THE ROSES****

I was pleasantly surprised by Jay Roach's remake of the iconic late 80s black comedy about a divorcing couple sabotaging each other's lives. The Crown's Olivia Colman plays a talented chef who puts her career on hold to raise the kids while Benedict Cumberbatch (THE THING WITH FEATHERS) goes on to become a successful architect.  The tables are turned when a massive storm both destroys his latest commission and his career but drives a famous food critic into her humble crab shack.  He becomes a stay-at-home dad and she becomes a radically successful restauranteur.  The divorce only moves into view in the final 45 minutes or so, and allows for a deliciously brilliant cameo from Allison Janney as a fierce divorce lawyer. It's then that we get the gonzo sabotage that made up most of the original film.  

I loved everything about this film. The brilliantly nasty verbal sparring from the two British leads, much of which comes at the expense of their shocked, prudish American friends.  No surprise that the script was written by Tony McNamara who so beautifully mined marital bickering in his under-rated and hilarious TV series The Great. But what gives this movie so much more depth and relatability compared to the original was its willingness to explore contemporary marriage dynamics around gender norms. I loved seeing the husband and wife struggle to cope with his feelings of emasculation as she becomes the breadwinner, and the wife struggle with becoming a side-show in her own children's lives.  We may not all build multi-million dollar houses in the Bay Area, but I think a lot of these financial and cultural pressures on marriage resonate. It was wonderful to see them explored honestly on film.

THE ROSES has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated R. It was released in August.

DIE MY LOVE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 11

Lynne Ramsay (YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE) creates a claustrophobic, deeply unsettling, occasionally mordantly funny drama about a mentally fragile woman suffering severely from post-partum depression. It stars Jennifer Lawrence in a raw, vulnerable role as the dangerously unboundaried mother in question. She cannot write, her sex life has gone to shit, she has lost her tolerance for the banal bullshit people say to mothers. Some of her rude interjections are funny.  But as the film goes on it becomes more and more frightening. We realise that while post-partum is definitely a factor, Grace was not well from the start.  And we ratchet up to a finale that’s both poetic and devastating.  It’s a bravura performance from Lawrence, and shows us just what she is capable of when she makes the right choice of material - something that has been sadly lacking for pretty much the last decade.  Robert Pattinson is also good in the smaller role of Grace’s husband Jackson. It’s a tricky role because he could so easily be played as unfeeling or feckless but he’s just a young man out of his depth.

This is a film that is slippery and refuses easy answers.  We are never really sure if things are happening for real or in Grace’s fevered imagination.  Does she really sleep with a mysterious neighbour (LaKeith Stanfield) or is he just a man she meets in a supermarket and then projects her sexual frustration upon.  Most importantly, when Grace finally says “enough” is she leaving the baby that she clearly loves, in spite of everything, or is she going to take her own life?  Even the attitude of the people around her is tricky to parse.  How far was Grace’s mother-in-law (Sissy Spacek) aware of her mental instability from the start? Her attitude at the wedding appears to be one of suppressed shock. And at a social gathering later on in the film, one of covering up and enablement.

My only criticism of the film is that when you make something that claustrophobic and intense then the running time of probably needs to be shorter.  I think 100 minutes would have been ideal. But I loved the way Ramsay traps us in a world that threatens to suffocate us, most notably by using a 4:3 aspect ratio and essentially one location.

DIE MY LOVE has a running time of 118 minutes.  It played Cannes and London. It will be released in the USA on November 7th and in the UK on November 24th.

NO OTHER CHOICE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 9

Pantheon director Park Chan Wook returns to our screens with the darkest of black comedies and social satires. It’s hilarious and occasionally deeply moving and sends a dire warning to all of us wage-slaves. And all with his trademark audacious and assured visual and aural style. The film is the third that I have seen in as many days where a family patriarch is so ashamed at being unable to financially provide for his wife and kids that he turns to a life of crime. After the feckless and self-involved JB Mooney (Josh O’Connor) in THE MASTERMIND and the charming but rogueish Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) in ROOFMAN we now get Man Soo (Lee Byung-Hun) in NO OTHER CHOICE. After decades working in a paper factory, itself an obsolete industry, he is laid off by the new American owners who use the platitude that they had “no other choice”. A year later and his house is about to be foreclosed, his wife is supporting the family, and his daughter can’t have cello lessons. They’ve even had to give up the dogs! Every job opening has a bevy of over-qualified men applying. So Man-Soo grabs his father’s old service revolver and takes a KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS approach to his problems. 

There is nothing that I didn’t love about this film. Its 2hr20 min running time went by in a flash. I loved its clear-eyed, heartbreaking depiction of middle-aged men discarded by society and its dire warning of what a fully automated AI-powered factory would look like. I loved its clear depiction of the social pressures on men in a misogynistic patriarchal society, whether young or old. I loved all of the acting performances. Both Lee Byung-Hun (JOINT SECURITY AREA) and Son Ye-Jin as his wife are superb. But most of all this film works because of how Director Park handles comedy - especially absurdist physical comedy - and uses music. The first truly violent scene goes on forever and is set to overloud schmaltzy Korean pop music. It’s funny but it also tells us so much about the emotional psychodrama in the marriage it is depicting. This is cinema at its finest, its most complex, and its most entertaining.  

NO OTHER CHOICE has a running time of 139 minutes. It played Venice, Busan, Toronto and London. It does not yet have a commercial release date in the USA or UK but was released in South Korea in September.

ROOFMAN**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 8

Derek Cianfrance (BLUE VALENTINE) returns to our screens with ROOFMAN - a rather melancholy, occasionally funny, but ultimately rather whimsical and moving true crime story.  The weird thing is that the dayglow poster and goofy plot set-up make you think you are walking into a gonzo crime caper.  And yes, the film may have elements of that, but it has far more depth and emotional heft. 

Channing Tatum (MAGIC MIKE) stars as the titular Roofman - a demobbed soldier with a talent for observation and charm to spare.  Without the cash to spoil his wife and kids, he turns to armed robbery, knocking off 45 fast food restaurants.  His kind heart and general goofiness get him caught, but his aforementioned observational smarts also allow him to plot an audacious prison escape. And all this is in the first forty-five minutes of the two-hour-plus film!  The balance of the film sees Jeffrey in a kind of purgatory: out of prison but on the lam and unable to spend time with his actual family. So, he ends up hiding out in a Toys’R’Us for literally months, hacking the security systems. Even more audaciously, he ends up making friends at a local church, and romancing local single mother and employee Leigh (Kirsten Dunst).  Jeffrey now has a new identity where he is the good guy, John, and everybody loves him - even Leigh’s emo teenage daughter. The problem is, he makes the same mistakes again and again: trying to buy people’s affections.

This is a film that floats along with mild good humour and a lot of warmth, thanks mostly to Channing Tatum’s innate charm and the fact that while he may be feckless he at least he owns his mistakes. It makes for an interesting contrast with JB Mooney, the lead character in Kelly Reichardt’s THE MASTERMIND.  Where Jeffrey is a loveable rogue who takes accountability but just can’t help himself, Mooney is an entitled prick.  They are both simultaneously brilliant and stupid.  But the former actually cares for his kids, and indeed seems to be a rather warm-hearted individual more generally.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, not least for its heavy 1990s nostalgia and a lovely pair of cameos from Peter Dinklage as the dickish store manager and Ben Mendelssohn as the parish priest.  Kirsten Dunst brings so much heart and warmth and intelligence to everything she does, and Tatum is so charming, that it’s just a fun two hours.  Not a rollicking comedy as the marketing campaign would have you believe, but perhaps more worth your time for all that. 

ROOFMAN has a running time of 126 minutes. It played Toronto 2025. It was released in the USA last Friday.

IS THIS THING ON?**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 8

IS THIS THING ON? is an absolutely delightful romantic dramedy based, rather improbably, on the life of Liverpudlian stand-up comedian John Bishop. Safely transposed to contemporary America, the movie stars Lego Batman Will Arnett and JAY KELLY’s Laura Dern as an unhappily married couple and parents of two sparky ten-year old boys.  As the movie opens they call time on their marriage: she stays in the suburban marital home with the dogs and the kids and he moves to an apartment in the city. Both are good people. In fact everyone in the movie is good people.  Yes they were unhappy and they split but there was no infidelity and there’s very little meanness.

What separation gives them is the chance to discover their identities as middle-aged people separate from each other and their identities as parents.  Who are they when considered on their own terms and in isolation?  She filled the void after retiring from sport with having a family but now goes back to coaching. He walks into a bar and is too cheap to pay the cover charge so ends up doing an open mic stand up slot. He discovers a whole new side of himself as well as a wonderfully welcoming and inclusive community of comedians.  And suddenly, both happy, the couple can be happy with each other.

This is a movie that could be sentimental and twee and obvious but it’s actually rather finely balanced and beautifully observed. Given that it was written by three men and based on an autobiography of a man, I was surprised by how well it captured the emotions of a middle-aged woman who sacrificed her career to raise a family. Bradley Cooper’s direction is assured and unshowy except for one bravura scene that takes us from an argument in an attic into a stand-up show.  The acting is universally good although perhaps the two leads were a little too old for their parts. Bradley Cooper has an hilarious and scene-stealing supporting role as a struggling actor. I also really loved how Cooper captured the energy and excitement and friendship of the stand-up scene.  He seems to have an authentic and love and appreciation of stand-up comedy and it shines through.

In a sense, this film is the lighter comedy counterpart to AFTER THE HUNT. It’s  a grown-up nuanced film about grown-ups with real marital issues but that shows how real marriages endure and even thrive on honesty and forbearance.  More of this please!

IS THIS THING ON? is rated R and has a running time of 124 minutes. It will be released in the USA on December 19th.

STRAIGHT CIRCLE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025

British film-maker Oscar Hudson's debut feature film is a darkly surreal black comedy about the futility of war and the pointlessness of divisive populist politics.  It's visually audacious and features stunning central performances from real-life twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor. Each plays a soldier stationed in a lone building guarding the border between their two countries. There's barren desert on either side and seemingly nothing of any value to guard.  But guard it they do!, releasing ceremonial pigeons each day to symbolise peace but each day loathing each other. Tensions ratchet up when one day, one of the guards lets off a pigeon without the other! So follows a journey of discovering that maybe they aren't that physically or emotionally different. Maybe they both just miss having a loving mum.  So what will happen when a General shows up telling them they actually are at war now, and to defend their territory?

The story is spare and violent and surreal.  I absolutely loved it! It reminded me of the best of Beckett and Ustinov.  I loved the use of vertical split screen to show each nation and brother mirroring the other, but was also relieved in those scenes that let the audience relax and just watch the characters mentally unravel.  I found the middle sections maybe a tad overlong but the final act is a bravura piece of storytelling that I absolutely adored. I cannot wait to see what Hudson does next.

STRAIGHT CIRCLE has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Venice where it won the Critics Week award.

TUNER**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Surprise Film

Documentarian Daniel Roher, who won an Oscar for NAVALNY, returns to our screens with his first fiction feature.  Co-written with Robert Ramsay (INTOLERABLE CRUELTY), the movie is about a young piano tuner called Niki who suffers from an acute sensitivity to sound that ended his career as a virtuoso concert pianist. He has to wear headphones to muffle sound, but his pitch-perfect musical sense makes him an amazing piano tuner, and by a twist of fate, also an amazing safe-cracker. 

The plot mechanics are thrown into gear when Niki's beloved and aged mentor Harry suffers a heart attack and accumulates massive medical bills. Niki slips into helping a security company pilfer from their clients. This also ends up implicating his new girlfriend, a talented pianist and composer called Ruthie, through a coincidental plot device that really brought me out of this otherwise excellent film.

There's a lot to love here.  Daniel Roher knows how to cut a brisk and exciting montage.  The new music by Marius de Vries is beautiful and the way in which it is used reminded me of another excellent LFF film, WHIPLASH.  The music is complemented by the the sound design, which both depicts the movie's tension and Niki's crippling condition.  It was no surprise to discover that the sound design was by Johnnie Burns, whose work in THE ZONE OF INTEREST was some of the most stunning sound work I have ever heard.  

Kudos to the co-writers for creating a film that is often very funny but also emotional and thrilling. And kudos to the entire cast. The White Lotus' Leo Woodall has starred in feature films before, but it feels as though his performance as Niki will be his breakout role.  He has to essay everything from nonchalance to deep hurt to peril and does so beautifully.  Dustin Hoffman is absolutely hilarious and charismatic in an extended cameo as Niki's mentor Harry.  And the two leading ladies, Havana Rose Liu (LURKER) and Tovah Feldshuh do their best with smaller but still important roles.  

This film is not without its flaws, but it shows real flair, confidence and foregrounds some phenomenal performances. I am surprised that it does not yet have a commercial release date.

TUNER has a running time of 109 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London.

OLMO**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 2

OLMO is a funny, heart-felt, glorious film about a good kid trying to get the girl of his dreams while real life gets in the way. The kid is a teenage boy called Olmo who lives with his Mexican immigrant parents and big sister in a shitty New Mexican town in the late 70s. The girl of his dreams, Nina, lives across the street and is having a party on Saturday night. Olmo is too young and uncool to really stand a chance, but maybe, just maybe, if he turns up with his dad's killer stereo and his Saturday Night Fever dance moves he can get the girl. The problem is that his dad has MS and needs constant care, his sister is going to the local roller disco, and his mum has to work a double shift. 

Writer-director Fernando Eimbcke (DUCK SEASON) captures moments of pure joy often set to wonderful music. Apart from the aforementioned disco scene, there's a lovely scene where Olmo and his best mate manage to fix the record player under Olmo's father's painfully detailed tutelage, and suddenly the whole family is dancing around the living room. Even getting a cranky old car to start can be a scene of spontaneous happiness.

But the film also has its quiet moments of desperate sadness. In an early scene the kids are having an argument about who is going to babysit the dad, while he sits mute in his wheelchair - a once proud man conscious of the burden he has become. And later, without giving away too many spoilers, there's a plot pivot that confronts Olmo with the responsibilities of being an adult.

And then there are just so many moments that will ring true to those of us who grew up in immigrant families. The parents still speak their native language - Spanish - in the house, but the kids, born in the USA, reply in English. Both sides understand each other perfectly but don't have the confidence to actually speak the others' native tongue. The parents who are always worn out and tired. The kids who so desperately want to fit in. It all rings true.

Kudos to Plan B who are financing these low budget films. I really hope this gets distribution. It's so valuable - not to mention entertaining - to see well told, beautifully made migrant stories in these divided and violent times.

OLMO has a running time of 84 minutes. It played Berlin and Toronto and will play the BFI London Film Festival. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Opening Night Gala

Rian Johnson has done it again with another fantastically fun and wickedly tricksy murder mystery - the third in his Knives Out franchise. WAKE UP DEAD MAN follows his satire on narcissistic billionaire tech bros (GLASS ONION) with an on-the-nose dissection of contemporary MAGA Christianity’s nasty judgmental power-hungry malevolent brand of religion. 

An absolutely superb Josh O’Connor (also starring in MASTERMIND in this year’s LFF stars as a young kind and earnest priest called Father Judd. He’s sent to a cultish rural church in upstate New York, presided over by Josh Brolin’s wicked fire-and-brimstone preacher Monsignor Wick. Wick is aided and abetted by a Mrs Danvers-like spooky woman-of-all-work Martha (Glenn Close) and her faithful lapdog Samson (Thomas Haden-Church). The parishioners are all seemingly within Wick’s grasp when he’s stabbed in the back in an apparent locked room mystery. We are thirty minutes into the film - so enter Daniel Craig’s deliciously camp Southern detective Benoit Blanc to save our young compassionate priest and reveal who the real murderer is! 

The first thing to say is that this film works brilliantly as a murder mystery, and I say this as someone who just reread and podcasted about every single one of Agatha Christie’s crime novels. The mystery is satisfyingly tricky and intricate and solvable - though I doubt many will. It works in the best tradition of debunking apparently supernatural crimes and a good knowledge of Wilkie Collins and Sherlock Holmes will certainly help you. 

The second thing to say is that the film works equally well as a satire on MAGA and unfeeling religion and ruthless politicians. What’s even better is that it balances cynicism with earnest respect for genuine faith, by balancing the viewpoints of self-confessed heretic Benoit Blanc and the young priest Father Judd. There’s a deeply moving scene between Judd and a receptionist called Louise that shows what faith and ministry can do when administered with compassion. 

Finally, the film is just a damn good time. It’s funny. It has jump scares. It drops in hilarious one-liners about contemporary culture - whether substack or Netflix. And we even get a self-referential Star Wars joke. There is quite literally nothing not to like in this wonderful film. Bring on Knives Out 4!

WAKE UP DEAD MAN has a running time of 140 minutes. It played Toronto and opened London and will be on Netflix on December 12th.

FWENDS** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

FWENDS is the debut feature from writer-director Sophie Somerville, and stars Emmanuelle Mattana and Melissa Gan as Em and Jessie, two friends reuniting in Melbourne and just wondering around the city discussing everything about their lives. It's a lovely naturalistic concept and wonderful to see female friendship highlighted on screen.  But the film feels like a 60 minute short expanded to a length that it's writing can't justify.  As day turns to night the girlfriends take drugs, get locked out of their apartment, and once again derp around the streets of Melbourne. It feels really repetitive and I didn't feel like I was getting character or narrative development to keep me interested. I also feel like your capacity to enjoy this film will be radically impacted by the generational cohort you belong to.  I have a lot of empathy with Millenials and Gan Z moaning about high rent and misogyny in the workplace.  But their general fecklessness is also deeply irritating. This is no BEFORE SUNRISE.

FWENDS has a running time of 92 minutes. It played Berlin where Sophie Somerville won the Calgari Film Award. It also played Sydney and Melbourne. It will play the BFI London Film Festival but all three screenings are sold out. 

LOVE, BROOKLYN** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

LOVE, BROOKLYN is a gentle earnest romantic dramedy with a side order of social commentary about gentrification. The positives: the film contains three great central performances, and some lovely lensing of a pandemic-emptied Brooklyn from DP Martim Vian. The negatives: the film moves way too slowly, and its insights are way too trite, for it to be either memorable or engaging.  

LOVE, BROOKLYN is the debut feature from director Rachael Holder and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman, and maybe that shows in its pacing. Or maybe it was a choice. But my word, for a 97 minute film I really was looking at my watch and wondering why we had not progressed. 

The film stars Andre Holland (MOONLIGHT) as Roger - a likeable thirtysomethibng journo who spends his time cycling around his beloved Brooklyn lamenting its evolution and wrestling with whether he is still in love with his ex- or ready to take on a deeper commitment with the single mum he had a one night stand with.  The ex is played by Nicole Beharie, currently on screen in Apple TV's The Morning Show.  She is fantastic as art gallerist Casey - all wit and vitality and zip.  Holland and Beharie have such on-screen chemistry we wonder why they broke up in the first place. And then we have DeWanda Wise as the more mature, centred and calm single mother Nicole, and I loved the scenes with her precocious young daughter Ally.  Nicole gently coaxes Roger into having more interaction with Ally and gives him the confidence to see a future together.  All three are good earnest people trying to live a good life. There's no actual dramatic tension.  There is, however,  some lovely gentle comedy provided by The Daily Show's Roy Wood Jr., as Alan, Roger's best friend.

There's some trite stuff at the end tying in the need to move forward, both in relationships to people and our urban homes.  The film washed over me like a warm breeze. Inconsequential and forgettable but not entirely unpleasant. 

LOVE, BROOKLYN has a running time of 97 minutes. It was released in the USA in September.

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND****

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND is a delightful film.  By turns funny, charming, moving and wise. It's so low-key it might slip from notice but that would be a terrible shame.  

Tim Key (Alan Partridge) is a widowed lottery-winning millionaire who decides to pay his wife's favourite folk band to play a concert on his beautiful but largely unpeopled British island. Much like Simon and Garfunkel, the band was once successful but has long-since split and both of its members are on their uppers.  Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) still bitterly resents his writing partner for leaving him and the now married Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) needs the money from the gig, but resents Herb for living in the past. 

Over the next ninety minutes we watch these three people deal with their past with good humour and grace.  The initial set-up is comedic. Tim Key's islander talks constantly with an off-kilter sense of humour and an intrusive starry-eyed fandom that borders on, but never crosses the line into, creepiness.  Meanwhile Tom Basden is the awkward out-of-towner stuck in the middle of nowhere with the dawning realisation that he is playing a concert for one.  There's a running joke that he can never buy anything he needs in the village shob, which always seems to sell an adjacent but not helpful object. 

But as the movie progresses and Nell turns up we get further into the emotional backstory of our characters. The movie gains depth but never gives us easy, sentimental answers. The protagonist actually experiences a credible and compelling emotional arc. And I was truly charmed by its denouement.

Director James Griffiths (CUBAN FURY) and his writer-stars (Key and Basden) have created a truly lovely, uplifting but never twee film that deserves a wide audience. What an unexpected pleasure it is!

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 99 minutes. It played Sundance and SXSW 2025 and was released in the UK in May.

MICKEY 17*****

MICKEY 17 is Korean writer-director Bong Joon Ho's much anticipated follow-up to his Oscar-winning political satire, PARASITE. Once again, his concerns are with economic inequality and political hypocrisy, and as with PARASITE, MICKEY 17 contains moments of trenchant laughter.  But the mood here is lighter, zanier, looser, and altogether more.... gonzo than PARASITE.  The political satire is broad and crude, the violence is ultra, but at heart this is a gorgeous love story and a plea for humanity.

Robert Pattinson continues to make astonishingly good career choices and stars as the eponymous Mickey.  He's basically a harmless but feckless and aimless man in a near-future dystopia.  On the run from mafia loansharks, abetted by his supposed best mate Timo (Steven Yeun), Mickey stupidly signs up to be an Expendable.  He is basically an indentured slave to an exploitative space colonisation mission, put in harms way, killed again and again, and then just reprinted out.  As the film opens, we are on the seventeenth iteration.

Joy of joys! Feckless Mickey somehow falls in love and lust with Naomie Ackie's kickass space-cop Nasha and she loves him back! In fact, I would read this film as a love story most of all.  Improbable, hilarious, sexy, weird, but a love story nonetheless. But things get weird when Mickey 17 is somehow alive at the same time as his sassier, more mischievous reprint Mickey 18.  And both set out to rise up against the kleptocratic rule of a character clearly based on Trump, with a Macchiavellian wife modelled on Imelda Marcos.  Mark Ruffalo seems to be reprising his role in POOR THINGS here, but it's a no less fun turn for that.   But the star of the show is clearly Pattinson.  And the the Creepers. I won't say more for fear of spoiling the plot but I would pay a LOT of money for a plushy that looks like a baby creeper.

MICKEY 17 has a running time of 137 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.

THE WEDDING BANQUET**** - BFI Flare Opening Night Gala

Writer-director Andrew Ahn (FIRE ISLAND) reimagines And Lee's THE WEDDING BANQUET in a contemporary Seattle setting.  With Ang and long-time collaborator James Schamus' blessing, Ahn has the freedom to truly update the film's central premise. In a world where gay people can now marry, the question is do they actually want to, and what should they decide about having kids? After all, as Ahn said as he introduced his new film at the BFI Flare film festival this week, they can't just oopsie-daisy a pregnancy - their choices have to have intentionality.  The result of these musings is a film that is hard to categorise, and that contains wild swings in mood, but that is ultimately rather moving and rewarding.  

The structure of the film is farce.  Min (Han Gi-Chan) is a Korean expat who needs a Green Card so he can avoid being yanked back to Korea by his super-wealthy but homophobic family. Min asks his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chis (SNL's Bowen Yang) to marry him, but once rejected moves on to his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran - STAR WARS).  She agrees to the sham marriage because Min will fund her girlfriend Lee (KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON's Lily Gladstone) in her IVF attempts.

So, two gay couples, two halves of each reluctant to commit, and two maternal figures.  We have Angela's mum (the ever-beautiful Joan Chen) who is making up for lost time and past hurt with her aggressive and somewhat narcissistic allyship. And we have Min's Korean grandma, whose surprise visit sets off the events of the film, and whose eventual softening ends it.  She comes to see that despite the foursome's stupid decisions, they truly are a wonderful found family.  Her wisdom is complemented by that of Chris' young cousin Angela (Bobo Lee in a really beautiful cameo).  Nobody is good enough to be a spouse or a parent alone, but our friends and lovers can make us good enough.

There are some hilariously funny moments in this film - and while I know Bowen Yang can be funny it was Han Gi-Chan that really made me crack up with his naive, sweet Min.  But the overwhelming tone of this film is one of contemplation, and grappling with really intense issues. I loved how deftly Ahn and Schamus' script balances all the different storylines.  Even smaller characters such as the grandma and Angela had depth and a story - even if only hinted at or lightly referred to. I also appreciated just seeing things on screen that I have never seen before - a woman's IVF journey, or a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. This film broadened my perspective.

More than anything, I feel this is a film from a rapidly vanishing America. Inclusive, sensitive, vulnerable, not scared of laughing at itself, but also dripping in humanity and love. It's a film that genuinely moved me, but also made me laugh and applaud.  That's a rare feat.  My only wish is that audiences meet it on its own terms and go with those genre or tonal shifts as they come.

THE WEDDING BANQUET is rated R and has a running time of 102 minutes. It played Sundance and opened BFI Flare 2025. It opens in the USA on April 18th.

IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU**** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Rose Byrne finally gets the starring role worthy of her talent in writer-director Mary Bronstein's scabrous dramedy IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU.  It's the film that Marielle Heller's NIGHTBITCH could have been if it had only had the courage.

Byrne plays a woman struggling to reconcile herself to what is effectively single motherhood of a child with a severe eating disorder.  Her apartment has been flooded, she's living in a crappy motel, she is condescended to by her daughter's therapists, and pretty much every man she encounters is demanding that she "just handle it" because THEY have work to do. No matter that she herself works full time.  

Naturally, Byrne's character turns to self-medication and occasionally screaming into pillows to get through both day and night. But there are no easy answers. Even as we build to a dramatic spontaneous medical intervention we know that the daughter isn't suddenly cured, and just because the husband finally came home it doesn't mean that our protagonist is finally understood or supported.

There are many things to love about this movie.  The performances are uniformly superb, and Byrne deservedly won the Silver Bear at Berlin for hers.  In smaller roles I was genuinely surprised at how good both Conan O'Brien and A$AP Rocky were. Perhaps it's no coincidence that they both play the only men who show some empathy and put down boundaries.  Indeed A$AP Rocky's motel worker Jamie may well be the moral centre of the film, even as he's ordering a brick of cocaine.

Behind the lens I loved Mary Bronstein's script and most of her directorial choices. (She also plays the deliciously passive-aggressive Dr Spring.) She absolutely skewers the delusional myths that society pedals young girls and women.  The sick daughter hankers after a hamster because she has a vision of it being her fluffy best friend as is then horrified when it's as scared and anxious as she is.  One of Byrne's patients is a young mother who secretly started seeing a therapist when she fell pregnant and is petrified that she will do violence to her child.  And Byrne's character herself is a wide gaping hole of guilt and shame at her prior choices around motherhood and whether she is cut out to be a mother at all.  Society tells women that childbearing is inevitable and that the experience will be joyful. This film is about what happens when it isn't.

The only thing stopping me giving this film five starts is its running time. I think that when you have a film this deliberately claustrophobic in its concerns and shooting style - and so desperately, frustratingly, sad and angry - that there's a limit to what an audience can take.  If this film had been twenty minutes shorter it would have been perfect. That and taking out a final shot of the child which I found its only slight turn to mawkishness.

IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated R. It played Sundance and Berlin 2025.

BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY****

First the irritating stuff.  Why oh why must London-set dramadies always be set among the 1 percent? Because let's be clear, most newly widowed mothers don't go back to work for a rebrand. They go back to work because they are financially insecure.  Most of them don't live in lavish picture-perfect Hampstead houses and have two kids in private school.  Most can't afford a full-time nanny. And most can't just waltz back into the same job they had a decade prior.

Second irritating point.  Renee Zellwegger.  The whole awkward tampon up the arse walk. The gurning.  The ditziness that is impervious to ageing and wisdom. The fact that she seems to have an endless stream of handsome men declare their underlying love for her.

Okay so that's two pretty major problems with this film.  BUT I still enjoyed it!  Why? Because author and screenwriter Helen Fielding has something moving and hopeful to say about grieving a loved one and about emotional growth.  We see Bridget as a widow navigate grief with her two small children, have a passionate summer fling with a hot younger man (The White Lotus' Leo Woodall) and then form a more mature attachment with her son's teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).  I believed in her grief, her joy, her contentment. Because Renee Zellwegger is actually a good actress when given something meaningful to do.  

And what of the emotional growth? Well that's all on the part of Hugh Grant's delicious rake Daniel, who comes to the realisation that he ought to forge a relationship with his teenage son. He has all the best lines and provides all of the film's comedy. Oh, except for a really superb cameo from Isla Fisher. Renee's prat falling does NOT count. (Shirley Henderson and the other best mates are all sadly underused.)

BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated R. It is in cinemas in the UK and on Peacock in the USA.

MY OLD ASS***

Writer-direct Megan Park returns with he R-rated dramedy MY OLD ASS in which 18-year old Elliott (Maisy Stella - Nashville) takes some shrooms with her friends and suddenly finds herself talking to her 39-year old self (Aubrey Plaza - White Lotus). The films starts off being utterly hilarious with lots of shocked teenage horror that a 39 year old isn't married and is still in school. And why Stella may not look much like a young Plaza, she gets her give no fucks wry humour and confidence. 

At first, older Elliott's advice seems really good and helpful but there's one glitch.  Old Elliott tells Young Elliott to avoid a guy called Chad, even though they seem to have an instant connection that belies E's assumption that she is gay. The movie then takes a somewhat jarring tonal turn into a far more serious and affecting drama. Which is all good. I just didn't see it coming. And it felt a bit rushed and underdeveloped - and well - trite - by the end.  That said, Maisy Stella has a real talent for comedy and I hope this film leads to her getting more parts.

MY OLD ASS is rated R, has a running time of 89 minutes, and was released in September.

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE*

The original 1984 GHOSTBUSTERS was a thing of perfection - inventive, hilarious, perilous, epic, buddy-bromance intimate. For decades, people have been trying and failing to resurrect its unique magic, not least SATURDAY NIGHT's Jason Reitman - son of the guy who directed the original.

Unfortunately, FROZEN EMPIRE is no exception to the sucky sequel rule.  It's a bloated film, both in terms of characters and running time, with disappointingly few moments of levity and no actual jump scares. 

In this contemporary retelling Egon Spengler's daughter (Carrie Coon - The Gilded Age) has taken over the family business with her two kids and partner (Paul Rudd).  There's a plot line about how hard it is to be a bonus dad and how the teenage daughter's only pal is a ghost in what may or may not be a queer relationship.  Meanwhile, a MacGuffin owned by some guy played by Kumail Nanjiani is about to unleash hell on earth and only the old school ghostbusters can stop it.  Ray (Dan Ackroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) - now conveniently rich - do most of the heavy lifting here. We get a cameo from Bill Murray as Venkman and that's literally the only scene that's actually funny. Kumail Nanjiani tries, but he can't carry a film this bloated on his own.

Enough already.

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE has a running time of 115 minutes and is rated PG-13. It was released in March 2024.

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL*****

It's hard to believe that Wallace & Gromit have been entertaining us for over 35 years. They have become veritable national treasures, along with their inventor and animator Nick Park.  And this latest instalment of their adventures, given a prime-time slot of Christmas Day in the UK, is an absolute delight!  The films remain as wonderfully funny, heat-warming, cine-literate, and genuinely pleasing to all ages as the rest of the franchise. We were guffawing, spell-bound and heartily pleased.

Park is joined by co-director Merlin Crossingham, on debut, in VENGEANCE MOST FOWL.  We begin with our beloved inventor Wallace, now voiced by Ben Whitehead, creating a household helper called Norbot to help with his long-suffering sidekick Gromit's daily tasks. Of course, the mute dog Gromit can never voice his scepticism at the ruthless efficiency of Norbot, but his expressively animated face tells us that he is not the least bit surprised when Norbot is hacked and placed in Evil mode, spawning a whole series of nefarious droids.  And who has hacked them? None other than our duos nemesis, Feathers McGraw!  Currently incarcerated in a zoo thanks to Wallace & Gromit's past crime-fighting capers, McGraw is out to re-steal the Blue Diamond, with the help of his minion-Norbots. Can our trusty duo save the day?!

This film has everything you might hope for in a Wallace & Gromit spectacular. Lovingly hand-crafted clay-mation. Tons of visual gags and cinema references, particularly to break-out films and heist movies.  And some wonderful voice cast cameos - not least Diane Morgan aka Philomena Cunk as Onya Doorstep, a local news reporter.  In the main cast, I loved Reece Sheersmith (Inside No.9) as Norbot and newcomer Lauren Patel as PC Mukherjee.  

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL is rated PG and has a running time of 79 minutes. It was released on BBC One in the UK on Christmas Day and will be released on Netflix on January 3rd.

THE UNDERDOGGS****

Snoop Dogg continues his journey toward National Treasure with this hilarious self-consciously genre-respecting underdog sports comedy. The dude even reveals that he literally has sponsored sports outreach for poor kids for the past decade.  Could we love him more?

Snoop plays a not-even-remotely-thinly-veiled version of himself called Jaycen "Two Js" Jennings. He is a washed-up sports-star who longs for a lucrative commentating gig, and decides that coaching a bunch of foul-mouthed poor kids will look great on social media, and help him win back his childhood sweetheart. He does this with the help of his drug-dealer side-kick Kareem (stand-up comedian Mike Epps) and soon discovers his inner good guy. Naturally there's a climactic sports match in which our hero has to choose between being with his team OR debuting on Fox Sports. No prizes for guessing the ending.

What I love about this film is that it is - much like Snoop - unabashedly what it wants to be. It even references THE MIGHTY DUCKS in an opening and closing scene. The screenwriters aren't trying to do anything too clever with the genre.  They aren't reinventing it. The only nod to modernity is putting in a discussion about consent. Otherwise the kids remain foul-mouthed, hilarious, and utterly loveable, to the end.

THE UNDERDOGS is rated R, has a running time of 96 minutes, and was released on Prime Video in January 2024.