Powerful to a point
We Live in Time
Director: John Crowley
I hour and 48 minutes
IF YOU CAN get past the slightly pretentious title, you will be in for a decent ride, provided you like Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh.
The whole film is centred around them and their courtship and what happens to them as a couple.
They met rather fortuitously following a road traffic accident – we know Tobias (Garfield) as had something of a rough time of it, as he extricates himself from a failed marriage and a significant road traffic collision – the two are related.
Almut (Pugh) is sort of drifting herself and the two collide like stars in the night sky causing a ripple throughout the universe – always likely on the big screen and reality and romantic cinematic fantasy doing that familiar dance of one influencing the other…
It’s hard to say a lot more about this without giving it away completely – let’s say their love is tested. The narrative jumps about which is just a device to make it more profound than it really is.
It’s very watchable, and believable and within the space of the film it all works and pulls you along.
Despite a lot going for it, there is something a little too twee and contrived – because of the extreme circumstances involved. Let’s leave it at that. Likeable at one level but not as radical as it might like to think about itself.
ACV rating: *** (out of five)
‘We Live in Time’ released in theatres in the UK on New Year’s Day 2025
Missed opportunity? Callas film falls slightly short
Maria
Dir: Pablo Larrain
2 hours and three minutes
ANGELINA JOLIE is regal and magnificent in many ways as famed opera singer Maria Callas (1923-1977), but Pablo Larrain’s film is a bit too in love with itself to come down from its perch and show us what the real Maria was like and what made her so – perhaps that was never and not the intention, covering only her the last part of her life towards its inevitable conclusion… A conventional biopic from cradle to grave would have been more interesting but it may be that I am the nit-picking, fussy, idiosyncratic critic – still good(ish) but lacked something…some element of soul that lifts a film from a product you simply consume to something that really lives and breathes…
ACV rating: ** ½
‘Maria’ released in the UK on New Year’s Day 2025 and will be available on Netflix later…
Does what it says on the festive tin, more or less…
That Christmas
Dir: Simon Otto
Writers: Richard Curtis & Peter Souter
1 hour and 31 mins
UNDOUBTEDLY created to be something of the new ‘Snowman‘ or ‘Love, Actually‘ but for children, ‘That Christmas‘ (book: 2020 with illustrator Rebecca Cobb) is what you might expect of the writer of both of those latter works…
Yes, Richard Curtis for kids and adapting his own book for the big screen – and for the first time – as an animation feature.
Watchable, politically correct (nothing intrinsically wrong with that, provided it is sincere), it’s a sweet tale with its heart in all the right places. Some good characterisation, humour for both children and adults, and a moral tale worthy of Dickens, kinda. Has a star cast with Brian Cox (‘Succession’) as Santa and Bill Nighy (‘The Wild Robot’) as Lighthouse Bill and Guz Khan (‘Man Like Mobeen’) as Dasher and comedian Sindhu Vee as one of the mums of the children who get lost… Will this still be playing in a 100 years time? Ergh, probably not but it’s cute enough and does what is says on the tin (just enough).
Acv rating: ***
Dropped on Netflix last month (December 4)
Cannes’ winner is gem all should appreciate
Anora
Director: Sean Baker
2 hours and 19 minutes
SHARP, funny, sexy, and riveting, writer-director Sean Baker’s ‘Anora‘ is everything it is billed to be – in what was a breakout hit at Cannes this year, taking the home the top prize, the Palme d’Or.
Rich spoilt Russian sexy boy meets New York ethnic Russian hooker-exotic dancer, called Anora/Ani and played by Mikey Madison in a standout role and now widely tipped for Oscars success. Ani is only a few years older and well up for it, when she sees the vast mountain of greenbacks at Ivan’s (Mark Eidelstein) wide disposal, as the son of an oligarch. Pre-Ukrainian war and with cute (not physically) Armenian Russian hoodlums in between, it’s a cracking tale with something of a twist at the end. Personally, it felt out of kilter but there is so much energy, wit and emotional insight in this movie, I can swallow it and still give it…
Acv rating: ***** (five out of five)
‘Anora’ released in the UK on November 1
Funny, edgy and an Indonesian to watch…
Crocodile Tears
Tumpal Tampubulon
1 hour and 38 minutes
IMPRESSIVE first feature writer-director Tumpal Tampubulon does what Wong Kar Wei did for filmmaking from Hong Kong. Obviously, I am getting ahead of myself and know not much about Indonesian filmmaking, forgive me – but there is so much in this tale and deftly done that Tampubulon is definitely a name to watch out for in the future.
Mother (Marissa Anita) and son Johan (Yusuf Mahardika) run a crocodile farm – all is well or stable, until son hooks up with a Karoke bar singer Arumi (Zulfa Maharani) – then the equilibrium explodes – (sexual) jealousy and the need to dominate and control are just two themes within a movie that mashes up genres – horror, comedy, psychological thriller – and comes up trumps. Superb.
Acv rating: ****
Sailesh Ram saw all these films at London Film Festival (October 9-20 2024)
