Drama
Bird (15)
Review: Oscar-winning writer-director Andrea Arnold beautifully captured the awkwardness of adolescence in her second film, Fish Tank, kindling sparks of sexual attraction between a 15-year-old girl living on a rundown housing estate and her mother’s adult boyfriend, played by Michael Fassbender. Tour-de-force performances, especially from newcomer Katie Jarvis, and an emotionally wrought script demonstrated Arnold’s rare ability to cut to the bone with words and shoot in a naturalistic style reminiscent of an intimate fly-on-the-wall documentary.
The Dartford-born filmmaker attempts (and fails) to conduct lightning twice by returning to her native Kent for a gritty coming-of-age drama set in a squat in Gravesend where young lives in motion are visibly fractured like the graffiti-strewn, insecure space they call home. Newcomer Nykiya Adams is mesmerising as a 12-year-old traversing the rubicon from adolescence to womanhood, molten with tightly coiled rage and confusion at a world that saddles her biological mother (Jasmine Jobson) with an abusive partner (James Nelson-Joyce) and inflicts trauma on three younger siblings.
Arnold alternates between her own piercing lens and the cracked mobile phone that her young heroine uses to document beauty and heartache. Humour is fleeting but does stretch to a joke at the expense of co-star Barry Keoghan’s eye-catching naked gyrations in Saltburn to Murder On The Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis-Bextor and earned him a Best Leading Actor nomination at the 2024 Baftas. Arnold’s picture is more of a slow, melancholic sway.
Bailey lives with her 14-year-old brother Hunter (Jason Buda) and wayward single father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), whose get-rich-quick scheme to pay for a hastily arranged wedding to girlfriend Kayleigh (Frankie Box) involves a Colorado river toad with hallucinogenic properties that “slimes to sincere music”. Cue an on-screen singalong to Yellow by Coldplay.
The girl is hungry for attention and affection and she sifts dreamily in her room with views from her window of the Gravesend to Tilbury ferry taking people away from her harsh reality. On her way home one afternoon from shadowing her brother, Bailey encounters a mysterious stranger in a kilt named Bird (Franz Rogowski), also on a journey of self-discovery and healing. He allows Arnold’s picture to take flight and crash-land with an ambitious conflation of social and magical realism that audiences may find challenging.
Bird bears the hallmarks of Arnold’s work, conjuring a contemporary fable of resilience to a soundtrack that careens from Blur and The Verve to Rednex’s line-dancing anthem Cotton Eye Joe. While Adams dazzles in every scene and Keoghan embraces the chaotic energy of his hand-to-mouth father, German actor Rogowski remains enigmatic until the bittersweet end.
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Comedy
Paddington In Peru (PG)
Review: How do you improve on the near perfection of the first Paddington and a delightful, crowd-pleasing sequel, which lovingly ruffled the fur of Michael Bond’s Peruvian bear and brought the ursine hero to life with digital trickery and a marmalade-smeared flourish? You don’t. Like the original Star Wars trilogy, Paddington In Peru brings a triptych of self-contained adventures to a spirited but comparatively disappointing close, anchored by the soothing vocals of Ben Whishaw as the accident-prone bear with a passion for orange condiments.
Emily Mortimer replaces Sally Hawkins as Mrs Brown but the rest of the original cast return, plus a cheeky cameo buried in the credits so audiences leave cinemas with contented grins. New additions to the ensemble elevate director Dougal Wilson’s family-friendly picture. Oscar winner Olivia Colman is heavenly as a musically minded Mother Superior, who sings a little ditty and strums her guitar to energise a throwaway map travel sequence to illustrate Paddington’s journey from London to Lima. She is hysterical, gurning gloriously through physical comedy set pieces and burnishing the word “suspicious” to a lol-worthy lustre. Antonio Banderas also gnaws on scenery, portraying a gold-fixed Spanish sea dog and the ancestral ghosts that haunt him including an Amelia Earhart-esque aviator with tumbling blonde locks.
At home in Windsor Gardens, Paddington (voiced by Whishaw) unexpectedly receives a letter from the Mother Superior (Colman) of the Home for Retired Bears in South America. The holy sister discloses that Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) is behaving peculiarly and may be yearning for a visit from her nephew. Paddington cannot stomach the thought of his closest living relative feeling lonely in her twilight years. He inspires an impromptu family holiday to Peru with Mr and Mrs Brown (Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer), children Judy (Madeleine Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) and eccentric housekeeper Mrs Bird (Julie Walters).
The mystery deepens when the Browns finally arrive at Aunt Lucy’s Cabin and discover she is missing. “All it takes to light the darkness is one candle of faith,” beams Mother Superior. Cantankerous river boat captain Hunter Cabot (Banderas) and his daughter Gina (Carla Tous) ferry the clan on a grand adventure, bound for a sacred Inca stone circle.
Scripted by Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont, Paddington In Peru lacks the anarchic twangs of previous instalments but retains the unabashed sweetness and sincerity. Running time feels bloated – perhaps too many marmalade sandwiches. Young members of the Brown family are largely surplus to dramatic requirements and Walters’ scenes are limited but Colman performs the heavy comic lifting with a knowing wink in her wimple. She climbs ev’ry mountain and is one of my favourite things about Wilson’s gung-ho, globe-trotting gallivant.
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Animation
Piece By Piece (12A)
Review: Musician and record producer Pharrell Williams has always danced to the beat of his own drum and assumed everyone else will eventually dance along too. As one half of The Neptunes with friend Chad Hugo, who he met at summer camp, Williams has produced killer tracks with a dizzying array of talent including I’m A Slave 4 U by Britney Spears, Hot In Herre by Nelly, Work It Out by Beyonce, Rock Your Body by Justin Timberlake, Milkshake by Kelis, Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani and Give It 2 Me by Madonna.
Under his own name, he produced and featured on Robin Thicke’s chart-topping hit Blurred Lines, shared a Grammy Award for his contributions to Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, garnered numerous plaudits for the exuberant dancefloor filler Happy, and was one of the producers of Oscar-nominated drama Hidden Figures. It’s fitting that a documentary about Williams’ life should also think outside of the toy box, choosing colourful bricks as a charming medium to chart his rise to fame from humble beginnings in Virginia Beach. “What if life was like a LEGO set and you could put it together however you want?” muses the musician in Morgan Neville’s picture.
The Oscar-winning director usually sculpts in live action such as 20 Feet From Stardom, which celebrated the contributions of backing singers to the music industry, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor? honouring children’s TV host Fred Rogers. Animation allows Neville to indulge exuberant visual flourishes, conjuring a shimmering seascape as Williams fancifully links the Atlantis Apartments complex where he grew up to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis ruled by Neptune, god of the sea.
Neville appears fleetingly on screen as a lustrous figurine, gamely asking Williams questions to tease out nuggets about his synesthesia, the neurological condition which can stimulate multiple senses, and an extraordinary trajectory including schooldays friendships with Missy Elliott, Pusha T and Timbaland. His first pay cheque was 10,000 US dollars. “I blew it in two weeks,” chuckles Williams, “I was 19 years old.” Collaborators, family and friends voice themselves in charmingly brickified forms and are effusive in their praise. “He was like the young brother we all wanted to protect,” notes Jay-Z.
Piece By Piece is a conventional documentary portrait elevated by colourful visuals, which bolts together animated behinds-the-scenes footage with reconstructions of key memories. Williams is an engaging subject but there is considerably more triumph than adversity and the introspection rarely ventures beneath surface level. “Relevance is a drug,” warns the musician towards the end of the film. Thanks to the enduringly popular construction blocks, he will remain relevant to modern cinemagoers but is still an enigma.
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Action
Red One (12A)
Review: How does Santa Claus visit every child around the world in the space of one night on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer reared on carrots? Screenwriter Chris Morgan risks adding his name to the naughty list by disclosing trade secrets of the North Pole in Red One, a yippee-ki-yay pheasant-plucking festive action adventure that puts Die Hard, Jingle All The Way and Santa Claus – The Movie in a blender and spices the family-friendly confection with profanities and a wintry trill of Mariah Carey.
Director Jake Kasdan previously worked with lead star Dwayne Johnson on Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle and its high-octane sequel, and the tone of this knockabout romp is similar, pitting human actors against digitally rendered beasts such as a gang of snarling snowmen who freeze victims to death. “Don’t let him get iced!” Johnson’s glowering hero orders an accomplice – a one-liner worthy of a Christmas cracker motto.
A combative central relationship between Johnson and co-star Chris Evans is played as a traditional mismatched buddy comedy replete with cartoonish violence when one half of the double-act compels the other to take part in a brutal game of competitive face slapping with Santa’s estranged brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju). Red One delivers considerably less wallop but the festive cheer and wholesome sentimentality ding dong merrily for two hours.
After more than 500 years as head of security at the North Pole with E.L.F. (Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification), Callum Drift (Johnson) prepares to retire from personally overseeing the safety of Santa Claus (JK Simmons), codename Red One. For the first time in history, people on the naughty list exceed those in Saint Nick’s good graces and Callum has become disillusioned by a rising tide of selfishness. “Somewhere down deep inside every adult is the kid they once were,” Santa urges.
On Callum’s final Christmas Eve, he witnesses a small team kidnap the man in the red suit. Krampus (Hivju), originator of the naughty list, is a prime suspect for the diabolically timed crime. Zoe (Lucy Liu), director of M.O.R.A. (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), co-ordinates a time-sensitive rescue mission and she pairs Callum with world-famous bounty hunter Jack O’Malley (Evans), codename the Wolf, who prides himself on being able to track down anyone on the planet.
Red One will not be challenging It’s A Wonderful Life, Miracle On 34th Street, Home Alone, Gremlins or Elf in the pantheon of the greatest Christmas films but Kasdan’s fantastical jaunt is a steady drip feed of giggles and fisticuffs. Johnson and Evans’ polar opposites inevitably gel and Morgan’s script gleefully decks the halls with tidings of comfort and joy. The main villain is underfed – not something you usually associate with a season of giving and gluttony.
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