Category / film reviews

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Oscar 20626

I’ve not seen the whole Best Picture shortlist, but I’ve seen most.

  • Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025)

The least interesting of the Lanthimos films I’ve seen – apparently a remake of Jigureul jikyeora! (Save the Green Planet!, 2003) in which Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap medical CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), convinced she is an alien. Your allegiances waver and like all of the films I’ve seen from the shortlist it needs a trim. There’s a rather inevitable left turn and we fall into camp.

  • Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, 2025)

Steven Spielberg is a lover of Peter Pan and yet Hook (1991) seemed to suggest he didn’t get it. del Toro seems to fall into the same flaws here – Shelley’s classic and abused novel, although the Universal and Hammer versions create a mythos that is tangential to the novel. Here we shift the action to the mid-19th century (and yet dynamite has been invented already), add an abusive back story for Victor (Oscar Isaac), shuffle Victor’s relatives and the syphilitic Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz). Jacob Elordi is watchable as ever as the Creature – he’s clearly rehearsing Heathcliff – but his ability to push a ship free of ice strains credibility rather than his muscles. The Arctic setting is just a fingers up at purists.

  • F1 (Joseph Kosinski, 2025)

Best Tony Scott tribute act, judging by the trailers, but an advert for a sports industry rather than the US military. Not seen, so I could be missing some subtlety.

  • Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, 2025)

Overrated adaptation, in which a neglected historical figure is shown how to feel by William Shakespeare.

  • Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025)

A rather fun screwball comedy, in which Marty (Timothée Chalamet) attempts to raise the money that will allow him to attend and win the world table tennis championship. The sport is mostly a metaphor, as Marty faces setback after setback. Abel Ferrara gives great cameo and it’s worth pondering the universe where this was called Wiff-Waff and directed by Ken Loach.

  • One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

I’ve largely avoided Anderson after Magnolia (1999) – which my memory tells me I saw the same day as either The Green Mile or Eyes Wide Shut and left me vowing never to see another film. So, this came as a pleasant surprise. “Ghetto”  Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) has long since retired from a career of revolutionary crime and has been left to look after a daughter Charlene (Chase Infiniti) – but now Col. Steven K. Lockjaw is on his trail This goes to unexpected places – not least being a Thomas Pynchon adaptation (ish).

  • O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025)

Another film about confronting the past – former academic Armando (Walter Moura) returns home to reconnect with his son and to search for details of his late mother. But there is soon a bounty on his head. There’s a complicated time structure – which I’m not sure adds up – and some surreal moments of black comedy. Definitely a contender.

  • Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier, 2025)

Possibly Trier’s least interesting film to date but I’d be happy for it to win – probably my favourite on the short list. Stage actress Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) refuses her father Gustav’s (Stellan Skarsgård) offer of a starring role in a quasi autobiographical film and he goes all Vertigo in casting an American starlet (Elle Fanning).

  • Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

It feels a long time since I saw this – Michael Jordan as twins sets up a Deep South bar and makes some enemies who are even more dangerous than the local White community. Some beautiful set pieces and stay for the credits – shame the Native American subplot didn’t go as far as it could have done.

  • Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, 2025)

I blinked and missed this – in part because the blurb didn’t sound like what I wanted to see. I’ll catch some time, maybe.

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Machine Learning

Molly vs the Machines (Marc Silver, 2026)

It is a relief that I was in my mid-thirties before social media hit me — I am, in a dubious phrase, a digital immigrant.

I suspect some of the systemic racism, sexism and homophobia, I would have been soaked in and probably expressed would put me in cancellation territory. The (large) dormitory village where I grew up was hideously white — there was a Black technician, but I don’t recall any Black pupils. Ethnic diversity was for takeaways and corner shops, or something in the (not very) big city. It wasn’t quite a monoculture, but the only access to alternate lifestyles was in print. I am/was overweight, which was added to the litany of low key bullying.

Social media allows the weight conscious to see many more images than the glossy magazines I could have consumed. Perceived self-image is magnified, trauma added to trauma, cyberbullying not only endemic, but no further away than the mobile in your pocket. It’s never easy being a teen, but I’m glad I’ve got it out the way with when I did.

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Huthering Weights

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
“Wuthering Heights” (Emerald Fennell, 2026)
Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, 2011)
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)

When I was clinging onto the idea of teaching English Literature, I got three part time gigs teaching nineteenth literature. This was ironical, because as an undergraduate there was an notable gap in my Beowulf to Virginia Woolf (and up to about 1990) that was Victoria Literature. Inevitable I had to teach three different Dickens and three Eliots, but Emily saved me by only having a single surviving novel.

I suspect my only knowledge of it was Kate Bush (which I had seen) and a Cliff Richard musical (which passed me by).

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A Bishop is Born

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2025)

I saw John Bishop a few times at the Carbuncle — when he didn’t have to postpone for TV double bookings — and he was fine, if not in my top ten lives comedians. There was a backstory even then — he had abandoned some kind of sales job for another role on the road. The deeper story is that he had become estranged from his wife, inadvertantly did a comedy open mic in Manchester and realised he was good at it. One night, his soon to be ex-wife was in the audience and was someone shocked — but like what she saw and they were reconciled.

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I Feel Sorry For Joe Alwyn

Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, 2025)

Hamlet (Aneil Keira, 2025)

I guess I confess to having not read the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, so I don’t know why of the clumsinesses are Hollywood additions. Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) is the stuck at home wife in the 1590s, whilst hubby William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is gallivanting around Shoreditch and the South Bank. All she has to look forward to is childrearing and his second-best bed.

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Yes Way (Maybe Way)

Eternals (Chloé Zhao, 2021)
Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts, 2021)
The Eyes of Tammy Bakker (Michael Showalter, 2021)

I’ve general felt the non-central Marvel adaptations were the best – or I liked a couple of the previous Spider-Man movies and the first Guardians of the Galaxy – but my patience in running short.

Eternals – which should be called Eternity – features a bunch of protecting the Earth superheroes who we haven’t previously been told about and some big bads which haven’t gone extinct after all. There’s some nice local colour of Camden Lock and they seem to have confused the Natural History Museum with the British Museum is Bleeding Obvious Sequel Easter Egg. One of the Eternals might be a baddy or not. You might even care. There’s some nice diversity, but I’d rather see Nomadland again.

Meanwhile, the third in a franchise often features the hero as the enemy – Superman vs. his Doppelganger and so on – but this Spider-Man goes the Three Doctors route. Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been framed for murder and mayhem and decides that Dr Strange (Bongodrums Candypatch) can cast a spell to make every one forget his secret identity, so he can get into college. The spell goes wrong and ends up summoning Alfred Molina from career doldrums from a different universe. Then other big bads and then Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) and Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) show up. There’s a neat in-joke about Spider-Maguire’s bad back and he’s the last to done the suit – I thought he might have refused to wear it – and Garfield is as interesting as he always is. The moral and parable is as pointed as the rest of the re-reboot series and you can’t help but feel the whole film is a trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Garfield is much better, however, in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, although it feels as if Jim Carey has been cast as Prior Walter. By coincidence, an episode of Jon Ronson’s Things Fall Apart featured an episode with Steven Pieters, a gay minister living with HIV, whom Tammy Faye had featured on one of her televangelism shows and who is portrayed her, possibly a little anachronistically in the rise and fall of two of the most significant television preachers. Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) is a bundle of energy, seemingly always performing, wanting to spread the Word and sceptical of the patriarchal and homophobic philosophy of the flavours of Christianity around her, whilst being quite happy to embrace the trappings of wealth. These trappings are fraudulently taken – and the film is never quite clear how much she knows this. It plays her religion straight, although it might have been a reason to be accepted. Chastain is in every scene, if not every shot, and it is an Oscar worthy performance. We can’t quite follow through a suspicion that her husband is a closeted gay, but we do get to see that other preachers are using the Bakkers’ fall for their own ends. At times, it feels as if it could have been another GoodFellas, but Scorsese would have fetishized the period detail.

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Flees Free

Flugt (Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021)

Whilst animation tends to make us think of Disney, there’s a whole world of adult animation such as Persepholis (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, 2007) and Waltz with Bashir (Aru Folman, 2008) from the documentary genre. Flee is an autobiographical account of “Amin Nawabi” confessing his life history to a friend (presumably Poher Ramussen) in Denmark and New York.

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Almost the Whole Hogg

Unrelated (Joanna Hogg, 2007)
Exhibition (Joanna Hogg, 2013)
The Souvenir Part II (Joanna Hogg, 2021)

It’s pretty rare for low budget independent movies to have sequels – Hogg’s The Souvenir is a rare exception.

Meanwhile, not being aware that it was getting an imminent release, I went back to earlier films.

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Kelly’s Eye

This is Tomorrow (Paul Kelly, 2007)
Finisterre (Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans, 2002)
What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? (Paul Kelly, 2005)
Kelly + Victor (Kieran Evans, 2012)

So, Paul Kelly has made at least three documentaries with Saint Etienne, a musical beat combo whose work I confess I’m not familiar with, although I’ve listened to some since. And I suspect that means I’m missing something with Finisterre.

Of course, This is Tomorrow is mistitled, because it surely refers to the iconic exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956, featuring artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, Richard Hamilton, and many more. Instead, it takes us back to the Festival of Britain in 1951, of which the Royal Festival Hall is one survivor. Designed by Leslie Martin, Peter Moro and Robert Matthew, compromises in building meant the acoustics were not as rich as they might have been. There was an attempt to improve this in 1964, followed by a major restoration and improvement between 2005 and 2007. The documentary shows the festival and then moves into an account of the work. I confess I was interested more in the former than the latter and it’s such a shame the Skylon was destroyed.

Having realised this was a loose trilogy, I then watched Finisterre, which includes extracts from The Shipping Forecast and music from the album by Saint Etienne. It’s a version of the City Symphony genre although, despite some really interesting shots and juxtapositions, doesn’t compare with Manhatta (Paul Strand, 1921) or Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (Walter Ruttmann, 1927). It’s a day in the life of the city, from 6.00am to 6.00am at Victoria Station, apparently also biographical of the band. I missed all this, but did like the snark about Camden.

Like This is Tomorrow, Mervyn was commissioned to be performed and screened in the Barbican, and is a depiction of the Lower Lea Valley, at around the time of the announcement of the 2012 Olympics. This coincided with the 7/7 bombing, which is brought in via snippets of news broadcasts. The trajectory depends on the wanderings of a paper boy, Mervyn Day (Noah Kelly, presumably the director’s son) on his rather extended paper route. David Essex and Linda Robson contribute as his grandfather and mother. Presumably his name is taken from a Leyton Orient footballer. It’s diverting enough, I learned a fair bit, and maybe needed to be watched alongside reading Iain Sinclair’s Sorry Meniscus (1999), about trying to walk to the Millennium Dome.

Kelly and Saint Etienne have since collaborated on How We Used to Live (2014), which I haven’t seen.

Evans, co-director of Finisterre, has also made a fiction film, Kelly + Victor, (apparently) loosely based on a novel of the same name by Niall Griffiths. Kelly (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) and Victor (Julian Morris) meet at a club and go back to her place where they have violent sex in which she bites and chokes him. Kelly is a shopworker, who occasionally helps out her dominatrix friend, whilst Victor is a romantic who works on Liverpool dock and whose idea of a date is wandering around the Walker Gallery or Sefton Park.

I’m in.

Of course, this can’t end well, so it needs a bit of caution.