From directing duo Will Becher and Richard Phelan, Farmageddon is the immensely clever, laugh a minute follow up to Aardman’s similarly inspired Shaun the Sheep Movie of 2015. Yes, it really was that long ago. The film is also the apex in the history of a character who has transgressed from Wallace and Gromit sub player to international superstar. Note that Shaun’s first big screen foray won the Bristol based studio box office takings of over $100m. Perhaps part two isn’t quite so faultless as its pitch perfect predecessor but, by gum, it’s close enough to be a fan favourite.
There’s an unquenchable irresistibility to the visual prospect of an Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones screen reunion, set in the basket of a hot air balloon some 37,000 feet above the ground. A cinematic match made in heaven, which happens to be set in the heavens. Maybe it is the case that neither Redmayne nor Jones will feature in next February’s awards conversations – as they did following 2014 hit The Theory of Everything – but in the imaginations of willing audiences, they can only soar higher and higher.
Criticism for The Laundromat, Netflix’s Steven Soderbergh directed answer to Adam McKay, has been generous. This is, by all accounts, a cheap, intensely smug and fundamentally patronising exercise in flippancy. Of course, it’s evidently not cheap. Aside from Soderbergh’s likely high price tag, the film stacks debts to a pedigree of acting talent that stretches from leading turns by Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas to cameos from the likes of David Schwimmer, Sharon Stone and Matthias Schoenaerts. In delivery, the film is so irksome it’s almost enough to encourage support for Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca’s ludicrous attempts to block the film as defamatory. If only it were that entertaining.
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