REVIEW - FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM (DAVID YATES)

You want fantastic? Good, because you can definitely find it here. David Yates and J. K. Rowling lighten up for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, newly untethered to the demands of a narrative-in-progress, buoyed by the opportunity to riff on material that's so very familiar to them both. If their winsome magic was occasionally all on which the Harry Potter films had to go, it's not necessarily a drawback to note that Fantastic Beasts inevitably loses some such magic in the changes made. What it gains is an equally-agreeable freedom, a looseness in tone and plot in which Rowling appears to delight, and in which Yates follows suit. By now, these two know how to get to where they're going, and so indulge in one cheeky little tangent after another along the route - Fantastic Beasts rollicks from one silly setpiece to the next, and, if anything, it's those scenes which are devoted toward the development of plot that feel like they're intruding. Yates is a fine director of darkness, though, and is once again blessed by the presence of yet another brilliant cinematographer in Philippe Rousselot; as ever, one of the principal joys of these Harry Potter-related pictures is their artistic and technical beauty, and particular, predictable credit must go to the increasingly invaluable Stuart Craig on production design. They bring the fantasy to fantastic life in this uncommonly winning blockbuster, enlivened further by an attractive sense of social conscience and some charming performances. Half a star off for a reproachable twist, for not knowing when to end, and for the single most appalling use of slo-mo 3D in film history.

OFFICIAL TRAILER FOR MARTIN SCORSESE'S SILENCE

Swanning in to slay the Oscars, Martin Scorsese's long-awaited Silence finally debuts a trailer. It's as promising as promised, and sure to be an exciting way to end a year at the movies / start a year, depending on where you live. To that end, Silence opens in the US on the 23rd of December and in the UK on the 1st of January.

REVIEW - THE RED TURTLE (MICHAEL DUDOK DE WIT)

The Red Turtle shores up like a brisk, soothing tonic to the excesses of modern animation, indeed modern filmmaking in general. Michael Dudok de Wit's short, sweet fable is so slight that it hardly even concerns itself with that most intrinsic of qualities for a fable - its moral lesson. Rather, the film simply exists as it exists, its only lesson an incidental one to filmmakers preoccupied with grand artistic schemes and embellishments. The intentional regression in The Red Turtle is comprehensive, as Dudok de Wit seeks to make no statements on this process, instead only availing of its capacity for liberation - on such a blank canvas, he is able to indulge himself however he pleases. And indulge he does, producing a work whose power and purpose are situated not in any formal nor metatextual declarations but in a more primal, emotional sphere. The Red Turtle is inflected, between scene after scene of exquisite visual beauty, with moments of immense affective potency, a deep and direct extraction of emotional responses for which the film scarcely prepares us. If Dudok de Wit's objectives are common and coarse, his motives are sound and his techniques superb, if for no other reason than his resounding success - this is a most moving film. Its near-archetypal stature as an animated film may appear as natural as anything depicted herein, though it's actually strictly relative, wholly dependent upon context; place this film next to 90% of the industry's 3D hackjobs and only then can one appreciate its worth. Perhaps here is Dudok de Wit's statement, and it's a fittingly straightforward one: in life, simplicity affords the greatest fulfilment. Maybe we could all benefit from getting lost at sea more often.

AMERICAN HONEY AND MOONLIGHT LEAD 2016 SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS

Earlier today, I wrote up a roster of predicted nominees for our Spirit Award nominations, now announced by Film Independent. And indeed, it was Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight, as I had predicted, that threw down the gauntlet for their fellow nominated titles, with 5 and 6 mentions apiece, though Andrea Arnold's American Honey was a hit with voters too, also claiming 6. As per, there were surprises aplenty, particularly in tech categories - they help to enliven an otherwise fairly safe slate for Film Independent. On the 25th of February, as ever on the eve of the Academy Awards, winners will be announced live on U.S. TV.

Best Feature

American Honey (Thomas Benski, Lars Knudsen, Lucas Ochoa, Pouya Shahbazian, Jay van Hoy and Alice Weinberg)

Chronic (Michel Franco, Gina Kwon, Gabriel Ripstein, Moises Zonana)

Jackie (Darren Aronofsky, Juan de Dios Larrain, Scott Franklin, Ari Handel and Mickey Liddell)

Manchester by the Sea (Lauren Beck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore, Kimberly Steward and Kevin J. Walsh)

Moonlight (Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Adele Romanski)

Best Director
Andrea Arnold (American Honey)
Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)
Pablo Larrain (Jackie)
Jeff Nichols (Loving)
Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women)

Best Female Lead
Annette Bening (20th Century Women)
Isabelle Huppert (Elle)
Sasha Lane (American Honey)
Ruth Negga (Loving)
Natalie Portman (Jackie)

Best Male Lead
Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)
David Harewood (Free in Deed)
Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic)
Jesse Plemons (Other People)
Tim Roth (Chronic)

Best Supporting Female
Edwina Findley (Free in Deed)
Paulina Garcia (Little Men)
Lily Gladstone (Certain Women)
Riley Keough (American Honey)
Molly Shannon (Other People)

Best Supporting Male
Ralph Fiennes (A Bigger Splash)
Ben Foster (Hell or High Water)
Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea)
Shia LaBeouf (American Honey)
Craig Robinson (Morris from America)

Best Screenplay
Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight)
Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)
Mike Mills (20th Century Women)
Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias (Little Men)
Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water)

Best Cinematography
Ava Berkovsky (Free in Deed)
Lol Crawley (Hell or High Water)
Zach Kuperstein (The Eyes of My Mother)
James Laxton (Moonlight)
Robbie Ryan (American Honey)

Best Editing
Matthew Hannam (Swiss Army Man)
Jennifer Lame (Manchester by the Sea)
Joi McMillon and Nat Sanders (Moonlight)
Jake Roberts (Hell or High Water)
Sebastian Sepulveda (Jackie)

Best Documentary
13th (Spencer Averick, Howard Barish and Ava DuVernay)
Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson and Marilyn Ness)
I Am Not Your Negro (Remi Grellety, Hebert Peck and Raoul Peck)
O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, Nina Krstic, Tamara Rosenberg and Caroline Waterlow)
Sonita (Rokhsareh Ghaem-Maghami and Gerd Haag)
Under the Sun (Natalya Manskaya and Vitaly Mansky)

Best International Film
Aquarius (Kleber Mendonca Filho)
Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari)
My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
Under the Shadow (Babak Anvari)

Best First Feature

The Childhood of a Leader (Chris Coen, Brady Corbet, Ron Curtis, Helena Danielsson, Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Mona Fastvold and Major Istvan)

The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer and Lisa Kjerulff)

Other People (Sam Bisby, Chris Kelly, Adam Scott and Naomi Scott)

Swiss Army Man (Miranda Bailey, Lawrence Inglee, Dan Kwan, Lauren Mann, Amanda Marshall, Eyal Rimmon, Daniel Scheinert and Jonathan Wang)

The Witch (Daniel Bekerman, Robert Eggers, Lars Knudsen, Jodi Redmond, Rodrigo Teixeira and Jay van Hoy)

Best First Screenplay
Robert Eggers (The Witch)
Chris Kelly (Other People)
Adam Mansbach (Barry)
Stella Meghie (Jean of the Joneses)
Craig Shilowich (Christine)

John Cassavetes Award
Free in Deed (Mike Bowes, Jake Mahaffy, Mike S. Ryan and Brent Stiefel)
Hunter Gatherer (Michael Covino, April Lamb, Josh Locy, Sara Murphy and Isaiah Smallman)
Lovesong (David Hansen, So Yong Kim, Alex Lipschultz, Johnny Mac and Bradley Rust Gray)
Nakom (Isaac Adakudugu, Kelly Daniela Norris, T. W. Pittman and Giovanni Ximenez)
Spa Night (Andrew Ahn, David Ariniello, Giulia Caruso, Kim Ki Jin and Kelly Thomas)

Robert Altman Award
Moonlight (Mahershala Ali, Patrick Decile, Naomie Harris, Alex Hibbert, Andre Holland, Barry Jenkins, Jharrel Jerome, Janelle Monae, Jaden Piner, Yesi Ramirez, Trevante Rhodes and Ashton Sanders)

Kiehl's Someone to Watch Award
Andrew Ahn (Spa Night)
Claire Carre (Embers)
Anna Rose Holmer (The Fits)
Ingrid Jungermann (Women Who Kill)

Piaget Producers Award
Lisa Kjerulff
Jordana Mollick
Melody C. Roscher and Craig Shilowich

Truer Than Fiction Award
Kristi Jacobson (Solitary)
Sara Jordeno (Kiki)
Wang Nan Fu (Hooligan Sparrow)

OFFICIAL TRAILER FOR BARRY

Who'd have thought Vikram Gandhi's Barry would look set to go down as one of 2016's most mournful features? Any title dealing with U.S. politics, whether past, present or future-set, certainly would. His acclaimed sophomore film, which premiered in September at TIFF, opens via Netflix in the U.S. on the 16th of December. A little reminder of what was, before the disaster of what will be soon after...

REVIEW - OTHER PEOPLE (CHRIS KELLY)

Admitted: the cancer comedy has been done to death - it's going to take a genuinely fresh and authentic perspective on it to make yet another variation on this trite theme worth enduring. If that's what Chris Kelly brings to Other People, he never transcends that inevitable triteness, meaning that all the handsome, insightful work supplied by himself and his cast alike must be resigned to relative ineffectuality. And yet Other People is indeed worth enduring - aside from when it winningly courts actual offence, it's an inoffensive, tolerable account of an experience most would find intolerable, and thus a pleasantly piquant portrait. That freshness is largely absent, but the authenticity is palpable in Kelly's unabashed presentation of the defining moments in a young man's life in the year approaching his mother's death. Kelly confronts the innate tragedy with provocative concessions to comedy, though somewhat undercuts the crucial dramatic tenor that is intended to simmer beneath as a result; Other People is eventually on surer footing when it succumbs to that tenor, allowing the humour to arise more organically, as a wry adjunct rather than a quirky counterpoint. And his leading cast is proficient in permitting such a process, with fine, intuitive work from leads Jesse Plemons and Molly Shannon. Even at its most predictably predictable, those two keep Other People from doing itself to its own death, and alone make it worth enduring, right to the very end.

REVIEW - SULLY (CLINT EASTWOOD)

208 seconds of prime, Grade A, choice cut American heroism, served up over roughly 90 minutes of cinema. Clint Eastwood has long been renowned for the economy of his style and the brevity of his filming process, though the methods were rarely so evident in the results as they are in Sully. Brief and unambitious, the film is a solid testament to the dignified, redoubtable honour of a job well done, to the individual people whose sense of duty and responsibility turned a potential tragedy on its head. It's a workingman's pursuit, a workingman's fable, and, in Eastwood's well-worked hands, a workingman's very work putting this on the screen. And his skill is matched, if not surpassed, by that of his fellow crew members - Sully is a handsome piece of craftsmanship, with exemplary sound design and editing. But whereas once Eastwood sprung first to mind when evaluating a workingman's worth as an artist, here his economy, indeed his modesty as a director seems calibrated to sidle him down the list. It's an intriguing step backward, either as a noble sign of deference to the real heroes, those portrayed on screen, or as a deflating sign of laziness on his part. For all the competence on display, there's rather little excellence, and even rather little evidence that such excellence was ever a concern. Sully simply works its way through its assemblage of scenes, gaining no momentum, eventually resolving with an increasing sensation of over-egged heroism; Eastwood is always loathe to put his points across too bluntly, but the sickly 'rah-rah America' tone that begins to emerge late on here verges on loathsome to this viewer. Not quite a heroic accomplishment, then, but a safe, stable landing nonetheless.

2016 EFA TECH CATEGORY AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED

In addition to its main category nominees, announced a week and a half ago, the European Film Awards have declared their award winners in tech categories. A seven-member jury, with one artist from each discipline for which an award was bestowed, caucused in Berlin to decide upon the 2016 recipients of these prestigious awards, chosen from the EFA selection list. It was a very successful result for Martin Zandvliet's Land of Mine, which won three awards despite receiving zero nominations in main categories. Congratulations to all the winners!

Prix Carlo di Palma - European Cinematographer 2016

Camilla Hjelm Knudsen (Land of Mine)

European Editor 2016

Janus Billeskov Jansen and Anne Osterud (The Commune)

European Production Designer 2016

Alice Normington (Suffragette)

European Costume Designer 2016

Stefanie Bieker (Land of Mine)

European Sound Designer 2016

Radoslaw Ochnio (11 Minutes)

European Hair & Make-Up Artist 2016

Barbara Kreuzer (Land of Mine)

European Composer 2016

Ilya Demutsky (The Student)

REVIEW - KING COBRA (JUSTIN KELLY)

It's not for nothing that we viewers get a serious kick out of porn, often especially porn featuring performers only recently of age. There's something quite thrilling in the exhibition of a young person only newly aware of a particular practice, skill or ability, yet brazenly unabashed and remarkably mature; this thrill only amplified when it's accompanied by the added taboo of homosexuality. It's in this understanding of the gay male attitude toward sex and sexual expression that King Cobra finds its fuel, though Justin Kelly sadly insists upon fuelling a regressive exercise in shallow salacity and sensationalization, contributing to the problematic character of that attitude both from the society without and the society within. Willing neither to explore psychological depth nor to expose genuine physical titillation in the pursuit of meaningful arousal, Kelly crafts King Cobra as a vacuous appropriation of style and a muddled attempt at provoking scandal. Though engaging and enjoyable, the film's stylistic motifs never truly coalesce, too inauthentic in their concept and too sporadic in their application; with an unambitious approach to narrative and character development, most everything herein is eventually overcome with either familiarity and/or banality. Occasional spurts of bizarre black humour seem to signify a will to turn King Cobra into an instant cult classic, perhaps like a gay Showgirls (as if it isn't already gay enough); these fail, since what worked for Paul Verhoeven then was directly due to his being in possession of genuine artistic impulses, of which Kelly is largely lacking. Comedy is provided from other sources, though, including a winning performance by Keegan Allen (the less said about James Franco's involvement, however, the better). But King Cobra thus only supplies us viewers with our kicks here and there, and with no lasting impact.

TRAILER #3 FOR HIDDEN FIGURES

I posted the first trailer for Hidden Figures. I posted the second trailer. And now I'm posting the third trailer. Can you tell I'm looking forward to this film? Out in the US on Christmas Day and in the UK on the 24th of February. See it.