Film

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

21/02/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

All things considered, this must be the least anticipated ‘sequel’ of the year. The Shrek franchise began way back in 2001 and, over the years, there have been three sequels of steadily diminishing quality. In 2011, Puss in Boots emerged as a Shrek spin-off and, it must be said, not a particularly memorable one. So Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is essentially a sequel to a spin-off. But those who take note of such things can’t fail to have missed the fact that the film has been nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA. This is because it has something up its sleeve that nobody expected. It’s really good.

In the adrenalin-fuelled opening sequence, we meet our titular hero (voiced once again by Antonio Banderas), who is singing and dancing for an adoring audience. Shortly thereafter, he takes on a whole army of warriors single-handedly, and rounds things off by doing battle with an ancient woodland bogeyman.

And then he er… dies. 

Of course, he’s a cat and everyone knows that felines have nine lives, right? But, as a helpful doctor explains, Puss has just used up life number eight. From now on he needs to be very careful indeed, because – if he allows himself to be killed one more time – his heroic escapades will be over for good. So when he encounters the genuinely creepy Wolf (Wagner Moura), he realises that this is an enemy he can never hope to defeat, and for the first time in his life, he’s afraid. Almost before you can say ‘game over,’ he’s hiding out in Mama Luna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph)’s cat refuge and pursuing a quiet, domesticated existence.

What follows is a clever meditation on the subject of death, but if that sounds like something you really don’t want to watch, let me assure you that yes, you actually do! As scripted by Paul Fisher and Tommy Swerdlow, this is a witty – sometimes hilarious -quest tale that never misses an opportunity to propel the franchise headlong into previously uncharted waters, while Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s flamboyant direction allows the animation department to steer the visuals into challenging new dimensions. Suffice to say that there are scenes here that challenge Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for eye-popping, jaw-dropping panache and make the original film look positively pedestrian.

There’s a welcome return for Puss’s ex-girlfriend, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), and a new sidekick in the shape of the criminally adorable Perrito (Harvey Guillén), a wannabe therapy dog who’s just pretending to be a cat, in a desperate attempt to extend his friendship group. And since the Shrek series has always riffed on popular fairy tales, we’re offered a villainous Goldilocks (Florence Pugh), plus her adoptive ursine family (Ray Winstone, Olivia Colman and Samson Kayo). There’s also arch-nemesis, Jack Horner (John Mulaney), a decidedly Trumpian creation, who – despite inheriting an entire pie-factory from his entitled parents – still insists on sticking his grubby thumbs into every opportunity that comes his way.

And did I mention the fabulous Latin American flavoured soundtrack by Heitor Pereira? I leave the cinema dancing.

While PIB:TLW might not be a comfortable fit for younger kids, for everyone from eight years and upwards, it’s a rollicking, rib-tickling adventure that never loses its momentum. My advice? Put aside your expectations and see this on the big screen. You won’t be disappointed.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Devotion

18/02/23

Amazon Prime

In the same year that Top Gun: Maverick achieves an Oscar nomination, another film about navy airmen crash-lands onto Amazon Prime, making barely a ripple. Whereas TGM was a complete invention, Devotion is a more serious undertaking, based around real life hero, Jesse Brown. Brown was the first African-American aviator to complete the United States Navy basic training programme and was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross. What’s more, his exploits largely took place in a confrontation that has been brushed under the carpet of history – The Korean War.

As portrayed by Jonathan Majors, Brown is a man weighed down by the responsibility of being a hero to so many people of colour – a man who, on a daily basis, hurls insults at his own reflection, based on all the racist abuse he’s encountered over the years, mostly from his fellow airmen. This strange ritual is overheard by Tom Hudner (Glen Powell), newly graduated from Flight Academy and chosen to work as Brown’s ‘wingman.’ (If Powell looks familiar, it’s because he enjoyed a similar role opposite Tom Cruise in TGM.)

Hudner soon comes to value Brown’s unconventional approach to flying, and he’s witness to the man’s evident devotion to his wife, Daisy (Christina Jackson), and to their young daughter, Pam. When Daisy charges Hudner with the task of ‘being there for’ her husband, he takes the responsibility seriously.

The early stretches of the movie depict Brown and his fellow pilots training in state-of-the-art Corsair jet fighters for a war that might happen at any moment. We are witness to the men’s rivalries, their various triumphs and disasters – and theres also a sequence where, on leave in Cannes, Brown encounters Hollywood starlet, Elizabeth Taylor (Serinda Swan) and accepts her invitation to meet up at her favourite casino.

But it’s not until around the halfway mark, when the airmen are sent off for active service, that the film finally… ahem, takes flight. There are some impressive aerial battle sequences (which provide a decent test for the new projector we’ve bought for watching movies at home) and, if the film’s ending is somewhat downbeat, well, this is history. Unlike some recent ‘true stories’ we’ve witnessed, screenwriters Jake Crane and Jonathan Stewart stick rigorously to the facts. As the inevitable series of post-credit photographs attests, they have been pretty meticulous. The Elizabeth Taylor meeting? It actually happened.

Devotion is by no means a perfect film. I fail to learn enough about any of the other airmen in Brown’s crew to care much about what happens to them and, if I’m honest, all that rampant testosterone does get a little wearisome in places. What’s more, with a running time in excess of two hours, my patience is somewhat tested in the film’s meandering first half. But it’s worth sticking with for those soaring battle sequences which really do take you right into the heart of the action, and to learn about an important historical figure.

3. 5 stars

Philip Caveney

The Quiet Girl (An Cailin Ciuin)

18/02/23

Amazon Prime

Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl (An Cailin Ciuin), based on a short story by Claire Keegan, is a beautiful film, as intense as it is languorous. It’s a simple story, elegantly told. The titular girl is Cáit (Catherine Clinch), and she’s quiet in many ways: tongue-tied, illiterate, watchful, an outsider. When we first see her, she’s hiding – in a field and then under her bed. She seems choked with secrets and longing, simultaneously yearning to be seen and to disappear.

Her home life is one of poverty and neglect. The house is full of children, and there’s another on the way. Her Mam (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is exhausted; her Da (Michael Patric) is a wastrel, gambling their meagre income and failing to do any work. He spends his time, predictably, with other women or in the pub, and Cáit’s mistrust of him is palpable. Is he abusive in other ways?

The kids at school call Cáit a weirdo, so it’s no surprise she wants to run away. And it’s no surprise to us that Mam can’t cope, and packs her off to spend the summer with some distant relatives – although it’s certainly a shock to Cáit, who isn’t told anything about where she’s going, before being bundled into Da’s car.

But her banishment proves her salvation, and – under Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and Seán (Andrew Bennett)’s gentle care and tutelage – Cáit blossoms. The healing is a two-way process: these stand-in grandparents have their own sorrow, evident in the carefully preserved child’s bedroom Cáit sleeps in, with its train wallpaper and wardrobe full of ‘just the right size’ clothes. Bairéad captures the sense of endlessness that comes with the long school holidays, while cinematographer Kate McCullough bathes the Irish countryside in a golden glow, making this month of respite seem like a whole new life.

There’s a raft of narratives out there that plumb the same notion: a single summer that shapes a person’s life – Willy Russell’s One Summer, Noel Streatfeild’s The Growing Summer, Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, to name but a few (in fact, Heidi features as a bedtime story here, although – of course – her tale is the reverse of Cáit’s). But this Irish-language film stands out, perhaps because of Clinch’s heartbreaking performance – you can almost feel her aching with loneliness and love. Despite the overt simplicity of the tale, there’s a lot to uncover.

With an Oscar nomination for best international feature, The Quiet Girl seems destined to make a lot of noise.

4.7 stars

Susan Singfield

Women Talking

15/02/23

The Cameo, Edinburgh

Sarah Polley’s Women Talking is an unusual film, in that it really is all in the words. It’s a film to listen to, rather than a film to watch. Based on the novel by Miriam Toews, itself based on a true story, it is billed as an ‘imagined response to real events’. This is, to my mind, both its strength and its weakness.

The real events are shocking: in Bolivia, between 2005 and 2009, more than a hundred girls and women were drugged and raped by the men in their Mennonite community. They were knocked out with cattle tranquillisers so that, when they woke up – bruised and bloody, pregnant and diseased – they didn’t really know what had happened, although terrifying fragments of memory sometimes surfaced. The men offered various explanations: they had been visited by ghosts or the devil; they were lying; they were hysterical. Eventually, two men were caught in the act; they gave other names, and eight were gaoled.

To their credit, neither the book nor the film dwell on the violence. We’ve all seen too many women brutalised on screen. Instead, they deal with the imagined aftermath. The story is moved to Canada; the collective victims ascribed characters and backstories. Rooney Mara is Ona, pregnant, but still radiating love. Clare Foy is Salome, with vengeance in her heart. Jessie Buckley is Mariche, minded to stay and try to forgive, because that’s what God decrees and she doesn’t want to be damned. All of the community’s men have gone to the city to post bail for the two who have been arrested, meaning that the women have forty-eight hours to make a decision. Do they stay and forgive? Stay and fight? Or leave, and start again?

There’s an attempt here at generating tension: the forty-eight hour deadline; the possibility that the women might be too timid to either fight or leave. But, in truth, this doesn’t really work. Who could doubt that these articulate, confident women would show their mettle when it came to it, that they wouldn’t do their utmost to protect their daughters?

The conversation is fascinating, incorporating far-reaching and nuanced questions about power, education, complicity and the role of an ally. I’m engrossed in the arguments. However, I can’t pretend I wouldn’t like a bit more dramatic drive, a bit more of a traditional story arc. Perhaps I wouldn’t feel this way if these were real testimonies – a verbatim piece would have more heft – but, as it’s fiction, I feel it’s asking a lot of an audience to sit through a film that could just as easily be a podcast or a radio play.

I’m glad that Polley has moved away from the book’s male narrator, August (Ben Whishaw), justified by Toews because women and girls in the Molotschna colony don’t learn to read or write. Given the subject matter, it seems like a no-brainer to silence him, so that he’s just the transcriber, and the story we hear is not filtered through a man’s perspective.

Despite my quibbles, there’s no doubting that these are strong, nuanced performances, imbued with dignity and pain, nor that the women talking need to be heard. It’s an important film. Just not, to my mind, an especially good one.

3.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

15/02/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Marcel is an unlikely star. He began his film career in a short clip on YouTube in 2010 and, over the next few years, starred in two more brief adventures. These subsequently went viral and were viewed by over 50 million people. A feature film was a possibility, but could something created on a whim have sufficient clout to sustain a running time of one and a half hours? On the evidence of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, the answer to that is a resounding ‘yes!’

Marcel seems to have been inspired by one of those weird little items you’ll sometimes encounter at the bottom of a long-forgotten drawer. You don’t remember where you got him or even why you hung onto him for so long – maybe you had a vague notion that he might come in useful one day? Created by Dean Fleischer Camp and endearingly voiced by Jenny Slate, Marcel is the cutest one-eyed shell with doll’s feet you’re ever likely to encounter. He can talk! He can sing! He can even knock out a mean version of Amazing Grace, using a piece of pasta as a trumpet. He lives in an Airbnb with his nanna, Connie (Isabella Rossellini), and he misses the other members of his family, who were inadvertently swept into a suitcase when the apartment’s previous occupants went their separate ways.

Now Marcel and Connie have a visitor called Dean (Fleischer Camp), a filmmaker who has decided to capture the duo’s antics on camera and who, in a move that echoes Marcel’s origins, decides to post the resulting footage online…

If this sounds like an unpromising concept, don’t be misled. Marcel is a delightful creation, who easily charms his way into my affections without ever being over sentimental. It’s hard to pin down his appeal in words, but pretty much everything he says makes me warm to him, whether he’s explaining his daily routines, demonstrating one of his Heath Robinson-like inventions or merely interacting with Connie. The screenplay, written by Fleischer Camp, Slate and Nick Paley, is beautifully nuanced, which means that – while younger viewers can simply enjoy the jokes and the lo-fi stop frame animation – more mature audiences will appreciate the more serious topics, like dementia and bereavement.

When Marcel wonders if his online followers might be able to help him locate the missing members of his family, the film cranks up a gear, drawing in real life TV personalities like Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, and even chat show titan Conan O’ Brien, who are clearly as impressed by Marcel as the rest of us. Utterly goofy and totally irresistible, MTSWSO has one other plus point worth mentioning: the various trailers for the movie utilise material that you won’t find in the actual feature. Trust me, I see a lot of trailers and this makes a refreshing change.

This film has, of course, been Oscar-nominated and – while I personally believe that Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio truly deserves to lift the ‘best animation’ gong – I won’t be totally surprised if a one-eyed shell beats everyone’s expectations. Whatever happens, this is a must-see.

But be warned: all but the most cynical will be in serious danger of falling head-over-heels for Marcel’s considerable charms.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Blue Jean

14/02/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

It’s hard to remember sometimes, from our current vantage point, just how deeply ingrained homophobia was in 1980s Britain. Writer/director Georgia Oakley’s debut film takes us back to 1988, and the implementation of Margaret Thatcher’s controversial Clause 28, which explicitly banned schools and local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality. I was in sixth form then, and I mostly remember finding it ridiculous – as if, without the clause, there would be advertisements everywhere. “Come on, kids! Be gay! It’s great!” But I only had the luxury of dismissing it as stupid because I was straight. I don’t know how it made the gay kids feel. I didn’t know anyone who said they were gay back then (although, of course, many have come out since). I don’t blame them for keeping schtum. I don’t remember the schoolyard as a place that celebrated difference.

Jean (Rosy McEwen) is a PE teacher. She’s also a lesbian, recently divorced from her husband, and enjoying a new relationship with Viv (Kerrie Hayes). But while Viv is at ease with herself – out and proud and politically engaged – Jean is less confident about her sexual identity. She’s still keen to fit in with the heteronormative world; she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself, either at school or with her family. It’s a matter of survival: however shocking it may seem, she’s right to fear her that job is on the line. She manages by drawing a clear distinction between work and home: she lives in a different town from the one she teaches in, and refuses drinks invitations from her colleagues. Her social life revolves around a gay club and a lesbian commune, and here she’s free to be herself.

Until fifteen-year-old Lois (Lucy Halliday) shows up in the club. She’s belligerent and bold – and she’s also Jean’s student. Suddenly, Jean’s worlds collide. Her carefully segregated life is under threat, and she’s torn between fight or flight.

Oakley’s script gives us a clear insight into the era, and into the overt discrimination that permeated popular culture. McEwen shows us a young woman forced into a choice she doesn’t want to make: she has to be a hero or a failure; she can’t just be; the government’s weird preoccupation with consenting adults’ sex lives has a profound impact on real people. Hayes is heartbreaking as Viv, whose clear-eyed view never dulls her pain, and newcomer Halliday is mesmerising on the screen.

Clause 28 was finally repealed in 2003, and things have certainly improved – although, of course, there’s still a way to go. Blue Jean serves as an important reminder of why we can’t ever relax our vigilance, and why we mustn’t let things slide. People’s lives and happiness depend on it.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

The Whale

11/02/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is rapidly approaching the end of his life. Since the death of his partner, Adam, he has allowed his health to decline. Inanimate, a binge eater and a housebound recluse, he now weighs in at over 600 pounds and, as his friend, Liz (Hong Chau), repeatedly tells him, if he doesn’t get himself to a hospital he will, inevitably, suffer a massive heart attack. But Charlie has no health insurance and insists on working at every opportunity, teaching English Literature online – though he pretends that the camera on his computer is broken so his students cannot see him.

But Charlie still has one burning ambition, – to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), whom he abandoned when she was eight years old. It’s not going to be easy, because she is hostile to his approaches, blaming him for the fact that her mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), is a heavy drinker and still very much a loner. Into this scenario wanders Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a young missionary, seeking to give Charlie some spiritual help – but mostly looking for his own salvation.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky with a screenplay by Samuel D Hunter (based on his stage play), The Whale was filmed during lockdown, and (very fittingly) feels trapped by its stage origins, confining itself almost completely to Charlie’s dark and claustrophobic apartment. It’s been accused by some as an exercise in fat-shaming, though this seems unfair: Charlie is an engaging and complex character, dealing with grief and addiction. Fraser wears convincing prosthetics, created by a whole team of artists, which serve to illuminate the almost cartoonish grotesquery of his size, while still making us empathise with his plight.

There’s no doubting the power of Fraser’s Oscar-nominated performance in the central role, fuelled to some degree, I think, by his own punishing experiences in the movie industry. In fact, all of the performances here are skilled, particularly Sink’s incandescent turn as an anger-fuelled teenager, determined to exact her revenge on just about everyone she encounters. The scene where Charlie has to offer to pay her to visit him is particularly tragic.

If I’m honest, I think there are better, more nuanced films in this year’s Oscar contenders, but I won’t be at all surprised if Fraser gets the nod for best actor. His performance here is exemplary, and The Whale is a powerful and affecting drama.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Fantastic Life of Minnie Rubinski

09/02/23

The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

Vision Mechanic’s production of The Fantastic Life of Minnie Rubinski was conceived during the pandemic and is inspired by creative director Kim Bergsagel’s mother (real name Sondra Rubin). Part movie, part installation and part puppet-show, it’s an affecting look into the memories and changing fortunes of one woman’s life.

Entering the performance space, we find ourselves in a darkened room dominated by a central ‘brain,’ a little shelter where we are invited to sit awhile and listen to the recorded sounds of a jumble of voices and musical cues. From there, we can follow one of a number of illuminated ‘synapses’ to a whole series of screens showing vignettes of key incidents from Minnie’s life. The characters are puppets, moving around custom-built sets, which are presented in intricate detail – check out the sequence in a 1950s supermarket and take a close look at the hundreds of items ranged on the shelves. The attention to detail is astonishing!

The scenes we are offered range from charming glimpses of Minnie’s childhood, to the years of her unfulfilling marriage, her time spent running a swish art gallery and latterly, her final days in a care home as she increasingly descends into dementia. It’s in these latter stretches that some of her adventures become particularly bizarre and the lines between memories and hallucinations are allowed to blur. We can choose to watch the sequences chronologically or simply go to whichever screen is vacant at any given time and piece everything together from what’s onscreen. (I really recommend this approach. It’s oddly like playing detective and the storyline is so skilfully handled, it never becomes confusing.)

Of course, a production like this isn’t the work of one person, but of a whole team of creative artists – puppet makers, set dressers, musicians, you name it – and their splendid endeavours are up there on the screens for all to see, as they pool their diverse talents to create a charming and fascinating narrative. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.

Interested parties should make a beeline for the Fruitmarket Gallery, because this delightful production, showing as part of the Manipulate Festival, is only available to view until Sunday 12th February. Go and spend forty-five minutes in Minnie’s extraordinary world. It’ll be time well spent.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Saint Omer

06/02/23

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh

To describe Saint Omer as a courtroom drama would be doing it an immense disservice. Yes, the action does take place in a courtroom in the titular French town – and yes, the story is inspired by real-life events, namely the trial of Fabienne Kabou, accused of the infanticide of her young daughter in 2016. But Alice Diop’s slow-burn feature is about so much more than what meets the eye.

In this version of the tale, the accused is Senegalese Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), whose only defence for leaving her daughter on a beach to die is that witchcraft impelled her to do it.’ The court’s Président (Valérie Petit) is understandably mystified and exasperated by the woman’s apparent conviction that, having admitted to the murder, she is perfectly justified in submitting a plea of not guilty.

Successful author, Rama (Kayije Kagame), also Senegalese, feels impelled to attend the trial. She’s pregnant herself and is in the process of writing a new book based around the myth of Medea, and believes that elements of the story are echoed in Coly’s situation. Rama also meets up with Coly’s manipulative mother, Odile (Salimata Kamate), who exerts a quiet sense of control, while utterly refusing to discuss her daughter’s claims of sorcery. As the trial progresses, Rama feels herself increasingly drawn to Coly’s plight.

Slow-paced and deeply compelling, Saint Omer feels like a meditation on the unfair demands of womanhood – that, purely because of their biology, women are forever cast as unremittingly evil whenever they are unable to fulfil the demands that motherhood places upon them. Everything builds to an impassioned address from defence lawyer, Maître Vaudenay (Ayrélia Petit), her remarks addressed direct to camera, so there can be no doubt of their intention.

It’s interesting to note how little cinematic artifice is on display here – hardly any of the cuts, dissolves and pans we associate with a movie are utilised, while characters remain curiously inert throughout proceedings. Coly is even dressed in clothes that virtually blend with the wood panelled background of the courtroom. She is, it seems, already virtually invisible. An extract from Pier Paolo Passolini’s film Medea (1969) seems to have been included merely to accentuate the gulf between Rama’s original notion and the stark reality of Coly’s situation.

And, unlike any other courtroom drama I’ve seen, there’s no interest in recording the outcome of the trial, and this seems entirely appropriate. Saint Omer is much more interested in what is left unsaid. It’s an undeniably powerful and illuminating film, expertly told.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Fabelmans

28/01/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

In the wake of the pandemic, several film directors seem to be have been inspired to take a closer look at at their own roots. Already this year we’ve had Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light, Alejandro G Innarutu’s Bardo and James Gray’s Armageddon Time – though good luck tracking down any cinema or streaming service showing the latter.

Now comes the turn of Steven Spielberg, arguably one of our greatest living directors, who is clearly looking to settle some old ghosts with The Fabelmans. The film is preceded by a short clip featuring an avuncular-looking Spielberg, humbly thanking the audience for coming to the cinema to see his latest offering. What we are about to watch, he tells us, is his most personal film ever.

It begins in 1952, when the young Sam Fabelman (Mateo Zoreyan) goes to his very first picture show along with his parents, Burt (Paul Dano), a computer programmer, and Mitzi (Michelle Williams), a talented pianist. Sam is initially apprehensive about the upcoming experience – he’s heard terrible things! – but is transfixed by Cecil B DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, particularly an extended sequence that depicts an epic train crash. That Christmas, Sam is given a lovely toy train set and he cannot stop himself from attempting to recreate what he saw in the movie and, inevitably, capturing it on film.

Time rolls on, and a teenage Sam (Gabrielle LaBelle) is living in Arizona, where Burt has gone for work. He’s still obsessively making amateur movies, aided by his willing schoolmates (including the famous World War 2 on a budget epic Escape to Nowhere) and thinks nothing of the fact that Burt’s friend, ‘Uncle’ Bennie (Seth Rogan), is a constant presence in the family’s life. It’s only when he is editing a film about a recent family camping trip that the camera reveals something he has previously had no inkling of…

The Fabelmans is essentially a family drama, but one that encompasses some weighty topics: mental health issues, the prevalence of anti-semitism and the expectations that parents can sometimes place on their children. Above all hovers the love of cinema, the almost magical ability it has to transform a viewer’s world, to allow them to escape from reality into a variety of uncharted realms. This is a warm and affectionate study of the director’s beginnings and, if it occasionally ventures perilously close to schmaltz, Spielberg is deft enough to repeatedly it snatch back from the abyss. The world he creates here is utterly believable.

There’s plenty to enjoy. I love the brief appearance by Judd Hirsch as all-round force of nature, Uncle Boris – a former silent movie actor, who recognises the nascent director lurking inside Sam and calls him to do something about it. There’s a beautifully nuanced performance from the ever-impressive Williams as a woman who has sacrificed her own creative ambitions to the demands of her family and is suffering because of it, and there’s a delicious, foul-mouthed cameo from (of all people) David Lynch. Throw in Janusz Kaminski’s gorgeous cinematography and legendary composer John Williams’ music, and you’ve got something a little bit special.

And while The Fabelmans is not quite the five-star masterpiece that so many critics have declared it to be, it’s nonetheless a fascinating look at the filmmaker’s roots and one that never loses momentum throughout its duration.

So don’t wait for streaming. See it where it belongs, and Steven will thank you in person.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney