Every year audiences flock to the cinema on Boxing Day for a well-earned break from talking to friends and relatives (and if you talk during the movie, shame on you). As usual, this year\u2019s lineup caters for all tastes \u2013 delivering arty dramas, foreign films, spectacles for kids and splashy mainstream fare.<\/p>\n
Urchin<\/p>\n
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The directorial debut of Babygirl and Triangle of Sadness actor Harris Dickinson is a warts-and-all character study and portrait of homelessness \u2013 a fact established in the opening scene when protagonist Mike (Frank Dillane) wakes by the side of the road to the sound of a ranting street preacher. The film immediately feels like a genuine, lived-in portrait of an undercurrent of British society Ralph McTell memorably evoked in his great song Streets of London.<\/p>\n
For a while I wondered: will this be a rise-from-the-gutter story? A tale of redemption, or starting again? As it turns out, Urchin isn\u2019t easy to pigeonhole, though it\u2019s certainly an empathetic and finely calibrated drama: social realist in spirit but never oppressively heavy. You want the best for Mike, despite his moments of cruelty and self-sabotage, yet neither the film nor Dillane\u2019s excellent performance play the pity card. The point is made that starting again is always possible but rarely a linear, entirely upwards trajectory.<\/p>\n
Read more: \u2018I\u2019ve paled up for roles \u2013 like when I played Voldemort\u2019: Frank Dillane on zombies, burnout and new film Urchin<\/a><\/p>\n My Brother\u2019s Band<\/p>\n \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Fingers crossed that Hollywood never gets its mitts on this moving and easy-to-watch French film (titled The Marching Band overseas) about a conductor with leukemia who discovers he\u2019s adopted and tracks down his biological brother, learning that he too is passionate about music. Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) is the conductor, famous and at the top of his game; Jimmy (Pierre Lottin) is his brother, who plays trombone in a community marching band. The potential for this generally feelgood but bittersweet film to devolve into Mr Holland\u2019s Opus-esque mawkishness is present throughout but, in the hands of director Emmanuel Courcol, it remains well balanced and never remotely cloying.<\/p>\n More could have been made of the high\/low art divide implicit in the premise but I\u2019m glad Courcol leaves it largely untouched, letting the beauty of both forms of musical performance speak for themselves without sermonising about how All Art Matters. The story is smartly and accessibly staged, with well-drawn characters and appealing performances.<\/p>\n Read more: The Marching Band review \u2013 tender French concert bromance gets out the trombones<\/a><\/p>\n The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants<\/p>\n \u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n<\/p>\n SpongeBob SquarePants is a good egg: annoyingly high energy and bug-eyed, sure, but a fundamentally decent sponge bobbing his way through a wet and wild universe. The latest in an expanding canon of movies (with four to date, and three spin-offs in the works) continues the franchise\u2019s brisk pace, poppin\u2019 fresh colour palettes and daffy mashup of live action and animation. The story is essentially an underwater road trip, whereby the blockish yellow hero ventures into a dark, Halloweenish part of the ocean, determined to become a \u201cbig guy\u201d and channel his \u201cintestinal fortitude\u201d.<\/p>\n Read more: SpongeBob at 20: how the pineapple-dwelling fry cook endured<\/a><\/p>\n Sentimental Value<\/p>\n \u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There are some interesting, left-of-centre ideas floating around in this father-daughter relationship drama between two creative and complicated people: dancer Nora (Renate Reinsve) and her film-maker father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd), who has written a new script just for her. In an introductory scene the family home is described by a narrator as a human-like entity, as if it can think and feel: \u201cWhat the house disliked more than noise was silence.\u201d<\/p>\n The house in question was clearly meant to carry metaphorical weight but much of it doesn\u2019t quite land in this well-acted but drifty and amorphous film, lacking shape and momentum. Joachim Trier, director of The Worst Person in the World<\/a>, focuses on gradually teasing out the fractures in the relationship between his two leads but seems to get distracted along the way, the back half in particular feeling quite shaggy and unfocused.<\/p>\n Read more: Sentimental Value review \u2013 Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd is an egomaniac director in act of ancestor worship<\/a><\/p>\n Rental Family<\/p>\n \u2605\u2605<\/p>\n<\/p>\n At first I was touched by the look on Brendan Fraser\u2019s face in Rental Family. It\u2019s soft, kind, a little happy, a little unsure; the look of a compassionate person trying to make sense of a difficult world. But after a while it became clear he had no other modes or layers; a shallow performance in a film that starts off relatively strongly but devolves into cheesiness and tissue box sentiment. Which is a shame, given it has a great premise: Fraser plays Phillip Vanderploeg, a US actor living in Japan, who takes a job as the \u201ctoken white guy\u201d for a company that provides actors to pose as family members and friends for strangers.<\/p>\n There was so much potential here for funny, profound, poignant commentaries on social isolation, sense of belonging and human connection but they\u2019re almost completely squandered by the director and co-writer, Hikari. I concur with this review<\/a> from the Guardian\u2019s Radheyan Simonpillai.<\/p>\n Read more: Rental Family review \u2013 Brendan Fraser is stranded in mawkish misfire<\/a><\/p>\n Anaconda<\/p>\n There\u2019s always at least one big silly Hollywood blockbuster included in the Boxing Day lineup. This year\u2019s (which I\u2019m yet to see) is a bit of an oddity: a meta action-comedy connected to the pulpy 1997 creature feature of the same name. THR reported<\/a> that this film, which stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd as indie film-makers who head to the Amazon to make a dodgy remake of Anaconda, exists \u201csomewhere between a reboot, reimaging and spiritual sequel\u201d.<\/p>\n The Housemaid<\/p>\n Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried headline this Paul Feig-directed adaptation of the bestselling novel of the same name, which has been compared to lurid female-led 90s thrillers. Sweeney plays the titular character, Millie, who has a troubled past but accepts a job with the well-to-do Winchester family, soon discovering all sorts of juicy secrets \u2013 or, as Variety\u2019s critic<\/a> puts it, \u201cdiabolical developments\u201d. I haven\u2019t seen it yet but my interest is certainly piqued; the Guardian\u2019s Peter Bradshaw<\/a> gave it four stars and called it \u201can outrageously enjoyable \u2013 or at any rate enjoyably outrageous \u2013 psycho-suspense thriller\u201d.<\/p>\n