THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE aka ANN LEE* - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Official Competition

Elvis Costello once wrote a song called “All This Useless Beauty”: an apt description of THE BRUTALIST co-writer and producer, Mona Fastvold’s new film, THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE.  It’s not that it’s badly put together. Indeed, the cinematography, costume and production design are rather handsome.  (Not that you can appreciate the cinematography on the Curzon Mayfair’s cream-crackered projector.). Fastvold is clearly a deeply skilled film-maker and has a sure and unique visual style and the courage to do something really audacious in putting music and movement at the heart of the film. Daniel Blumberg’s score takes inspiration from actual Shaker folk music and the choreography of the cult sect shaking and beating their chests to the music is genuinely mesmerising. In the words of my husband, if this film had been a thirty-minute piece of experimenta mashing up the dance numbers it would have been a banger.

But no. What we have here is the Wikipedia entry for Ann Lee rendered as a film. Born in 18th century Manchester in a Quaker community she joins a sect known for its “shaking”.  She loses four children in infancy, is persecuted for her faith, and develops the belief that she is literally the second coming of Christ.  She takes her followers to New York and eventually founds a religious community in the middle of Bumblefuck.  She continues to be prosecuted for refusing to take sides in the American War of Independence, then dies.

Fastvold and Brady Corbet’s script has no interest in interrogating any of Ann Lee’s religious claims and shows no interest in the interiority of any of the characters.  The utter sincerity of the film shocked me. It read like a propaganda piece for a cult.  Every now and then there would be flickers of potential interest: ooh, is the husband a sado-masochist?! Is the brother gay?! Is Ann a eunuch?! But no.  Nothing so prurient or interesting.  Ann is just taken as what she is: a pioneering female religious leader with a decent following of her fellow nutters.  Indeed she really is a saint according to this film.  Observe the one liner where she shames slave traders, or the other one liner where her people have the condescension to learn woodworking from the First Nations. She must be a good person, right?

I just feel really sad that some really talented film-makers got together and harnessed all of their earnest intentions to create such an utterly uncurious and irrelevant film. What a waste.

ANN LEE has a running time of 137 minutes.  It played Venice, Toronto and London. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

THUNDERBOLTS* - ****

I bugged out of the Marvel Universe after GUARDIANS 1. Too many movies. Too many big bads blowing up cities. Too many sardonic quips from Iron Man. It just all became so same.  But for whatever reason I decided to watch THUNDERBOLTS* and thoroughly enjoyed it!  

The first phase of the MCU is over. The po-faced Captain America type characters are gone.  This is a post-Avengers world. And we are dealing with its detritus and emotional baggage.  I like the beaten up, jaded look of the characters. Florence Pugh's little sister to Scar-Jo's deceased Black Widow looks she's coming off a bender.  The millennial, I-hate-my job-angst is both hilarious and relatable. I like the idea that rather than saving the world she's just a mercenary. I really like the idea that despite all the tedious fight scenes what really matters is having mates with whom one can be vulnerable and tackle all the demons that haunt us. That's a nice message.  

And it's wrapped in a genuinely very funny script Eric Pearson and Joanna Cala and SUPERB line delivery from Florence Pugh and David Harbour as the most ridiculously messed-up and adorable father-daughter superheroes seen on screen. We haven't seen the name Bob deployed for this much comic effect since Blackadder 2.  I also LOVE Julia Louis-Dreyfus in basically anything. Here, she's a billionaire arms-dealer - kind of like the successful version of her character in Veep - who wants to control the mercenaries.  She manages to pivot so quickly it takes your breath away.

Kudos to director Jake Schreier for pulling off a genuinely enjoyable, funny and moving Marvel film. It's certainly a handbrake-turn away from his wonderful ROBOT & FRANK but I am here for it.

THUNDERBOLTS is rated PG-13, has a running time of 127 minutes and is on global release.

SKINCARE* - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Preview

SKINCARE is a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. Its star, Elizabeth Banks (CALL JANE), is playing it straight as an aesthetician being driven out of business by a stalker/corporate saboteur.  But Lewis Pullman is playing it like he's in a spoof or a social satire as her wannabe boyfriend slash life coach. Meanwhile the needle drops and lighting make it feel like the film wants to be a sleazy 80s thriller.  None of it hangs together.

Instead what we get is a frustrating film about someone we are meant to believe is a hustler businesswoman but who relies on men to get her out of difficulty.  Whether it's a newscaster who can give her promotional airtime on his channel (Nathan Fillion) or a local mechanic who can fix her slashed tires or the aforementioned life coach, our heroine responds to societal misogyny by being a helpless damsel in distress. And don't get me started on Pose's MJ Rodriguez, criminally wasted in the faithful friend sidekick role.

It's the kind of film with uninteresting female characters that one can only imagine being written by three men with little screenwriting experience. And so it comes as no surprise to discover that this is Austin Peters' fiction feature directorial debut based on a script co-written with debut feature screenwriters Sam Freilich and Derring Regan.

I am not sure what this film is doing in the festival. It's very weak.

SKINCARE has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated R. It was released in the USA in August and will play the BFI London Film Festival 2024.