Film Shapes

The Boy and the Heron is legendary animator/writer/director Hayao Miyazaki's twelfth feature, and amazingly, his first since 2013's The Wind Rises . This takes elements of many of his earlier work and tells the story of a young lad called Mihato (voiced by Soma Santoki) who moves away from Tokyo during the war after the death of his mother. His father, Shoichi (ex-SMAPper, Takuya Kimura), had wasted little time in starting a new family with Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), the younger sister of Mahito's mum. The introduction to the new residence throws up some of the Miyazaki hallmarks - a lush rural setting, a weird encounter with nature (the heron of the title), oddly cute geriatrics, and gorgeously rendered architecture. As soon as Mahito gets to this new abode, the grey heron starts pissing about with him - flying too close; peering in his window as he's napping; tap, tap, tapping at his chamber door (or roof, to be exact). The heron (Masaki Suda) tries to convince him (y...

Justine Triet's Palme d'Or winning drama about the unravelling of a relationship is a coldly intriguing piece of work. The film starts at an Alpine cottage where Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is being interviewed about her writing. Her husband, Samuel (Samuel Maleski) is upstairs playing loud music, her son readying the dog for a walk in the snow. The music brings a premature end to the interview as the son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) heads out. On his return, his father lies dead at the front of the house. No spoilers here, this all happens in the first 10 minutes of the film. The rest of the runtime picks apart the events leading up to the fall. But did he fall, did he jump or was he pushed? The intrigue doesn't play out like a detective story, where the fun lies in the minutiae of putting the 'how' together. Rather, it focusses on the 'why', or how things got to this point. Sandra enlists the help of an old lawyer friend, Vincent (Swann Arlaud) when it appears...

Kristoffer Borgli's second English language feature is a high-key concept with low-key delivery. This is not to do it down, only to note that the film has a slightly muddy look, and an almost soporific feel to it. This is in contrast to its razor-sharp treatment of culture wars and the trauma industry in the US, crucially viewed through the eyes of a European outsider. The ace up the sleeve is the star (and producer) Nicolas Cage. He's always been a clever performer but in the last few years, he's been getting grungier, more shop-worn, possibly even less self-conscious. This is reflected in his choice of roles but it's hard to distinguish between the chicken and the egg in this respect. As Paul Matthews, an evolutionary biology professor at Osler University in an indistinct area of North America, Cage gives off an air of mundanity that you can almost whiff. The conceit of Dream Scenario is that people are having dreams, not about Paul, but with him in them, observing e...

A whole family trip to the cinema for this animated duck movie, written by Mike White (of The White Lotus fame) and directed and co-written by Benjamin Renner. It's a fairly simple storyline - mum and ducklings fancy a trip to Jamaica, risk-averse dad is reluctant. Of course, for the sake of the plot, dad comes around. The journey is physical as well as offering a chance to experience personal (duckal?) growth - the spirit of adventure is enhanced, and the kids, mainly the older lad, transition from childhood to adulthood. There are numerous POV flying scenes - through clouds, between buildings in New York, in a nightmarish kitchen, down water slides, through a jungle - seriously, it's enough to make an adult dizzy. Admittedly though, it feels kind of reductive to even talk about all this as a grown up human. The colours, sounds, Looney Tunes style sight gags, are all mechanically tooled for little grommets to lap up, let's face it, this type of film isn't for the lik...

I had to look this up, but it seems that 'May December' refers to a relationship between a young person and a much older one. The couple in question are Joe (Charles Melton) and Gracie (Julianne Moore) and it's not so much the age gap that's the issue, more the fact that Joe was 13 when their 'affair' began. The wrinkle that this is all loosely based on real events adds a sense of car-crash voyeurism to proceedings. As the film kicks off, it's been 20-odd years since the controversy and Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is sent to shadow Gracie before playing her in a movie about the tabloid romance. This is a real actorly film, shot through the looking glass of melodrama. The layers are thick and peely - the tabloid news story, which was previously made into a TV movie, is now being 'researched' by Portman for a feature. Everything feels like a show until Joe berates Portman that it's NOT a story, it's his "fucking life". Portman is supe...

Ridley Scott's latest film, following the underrated The Last Duel and the rated House of Gucci,  is a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte (probably no need for the surname). It traces his rise, post Madame Guillotine, through Robespierre's Reign of Terror, to his sweeping victories in battle and finally, to his exile. All the while, his romance with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) frames the narrative. It's basically a grand historical rom-com, if you find yourself as tickled by the ripe dialogue as I was. Joaquin Phoenix plays the general with his usual weird panache and his delivery of some of these crackers is top fun. He tells an English foreign minister, "You think you're so good just because you have boats!" And to Josephine he proclaims that, "Destiny has brought me to this lamb chop."  Phoenix is on his regular top form but Kirby is brilliant as the enigmatic widow who allows herself to be wooed by the little guy. She puts her expressive eyes to good...

So, another origin story arrives on our screens. Considering the 1971 original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is one of the best children's films ever made, it might have been wise to steer well clear of this Roald Dahl IP. Luckily, in the hands of writer/director Paul King and co-writer Simon Farnaby, Wonka justifies it's existence. Just.  Timothée Chalamet plays the young Wonka with a louche absurdism, channelling all the nuttiness of Gene Wilder but sadly, none of the edgy paedophobia. This scans in that it probably takes a long time to nurture that distaste for children that Wilder's Wonka displayed so winningly. Story goes, Wonka arrives on a ship at one of those cities that often appeared in 1960s and 70s films ( Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , the original Wonka , even Mary Poppins ) that represented American ideas of old Europe. Is it Germany? England? France? Austria? Call it Generic Europa and leave it at that. He is on a mission to sell his chocolatey wares ...