THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM**

Director Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost In The Shell)'s THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM is a mediocre animated film set in Middle Earth that has too little story for its running time, despite having about seven screenwriters credited to it. Apparently the film was rushed out so that New Line could keep the rights to The Lord of the Rings, and if so that might also explain the rather average animation. I suspect there is a tighter, more compelling 90 minute film within this baggy two hour plus running time, and that a 90 minute film may have allowed for a more detailed and inventive animation style.

The story is crafted to speak directly to the Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy, much as the TV series Rings of Power does. This means that musical themes are repeated as are character tropes: the proud but outmatched King, the rejected but loyal nephew, the daughter who is underestimated but proves herself a hero. At its worst, lines are lifted straight from LOTR, such as when Hera says that all eyes will be fixed on her. 

The story begins with Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox - Succession), proud ruler of Rohan, refusing to marry his daughter Hera (nepo baby Gaia Wise) to Wulf (Luca Pasqualino), the son of a Dunlander. This starts a massive feud, resulting in Wulf later attacking Edoras and forcing Hera to lead her people into what will become Helm's Deep. Battles ensue.

To be clear, I did quite enjoy the film but just wish it had been tighter and meatier and less beholden to LOTR callbacks. There's something really moving about seeing Helm's end and then hearing that funeral song. But it just isn't enough to sustain the running time.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 134 minutes.

WICKED: PART I***

I came to WICKED: PART I cold. I had not seen the musical, heard any of the songs, and was unspoiled as to plot.  Here is what I discovered:

The movie is Act One of a two act musical that serves as a prequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ.  It begins with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West as announced by the Glinda the Good Witch and then takes us back to their teenage friendship at the unfortunately named Shiz University.  

We learn that the Wicked Witch was actually a thoughtful, earnest, sensitive girl called Elphaba who had been spurned by society because of her green skin and her frighteningly uncontrollable actual magic powers. She dreamed of meeting the Wizard of Oz so that he could grant her a wish.  As Galinda soon realises, that wish is to get rid of her green skin, because as much as Elphaba pretends not to care what people think about her, of course she does.  Thanks to a mix-up, the two teenagers become best friends.  Galinda begins to discover her conscience just as Elphaba discovers that she has a crush on Galinda's dashing and apparently superficial boyfriend Fiyero. They bond over their shared horror at the persecution of animals, who have hitherto lived side-by-side with humans in a Bojack Horseman style world. The film culminates in the girls finally arriving in the Emerald City to meet the Wizard and asking for her heart's desire....

Let's start with the negatives. First of all, the music is not to my taste. The vast majority is derivative, mediocre and eminently skippable. The exceptions are the songs Popular and Defying Gravity, but that's thin gruel for a two hour, forty minute running time. Second of all, the themes of the musical are obvious, ham-fisted and trite.  I feel that I have seen a bazillion movies about how the uniquely talented but superficially different people are excluded and mocked only to use their power for vengeance. X-MEN anyone?  And oh the delicious irony of a film so very inclusive that refuses to cast even one little person as a munchkin.  Third, the plot is just so blatantly obvious. I guessed the plot twist concerning the Wizard and the plot twist concerning Fiyero while watching Act One, and googled post-film to confirm my guesses.

Still, there's a lot to love too, and on the whole I did enjoy watching the film.  The production and costume design are exceptionally good, and I loved the steampunk aesthetic of the world.  Ariana Grande is hilarious as Galinda and Cynthia Erivo (HARRIET) is heartbreaking as Elphaba, and on the rare occasions when they sing together it's just so perfectly harmonious it's joyous. The two actresses evidently fell in love with each other during filming and that reads on screen. When they share a moment on a dance floor it brings tears to our eyes.  They are the reason why the running time flies by so fast and why - despite the largely mediocre score and unsubtle politics - the film is memorable.

WICKED: PART I is rated PG and has a running time of 160 minutes. It is on global release.

ALL OF US STRANGERS**** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 5

ALL OF US STRANGERS is the latest film from Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND) and yet another beautifully crafted, intimate, emotionally affecting film. It stars Andrew Scott (Sherlock) as Adam, a gay, forty something screenwriter struggling to deal with the death of his parents when he was a child. On successive visits to his childhood home he imagines he can tell them about his life now, come out to them, and tell them how the world has changed for him.  The scenes can only be described as truly heartbreaking. Adam flits between adulthood and childhood, delighting in being able to be cared for by his mum and dad, but then also bristling at their attitudes to his sexuality. They tell them they are proud of him and he is so riven with self-doubt and pain that he cannot accept the complement. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are wonderful in these smaller but viscerally emotional roles.  

I found the present day relationship less successful. Adam strikes up a friendship with another man in his apartment block: they are seemingly the only two people home alone at Christmas.  Harry (Paul Mescal) seems more comfortable in his skin at first, or at least more able to articulate his need for connection and intimacy. But as the film progresses we realise that he is also deeply vulnerable.

Andrew Haigh's previous films showed a willingness to mine the emotional nuances of modern relationships. But I feel ALL OF US STRANGERS is a leap forward in its technical skill and visual and aural creativity. In particular, a bravura central scene in a nightclub shows a director increasingly confident in his work and willing to push himself stylistically.

ALL OF US STRANGERS has a running time of 105 minutes. It played London 2023. It goes on release in the USA on December 22nd and in the UK on January 26th.

DUNE (2021) ****

Frank Herbert's iconic ecological sci-fi/fantasy series, Dune, begins its first book with our hero, a young aristocrat called Paul Atreides, being yanked off his luscious home planet to travel with his family to an arid desert planet called Arrakis. The evil Emperor has lured them there with the promise of Arrakis' riches - the ability to mine "spice" - a drug that makes interplanetary travel possible. Really, the Emperor is jealous of Paul's father's charismatic power and is backing House Atreides rivals, the Harkonnens.  But Paul's father feels he can mount a challenge if he can form an alliance with Arrakis' indigenous population of Fremen....

Dune is notoriously unfilmable and yet it feels like every film-maker who read it as a teenager or somehow got their hands on Jodo's epic designs (see Frank Pavich's superb documentary JODOROWSKY'S DUNE) has somehow filmed it without acknowledging it openly.  To read Dune is to realise how much everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones has borrowed heavily from its tale of political infighting, inter-galactic warfare, and mystic religiosity. This means that anyone who ACTUALLY films Dune risks looking like they're ripping off later works who themselves ripped off Dune.  (Tatooine, Saarlaks and the Force anyone?!)  And then there's the terrifying experience of David Lynch in the mid-80s, creating a Dune that was a commercial failure, where he didn't have final edit, and where despite flashes of design brilliance the whole thing feels like a pantomime ghoulish mess. (See my DVD commentary here). 

So it takes a real fanboy to have the balls to actually film Dune, and that fanboy is Denis Villeneuve, most famous for his superb sci-fi film ARRIVAL and the recent  moody but unnecessary BLADE RUNNER sequel. It tells you a lot that despite his commercial track record, the studio was not willing to finance both films that would've covered book one of the series, wanting to wait and see if part one actually found an audience.  Hollywood scars run long and deep.

Villeneuve's DUNE is, I am relieved and happy to say, a visual and aural triumph.  From his creation of Caladan in the Norwegian fjords, to his stunning depiction of shifting sands in Arrakis, this is a film-maker with a keen sensibility who leaves us with instantly iconic scenes.  I also really loved his design aesthetic - with beautifully rendered space-ships and palace interiors and ornithopters that actually look like flying insects.  Where Lynch leaned into the grotesquery of Baron Harkonnen, Villeneuve realises that what lives in our minds when we read a book can look absurd when visualised on screen, and so he uses that character sparingly and in a very pared down design. Indeed, all the costumes and make-up feel sleek and and as modern as possible. Finally, behind the lens, Hans Zimmer's score is another triumph, and I am unsurprised to learn that he's another fanboy. 

The acting is by and large fine - with Charlotte Rampling's Bene Genesserit Reverend Mother the standout cameo. Timothee Chalamet - well he looks young enough as Paul - almost pre-pubescent - but it's just another Chalamet role where he plays a brooding kid.  He has zero range - or at least no range that I've seen. Let's see if he can actually look like a leader as and when the next film is made.  Javier Bardem is fun as Stilgar, but we see very little of him.  Where I started to have problems was the use of humour in the film. Herbert's book is really dour and unfunny and the insertion of a couple of deliberately funny scenes around Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck sat awkwardly with the film's overall tone. And then there was the problem of the audience i watched this with laughing at Zendaya's Chani as she mocked Paul.  And again, given that she needs to take a much larger role in any sequel, that may prove a big problem.

Overall, my feeling is that I enjoyed being in Villeneuve's world and fanboys will be happy that setpieces such as the fight with Jamis make the cut. BUT - BUT - I did find myself looking at my watch a lot.  It's a really weird decision not to film the whole book and because of that not much actually happens, there's no real narrative drive, and it's all just set-up. That's fine for me - I'll happily wait for another film, but is a mainstream audience going to wait? And if not, is this film going to make enough money to warrant a sequel?

DUNE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 155 minutes.  DUNE played Venice and Toronto 2021 and opens in the UK on October 21st and in the USA on October 22nd.

FRIENDSHIPS DEATH (1987) - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 9

FRIENDSHIP'S DEATH was originally released in 1987 but has since been lovingly restored by the BFI and is playing in this year's London Film Festival. 

It stars a very young Tilda Swinton as woman who seemingly just shows up in Jordan in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian war of 1970, and is befriended by a journalist played by Big Paterson.  The rest of the movie plays as a two-hander and takes place almost entirely within the confines of a hotel room in Amman. We hear the bullets and bombs firing and very occasionally see archive news footage but essentially this feels like a filmed stage play, albeit with some rather funky camera angles and some deeply cool outfits for Swinton.

The conceit of the film is that Swinton is actually an alien from a more advanced planet where the biological beings have long since died out and been superseded by cylons. She has been sent to Earth to make contact with the academic community and give them an axiomatic ethical system that can ensure humanity's peaceful survival.  She ends up in Amman by mistake, and seeing the brutality of war gives up on her mission, rather accurately predicting that if she did make it to MIT she'd just be turned over to the FBI for endless testing and exploitation - and that - in the funniest line of the film - if she went to England the authorities there would do the same but just more slowly.

Those looking for a sci-fi film will be disappointed.  This is actually a rather more philosophical film where two smart people - well one person and one robot -  debate the Singularity and ethics. The wonder of the film is that despite its short running time, we really believe in the friendship that has built up between the pair, and indeed delight in Tilda Swinton's delight at the absurdity of shaving, or at building things with Lego! This is - then - a beautifully acted chamber piece, remarkably prescient in its ideas and understanding of technology.

FRIENDSHIP'S DEATH originally played Toronto 1987 and Berlin 1988. It is playing in the BFI London Film Festival 2020 in a new restored version from the BFI National Archive.

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS - Venice Film Festival 2019

Ciro Guerra (EMBRACE THE SERPENT) returns to our screens with his first English-language film, based on the famous fable by JM Coetzee, and adapted by him for the screen. When Coetzee wrote Waiting for the Barbarians, it was in the context of Apartheid era South Africa, and it was fascinating to see how this provocative, political author would adapt his fable for an era, forty years later, where apartheid is over, but fear of the Other is once again dangerously real.  What he does is take his fantasy world and create something that is outside of place and time but feels more global in its reach.  The film is set in a dusty colonial outpost that feels from its costumes and customs as though it might be in the early 1900s - maybe at the time of the Boer War. From the location and food and dress, it feels like this outpost might be in North Africa rather than South Africa.  But the Others are not Africans but rather Central Asian nomads. In that sense, this nowhere place is a microcosm of the world, with small-minded white people divided between those superficially at peace with immigration and cultural diversity - and those that are violently opposed to it.

The former position is embodied in the calm, gentle, laconic figure of the Magistrate, played by Mark Rylance.  He seems to drip with compassions and decency and gently holds the balance between the colonists and the natives, highly self-aware that he is trespassing on their land.  The latter position is embodied by Johnny Depp's Colonel Joll - and later by his sidekick Mandel (Robert Pattinson).  Both men play their characters as brittle, humourless sadists, relishing their roles in fabricating a border threat, and then ruthlessly torturing the nomads who wander into town.

Of course, the point of Coetzee's book, and this faithful, visually stunning, beautifully acted, slow-burning adaptation - is to ask just who the barbarians are.  The magistrate hints that for the nomads, it's the colonists who are the barbarians, coming into their land, raping and pillaging.  He also shows how under the pressure of an aggressive policy toward the nomads, it's the colonists who become the barbarians - eventually looting and desecrating their OWN town.  Which isn't to say that the nomads don't commit their own act of atrocity, but only when highly provoked.

The most fascinating part of both film and novel is, however, the character of the Magistrate, and how far his liberal earnestness is also both delusional, and masks complex and troubling attitudes toward the nomads.  He takes pity on a nomad woman (Gana Bayarsaikhan) who has been tortured.  It becomes evident to us and to his maid (Greta Scacchi) that the Magistrate has a really weird and borderline sinister attitude to the woman.  He seems to objectify and fetishise her, and wants her to love him, even though his attentions clearly creep her out. How absurd, and thoughtless, and insulting, that he would even consider she might stay with him in the very place where she was viciously abused?

And so, the most fascinating part of this film is the question it poses to those of us who think we're on the liberal progressive side of the debate - what are the unconscious ways in which we are no better than the more obviously prejudiced people around us? 

This makes for a gripping and thought-provoking film, but it's worth pointing out that it's also visually stunning. From Chris Menges' cinematography in the North African desert, to the scenes of an almost Western nature, when the Magistrate goes to return to the girl to the nomads - to the wonderful costumes that hint at different periods. The score - from composer Giampiero Ambrosi - is also superb, and helps subtlety painfully ratchet up the tension as we enter the second hour of this contemplative piece. 

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS has a running time of 112 minutes. The film played Venice and will play London 2019.  It does not yet have a commercial release date in the USA or UK.

THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN THE WALLS

THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS is a surprisingly entertaining and warm-hearted children's fantasy film based on the book series by John Bellairs, iconically illustrated by Edward Gorey. It's brought to the screen, again surprisingly, by R-rated film director Eli Roth, displaying a soft centre in this funny, handsomely made film.  It stars Owen Vaccaro as young orphan in the 1950s who goes to live with his eccentric uncle (Jack Black) in the titular magical house. Lewis' Uncle Jonathan and his neighbour/best friend Mrs Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) teach young Lewis magic, with which he summons the ghost of his uncle's old enemy (Kyle MacLachlan). We then get a magical showdown that's really more about a profound lesson - that holding onto memories of our loved ones can go too far - that sometimes it's healthy to move forward. 

The resulting film is genuinely funny and as improbable as it may sound, I really loved the banter between Jack Black and Cate Blanchett!  The movie is also beautifully designed. The house is filled with so many uniquely designed clocks, victoriana and gothic furniture, as well as sofas that act like puppies, and garden topiary that throws up!  The costumes are gorgeous - particularly those of the always immaculately put together Mrs Zimmerman.  Most of all, despite all the crazy special effects, this really is a movie that has a lot of heart, and none of its whimsy is unused or superficial. Lewis' wordplay, his love of the word "indomitable" in particular - is ultimately profound. And watch out for that Magic Eight Ball. 

THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS is rated PG and has a running time of 105 minutes. It is available to rent and own. 

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD

For a very long film, CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD has a lot of characters with very few lines, and even less to do.  There's the troubling casting of a pretty Asian woman as a mysterious but almost mute Nagini.  There's Ezra Miller (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) as the troubled, mysterious but almost mute Credence.  Even the lead character, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) says little except in a cryptically shy mumble, his eyes shyly averted from his interlocutor's face and yet somehow aimed at their boobs. 

For a very long film, CRIMES OF GRINDEWALD also seems rather rushed and haphazard.  Scenes end in a jarring manner, mashed up against the next one. There's a feeling that things are happening in between that have been left on the editors floor.  Things that would help us understand what the frack is going on.  It's been quite some time since I've had to google the ending of a film to figure out what just happened, but I had to with this film on two counts!

So what's actually going on? There's a powerfully magically destructive kid called Credence. He may be able to take out Dumbledore (Jude Law).  Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is a kind of fascist anti-muggle bastard who's escaped prison and now wants to manipulate Credence into helping him take out Dumbledore.  It's not clear why Grindelwald can't go after Dumbledore directly. But maybe it's for the same reason that Dumbledore has to use his proxy - Scamander - to go after Grindelwald - because the two have a blood oath not to attack each other. Apparently this is because they used to be gay lovers. I know this because of the interwebs, rather than from anything the film might helpfully tell me.

What the movie actually consists of is a bunch of different characters wandering around Paris trying to find each other.  This is all very dull. What makes the movie worth watching are two things - first the absolutely ravishing costume and production design evoking an inter-war Paris - and the occasional moments of emotional impact - mostly revolving around the character of Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz.)  Leta is, like Credence, filled with self-hate and conflict. She's an old school friend of Newt, engaged to his elder brother, anxious about some childhood guilt, and flirting with joining Grindelwald.  By contrast, the less I had to watch Redmayne's Scamander - a bag of cliched tics and mumbles - the better. And his purported love interest - played by Katherine Waterston - is a charisma vacuum.  Dan Fogler is far more engaging as the muggle comedy sidekick but is criminally underused. And as for his lover, Tina Goldstein (Alison Sudol channelling Marilyn's breathy high-pitched voice), it's not clear why she would react to not being allowed to marry a muggle by following a fascist who wants to enslave muggles.

Not much of this movie makes sense.

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 134 minutes. It is available to rent and own. 

KING ARTHUR

I massively enjoyed Guy Ritchie's retelling of the KING ARTHUR myth - it was funny, fast-paced, had some really superb visuals and a kinetic score.  It sets itself up perfectly for a sequel that isn't going to happen because for some bizarre reason no-one else liked it.  Close your ears to their whining and give it a go because it's stonkingly good fun! 

In Ritchie's version of the tale, we have a mythical version of post-Roman Britain in which King Uther (Eric Bana) has been trained by a mage called Merlin and given a magical sword called Excalibur.  His evil brother Vortigern (Jude Law is superb cigar-chomping mode) kills his brother and seizes the crown but has one problem - Excalibur is stuck in a stone and he can't remove it.  He also has a second problem but he doesn't know it yet.  Uther's son Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) was saved as a baby and ended up being raised in a brothel.  The main action of this film sees him extract the sword from the stone, realise his true inheritance, struggle to accept it, but overcome this hesitation thanks to an ethereal Lady In The Lake, and save Britain from Vortigern's black magic. 

So far so good.  I have no truck with purists saying that Ritchie has changed the story.  It's a story that is endlessly malleable. It's a myth from an oral tradition that takes some shreds of actual history and runs wild, and has done for centuries. I also love how Guy Ritchie gets certain things really right - the clash between the forces of modernity and the old beliefs in magicks - this is Britain  at a time of deeply contested philosophy - pagan vs Christian - Briton vs Roman - you name it. 

Anyway, this is KING ARTHUR with all the energy, vivid characterisation, underdog energy and sharp dialogue of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS.  What's even more impressive is that despite all the jokes and lad-humour, the movie worked on a deeper level.  There's a particular character moment that actually moved me because I was so invested in the characters. And the way in which Ritchie imagines the Lady in the Lake is stunning. Of course there's also lots of cheap CGI and silly fight scenes but it doesn't matter - because I liked hanging out with this group of usurpers - I loved the moment at the end when order was restored and Goosefat Bill became Ser William again - I loved the diversity of the Knights of the Round Table, and I want my sequel GODAMMIT!

KING ARTHUR has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13. 

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (Spoilers)

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY averages the same rating as I gave THE LAST JEDI - 2.5/5. The difference is that what I really loved about TLJ I REALLY loved - some of the production design and visual styling was superb. And what I hated about TLJ I really hated - the clunky humour. By contrast, SOLO was a solidly okay film, unvaryingly ok throughout, with nothing I absolutely loved, nothing I hated, just a failure to ignite my excitement or imagination, but with some nice nuanced plotting.

First things first, Alden Ehrenreich is not bad as Han Solo, despite rumours of having an acting coach on set. He doesn't do a Harrison Ford impression in the way that Donald Glover tries to with Landon. He's charming and cheerful and was just fine. I thought he worked well with Chewie, and we get a lovely reverse meet-cute as Han is thrown to "the beast" and helps him escape. Is this really the blood debt we've heard so much about? Or will something happen in the contracted next two Solo movies that has more heft? Chewie remains a badass. Moreso in the modern movies. We actually do see him rip someone's arms off. But he's also lovable. Like when he goofily makes the same dumb move on the Falcon's chess set, or politely lets a girl co-pilot the Falcon until it's clear she has no clue. More meaningfully, we get a great thematic storyline here about slavery and freedom played out through Chewie freeing slaves in a mining colony that echoes what we know about his own people enslaved on Kashyyk. I hope we get to see more of that in later films.  This story is also echoed in L3's storyline about freeing enslaved droids.

This brings us to the next pairing - Lando and L3.  This is truly Donald Glover's moment and it's true that he brings the swagger to Lando with his awesome collection of capes. It made me truly sad that we didn't get Billy Dee Williams in the new films.  Many people said we should've had a Lando prequel and I guess that hyped up my expectations for this character. To be sure Glover is good, but I felt that his relationship with feminist cranky droid L3 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) just didn't jive for me. I wasn't upset when she died. And I felt her witty one-liners weren't landing for me. I didn't laugh once at her. I didn't care when she died. And then lessened Lando's storyline. She also has a weird design - what's with those hips? Overall, a fail - and epically so compared to the awesome droid in ROGUE ONE.

The funny thing is that when it comes to swagger, Paul Bettany's ganster baddie, Drydon Vos, arguably has more swagger and cape-game than Lando. And Woody Harrelson's gang leader Tobias Beckett brings more of the casual comedy and roguishness than Alden Ehrenreich ever could. These are the characters that actually brought some fun and panache to the film! Poor Thandie Newton as Beckett's wife Val is fine but gets little screen time. (Did filming WESTWORLD get in the way?)  In fact, I cared more about the CGI creation Rio (voiced by Jon Favreau). 

So the plot basically sees Han meet cute with Chewie - join Beckett, Val and Rio on a heist - fail to get the goods - promise Drydon Vos to try again - only to be last minute jacked by a bunch of Marauders - and betrayed by both Beckett and Han's love interest Qi'ra (a feisty and fun Emilia Clarke who apparently knows kung fu).   The Marauders have some of the coolest designed costumes and their leader, Enfys Nest (Erin Kellyman) is actually a proton-rebel and does all the scene stealing I'd expected Lando to do! In fact, I want a film about her!  One also wonders if she's a candidate for Rey's mum.

As for Qi'ra her eventual betrayal is really just an avenue to reveal the existence of Darth Maul as a criminal mastermind. I know this confused some of my friends, and you'd have had to be watching The Clone Wars and Rebels to be up to speed with how Maul survived apparent death at the hands of Kenobi though sheer force of evil will, fashioned new legs from trash, and rose to lead a criminal alliance against Darth Sidious. At any rate, from being basically a fun costume in the prequels, he's become one of the more interesting characters in the EU, and if there are more SOLO movies, then this will be super-interesting to explore. 

This sums up how I feel about SOLO:  It's visually well-designed and the story is neat.  Not just in a macro sense - bringing back Maul is awesome - but in how it ties down little things like why Han hugs Lando that way in EMPIRE - checking for cards. I also loved the themes of freedom vs slavery. I think Ron Howard failed to make the action scenes sufficiently exciting, and that cinematographer Bradford Young didn't light the entire movie bright enough to see all the detail in the sets and costumes.  And I feel that for me some of the humour - especially around L3 fell flat.  I could've watched this at home rather than in the cinema - it isn't urgent or visually grand enough. But it's a story I will follow through with. And it's far less divisive and frustrating than TLJ.

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 135 minutes. It is on global release. 

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Spoilers)

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI is the second instalment in the new trilogy of films, that sees the aftermath of the Rebellion's defeat of The Empire in the original trilogy.  In THE FORCE AWAKENS we saw a weakened Republic under attack by the newly resurgent remains of the old Empire, named The First Order.   The Emperor was replaced by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), with General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) as his military leader, Starkiller Base as his Death Star, Coruscant as its target, and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) aka Ben Solo as his Vader.  

In response, Republican Senator Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) was running a covert militarised Resistance starring a dashing pilot called Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and his droid BB8.  The droid happened upon a young girl called Rey (Daisy Ridley), abandoned on the desert planet Jakku, waiting for her parents, and an instinctive force user. They in turn happened upon a stormtrooper defector called Finn (John Boyega) who seemed to exist mostly for comic effect, but also to have an antagonistic relationship with his former boss Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie). A largely redundant but popular side character was cantina owner Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyongo) who served to give Rey Luke Skywalker's old lightsaber.

The main questions set up by the film were whether Ben Solo would or could be turned by Rey to the Light Side of the Force having killed his father Han (Harrison Ford) in a test of loyalty to Snoke; who Rey's parents were, thus explaining her exceptional Force strength; and whether Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), living as a hermit, would be willing to train Rey to that task having failed in training Ben. Ancillary questions were how the First Order has amassed such tech and power so quickly (largely answered in the EU); and who Snoke was (which wasn't.)

And so we get to The Last Jedi, familiar with the grammar of Star Wars movies and the role of the middle chapter in a trilogy as a bridge of sorts, and eager to see if director Rian Johnson (BRICK, LOOPER) could move beyond the excessive fan service that was the only serious flaw that JJ Abrams (STAR TREK) made in his otherwise flawless and joyous The Force Awakens. Additionally, if we read the EU, we might have thought we would see some serious character development for Phasma (given the standalone book).

THE SHAPE OF WATER - Day 8 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

It's always scary walking into a film by one of your favourite directors, with a great cast and an intriguing premise - your most anticipated film of the Festival in fact! - scared that your high expectations will be disappointed. And this in particular in a year of mediocre films - few duds, few highs, just a lot of ok films.  Well, I am pleased to report that Giullermo Del Toro's THE SHAPE OF WATER is an absolute delight - an adult fairy tale that doesn't gloss over the darkness in life, but reinterprets it as a magical fable of love conquering loneliness and prejudice.

Sally Hawkins (FUNNY HA HA) stars as Elisa, a mute cleaner who works at a mysterious government facility in 1960s Baltimore.  She has two good friends  - the first is her neighbour - a washed-up advertising draughtsman (Richard Jenkins) - and the second is her fellow cleaner (Octavia Spencer - THE HELP). Elisa's life changes when she meets a merman (Doug Jones), who is being held captive at the government facility.  His fate is in the hands of a racist, sexually harassing torturer (Michael Shannon) who wants the merman dissected.  But this offends the scientific mind of Michael Stuhlbarg's researcher. He teams up with Elisa to attempt to liberate the merman from the small-minded nasties cornering him. 

There's so much to love about this film it's hard to know where to begin. First and foremost we have the stunning visual imagination of GDT - creating a kind of hyper 1960s America with a deep green visual palette, a delight in vintage cinemas and interiors as well as the oppressive bourgeois perfection of 1960s American suburban life, as well as steampunky mechanical widgets filling the laboratory. The use of colour is just perfection.  And then I love how GDT mixes a kind of romantic sensuous love affair with explicit scenes showing Elisa masturbating or a pet coming to a bad end.  This is truly adult fantasy.  And of course, we have the beautiful allegory of the prejudice the merman faces with the civil rights unrest we see on TV and the harassment Elisa faces in the workplace.  Complementing all of GDT's unique vision and execution, we have a wonderfully romantic from Alexandre Desplat, and a movie whose love of movies influences everything from plot points to scene settings to the way in which the main character views herself.

Of course, few movies are perfect and there are a couple of things that I would have altered in THE SHAPE OF WATER. I would have changed the one dream-like reverie - the movie felt fantastic enough as it was without this jarring shift in tone.  And secondly, I'm starting to get a bit frustrated by the typecasting of Michael Shannon as sexually messed up government man (viz BOARDWALK EMPIRE) and Octavia Spencer as sassy black woman who gets to smack her lips and offer folksy wisdom to the lead white actress. It's getting really old and lazy. She needs to be offered and to accept better more varied parts or she risks being written off as a modern day Hattie McDaniel.

THE SHAPE OF WATER has a running time of 119 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language, violence, sex and nudity. The film played Venice, Telluride, Toronto, Sitges and London. It opens in the UK on Dec 4th, in the USA, Canada and Mexico on Dec 8th, in Brazil on Jan 11th, in France on Jan 17th, in Australia on Jan 25th, in Spain on Jan 26th, in New Zealand and Portugal on Feb 1st, in Switzerland and Netherlands on Feb 15th, in Ireland on Feb 15th and in Argentina and Denmark on Feb 22nd. 

WONDERSTRUCK - Day 2 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

I read Brian Selznick's WONDERSTRUCK upon hearing that his screen adaptation would be playing the BFI London Film Festival and immediately fell in love with it.  So many of its themes resonated with me - from the fear of having no place to fit in in society; to the love of collecting and old books; to the delight in architecture and models; and most importantly of all, a captivation with the history of cinema itself.  And that's all before one realised that this was going to be a profoundly beautiful treatment of the challenges and triumphs of growing up deaf.  Added to its thematic richness, Selznick's book was truly beautiful, unique and imaginative. He intertwines two stories of two kids from different eras - a girl called Rose living in 1920s New Jersey, and a boy called Ben living in 1970s Minnesota. Rose's story is told in beautiful black and white pencil drawings and depict a world of silent movie stars and the golden age of New York. Meanwhile Ben's story is told in text, but text that is beautifully and deliberately typeset. As the stories later meet and mingle, so to do the formats. The result is a visually stunning book.

Acclaimed auteur Todd Haynes admitted in his introduction to this film that he wasn't the obvious director for such a book at first glance - this is his first film aimed at a younger audience.  But when one considers its fascination with cinema history, who better than a director who has reinterpreted Sirkian melodrama for modern audiences? WONDERSTRUCK demands a director who is comfortable in different eras and styles, and who can harness the powers of pure cinema - visual, sound design, music - to convey emotional journeys and suspense. And this is what we get in this film.  In Rose's story, huge attention has been paid to texture - her hair, the patterns on her clothes, the thick ribbing on her tights, visually echoing the cross-grain drawings in the original book. And there's a delight and wonder at the stunning architecture of New York - we see it afresh in her eyes.  Millicent Simmonds - a talented deaf actress in her screen debut - is captivating in the part.  In Ben's story I feel Haynes really added to Selznick's world, showing a grittiness and griminess to pre-Giuliani New York and using music cues to great effect. In fact, Carter Burwell's score is one of the most impressive thing about this film, and holds the disparate themes together.

I can see why some people have been less than impressed by WONDERSTRUCK. It is patient and deliberate in how it unravels its story - the plot reveals depend on "big" events happening that may feel too many or too obvious - and its essentially a rather melancholy story about loss.  But I also feel that it's a deeply moving story about finding one's place in the world, triumphing over loneliness, and forging one's own path.  And I must admit that the final half hour had me in tears. Fans of the book will not be disappointed, and I feel that in the technical brilliance of the film, neither will Haynes fans if they open themselves up to the young adult material. After all, aren't so many of his films about misfits struggling to find a place in oppressive bourgeois conventional society?

WONDERSTRUCK has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG.  The movie played Cannes, San Sebastian, London and New York 2017. It opens in the USA on Oct 20th, in Hong Kong on Oct 26th, in France on Nov 15th, in the Netherlands on Dec 7th and in Belgium on Dec 20th.

PLANETARIUM - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 9

There once was a Romanian Jew called Bernard Natan who came to France and took over the legendary Pathe cinema studio.  He was the pillar of the movie industry - a man of power and taste. He even had an air of scandal about him - rumours abounded he had directed, and maybe even starred in, hardcore porn.  But when the Nazis came, power and influence did not protect him. He was accused of fraud, thrown into prison, and released only to be handed over to the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. This could have made an exceptionally interesting movie, a little like CABARET in contrasting the carefree hedonism of the glamorous set with the rise of fascism just at the corner of our vision.  But that is, sadly, not the film that Rebecca Zlotowski chose to make.  Rather, she takes elements of Natan's life, recasts them, and mixes them in with elements of spiritualism and science for a film that contains far too many ideas and not enough focus.

A MONSTER CALLS - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 3

A MONSTER CALLS is the best film I have watched this year - a visually stunning, genuinely moving, imaginative and yet profoundly real film about a young boy who retreats into a world of fantasy to cope with his mother's terminal cancer.  The film is directed by JA Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE) using a screenplay by Patrick Ness, based on his own book, all credit is due to the imagination of both.

The create a world in which a boy called Conor O'Malley (Lewis McDougall) lives with his young mother (Felicity Jones - ROGUE ONE) in a house overlooking a spooky looking old church with a giant yew tree in the graveyard.  The boy is plagued by nightmares in which he loses his mother to a chasm that opens up in the graveyard.  One night, at 12:07 he is visited by a monster - the yew tree turned into a kindly/scary old man - and he promises that he will tell Conor three stories,  after which Conor must tell him his story - his truth.  Conor is sceptical about the relevance or power of fairtytales - especially ones as tricksy and dark and conflicted as those told by the monster.  But we soon realise that that monster is there to help Conor understand that in real life there aren't good guys and bad guys and happily ever after.  That belief and love are important but sometimes they aren't enough.  And that sometimes just honestly expressing how you feel is the hardest battle of all.

TALE OF TALES

Matteo Garrone hangs a sharp right from quasi-docu-realist Mafia dramas into seventeenth century Italian fantasy horror with his new portmanteau film TALE OF TALES.  The movie is based on three tales collected by Giambattista Basile - tales that went on to inspire the Grimms and Hans Christian Anderson two centuries later.  But rather than give us the familiar precursors to Cinderella or Puss In Boots we get three tales of weird unfamiliarity and satisfyingly gruesome meaning.

In the first, Salma Hayek plays a queen desperate to bear a child no matter what the cost of trusting a malevolent wizard.  The poster art of this film shows one of its most memorable visuals - Hayek eating a giant bloody sea-monster's heart in a stunningly ornate white room.  But this story is full of arresting visuals - from John C Reilly's king in a diving suit battling the monster, to two albino twins escaping under that same sea.  For the Queen never truly realises what the wizard tells her - that every life and every action is bought at a price, and that the closer one tries to force love, the further it slips away.

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - Some thoughts

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is not a movie that I can review with any kind of objectivity. STAR WARS is the universe that I grew up in and escaped to as a kid. It's beyond emotional - it's part of me.  And so factors that others might find negative in this new movie - the fan-service, the derivative plot - well, to me that's just coming home. So rather than a review, here are some thoughts on the new film.

The power of the original Star Wars trilogy was its appeal to bored small-town kids.  You too might just be whisked off into an adventure. In the words of Bowie, you could be a Hero. And the film was cast in those terms - mythic terms of dark versus light.  These were the stories of cowboys and Indians, superheroes and supervillains, but it was also subversive.   It was set in a lived-in world of beaten up spacecraft and mechanical failures.  It's vision was a Utopian one.  There was a mysterious Force that united us all, and it could tempt us to the dark side.  But this was a world in which the bad guy could be redeemed. Where a band of friend could outwit a totalitarian power.  The original trilogy fought the political battles of the seventies.  This was a galaxy in which a human might fight alongside a Mon Calamari with equal respect and where the pilot who blew up the second Death Star was black.  It was a world in which the Princess who needed rescuing could pick up a blaster and rescue herself just fine. And if she was put in a slave's bikini she could use her shackles to strangle her oppressor.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 1

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman as show producer Plutarch Heavensbee
and Julianne Moore as rebel President Coin.

MOCKINGJAY is a dirge of a film. Two hours of hackneyed dialogue, J-Law stumbling around debris with PTSD interspersed with the occasional attempt at a rousing speech for rebellion.  The movie has no pace, no flow, no excitement, largely because it's basically pre-amble to the final showdown between the oppressed masses and the ruthless President of this dystopian future dictatorship.  I'm not sure how the young fans of Suzanne Collins' wildly successful books will react to the style and content of this film but I found the shift in tone from the gladiatorial action of the first two films to the attempt at earnest commentary on war jarring.  Which isn't to say it isn't an honourable attempt at engaging with contemporary politics, but my god it isn't entertaining either.  

As the movie opens, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) has been rescued from the Hunger Games and wakes up traumatised in District 13 - an austere military bunker run by the sinister President Coin  (a typically steely Julianne Moore).  Coin decides to pimp Katniss out in much the same way as her nemesis President Snow (a 2-D villain played with mustache-twirling glee by Donald Sutherland) did.  Instead of schmaltzy TV interviews for the state, Katniss now does supposedly impromptu Churchillian speeches urging the rebels to rise up - all of which have been expertly stage managed by Coin and her on-the-ground director Cressida (Natalie Dormer).  The movie cruises toward the inevitable showdown contrasting the "propos" with the terrorist/freedom fighter acts in various districts. And all the time, in the background, there's Katniss' demand that Peeta be rescued, culminating in an extraction that is clearly inspired by the Navy SEALS raid on Abbotabad.  All of this is fine, except that it gets undercut by the hokey dialogue and plot turns.  Of COURSE, when Katniss rescues her sister's cat we just now there's going to be some perilous plot moment when rescuing the cat places Katniss in jeopardy.  And the scenes near the end when President Coin commands her troops against a state bombing campaign reeks on the final scenes in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE.

Overall, I'm not sure whether they really needed to cut the final book into two films. This first part could easily have been much shorter - just one propo - just one montage of the people rising up - because what we want to get to is the final fifteen minutes of Part 1 and then all of Part 2.  I applaud the good intentions to get gritty and real but once again, I'm just not sure how this constitutes any kind of credible storytelling in a world of such outlandish fantasy costumes and hokey dialogue and cartoon villains. 

MOCKINGJAY has a running time of 123 minutes, is rated PG and is on global release.

QISSA: THE TALE OF A LONELY GHOST

Anup Singh's fantastic historical fable (qissa means fable in English) is a tale of loss and madness that echoes in it's personal tragedies the wider political madness of Partition.  The separation of India and Pakistan in 1947 led to a traumatic upheaval as Sikhs and Hindus left the newly Pakistani northern Punjab and journeyed to the still India southern Punjab, while Muslims made the journey in reverse.  Torn from their homes, the refugees were victims of violence on both sides. Thus, early in the story we meet the Sikh patriarch Umber Singh (Irrfan Khan - LIFE OF PI) - so embittered that he literally poisons the well of his former home - an act which in the quiet unspoken fantastical film signals ill-omens. Four years later, when his wife gives birth to yet another daughter, he commits a momentary act of madness, welcoming the birth of his son and heir. Thus his daughter is brought up a a boy - a deceit that is tacitly condoned by father, mother and even family friend - and it's part of the subtle ambiguity of the film that even on her wedding day, we're not entirely sure how far the daughter realises she is in fact a girl.  

MALEFICENT 3D

I fell in love with MALEFICENT despite its obvious weaknesses. Maybe it's because I'm one of those kids who was terrified by the Disney villain but also kind of wanted to be her! She was wicked and sarcastic and marvelous in the way that made Alan Rickman a scene stealer in the Kevin Costner ROBIN HOOD - that supercilious British aristocratic charm that makes Americans fawn over Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. That, and I'm a sucker for a gothic fairy tale - and a subversive Angela Carter investigation of the sexual motives at their heart.

So in this movie, per Linda Woolverton's (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) script, Maleficent was once a wonderfully romantic innocent child who happened to fall in love with an ambitious man who used her cruelly, physically and violently to gain the throne. Mutilated and bent on revenge she curses the new King Stefan's daughter Aurora and he descends into paranoia, sending his daughter off to a cottage in a forest guarded by three good fairies. But in another twist, they are self-absorbed and incompetent, and it's only Maleficent's at first-reluctant, and then eager, care that keeps the girl safe. In a wonderful irony, the girl herself is not insensible of this care, calling Maleficent her "fairy godmother", and as all of us who have seen FROZEN know, true love's kiss can be recast - this time as a maternal rather than sibling bond.

Am I spoiling the ending? No, I think it's telegraphed widely beforehand.  As soon as we see the perfectly cast, almost fey Elle Fanning as Aurora gushing over her fairy godmother, the brilliantly comedically uncomfortable Maleficent, we know where the story is heading.  And perhaps this is the place to point out how marvelous Angelina Jolie in the role. Of course, her looks are perfect for Maleficent, and enhanced further by super-sharp prosthetic cheekbones.  But it's her rarely scene comedic acting that seals the deal  - the bemusement and discomfort when the cute baby Aurora (played her real-life daughter) asks to be picked up, or the patronising amusement as she prevents the baby from wandering off a cliff.  The supporting cast is similarly well appointed. I loved Sam Riley as Maleficent's soft-hearted "evil henchman" Diaval - and I'm sort there's fanfic being written about the two of them as we speak.  But how lovely to see Juno Temple as one of the three good fairies too.

So kudos to all involved - for Linda Woolverton's well-thought out script, to Peter Stromberg for his direction which is 9/10th amazing production design, to the charismatic Jolie and the believable relationship with Fanning's Aurora. If there's any false note it's perhaps Sharlto Copley's almost method-insane Scottish King Stefan, curiously grim and out of step with the almost self-consciously arch delivery of Angelina Jolie. He seemed to be in quite another film.

MALEFICENT has a running time of 97 minutes and is rated PG. MALEFICENT went on global release on May 28th. It will open in Japan on July 5th and in Bangladesh on August 6th.