Critic's Notebook

Scenes From a Divorce

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MOVIE REVIEW
Our Son (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

It’s no one fault, or it’s both their faults, but even with the best will in the world sometimes marriages just can’t be saved. In the case of book publisher Nicky (Luke Evans) and stay-at-home dad Gabriel (Billy Porter) neither of them has been perfect – overwork here, infidelity there – but the main issue is their different parenting styles for their son, Owen (Christopher Woodley), and the resentment which has seeped in until it’s the only thing they can feel. But “Our Son” is not a gay “Marriage Story,” even if that’s the easy marketing tagline which brought it to BFI Flare. Instead it’s about ordinary adult disappointments between an ordinary couple who happen to be gay and the ways in which their homosexuality directs the choices around their completely ordinary divorce.

Quiet Reflection

BFI

MOVIE REVIEW
Solids By the Seashore (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

“Solids By the Seashore” is unusual for a few reasons. Firstly, it equates the changes people undergo in a new relationship with those a beach undergoes through the ebb and flow of the seasons. Secondly, the people in the new relationship are two young Thai women, one a free-wheeling artist and the other a quiet hijabi. And finally, it’s also a movie about art – the people who make it, the people who sell it and the relationship art has with the places where it’s made. It combines its themes for an unusually satisfying resolution that manages to make all its points despite its restraint.

Danger Zone

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MOVIE REVIEW
Operation Valentine (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

“Fighter” was the Hindi-language response of “Top Gun: Maverick;” and now we have “Operation Valentine,” the Telugu-language equivalent. It's about the same real-life incidents from 2019 also referenced in “Fighter,” but “Operation Valentine” is much the worse movie for two reasons. Firstly, director Shakti Pratap Singh chose to use footage of the real-life funerals which followed the 2019 attacks, which is desperately inappropriate. Secondly, it reduces the entire history of hostilities between two nations into one man's struggle with himself. It's a breathtaking achievement but perhaps not the intended one.

Spider Sense: Far From Home

Larry Horricks/Netflix

MOVIE REVIEW
Spaceman (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

After “Gravity” came out, Tina Fey famously quipped that it’s about how George Clooney would rather die in the blackness of space than spend time with a woman his own age. Along those lines, “Spaceman” is about how Adam Sandler would rather die in the blackness of space than spend time with his pregnant wife. Deep space is a long way to go to learn that your wife’s feelings are just as valid as your career; and a talking space spider is one hell of a therapist, but hey, whatever works.

Air Show

Courtesy photo

MOVIE REVIEW
Fighter (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

“Fighter” is much, much more interesting than its topline, a.k.a. the Indian answer to “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Born to Fly.” The influence of American war movies and all their cheery flyboys is strong, but “Fighter” is much more pointed than either of the American and Chinese celebration of their armed forces in that it has a clear conflict and enemy: Kashmir, and terrorists who commit crimes against Indian citizens while finding shelter in Pakistan. This specificity is very unusual in recent worldwide blockbusters and means that the relentless patriotism, such as a poem about how no coffin is more beautiful than one draped with an Indian flag, is way more meaningful.

Eye for an Eye, Captain

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MOVIE REVIEW
Captain Miller (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

While it feels like a western and looks like a war epic, “Captain Miller” manages to have its cake and eat it. The movie preaches a message of antiviolence while amassing a body count in the thousands. Five bomb and fire experts are thanked in the credits, which understates how many explosions take place and how much stunt work must have been necessary. But despite the extraordinary amount of mayhem, the overall message is one of disgust for violence and the unjust systems which make violence inescapable.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

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MOVIE REVIEW
Merry Christmas (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

“Merry Christmas” absolutely captures end-of-year melancholy, with its lonely lead characters surprising themselves with the sudden importance of their chance encounter. This movie deeply knows the difficulty of living with your choices and how a spur-of-the-moment impulse can shape your entire life. But while it does less well with creating a coherent and believable plot, it does an exceptional job of building a mood.

Escape From Planet Earth

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MOVIE REVIEW
Ayalaan (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

At one point someone asks the alien at the center of this goofy Tamil-language science fiction movie why he’s in Chennai instead of America, where aliens always invade in the movies. The alien points out that one creature isn’t exactly an invasion; and anyway Chennai is where he needs to be. A fragment of his people’s technology has made its way into the hands of an evil businessman named Aryan (Sharad Kelkar), who’s using it to drill into the Earth’s core in search of a new sustainable energy source. Only, lots of people have died already because of the technology; and if he does succeed in drilling through, the whole planet will explode. So Tattoo (played in body capture by Venkat Senguttuvan and voiced by Siddharth) has chosen to reveal himself to the most obvious person to render assistance – Tamizh (Sivakarthikeyan, who’s terrific), a failed organic farmer who’s currently working as a kind of party clown. But while he’s bad at business, Tamizh has a kind heart, something Tattoo’s people have been told didn’t exist on Earth. But the emphasis on kindness doesn’t prevent the movie from a genuine nastiness that you just don’t want in a kids’ movie.

The Unwanted Child

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MOVIE REVIEW
Guntur Kaaram (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

At different times various henchmen approach the hero of “Guntur Kaaram” with machetes, sledgehammers or bamboo poles, but Ramana (Mahesh Babu) simply strides up to them and slaps them. That’s it. That’s all he does. He slaps them; and they fall so hard they are incapacitated for the rest of the slow-motion fight. Sometimes he takes one of their weapons and whops them around the head with it. Usually there’s a cigarette in his other hand for atmospheric puffing. There’s some wirework involved but for the most part the impact of Ramana’s fighting style is due to his arrogance. In one sequence he even lights a match for a cigarette off his opponent’s bald head. There’s a great deal of this entertaining old-school violence in a plot built around caste politics, controlling patriarchs and painful family legacy. But despite some wildly sexy dance numbers and an ego that’s off the charts, unfortunately “Guntur Kaaram” doesn’t hang together.

Human Interest

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MOVIE REVIEW
One Life (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

In telling the true story of a British stockbroker who facilitated escapes for 669 Jewish children on the eve of World War II, “One Life” bounces between two disparate timelines unconnected until the end, if that. In 1938, Nicholas Winton, here played by obscure South African actor Johnny Flynn, arrives in Prague at the behest of Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) to assist Martin Blake (Ziggy Heath) of the British Committee for Refugees From Czechoslovakia in ironing out the logistics of evacuating refugees in advance of the German blitzkrieg. In 1987, Winton, now played by two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins, has to reckon with the diminished stakes of clearing out his study of paperwork hoarded for nearly five decades.