This year is packed with highly anticipated sequels and fresh new reels, from "Bridget Jones" and "Mission Impossible" to Michael B. Jordan in a Mississippi mobster horror.
Superman
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's another Superman reboot. Clark Kent's cape-wearing superhero is back in a "charming take", written and directed by James Gunn, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. A "sincere" but "goofy" film with a few "twists on the mythology", it captivated this "superhero-weary critic". David Corenswet has "muscular shoulders, a dimple in his cheek and a curl in the middle of his forehead" – and most importantly, "when he says he just loves people" he's entirely believable.
"All of this, of course, is corny. Hokey. Cheesy. Achingly sincere. Cringe, even," said Glen Weldon on NPR. But this is partly what makes the movie work so well. After Gunn compared his film to an immigrant's story, Fox News labelled it "Superwoke". But this iteration of the character arrives as "bedrock American principles like justice for all, defending the defenceless, helping those in need – feel out of reach" and it's "inspiring to be reminded what those ideals look like".
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28 Years Later
It's more than 20 years since director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland "stunned the world" with their dystopian "masterpiece" "28 Days Later" (2002), said George Simpson in the Daily Express. A follow-up in 2007 did not set the world alight, yet now they are back, with the first in a new trilogy of sequels that is "easily the best" film of the year so far. As the title says, it is 28 years since the Rage virus spread through the UK, turning its inhabitants into bloodthirsty monsters, while the country has been abandoned to its fate by the rest of the world with a strict maritime exclusion zone imposed around it. However, a small community has managed to isolate itself from the plague on the island of Lindisfarne, where its people subsist as though in the Middle Ages.
Our hero is 12-year-old Spike, who is taken by his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on an "ultra-violent rite-of-passage" trip to the mainland where he must learn how to destroy the infected humans, said Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. These have changed since 2002 and now range from relatively easy-to-kill variants who crawl on all fours to terrifyingly large and powerful "alphas". The scenes in which father and son hunt and are hunted are visceral and "thrilling", but the film takes a more contemplative turn when Ralph Fiennes appears as a former doctor, with – perhaps – the ability to cure Spike's ailing mother (Jodie Comer).
Shot in part on iPhone cameras, the film is never boring, said Stephanie Zacharek in Time, and Fiennes in particular is "terrific". But the ending is "dumb". The movie contains all the elements that made the original "great", yet somehow "adds up to less".
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
"For nearly three decades, Tom Cruise has been running, soaring, slugging and white-knuckling it through the Mission: Impossible series," said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. Small wonder, then, that he looks a bit "beaten up" on the poster for "The Final Reckoning", the franchise's eighth instalment, and perhaps its last. But even if time is catching up with the 62-year-old actor, he is still pushing himself to "lunatic extremes". In this "enjoyably unhinged" follow-up to 2023's "Dead Reckoning Part One", he plunges into deep waters and hangs off airborne planes – "insistently defying the odds as well as his own mortality".
The story picks up where that last film left off, with an AI program called "the Entity" threatening to eradicate mankind, having first taken over the internet and now trying to seize the global nuclear arsenal. Of course it falls to secret agent extraordinaire Ethan Hunt, and his usual sidekicks, to do the impossible and save the human race. In these dark political times, audiences are likely to be thirsting for some "rollicking", stunt-heavy fun from the M:I team, said Nicholas Barber on BBC Culture; but whereas "Dead Reckoning" was a "frothy Euro caper" sprinkled with "mischief, glamour and romance", this instalment manages to be doomy and portentous, as well as silly, with "cod philosophy about destiny and choice" in place of "snappy banter", an excess of ponderous exposition, and far too much of the action taking place in dark caverns and tunnels.
The franchise has caved in to self indulgence with the "fatalistic pomp of Wagner's Ring cycle", said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent – and I loved it. Yes, it's lumbering and absurd, and seemingly built around the ego of its star – but for sheer spectacle, it is hard to beat.
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet's Oscar-winning film follows Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones). Together, they flee post-war Europe and travel to the United States to begin rebuilding their lives. This is "not a film to devour, but to be devoured by", said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. Pierced with the "fierce cynicism" found in Corbet's earlier works, “The Brutalist” could have been a "traditional historic epic", but is transformed into an "existentially disturbing monster movie. The monster in question is, of course, America."
"Bold, confrontational and oversized in every way imaginable", the sprawling three-hour film is an "uncompromising cinematic statement", said Wendy Ide in The Observer. Shot almost entirely on VistaVision (a format last used in Hollywood in the 1960s), it's a "visually arresting" movie, and Brody is "impressive" as the "gaunt, haunted" László. In all, it's a "remarkable achievement", and the kind of colossal "passion project" that is usually reserved for a tiny handful of "celebrated auteurs". With "The Brutalist", Corbet gains entry to this exclusive club.
Flow
The "closest thing to a big surprise" at this year's Oscars came when this impressionistic Latvian film, created on open-source animation software for just $3.7m – and containing no dialogue – beat off the big studios to take home the Academy Award for best animated feature, said Donald Clarke in The Irish Times.
With a smidgen of "The Wind in the Willows" and a dollop of "The Incredible Journey", this "charming" film is about an unnamed slate-coloured cat making its way through the vestiges of a ruined civilisation in the aftermath of an environmental catastrophe. When the land around it begins to flood, the cat's only chance is to leap onto a sailing boat, which it shares with a "lolloping" labrador, a "superior" bird, a "sedate" capybara, and, eventually, a lemur. Together, they float towards what we pray is safer ground; what they themselves expect from it, we can only guess. "You could see the film as a piece of outsider art", but children will watch it "until the pixels wear out".
Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story
It would be difficult to make a boring documentary about Edna O'Brien, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. The Irish writer, who died last year aged 93, scarcely said or did "anything uninteresting in her life": she "fearlessly and thrillingly" told the truth about the female experience in her novels and she was "incapable of recounting a duff anecdote". And this "beautifully constructed" portrait certainly does not sell her short. Using previously unseen diary entries, and featuring an interview with O'Brien herself, which she gave shortly before her death, it is a "tender and gripping" tribute to a woman who "carved her own path despite many attempts to bring her into line".
O'Brien is "a gift from the documentary filmmaking gods", said Hilary White in The Irish Independent. Her recollections, which are interspersed with archive footage and contributions from talking heads, are "brittle" and often shocking. We learn how her debut novel, "The Country Girls" (1960), "scandalised" conservative Ireland; and that her success overseas provoked the ire of both her violently abusive, alcoholic father and her novelist husband. Unbowed and newly separated, she moved to London and became "a darling" of its "celebrity set". She threw "lavish parties" attended by the likes of Paul McCartney, had a fling with Robert Mitchum and a relationship with an unnamed British politician that had "severe effects" on her "productivity, personal finances and health". The writer sits at the centre of Sinéad O'Shea's "sobering, endlessly interesting" film, said Kevin Maher in The Times – "a passionate woman in her final days", ruefully reflecting on a life that was glittering, "but always undercut by conflict and gnawing dissatisfaction".
Sinners
Director Ryan Coogler was responsible for two of Marvel's "most satisfying and textured" films, said Wendy Ide in The Observer: "Black Panther" and its sequel "Wakanda Forever". So he has definitely earned the chance to make a "passion project", but who would have guessed that it would be a film as "wild" and "untrammelled" as this "sexy southern-gothic horror" – "a blues-infused vampire flick in which the music flows as freely as the blood". In "Sinners", Michael B. Jordan takes the dual role of Smoke and Stack, "gangster twins" who have returned to their hometown in Mississippi in 1932 flush from Al Capone's Chicago. They are now intent on opening "a black-owned juke-joint under the noses of the Ku Klux Klan" with their cousin, a talented young blues guitarist (newcomer Miles Caton); but it turns out that an "evil" even greater than the KKK awaits them.
Coogler takes his time to conjure a vivid picture of the black Deep South and its culture, said Angelica Jade Bastién in New York magazine; we see "bracing" shots "of cotton fields plumbed by sharecroppers, endless skies and dusty roads, the verdant expanse of a land that has witnessed so much sorrow"; the characters are cleverly drawn, and brilliantly acted.
A Complete Unknown
"In 1960, John, Paul, George – but not yet Ringo – became The Beatles," said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. "In 1962, the Rolling Stones were born. But in the year in between, 1961, another key moment in modern musical history took place – the then 19-year-old Bob Dylan arrived in New York" with his acoustic guitar. "A Complete Unknown", the title of which comes from his track "Like a Rolling Stone", is the story of what happened over the next few years, culminating in his divisive switch to electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Directed by James Mangold ("Walk the Line"), the film "grips, moves and does an excellent job of reminding everyone, even Dylan agnostics", of the importance of his music, thanks not least to its star Timothée Chalamet, "who never stops looking like Timothée Chalamet", yet somehow convinces us that "he might just be the young Bob".
The events building up to Newport unfold rather listlessly, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator – at one point we see Dylan in a record store, checking if his album is in stock – but the film "has a seductive, meditative, cumulative power. I wasn't bored for a single second." As for Chalamet, he is "astonishing, and does his own singing. He may even be better at singing Dylan than Dylan is at singing Dylan."
Nickel Boys
Every now and then, a film comes along "that understands the potential of cinema so deeply that it changes the medium for everyone", said Kevin Maher in The Times. The 2015 Holocaust drama "Son of Saul" was one of those films, as was "2001: A Space Odyssey". "To that list we now have to add 'Nickel Boys', an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that is told completely, and audaciously, through point-of-view shots of its two protagonists, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson)." Opening in Jim Crow-era Florida, the film introduces us first to Elwood, whose blissful home life is turned on its head when he is sent to the "brutal Nickel Academy, a so-called reform school based on the real-life and equally infamous Dozier School for Boys". There, he meets the "slick but sensitive Turner", and an instant bond is formed. The film commits "welcome sacrilege by altering the horribly downbeat ending of Whitehead's novel"; and though its subject matter is grim, it's surprisingly uplifting.
"The first-person use of the camera may not be a new filmmaking technique," said Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman, but in "Nickel Boys", director RaMell Ross "takes it to another level", immersing viewers in the boys' world in a way that is "quite extraordinary". This is a film that is "unlike anything else out there".
The Ballad Of Wallis Island
This "small-scale treat" from James Griffiths "finds a sweet spot between heart and humour", said Ian Freer in Empire. It manages to explore themes of love and loss and reconciliation without "ever skimping on great gags". Tim Key plays Charles, a reclusive lottery winner who wants to stage a private reunion gig for his favourite folk duo, McGwyer Mortimer (played by Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan). Charles "is a terrific comedy creation", and there are "plot twists and surprising revelations amid strong character work".
"The Ballad of Wallis Island" is "low in budget and high in whimsy", a combination I have come to "dread", said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. Yet it is delightful, "just the right side of zany, perfectly askew". The casting of Mulligan is "a coup twice over", most likely the reason the film was "greenlit" and "star power cranked" she lightens Herb's "brooding gloom".
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
"Hold the blue soup and pack away the big knickers," said Kevin Maher in The Times: "Bridget Jones has finally grown up." Over three "increasingly shambolic movie outings", we've seen this "de facto national treasure" (deftly played by the Texan actress Renée Zellweger) pratfalling boozily "into mud piles and out of taxis", and worrying incessantly about her "'wobbly bits'. But you can only play the nincompoop for so long, and thankfully, and rather thrillingly, it's all change here – in a film of sly sobriety and uncommon depths."
It turns out that Bridget has had a tough few years, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday: her beloved father (Jim Broadbent) has died, as has her husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) – killed while on a human rights mission to Sudan. That was four years ago. But Bridget, who now lives with her two children in a wisteria-draped house in Hampstead, has decided that it is time to stop moping, and allows a friend to sign her up to Tinder as a "tragic widow seeking sexual reawakening". Two romantic options soon materialise: Roxster, a 29-year-old student nicely played by "One Day"'s Leo Woodall, and Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a science teacher at Bridget's kids' posh prep school. Not everything in the film "quite works" – a sequence in which Bridget acquires "trout-pout lips" feels "clumsy and dated", for instance – but Zellweger is "better than ever", Ejiofor is "cleverly restrained", and a "beautifully written last lap will send virtually everyone out onto the streets dabbing gently at their eyes".
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