by
Julien Faddoul
Jojo Rabbit *
A young boy in Hitler's army finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.
Nazism as seen through rose-tinted, Dadaist, infantile glasses. Accusations of back-door ratification are unreasonable; the problem is Waititi (who is half-Jewish, incidentally) is completely indecisive in both tone and satirical viewpoint and the film just isn’t funny or insightful enough, despite a fairly impressive juvenile performance at the centre. One gets the sense that what he was going for was something akin to The Great Dictator (1940) or To Be or Not to Be (1942).
wd – Taika Waititi (Based on the Novel by Christine Leunens)
ph – Mihai Malaimare Jr
pd – Ra Vincent
m – Michael Giacchino
ed – Tom Eagles
cos – Mayes C. Rubeo
p – Carthew Neal, Chelsea Winstanley, Taika Waititi
Cast: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson, Taika Waititi, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, Alfie Allen, Stephen Merchant, Archie Yates
Harriet *
Harriet Tubman, who helped free hundreds of slaves from the South after escaping from slavery herself in 1849.
Wishy-washy revenge western-style biopic with the occasional splinter of intermittent technique; designed to win awards and to educate the non-reader.
d – Kasi Lemmons
w – Kasi Lemmons, Gregory Allen Howard
ph – John Toll
pd – Warren Alan Young
m – Terence Blanchard
ed – Wyatt Smith
cos – Paul Tazewell
p – Gregory Allen Howard, Debra Martin Chase, Daniela Taplin Lundberg
Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr, Jennifer Nettles, Joe Alwyn, Tim Guinee, Deborah Ayorinde, Clarke Peters, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Vondie Curtis-Hall
The King
England, 15th century. Hal, a capricious prince who lives among the populace far from court, is forced by circumstances to reluctantly accept the throne and become Henry V.
Inane medieval war film (loosely based on Shakespeare’s Henriad works) of the kind we’ve seen many times before. This time we get muddled history and hammy performances.
d – David Michôd
w – Joel Edgerton, David Michôd
ph – Adam Arkapaw
pd – Fiona Crombie
m – Nicholas Britell
ed – Peter Sciberras
cos – Jane Petrie
p – David Michôd, Joel Edgerton, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Brad Pitt, Liz Watts
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Tom Glynn-Carney, Lily-Rose Depp, Thomasin McKenzie, Robert Pattinson, Ben Mendelsohn, Andrew Havill
Last Christmas
A haphazard woman working as an elf in a Christmas department store falls for a handsome man who seems too good to be true.
Bonkers, ludicrously plotted romantic comedy, depicting no recognizable human traits or behaviour, and with a twist ending that is both utterly laughable and wholly foreseeable to anyone familiar with the pop songs of George Michael.
d – Paul Feig
w – Emma Thompson, Bryony Kimmings, Greg Wise
ph – John Schwartzman
pd – Gary Freeman
m – Theodore Shapiro
ed – Brent White
cos – Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
p – Emma Thompson, Jessie Henderson, David Livingstone, Erik Baiers
Cast: Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Emma Thompson, Michelle Yeoh, Patti LuPone, Rob Delaney, Lydia Leonard, Sue Perkins, Peter Mygind, Rebecca Root
Midway
The story of the soldiers and aviators who helped turn the tide of the Second World War during the iconic Battle of Midway in June 1942.
Dull and unconvincing from all angles; Emmerich seems way more interested in his male actors’ chiseled looks that in any authoritative recreation of the Midway battle.
d – Roland Emmerich
w – Wes Tooke
ph – Robby Baumgartner
pd – Kirk M. Petruccelli
m – Harald Kloser, Thomas Wanker
ed – Adam Wolfe
cos – Mario Davignon
p – Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser
Cast: Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Woody Harrelson, Mandy Moore, Dennis Quaid, Tadanobu Asano, Jun Kunimura, Etsushi Toyokawa
Doctor Sleep
A traumatized alcoholic meets a kid who also has the ability to “shine.” He tries to protect her from a cult whose goal is to feed off of people like them in order to remain immortal.
A sequel of sorts to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining; it’s based on the novel that was itself a direct sequel to the novel that the earlier film was based on, written for what seems to be an apparent censure by the author, who possessed an infamous dislike of Kubrick’s adaptation. None of that discourse is evident in this film, which is just another case of indulging in the ouroboros of nostalgia for something that already exists.
wd – Mike Flanagan (Based on the Novel by Stephen King)
ph – Michael Fimognari
pd – Maher Ahmad
m – The Newton Brothers
ed – Mike Flanagan
cos – Terry Anderson
p – Jon Berg, Trevor Macy
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Kyliegh Curran, Rebecca Ferguson, Zahn McClarnon, Bruce Greenwood, Carel Struycken, Emily Alyn Lind, Jocelin Donahue, Nicholas Pryor
Motherless Brooklyn *
A private detective living with Tourette syndrome ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and best friend
Undeniable vanity project with way too many awkward/self serving choices to work even an ounce as seriously as the filmmakers intended. But the sincerity on display is fascinating, and after a while, kind of charming.
wd – Edward Norton (Based on the Novel by Jonathan Lethem)
ph – Dick Pope
pd – Beth Mickle
m – Daniel Pemberton
ed – Joe Klotz
cos – Amy Roth
p – Edward Norton, Michael Bederman, Bill Migliore, Daniel Nadler, Gigi Pritzker, Rachel Shane, Robert F. Smith
Cast: Edward Norton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis, Leslie Mann, Ethan Suplee, Josh Pais, Michael Kenneth Williams, Cherry Jones, Candace M. Smith, Fisher Stevens
Terminator: Dark Fate
Sarah Connor and a hybrid cyborg human must protect a young girl from a newly modified liquid Terminator from the future.
Another maddeningly lackadaisical example of franchise cinema not playing by its own rules, asserting their audience to dispense with the plot developments of some installments and retain some others. Movies are an artform, not a tax audit. Regardless, both the staging and the dialogue here are woeful, despite attempts at progressive inclusivity.
d – Tim Miller
w – David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Billy Ray, James Cameron, Charles H. Eglee, Josh Friedman
ph – Ken Seng
pd – Sonja Klaus
m – Junkie XL
ed – Julian Clarke
cos – Ngila Dickson
p – James Cameron, David Ellison
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes, Mackenzie Davis, Gabriel Luna, Diego Boneta, Fraser James, Alicia Borrachero, Enrique Arce, Edward Furlong, Jude Collie, Brett Azar, Nicholas Wittman
Dolemite is My Name **
The story of Rudy Ray Moore, who created the iconic big screen pimp character Dolemite in the 1970s.
Standard-issue biopic in the typical Alexander/Karaszewski fashion, focusing on real-life showbusiness outsiders with crazy dreams. But this is essentially two solid hours of joy and revelry (a rare jewel) anchored by a fantastic high-spirited performance from Murphy.
d – Craig Brewer
w – Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski
ph – Eric Steelberg
pd – Clay A. Griffith
m – Scott Bomar
ed – Billy Fox
cos – Ruth E. Carter
p – John Davis, John Fox, Eddie Murphy
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Tituss Burgess, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Snoop Dogg, Ron Cephas Jones
The Long Day Closes ***
A recollection of growing up in working-class Great Britain in the mid-1950s as a solitary, movie-obsessed 11-year-old.
Remarkable, understated, nostalgic. Davies' atmospheric film is based on his own memories, though not regretting the gap between its adult narrator and its undersized introverted boy, who is a misfit within his own family. It presents the past recalled with supreme exactness, from the pleasures at home listening to his mother and her friends gossip, to the horror of school with its torturous classmates and unsympathetic teachers. I should point out that these are all accurate occurrences to my own childhood, even though I was never an 11-year-old homosexual in 1950s Liverpool. Davies' film deals in an individual manner with emotional repression and the release offered by the cinema. And its potency remains affecting over 25 years later.
wd – Terence Davies
ph – Michael Coulter
pd – Christopher Hobbs
m – Bob Last, Robert Lockhart
ed – William Diver
cos – Monica Howe
p – Olivia Stewart, Angela Topping
Cast: Marjorie Yates, Leigh McCormack, Anthony Watson, Nicholas Lamont, Ayse Owens, Jimmy Wilde, Robin Polley
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