Cinema

Song Sung Blue is a musical biopic of the real-life Milwaukee couple who formed a Neil Diamond tribute act and never hit the big time, or anywhere near. At its heart is a love story – one that is beautifully told. It stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, who is so sublime that we may even opt to forgive her for How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and similar. The only real downside is that it will leave you with an earworm of ‘Sweet Caroline’ (‘bom, bom, bom’) for the rest of your born days. A Hollywood biopic wouldn’t normally give such a couple the time of day so what’s the story? The story is that the filmmaker Greg Kohs was in Milwaukee working on a project in the early 1990s when he encountered Mike and Claire Sardina performing Diamond songs as the duo Lightning and Thunder.

The Christmas film Goodbye June marks Kate Winslet’s directorial debut. It’s based on a screenplay by Joe Anders – the 21-year-old son she had with Sam Mendes. I would like to be gracious about it. But it would help if it were a better film. It’s about four, fractious adult children who are forced to gather at the bedside of their dying mother. The cast is so formidable it should be a slam-dunk festive weepie. But the characters are, alas, too thinly sketched, while their various trajectories take us into the kind of banal, maudlin territory most suited to a Call The Midwife special. On a more positive note, however, if your idea of Christmassy fun is watching Helen Mirren slowly peter out while snow softly falls outside, you will be well served.

Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly stars George Clooney as a handsome movie star playing a handsome movie star who has an identity crisis and is forced to reflect on his life. It’s being sold as a Hollywood satire, but it’s far too affectionate to be biting, and contains moments where it drowns in schmaltz. For a director of Baumbach’s calibre (Marriage Story, The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha), it all feels like very low-hanging fruit. That said, it’s not such an ordeal to spend a couple of hours in the company of Clooney as the golden Tuscan sunshine beats down (it’s mostly filmed in Italy). I found I could cope.

The Thing With Feathers is an adaptation of Max Porter’s acclaimed novella about a widower who is left to raise his two sons after his beloved wife’s sudden death and whose grief is embodied in the form of a monstrous, giant black crow. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch, who gives his absolute all, but while the film deploys psychological horror tropes it’s too mired in a pit of despond to be anything other than a misery fest. Also, while the crow works as metaphor in the book (it’s a rather wonderful book, as it happens), on film it’s a disaster. Unless, that is, you too see grief as a big talking bird that is very clearly a fella in a costume. Crow, aside from clearly being a fella in a costume, is also, it turns out, from Lancashire The film opens on the day of the funeral.

Nuremberg is one of those films that falls short on everything it wants to be and everything it could be. It’s a historical drama, set just before the trials, where an American psychiatrist (Rami Malek) is charged with assessing whether Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second in command, is fit to stand trial and to ascertain what his defence might be. This should be electric and terrifying and take us inside the Nazi mind. In other words, I had expected a tense two-hander. But it’s serviceable rather than inspired, plodding rather than tense, its running time (two and a half hours) trying. (Keep a Red Bull to hand.) It also takes some horrible missteps. Mrs Göring, sympathetic? Please.

Bugonia is the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster, Poor Things) and it’s about a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps a pharmaceutical boss. It’s extremely wacky – possibly in a good way, still not sure. You certainly get value for money; it smashes together several genres (absurdist comedy, sci-fi, thriller, body horror) and takes a swipe at everything from capitalism and conglomerates to echo chambers and internet rabbit holes. But whether it adds up to much or has anything to say, also still not sure. It has a script by Will Tracy (Succession, The Menu) and is a remake of the 2003 Korean cult favourite Save The Green Planet!.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a biopic of ‘the boss’ starring Jeremy Allen White. It is not cradle to grave and do not expect the usual crowd-pleasing beats. There isn’t a single montage. Instead, it focuses on 1981, the making of his sixth album, Nebraska, and his mental troubles at that time. This will doubtless satisfy the completists. But non-completists – I could have named only two of his songs, tops – may wonder if it’s that interesting. Also, as White’s performance isn’t a million miles from tortured chef Carmy in Disney+’s The Bear I kept expecting him to put down his guitar and go tweeze micro-herbs on some fancy dish. This may be a problem. ‘I know who you are,’ says a fan. ‘That makes one of us,’ he replies.

Ballad of a Small Player opens with Lord Doyle, played by Colin Farrell, hiding from security in his trashed casino suite in Macau. After they’re gone, he slips into the corridor and sees a trolley holding a bouquet of flowers and a knife. I kept my eyes on the knife, expecting the jittery, paranoid gambling addict to grab the weapon. Instead he places a white rose in his green velvet lapel. Director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave) enjoys playing these games of misdirection. It feels appropriate. Casinos – with their chandeliers, gaudy frescoes and croupiers in black tie – are contradictory places. Opulence in these temples of luck is both a way of hiding the brutality of emptying bank accounts, and a show of deference to the gods of fortune.

Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest as good as everyone is saying? That it has a run time of nearly three hours and I didn’t drop off, and didn’t have to fight dropping off, may say it all. But if you want more, I can also vouch that One Battle After Another is funny and fantastically propulsive, and it also, I should add, reinvents the car chase – which I don’t believe any of us expected to see in our lifetimes. So while you can search for a deeper meaning if you want (many have), you can also simply enjoy it. (I give you permission.) The car chase at the end?

Dead of Winter is an action thriller starring Emma Thompson and you have to hand it to her. Has such a thoroughly ordinary, sixty-something-year-old woman (no superpowers) ever carried an action thriller before? Not that I can think of. That’s not to say it’s devoid of clichés. I think we all know that it’s best to steer clear of cabins miles from anywhere. But it’s well made, tense, fun, and if you’ve longed to see an ordinary, sixty-something-year-old woman brandish a gun or put a claw hammer through someone’s foot you will not be disappointed. Directed by Brian Kirk, from a script by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb, it’s set within the vast, wintery landscape of Minnesota (though actually filmed in Finland).

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is, I have to tell you, anything but. I should have trusted the trailer. When I caught this, my first thought was ‘heck, that looks bad’. Stupidly, I was not put off. The film is written by Seth Reiss (co-writer of The Menu) and directed by Kogonada (if you haven’t seen After Yang, more fool you). And it stars Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell. It can’t be that bad, surely? Reader, I swear to you, it is. The direction is prosaic and sentimental while Robbie and Farrell have zero chemistry, not a squeak It’s a romantic fantasy about two people who have resolved to stay single but whose lives are changed via a magical GPS system – and if I’ve already lost you, fair play.

This Is Spinal Tap is now such a deserved comedy behemoth that it’s easy to forget how gradual its ascent to generally agreed greatness was. Only over the years did so many lines and scenes from a low-key 1984 mockumentary about a heavy-rock band (amps that ‘go to 11’, a tiny Stonehenge, a classically inspired piece called ‘Lick My Love Pump’) become part of our lives. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, by contrast, comes amid a loud fanfare – which may be part of the problem, because the result certainly doesn’t live up to expectations that are inevitably sky-high. Then again, the sad truth is that it mightn’t have lived up to lower ones either.

What set this apart, I would suggest, is its deep and unremitting unpleasantness The Cut stars Orlando Bloom as a boxer who comes out of retirement for one last shot at glory. You may be wondering: how does this film about a boxer coming out of retirement for one last shot at glory differ from all the others? It’s a story that’s been told umpteen times but what set this apart, I would suggest, is its deep and unremitting unpleasantness. If I were given the choice of having to sit through it again or losing one of my limbs I would need to put some serious thought into that. Bloom has been among the ensemble casts of successful franchises (Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings) but this is his shot at leading man glory.

The Roses is a remake of The War of the Roses (1989), the diabolically funny black bitter comedy that was directed by Danny DeVito and starred Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas as a couple who start out in love, then hate each other like poison, and once their battle is under way it’s no holds barred. You remember the dinner-party scene and what he did to the fish course? You remember him sawing the heels off all her shoes and her serving him that liver pâté on crackers? (Let’s just say: no pets were spared.) Of course you remember. Will you remember this ‘reimagining’ in 36 years? It has an excellent director, an excellent scriptwriter, an excellent cast (Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman) but no, you probably won’t.

Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, which is set in a retirement village and features pensioners solving murders, was a publishing sensation. (There are now four books in the series, with combined sales of more than ten million copies.) I’ve never read it. ‘Cosy crime’, as it’s called, is either your bag or it isn’t. This adaptation, however, feels exactly like the book that I haven’t and would never read. I hope Mr Osman et al. will take this as praise. In other words, the film knows what it is doing, who it is for, and fans will, I’m convinced, be delighted. It’s reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, but at the opposite end of the age spectrum It’s not cinematic.

Celine Song’s first film, the wonderful Past Lives (2023), earned two Oscar nominations. So expectations were riding high for Materialists. Perhaps way too high. And, yes, it’s a letdown. It feels like an early Woody Allen but blunter, shallower, with no zingers, and a lead character that’s hard to care about. Dakota Johnson is our lead, playing a matchmaker who has two dreamboats (Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal) vying for her hand and throughout I was thinking: I should have your problems, love.  Should she be seduced by Harry’s penthouse or return to broke John? (Harry! He has silk sheets!) It’s billed as a romcom but those who expect that will be disappointed. It’s more an essay on modern dating.

The Kingdom is a mafia drama like no other. It’s directed by Julien Colonna whose father was a Corsican mob boss who died in 2006 (officially in a car crash although it’s generally believed he was ‘whacked’). And it’s told through the eyes of a young girl. Think of it as The Godfather from the point of view of a teenage Connie Corleone. Or The Sopranos from the perspective of Meadow. Or just take it for what it is, which is tense, brilliant and rivetingly convincing. The film is set in Corsica in 1995 at a time when the island was experiencing deadly mob feuds as well as intense conflicts between nationalist groups. Colonna has deployed locals rather than professional actors which adds to that believability.

As the lights went down for The Naked Gun – the ‘legacy sequel’ to the spoof cop franchise – I found myself praying: ‘Please God, let it be deliciously and relentlessly stupid or I will be heartbroken.’ I was not hopeful. I never am when it comes to a ‘legacy sequel’. What they usually mean by ‘legacy sequel’ is: a ‘reboot’. But within the first few minutes I heard a strange noise and felt a peculiar sensation and realised I was laughing. It happened quite a few times more, in fact.  I was as surprised as anybody. Even though the third act drags a bit and Liam Neeson is no Leslie Nielsen (despite their pleasingly similar names), any film that has ‘Set Dressing’ listed in the end credits followed by ‘Ranch, Vinaigrette, Blue Cheese…’ gets my vote.