Manchester Theatre News & Reviews
You Guide to the BAFTA Best Picture Nominations
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Below, we rounded up the reviews of the 2024 BAFTA Best Picture nominations:
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OPPENHEIMER (Winner of Best Film)
★★★★★ This combustible and relentlessly-paced biography of the 'father of the the atomic bomb' is a contender for Christopher Nolan’s best film. ~ Little White Lies.
★★★★★ It's boldly imaginative and his most mature work yet. ~ BBC.
★★★★★ A masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a whole new level. A film that you don’t merely watch, but must reckon with. ~ Empire
★★★★★ Christopher Nolan’s portrait of the obsessive genius is close to a modern masterpiece. An epic film to rival Citizen Kane. ~ Sunday Times.
★★★★★ Taut and sprawling, riveting and haunting: firing on all cylinders, Nolan tackles world-changing history with fearsome force and focus. ~ Total Film.
★★★★★ A triumph, like witnessing history itself being split open. ~ The Telegraph.
★★★★★ And anchoring everything is Cillian Murphy’s stunning, award-worthy performance. Although sphinx-like in demeanour, the Peaky Blinders star still manages to convey (via those piercing blue eyes and gaunt, chiselled expression) the haunted internal struggle of a man who would describe himself as "the destroyer of worlds." ~ Radio Times.
POOR THINGS
★★★★★ A funny, sad, bawdy, beautiful concoction. ~ Total Film.
★★★★★ The director of The Favourite teams up again with the fearless Hollywood star in a funny, filthy and explosively inventive spin on Frankenstein. ~ The Observer.
★★★★★ Stone’s raunchy gothic comedy is unlike anything you’ve seen in years. A young woman with an infant’s brain cuts a swathe through Europe in a madcap creation myth full of sex and substance. ~ The Telegraph.
★★★★★ Yorgos Lanthimos’s feminist Frankenstein comedy is scabrous, smart and obscenely funny. ~ Time Out.
★★★★★ There's Emma Stone slaying, Mark Ruffalo simping, Willem Dafoe burping, and countless more joys to experience. ~ Little White Lies.
★★★★★ Stone gives a hilarious, beyond-next-level performance as Bella Baxter, the experimental subject of a troubled Victorian anatomist, in Lanthimos’s toweringly bizarre comedy. ~ The Guardian.
★★★★★ Lanthimos’s films are always strange, and this is perhaps the most peculiar but also the most relatable of them all, while Emma Stone is magnificent as a sex-obsessed Victorian. ~ The i.
★★★★★ Lanthimos’ surreal twist on Frankenstein is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Emma Stone is extraordinary as a young woman brought back to life with the mind of a toddler. ~ Irish Independent.
★★★★★ Stone gives one of the bravest and boldest performances we’ve seen in a long time. Unpredictable but completely natural, heightened but sympathetic, hilarious but heart-wrenching. Her portrayal of the quickly maturing woman is a delight to watch. ~ RTE.
★★★★★ A sly and hilarious tale of sexual adventure. The team behind The Favourite reunite in this tale of a rampantly curious 19th-century woman, played in Oscar-worthy style by Emma Stone. ~ The Times.
★★★★★ After The Favourite, this new offering will cement the director's reputation as a brilliant popular filmmaker. ~ Evening Standard.
★★★★★ No other mainstream director today is making movies this visually bold and brilliantly realised. ~ Financial Times.
★★★★★ Absolutely batshit, utterly filthy and a true original: Poor Things is as good as Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone have ever been. ~ Empire.
THE HOLDOVERS
★★★★ The most scintillating festive movie in years. ~ Little White Lies.
★★★★ The spirit of the American New Wave lives on in this curmudgeonly Christmas drama that hides a big heart and a hopeful outlook beneath its withering putdowns. ~ Radio Times.
★★★★★ Alexander Payne's best work since Sideways. ~ Total Film.
★★★★★ Uncork your finest bottle of wine (not Merlot) and rejoice. Because one of cinema’s greatest actor-director duos, Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne — who are to stories about born losers what De Niro and Scorsese are to ones about charismatic criminals — are back with a brand-new groove. ~ Empire.
★★★★★ Payne returns with one of his funniest, sharpest, and most humane comedies to date. ~ The Scotsman.
★★★★ The director makes a welcome return to form with a warm and melancholic 70s-set comedy drama led by a trio of note-perfect performances. ~ The Guardian.
★★★★ Paul Giamatti shines as a teacher forced to look after pupils over the Christmas break, in a terrific 1970s-set period piece. ~ Telegraph.
★★★★ It’s a bittersweet callback to a golden age when there were a whole lot more movies like this one. ~ Time Out.
★★★★★ This magical film should win Paul Giamatti an Oscar. ~ The i.
★★★★ A masterclass in melancholy, Sideways director Payne reunites with that film’s star for a 70s-set tale of a boarding school’s Christmas holiday left-behinds that’s as achingly sharp as it is funny. ~ Observer.
★★★★★ Those hoping for another Giamatti masterclass here will more than get their money's worth. He's better than he was in Sideways. But here's the thing: Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa are every bit as brilliant. ~ RTE.
★★★★ The plot structure may seem familiar but it’s the mood that matters most, as does the gorgeous depiction of complex characters in crisis. ~ The Times.
★★★★★ It’s funny and soulful, and Giamatti is sublime as a man hiding behind his own popularity. ~ Irish Independent.
★★★★★ While Payne’s masterpiece is bound to become a new staple in the Christmas movie canon, the fact is filmmaking as note-perfect and beautifully calibrated as this can be enjoyed any time of year. ~ Sunday Irish Independent.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
★★★★★ Martin Scorsese’s tale of indigenous slaughter is a masterpiece. ~ The Independent.
★★★★★ Scorsese has outdone himself with this extravagant Western about the Osage Indian murders, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro on terrific form. ~ Telegraph.
★★★★★ This remarkable epic about the bloody birth of America is a macabre western about serial murders among the Osage tribe in 1920s Oklahoma, which reflects the erasure of Native Americans from the US. ~ The Guardian.
★★★★★ At three-and-a-half hours, it's a true epic - a richly detailed film that tells its story with patience and precision, slowly unfolding until it reaches a crescendo that is more powerful for the sustained build-up. ~ Radio Times.
★★★★★ Serrated with political edge, Scorsese’s true-crime epic is impeccably constructed and utterly gripping. ~ Time Out.
★★★★★ Based on David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book of the same name, Scorsese’s western (yes, he’s finally made it) delves deep into manifest destiny, greed, racism, neocolonialism and misogyny in a rich, immersive masterclass that braids together the interests of his past projects. ~ Total Film.
★★★★★ Monumental stuff: a story about the deadly legacy of America’s colonial sins, both vast and intimate in scope. Exceptional filmmaking, by an exceptional filmmaker. ~ Empire.
★★★★★ Popular music from the 1920s, Native American songs and Robbie Robertson’s bluesy score help round off this remarkable Western, a film that will linger in the minds of its audience for a long time. ~ NME.
★★★★★ Martin Scorsese at his best. ~ Sunday Times.
ANATOMY OF A FALL
★★★★★ If you like a film that keeps you guessing until the end - and perhaps beyond - then get yourself into the public gallery for this case. Already the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes and now primed for a handful of Oscar nominations, Anatomy of a Fall puts a marriage under the microscope, challenging the viewer not to blink for two and a half hours. ~ RTE.
★★★★ A courtroom thriller with a makeover, Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning film is like an Agatha Christie with a twist. ~ The Times.
★★★★★ A sparkling intellectual thriller that lingers for days, Triet’s breathtaking new film unpicks the aftermath of a fatal accident in the Alps. Did the victim fall – or were they pushed? ~ The Telegraph.
★★★★★ Was it suicide or murder? This unconventional thriller leaves you guessing. ~ Irish Independent.
★★★★ A tantalising screenplay keeps the audience guessing in the gripping, electric Palme d’Or-winning courtroom thriller, in which superb lead actor Sandra Hüller plays a woman suspected of her husband’s murder. ~ The Observer.
★★★★ There’s a bracing and chilly high-mindedness about Triet’s psychothriller, about a suspicious death whose only reliable witness happens to be blind. Her courtroom drama murder mystery, with its ambiguous title and ambiguous dénouement, is very intriguing. It reminded me at various stages of Billy Wilder’s Agatha Christie adaptation Witness for the Prosecution or Steven Bochco’s underrated, under-remembered 90s TV drama Murder One. ~ The Guardian.
★★★★★ You may think you’ve seen it all before: wife goes to court for killing her husband; young son is unsure what he witnessed; audience is strung along by the "did-she-didn’t-she". Except Anatomy of a Fall totally transcends those predictable parameters. ~ The i.
★★★★ An austere, methodical courtroom drama built with stunning precision. ~ The Independent.
★★★★ Surprisingly gripping for a film devoid of real action, this family drama masquerading as a murder-mystery touches on universal marital tensions; it is both enigmatic and very human. ~ Empire.
★★★★ Director Justine Triet offers no easy answers and is less interested in high stakes drama than in the smaller interactions that make relationships tick. ~ Radio Times.
★★★★★ It is often observed that no one knows what a marriage is like except the two people in it, but in Justine Triet’s fascinating, knotty courtroom thriller that number may be too high. ~ The Irish Times.
★★★★★ The morally knotty French crime drama was deservedly awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes. ~ Financial Times.
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THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Somehow not nominated for Best Film despite beating the other films above to win Best British Film & Best Film in a Foreign Language):
★★★★★ This is the most uniquely disquieting piece of Holocaust cinema in memory. ~ Sunday Irish Independent.
★★★★★ Jonathan Glazer’s unforgettable Auschwitz drama is a brutal masterpiece. ~ The Observer.
★★★★★ Perhaps the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen on this subject. ~ Irish Independent.
★★★★★ An uncompromising and chilling vision of evil unlike any other film about Nazism, you will never forget this Holocaust nightmare. ~ The i.
★★★★★ A towering, awful masterwork, Glazer's stark film about the domestic routine of the Höss family next door to Auschwitz is a colossal, profoundly disturbing achievement in filmmaking. ~ Little White Lies.
★★★★★ The Under the Skin and Sexy Beast director has made a blood-freezing treatise on the banality of evil – and it's proved a hit at Cannes, where it received a six-minute standing ovation. ~ BBC.
★★★★★ The English director's film, based loosely on Martin Amis’s novel, is beautiful and terrible. ~ London Evening Standard.
★★★★★ This adaptation masterfully reinvents Martin Amis novel and is easily Jonathan Glazer’s most mature work. ~ The Times.
★★★★★ If this is cinematic poetry then it is poetry of the starkest measure. Yet so original is the approach that it positively yells of authorship. ~ Irish Times.
★★★★★ Glazer's artful approach and cold sense of remove, plus an unforgettable score from experimental composer Mica Levi, make this a deeply disturbing depiction of the banality of evil, and a Holocaust drama like no other. ~ Radio Times.
★★★★★ A hellish, daring spin on more traditional Holocaust movies, Glazer’s film – which has been nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture – is set on the literal fringes of Auschwitz, with seemingly idyllic images of family life bordering the horror on the other side of the fence. ~ The Independent.
★★★★★ A striking, unforgettable exercise in absence, this is about what we don’t see — and what we choose not to see. The horror is unseen but underlying, and all the more arresting because of it. ~ Empire.
★★★★★ Glazer’s haunting Holocaust movie explores everyday evil and proves the peripheral atrocities are impossible to ignore. A singular piece of work. ~ Total Film.
★★★★★ It’s careful in deciding what it does and doesn’t show, and it seeks a way of addressing this story that honours the facts while not treading over old ground formally or dramatically. It’s provocative in a deeply intelligent way. ~ Time Out.
★★★★★ Glazer’s Auschwitz film is horrifying in its banality. Devastating and vital, the Under the Skin director's Oscar-nominated drama shows how evil can flourish in the most mundane circumstances. ~ Telegraph.
★★★★★ Glazer has achieved something much greater than just making the monstrous mundane — by rendering such extreme inhumanity ordinary he reawakens us to its true horror. ~ Financial Times.
★★★★★ Bluntly, it's too important to miss in cinemas. If you can't find the time in the coming weeks, make sure you do before the end of 2024. ~ RTE.
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