Holmes & Watson is easily the best film made in 2018. Ah, ok, you’ve caught me in a lie. It is, in fact, one of the biggest flops of the year. It’s absolutely no wonder that the press weren’t given a sneak peek of the movie before its release because it would have been akin to throwing a defenceless, bleating lamb to a pack of ravenous, salivating wolves. It’s elementary, my dear viewers; this purportedly humorous – and I use that word very loosely – take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mysteries, featuring observant fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick John Watson, is a load of tosh. Holmes & Watson is a proverbial slap in the face for deep-dyed fans of the original stories. It was a real struggle to reach the end.
Echoes of the film Haifaa al-Mansour’s tepid Mary Shelley biopic should have been reverberate through Colette, which sees Keira Knightley lead her best film since 2014’s The Imitation Game.From director Wash Westmoreland, this period drama uproots the early promise of corset clichés to deliver a more satisfying exploration of gender restriction and rebellion. It helps too that the lavish production aesthetic makes for delightful viewing.
Tim Wardle’s mind-blowing, consistently watchable, documentary lays out the most incredibly twisty true story that I’ve heard in a long time. If it seems, at first, as though audiences will be treated to nothing more than a heart-warming tale of human connection against the odds, the breezy tone soon dissipates as we turn a corner towards something far more sinister. We soon realise that Three Identical Strangers is a ‘more than meets the eye’ allegory of immorality and corruption.
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