Film

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.

Well, One Battle After Another is the toast of the Golden Globe nominations and Wicked: For Good is… not. That’s the biggest immediate takeaway of the first indicator as to how the awards race next year is likely to pan out. The many nuances and surprises of Monday's announcement are not only a fascinating insight into the state of Hollywood in 2025, but also a reminder that the Globes have always prized big star names above everything else – including, perhaps, the worthiness of their inclusion.

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.

Left-Handed Girl is a Taiwanese drama about a single mother who moves back to Taipei with her two daughters to run a noodle stand in the night market. It’s one of those films where the stakes don’t appear that high – will the mother make the rent this month?; will the littlest daughter settle at her new school?; what’s grandma’s game? – yet we become so attached to this family and their survival it will all matter a great deal. It also features an adorable pet meerkat, GooGoo, and I doubt you’ll see a better film starring an adorable pet meerkat called GooGoo this year. I’d bet my life on it.

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.

Who’s the greatest living American film director? Many would say Steven Spielberg, and that can’t be dismissed, but he hasn’t made a really good film since Munich (2005). There are many younger pretenders – such as David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino – and the more esoterically inclined might make the case for anyone from Terrence Malick to Spike Lee. Yet it’s hard not to feel that the don of contemporary American cinema is Martin Scorsese, whose career over the past five-and-a-half decades has existed, sans pareil, thanks to a vast dollop of talent, a considerable degree of good fortune and, crucially, an ability to lure both A-list collaborators and deep-pocketed moneymen into financing his films.

After a spectacularly bad few weeks for the box office – with only the Predator sequel overperforming, probably because it was rated PG-13 – Paramount is no doubt eyeing the release of their Edgar Wright/Stephen King/Glen Powell would-be blockbuster The Running Man with unusual trepidation. As well they might. Although it has been marketed as an all-action thriller in the vein of the studio’s Mission: Impossible films, it comes with the slight air of tainted goods.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac (Baron Victor Frankenstein) and Jacob Elordi (‘the creature’) and retells the basics of Mary Shelley’s story – man creates monster, man rejects monster, monster goes off on one – with high-camp sumptuousness. Del Toro’s spin is to include a redemptive arc, plus he throws in some invented characters. ‘The creature’, meanwhile, is portrayed with great sympathy, as a soulful, mistreated innocent. In other words, there’s no Boris Karloff lumbering around in that blazer a size too small with a bolt through the neck. It opens with a Danish expedition-ship stuck in the Arctic ice and the crew rescuing an injured Victor.

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!.