Lean on Pete

Looking at the barely-surviving Midwest underclass in the US through the story of a teenage boy and the horse he relies on as his situation gets increasingly dire, this is not exactly the most uplifting or gentlest of stories. But it has a raw honesty to it, whether it be through the performances (Charlie Plummer’s determined but naïve boy, Steve Buscemi and Chole Sevigny as the resolutely practical trainer and jockey who he works with) or the unfussy style that director Andrew Haigh applies to the film. The film turns the knife a few times more than is necessary in the last 15 minutes - one particular incident about twenty minutes before the end feels like it should be the climax of the film,  and instead the film piles on more events before reaching resolution (and the performances continue to be good here, it’s just … I don’t know the extra material really justifies the screentime in terms of theme or characterisation – I know this is based on a novel, but this feels like the bit of the novel you cut for the movie). That doesn’t completely ruin the film but it does water down my appreciation a little bit.

Creed II

I’ve never seen a full “Rocky Film” – but I have seen the previous “Creed”, and liked it as a smart, populist boxing film about a young man finding himself and coming to terms with his legacy and his desire to excel at his chosen profession. And I’m aware of the Rocky films as a sort of shared cultural memory – the mild-mannered Italian boxer who rises to the championship in the face of various rivals while developing his relationship with his girlfriend, then wife, Adrian. I’m particularly aware of the wildly nationalistic, very very 80s, Rocky IV, which sees Rocky take on Ivan Drago, an evil Russian who kills his former opponent Apollo Creed in the ring before Rocky sets things right in a climactic fight right in the middle of the Soviet Union.

And to a certain extent, the setup for this film is a little gimmicky – Adonis Creed fights the son of the man who killed his father, Viktor Drago. It’s acknowledged early on that this is a cheap marketing ploy on the part of a boxing promoter, but there’s also emotional baggage here – Adonis’ desire to avenge the father he never knew, and Viktor, trained by Ivan to redeem what he perceives as his 30-years-old failure. And certainly the melodrama comes fairly regularly – Adonis also has to deal with his girlfriend’s encroaching deafness, and Rocky’s own reluctance to reengage with the brutality of the  past. This does lack the finely tuned sense of the first Creed, bringing far more melodrama and flat out cheese to the story. But dammit, a lot of this cheese works. I do think Adonis gets a little bit lost in the multiple subplots – the film never quite comes as clearly from his perspective as it did in the first one- and some plot points feel more like they are happening because they have to happen to get us to the next thing, rather than naturally earning them. But there’s still the strong cast – not only Jordan and Stallone, but also the wonderfully engaging Tessa Thompson as Adonis’s Girlfriend and the just plain spectacular Phylicia Rashad as his adoptive mother, pumping out wisdom and authority with every pore. Dolph Lungren is surprisingly good as the returned Drago, communicating the pain and rage of the previous decades (and pretty much embodying the term “toxic fatherhood”), and the climax feels incredibly climactic. So yes, it’s a little less well-constructed than the first film – but still, it is a pretty decent film that (damn the pun) still packs a punch.

The Children Act

This Ian McEwan adaptation gives Emma Thompson the best solo vehicle she’s had in a while, as a Chidren’s court judge who finds her marriage collapsing as she adjudicates for a young Jehovah’s witness boy whose life requires a blood transfusion, something his religion forbids. It feels in some ways like a companion piece to McEwan’s earlier work, Enduring Love – a look at the costs and obligations an apparent act of kindness can impose on someone. And Thompson serves the film well – giving away the emotional tempest that hides under a judicial exterior. But there is a tendency here to play things so emotionally restrained that everything stays at a slight distance – Thompson’s character is so determined to not have the emotional conversation and engagement she clearly needs to have with the people around her. And put next to the pure warmth of Stanley Tucci whose every step shows how ready he is to accept her if she’ll just lower the barriers slightly, the very English resolve gets incredibly frustrating. There are some decent supporting performances here – Jason Watkins, in particular, steals scenes wholesale with a glance as Thompson’s clerk – but this never quite goes beyond a theoretical exercise in moral dilemmas into something more emotionally accessible.

Widows

This is a thick pulp-crime genre piece packed with interest. Three women left behind after their criminal husbands die in a robbery gone wrong, all desperate to get a piece of a five million dollar plan their husbands left behind, find themselves up against rival gangsters and Chicago politics at its most venal. Led by a powerhouse Viola Davis, determined and tough, there’s a great ensemble cast here all playing in top gear (Michelle Roduiguez hasn’t been served material this meaty since her debut in “Girlfight”, and Elizabeth Debecki finally gets her breakthrough from “interesting bit of the supporting cast” to something far more central, this is probably the best Colin Farrell’s been with an American accent, Brian Tyrese Henry brings an intimidating authority and Daniel Kaluyaa a terrifying stillness). Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn have rewritten Lyda LaPlant’s pulp 80s miniseries into an exploration of class, gender, race and power as they come up against each other in a crime movie that serves both the pulpy pleasures, a whole lot of emotional thoughtfulness and a playing out of wider social forces against a group of very distinctive individuals. I’d hoped this would be interesting. I got something that delighted me all the way through to the final shot. Absolutely recommended.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Another attempt for Disney to raid the archive for themes they can use for live action movies, “Nutcracker and the Four Realms” imposes a period fantasy narrative on the Tchaikovsky ballet previously featured in “Fantasia” to mixed results. This has the same girl-coming-of-age-enters-a-damaged-fantasy-land-that-she-can-repair dynamics as the recent “Alice in Wonderland” live action film, and while it’s nice to have a fantasy land that’s Russian-themed (and exposition via ballet), this still sits somewhere below a skilful recreation. Mackenzie Foy has all the externals that a good girl heroine should (she’s inventive and brave and succeeds by her wits far more than any physical skills), but she’s a little stodgy. The supporting cast has a few entertaining turns – in particular, Keira Knightley grabs the opportunity to turn her performance up to 11 as a delightfully hammy Sugar Plum Fairy – silly, sultry and far more exciting than I’ve seen Knightley be previously. But this doesn’t quite make it as quality family entertainment – it’s all a little too desperate to fit into the mould of what’s worked previously, and just not enough fun when Knightley’s not on screen.

Anna and the Apocalypse

This Scottish-High-School-Christmas-Zombie-Musical is a fun little entertainment – the story of a girl about to leave her small country town to see the world when one Christmas the zombie apocalypse threatens her friends and family, it combines gleeful songs and choreography with splatter and gore in a mix that is frequently joyously irresistible. If the fun starts to pall towards the end as the film attempts a more serious emotional resolution (and a key human villain ends up being somewhat overacted), and it possibly ends up slightly less than the sum of its parts, there’s still a lot of parts that put a smile on the face. Yes, having two of the characters blissfully celebrate the season while oblivious to the undead lurching in the background is gag not unlike one of “Shaun of the Dead”s most memorable sequences, but if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. And perhaps the songs are a mixed bag, with a few too many wannabe power ballads near the end. But there’s enough here to bring a reasonable amount of seasonal joy.

Overlord

A team of soldiers parachute into Nazi-occupied territory to take down a transmitter. In the storm of battle, they discover something far worse – secret experiments the Nazis have been conducting that could change the war forever. This hybrid of war movie and horror movie is familiar stuff, though done with a reasonable amount of polish. It tends to work better as a war movie, particularly in the first ten-fifteen minutes as the paratroopers fly over Europe under heavy fire and then jump into danger, then later on, as the monstrous experiments are pretty familiar iconography at this point and the squad of soldiers never quite transcend their stereotypes of “the jewish one”, “The Italian one” etc. But while it doesn’t exactly innovate or surprise, it’s still effective in hitting the familiar notes and getting the familiar thrills and action.