Agat Films
13. Holy Cow
Deep in the leafy French countryside, a scruffy teenage layabout Totone (Clément Faveau) has to look after his younger sister Claire (Luna Garret) after the sudden death of their father. His answer to their dire financial problems? Making award-winning luxury cheese. Louise Courvoisier’s debut film is a heart-tugging coming-of-age drama, rooted in the soil of the Jura region where she grew up. She offers an earthy insider’s view of how strenuous life can be for agricultural workers, and how wrenching it is when carefree youth turns to relentless, responsible adulthood. But she also fashions a warm, romantic, gorgeously scenic and ultimately hopeful tale of underdogs working together in the sunshine to improve their lives. Blessed are the cheesemakers, as Monty Python once put it. (NB)
Bleecker Street
14. The Friend
A giant, sloppy Great Dane tugs Naomi Watts around the streets of Manhattan, but by the end of this lovely film about affection and grief the physical comedy with the dog seems the least of it. Watts smoothly play Iris, a creative writing teacher whose best friend, Walter, a famous womanising author, kills himself. He leaves her his dog, Apollo, even though she lives in a one-room apartment in a pet-free building. Dealing with Apollo becomes a way for Iris to grapple with her feelings of love and loss for Walter, played by Bill Murray in flashback scenes filled with such wit and tenderness that they have a great impact in spite of his minimal screen time. Based on Sigrid Nunez’s eloquent, acclaimed 2018 novel, the film was directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose films include the underrated Montana Story (2021) with Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague. Avoiding mawkish clichés, they have created a gem of a film that is funny and touching whether you are a pet lover or not. Come for the rambunctious Great Dane, stay for the beautifully rendered emotions. (CJ)
BBC/ Aardman Animations
15. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Aardman’s two greatest heroes are back – and so is their sneakiest ever adversary, a diabolical penguin named Feathers McGraw. Directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, the Oscar-nominated Vengeance Most Fowl is chock-full of the qualities that make Wallace & Gromit’s farcical adventures so cherished: the painstaking stop-motion claymation, the Heath Robinson-style gadgetry, the winking homages to classic cinema, the gleefully silly British humour, and the deep affection for the characters and their world. Above all, it a treat to see Feathers McGraw, more than 30 years after he was introduced in The Wrong Trousers. But there is more to the Bristol-based studio’s new film than the nostalgic whimsy you would expect. When Wallace invents a robotic garden gnome that does all of Gromit’s favourite gardening jobs (and that’s even before it turns evil), the story takes a canalboat trip into Mission: Impossible territory by addressing fears about artificial intelligence. (NB)
A24
16. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
The immensely talented director Rungano Nyoni, whose I Am Not a Witch (2017) won a Bafta for outstanding British debut, makes artful, accessible films of great visual panache. Her latest is a clear-eyed drama about cultural and generational conflict. The heroine, Shula, is a cosmopolitan woman recently returned from the city to her village in Zambia. Nyoni conveys this dissonance at once, as Shula drives home from a costume party dressed in a glittery silver helmet and dark glasses (an homage to a Missy Elliott video) and finds her Uncle Fred dead on a dirt road. As the story takes us into the family’s traditional funeral rituals, it slowly reveals that Shula and two cousins had been abused by Fred as children, a reality their mothers put aside as they mourn their brother. Nyoni’s style is realistic even as she drops in surreal images. The narrative about secrecy and the trauma of sexual assault builds in power right to the end, when Shula recalls a children’s television programme and the title of this stunning film finally makes sense. (CJ)
The numbers in this piece do not represent rankings, but are intended to make the separate entries as clear as possible.
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