With more sparkles than an Liberace tribute act, the third Trolls film is the franchise’s trippiest yet. A mind boggling feature of the sort students will one day discover to be best experienced while high as kites. Few films this year will offer cinematography so chromatically effervescent, nor a soundtrack so mercilessly upbeat. It’s hard to imagine any other family flick this decade will force the BBFC to warn of ‘sex references’ – and they are pretty darn filthy when you spot them. Yup, Band Together is, without question, total mayhem. Hogwash too. Broken down, the film is incoherently plotted, structurally baffling and tonally nauseating. More notably, however, it is also cinematic Stockholm Syndrome in action. These Trolls (still) just want to have fun and their joie de vivre is (still) hugely infectious.
In June 2014, WWII Royal Navy veteran, tickling ninety, absconded his Hove nursing home in favour of a cross-Channel jaunt to Normandy. His want was to witness the commemoration of the D-Day landings he participated in seventy years prior and on the very beaches he once marched upon. It’s a charming tale. There’s little by way of drama – Britain was still in the EU back then – but a nation’s imagination was captured. Almost a decade on, Bernard Jordan’s adventure is immortalised in Oliver Parker’s The Great Escaper and by a rather sensational turn from Michael Caine. Having hit ninety himself this year, Caine has intimated the film may be his last. If this is to be, you’d be hard pressed to find a finer final bow from a talent so mighty.
There’s concern in some indie quarters that dynamic new filmmakers are being sucked into a studio system that cares not for directorial voice and vision but makes hey with the chewing and spitting of rising talent. Marvel’s Eternals suffocated Chloé Zhao and The Fantastic Four took down Chronicle’s Josh Trank. No such fear can land at the door of Gareth Edwards. Having cut his teeth with the micro-budgeted Monsters, Edwards has spent much of the past decade delivering big on blockbuster budgets. His Rogue One remains the best Star Wars since Darth Vader wasn’t Luke’s father. But now, the circle closes. Originality wins out. There’s no mistaking Edwards’ voice in The Creator, a shining example of what an indie director can do with the trust won from major financiers.
The Film Blog 