple of them are forthcoming releases, such as Kore-eda's film Broker and the documentary Wildcat.

Critical Week: Play ball

I've been laying low this week, watching few films to recover after the glut of the London Film Festival (42 features in two weeks!). The final weekend of the festival featured a few movies that will be hitting cinemas over the coming months, including King Richard, starring Will Smith in a biopic about Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena. It's a crowd-pleasing movie, but would have been stronger if it was actually the sisters' story. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand lead a strong cast in Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, a retro-style Shakespeare movie that's bold and riveting, even if it's never surprising. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The French Dispatch Dune
The Harder They Fall
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Show
ALL REVIEWS >

Further from the beaten path, Memoria is a surreal Colombian odyssey by Thai filmmaker Apichat Weerasethakul starring Tilda Swinton. It looks and sounds amazing, never mind what it's about. From provocateur filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, Benedetta audaciously mixes religion with sexuality in the true story of a 17th century French nun. Dashcam is a riotously inventive London-set horror thriller as seen through a live-stream camera. Todd Haynes' doc The Velvet Underground traces the story of the iconic New York art scene band with an inventive mix of visuals and music. The terrific Mexican doc A Cop Movie blurs the lines between fact and fiction with its skilfully layered approach. And the British doc Rebel Dykes recounts the important story of 1980s queer activists with the energy and attitude they deserve.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Oscar Isaac in The Card Counter, the big-budget horror thriller Antlers, the British-Indian horror Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff, the vampire thriller Dead & Beautiful and the Turkish drama Love, Spells & All That.

LFF: Art appreciation

It's always bittersweet to get to this stage in the festival and realise how many films I'll be missing this year. At the 65th BFI London Film Festival, I made a list of the movies I wanted to see - about 70 titles from nearly 200 films in the programme. And in the end I've had to admit that there about 35 of those that I won't catch here. Some will pop up during awards season or on UK release dates over the coming months, but sadly many will never be available again here. Meanwhile, with the festival's end in sight, I'm trying to catch up on the backlog of reviews for the website - they should all be posted there over the next few days. Here are five highlights for Saturday...

Memoria
dir-scr Apichatpong Weerasethakul; with Tilda Swinton, Elkin Diaz 21/Col ****
Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes his first foray abroad, taking an international cast on an evocative odyssey set in various beautifully shot locations in Colombia. It's the kind of film that only hints at its meaning, requiring faith from the audience as we're taken a journey that's haunting for reasons we can barely define. It's a beautiful exploration of sights, sounds and, as the title says, memory.

King Richard
dir Reinaldo Marcus Green; with Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis 21/US ***
In this lively, crowd-pleasing biopic, Venus and Serena Williams' rise to fame is recounted through the story of their father. This throws things out of balance, because it's not actually his movie. In a mannered performance by Will Smith, Richard comes across as stubborn and annoying, which no doubt fuelled his daughters' success. But we're much more interested in their points of view, which are underrepresented here.

Benedetta
dir Paul Verhoeven; with Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling 21/Fr ***.
Leave it to Paul Verhoeven to turn the true story of Sister Benedetta into a lurid religious horror romp with equal measures of fervour and lust. More than a little camp, this biopic is deliberately provocative as it adds steamy melodrama to real-life events. It's skilfully assembled, with strong period detail and a vicious sense of humour. So even if it plays loosely with facts, it remains devilishly entertaining.

Bull
dir-scr Paul Andrew Williams; with Neil Maskell, David Hayman 21/UK ***
Highly stylised in the form of an old-time movie, with added quirky touches and hints of a modern sensibility, this offbeat British biopic is impossible to pigeonhole. And filmmaker Will Sharpe isn't afraid to mix overwhelming cuteness with pitch-black drama and soaring sentimentality. It's all a bit too mannered to properly engage the audience, but it does look amazing, and it features some defiantly singular performances.

Petrov's Flu
dir-scr Kirill Serebrennikov; with Semyon Serzin, Chulpan Khamatova 21/Rus ***.
A riotous odyssey through post-Soviet Russia, this demanding epic keeps the audience on its toes, as adept filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov moves rapid-fire through a series of full-on set pieces. The camerawork is extraordinary, often in elaborately long takes. With the titular viral infection spreading, the film has a clever timeliness, and its blackly comical tone prevents the outrageously gloomy series of events from ever feeling too heavy... FULL REVIEW >

Full reviews of festival films will be published as possible and linked at Shadows' LFF HOMEPAGE 
For full information, visit BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 

Critical Week: Drop the mic

Another rather crazy week at the movies for critics, with screenings of forthcoming releases mingled with awards contenders and catch-up screenings of films I've missed this year. Plus the first of my voting deadlines in year-end awards, as big prizes like SAG and the Golden Globes announced their nominees. And also rather a lot for me to do as chair of the London Critics' Circle Film Awards! Plus the UK general election, which tonight will decide the fate of the nation (not feeling hopeful). So it's clearly not just another week.

The biggest new release screened is Spies in Disguise, an action-packed animated spy adventure voiced by Tom Holland and Will Smith. Adam Sandler veers wildly off-type (in a very good way) for the bold, in-your-face drama Uncut Gems, which is unforgettable cinema. Justin Long stars in the prickly but very timely comedy drama After Class. And Hugh Jackman and Zach Galifianakis voice the lead roles in the gorgeously animated global romp Missing Link.

France's official Oscar contender is Les Miserables, a present-day drama about cops patrolling a rough Parisian suburb. It bristles with life, and nails its themes skilfully. Also from France, Amanda is a gentle, rather sweet drama about everyday people in the wake of an unthinkably horrific event. And there were two docs: Asif Kapadia's sharply edited archive bio Diego Maradona and the entertainingly star-packed filmography doc QT8 Quentin Tarantino: The First Eight.

This coming week there are more awards contenders to catch up with before further voting deadlines. These include Isabelle Huppert in Frankie, Jonathan Majors in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the animated Weathering With You, and the drama Long Day's Journey Into Night. As for regular release screenings, there's Daniel Radcliffe in Escape From Pretoria and Gary Oldman in The Courier. And since studios are refusing press screening requests, I'll be at the cinema to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and the musical Cats with the fans.

Critical Week: Furry heroes

I caught up with the month's two big kids' movies this past week, before leaving London. The Secret Life of Pets 2 is as frantic as the first film, if not more so with its three parallel plot strands. So it never settles down long enough to make the characters very endearing. But it is funny. And Guy Ritchie's live-action Aladdin remake is a surprisingly childish movie - goofy and energetic. But it's also quite enjoyably camp, with a sweet and pointed romance at the centre. And Will Smith puts his own distinctive spin on the Genie, thankfully.

Haven't managed to catch any other films, but I did watch lots of TV on the long flight, including the final episode of Game of Thrones (it was fine, but not the shocking spectacle the series deserved) and a proper binge of The OA (super-addictive, and I'm still a season behind).

I'm travelling west for the next couple of weeks, visiting family in Los Angeles and friends in Maui - not on glamorous movie business, but I hope to catch up with a few films that are opening while I'm out there, starting with Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir, James Gunn's Brightburn and the Elton John biopic Rocketman, which screened to press in London just after I flew out. Although I have other things on my mind aside from movies, of course...

Critical Week: Odd couple

One nice thing about the films I've seen this week is that I haven't needed to write long reviews for each one. So here are shorter comments on the movies I've caught up with over the holidays so far, starting with the one pictured above (that's Will Smith with, yes, Joel Edgerton)...

Bright
dir David Ayer; with Will Smith, Joel Edgerton 17/US *.
Perhaps there was something interesting in Max Landis' script for this fantasy cop thriller, but director David Ayer brings his usual sledgehammer approach, obliterating any character nuance or plot intrigue with a barrage of bullets, explosions and relentless machismo. The one decent twist in the tale is badly telegraphed from the start, and it's all so blunt that it leaves the actors lost. Smith can survive this kind of thing with his wits, but Edgerton's excellent acting chops are swamped by his excessive makeup. This eliminates any chance of proper camaraderie as they play human Ward and orc Jakoby, cops partnering in a parallel reality Los Angeles in which a psychotic elf (Noomi Rapace) is plotting to resurrect a dark lord, but first needs to track down her missing wand, which can only be touched by a bright like the young Tikka (Lucy Fry), whom Ward and Jakoby have rescued. Along with endlessly dull mythology in the dialog, scenes are packed with incoherent chases, shootouts, fights and lots of magical nonsense. Even the solid cast, which includes Edgar Ramirez, Jay Hernandez and Margaret Cho, can't save this one.

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Raw

dir-scr Julia Ducournau; with Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf 16/Bel ****

A chillingly original take on the coming-of-age story, this French drama takes a series of almost outrageously gruesome twists and turns. There's a dark undercurrent of meaning here, but writer-director Julia Ducournau seems mainly interested in freaking out the audience with some extreme femininity. It's the story of teen Justine (Marillier), who is enduring a particularly painful week of hazing as she starts veterinary school, following the footsteps of her big sister Alex (Rumpf). A strict vegetarian, the worst thing for Justine is being forced to eat a bit of raw meat. And she's horrified to discover she now has a craving for meat, including the human kind. Ducournau kind of taunts the audience with unfinished scenes and lots of waking up unaware of what happened the night before. But the film is gleefully grisly and darkly provocative. A true original.

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Aquarius

dir-scr Kleber Mendonca Filho; with Sonia Braga, Zoraide Coleto 16/Br ***.

Brazilian filmmaker Mendonca isn't terribly subtle with this over-long drama about the clash between old-world humanity and present-day commercialism, but the film has a loose energy that makes it worth a look. And Sonia Braga shines in the central role. She plays retired journalist Clara, a woman who has had a long, full life then finds herself the last occupant of the seaside apartment block in Recife where she raised her children with her late husband. Now she's the only thing stopping the developers from knocking down the building so they can construct a gleaming tower in its place. But she has no intention of going, so simply gets on with her life, spending time with her friends, children, grandson and a favourite nephew, continuing her lifelong bond with housekeeper Ladjane (Coleto) and enjoying her extensive, eclectic music collection. All of this meanders a bit, and the final act feels both heavy-handed and oddly unfinished. But watching Braga is sheer joy.

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Jane

dir-scr Brett Morgen; with Jane Goodall, Hugo van Lawick 17/US ***.

Using a treasure trove of unseen footage from the early 1960s, this documentary traces the life and pioneering work of Jane Goodall. It's fascinating to watch her as an untrained 26-year-old head into the wilds of Tanzania with only her innate curiosity and patience to work with. She was specifically selected for those qualities - and for her lack of scientific education - and as a result her observations of chimpanzees told the world things no one ever knew, in the process changing the definition of what it means to be human. This may not be a particularly original observation, but filmmaker Brett Morgan assembles this doc beautifully, making the most of the footage skilfully shot by Goodall's husband Hugo van Lawick. And since it's narrated by the luminous 83-year-old Goodall herself, it's full of pointed personal commentary. Her life journey is moving and important.

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The Work

dir Jairus McLeary, Gethin Aldous; with Brian, Charles, Dark Cloud 17/US ***.

There's rather a lot of navel gazing in this involving documentary about a group of men working through their deep-seated issues in a California prison support group. Intriguingly, the film follows several non-inmates as they join the prisoners in Folsom and find themselves right in the middle of the cathartic experience. All of these men have serious issues with their fathers, expressed through their lives in a variety of ways. And how they confront them varies from man to man, sometimes through baring the soul and sometimes through making the struggle a physical one. Each of them is in tears at some point. It's all rather intense, and extremely over-serious. But it's also a remarkably honest look at the way masculinity is expressed in American culture. And it's shot in a strikingly observational way that gets very, very personal. It's a view of male identity that's rarely if ever seen on-screen.

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I also watched the superb Irish drama Sanctuary and the acclaimed German thriller In the Fade starring Diane Kruger, as well as a couple of Christmas films, including the Victoria Christmas movie, Sarah Jessica Parker in The Family Stone (2005) and Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays (1995), which I'd never seen before.

And there are a few more films I need to see this coming week, before the final round of voting in a couple of awards, and also just to wrap up my year - things like Angelina Jolie's First They Killed My Father and the British dramas Lies We Tell and Journey's End. If I have time....

Critical Week: A boy's best friend

Big movies screened to the press this week include the action romp Monster Trucks, which is a proper guilty pleasure with a solid cast including Luke Till (above), Jane Levy, Rob Lowe, Amy Ryan and Thomas Lennon. The dream team of Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt makes Passengers thoroughly engaging as a high-concept sci-fi drama-romance-thriller hybrid. And Assassin's Creed reunites Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard but falls into the usual trap of neglecting to find a coherent plot in a videogame.

James Franco and Bryan Cranston square off in the comedy Why Him?, yet another Meet the Parents-style romp from John Hamburg. It's stupid, but funny. Gold stars Matthew McConaughey in the fascinating true story of a rather dodgy mining operation, but the film isn't easy to engage with. Will Smith is bogged down in syruppy sentiment in Collateral Beauty, which is livened up a bit by Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, Michael Pena and Kate Winslet. And the indie drama Retake is an enigmatic and surprisingly moving road trip starring Tuc Watkins.

My last actual screening of the year is Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, but I have several screener discs I need to watch over the next week or so before voting in various awards (I've already voted in the London Critics' Circle Film Awards - we announced our nominations this afternoon). Discs in the pile include Hello My Name Is Doris, Touched With Fire, A Man Called Ove, Aferim!, Zero Days, Before the Flood, Kate Plays Christine and My Scientology Movie. How many will I find time to watch?

Critical Week: My head hurts!

I caught up this week with Will Smith's new film Concussion, a true drama that's very well shot and acted, and also relentlessly "Important!" Hopefully it'll finally give traction to the dangers of brain injury in America's favourite sport, which has suppressed medical findings for decades. Long delayed here in the UK, Ramin Bahrani's 2012 film At Any Price will be released in the wake of the filmmaker's 2014 drama 99 Homes. This is a similar story of the American dream gone sour, and it gives Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron (astutely cast as father and son) unusually meaty roles.

Vincent Cassel is terrific as the patriarch in Partisan, an elusive drama about a commune in an isolated country (it was shot in the Georgian Republic) where one of his children begins to doubt the nature of this created reality. It's clever and startlingly involving. And from Denmark, A War cross-cuts between life at home and on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Shot like a documentary, the film feels rather derivative (see Restrepo for the real thing) but carries a strong kick in the moral dilemma of the final act. I also caught up with two previously released awards contenders:

Hard to Be a God
dir Aleksey German; with Leonid Yarmolnik, Aleksandr Chutko 13/Rus ****
With a virtually plotless structure and nearly three-hour running time, this Russian epic will test the patience of even the most ambitious moviegoer. But there's so much going on in every extraordinary frame that it's never boring. Violent, silly and utterly bonkers, the premise is that a group of scientists has travelled to help a distant planet that's stuck in its middle ages, unwilling to move into a renaissance. Shot in vivid black and white, the film follows one of these men, Don Rumata (Yarmolnik), through an odyssey of mud and blood. Details are observed in long takes by the bravura camerawork and jaw-dropping production design. It may ultimately be a meandering and bleak look at the tenacity of human ignorance, but it's utterly dazzling. (Nominated for Foreign-Language Film of the Year by the London Critics' Circle.)

Radiator
dir Tom Browne; with Richard Johnson, Gemma Jones, Daniel Cerqueira 14/UK ****
A beautifully played three-hander, this astutely written, shot and acted film centres on Daniel (Cerqueira) who finds that he needs to travel more often out of London to visit his parents as their eccentricities increase. Leonard (Johnson) has confined himself to the sofa, while Maria (Jones) keeps herself unnecessarily busy. In very different ways, both are extremely demanding, and Daniel struggles to adapt to this new paradigm in which he is their primary caregiver. Each scene is packed with astute observations, played to perfection by the sharp cast with an offhanded sense of humour. And the emotional kicks, when they come along, are potent. (Nominated for Breakthrough British Filmmaker by the London Critics' Circle.)

I still have a few more screeners to watch before I cast my final votes in the London Critics' Circle Film Awards and make my nominations in Galeca's Dorian Awards. And I also need to finalise my own year-end lists, which I'm planning to post on Thursday.

Critical Week: Sleepless in Seattle

In the absence of UK press screenings, critics had to actually buy tickets (shock horror!) to see Fifty Shades of Grey on Friday morning with the superfans. Surprisingly, the film isn't that bad, and works as a rather well-made guilty pleasure. It's made a box office fortune, but earlier reviews might have broadened the audience even further.

Big movies screened this past week include the all-star British sequel The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, reuniting the likes of Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy plus Richard Gere and Tamsin Grieg (comments are embargoed). Will Smith and Margot Robbie star in the conman romp Focus, which uneasily mixes a heist thriller with a rom-com. Chris Hemsworth plays a hacker in the cyberthriller Blackhat, another awkward mix of mystery drama and romance.

A little further afield, the fan doc Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of is engaging without scratching the surface; Francois Ozon's The New Girlfriend is utterly magical filmmaking with amazing performances and some complex, important things to say; the low-budget The Last Straight Man is an astute two-hander exploring male friendships and relationships and the blurred line of sexuality; Dreamcatcher is an award-winning doc that can't help but inspire us to reach out to our community; Kissing Darkness is a corny gay comedy-horror about vampires in the woods; and Global Warming is a collection of four provocative comedy-drama shorts by Reid Waterer - two are very good, two are just ok.

This coming week's screenings include Celine Sciamma's award-winning Girlhood, Jeremy Renner in Kill the Messenger, the animated hit The Spongebob Movie: Sponge out of Water, Kodi Smit-McPhee in All the Wilderness, Julia Stiles in Out of the Dark, Sion Sono's Tokyo Tribe and the Brazilian drama Futuro Beach.

And I'll be watching the Oscars live all night Sunday night - best picture is usually announced just as the sun is coming up on Monday morning in London.

By the way, the blog passed 100,000 hits this week.