Truth be told, but expressed with only the very best intention, All is True is terribly old fashioned. As Shakespearean biographical features go, it is twee, sycophantic and hardly more factual than Roland Emmerich’s ludicrously slanderous 2011 offering Anonymous. And yet, projected through the lush glow of Zac Nicholson’s eternally autumnal cinematography, it is a delightfully tender film. From open to close, in spite of dour and devastating plotting, a viewing feels equitable to the warmest of enveloping embraces.
On paper, Mary Queen of Scots reads like a prestige picture par excellence. Saoirse Ronan leads, theatre stalwart Josie Rourke directs and the creator of Netflix hit House of Cards, Beau Willimon, writes. The reality is a much drier, less engaging and only sporadically compelling affair. Were hair and makeup alone enough to make a triumph, Rourke’s film would be nothing less. On the other hand, in such a world, Redken would be beating Disney at the box office.
Barry Jenkins follows Moonlight – the sumptuously cinematic coming of age Oscar winner that famously wasn’t La La Land two years ago – with a love story almost equally perfect. Based on the eponymous novel by pioneering novelist James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk boasts gorgeous writing and Jenkins’ now familiar eye for visual lyricism. Frustration and anger weave through his painfully empathetic narrative, which is itself told with a wonderfully fluid approach to time. The casting, meanwhile, is impeccable, with Jenkins once again proving himself to be a raconteur of talent and kingmaker.
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