Hamnet (2025)

For all of the praise heaped upon it, and all of the love it has already received, I found myself not enjoying Hamnet, for the most part. I was impressed by the lead performances, both Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are excellent, but I wasn't particularly invested in it, or moved by the painful core of it. Or so I thought. Then something happened near the very end of the film and I was in tears, the entire essence of the film unfurling in front of me like some flower coming into bloom. I don't know if others will feel the same way, but I encourage you all to have patience with this until the very end.

Buckley plays Agnes, a woman who weds a certain William Shakespeare (Mescal). After an intense and secretive start to their relationship, things must progress quickly when Agnes becomes pregnant. Agnes is eventually left for periods of time to look after their children while Shakespeare spends time in London seeing if he can make any kind of living from this writing lark. Not present for the death of his son, Shakespeare seems unable to console and support his wife, and she's not even sure how impacted he is by the event. But it turns out that he is devastated, and tries to convey his emotions in a play that explores grief and family, and also happens to be one of the best ever written.

Based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell, who helped to adapt it into screenplay form with director Chloé Zhao, Hamnet is a decent enough film, for the most part, until it sneaks up to you and delivers a one-two gut punch in the third act. Hearing very familiar quotes completely reframed by new context that the story focuses on makes everything feel more emotional and resonant, and the destination makes the uneven journey completely worthwhile. I still wouldn't consider this quite as praiseworthy as many others would, but it's certainly worth watching at least once.

Mescal and Buckley are both as good as you'd expect, the latter being recognised for her performance with a number of awards already. The character isn't a million miles away from others that she tends to play though, but she's consistently great, particularly when it comes to the moments that require her to be wracked with real heartache. Mescal has to work around a couple of moments that deliver "Shakespeare 101" soundbites, but certainly looks and feels absolutely right playing such a literary icon. Emily Watson and David Wilmot both excel as the senior Shakespeares, with Watson becoming warmer and more considerate as she accepts her son becoming his own man, and Joe Alwyn is welcome in his small role, playing Bartholomew (brother of Agnes). All of the younger cast members also do well, although the focus is on Jacobi Jupe in the titular role.

Very good, but not great, yet it has one truly memorable moment that moved me more than anything else I have watched in the past year. I could see other people sneering at it though, which would leave the film with very little else to offer them. I have to figure out if that one moment is enough to elevate the entire film, but I don't think it is. The feature is decidedly okay, if a bit overlong and lacking any decent flow, so it all averages out to still being very good. And still being not great.

7/10

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Gladiator II (2024)

While it's true that it may seem a bit too little too late when considering a sequel nowadays to Gladiator, there were a number of factors that could allow viewers some small sense of optimism. Ridley Scott back at the helm, and a cast including some hot stars of the moment, and a couple of people returning from the first film.

I couldn't really say whether or not that optimism ends up misplaced. Gladiator II is decent enough, there are some fun set-pieces and the focus is much more on the political scheming of one main character, but it pales in comparison to the 2000 movie that it is following. Maybe my opinion was tinged by watching both one after another, but what was I supposed to do when I wanted an excuse to work out my sound system while wearing a home-made toga (aka knotted bedsheet)?

Paul Mescal plays our hero this time around, a young man thrown into bloody battles after he has been enslaved during a Roman conquest of his home, in a sequence that shows him yearning for revenge after the death of someone very close to him. Pedro Pascal is General Acacius, the man who was at the head of that Roman horde, although we soon learn that he is weary of doing the bidding of Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), two twisted souls who seem to be leading Rome further and further way from the glory of what it once was. Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) is still trying to stay safe while positioned very close to the rulers, and there's a man named Macrinus (Denzel Washington) who will twist and turn around everyone I have just mentioned as he figures out a way to get himself into a position of great power.

Springboarding directly from the original movie, David Scarpa's screenplay does everything that everyone involved must have decided it needed. That's a bit sad, because what it apparently needed was plenty of callbacks to the first film, some unnecessary ret-conning that paints one or two people in an annoyingly different light, and fights that are all about entertainment and spectacle ahead of any sense of plausibility. Fair play though, the fights worked for me, but I can see why some would hate one or two of them.

As much as I like Mescal, and as good as he is here, he isn't quite good enough. There's some steely core missing, and he's not helped by the fact that the script doesn't give him much to work with. The same can be said about Pascal, another actor I tend to really like in the right roles. Washington gets much more to say and do, which at least makes everything easier to accept and enjoy as he steals scene after scene, and both Quinn and Hechinger are a lot of fun delivering a double dose of oddness (even if it feels a bit like someone went "Gladiator had one evil Emperor so we'll be twice as good because we'll have TWO!"). As for Nielsen. She's arguably more wasted than both of her male co-stars, and her journey, still intertwined with that of Gracchus (played again by Derek Jacobi), feels almost laughably overstuffed with coincidence and misfortune. 

None of the dialogue stands out this time around, apart from the lines that will make you either groan or laugh, the main arc for our hero feels more like a clumsy scribble than a satisfying straight line, and a bit too much obvious CGI gives it that problem that many other modern blockbusters have: a feeling of weightlessness and everything being of less consequence because so much of it is made up of computer programming. Sorry to sound needlessly snippy, but even the score from Harry Gregson-Williams fails to come close to the soaring Hans Zimmer music from the first film. 

Did I enjoy this while it was on? Yes. Did I feel the 148-minute runtime? Also yes. Will I rewatch this? Probably. Will I rewatch the original film ahead of this? Absolutely. That remains a bit of a modern classic. This is mildly diverting fun that may well be forgotten in a year or two (much like that sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . . . remember when that happened?)

6/10

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All Of Us Strangers (2024)

Whether it's conscious or not, we are all in constant dialogue with those who came before us, specifically our parents. Sometimes those conversations are satisfyingly fluid, changing as you grow up and the people around you adjust to the changing world around them. Sometimes those conversations are crystallized and kept within a snowglobe of a memory, something you think about again and again while knowing that the outcome wasn’t what you had hoped for, either because you didn’t know how to word things better or the people you were talking to weren’t quite who you hoped they were.

All Of Us Strangers explores this, allowing the central character (Adam, played by Andrew Scott) to process his memories and longing for conversations he never had with his dead parents (played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) by allowing him to meet them at the age they were when they died. There’s no explanation for this, and everyone decides against overthinking it, but the chance is there for everyone to have a kind of closure that reality denied them decades ago. Meanwhile, Adam also meets a young man named Harry (Paul Mescal), someone he starts growing very close to after initially refusing his awkward attempt to enter his life.

Director Andrew Haigh has been helming great films for quite some time now, but I am tempted to hail All Of Us Strangers as his masterpiece. Based on a novel by Taichi Yamada (this isn’t the first time it has been adapted for the screen), Haigh uses the supernatural framework to look at different kinds of love, different regrets, and how people might change their lives if they realised the butterfly effect caused by many of their actions. He also crafts a delicate love story between Adam and Harry that reminds every viewer of the kind of connection we want with those we care about.

The central quartet are all quite flawless. Foy and Bell play their parts well, young enough to be open and just old enough to have some insight and wisdom (possibly, bear in mind that they might just be projections), even while their view of their son is being reframed. Mescal is a sweet and welcome presence, an apparent chance of very real hope and happiness in the here and now. Then you have Scott, a man who has found a delicate gift he doesn’t understand, but doesn’t want to mishandle or break. Scott goes through a full range of emotions here, and Haigh knows how to complement the insightful and warm script with moments that just show everything via Scott’s face. The man can deliver dialogue brilliantly, but he also knows how to often say everything without saying anything.

There’s great use of a few classic pop hits, a visual style that mixes the everyday with heightened moments that celebrate a life suddenly buoyed by love, and a potentially-divisive ending so heart-achingly beautiful that it moved me to tears as the credits started to roll and I realised that this was going to be an early contender for one of my favourite films of the year.

9/10

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Prime Time: Foe (2023)

It is the future. Stuff has happened that isn’t great, although it also doesn’t seem to be anything plunging the world into a violence-filled apocalypse. A married couple, Hen (Saoirse Ronan) and Junior (Paul Mescal), are trying to move through what seems to be a slightly strained and difficult period while they continue to work on the land that surrounds their remote farmhouse. Things aren’t helped by the arrival of a stranger (Terrance, played by Aaron Pierre) who is tasked with preparing them for a major change in their living arrangements.

Although I hadn’t heard many glowing notices for Foe, there were/are one or two people who decided to champion it as an unfairly-neglected work. Considering the talent of the two main leads, I decided to check it out. I wish I hadn’t bothered. This is massively disappointing, with a cast stuck working with highly unoriginal material and a lack of any real vision.

I would be more forgiving if this was the first film from director Garth Davis, but it isn’t. He made a splash a few years ago with the celebrated Lion, but this is a very different beast (no pun intended). Here he adapts a book by Iain Reid, with Reid himself also assisting in the move from page to screen, but neither writer is able to do enough to flesh out the backgrounds of the main characters or keep the sense of a bigger world turning around them. If you want a well-done character study then this isn’t it, I’m afraid. Then again, if you want some smart sci-fi, this is also lacking in that department. So it is hard to think of anyone who will be fully satisfied by this.

Ronan and Mescal are still both very watchable, overcoming the script to make their characters more interesting and sympathetic than they otherwise would be. They are the big draw, and I suspect this would have been unbearable with lesser stars in the main roles. As for Pierre, he is fine. His character adds tension and intrigue, but he also highlights the many problems that litter the screenplay, from dialogue exchanges to the entire structure of the thing.

I am sure everyone involved in this had good intentions, and there are choices made that I can appreciate even as I continued to dislike how I saw the film was playing out, but this isn’t worth your time. In fact, it would work far better as a minimally-staged play, something that keeps the focus on the performances instead of the tired ideas at the heart of it all. Don’t rush to see this film. But if it does get the stage treatment at any point, do give that a go.

4/10

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Mubi Monday: Aftersun (2022)

I spent the last 10-15 minutes of Aftersun trying, and failing, to keep my emotions in check. That isn't a spoiler. It's just a statement about the cumulative power of the film, and my own inability to sometimes stop myself from turning into a blubbering mess. Aftersun is trying to capture the essence of a few different things - a father-daughter relationship, the way our memories change as we look back on them with different information, that holiday abroad when you're a child, and more - and it succeeds in everything it sets out to achieve.

Paul Mescal plays Calum, the 30-year-old father of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio). The two of them are on a summer holiday in Turkey, a holiday that Calum wants to make as perfect as possible, in terms of having fun with his daughter and reassuring her of how she will always be able to discuss everything in her life with him. There's an underlying tension though, emphasised by the fact that what viewers are seeing of this holiday is being filtered through some videotape recordings and memories of the adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), interspersed with some dream imagery of her unable to reach her father in a sweaty rave environment. Calum might not have the money and resources to always give Sophie what he thinks she deserves, while Sophie is at a stage where she alternates between enjoying innocent fun and wishing that she was already as old as the teenagers she assumes are much cooler than her.

This is one hell of a film from writer-director Charlotte Wells. The fact that it is her feature debut is utterly astonishing, especially when I cannot think of another film in recent years to have so thoroughly shaken me to my core (in a good way). I am still struggling now to consider the film without having another serious case of leaky eyes. I could mention the brilliant soundtrack, one that keeps reminding viewers that most of the film is set in the early 2000s, I could mention the framing and shot choice throughout (especially when making use of a small hotel room, mirrors, and the glass door/window to the balcony), but it all really comes to the writing and the performances. Every main scene here rings true, whether it's briefly watching an unfortunate parent berate a child that has pushed his luck too far or that feeling of being at an arcade machine, visualising the games you might play, and then being fortunate enough to have someone offer to pay for you to have another shot on it. And that's before I get to the beautifully-portrayed relationship between Calum and Sophie, both trying to treat one another with love and respect, but also never knowing exactly what their mental state is. Aftersun is a reminder of so many things, so many moments that viewers will find familiar and resonant, but one of those things is that we only ever have the faintest idea, if any, of what others are going through.

Mescal has already received a lot of praise for his performance here, and deservedly so, but Corio is equal to him. Both feel absolutely right in their roles, whether on their own or (more often) alongside one another. Both are also allowed to be good people, and they're allowed to be imperfect, and the fact that the holiday we're witnessing crystallises so many memories, providing so many small moments that become larger and more powerful over time, gives Mescal and Corio the room to layer plenty of nuance over their work. Almost every dialogue exchange can be turned around, dug into, and dissected in so many different ways. Thankfully, Wells does have a definite tale to tell here, meaning that we aren't left with something unsatisfyingly ambiguous.

I would like to put together so many more words to motivate people to watch this film, including praise for Rowlson-Hall, praise for the cast of teens convincingly playing holidaying teens, and praise for what may now be the best use of "Under Pressure" in a movie soundtrack (stealing the crown previously held by Grosse Pointe Blank), as well as a complementary and perfect score from Oliver Coates. I have to stop now though. I'd like to namecheck everyone, from the cinematographer to the editor, but I need to step away now, to shake off a film experience that has left me happy, a bit heartbroken, and stunned.

10/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Lost Daughter (2021)

Marking the feature directorial debut of Maggie Gyllenhaal, who also adapted the novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante into script form, The Lost Daughter is very much a film looking at an experience common for most of the female population. It's about motherhood, the expectations placed on women to be the main care providers for children, and the thoughts that people process when they see those expectations being dismissed, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Olivia Colman plays Leda, a professor out to enjoy a bit of a working holiday. She will do some reading and writing, but most of her studying can take place on a sunny beach. Potential peace and bliss is spoiled, however, when a large family take over part of the beach. They aren't nice people, apparently, but Leda refusing to give up her own spot on the beach makes her a curiosity. In turn, Leda cannot stop watching young Nina, a woman struggling with her own daughter. When Nina's daughter goes missing one day, Leda saves the day by finding and returning her. But the child is unhappy, her favourite doll having gone missing while she was on her wanders. Different tensions rise, within Nina, within the extended family, within Leda, and there's a sense that things may go very badly. Perhaps the present is connected to the past, which we see as a younger Leda (played by Jessie Buckley) struggles with motherhood while trying to develop her learning and career.

The first thing to note here is the superb cast. Although I wasn't as won over by Buckley as some others seem to be, she's fine, this is generally a cast of great actors delivering great performances. Colman has been consistently superb for a long time now, way before any awards were handed over to her, and she continues to be arguably flawless in her main roles. Johnson has also been delivering great work over the past few years, outwith her work in the awful "Fifty Shades" movies, and she's excellent here. Ed Harris is a delight, playing the landlord/porter/islander who sees something in Leda that he responds to, and Peter Sarsgaard is enjoyable enough in a few scenes showing his character forming a strong connection with Leda over a shared love of linguistics. There's also a good supporting turn from Paul Mescal as Will, a young man who works at the sunny resort to earn some money in between terms. It's Will who warns Leda about the true nastiness of the people she got away with crossing once, and his character becomes more important in the third act. The story stays with Leda though, meaning most of the scenes focus on either Colman or Buckley.

It's the performances and the ideas in the script that helped to make this bearable. I'm afraid to say that very little else worked for me. Gyllenhaal does well in her choice to not spoonfeed the audience, allowing characters to behave erratically at times without making their motives obvious, but she indulges herself too often with an artistic and "breathy" approach to the shooting style that detracts from the bittersweet core of the film. Everything that isn't the actual acting, from the Dickon Hinchliffe music to the cinematography by Hélène Louvart, seems to be trying hard to undermine the acting. The film is a well-cast piece of work almost entirely undone by the pretentious errors of an earnest first-time feature director behind the camera.

As hesitant as I am to recommend this to people, it also remains just about worth your time. For now. There's a better film to be made about this, a film for anyone who has ever felt the urge to throttle someone saying "any children?" or "never mind, plenty time yet to start a family". Images of women defined only by motherhood are everywhere, it's a societal bias that I don't think will ever disappear, and art that fights back against that is important. It gives a voice to those who don't have that maternal urge, for whatever reason, and it reminds people that women are more than JUST wives and mothers.

The Lost Daughter could have easily been called The Lost Mother, The Lost Years, The Lost Love, The Lost Chances, or any of a dozen other titles. But it could also be referred to as The Lost Opportunity, subjectively speaking.

5/10

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