Greta Gerwig’s sophomore feature not only improves on her first effort – 2017 coming of age hit Lady Bird – but quickly establishes itself as the definitive adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s seminal classic: ‘Little Women’. Quite the achievement for the seventh screen take on the story. While a sterling cast and sumptuous production values do much to enhance an experience of the film, it is Gerwig’s creative certainty in reshaping the story, via astute thematic blending, that elevated the wider whole. Nuance bleeds through each and every shot, line and prop so confidently that one might almost mistake the film for an original construct. Gerwig’s understanding of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March is every bit as profound as was with Lady Bird herself. What could possibly come next?
Though now essentially synonymous with the musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber power ballad Memory wasn’t originally in Cats. Or rather, more accurately, the T. S. Elliot poem upon which the song is primarily based – Grizabella the Glamour Cat – never made the published edition of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It was, as history recalls, considered too sad for children. Heaven only knows, then, what history will make of Tom Hooper’s orgasmically charged film adaptation of the show. It will, at least, surely stick in the memory, for better or worse. Mostly worse.
What once seemed like a brave new era of adventure in a galaxy far far away has rather stewed of late. While there’s no denying a franchise so casually able to earn hundreds of millions, if not billions, at the box office still holds fond regard in hearts and minds across the globe, Disney’s reborn Star Wars all too quickly shed its early sparkle. If The Force Awakens took things to light speed on the power of nostalgia, an internal failure to configure a future for Star Wars beyond the past has rendered it all rather vanilla. Rogue One had it, Solo didn’t; as for The Last Jedi, that depends on who you ask. Now comes The Rise of Skywalker – grand finale to a nonology four decades in the making – less victory lap than MOT with longevity to prove.
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