Critical Week: The waiting game

While there are glimpses of a post-pandemic new normal, everything still feels up in the air. The Sundance Film Festival is currently running a virtual edition, while major film releases continue to shift their releases further back to hopefully less turbulent times. Meanwhile, I've been busy putting together the London Film Critics' Circle awards as another virtual ceremony. And press screenings are in a strange phase as well, with very few things in the diary. Aside from a few shorts, the only narrative film I saw this week was a catch-up awards contender, the indie drama Test Pattern, a pointed, bracingly honest romance that gently takes the audience through some rather enormous tonal shifts.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Compartment No 6
Parallel Mothers • Taming the Garden
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind
the Monster
 ALL REVIEWS >

All the other movies I watched were documentaries. Two looked back on a century of film history, skilfully exploring the lives and careers of cinema icons. Although neither feels like it gets too deep under the skin, fans will love both: The Real Charlie Chaplin and Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster. The other three are serious awards contenders: The Rescue is a thrilling, strikingly well-shot doc about the operation to free 12 boys trapped in a flooded Thai cave. Procession movingly traces a group of men taking inventive action as they try to heal from childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests. And the visually gorgeous Taming the Garden quietly observes the startling impact a billionaire has on nature, culture and history as he creates a landscaped garden.

Films to see over the coming week include Johnny Knoxville and crew's continuing idiocy in Jackass Forever, Scout Taylor-Compton in The Long Night, Sam Claflin in Book of Love, the Spanish drama Bringing Him Back, the documentary The Tinder Swindler, and the shorts collection The French Boys 3.

Stage: Let's get radical

AKEIM TOUSSAINT BUCK
Radical Visions
Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler's Wells • 20-21.Jan.22

This Wild Card programme was presented as a series of seven separate elements over more than three hours. It included two dance pieces and a film in the Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler's Wells, while beforehand, during the interval and at the end, more informal events were held in the Fox Garden Cafe and Khan Room. Each portion of this evening reverberated with the spirit and energy of Britain's Black subculture, exploring issues of identity and legacy that are easy for everyone in the audience to connect with.

Inscribed in "Me"
choreographer-performer Alethia Antonia
composers Akeim Toussaint Buck & Mikel Ameen
lighting Ali Hunter

Slowly emerging from pitch-black, Antonia athletically perches atop a wooden crate, balancing and twisting, trying to escape its gravitational pull, then finally giving in and facing a whole new set of challenges. It's a remarkably controlled performance, urgent in its intense physicality and the vivid sense that she is being held, called, pushed and pulled by a force much greater than herself. Her physicality is simply stunning, muscular and passionate. The audience takes this journey with her, and it's so forceful that we often find ourself holding our breath as we wait the next flicker of free expression. It's focussed and utterly riveting.

Black Is...
by Fubunation
choreography Rhys Dennis & Waddah Sinada
performers Mayowa Ogunnaike, Rhys Dennis, Rose Sall Sao, Waddah Sinada
composer Sam Nunez
lighting Kieron Johnson

With strikingly angled lighting, this piece features four dancers undulating in various formations around the stage, creating shapes together and separately as each dancer forges his or her own identity within the group. It's a remarkably simple idea, effective in the way the choreography emerges from the centre of these focussed and seriously skilled dancers' bodies, vibrating to the rhythmic soundscape. The effect is often dazzling, shifting tempo from pulsating slow motion to race rapidly around the space. And while the actions are largely contained within the body, there are stunning moments of expansive movement that add an exhilarating soulfulness.

Radical Visions: music and spoken word
performers Lateshia Howell, Kai Larasi, Tatenda Naomi Matsvai, Muti Musafiri
musicians Amynata Adigada, Azizi Cole, Pariss Elektra, Otis Jones

During the interval, a team of performers gathers the crowd around them, delivering a series of spoken-word pieces with musical underscore that explore powerful themes connecting humanity to its ancestry and the universe. "Warrior blood runs through me," intones one poet, and another riffs on the fact that at our core each of us is a cosmic being. In between these, a dancer rallies the cast, musicians and audience to chant in celebration of radical visions. Perhaps these ideas aren't particularly radical, but they are delivered with an artistic skill that is utterly mesmerising, reenforcing big ideas that are easy for us to forget.

Displaced
dir Akeim Toussaint Buck & Ashley Karrell
scr Akeim Toussaint Buck
with Akeim Toussaint Buck, Arthur France, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Pariss Elektra, Azizi Cole, Cleve 'Rev Chunky' Freckleton, Solomon Charles-Kelly, Lorina Gumbs
22/UK 40m

Expanded from Buck's original one-man dance theatre production Windows of Displacement, this beautifully shot and edited film plays out in self-contained chapters as performer Buck delivers words and movement from a variety of locations, connecting his personal legacy from his ancestors in Africa to his birth in Jamaica to his childhood and life in Britain. Scenes are shot on beaches, forests, city streets and inside a church, surrounded by fellow performers who celebrate human connections and commonality. It's a very clever piece, both warmly uplifting and sharply pointed. And watching it is an eye-opening experience, a reminder that each of us has a complex history that makes us who we are. We really need to stop defining people by whatever is the most obvious.

photos by Ashley Karrell, Camilla Greenwell, Sanaa Abstrakt • 20.Jan.22

 

Critical Week: Say cheese

Covid restrictions are lifting in Britain, but I haven't had many press screenings this week, mainly because many of the films opening this month are ones I saw at a festival last year. Thankfully, this gives me some extra time to work on the forthcoming London Critics' Circle Film Awards - there are less than three weeks to pull everything together for that, even as a virtual event. Bigger films this week included A Journal for Jordan, a sentimentalised true drama starring Michael B Jordan and Chante Adams, directed by Denzel Washington. It's a good story, but feels too gentle and worthy. And then there's the silly fantasy fairy tale The King's Daughter, in which Pierce Brosnan plays Louis XIV, whose daughter (Kaya Scodelario) befriends a mermaid (Bingbing Fan) and refuses to fall for the suitable man. It's ridiculous but fun.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Belfast • Cicada • Torn
Nightmare Alley
ALL REVIEWS >

And then there's the jaunty Spain-set comedy Rifkin's Festival, which has some terrific touches but is another uneven film from the troublesome Woody Allen. From Brazil, The Pink Cloud is eerily prescient, shot in 2019 but expertly capturing the feeling of lockdown in its story about a toxic cloud that traps a new couple in a flat for years. Buzzy Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi skilfully tells three separate stories in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, and their thematic angles dovetail beautifully. And in the documentary Torn, filmmaker Max Lowe recounts the involving, twisty story of his mountain-climbing superstar father and his legacy.

This coming week I have mainly documentaries to watch, including The Real Charlie Chaplin, Taming the Garden, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster and awards contenders Procession and The Rescue.

Critical Week: This round's on me

As movie awards season heats up, things are getting busier for me - we're in the final week of voting in the London Critics' Circle Film Awards. I'm the chair of this group, so have quite a lot to do over the next few weeks before we announce our winners. Only a couple of the films I saw this week are awards-worthy. Ben Affleck earned a SAG nomination for his role in The Tender Bar, a gentle and somewhat uneven personal drama that also stars Tye Sheridan and is directed by George Clooney. On the big screen, I had a press screening of the fifth Scream movie, another self-referential meta-horror that plays it rather straight rather than going for something original. But it's fun to see Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette back together on-screen.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Memoria • Cow • Belle
Save the Cinema • Scream
ALL REVIEWS >

Smaller movies this week included the nutty horror The Free Fall, which plays out in swirly confusion before a terrific but very late reveal. Lucy Hale stars in Borrego, an underpowered thriller set on the drug-overrun desert on the California-Mexico border. There's more arthouse horror in The Scary of Sixty-First, a stylish and sexy Manhattan freak-out. And from Switzerland, The Fam (La Mif) is a riveting doc-style drama set in a children's care home.

Films to watch this coming week include Michael B Jordan in A Journal for Jordan, Christoph Waltz in Rifkin's Festival, the Brazilian thriller The Pink Cloud and the mountain-climber doc Torn, plus awards contenders Test Pattern, El Planeta, Azor and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy .

Critical Week: Killer heels

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Amid growing covid-related issues in the UK, London-based critics have had our first press screening of 2022: a masked-up full house enjoying pre-film cocktails, popcorn and photo ops before watching the globe-hopping action movie The 355 on a huge Leicester Square screen. The movie has its moments, thanks to the far above-average cast (above are Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o and Diane Kruger), although the lazy script and choppy-shaky action scenes let it down rather badly.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
A Hero • Writing With Fire
Licorice Pizza • Ailey
Munich: The Edge of War 
ALL REVIEWS >

Other films seen this week were an eclectic bunch. Minyan is a thoughtful, insightful drama set in 1980s Brooklyn as a teen struggles with the tension between his tight Russian-Jewish family and his newfound homosexuality. From Kosovo, Hive is a superbly understated true story of a woman taking on her sexist society. Mads Mikkelsen is terrific as a burly soldier in Riders of Justice, an unusually smart and engaging Danish variation on the Taken vengeance formula. Quentin Dupieux is back with another endearingly bonkers adventure, Mandibles, about two chuckleheads who find a gigantic housefly. And from Spain, More the Merrier is a multi-strand comedy set around a club for swingers. Sometimes very sexy, the film struggles to escape from the usual prudish attitudes.

This coming week I'll finally catching up with Ben Affleck in The Tender Bar, Shawn Ashmore in Free Fall, the Swiss drama La Mif, and the documentary Taming the Garden.

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.

The Best of 2021: 41st Shadows Awards

It's been another strange year, with more lockdowns, uncertain film releasing schedules and on-off film festivals. As always, these are my favourites from the movies I actually watched in 2021, regardless of when they were released (some weren't). As in the past two years, I was reluctant to choose this particular film as my best, simply because everyone else seems to be naming it too. But it's the one I haven't been able to get out of my head since I saw it on a big screen in October.

What follows here are my top 10s in the main categories. There is rather a whole lot more ON THE WEBSITE. 

BEST FILM: 

1. 
   The Power of the Dog
2. Benediction
3. Quo Vadis, Aida?
4. Judas and the Black Messiah 
5. Flee
6. Petite Maman 
7. Night of the Kings 
8. Tick, Tick... Boom! 
9. Drive My Car 
10. Dune

DIRECTOR: 

1. 
   Jane Campion - The Power of the Dog
2. Jasmila Zbanic - Quo Vadis, Aida?
3. Celine Sciamma - Petite Maman
4. Terence Davies - Benediction
5. Laura Wandel - Playground
6. Denis Villeneuve - Dune
7. Philippe Lacote - Night of the Kings
8. Shaka King - Judas and the Black Messiah
9. Ryusuke Hamaguchi - Drive My Car
10. Kaouther Ben Hania - The Man Who Sold His Skin

SCREENWRITER:

1. 
   Terence Davies - Benediction
2. Celine Sciamma - Petite Maman
3. Jane Campion - The Power of the Dog
4. Jasmila Zbanic - Quo Vadis, Aida?
5. Asghar Farhadi - A Hero
6. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe - Drive My Car
7. Pedro Almodovar - Parallel Mothers
8. Marley Morrison - Sweetheart
9. Ramin Bahrani - The White Tiger
10. Sian Heder - Coda

ACTRESS: 

1. 
   Penelope Cruz - Parallel Mothers
2. Jasna Djuricic - Quo Vadis, Aida?
3. Olivia Colman - The Lost Daughter, Mothering Sunday
4. Cate Blanchett - Nightmare Alley, Don't Look Up
5. Nell Barlow - Sweetheart
6. Maya Vanderbeque - Playground
7. Jennifer Hudson - Respect, Monster
8. Tilda Swinton - Memoria, The French Dispatch, The Souvenir: Part II
9. Julia Vysotskaya - Dear Comrades
10. Renate Reinsve - The Worst Person in the World

ACTOR:

1. 
   Andrew Garfield - Tick Tick... Boom, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Mainstream, Spider-Man: No Way Home
2. Benedict Cumberbatch - The Power of the Dog, The Courier, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, Spider-Man: No Way Home
3. LaKeith Stanfield - Judas and the Black Messiah, The Harder They Fall
4. Jack Lowden - Benediction
5. Kone Bakary - Night of the Kings
6. Javier Bardem - The Good Boss, Being the Ricardos, Dune
7. Dev Patel - The Green Knight
8. Franz Rogowski - Great Freedom, Undine
9. Woody Norman - C'mon C'mon
10. Adarsh Gourav - The White Tiger

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: 

1. 
   Jessie Buckley - The Lost Daughter, The Courier
2. Rita Moreno - West Side Story
3. Dianne Wiest - I Care a Lot
4. Ariana DeBose - West Side Story
5. Dominique Fishback - Judas and the Black Messiah
6. Milena Smit - Parallel Mothers
7. Millicent Simmonds - A Quiet Place Part II
8. Jo Hartley - Sweetheart
9. Ruth Negga - Passing
10. Emma Thompson - Cruella

SUPPORTING ACTOR: 

1. 
   Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Kodi Smit-McPhee - The Power of the Dog
3. Ray Liotta - The Many Saints of Newark
4. Andre Holland - Passing
5. Anders Danielsen Lie - The Worst Person in the World
6. Theodore Pellerin - Underground
7. Noah Jupe - A Quiet Place Part II, No Sudden Move
8. Rajkummar Rao - The White Tiger
9. Sope Dirisu - Mothering Sunday, Silent Night
10. Richard E Grant - Everybody's Talking About Jamie

WORST FILM: 

1. 
   Space Jam: A New Legacy 
2. The Reckoning 
3. Joe Bell 
4. Tom and Jerry 
5. Red Notice
6. The Birthday Cake 
7. Hide and Seek 
8. Those Who Wish Me Dead
9. Voyagers 
10. Cry Macho 

N O N - F I L M   D I V I S I O N

TV SERIES: 

1. 
   It's a Sin (BBC)
2. The Underground Railroad (Prime)
3. Ted Lasso (Apple)
4. Mare of Easttown (HBO)
5. Brand New Cherry Flavor (Netflix)
6. Call My Agent (Netflix)
7. The White Lotus (HBO)
8. Shameless (Showtime)
9. Succession (HBO)
10. Young Rock (NBC)

SINGLES: 

1. 
   Montero (Call Me By Your Name) - Lil Nas X
2. Caroline - Arlo Parks
3. Energy - Pa Salieu & Mahalia
4. Love Is Back - Celeste
5. Todo de Ti - Rauw Alejandro
6. 3, 2, 1 - 24kGoldn
7. Don't Be Late - Michael Kiwanuka
8. Waiting on a War - Foo Fighters
9. Apricots - Bicep
10. Overpass Graffiti - Ed Sheeran