CHICKEN RUN: THE DAWN OF THE NUGGET***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 11

CHICKEN RUN: THE DAWN OF THE NUGGET is an absolute delight and a worthy sequel to the beloved first film. It has everything you want from a family adventure comedy - verbal, visual and physical humour; beautifully executed action set-pieces; characters you actually care about; and an uplifting message about caring about your community and female empowerment.

As the film opens, we see our liberated chickens living the good life in a chicken version of The Shire. Our hero and heroine Rocky and Ginger have a lovely baby daughter, Molly, who seems to have a spirit of adventure that her mother at least is eager to suppress.  They are so happy, and the world so unsafe, why leave their idyllic island?  All of this changes when Molly runs away to an apparently bucolic chicken fantasy land only to discover that it's an horrific factory designed to make chickens docile so that they make tastier nuggets. And so, after the escape movie if the original, we now get a heist movie, as Ginger Rocky and their friends have to break IN to the chicken farm to liberate their daughter. 

The resulting film is beautiful, smart, imaginative and endless fun. I wouldn't change a single stop-motion frame. It was wonderful to be back in the company of old friends, if newly (and controversially) voiced.  Bella Ramsay (The Last of Us) is wonderfully courageous and earnest as Molly and I particularly loved her rogueish rat uncles voiced by Romesh Ranganathan and Daniel Mays. But most of all it was wonderful to see the cine-literate team behind this film reference and re-imagine so many heist movie and evil lair tropes - not least British ones! - with just the right amount of mischief and irreverence.  We had a wonderful time, and our lovely youngsters were bouncing with delight all the way through. 

CHICKEN RUN: THE DAWN OF THE NUGGET is rated PG and has a running time of 97 minutes. It opens on limited release in UK cinemas on December 8th and then on Netflix globally on December 15th.

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. 

London Film Festival Day 10 - W.

W. is a frustrating movie. It features a strong central performance from Josh Brolin (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN) as George W. Bush, but this biopic plays like an afternoon TV drama. Writer Stanley Weiser and director Oliver Stone have given us a conventional biopic wherein a bunch of stuff happens to W. He goes to Yale, he drinks a lot, he fails at a bunch of jobs, he gets born again, and somehow, just to prove he can, he gets elected, he takes us into Iraq....Nowhere do the film-makers show the kind of intelligence in shaping the material that Paolo Sorrentino lent to his Giuilio Andreotti biopic, IL DIVO. There are no big ideas. Okay - there's one big idea. That W. was always trying to prove his worth to his "poppy" H.W. But frankly, this is treated in such a ham-fisted, cursory manner it hardly passes for an over-riding theme. And the dream-sequence in a baseball stadium is so crude and so ill-pursued that it wouldn't look out of place in a rookie feature. Oliver Stone seems to be regressing from a work of labyrinthine brilliance and daring - JFK - to this superficial, paint-by-numbers narrative. Directorial clumsiness aside, biographers of W. have a problem, and it's not a problem that Oliver Stone resolves. You have to make a choice on how you view W. If you assume that he really is as dumb as he looks - that he can barely string a sentence together and that he's been manipulated by the neo-cons - then you reduce him to a buffoon. And if you reduce him to a buffoon, but you're dealing with serious issues like Iraq, then what the audience wants is actually a film about Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and how those guys got what they wanted. In other words, you want a movie in which W. is not the lead character. On the other hand, if you argue that W. was actually more intelligent and active than that - that it takes more than a famous name to become POTUS - then you have to work hard to argue your case and to make W. a nuanced and interesting character worthy of a biopic. Oliver Stone simply doesn't do this. He doesn't try to get underneath the skin of W. in the way that he got underneath the skin of Nixon. Stone goes for the easy laughs in mocking W. As a result, he undermines his own case for making the film. Accordingly, we get a sporadically entertaining but largely dull film that strings together famous phrases, a series of vignettes and some piss-poor caricatures of cabinet members. This film is not worthy of Oliver Stone. And it's certainly not worthy of an American president that took his country into a three-front war; tore down constitutional protections; and was at the helm at the start of an economic clusterfuck. 

W. played London 2008. It was released earlier this month in the US and opens next weekend in Belgium and France. W opens in the UK on November 7th, in Turkey on November 14th, in Sweden on December 5th, in Finland on January 2nd and in the Netherlands on January 8th.

ROCKNROLLA - Lock Stock Lite

Once upon a time, Guy Ritchie was a director who made visually stylish, wickedly funny, caper movies set in a caricature of London's underworld. Then he made box office stinkers SWEPT AWAY and REVOLVER under the evil twin influence of Madge and Luc Besson. You can hardly blame him, then, when he retreats into his comfort zone with a LOCK, STOCK-lite, commercially viable flick designed to restore him to some semblance of respect.

ROCKNROLLA is, then, something of a return to form, if you're being generous, or a desperate attempt to recapture earlier promise, if you're being harsh. It lacks the comic insanity of LOCK, STOCK and the sheer malevolence of SNATCH. The characters are re-hashes, as is much of the dialogue and situational comedy. Everything seems lightly warmed-over, like last night's pizza. Still, for all that, ROCKNROLLA is likely to be warmly received by critics and audiences for what it isn't - a pretentious disaster.

Once again, we're back in Ritchie-land circa 2007. Pre-credit crunch, London is a mix of old school East End gangsters and new-school Russian billionaire mobsters. Caught in the middle, we have "The Wild Bunch". They're actually a rather banal bunch of working-class lads who do the odd heist and serve the odd stretch. The Russian mob pay the East End gangster to use his bent Councillor to give planning permission to a big real estate deal. The low-level crims, tipped off by the Russian's temptress accountant, nick the bribe money not once, but twice. In the process, they uncover the real identity of a grass, and procure the Russian's "lucky painting" that was stolen by the Gangster's smack-head son. The fact that I can summarise the plot so succinctly shows you how much less ambitious and twisty the plot of ROCKNROLLA is compared to LOCK, STOCK and SNATCH.

Everything seems a little weaker than in previous films. Gerard Butler lacks the gruff authenticity of Jason Statham in the lead role. His side-kicks are less colourful characters than in Ritchie's first two flicks. Thandie Newton has little to do as the temptress. Jeremy Piven and Ludacris are wasted as the token yanquie guest stars. Tom Wilkinson hams it up as the East End gangster but lacks the menace and force of Alan Ford's Bricktop, or even Mike Reid's Avi. Altogether, Ritchie has gone for big-names in his cast rather than local character actors to the movie's detriment.

There remain two reasons to watch this film: Mark Strong is always watchable and is good value in the Jason Statham role of narrator and hard-man. But the real star of the show is Toby Kebbell as the fucked-up step-son of the Gangster - a rock star who has faked his own death from an overdose - a smack-head but the only person with a clear idea of the machinations of the underworld. If there is a sequel to ROCKNROLLA, and Kebbell is at the centre of it, I'll be there on opening night.

ROCKNROLLA is on release in the UK. It goes on release in the US on October 8th; in the Netherlands on October 23rd; in Argentina and Australia on November 6th; in Venezuela on November 14th; in France on November 19th; in Germany on November 27th; in Greece and Portugal on December 4th; in Belgium on December 10th; in Russia on January 1st and in Japan on March 28th.

RUN FATBOY RUN - save yourself 10 quid and just watch the trailer...

....coz all the laughs and the entire plot of this schmaltzy rom-com are contained therein.

True, Simon Pegg did co-write and star in RUN FATBOY RUN but his mojo has evidently been diluted by the writing "talents" of Michael Ian Black (Reno 911 - 'nuff said) and the incipient directing "talents" of David "Ross" Schwimmer. The story is derivative and stretched thin. Pegg plays a loser who walked out on his pregnant fiancee (Thandie Newton) five years ago. In the present day, he enters a marathon in order to win her back from her new rich American boyfriend (Hank Azaria). The only saving grace is Dylan Moran in a Black Books'esque role as Pegg's best friend. Cameos by David Walliams and Stephen Merchant are utterly wasted. Also, why is it every London-based investment banker in a US financed movie works in the Swiss Re tower?

RUN FATBOY RUN is on release in the UK and opens in the US on October 26th 2007.

NORBIT - actually not so bad!

I refused to see NORBIT in the cinema because I didn't want to be party to yet another film in which someone (usually Eddie Murphy) dons a fat suit and makes fun of fat people. It seems that in these politically correct times, the only people we can still mock with impunity are chavs and the obese. But eventually, Doctor007 brought the flick over on DVD and actually I was pleasantly surprised, because once you strip away the fat jokes this is actually a very funny, if utterly predictable, romantic comedy. In addition, while I think the flick could've survived as happily without the fat jokes, you do have to admire Murphy and the make-up artist for creating a character, Rasputia, that is utterly believable.

As usual, Murphy plays a bunch of characters in this flick but the main one is a gullible orphan called Norbit. Early on in life he loses his sweetheart and is taken up by a mean fat girl called Rasputia and her criminal family. In adult life, he's bizarrely happily married (after all, Rasputia gives him a family), until his childhood sweetheart walks back into his life. She's played by Thandie Newton in full on "sweet" mode. The movie is about Norbit realising that he has the strength to walk out on adulterous Rasputia and expose his girlfriend's fiance as a con-man.

Against all expectations, there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, although tellingly these do not involve Rasputia. I loved the Eddie Griffin and Marlon Wayans characters, for instance. There's also something instinctively appealing about a movie filmed in primary colours in which good wins out over bad. So, surprised as I am to say it, NORBIT gets a thumbs up as a DVD movie.

NORBIT was released in February 2007 and is now available on DVD.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS, I mean, hard cash

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS is an astounding movie. It's being sold as this emotional tearjerker about a solid-gold dad who lifts himself and his cute little kid out of poverty through sheer hard-work and endurance. It's a real-life American Dream. We know the dad is a good guy because he's being played by Will Smith, whose whole public persona is of a good guy and solid father. And we know the guy is smart because he can solve a Rubik's cube. And hey, his kid really is very sweet. We see this guy suffer eviction, the IRS jacking his savings and even homelessness, but he makes it in the end. Excellent.

The subversive part is this: the character Chris Gardner surely wants to be a good father and put his family on a solid financial footing. But he also wants a fast car painted pillar-box red. In fact, the entire motivating force of the movie is summed up in a quick scene where Gardner sees a guy pull up to a skyscraper in a sweet convertible. He asks him what he does for a living, and decides that that's what he's going to do. Because, in this movie, The Pursuit of Happyness is actually The Pursuit of Cash. Pure and simple. Dress it up with cute kids and gritty cinematography all you want: the guy wants to be rich.

Ain't nothing wrong with that. I personally hope to be very rich all my life. But it's just funny to find that underneath the soft, cuddly, sweet, sentimental exterior of this movie (imagining dinosaurs in the train station: ye gods I nearly vomited) beats the cold, ruthless heart of a greedy capitalist bastard. The kind of guy who bilks a cab fare or pushes onto a bus in order or lies that he's in the neighbourhead or jumps the call list in order to get ahead.

Subversion aside, there are some other things to like. Will Smith does give a nuanced, quietly impressive performance, and his real-life son Jaden is highly impressive as his on-screen son. I also appreciate a script in which THE MAN isn't holding back the struggling worker. Gardener faces obstacles but they aren't the vicious injustices of an uncaring system.

Still, I can't honestly recommend a film that was at least half an hour too long, repetitive and nauseatingly sentimental in parts. I really don't need to see Will Smith running at break-neck speed across a road to get to get to a life-changing appointment so many times.....And don't even get me started on Thandie Newton's hysterical performance as Gardner's haggard wife. Poor direction or poor chocies on Newton's part? Who knows? And who cares? Because after an hour and a half I really didn't care any more.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS is on release in the USA. It opens in Australia tomorrow and in Italy and the UK on the 12th. It opens in Germany and Israel on the 18th and in Japan on the 27th and France on the 31st. It opens in Argentina, the Netherlands, Brazil and Spain on Feb 2nd and in Belgium, Estonia, Finland and Venezuala on the 9th. It opens in Hungary on the 15th, Sweden on the 23rd, Singapore on March 1st and Turkey on March 2nd.