Tom Salinsky

Another day, another legacy threequel. This time I had seen both predecessor films before, but I took the time to revisit them as I didn’t remember either very clearly.

It comes as no surprise to learn that the 1982 original was a case of new technology looking for an application. Ambitious young executive Steven Lisberger was fascinated with the possibilities of computer graphics and sold his screenplay about a man digitised inside a mainframe to Disney with himself attached as director. A very expensive prospect and not a big financial success, it nevertheless hit hard with a certain demographic. I was ten years old, also obsessed with computer graphics and I loved it. I saw it and the cinema, I rented it on VHS, I read and re-read the novelisation.

Watching it now, it has a certain naive charm but the story barely makes a particle of sense, some of the visuals are very shonky and it’s only really Jeff Bridges’s brawny charm that makes any of this work at all. Even David Warner seems oddly withdrawn. This “secret life of computer programs” which makes even less sense than secret life of toys, secret life of bugs or secret life of monsters. That’s when it isn’t being Spartacus or other less good gladiator films.

Some of the primitive CG is genuinely striking, like the amazing light cycle chase. It’s useful to remember how new all that was, but to me it still holds up. But much of the so-called computer graphics material is either backlit cell animation or old-fashioned photochemical matting, and the black-and-white photography for the faces of the programs and the grey costumes makes the whole thing look grainy and the wrong kind of artificial. The non-neon parts of the costumes always look bad, and the pillowcase which someone has shoved over David Warner’s head is absolutely dreadful. Perhaps that’s why he looks so miserable.

What’s real and what’s not is hard to pin down. Strikingly, once Flynn is translated into the digital realm, we never return to the real world until he does – despite a supposed (vague) threat the the rogue MCP is attempting to start a world war or somesuch. Instead we’re asked to care about the self-actualisation of computer programs, which is a bit of a stretch.

Still, this is novel, not too self-important and breezes past at just over ninety minutes. None of which is true of the 2010 sequel, which I was initially surprised to learn was Joseph (Top Gun Maverick) Kosinski’s big break. It adds an extra half hour to the runtime, makes Flynn’s son the hero and reimagines the computer world with far more mature graphics. However, here comes the wrong kind of artificial again and this time it’s pervasive instead of occasional. Take the giant hovering “Recognizers” which patrol the space. In the 1982 film, they look like floating blocks, whose smooth geometry is all that early eighties workstations could feasibly animate. This gives them a definingly digital appearance, which is very striking, especially when the individual blocks can barely hold together.

The newer film, made in an era of photorealism, keeps the same gross design for these craft but makes them inescapably physical objects which have weight and momentum, and kick up dust when they land. They are things, making an intangibly alien world mundane and familiar. The same is true of the light cycles, which used to traverse a purely two dimensional grid making ninety degree turns, like no vehicle on earth. In the Kosinski film, they leap, jump, curve, tilt and skid – in other words, they do all the things that ordinary bikes do, so what’s the point? The same dullness extends to the costumes. Sure, no-one’s wearing a duvet on his head, but the helmets which keep their faces hidden just make them look like courier drivers.

Then we come to the fact that the chief antagonist is a Flynn’s program Clu, also played by Jeff Bridges who is returned to his 1980s youth and vitality, but 2025 digital de-aging is barely up to the task, and 2010’s digital aging only ever makes the young Bridges (also seen in the real world as a younger Flynn) seem like a waxy puppet version of the actor. Again, it’s the wrong kind of artificial. For that matter, why has the digital copy of Flynn aged at all? And in any case, why not have had Flynn missing for a couple of years instead of decades and avoided the whole issue?

The supporting cast is strong. Olivia Wilde is quite an upgrade compared to the rather bland Cindy Morgan, and it’s always a pleasure to see Michael Sheen. But the leaden pacing kills this one, and it makes even less sense than the original. By far the best element is the score by Daft Punk which means this is always worth listening to even when it isn’t worth watching.

All of which brings us to the 2025 iteration, Tron Ares, helmed by somebody called Joachim Rønning. Whereas the two previous films begin in the real world, go into the “grid” and stay there – even when the storytelling might have benefited from cutting back-and-forth – and then only emerge at the end, this upends the whole Tron tradition by having people go in-and-out of the grid all the time. Yes, we get programs and even light cycles in the real world.

This was so refreshing after the dry, portentous, self-importance of Legacy. I assume the planning process involved taking all the things in the previous two films which made any sort of sense at all, tidily dropping them into the nearest waste paper basket and then using the now-reclaimed narrative space for more car chases and explosions. Watched at the BFI IMAX, this was a ridiculously enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Greta Lee turns out to be an ideal action movie star, not trying to bring too much sparkle to a role that doesn’t need it (we have Gillian Anderson for that) but never disappearing among the swarm of pixels either. Jodie Turner-Smith is suitably terrifying, and even Jared Leto seems perfectly cast as a character with no personality.

And all the problems with the CG world which Legacy succumbed to have been correct here. The 2025 iteration of the Grid feels entirely alien and digital, and then delightfully in the final act we get an evocation of the 1982 Grid for that extra power shot of nostalgia. Jeff Bridges gets little to do except pontificate into his beard, but by that time we’ve already had a police car get sliced in half by a light cycle trail, so nothing could piss me off.

Sadly, this has underperformed at the box office, and the 3D is largely pointless, but Tron Ares makes a perfect summer blockbuster, which is why I can only assume it was released at the beginning of awards season.

Sometimes you need a push to go back and watch a classic you missed the first time around. My watch-all-the-Academy-Award-Best-Picture-winners project was great for this because not only did I see some amazing winners for the first time, in the interests of putting each film in its proper context I also caught up on some other masterpieces made the same year. And regular readers may recall that I only watched The Day of the Jackal very recently because it had been turned into a TV series and I wanted to see the original first.

With 28 Years Later, the impetus was even more urgent because it suddenly seemed as if my entire podcast feed had been turned into people saying “We’re going to discuss that bonkers ending now, so here’s your spoiler warning.” I am also going to discuss that bonkers ending, so here’s your spoiler warning.

Now I couldn’t watch 28 Years Later because I hadn’t seen 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later, but luckily both are readily available on streaming services so here we go. I’m generally very pro Danny Boyle and 28 Days Later is the perfect example of his idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking, allied to a strong interest in bold clear narratives and engaging relatable characters.

The structure is absolute simplicity, almost simplistic. Delivery guy Jim wakes up in hospital, like Bill Masen before him, to discover that while he slept the world has ended. Alex Garland and Danny Boyle’s zombies – sorry “infected” – aren’t supernatural the way that George Romero’s classic undead are, but there’s only a thin skein of biological plausibility over the whole premise, which is easily punctured. (For that matter, nobody wakes up from a four week coma and is rampaging around a military compound like a one-man army a couple of days later, but whatever.) Like a good magic trick, the film makes sure you aren’t worrying about that; it keeps distracting you with far more interesting and exciting things.

Jim meets Selena and Mark. Selena and Jim kill Mark when he becomes infected. Selena and Jim meet Hannah and Frank. Soldiers kill Frank when he becomes infected. Soldiers try to rape Selena and Hannah. Jim kills all the soldiers. So, as is generally the case with this kind of film, the real villains aren’t the flesh eating monsters, but the amoral humans. Determined to cast unknowns in the leads (Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris for chrissake!) Boyle hired familiar faces Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson for supporting roles, but out of those familiar faces come very unfamiliar voices (Eccleston poshing up, Gleeson doing Cockney, neither very consistently). It’s a tiny flaw in a lean, propulsive thriller where the cheap-ass camerawork isn’t something that needs to be overlooked, it’s kind of the point.

The film was a sizeable hit and reinvigorated the zombie genre, giving rise to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, the Pegg/Frost/Wright Shaun of the Dead, the seemingly endless The Walking Dead and so on. A sequel seemed inevitable, but when it came, Boyle, Garland, and the entire cast were nowhere to be seen. 28 Weeks Later does a decent job of getting the story going again, and has a cracking opening scene with Robert Carlyle leaving Catherine McCormack to die, but lacks any of the freshness and focus of the original. In particular, it casts around aimlessly for characters we’re supposed to care about, the baton being passed between Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau and Carlyle and McCormack seemingly at random. Everything that happens in 28 Days Later is based on the bond between Jim and Selena. In the sequel, some people try to survive and some do and some don’t. It’s not as compelling and I looked in vain for a relationship as strong and as interesting.

Although it made money, the second film wasn’t anything like as profitable as the first (which had cost half as much and took slightly more at the box office). So despite the demand, 28 Months Later never arrived. But now, 23 years later, comes 28 Years Later. That’s a big jump, and the storytelling reflects that. In the first film, Jim has skipped several weeks during which the country fell. In the second, the problem starts and then is contained over a few months. In the third we have a whole generation of characters whose only connection with the pre-Rage world is old VHS tapes and stories their parents tell.

Picking up one solitary thread from the previous film, Garland and Boyle (now back as writer and director) establish that Britain is sealed off from the rest of the world, with quarantine ships patrolling its borders. That’s another fascinating difference. Often this kind of film, being a vehicle for social commentary, has a rather broad approach to geography, seeking a universal appeal. So, the first film takes place in and around London because it has to take place somewhere. The second film, with its American Army focus, feels like it could be happening anywhere. But the third film is about Britain. It’s about cricket and Teletubbies and Jimmy Saville and Henry V, and Brexit – Boyle indulging his fondness for quirky cut-aways just enough to give the sequences a little boost of energy, not so often that it becomes tiresome.

In act one, overbearing father Aaron Taylor Johnson takes his young son Jamie (Alfie Williams) to hunt infected on the mainland with bows and arrows before they retreat back across the causeway to the safety of their compound. So far, so zombie, with just the tiny wrinkle that dad exaggerates tales of his son’s prowess in the way that a country that used to have an Empire still imagines that it’s able to punch above its weight.

But in the second act, Jamie and his sick mother (Jodie Comer, spectacular as always) seek out the dotty old doctor who is still living among the infected. After a sidequest in which the presence of Swedish SEALs briefly makes this feel like the suspense and gory action sequences are just going to keep ramping up, we settle down for a remarkably compassionate and heartfelt meditation on death, life, memory and dignity, anchored by a beautiful performance from Ralph Fiennes.

Add to this a satisfyingly detailed introduction to a more complex infected eco-system, and you have a rather surprising but thoroughly entertaining film which manages the trick of carrying on the story and giving me something I didn’t know I wanted, rather than just doing the same tricks again. And then we come to Jack O’Connell in a lurid shell-suit.

It’s one of the tropes of this series that you have to start with a prologue, so the title of the film can do double duty. Animal rights protestors free an infected monkey. 28 Days Later, Jim wakes up in hospital. Robert Carlyle runs for his life. 28 Weeks Later, he’s reunited with his kids on the Isle of Dogs. And here, a young boy sees the local vicar seemingly welcoming in hoards of infected. 28 Years Later, he’s become – not the very slightly unhinged father figure played by Aaron Taylor Johnson as we are no don’t intended to conclude – but cult leader Sir Jimmy Crystal. It’s a violent left turn and in a Marvel movie would no doubt have played as a mid-credits scene, but given that the fourth movie (directed by Nia da Costa) is already in the can, I’m all for this kind of throw-forward. And I don’t want the next film to repeat the third film any more than I wanted the third film to repeat the first film.

As to the evocation of the horrendous Jimmy Saville, it’s easy to conclude that this is just being done for shock effect, but I’m happy not to pre-judge. Icons of evil can be powerful storytelling tools and the image of cuddly Jimmy, friend to children, who was actually a vile sex criminal who abused his power, is a potent one. But to find out whether that story is used carelessly or pointedly, we’ll have to wait until January.

This is clearly the film of the summer which is tearing through the box office faster and more ferociously than a gang of redneck vampires through a juke joint. I saw it and loved it, but I was also careful to learn as little about it as possible in order that it could give up its secrets as it saw fit. I’ve since seen the spoilerific trailers, and I’d urge anyone reading this who hasn’t seen Sinners to avoid them too, stop reading and go and see Sinners, because it’s terrific.

This is the second of two legends-of-acting-playing-two-roles movies out this month, but here it feels like it makes rather more sense than de Niro showing he can do hat-on and hat-off acting in the same film. Smoke and Stack are two different sides of the same coin, plus – who else you gonna get to go toe-to-toe with Michael B Jordan if not Michael B Jordan? The effects work is exemplary, although I wasn’t so knocked out by the cigarette switch in the opening, but the climactic fight is absolutely flawless, and in the dialogue scenes, I simply forget they were both the same actor after a while.

The rest of the cast is top notch too, from seasoned campaigners like Delroy Lindo, to up-and-comers like Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell and Wunmi Mosaku, to complete noobs like the revelatory Miles Canton.

About the only thing which anyone seems to complain about is the pacing, but everyone has a different niggle, so this is evidently a matter of taste more than anything else. For what it’s worth, here’s my take. The opening narration is delicious, and the opening in-media-res-wait-one-day-earlier while shopworn works well to promise the scares that are coming. I adored the material surrounding the brothers putting their venue together and didn’t feel for a minute that I was being made to wait too long for the gore fest, but the intro to Jack O’Connell felt misplaced. I gather this was originally planned to open the film, but director Ryan Coogler felt the audience would be waiting for him to reappear and not be paying attention. He might be right, but the new position for this short sequence feels arbitrary and clunky. Compare that to the elegant way in which the bravura and astonishingly bold music-through-time-lifts-the-roof sequence gives way to the arrival of the bloodsucking trio. Here everything feels purposeful, carefully weighted and hugely effective.

As reality dawns on our gang and they break up the party, they’re made to confront the consequences of their choices, and this again is beautifully paced, but this movie which so luxuriated in its set-ups rushes its pay-offs ever-so-slightly with the climactic battle in the eaves of the bar feeling almost perfunctory. Do stay for the closing credits though if you want to know how the story really ends.

To be clear, these are minor quibbles, with what overall is a hugely exciting, deeply involving, transcendently musical, incredibly confident piece of filmmaking, packing luminous performances, suitably gory effects, razor sharp editing and gorgeous cinematography. What really makes it work though is how the themes of good, evil, temptation, history, hatred, trust, religion, sex, money and death are woven through the rich characters to create a deeply layered, profoundly moving and intricately constructed story. Not bad for a vampire flick by a Marvel director.

The last of the Best Picture nominees this year (for me personally) is arguably the one which is dominating the discourse the least. That’s not surprising given that it’s neither a hugely controversial offering likely to split the crowd, but nor does it really have a shot at the big prize. I’m Still Here is the latest from Walter Salles whose Central Station from 1998 I remember thinking was fantastic, and there’s a weird overlap here with Emilia Pérez. Jacques Audiard’s film takes the fate of the disappeared in Mexico and uses it as a lever to open up the morality of a former gangster now living life as a civilian – and as noted, it rather collapses under the weight of a lot of silly clichés at the end, regardless of what you think about the depictions of the Mexican people, trans people and whether or not you liked the songs.

Salles’s intentions are rather more sober and serious as he tells the true story of the disappearance of politician Rubens Paiva in Brazil in the 1970s – through the eyes of his wife Eunice, played by Fernanda Torres. And although Selton Mello does great work as the husband, as do the teen/child actors playing the kids, it’s Torres who carries this absorbing film bodily on her shoulders. From her early caution as friends meet in her home to consider action against the military regime, to her steely management of the armed men in her living room, to the trauma of her imprisonment, to her heroic efforts to rebuild her life, she’s amazing.

This is a simple, unfussy film which tells its story without flinching and without glorifying, but which never feels like a documentary. From the very beginning, every aspect rings true, and how lovely to see Fernanda Montenegro – Oscar-nominated star of Central Station – in a cameo at the end. Fernanda Torres is nominated for this film, but I assume Demi Moore has this sewn up. Obviously it has a shot at Best International Feature, particularly given the Emilia Pérez backlash – although Audiard still won at the BAFTAs, so who knows? I enjoyed this more than any of the other Best Picture nominees, apart from The Substance – but hold on, there’s another film coming.

I gotta be honest, I put on Sing Sing feeling a bit like I was going to have to eat my greens. I’ve loved Colman Domingo since first seeing him on Fear the Walking Dead, but there are so many trite, clichéd and frustrating ways to tell the story of prison-theatre-programme-leads-to-personal-growth-but-also-brings-up-trauma that I suspected this would rapidly fall over its feet and land in saccharine schmaltz or hysterical melodrama. Boy, was I wrong. This incredible movie dodges every single tired trope the second they appear on the narrative horizon, and every frame of this rings so perfectly and so affectingly true, that I should have guessed earlier that almost the entire cast are graduates of the programme in question and they’re all essentially playing themselves, with Domingo, Paul Raci and Sean San José the only ring-ins.

I don’t know how I would have experienced the film if I’d known that beforehand – I don’t think it’s intended to be a big surprise. But now I want to watch it again knowing that because the performances are even more incredible when you consider that for most of the cast it would be their first time on a movie set. So all the credit in the world to them, but also to director and co-screenwriter Greg Kwedar for marshalling these resources with such precision and empathy. Shot on 16mm, the feeling of confinement gradually shades into intimacy and the surroundings feel totally authentic from the very first frame. I’m calling it – this is my favourite film of 2024.

I also want to briefly consider Memoir of a Snail which continues Adam Elliot’s idiosyncraticly adult adventures in claymation, and which combines terrific voice performances from the likes of Sarah Snook, Jacki Weaver, Magda Szubanski and Kodi Smit-McPhee with tactile plasticine animation to create a grungily charming life-story. While not quite having the impact of Elliot’s earlier triumph Mary & Max, this is still very well done, but the Best Animated Feature category is very competitive this year and I don’t think it stands a chance next to The Wild Robot and Flow, as good as it is.

I’m also trying to see all the nominees for Best Animated Feature. Inside Out 2 is wonderful entertainment despite not being a patch on the original, which just emphasises what a tremendously strong piece of work the original is. Vengeance Most Fowl is Wallace and Gromit at very nearly their best, and one barely notices the absence of Peter Sallis. I’m very excited about Memoir of a Snail, having been knocked out by the same team’s Mary and Max some years ago. That leaves The Wild Robot and Flow.

In their different ways, these are both painterly CG animations about the collision between nature and the modern world, with a largely animal cast and driven by a singular creative talent. But despite these superficial similarities they function in very different ways, although I’m pleased to say I think they’re both terrific.

The Wild Robot is the latest offering from mad genius Chris Sanders, who was let off the leash back when Disney was earning All Of The Money to make Lilo & Stitch, possibly my favourite post-renaissance 2D Disney movie. After a period in the wilderness, he came back with How to Train Your Dragon, and also has (sigh) a live action Lilo & Stitch coming out soon. Meanwhile, he’s cast Lupita Nyong’o as “Roz”, a silicon help-meet who mysteriously washes up on the shore of an uninhabited island. With echoes of both WALL-E and The Iron Giant, Roz grapples with what her purpose is, and (having spent days learning their language) turns to various animal friends for help.

This is pretty breezy, family-friendly, crowd-pleasing stuff, but an exceptional voice cast (including Pedro Pascal as a wily fox, Catherine O’Hara as a hilarious possum, Matt Berry as a neurotic beaver and Mark Hamill as a grizzly bear) and some absolutely gorgeous animation elevate this to classic status, and the script knows just when to go for the gag and when to pluck on your heart strings.

It reportedly cost around $80m which is cheap for a major CG movie. Flow was made for less than a tenth of that, and it’s almost impossible to tell. This Latvian animation was created by a tiny Latvian/Parisian team on consumer-grade equipment and tells the entirely worldless story of a tiny grey cat making friends (secretarybird, golden retriever and capybara mainly) in order to escape mysteriously rising flood waters. Again, the CG images have been given a painterly sheen, and whereas in the American movie, I’m convinced this is entirely for artistic reasons, here I think it may have been in part to conceal the relative simplicity of the digital models. But when the animation is so simultaneously characterful and accurate to the natural world, this seems like a pointless thing to quibble about.

My taste for magical realism, which at points strays in to surrealism, isn’t quite as well developed as that of director Gints Zilbalodis, but for the most part, this is a gorgeous, enthralling, sweetly beguiling story of friendship and adventure which never for a moment feels like dialogue would have added anything at all.

September 5

Tim Fehlbaum’s account of the Munich Massacre from the point of view of the ABC Sports team covering the Olympics makes an amazing trailer but only a pretty good film. Of course, it’s not the film’s fault that it’s been sold as something slightly other than what it is, but the differences between the white-knuckle, morally-queasy trailer and the rather more by-the-numbers actual movie raises questions in my mind about the wisdom of this approach.

It’s certainly an interesting piece of history, as has already been proven by Steven Spielberg who took a very different approach in his film Munich. In 1972, terrorists took nine members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage. By the early hours of the next morning, most of the terrorists and all of the hostages were dead. We follow the television crew who are used to talking over footage of swimming, long jumping and javelin events as they grapple with the reality that the are the only people able to tell the world what’s happening.

The pressure cooker environment is effective, and – as Billy Wilder observed – “audiences love ‘how’” so the stuff about having to smuggle film cans in and out of the Olympic Village, strapped to the body of a cameraman posing as a coach is fascinating. And there is tension, and there are interesting debates about whether the ABC coverage is influencing events for better or for worse, and whether ABC Sports president Roone Arledge is thinking more about innocent lives or about his own career.

The problem is that, of necessity, we only get access to either the plight of the hostages, or the actions of the German authorities, in fragments. So, we’re presented with a story in which innocent lives are at stake and a terrifying stand-off is taking place, but the film is trying to wring tension and excitement out of whether or not ABC will get access to the “bird” (satellite) or what form of words the anchor should use to (wrongly) announce that the hostages are alive and free.

It’s a decent TV movie, but I’m a bit disappointed and rather surprised to see it nominated for its screenplay. Still, in a world in which The Imitation Game wins a screenplay Oscar, anything is possible.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Also taking an unusual angle on events of global importance, but succeeding rather better is The Seed of the Sacred Fig, up for Best International Feature. The story of the making of this film by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof could be movie in itself, as the raw footage had to be smuggled out of the country and the director had to flee before he could be arrested. Thus, this film about Iran, shot in Iran, by Iranians and entirely in Persian ends up as Germany official selection for the Academy Awards.

Missagh Zareh is Iman, newly promoted within the Revolutionary Court, but beginning to have misgivings about the nature of his role. His daughters meanwhile have an even more rebellious streak to them, amplified by protests surrounding the death in custody of a young woman (not named as but clearly meant to be Mahsa Amini), leaving his wife caught in the middle. Where September 5 is constrained by its narrative framework, the effect of the shifting political sands on this ordinary family is very much the point, and as such the family drama and the huge global story reflect on each other in fascinating, disturbing and moving ways – no more so than when Rasoulof includes real footage of Iranian protests and police actions.

While the whole cast is excellent, I must make special mention of Soheila Golestani as Iman’s wife Najmeh who fiercely attempts to steer a clear path between her own morality, her love for her family and her practical need to survive and thrive. She’s constantly trying to give nothing away, but there’s always something going on behind her eyes.

Normally it’s easy to spot which film will take the Best International Feature award – it’s the one also nominated in one or more other categories. But this year, we have both Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here nominated for Best Picture, and Flow nominated for Best Animated Feature, leaving only this and The Girl with the Needle without additional nominations elsewhere. But of the films in the Oscar conversation, I liked this more than pretty much anything else outside of The Substance and Anora.

Mysteriously not nominated for a single Oscar, despite its star walking home with a clutch of awards all over town, Hard Truths finds Mike Leigh back in Naked territory, giving us a portrait of a thoroughly unlikeable motormouth anti-hero and daring us not to fall in love. Marianne Jean-Baptiste does incredible work as Pansy, whose brittle Karen-ish behaviour to everyone around her barely conceals an inner core of deep pain and loneliness. This drives her husband and son into a near-silent fugue state of incomprehending stoicism, and contrasts strongly with her two nieces who won’t let a little thing like Sam Spiro being loathesomely patronising put a spoke in the wheels of their plans for a Mother’s Day brunch. Sitting in the middle is Pansy’s sister Chantelle, where Michele Austin is much less showy than Jean-Baptiste but who navigates a tricky path between optimism and despair.

As usual, Mike Leigh’s improvisatory and exploratory script-writing delivers complex and truthful characters and wonderful performances, but as sometimes happens doesn’t provide us with a neat structure or much in the way of climactic catharsis. That Mother’s Day brunch looks to be the scene where all the narrative threads come together, but it passes and leads to a faintly irrelevant coda, centring David Webber’s Curtley almost as much as Pansy, and sidelining Chantelle. For the first four-fifths, however, this is epic, often hilarious, frequently heartbreaking stuff and I can only hope it does better at the BAFTAs than it did in Hollywood.

Of rather less interest is Robert Zemeckis’s slickly experimental single-camera-angle movie Here, based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, and which reunited the director with his Forrest Gump team of screenwriter Eric Roth and lead actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. At least I think it’s them. For most of the running time they’re concealed behind a smear of de-aging (or up-aging) pixels, and it’s deeply to their credit that something resembling a performance manages to emerge from underneath all the digital shenanigans. This is especially true given that Roth hasn’t thought of anything remotely novel, insightful or even interesting for them or any of the other characters to say, so they just mouth Hallmark platitudes about how time flies or the future is coming as the narrative hyperactively pings from decade-to-decade seemingly at random. A couple of times, the juxtaposition of events from different periods in history brushes past something like wit, such as when a leaky roof is overlaid with a woman’s waters breaking, but these moments are the exceptions rather than the norm.

To facilitate the artifice of both the permanently locked-off camera and the huge time jumps, the whole thing was shot at Pinewood, hence the slightly disconcerting presence of so many familiar British TV faces from Michelle Dockery to Nikki Amuka-Bird to Kelly Reilly to Angus Wright to Ophelia Lovibond. All do decent accents (except possibly for Paul Bettany who seems permanently constipated) but it’s yet more artifice for a film that wants to be telling a sweet simple story about family, but which hasn’t figured out what the story is, or why we should care, or why it’s better to shoot it this way.

Nickel Boys is the first drama film from experimental documentarian RaMell Ross and it takes a grim story (from the novel by Colson Whitehead) and presents it in a very striking way which doesn’t always help. This is a very choppy, piecemeal film, in which short scenes end with hard cuts and material from other sources (and sometimes timeframes) is cut in unexpectedly. This I could have coped with, although some of the metaphors from the Apollo 8 mission and the Martin Luther King marches was a bit heavy-handed for my taste.

What I had a harder time with was the decision to shoot almost everything first person. Ross is smart enough not to be wedded to this technique, but he doesn’t stray from it often, and the idea presumably is to place us directly in the shoes of the main protagonist Elwood. We look out through his eyes and see the world that he sees. But drama is watching one person changed by another, and if we can’t see our protagonist’s face, we have to guess how he might be reacting. Near the middle of the film, Elwood’s friend Turner is also given the power of the point-of-view shot which means we can finally cut between two people having a conversation – but these conversations tend not to be the crucial ones, so we’re still stuck with only half the story.

In a second strand, taking place years after the boys’ incarceration, adult Elwood is shot over his own shoulder, so again we can’t see his face but now it’s harder to frame shots so that we can see who he’s talking to. A bit life Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, this struck me as an interesting formal experiment, but ultimately one which didn’t have the effect of immersing me more fully in the story – in fact just the opposite, it held me at a distance. That’s a shame as there’s much to appreciate here. This isn’t a true story, but it was inspired by ghastly places like the Dozier School which deserve to be exposed, and the Jim Crow era is a horrendous stain on American history, which some Americans seem only too happy to forget about.

I do have a nasty suspicion that the camerawork is designed at least in part to facilitate a final rug-pull which struck me as confusing and unlikely. Other people have found more thematic resonance in this, and maybe if I watched it again, knowing what was coming, I’d see that too, but I was too busy trying to work out the crossword puzzle which the film had set me to be truly moved or to appreciate the themes. There’s great work here from Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson and especially Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, but I didn’t get as much out of this as I expected or wanted to. I seem to be in the minority, though, so the failing may well be mine.

Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s account of the final ninety minutes before the first episode of “NBC’s Saturday Night” went on the air is a work of obvious artifice, but it’s greatly to Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan’s credit that most of the backstory about events taking place outside of this very narrow window goes down very easily. There’s even a nice visual metaphor in one of the aspects of the show which I’d be prepared to bet never happened. This succeeds very nicely in making a somewhat trivial event seem of momentous importance, and the cast is having an absolute ball, anchored by Gabrielle LaBelle as the earnest, almost unflappable Lorne Michaels – but shout outs too to Tommy Dewey as Michael O’Donoghue, Matthew Rhys unrecognisable as George Carlin, Nicholas Braun in a remarkable dual role and most deliciously of all JK Simmons as a revoltingly vulgar evocation of Milton Berle. Good fun and buoyed by an appropriately demented score from Jon Batiste.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Conclave – no, not enjoy: savour. It looks magnificent and Edward Berger continues his productively discordant partnership with composer Volker Bertelmann whose strident foghorning helped make All Quiet on the Western Front so evocative. We have some of this generation’s finest Old Men of Acting giving it everything they’ve got. And who wouldn’t want to peek behind the curtain of decision making at the Vatican? Decision making is one of the keystones of storytelling, whether it’s Chaplin being forced to eat his own shoe, Michael realising only he can take out McClusky or Han Solo coming back to save Luke Skywalker.

But this time, Berger isn’t adapting a classic German novel born out of the pain of a generation-defining conflict. This time, his source text is a Robert Harris page-turner – maybe not quite an airport thriller, but definitely aiming to build suspense and pass the time rather than leaving the reader pondering great questions about the nature of humanity and goodness. And if the characters in Conclave spend any time at all pondering such questions, they do it off-screen, as when they’re in front of the camera, they’re scheming and plotting in a way much more befitting Francis Urquhart or Malcolm Tucker. We know Ralph Fiennes’s earnest and studious Cardinal Lawrence is experiencing a mild crisis of faith because he tells us so – not because it’s dramatised in any particularly interesting way.

Yes, the plot did keep me guessing, but this is also sometimes to the film’s detriment, as the rules of the thriller to which it’s so wedded mean that the clearly-telegraphed penultimate twist must needs be topped by a final somewhat ludicrous twist. To be clear, this is partly the fun of what is a very entertaining and engaging film. It’s endlessly charming and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny to see these pompous clerics in their ornate robes sneaking a crafty ciggie, fiddling with an iPhone or hacking into someone else’s email. But the actual storytelling couldn’t be less interested in the philosophical debates about the future of the Catholic church, and is only just interested enough in the personalities of the main players to make the plot work.

That leaves us with the actors, and here Isabella Rossellini is effortlessly commanding, Fiennes and Tucci elevate the thin material they’re given and Lucian Msamati – whose Cardinal Adeyemi actually is given a little bit of depth and nuance – is very impressive. What baffles me slightly is why John Lithgow took the gig. I’m certain he doesn’t need the work and his character exists solely to wax his moustache and cackle evilly. A missed opportunity.

In terms of character depth, A Complete Unknown is sort of the opposite. Monica Barbaro manages to mine the flimsy screenplay and comes up with a complete character with a rich interior life seemingly from nowhere. Everyone else seems satisfied with doing impersonations and moving through the relevant Wikipedia entries until 140 minutes is up. Maybe that’s because Elle Fanning looks so completely lost – because her character is the only one that’s invented.

I came to this knowing nothing much at all about Bob Dylan, which meant on the one hand that I wouldn’t be huffing and fuming and nit picking as the inevitable artistic licenses were taken. On the other hand, that means things need to be explained to me to make the story work, and various things seemed to happen which were given profound significance without paying off in any meaningful way. Dylan’s first album is all covers. Why? Did they sell? How did he persuade the record company to let him record originals? Who are these two different round men who smoke cigars both of whom seem to be something to do with his management but neither of whom is ever introduced or seen to be making decisions which impact his life or career. Who’s this guy bullying his way into the recording session and ending up playing the organ? What, to be blunt, is the point of any of this, other than to check off events in the life of a famous asshole?

But I could have stood a bit of confusion about the finer points of the music industry if the character work had been stronger. Timothee Chalamet is a fine talent and has clearly worked incredibly hard to summon up Dylan’s manner and musical abilities. But if we aren’t given any insight into who he was and what he wanted, then the entire exercise seems futile. Early on, I appreciated the measured pace and there were some nice moments between Chalamet’s puppy-dog 20-year-old Dylan and Edward Norton’s avuncular Pete Seeger. But after the first half hour, this turns into Folk Hard: The Bobby Dylan Story with a dedication that seems almost demented.

Eight down, two to go.

And they’re off. The starter’s gun has been fired for this year’s Oscars race, and while it wasn’t hard to predict most of the films appearing in most of the categories, there were still some surprises. Chief of these is that the most nominated film is Jacques Audiard’s bonkers transgender Spanish language gangster musical redemption fantasy Emilia Pérez which can count thirteen mentions. This is to a certain extent artificial, but even if you discount Best International Feature and ignore one of its two Best Original Song mentions, it would still top the list with eleven, just ahead of The Brutalist and Wicked, both with ten.

Together with strong showings in the directing and editing categories, that suggests that the contest for Best Picture is between those three, but I think Emilia Pérez will struggle to convert a lot of its chances and I also wouldn’t rule out Conclave, which might not have as many pluses as some of its rivals (and only garnered eight nominations, tying it with A Complete Unknown), but it doesn’t have any negatives – it isn’t weird, it isn’t a musical, it isn’t TikTok friendly and none of its characters were revoiced by AI.

Let’s rundown the Best Picture nominees and I’ll give you some further thoughts.

Anora was a delightful surprise when I took myself off to see it earlier this year. Sean Baker is a very fine filmmaker indeed and the promise he showed with The Florida Project is fully flowering here (I didn’t see Red Rocket but I’ve heard good things). I don’t think this has much of a chance of winning Best Picture, but it’s the kind of movie which could pick up a screenplay award as a sort of consolation prize.

The Brutalist is about as compelling as a 200-minute movie about architecture could possibly hope to be. Adrien Brody is amazing and the guest cast almost uniformly strong. I wasn’t always convinced by Felicity Jones, AI or no AI, but this is a huge and very Oscar-friendly achievement, and currently the bookies’ favourite. I just wonder whether it’s a bit too weighty to have lots of people putting it at the top of their ballots. Full review here.

A Complete Unknown looks great, provided it can avoid enough Dewey Cox clichés, and Timothée Chalamet can usually be relied upon to elevate weaker material. I’ll try and see it very soon.

Conclave likewise has passed me by and looks like hand-milled Oscar bait, but I think that voters who want serious and meaningful will prefer The Brutalist and those who want something with a bit more flair and dash will go for Emilia Pérez – but then maybe Conclave will come through the middle? Against that, Edward Berger hasn’t been nominated as Best Director, which must hurt the film’s chances.

Dune: Part Two feels like it’s here to make up the numbers. I don’t have any particular fondness for the Duniverse, but I went to see both movies on the big screen and I had a good time. I don’t entirely know if the effort required to create them is appropriate to the entertainment value I derived from them, but I don’t have any real complaints about either. The chances of a science-fiction sequel winning Best Picture however are slim to say the least.

And you might think that a similar calculation applies to Emilia Pérez but with nominations for two of its cast, its director, its screenplay and its editing, it must be in with a shout. The bookies have it just behind The Brutalist which sounds right to me – and there’s quite a jump in price, so you could clean up if you got it right.

Of I’m Still Here and Nickel Boys I know almost nothing, but I will – as usual – attempt to see them on a big screen before the first Sunday in March. The Substance I’m delighted to find on the list, as it is already one of my favourite films of the year, and I found it utterly compelling. Full review here.

Lastly, we have Jon M Chu’s Wicked (shorn of its “Part One” suffix) which I thought was one of the best stage-to-screen musical adaptations I’ve seen recently (not quite as good as Matilda though). And yes, a lot of the set-ups will have to be paid off next year which isn’t ideal, but as vastly elongated first acts of musicals go, this is exemplary. Review here.

In other categories, Best Actor looks like a straight fight between Adrien Brody and Timothée Chalamet, Best Actress looks nailed on for Demi Moore, likewise Kieran Culkin is getting a lot of attention for A Real Pain, and Zoe Saldaña will surely win for Emilia Pérez even if that film is shut out elsewhere. Likewise, Conclave must have a good chance at winning Best Adapted Screenplay even if it is not given much love in other categories.

And speaking of films not given much love, it’s a double Guadagnino shut-out with no nominations at all for either Challengers or Queer, and it looks like Nicole Kidman humped all those rugs for nothing as Babygirl has been completely overlooked. Some Academy watchers also expected to see mentions for Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, and Denzil Washington for Gladiator II, which only gets a nod for its costume design. There was also a lot of enthusiasm for Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl, but not from the Academy.

Right, time for me to book some movie tickets. See you back here soon.