Beast

  Beast is a ludicrous, but not ridiculous enough take on Man versus Nature, where the man is Idriss Elba and Nature is a lion that's presented as some sort of silent, efficient assassin just as long as it's not trying to kill Elba or his family. It's competently made, but the script (by Jaime Primak Sullivan and Ryan Engle) is... well, it's terrible.

 Elba plays Nate Samuels, a doctor who flies out to the bush in South Africa so he can reconnect with his daughters (Leah Jeffries and Iyana Halley). Things have been dicey since he separated from their late mother, you see, who died before they could reconcile. So he's got that typical hollywood sad dad thing going on where his daughters barely speak to him. But it's fine, honestly - trite, and convenient (they can bond while getting hunted by a lethal predator!) but the actors make it work.
 Also good: Congenial weirdo Sharlto Copley as Martin Battles, Nate's childhood friend; His relation with Nate and rapport with the girls is warm and genuinely charming.

 Martin is a preserve ranger, so as a treat he takes out Nate and his brood out to an area of a local preserve where tourists don't get to go. Things go south as the family is trapped in a crashed jeep by a stalking lion - one we know from the (fun, silly) prelude has sworn bloody revenge against humanity after poachers killed his pride. If the prelude had ended with the lion roaring at the sky while the camera pulls away, it wouldn't be a better movie, but... Wait, you know what? Fuck that, it'd totally be a better movie.

 OK, that's the basis for a fun, silly B-movie. Unfortunately Beast drags on for too long and commits the cardinal sin of making the lion be an almost laughable threat, incapable of eating these lousy civilians even though it has them all but served on a platter. Not because it's foiled in any particularly clever way, they just keep it away with kicks and screams. The fact that Cujo is still fresh in my mind, having rewatched it recently, does not help this movie's similar second act at all.

 There's some business with a band of Poachers that, besides giving the lion a revenge arc and a very short interaction with the protagonists, does fuck all for the story, an absolutely dire minor sideplot about a poacher killer (which seems like something that was mercifully cut shorter than it was originally intended to be), a late-film change of location, and, despite how lean the movie is (it clocks in at ninety minutes), a lot of what feels like wheel spinning. There's some scenes that might have some tension in a movie where there was any actual risk, but given how badly the lion fucked up the many, many chances it got with a clear shot at Nate and his family... yeah, not buying it.

 The effects are mixed, with some unnatural-looking action scenes along with some pretty well-made ones. Most FX shots would not look that bad on a more fantastic movie, but here the uncanniness sticks out like a sore thumb - we're too familiar with the real thing, thanks to David Attenborough and his ilk. The scenery is beautiful, and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot does it justice; Director Baltasar Kormákur keeps things moving nicely whenever there's not a lot of leonine action going on. It's the script that's the main problem here, with a rote plot and terrible confrontations between Elba and the lion - a pretty big problem when that's the main draw.

Three Thousand Years of Longing

 Now this... this is something special.

 George Miller has made a bunch of movies in the last thirty-odd years; from Mad Maxes to Happy Feetses to Witches of Eastwick... They're all heartfelt, idiosyncratic, and have more thought and care put into them than most other things out there. Other than that it's a pretty eclectic list, isn't it?

 All of his stuff is pretty personal. But with the success of the latest Mad Max so far he got the clout to finish a passion project of his. So if Fury Road was 'a movie for them', what does 'a movie for me' even mean?

 We're talking about the man who followed up one of the purest story-book movies ever with (the wonderful, but very strange) Babe: Pig in the City. So yes, his new movie is weird, personal and dense. And oh yes it's good; So, so good.

 Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is a narratologist* who's got a little more than her toes dipped in the realm of imagination. Despite being collected, completely logical-minded and pragmatic, hallucinations of fantastical and mythological characters often intrude into her life. She's learnt to ignore them.
 In light of this, Dr. Binnie isn't overtly surprised when, in an Istambul hotel room, she accidentally frees a Genie from a bottle. She is a bit concerned, though, when the Genie played by Idris Elba (always referred to by its more mythological name, Djinn - Ifrits make an appearance too!) won't politely go away.

 The Djinn, you see, needs Alithea to make three wishes - not just any wish, it needs to be something straight from the heart - before he can be set free from his curse, or back to the bottle he goes.

 Alithea refuses to ask for anything at first. For one, she claims she's perfectly content with her life and insists she wants for nothing. And besides, as a student of stories and mythology, she's perfectly aware that in stories about wishes, irony and poetic justice prevail: they'll always come back and bite you in the ass.

 So they get to talking, and then swapping stories. The Djinn tells of how he was imprisoned by Solomon himself: It seems Solomon went to see the queen of Sheba (not the other way around - take that, Bible!) and he did not take kindly to the Djinn competing (futilely) for his affections.

 Moved by the story, Alithea tells of how she had an imaginary friend as a child whom she inadvertently killed in a fit of doubt. In turn the Djinn tells of his other 'incarcerations', as he ironically calls the previous times he was freed from the bottle. They're lovely little stories full of unexpected turns and tangents that take us from the golden age of the Ottoman empire to Byzantium to the decline of the Ottomans in more modern times.

 Each story is lavishly and beautifully represented on the screen with an eye for detail and humorous moments and the sort of visual panache you'd expect from Miller.

 As they talk and exchange stories, Alithea (who has confessed she doesn't feel as others do - she only really feels emotions through stories) becomes lost in the Djinn's tales... and makes a wish.

 A pretty rotten one, as far as these things go, but it's granted by the genie with no protest. And I'll leave things there, because seeing how things progress is part of this movie's powerful spell.

 There is ugliness in its many stories, and it brings up that old chestnut that our modern world is hostile to magic. But at no point is there bitterness. Humanity and the fruits of science are celebrated to the end by one who stands metaphysically opposed to them. And despite everything, it's still an unapologetically romantic story.

 It's an incredible, beautiful, thorny movie that hides beneath its romantic exterior a tangle of themes and ideas that I'm still trying to unpick a few days later. It's the closest I've ever seen anything come to The Sandman - and I do not deploy this comparison lightly, since the full Sandman comic run is one of my favorite works of literature. It's easily the best and most original thing I've seen this year, which is high praise considering Everything Everywhere All the Time came out only a few months ago.

 I should mention the surfaces of this thing - bright primary colors, tightly composed images, well thought out camera moves and imaginative and cool visual effects... but also the music, the acting (both Idriss Elba and Tilda Swinton are superb) and the editing! Scene transitions are a marvel, smoothly progressing visually into each other, or linked by sounds that drift from one to the next. A thing of beauty.

 I should probably also warn that this is a movie that feels as if it was custom-made for me - from one of the segments being set in Byzantium to the focus on stories and mythology, I don't think I could be objective about it even if  I wanted to.

 Would I recommend this to anyone? I suspect a lot of people will find it too shapeless, too weird, or like some elements but not be engaged by others. And that's fine. But something this original and well put together deservers you at least give it a shot.

* - Surprisingly enough, it's a real field of study. Though I do wonder if they draw enough attention to run TED-talk-like seminars on the academic circuit...