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| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | Felix and the Hidden Treasure – family animation flounders as satire | | by Cath Clarke Jun 1, 2021 | | A boy searches for his father in a decent-looking adventure that ditches that narrative for a kid-unfriendly one about a cult This is a semi-entertaining, reasonably decent family animation that begins promisingly with a swell of adventure as a young boy sets sail in a boat in search of his missing dad. But after a couple of hastily resolved peril-at-sea moments (“We’re done for! We’re saved!”) the script lurches into a bizarrely un-childfriendly storyline about a secretive cult. The boy is 12-year-old Felix (nicely voiced by Daniel Brochu), who lives in Quebec’s Magdalen Islands with his mum and little sister. Two years earlier, his fisherman dad was lost at sea. Any hope that he might be alive is long gone, but Felix is determined to search the island where he was last spotted. He ropes in grumpy lighthouse-keeper Tom to help – a real old Captain Birdseye with a bushy beard and eyebrows like furry white caterpillars. Continue reading... | | | | | Land review – Robin Wright heads into the wild for tame drama | | by Benjamin Lee Jun 1, 2021 | | The actor makes a muted directorial debut with a conventional film about a woman going off the grid after a devastating tragedy In Robin Wright’s conventional, competent directorial debut, Land, the actor (who has previously shown adeptness behind the camera for various episodes of House of Cards) takes us somewhere we know a little too well. Edee (played by Wright), is an urban-dwelling woman whose grief has distanced her from society, as grief often does, making her crave solitude, choosing self-inflicted actual loneliness rather than the more uncomfortable alternative – feeling lonely when there are so many others around. So she packs up and moves to a remote cabin in the Rockies, without any way of contacting the outside world, and tries to start a new life, alone. Related: Flee review – remarkable refugee story told with heart and audacity Continue reading... | | | | | Moulin Rouge at 20: the dazzling musical that continues to shine | | by Guy Lodge Jun 1, 2021 | | Baz Luhrmann’s glittery spectacle remains as captivating as it was in 2001 thanks to a magnetic star turn from Nicole Kidman and its relentless energy The musical is back! Again! As cinemas resume business as (sort of) usual in the latter stages of a pandemic, 2021 is being hyped as some kind of banner year for that most long-suffering of genres – one that, between the instantly legendary calamity of Cats and such lesser recent failures as The Prom, has recently been enduring a distinctly sub-golden age. Amid upcoming film versions of Dear Evan Hansen, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Tick, Tick … Boom!, hopes are particularly high that the presumed box-office success of Jon M Chu’s In the Heights this summer and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story at Christmas will relegitimise the grand-scale studio musical. Less commercially minded cinephiles, meanwhile, are awaiting the return of French auteur Leos Carax, set to open the Cannes festival in July with his thrillingly strange-looking Sparks-scored extravaganza Annette. Related: Shrek at 20: an unfunny and overrated low for blockbuster animation Continue reading... | | | | | Hear me out: why Joyful Noise isn't a bad movie | | by Rebecca Nicholson Jun 1, 2021 | | The latest in our series of writers sticking up for maligned films is a defence of the Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah musical comedy Joyful Noise lives with an undignified 32% splat on Rotten Tomatoes. This story of a small gospel choir in Georgia did not charm critics, who found it saccharine, too long and baggy, its handling of social issues – recession and Asperger syndrome, mostly – unforgivably clumsy. None of those criticisms are untrue, technically. It is a portrait of small-town America rendered in crayon, its colours crude and simple. But it is so full of both heart and genuinely unhinged decisions that I return to it again and again for a feelgood fix. Related: Hear me out: why 2014’s Robocop isn’t a bad movie Continue reading... | | | | | 'They had soul': Anton Corbijn on 40 years shooting Depeche Mode | | by Alexis Petridis Jun 1, 2021 | | He thought they were pop lightweights – then turned them into moody megastars. The photographer recalls his adventures with the band, from desert trips to drug-induced near-death experiences By his own cheerful admission, Anton Corbijn’s relationship with Depeche Mode did not get off to a flying start. It was 1981 and Corbijn was the NME’s new star photographer, lured to the UK from his native Netherlands by the sound of British post-punk, particularly Joy Division. His subsequent black and white portraits of the quartet tramping Manchester’s snow-covered streets became the most iconic images of their brief career, and Corbijn had gone on to take equally celebrated shots of everyone from Captain Beefheart to David Bowie. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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