FLEE, an animated memoir/documentary telling of Afghan migrant Amin’s remarkable journey, is some powerful stuff. I’ve heard some people find the animation somehow alienating, that it lessons Amin’s story but I just don’t agree. The style of the animation, almost Hergé comic strip-esque might not always work – the more harrowing scenes might be better told in audio form only – but overall it wasn’t a bad decision to approach this story in animated form. Whatever your response normally is to a cartoon, whether you have an innate emotional connection to the form or not will affect your mileage for sure, but how else was this documentary that necessitated the anonymity of the subject supposed to be made in a visual medium? A feature-length interview in witness protection-shadows? This is often a tough watch but the humanity, the resilience and determination shines through and the few moments where Amin finds a scrap of true joy and happiness are truly sustaining. SSP
Review in Brief: Flee (2021)
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Review in Brief: The House (2022)
THE HOUSE is an unexpected, twisted delight and is unlikely to be unseated as the most striking animated feature of 2022 until ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE arrives towards the end of the year. This is an anthology of stories revolving around the various residents of an uncanny, vaguely sinister dwelling across three time periods and realities. One tale follows a poor Victorian family gifted the house by a sinister benefactor; the next an aspiring developer has to fight an infestation in order to sell the house; and finally an optimistic landlord attempts to run it as a boarding house in a flooded end of the world. All chapters utilise stop-motion to realise very differently designed groups of characters, from tiny-faced doll-people to giant beetles masquerading as rats (it makes sense in context). All the film’s stories have a moral to them, Roald Dahl-esque dark fables full of gallows humour, mischief and memorable visual flourishes. SSP
Review in Brief: The King’s Man (2021)
THE KING’S MAN just doesn’t work on so many levels. It has a big tone problem to begin with, and far too many scenes of people standing around explaining what World War I was. Sworn pacifist the Duke of Oxford Orlando (Ralph Fiennes) and his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) undertake a clandestine mission in Russia at the outbreak of WWI, going up against Rasputin (Rhys Ifans) and a secret society aiming to destabilise superpowers and take over the world. It’s left far too long before we get to experience one of the Kingsman franchise’s trademark dynamic action sequences (RIP choreographer Brad Allen) and the one scene that’s the right balance of ridiculous fun and spectacle is a dance-fight against Rasputin set to a remix of the 1812 Overture. Everything else is narratively clunky, incredibly misjudged and rather than emphasising the waste of human lives in the most destructive of wars in our history ends up insultingly turning the conflict into a Saturday morning cartoon. SSP
SSP Thinks Film 