film reviews
A Fantastic Woman review - from Chile with heat
Saskia Baron

The woman of the title is not the first person we meet on screen; we meet her lover, a 57-year-old silver fox Orlando (Francisco Reyes). He’s getting a massage in a sauna and then returning to his office where he owns a printing company. We meet him again later. He’s looking for someone, a beautiful merengue singer performing in a fancy hotel. Marina (Daniela Vega, pictured below with Reyes) sings "Your love is yesterday’s newspaper" and they lock eyes.

Marina has been Orlando’s lover for a year, they share his flat, she adores his dog Diabla. They enjoy a romantic birthday dinner in a Chinese restaurant. But Orlando has an ex-wife, a seven-year-old daughter and an adult son by a previous marriage. And Marina is not only 30 years Orlando's junior, but a young trans woman. She may long to be his life partner and a singer, but she is not destined for a long romance with Orlando.A Fantastic WomanChilean writer-director Sebastián Lelio made the wonderful Gloria in 2013 and has deservedly won a 2017 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination for A Fantastic Woman. This is an extraordinarily moving romantic drama with shades of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Marina finds herself accused of murder, humiliated, evicted, excluded, bullied and deprived of the right to mourn.

Through it all, the camera holds the actor Daniela Vega centre frame. We watch Vega’s beautiful, powerful face and her defiant body, scorned by a transphobic culture. Predominantly realist in style and set in the ultra-modern city of Santiago, there are several distressing scenes where Marina is brutally abused and yet stays strong. But these scenes are countered by Lelio’s more visionary elliptical sequences. Marina is framed over and over again in mirrors and the director's brief sequences of camp fantasy and ghostly sightings of Orlando recall Jean Cocteau at his finest. We see Marina walk in a trance through a series of underground, labyrinthine corridors, searching for her Orpheus.

As well as Chilean torch songs, the soundtrack pays homage to Bernard Herrmann and Cat Stevens while ruthlessly deploying Carole King’s ballad (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman and a superb Handel aria. It’s an audacious mixture of musical genres which matches perfectly the film’s daring subject matter and its refusal to conform to any one stylistic model. If Daniela Vega can be both a man and a woman, then Lelio can make a film that crosses genres and defies conventions too. A Fantastic Woman is magnificent in every way. 

@saskiabaron

Overleaf: watch the trailer for A Fantastic Woman

Red Sparrow review - from Russia with lust
Adam Sweeting

As it turns out, the slashed-to-the-hip Versace dress with which Jennifer Lawrence provoked controversy (synthetic or otherwise) on a freezing London rooftop was an accurate barometer of what to expect from Red Sparrow.

DVD: Boy
David Kettle

Following his irreverent superhero reboot Thor: Ragnarok, one of 2017’s most distinctive blockbusters, and his quirky Kiwi indie comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016, it’s fair to say that interest in New Zealand director Taika Waititi’s back catalogue is high. Hence, no doubt, the DVD release of Waititi’s second feature, 2010’s big-hearted coming-of-age comedy Boy.

It’s fair to say, too, that the director’s signature style – his bathetic, deadpan wit; his unapologetic silliness; his big emotions – are all there in this earlier movie. But there’s a more serious side to Boy: a sense of ambition to deal with weightier issues, ones of grief, masculinity, family, even hope and potential (a word that the film’s lead seems understandably obsessed by). But they’re all delivered with such a remarkable lightness of touch, and a glorious sense of the absurd, that anything approaching portentous sermonising is swiftly undercut.

BoyBoy (James Rolleston) – real name Alamein, after the World War Two battle – is a Michael Jackson-obsessed 11-year-old in remote Waihau Bay in New Zealand in 1984, gamely looking after his gaggle of younger siblings and cousins while their grandmother is away at a funeral. Among them is his younger brother, six-year-old Rocky (Te Aho Eketone-Whitu, pictured above with James Rolleston), who’s convinced he has telekinetic superpowers, although they never seem to work (or rarely, at least).

After the surprise arrival of his semi-estranged father, also named Alamein (Waititi, pictured below with James Rolleston) – who’s been behind bars for robbery – accompanied by two deadbeat hangers-on, Boy is initially awe-struck. But he soon begins to see through the man’s bluster and bravado, and to realise that the heroic qualities he idolised in his dad existed only in his imagination.

Waititi gets astonishingly natural, utterly convincing performances from his two young leads – both amateurs at the time of filming (Rolleston, the story goes, turned up as an extra before being snapped as a replacement lead just days before filming started). Eketone-Whitu in particular is mesmerising as the otherworldly Rocky, not quite connected with events around him, immediately suspicious of his returning father’s motives, and barely comprehending the tragic fate of his mother. As their needy man-child of a father, Waititi walks a fine line between gormless humour and behaviour that’s far less forgiveable. It’s rather a broad portrayal, but one that’s persuasive nonetheless.BoyWaititi makes reference to the deprivation of his isolated community, but context is never overemphasised – Boy is very much the story of its characters, despite its portrayal of a Maori people somewhat adrift from the modern world. Likewise, Adam Clark’s expressive cinematography contrasts the jaw-dropping splendours of the North Island landscape with the grimy poverty of a community that seems to be simply killing time.

Boy isn’t without its problems, one of which is its uneven pacing. Waititi seems to throw everything he can at his frenetic exposition – dance routines, animated kids’ drawings, asides to camera and plenty more – but then the far slower second act seems to drag, even threaten to lose its way. And it’s a shame that producers couldn’t rustle up any special features or commentaries to fill out this DVD release. But it’s a tender, big-hearted, often downright hilarious movie all the same, one that feels fresh, sincere, and never calculated. As in his later Hunt for the Wilderpeople – although here in a less polished, grittier way – Waititi dares to place kids firmly as his film’s focus, never patronising or romanticising them, but instead celebrating their strength and resilience. 

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Boy

Game Night review - Rachel McAdams is bliss in bonkers comedy thriller
Matt Wolf

Fake news takes on new meaning in the largely gonzo Game Night, which leaves spectators wondering moment-to-moment whether what they are watching is reality or part of a continually unfolding game. Telling of a gathering of six whose game night doesn't quite, um, go according to plan, this co-directing effort between John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein throws numerous genres into the celluloid megamix and blends them to the max.

The Light of the Moon, Amazon Prime review - coping with the unthinkable
Adam Sweeting

This account of the aftermath of a sexual assault is handled with a clear-headed restraint and attention to detail that’s refreshing in the feverish post-Weinstein climate.

Mom and Dad review - daft and dark zombie thriller
Veronica Lee

As Mom and Dad opens, after a comically shocking preface, the Ryan family are presented as a typical all-American middle-class family – albeit one that, strangely enough, can afford a daily maid who cooks their breakfast. 

Dark River review - haunted rural realism
Nick Hasted

Country darkness falls quickly when Alice (Ruth Wilson) goes back to the farm. She stops before entering to gratefully absorb the Yorkshire countryside’s sunny beauty.

DVD/Blu-ray: The Party
Owen Richards

Take one of the strongest casts in British cinema and put them in a confined space; it was always going to be fun. Sally Potter’s The Party sets its sights on the duplicitous liberal elite, where venality hides behind paper-thin morals.

Janet (Kristen Scott Thomas) is hosting a get-together in celebration of her promotion to Shadow Health Secretary. Her husband Bill (Timothy Spall) is strangely quiet, barely acknowledging the arrival of their guests: the brilliantly sour April (Patricia Clarkson), her new-age life coach partner Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), feminist academic Martha (Cherry Jones), and her pregnant wife Jinny (Emily Mortimer). Once coked-up banker Tom (Cillian Murphy) joins proceedings, the pleasantries fall away as Bill reveals his big secret.

The exposition-heavy dialogue creaks through the opening 10 minutes, with every character explaining each other’s jobs and relationships as if being tested. It’s unsubtle, but it puts the pieces in place, allowing the film to swiftly move into anarchy. Every character is vain and hypocritical, desperately battling their own impulses to appear tolerable. When secrets start spilling over, fragile factions form in a pressure cooker environment, allegiances quickly changing with each reveal.Timothy Spall as Bill in The PartyOnce in full flow, it’s a pure joy to watch; the cast have a riot, bouncing around the rooms to an eclectic soundtrack provided by Bill’s record player. There are moments of true comic gold, from The Thick of It-style implications of the Shadow Health Secretary’s husband going private for a terminal diagnosis, to the daft panic when searching for the right music to revive a dying man. Disappointingly, the ending peters out with a whimper, unable to find a satisfying conclusion to the madness. The final reveal attempts one more rug pull, but it feels cheap in comparison to the excellence preceding it.

It’s easy to imagine The Party starting life as a stage play, with its single setting and elements of farce, but it is a visual treat on the screen. The black and white presentation gives events a surreal grandeur, turning a middle-class suburban home into a monochromatic stage. Close ups of frantic faces (in particular, king of the crazed looks Cillian Murphy) build a claustrophobic atmosphere, highlighting every twitch as an amplified tell.

The house itself was a purpose-built set, as revealed in the special features on this release. After scouting various locations, production designer Carlos Conti and director Potter combined their favourite elements to create the ideal layout on a soundstage. The documentary on its construction is surprisingly fascinating, showing the lengths gone to make the rooms appear convincingly lived in. It emphasises the role that the house plays, perfectly designed to appear simultaneously spacious and suffocating on film.

Also included is a huge collection of interviews from the entire cast, along with Sally Potter and the film’s producers. It confirms that the script’s wit and depth was a major draw for the cast, who can demand hefty fees on more commercial vehicles. It’s a shame that the presentation of the interviews is so unimaginative, nothing more than soundbites presented with minimum effort. Still, it’s more than most British indies offer on home release, and worth it for that hour of perfect madness.

@OwenRichards91

Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Party

I, Tonya review - Margot Robbie shines in over-complicated oddity
Markie Robson-Scott

Tonya Harding and the kneecapping of Nancy Kerrigan – what a story it was, back in 1994. Even if you knew nothing about figure skating, you followed the tale of Tonya, the red-neck, white-trash Olympic hopeful from Oregon, her more elegant rival Nancy and the clumsy plot, hatched by Tonya’s estranged husband and other bozos, and perhaps Tonya herself, to ruin Kerrigan’s chances in the Winter Olympics.

Lady Bird review - Greta Gerwig's luminous coming-of-age movie
Markie Robson-Scott

Greta Gerwig, in her hugely acclaimed, semi-autobiographical directing debut (a Golden Globe for best director, five Academy Award nominations) opens Lady Bird with a Joan Didion quote: “Anyone who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.”