There are two offerings of feelgood, a snarling biopic and a class documentary in cinemas this weekend.
Onward ****
This latest animated movie from those extremely talented people at Pixar seems to have divided the reviewing classes in the United States, but for us it's yet another indicator of how strong Pixar remain, despite being swallowed whole by the Disney monolith in recent years.
In short, it's a gem.
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Directed by Dan Scanlon (interviewed above with producer Kori Rae), who performed the same role for Monsters University, the subject matter is very close to his heart, even if the tale takes place in a fantasy world populated by the likes of elves, centaurs, satyrs, cyclops, gnomes and trolls. Read our full review here.
True History of the Kelly Gang ****
George MacKay (interviewed below) is riveting in this savage symphony about the legend of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.
The wild 19th-century colonial boy rose from brutal beginnings on the edge of the Outback to become a still-divisive folk hero in Aussie history.
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Director Justin Kurzel's biopic rocks with a combustible power and crackles with a feverish energy. It's dreamlike and scabrous and casts our anti-hero in a very sympathetic light with a strange, almost supernatural starkness. Read our full review here.
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am ****
Two hours in the best of company - that's what's on offer here. And if your never-ending list of to-read authors doesn't include the late Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved), well, it should do after about 15 minutes.
This unstuffy documentary lives up to its title as it charts the life of a literary icon from student to librarian to mother to editor to author to Nobel Prize winner, with special mention for her talents as a star baker along the way.
Morrison makes for a brilliant interviewee: matter-of-fact about her work, with steel and a great sense of humour there to inspire newcomers to her novels and longtime fans alike. Read our full review here.
Military Wives ***
The Full Monty director Peter Cattaneo is out to strike box office gold again with another gloom-busting story, this time involving singers, not strippers.
In a fine example of casting chemistry, Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan are thrown together by circumstance as Kate and Lisa - counting the hours of their husbands' tours of duty in Afghanistan.
Kate is the Colonel's wife who has already lost her only child in the conflict. Lisa is the new arrival on base whose other half has just been made Sergeant Major. Read our full review here.
Still Showing:
The Invisible Man ****
Writer/director Leigh Whannell's (Saw, Insidious), cleverly produced reimagining of HG Wells's sci-fi novel, and the original 1933 big screen classic, is a painfully relevant and unsettling mind-bender that deserves your presence.
From its opening frames, the film digs its claws in and doesn't let go as Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) finally escapes the grasp of her controlling partner (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a famous optics pioneer. Ever the manipulator, he fakes his own death, and uses his presence (or lack of) to continue his menacing ways.
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This socially-aware piece of cinema paints an immensely unnerving portrait of a woman in the clutches of a volatile relationship that becomes even more sinister when her abuser is no longer visible to the naked eye. Read our full review here.
Dark Waters ****
Somewhat a labour of love for leading man, producer and noted environmentalist Mark Ruffalo, Dark Waters tells the compelling true story of how a meek corporate lawyer switched from defending his rapacious clients to investigating them in one of the most protracted and disturbing legal cases in American history.
Based on a New York Times magazine article by Nathaniel Rich, Ruffalo plays Rob Bilott, a mild-mannered and dedicated attorney in a prestigious Cincinnati law firm in the late 1990s who is making his way up the corporate ladder until he is alerted to some truly shocking ecological crimes in his rural hometown. Read our full review here.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire ****
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a cool, almost ascetic work exploring sexual repression and sexual longing - sides perhaps of the same 18th-Century French coin - between two young women, an artist and her portrait subject.
There is a sense of layers of the past and connections with bygone years toppling on to the present, that repeated motif of portraiture and perception, of desire freed from its shackles in the context of a deeply-founded family story.
There are some absorbing, delicately-measured scenes depicting the growing relationship between painter and her sitter. Read our full review here.
Downhill ****
This thought-provoking remake of Ruben Östlund's 2014 Swedish-language film Force Majeure deftly juggles dark passages with oddly comic counterbalance.
It's an interesting one, this clever, dark exercise. In the original movie, a father and husband in fight-or-flight mode opts for flight as a so-called 'controlled’ avalanche over-spills onto an Alpine ski resort. He runs or walks quickly away from the incident.
The same drama is enacted in the remake, with the mother Billie played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell as the father Pete. Read our full review here.
Color Out of Space ****
Four decades into his career, Nicolas Cage is still mad for the work, and out the door with it. Indeed, it's at the stage where if you were given good odds on him making a cameo in Fair City (as himself popping into McCoy's for soup and a sandwich on the way to the Airport, or channelling his self-described "nouveau shamanic" acting style as a blow-in on the Northside), take them because, as Color Out of Space proves, stranger things have happened. Its director, Richard Stanley, is back in business and making his first dramatic feature after 25 years away.
Adapted from a HP Lovecraft story, Color Out of Space gives film fans what they never knew they needed: Cage as alpaca farmer Nathan Gardner.
Living the escape-from-the-city dream with wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) and their three children, Nathan and co receive an uninvited guest in the form of "a boom like a sonic boom and a big flash like a pink light". Read our full review here.
