Critical Week: They're everywhere

Heading into my birthday weekend, Britain is in full-on summer mode, with London's Pride march on Saturday, Glastonbury in full swing, Wimbledon finishing week 1 and England playing in the European Football Championship knockout round. It's also a double blockbuster week in cinemas, and both films had their only press screenings just a few days before opening. A Quiet Place: Day One is a prequel to John Krasinski's 2018 hit, and it's a remarkably personal, deeply involving thriller starring Joseph Quinn and Lupita Nyong'o (above), plus the year's best cat so far. Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter I is a three hour epic that's skilfully made and strongly acted by a starry ensemble cast as vast as the Montana landscapes. Basically an introduction to a planned series of films, it's all set-up with no pay-off at all. At least we only have to wait about six weeks for chapter two.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Network • Kinds of Kindness
A Quiet Place: Day One
Dance Revolutionaries
ALL REVIEWS >

Other films this week included the excellent Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler as mother and daughter in the quirky Janet Planet, which is beautifully observed but far too indulgent for most audiences (including me). Currently on television with Fantasmas, Julio Torres brings his quirky acting-filmmaking style to the big screen with Problemista, a hugely inventive immigrant drama that explores the urgency of being creative. And it costars an on-fire Tilda Swinton.

Set at an isolated clothing optional campground in New Hampshire, Birder is an unusually casual serial killer thriller that gets under the skin, as it were. The queer drama Spark finds all kinds of clever, resonant ways to explore a familiar story about identity. From India, the action thriller Kill is a seriously well-orchestrated rampage of gritty violence and heightened emotion on a train. Filmed at locations around Britain, Dance Revolutionaries features first-rate performers in gorgeously choreographed pieces. And I had a chance to revisit one of my all-time favourites, the 1976 TV newsroom drama Network, as it's being reissued to celebrate director Sidney Lumet's centenary. With its ace cast (Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch) and Paddy Chayefsky's blistering screenplay, it still feels frighteningly current.

This coming week is even busier, as I'll be watching Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron in A Family Affair, Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Mia Goth in MaXXXine, Nicolas Cage in Longlegs, Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Tuesday, Ewan McGregor in Mother Couch, Hayley Bennett in Widow Cliquot, Stellan Skarsgard in What Remains, Paul Raci in The Secret Art of Human Flight, Chinese drama Black Dog and Carlos Acosta's stage production of Carmen.

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.

Kindness is a survival skill

An encounter with The Wild Robot
at Annecy Film Festival...

A quiet, absurdly picturesque corner of the French Alps has become the global epicentre of cinematic animation. The Annecy International Animation Film Festival is apparently now more import to studios than ComicCon for launching new projects, while its market is a buzzing hub for aspiring filmmakers from every corner of the globe. Amid a huge range of adventurous animation across the programme, big studio premieres this year included Pixar's Inside Out 2, Illumination's Despicable Me 4, Paramount's Transformers One and two from Netflix: Ultraman: Rising and The Imaginary. There was also short-format work featuring Pokemon, Snoopy & Charlie Brown, Porky Pig & Daffy Duck, Beavis & Butt-head, and Asterix & Obelix.

Sanders on-stage at Annecy

Fans in Annecy were especially delighted to see advance footage from a variety of forthcoming high-profile projects: Disney's Moana 2, Aardman's Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Roald Dahl's The Twits, Richard Curtis' That Christmas, Warner Bros' The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Nickelodeon's Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, Netflix's In Your Dreams, Skydance's Spellbound and DreamWorks' The Wild Robot.

It was this last title that brought me to Annecy for the first time, offering a chance to spend some time with writer-director Chris Sanders and his creative team. Sanders is an animation veteran involved in writing such Disney classics as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and Mulan. He also wrote and directed Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. So it's fascinating to hear him and his cohorts call The Wild Robot the film of their career.

A shared passion

The Wild Robot certainly looks unlike anything we've seen before, with its delicately hand-painted brushstrokes layered together using technology. This creates a dazzling visual style that looks like an oil painting come to life.

A small group of journalists sat down to chat with the film's design team over breakfast on a sunny terrace overlooking Lake Annecy. Sanders begins by speaking warmly about the collaborative artists who have been assembled, and how they embody the spirit of this particular film. "I knew everyone's prior work," he says, "and the people we wanted were available! All of us trained as painters, so the computer is a pencil to us. And we gravitated to a story that doesn't have the obvious heroes and villains. It's about shades of emotions."

Visual effects supervisor Jeff Budsberg says this idea is reflected in the looser style of the imagery. "We wanted the endearing qualities of paintings, because they're more immersive," he says. "And it was important to let the animals be animals."

"I asked that the animals have animal eyes," Sanders notes, "because we usually default to human eyes for everything." This idea extends to using real animal skeletons to guide the structure of foxes, geese, bears, otters and more.

"The animation has to disappear, so you don't think about it," adds Jakob Hjort Jensen, head of character animation. "Because we have a lot of experience, we have more restraint. So we resisted throwing everything at the screen."

"It could have been much more stylised," agrees production designer Raymond Zibach, "but we wanted to find a balance, so we never broke the spell."

"It was important to develop a something specific for the movie," says head of look Baptiste Van Opstal, referring to how digital animation has tended to create a sameness in design and texture across many films, especially with skin, fur and water. "The image doesn't need to be a slave to the technology."

Indeed, The Wild Robot is a story about nature and technology finding a way to coexist. "But it has to be seen on a human level," notes producer Jeff Hermann. "And that's why we are all genuinely inspired by this project and Chris' vision for it."

"The crew has embraced the story completely," Sanders agrees, "and that's why the film is so good. It's thrilling to see audiences connect with the preview footage and see its differences."

"The way people react to the footage makes us know that we that we weren't crazy," says Zibach. "And those scenes still get me!"

A survival story

For a film that features few humans, the premise is unusually resonant, taken from the first in Peter Brown's trilogy of novels about the robot Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong'o), who finds herself in a very unfamiliar place, a deserted island populated by lively animals.

"I love that Roz wakes up and has no idea what's going to happen to her," Sanders says.

"The opening sequence carries so much weight," says head of story Heidi Jo Gilbert. "It has to reveal key things about her journey as well as the dog-eat-dog nature of the forest. Then she's learning to hear and understand the hate the animals have for her, as well as the violence between them."

"It's important to have bittersweetness in stories for kids," says Jensen.

"That brutality informed the design," Zibach adds. "It's aggressive and sometimes deliberately uneven. It's was a challenge to get the balance right."

"Each sequence in the book has consequences," Hermann notes. "The key message throughout the story is that kindness is a survival skill." Once Roz unlocks their languages, the critters are voiced by an impressive voice cast including Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Catherine O'Hara, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Ving Rhames, Matt Berry and Mark Hamill.

Set in the future, the time and place are intentionally vague, because they are seen through the eyes of the characters. But when they migrate, the geese see the world beyond the island. "It's just landscape to them," says Sanders. "But there are signposts for the audience about where and when this is taking place." As a teaser, one shot in the trailer reveals a submerged Golden Gate Bridge below the migrating geese.

Finding their voice

Working with Lupita to develop Roz was an art, Sanders says. "It involved experimenting, redefining and evolving," he says. "It couldn't be robotic or emotionless, but she starts more cheerful, and then changes as she begins to understand."

"It's like reverse peacocking," notes Jensen. "At the start, Roz is showing off her robotic abilities, but gradually she becomes more natural and connected."

Budsberg agrees that this shift is key to the story. "Roz changes imperceptibly from scene to scene," he says. "At first she looks like an alien metal being, then she gets more and more like the island. She is affected by the island, and she also makes an impact on it."

"They change each other," Sanders says. "It's all about being who they are and being vulnerable."

Some 20,000 people representing 103 countries attended Annecy Festival this year. The top prize went to Australia's Memoir of a Snail, directed by Adam Elliot, who previously won this award in 2009 for Mary & Max (and won an Oscar for the 2003 short Harvie Krumpet). And three other awards were presented to Flow, a feline odyssey by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis.

For more information: ANNECY FESTIVAL >

photos by Marc Piasecki • with thanks to DreamWorks • 10-13.Jun.24

Critical Week: Are you my mother?

It was all about animation for me this past week, with two big releases in cinemas as well as my first visit to the premiere animation film festival in the world. I was invited to a crew screening of Netflix's Ultraman: Rising on the UK's biggest Imax screen, and it certainly looks amazing at that size. The story is involving, with terrific action and a lot of adorably childish silliness too. Pixar's Inside Out 2 is finally here, and it's more centred on the plasticky humans than the witty, insightful emotions. It's still good fun, but it feels like it misses a couple of big tricks.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Sorcery • Summer Solstice
Ama Gloria • Tiger Stripes
ALL REVIEWS >

Other films the offbeat comedy Bad Behaviour, which stars Jennifer Connelly and writer-director Alice Englert as an awkward mother and daughter. The engaging queer comedy-drama Summer Solstice is sharp and authentic. 

Over last weekend, I also saw several films at the Sundance Film Festival: London, which have been already covered here. And the Annecy International Film Festival in France us a treasure trove of animation. I was there to cover the first look at DreamWorks' The Wild Robot (more on that soon), and I also managed to see two beautifully animated films: from Spain, Rock Bottom is a dark and trippy drama about a pivotal moment in musician Robert Wyatt's life, while Japan's The Birth of Kitaro: Mystery of GeGeGe is based on such an extensive manga that it's tricky to get into its fantastical, outlandish tale.

This coming week I'll be watching Russell Crowe in The Exorcism, Demi Moore in The Substance, animated adventure The Imaginary, war drama Before Dawn, campground thriller Birder, sci-fi drama Spark and the Taliban doc Hollywoodgate.

Sundance: Find yourself

It's nice that the Sundance Film Festival: London is so manageable - just 12 features over fur days, plus short films and filmmaker events in a single venue. The programmers bring a terrific range of films and filmmakers over from the main festival in Utah. Most years there are only one or two films that I miss (it was only Skywalkers this year), and I also try to catch some of the shorts (see below). My favourite films this year were Kneecap, My Old Ass and the surprise film, which we had no idea about until the 35mm print began to roll. Here are some more short comments, starting with the closing film...

Dìdi
dir-scr Sean Wang; with Izaac Wang, Joan Chen 24/US ***.
Clearly autobiographical in nature, this teen drama isn't quite a coming-of-age movie, but writer-director Sean Wang refreshingly creates complex moments while making sharply pointed observations. So while this may be the usual collection of comically awkward and painfully embarrassing adolescent events, it also has several lovely things to say about generational issues in immigrant families. It may feel somewhat familiar, but there's a freshness to the approach... FULL REVIEW >

SURPRISE FILM
Kinds of Kindness
dir Yorgos Lanthimos; with Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons 24/UK ****
Returning to their surreally challenging storytelling style, Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimos Filippou have concocted three separate stories starring the same core cast. Each is a rather warped quest for some sort of redemption, with elements that ring true only within the reality of the narrative. And the actors deliver committed, eerily realistic performances that are often disarmingly emotional. With continual surprises, this is fiercely original and unforgettable... FULL REVIEW >

My Old Ass
dir-scr Megan Park; with Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza 24/Can ****
Rippling with authenticity, the dialog in this comedy-drama continually resonates, encouraging the audience to think deeply about things we take for granted. Writer-director Megan Park skilfully crafts a witty story that's packed with fully rounded characters who are hugely likeable even if they're imperfect. And with a wacky touch of hallucinogenic magic, the script finds a fresh new path into the coming-of-age genre that never feels simplistic or sentimental... FULL REVIEW >

Rob Peace
dir-scr Chiwetel Ejiofor; with Jay Will, Mary J Blige 24/US ***
There's a very strong true story at the heart of this film, full of complexities and issues that provoke thought. Although actor-filmmaker Chiwetel Ejiofor doesn't allow for much nuance in the way it's written, edited and played. Much of the dialog, as well as the overstated voiceover, are so on-the-nose that it's impossible to miss the properly important themes here. Still, it's finely played by a terrific cast, and the final sequence at least makes an attempt at feeling hopeful.

Girls Will Be Girls
dir-scr Shuchi Talati; with Preeti Panigrahi; Kani Kusruti 24/In ****
From India, this is a distinctive coming-of-age drama, beautifully shot and assembled to depict events through the eyes of a bright teen girl who is having her first encounter with love. This is a complex and remarkably insightful film, as writer-director Shuchi Talati draws on her own experiences, adding details that bring scenes to life with unusual subtlety. And unlike most teen movies, the story unfolds with an unflinching honesty in the way various events are depicted.

I also saw seven short films in the UK Shorts programme. My favourites were the surreal comedy Good Boy, starring Ben Whishaw as a guy grappling with the reality of his life; the beautifully shot and acted drama Essex Girls, about a teen girl who makes a discovery about who she is; and the amusing collage of Salone Love, which centres around a vox pop about love in Sierra Leone.

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

Stage: A knight to remember

Jazz Emu: Knight Fever
with Archie Henderson, Sofia Grant (keys), Nicky Green (synths), Angie Prasanti (bass), Joel Phillips (drums)
Soho Theatre, London • 3-22.Jun.24 ★★★★
Also at the Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe in Aug and touring the UK in Feb-Mar 2025

With a wildly imaginative narrative, this show has an entertaining ramshackle vibe that almost allows us to forget that these are extremely skilled musicians and comics putting on a silly show. Cleverly framed around an epic quest, it's a performance that keeps us laughing with subtle gags, witty music and energetic physicality. So while Jazz Emu is essentially a clown, it's very difficult not to root for him.

We're watching the final rehearsal for the Royal Variety Show for Jazz and his band The Cosmique Perfectión, who are following Kelly Clarkson in the lineup. But for Jazz, the key question is who the King will give a knighthood to at the end of the night. And every effort he makes to gain attention seems to push him even further away from this ultimate honour. It also begins to feel doubtful that he can prove that other people love him as much as he loves himself.

As played by Archie Henderson, Jazz is a charmer with absolutely no awareness of himself or the world around him. How else would he get pulled into such an obvious fishing/malware scam? Or why else would he hire a clearly shifty publicist to help him secure the knighthood? With his elastic voice, he's also a gifted comic and singer who plays a range of instruments as he and the band perform his instant classic tunes, including the email "opera" My Brothe, the hilariously transgressive Eggerson Keaveney and the funky, insanely catchy Still Waiting. All of these have already become iconic on YouTube.

The humour is often surreal, finding laughs in the most unexpected places, from the frequent jabs at Kelly Clarkson to a cobra drinking lemonade. He recounts wonderfully ridiculous stories that spiral in wildly absurd directions, such as his brief experience of afterlife when he hit his head in a swimming pool. And his song about going back to the good old days is as stupid as it sounds, but also carries a wickedly sharp point.

This is a wonderfully slick show, with great live music accompanied by terrific video-screens that both add to the songs and push the narrative along. Each bandmate emerges with his or her own personality and skill, while Jazz has a lot of fun playing off the audience, many of whom are clearly already loyal fans. And seeing this show is a sure-fire way to become one yourself.

For information, JAZZ EMU >

photos by Dylan Woodley & David Monteith-Hodge • 6.Jun.24

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 >

~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~
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.