Despite a worldwide pandemic, in 2020 life went on. Ten years on from crowd-sourced documentary LIFE IN A DAY Kevin Macdonald and his team did it again, this time picking 25 July 2020 as the date of record. This world-spanning journey proceeds chronologically from sunrise to sunset, stories grouped by subject, predominant emotion or theme, all held together with neat editing and a beautiful but unobtrusive score. We meet an opera-singing surgeon belting out an aria before pulling up his mask to resume his duties, and a couple undergoing IVF treatment hitting heartbreaking setback. We see the particular extra challenge Covid deaths impose on predominantly Muslim countries with the religious importance of cleansing every body before burial. We reconnect with one contributor to the original Life in a Day whose teenage son has passed away in the intervening years, and in the year of George Floyd’s murder an African American woman tells the story of how she has lost three brothers to the police. Even though it gives us some upsetting sights, LIAD 2020 is ultimately a hopeful and universal document of the resilience of humanity in the most trying of times. SSP
Review in Brief: Life in a Day 2020 (2021)
Fugitive Dreams (2020) Review – MANIFF
Showa Era Godzilla Movies Ranked (1954-1975)
Review in Brief: Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
Exhausted as so many of us might be by all the needlessly aggressive online discourse attached to this, it’s finally here, what is apparently the closest we are ever going to get to seeing Zack Snyder’s original vision for JUSTICE LEAGUE. The weaknesses of Joss Whedon’s scattershot cut stand out all the starker in comparison, and while this is by any measure too long and portentous, there are some vast improvements on show in this superior version. The development and character arcs of the Flash (Ezra Miller) and especially Cyborg (Ray Fisher) become the films strongest and most connective passages and the final act especially is now more entertaining and impactful. We still have some jarring character popping against CG backgrounds, Batman (Ben Affleck) using more guns than ever before and an egregious dark epilogue, but this does end up standing on the better end of the DCEU quality scale (take that how you will). SSP
Review in Brief: Space Sweepers (2021)
SPACE SWEEPERS is an ambitious, vibrant, zongo Korean space opera that runs a bit long and perhaps suffers from being overstuffed with too many ideas, but you go with it because you grow to love this dysfunctional crew/family of misfits (lead by Kim Tae-ri). The influence of the sci-fi of Luc Besson, Joss Whedon and James Gunn in addition to countless anime touchstones on director Jo Sung-hee is obvious, but the archetypal characters win you over with warm relationship stuff and committed energy throughout. No, I’ve no idea why the big bad (Richard Armitage) occasionally goes red and veiny and gains a reverb on his voice – it’s probably one of half a dozen more ideas would need a TV series to explain. Unwieldy it may be, but Space Sweepers gets more than enough right and does action and humour with gusto to hope for more Korean filmmakers to head into the realms of big-budget sci-fi. SSP
MANIFF Review in Brief: The Catch (2020)
This film was watched at a Manchester International Film Festival Virtual Screening.
Gritty family drama THE CATCH is firmly rooted in a distinct sense of place. The plot steadily drifts but the raw emotionality frequently spills over in this tale of a woman (Katia Winter) returning home to her estranged family in Maine carrying with her trauma and secrets. The lobstermen drug smuggling subplot is a weird match for the low-key dramatic elements and results in some dramatic contrivance in the final act. Writer-director Matthew Ya-Hsiung Balzer’s film struggles to rise beyond a certain level, but he’s a promising talent and it’s all very well filmed and performed. The past few years have seen a glut of heavy farming dramas so perhaps this is a sign of an incoming wave of the coastal equivalent on the way. SSP
Review in Brief: News of the World (2020)
NEWS OF THE WORLD might feel slighter than Paul Greengrass’ very best work but it’s handsome and heartfelt and manages to sneak in some very relevant social commentary to the here-and-now. Tom Hanks plays a retired Army captain traveling the Southern states to read the news to locals but finds a new calling when he encounters a German girl abandoned on the side of the road who has apparently been raised by a Native tribe (Helena Zengel). Don’t expect many spontaneous shootouts – this is one of very few Westerns that acknowledges that you had to turn in your arms on entering a new town, a particular problem when you come across an outlaw-run town whose leader demands his legend is promoted by the smartly-dressed new arrival with a loud voice. The harshness of life in these times comes across even if Hanks’ thoroughly decent star personality seems an odd fit for the period. Episodic storytelling and some contrivance is mostly overcome by the winning chemistry of the leads. SSP
Review in Brief: First Cow (2019/20)
FIRST COW is one of those films that drops you into another time and every small detail adds to its palpable authenticity. Nobody films slow and beautiful stories like Kelly Reichardt. Cookie (John Magaro) is a man trying to get by in a harsh time, meeting a fellow survivor, a fellow man without place (Orion Lee) along the way. It is strange how many historical films erase non-white characters but First Cow presents a Northern Territory fort as it would have been – a melting pot of people from everywhere. This may be the tensest film about frying batter ever made – Cookie and King-Lu are making a killing selling their cakes, but inevitably the local landowner (Toby Jones) develops a liking for them and invites the pair to cater for a function, blissfully unaware they are made using milk from his cow, the only one in the Territory. This is glorious filmmaking from a director at the height of her powers. SSP
SSP Thinks Film 