Screening Room

JOHN LENNON: THE LAST INTERVIEW

May 20, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

The 8th December 1980 is a grim date for Lennon fans – it’s known that the former Beatle was gunned down by Mark Chapman outside his apartment in New York’s Dakota Building. What is less known is the free-wheeling interview he gave to a radio team from San Francisco in the hours before. Having just made Double Fantasy with his wife, Yoko Ono, after a step back from the spotlight to become a house husband and dad to his son Sean, Lennon was full of renewed creativity and opinions on everything from masculinity, politics and childcare to fame, legacy and artistry. Intro by the team who interviewed Lennon aside, Steven Soderbergh has taken that audio interview and laid it out in all its prescient, charming, time-capsule glory.

John Lennon, Steven Soderbergh, Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon

Despite the interviewers being warned that Lennon should not be asked about the Beatles or his past, he’s an open subject – volunteering memories of meeting and gelling with McCartney, delving into his first date with Yoko (‘we didn’t make love’) and discussing his party boy era. It’s unusual to hear such a huge star talk in such an unfiltered and personal way, and feels like a true window into the person behind the personality. Also on the table for discussion: the pro and cons of global fame, the public hatred of Yoko, trying to keep your kid off sugar and marketing, the daily schedule of a creative couple and why celebrities are so inclined to join cults and movements. Intelligent, informed and disarmingly self-aware, Lennon is an entertaining orator and in many ways, ahead of his time in his thoughts on working-from-home, ally-ship, Totalitarian governments and polarised politics.

Yoko is equally fascinating, heard at the beginning of the interview but rarely later, despite having insight into a phenomenon that still continues: the particular public punishment of women. It’s clear she and John had a magnetic attraction, understanding and partnership – yet she is sidelined fast, whether by the interviewers at the time or by Soderbergh’s editing. It’s also a shame that the personal photos and footage of both of them run out towards the end of the film to be replaced by AI slop, something it feels likely hand-on creative Lennon would not have been into.

Still, as a film that captures a cultural icon at a crossroads in his life when he felt he was on the cusp of transformation, it’s both sad and celebratory. Lennon had achieved so much before that December morning and felt that he was about to embark on a new phase of prodigious songwriting, instead his potential was extinguished by someone else. It’s a Sliding Doors interview: had he planned a different day after his chat instead of heading out of the door, what might we have seen from him? As a historical record of a mobius strip moment it’s an intrigue.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of MISHPOOKAH ENTERTAINMENT GROUP
John Lennon: The Last Interview premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

Screening Room

CLUB KID

May 18, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Jordan Firstman is a knowingly bratty, provocative presence on social media and one might expect his first film to debut at Cannes to be a baiting, meta, Marmite affair that courts controversy. What’s unexpected is that his queer, specific take on Chaplin’s The Kid is universal, warm, funny and full of soulful hope. Like Anora (also produced by Alex Coco), Club Kid transcends its sweary, druggy NSFW settings with vibrant characters and hell-for-leather performances. One doesn’t have to know what being grundled is or the details of Clare Danes’ connection to the Philippines (though ‘normies’ will learn) to understand or fall for it.

Firstman is front and centre as New York party promoter Peter, who enjoys his events as much as his punters. Collabing with party girl Sophie (Cara Delevingne, excellent), Peter gets the right people, and drugs, in a room – and he does all of them. An intoxicating pre-title sequence literally tags us along for this ride, starting with an Uber ride and descending to the strobing rooms and glitter cannons of Club Labor. For a decade, he exists in a blur of MDMA, GBH, coke and sex, until Sophie tires of his chaos and a figure from his drug-hazed past arrives on his doorstep with the product of an orgiastic night in tow; a 10 year-old British kid, Arlo (Reggie Absalom). Like Three Men and A Baby but with more queens, fisting chat and inappropriate slogan tees, Peter must learn to be a father and, in the process, learn the value of a created family.

That sweet through-line is constantly juxtaposed with salty bitching, inventive swearing and laugh-out-loud moments (a dairy intolerance vomit, the unlikely May-December romance between Peter’s houseguest and the OAP downstairs, a UK lawyer who likes Drag Race). And paternal love isn’t the only tenderness nurtured. In trying to gel with Arlo, Peter meets child psychologist Oscar (Diego Calva, emitting pure warmth) and discovers a relationship doesn’t have to be limited to one night stands. The two men have incendiary chemistry; a fizzy moment where they decide not to kiss in Central Park is magic while Oscar’s embrace at a point of emotional turbulence for Peter will prompt tears. There’s also strong solidarity from Peter’s ‘freak’ friends group which is heartwarming to watch; especially DJ Saffron (Saturn Risin9) who teaches Arlo the decks and his ex Devon (Nigil Whyte) who mixes parental advice with sex suggestions. Even bitchy coke queen Sophie operates with a morality code, albeit one of being strung out around the clock.

Club Kid may open a window of a super cool NY community (and their slang) but it also has something to say about Peter Pan lifestyles and responsible parenting, there’s a moving earnestness at play amid the snark. And though Arlo seems something of a fantasy child (he’s not messed up by a family tragedy, accepts Peter immediately and is just so damn cute), the lack of character depth here can be excused by the authenticity elsewhere. Sincere, saucy and loaded with tunes (from Rihanna to Ethel Cain), Firstman’s film was understandably snapped up at Cannes. Like last year’s Pillion, this is a filthy-gorgeous crowd-pleaser with immense heart.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Image courtesy of A24
Club Kid premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

Screening Room

FATHERLAND

May 15, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Paweł Pawlikowski’s latest film is beautifully calibrated and poignant – and proof that running times do not need to be bombastic to tell a profound story. In just 82 minutes, Fatherland explores big themes of art and legacy while also teasing out conversation points of parental overshadowing, national identity and the small things that break a dam of contained grief. Sumptuous monochrome and academy ratio, it’s a period piece with plenty to say about the 21st century, and a cinematic treat that demands big screen viewing – with the drama of screen curtains closing to accommodate its pleasingly old-school format.

Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler, August Diehl — Mubi

It opens with a phone call between siblings; depressed Klaus (August Diehl) and pragmatic Erika (Sandra Hüller), the adult children of celebrated German writer and egghead, Thomas Mann. Erika wants Klaus to attend a trip their father is about to embark on, Klaus is unsure. The rest of the film tracks the trip in question as Mann (Hanns Zischler) returns to his homeland in 1949 to receive two awards for his work, after fleeing the nation for America during WWII. Erika is his helpmeet; driver, translator, secretary, publicist, stylist. As the duo travel between destroyed Frankfurt and the Weimar communist sector, family tragedy reshapes their experience and their relationship.

Though this ostensibly is a story of a male genius (Mann is a Nobel prizewinner and intellectual), the real focus is Erika, a formidably accomplished woman whose calm calculation snaps during a sharp conversation with a Nazi actor during a party and when drunk former soldiers carouse outside her window. Though she is fluent in multiple languages, a writer and a former actor, her most powerful act comes in gently taking the hand of an old man struggling to process his feelings or forgive himself for narcissism. Though the whole cast is excellent, Hüller is exemplary. The way she holds a cigarette informs an audience, just as the micro twist of her mouth betrays the feelings she doesn’t give voice to. And the recreation of a destroyed post-war Germany is like dreamlike time-travel. Every shot is gorgeous, but a couple of sequences of the Manns driving through bombed, shattered streets and along East German lanes feel like historical gems liberated from long lost archives.

While Mann talks loftily of art and what society should look like, the parallels between a fledgling East German tightening control via autocracy and a Trump-era America are easily found. Recognisable too are the concepts of being on the right side of history and the way that art can illuminate and soothe. Whether a Bach fan or not, the moment one of his pieces plays in a devastated building, is a haunting, healing moment of hope. It transports, just as Pawlikowski’s movie does.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of MUBI
Fatherland premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

Screening Room

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA

May 14, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

I Saw The TV Glow creator, Jane Schoenbrun, returns with another zeitgeisty future-cult exploring fandom and the blur between art and life – bowing at Cannes in a gush of blood and fried chicken dipping sauce. Taking place in a world where eighties slasher franchise Camp Miasma exists (a seven-picture series that is realised nostalgically and brilliantly in a bang-on credit sequence), Sundance darling, Kris (Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder) is asked to bring her woke smarts to rebooting the artistically zeroed but still monetisable brand. Or as the constantly reanimated series is described by her, ‘zombie IP’.

Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, Jack Haven, Jane Schoenbrun — Ryan Plummer/Plan B Entertainment

A director with ideas about the intersection of queerness and cultural monstrosity in horror – this one has a murderer who rises from the lake at the teen camp wearing a vent hood to terrorise nubile, scantily clad girls with a spear – Kris arranges to meet with the original final girl of the franchise, Billy (Gillian Anderson). A Norma Desmond-esque recluse who lives at the location used in the first film, Billy has a Southern accent that drips like molasses from her scarlet lips and a penchant for fried chicken. Swishing around her trapped-in-time house in sexy peignoirs or Hitchcock Blonde hats, she is alluring to Kris, a queer ‘pip squeak’ who is disassociated from her own desire in bed. Kris is seduced by the idea that Billy reached the most exquisite orgasm of her life while viewing herself as both killer and victim during filming. In accessing the male gaze of the lake-dwelling murderer, known as ‘Little Death’ (he evokes post-coital ‘petit mort’, geddit?), Billy has stepped into her power and a liminal space where art/reality fuse. Do the movies create Little Death or does he create the movies? And just how much fake blood can spew from beheaded and impaled bodies?

Schoenbrun has recently transitioned and while their psychosexual dark comedy horror sharply analyses the idea of gender dysmorphia via horror tropes, it also dismantles the libidinal and misogynistic aspects of slasher films by inviting audiences to consider why we are so often asked to root for female victims while also given the POV of their male predators. But those are only two aspects of a film loaded with concepts to consider on multiple views. The impact of porn (also a VHS boom industry) on female eroticism, the exploration of consent and the numerous sly nods to cinematic iconography are also offered for the unpacking.

But even if you don’t want to parse it, Camp Miasma, offers a fun time at the flicks. Both Einbinder and Anderson are delicious to watch – Einbinder comedic while leaning into the terror, Anderson Southern gothic vamping without ever mocking. There’s banging needle drops from Counting Crows, REM and Donna Lewis, decapitated heads sighing ‘bummer’ with their last breath and pleasing visual effects that provide a tangible sense of the video cassette age. Twin Peaks DNA ripples through the bloodlust, a sense of watching something smart – the sort of jewel-box movie that probably will play at midnight screenings in the future and inspire fan theories. The meaning of ‘miasma’ is of an unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapour, and while Schoenbrun’s reflexive romp dwells in death and franchises past their sell-by date, it’s certainly no stinker itself.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of Plan B Entertainment
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

Screening Room

BUTTERFLY JAM

May 14, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Closeness and Beanpole filmmaker Kantemir Balagov debuts his first English language movie at Cannes this year and, unfortunately, the third time is not the charm. Set in New Jersey, it tracks a blue collar Circassian family running a failing diner where delens (regional cheese and potato pies) are talked about incessantly and the minutiae of working class life is considered enough of a narrative hook. Azik (Barry Keoghan) is a whimsical chef who claims to make his excellent conserve out butterflies. ‘I can make anything,’ he boasts to his gambling, wrestling crew who swig vodka and rough house through the restaurant after hours. Only, he can’t. A widowed dad to a 16 year-old wrestling champ, Tamir (Talga Akdogan) – who behaves more like the parent in the relationship – Azik can’t make a living or much of himself. He’d like to work at a mate’s new flashy restaurant but fails to recommend himself, his idea of a gift to his son is a visit to a local sex worker, and his male pride is constantly pricked by Marat (Harry Melling), a shifty livewire whose mood seems always in flux. Azik’s heavily pregnant sister, Zayla (Riley Keough) despairs at the lack of purpose as she furiously mops the floors and phones an absent husband.

Barry Keoghan, Riley Keough, Harry Melling, Talga Akdogan — Why Not Productions

Masculinity is prided within this group – the ability to provide for family, pin a man to the floor, seduce women in bars. Marat struggles with all of them, baiting Azik with macho posturing that has fatal consequences. There’s also a pink pelican that wanders around the family’s plant-strewn house clapping its beak together and watching the cast with doleful eyes. The bird is incredibly engaging where the characters are not. The film closes with a celebrity cameo that feels unmoored and unearned.

As a study of the Circassian community and toxic machismo, Butterfly Jam never digs deep enough into either. Delens and a professional funeral mourner played for comedy aside, there’s little to learn about the culture or diaspora of this group. While the posturing and slighting of male ego is Scorsese-lite and culminates, violently, in something of a cheap shot (narratively and visually). Pink is everywhere – in Tamir’s clothes and wrestling suit, the pelican, the broken candyfloss machine Maret buys, the jam that Azik serves – but within such an unfocused story it adds little meaning. It’s a shame that such a talented filmmaker and his buzzy cast do not have more to say. Like the job that Azik fails to get, it feels like a missed opportunity.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of Why Not Productions
Butterfly Jam premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

Screening Room

THE CHRISTOPHERS

May 12, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Steven Soderbergh’s latest twisty thriller features no guns or spies like the entertaining Black Bag, but double-crossing, motive reversal and tart conversation set within the art world are present and correct to delicious effect. The tale may essentially be a two-hander set in a London townhouse with only canvases and paint daubs as the collateral at stake, but there’s plenty of blindsiding and fun to be had.

Sir Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, James Cordon, Jessica Henning — Claudette Barius/NEON

The ‘Christophers’ of the title are a series of heralded works by enfant terrible painter Julian Sklar (Sir Ian McKellen), a misanthropic grinch who was once a philandering sixties art bad boy whose works and lifestyle were as rock ‘n’ roll as any of his artistic music contemporaries. His pieces have fetched huge sums at auction and now he is artistically blocked; unwilling to complete the set, unable to paint anything new. Instead he grumpily sits in his studio (clearly modelled on Lucian Freud’s) raging against the world – particularly his two adult children (James Cordon and Jessica Gunning) who he accuses of moneygrabbing.

He’s not wrong. The Sklar siblings are keen on getting the Christophers series finished to net them cash (especially as Dad’s health is failing), and they don’t mind how. In the opening of the film, the duo engage art restorer, Lori (Michaela Coel), to act as Julian’s new assistant with the aim of finding the canvases and using her latent forgery skills to finish them. She’s a quiet, watchful woman who went to the same prestigious art school as Julian, yet is working in a food truck rather than pursuing her passion.

When Julian and Lori meet the sparks fly. Used to harranging, bullying and shocking any audience (whether that’s fans paying money for Cameo videos or wannabe painters on his eighties TV art show), he is wrongfooted by Lori’s stoicism, how unimpressed or undaunted she is by him. Lori’s still waters run deep, and as the duo learn more about each other, allegiances change, revenge is served and the art world is lampooned.

McKellen tears into Julian with gusto – ranting about cancel culture, his terrible children, the horror of mediocrity with glee. He’s a monster and initially sucks all the air from the screen, leaving the usually incendiary Coel with little to do but remain passive. But it ultimately works to provide sweet satisfaction when her power arrives. While McKellen hisses zingers, Cordon and Henning are gloriously craven and avaricious as a pair of talentless freeloaders wanting an easy payout.

Ed Solomon’s screenplay questions art (what is true genius? Who should decide it?), the morality of reality TV shows (Julian’s condescension to contestants is the worst kind of cruelty for entertainment) and misogyny (why are men allowed to behave badly and women are not?). His twists and turns are not only fun, they reveal what we as an audience may be guilty of in assumption and profiling. And though we know McKellen is a generational talent, his sketching here of a bitter, performative man hiding self-doubt and fear is something of a masterstroke.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of NEON
The Christophers is in UK cinemas 15 May

Screening Room

REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES

May 8, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Lewis Pullman is having an extended moment. Having impressed in Marvel fare, competed with the flyboys as Bob in Top Gun: Maverick and showed off his pipes and moves in The Testament of Ann Lee, he’s dipping his toes in sentimentality and romance in this, a whimsical adap of Shelby Van Pelt’s bestseller. He’s Cameron, a young drifter on a personal mission along the Cascadia coast, stuck in the small town of Sowell Bay when his crappy camper van conks out. Strapped for cash to fix it, a cheery local (Colm Meaney, emanating kindness) gets him a temp job night cleaning at the local aquarium.

Sally Field, Lewis Pullman, Colm Meaney, Alfred Molina — Netflix

The job is available because widowed Tova (Sally Field) has bust her ankle and can’t polish and mop as thoroughly as she’d like. Tova isn’t only nursing a sprain, she’s heartbroken from long-term grief and the growing realisation that her age and loneliness might mean she needs to leave her lush waterside cabin for a nursing home. Tova chats about all her feelings when she cleans to the aquarium’s octopus, Marcellus, who narrates his own version of events (voiced soothingly by Alfred Molina) as we follow a trio of arcs of three lonely beings who find unexpected connection.

A rom-com of sorts that is gently amusing and romantic in platonic love as Tova and Cameron create a slow bond (though he also tries, spikily and entertainingly, to woo a local surf shop owner), Remarkable Bright Creatures is a balm to watch. Filmed in Deep Cove, near Vancouver, the locations are travel porn alone – a beautiful backdrop for the halting relationship between both Tova and Cameron, and Tova and a would be paramour.

While Marcellus is entirely CG (and excellently rendered), the bright spark between a wounded OAP and hurting young man feels authentic and moving thanks to natural chemistry between Pullman and Field. With nuanced performances that travel from comedy to deep sadness, both make their characters real within a picture postcard setting. The only false note is the gaggle of horny retired friends that Tova has, their hijinks in emotional relief to the quiet work Field is doing.

Though the ‘twist’ might be predictable and the action gentle, Remarkably Bright Creatures is the sort of cosy hug of a picture that might take tear ducts by surprise as well as prompt googling trips to British Columbia. Deep Cove is likely to have a busy summer and Pullman net more fans.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of Netflix
Remarkably Bright Creatures is in cinemas now

Screening Room

HOKUM

May 1, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

When watching Damien McCarthy’s Irish folk horror it’s impossible not to think about The Shining – and that’s no bad thing. Stephen King’s creeper, and the movie from Kubrick, haunt the odyssey of a misanthropic, depressed and alcoholic writer, Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) who’s trying to crack the end of his bestselling trilogy and heads to the Emerald Isle to spread the ashes of his dead parents in a spot they apparently loved. Oh, and during Halloween. Though we see Ohm at home (and during the course of proceedings, in a hospital room) the tale essentially unspools as a bottle episode, confined to the environs of the dated and remote Billberry Woods Hotel. A chintzy, rustic place where goats high on magic mushrooms butt the parked cars, the proprietor tells children stories of local witches who lure victims to a hellscape below ground and the honeymoon suite is locked up to prevent some mysterious horror, it’s the sort of establishment most of us might shudder at and pull a u-turn in the drive.

Adam Scott, Florence Ordesh, Damien McCarthy

But Ohm is a glutton for punishment. Harbouring psychological wounds carried from childhood and a mean streak a mile wide, he glugs whiskey in the bar, belittles and burns a fan bellboy and declares the barkeep’s assertion that a witch is trapped in the honeymoon suite as ‘hokum’. He’s just here to write and not engage in such nonsense. But all work and no play makes Ohm a dull boy. A dark night of the soul brings him close to the glimmer of death and sets him on a quest to find a missing woman (Florence Ordesh), investigate the suite upstairs and come to terms with demons – his own and those that lurk.

McCarthy’s set up ignores mobile phones from the get-go (no inelegant ‘oh, there’s no signal here’ nonsense, they simply do not exist) and builds a plan of the hotel for audiences to understand. The honeymoon suite is reached by a lurching lift, there are a series of cellars under the hotel, woods surround the property and the hotel is on the cusp of closure for the season. That leaves Ohm alone to battle what he finds upstairs, no staff or passing traffic. And what he discovers is genuinely unsettling – production and sound design combining to create a suite of nightmares, jump-scares deftly deployed to ratchet bpm. It’s impressive how terrifying McCarthy can make the drawing of a chalk circle in the dark or a rabbit TV show on a flickering screen. And the increasing compression of spaces is unpleasantly claustrophobic: scaling the action down from hotel complex to single suite, to a tight-squeeze dumb-waiter system and the corner of a dank cellar. (Definite Blair Witch vibes.)

Key to selling the scares is Scott – playing an asshole who deserves comeuppance, but with enough soul to deserve our sympathy and good will too. To see such a sardonic man who has no magic in his life understand the darkness at the edge of our physical world feels authentic, his catharsis earned. His unpicking of Ohm’s pain as he’s terrorised makes Hokum a satisfying horror: both thrillingly scary and emotionally resonant– might make you reconsider staying in a rural hostelry.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of Black Bear/Neon
Hokum is in cinemas now

Screening Room

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2

May 1, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Twenty years after aspiring journalist Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) finally earned the grudging respect of Runway magazine maven – and thinly disguised Anna Wintour avatar – Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) via frenemy and tough love shenanigans with assistant Emily (Emily Blunt) and stylist Nigel (Stanley Tucci), the quartet returns. Of course. In the light of Maverick suiting up again and the SATC girls stepping back into their Manolos, legacy sequels and nostalgia-core is big business (Dirty Dancing revisit incoming). The question of whether beloved characters should be exhumed is moot, it’s whether the 2.0 can stand on its own feet as something more than mere fan service, with plenty of cocklewarming callbacks.

Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Meryl Streep, Simone Ashley, Stanley Tucci — Macall Polay

Devil 2 manages the trick, but only just. In 2026 Andy is a serious award-winning journalist who’s just been made redundant as her paper downsizes, and returns to the Runway offices as features editor after Miranda suffers near-cancellation for her accidental promotion of sweat shops. Nigel is still consigliere to Miranda, Emily is now the head of Dior. There’s a new assistant, Amari, who schools Miranda in what she can’t say during her withering put-downs (Simone Ashley) and a plot that revolves around Andy having to prove her worth to Miranda again as publishing becomes irrelevant in a world of social media. There’s fashion, Diet Coke placement, celebrity cameos (Donatella Versace and Gaga working better than others) plus an awkward romantic sub-plot and a Justin Theroux turn that both feel surplus to requirement.

It’s hitting all the right notes of the original (female empowerment, OTT fashion, a nice nod to cerulean) and Streep does get to flex that calm delivery and imperious stare while MVP Blunt brings her excellent comedic timing (biggest laugh is her Italian gag with Versace). But the story situates Miranda as a victim from the start and diminishes her bite, which was a huge part of the deliciousness of the first film. Though she has more fashion, she has fewer words; leaving Andy and Emily to spat in a corporate takeover narrative that doesn’t feel high stakes enough.

Though the denouement of the characters is placed very firmly in this decade and current media landscape, it feels non-essential to non-fans – the pleasure to be found in seeing ‘Spring Florals’ as the theme of the Runway Ball at the Met, understanding why one should never go upstairs in Miranda’s brownstone, the significance of soup in the canteen and the return of a revamped lumpy blue sweater. And Milan looks glam for a third-reel romp. It’s all perfectly entertaining, without being, as Miranda would say, groundbreaking.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of 20th Century Studios
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas now

Screening Room

MICHAEL

April 24, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

That a biopic made with the blessing of the Jackson estate would be a hagiograph of the King of Pop should hardly surprise – so don’t arrive at this rhinestone-covered account of MJ’s rise to superstardom expecting any reference to his personal life or allegations made against him. There’s potential for a probing character study of a damaged Peter Pan figure and the horrors of fame, but this is not that film.

The movie went into reshoots and was recut after a historical legal NDA was unearthed preventing any deviation from the narrative of The Gospel According to St Michael – so leaving the elephant in the room out of the equation, is Jackson, purely as an artist, brought alive?

Colman Domingo, Jaafar Jackson, Juliano Valdi, Nia Long — Glen Wilson/Lionsgate

Certainly, if you want to see spot-on facsimiles of his most famous pop-culture moments then Antoine Fuqua’s almost mechanical recreations hit the spot. We meet Michael as an Indiana moppet in 1966, the 10-year-old lead singer of a sibling band with stars in his eyes and belt strap welts across his back. Terrorised by unforgiving patriarch Joe Jackson (Colman Domingo with gimlet-eyed intensity) who doesn’t intend to work in a steel mill for the rest of his life, Michael (Juliano Valdi) and his brothers are drilled in their performance with the promise of violence, regardless of the time or the quiet pleas of their mother (Nia Long). Joe’s vicarious drive for fame and fortune takes the Jackson 5 up the charts, to Motown and onto LA where Michael’s growing obsession with animal ‘friends’ and his need to escape his father coalesces.

As a young man denied a childhood, suffering from vitiligo and squirming under constantly being called ‘big nose’ by his Dad, Michael (Jackson’s real-life nephew, son of Jermaine, Jaafar Jackson) begins to craft his own identity; musically and physically. He starts work on the solo album Off the Wall, sets off on his life-long plastic surgery odyssey, hones his uniform (make-up, aviators, military chic, sequinned socks) and learns to moonwalk.

There’s no denying that Jackson is uncanny as Jacko; nailing his breathy voice, the dazzling smile, the dance moves and the performative shyness. And there’s also no denying the global success of MJ with the bangers that are reenacted with his real vocals. Beat It, Thriller, his electric turn of Billie Jean at the Motown 25 celebration and the iconic Bad tour showstopper are highlights and genuine cultural touchpoints, while fans are catered for with extended worship of his performance of Human Nature at the 1984 Jackson 5 Victory Tour. The dazzle and sparkle, the spins and tippy-toe flexes are all on point, the costumes unimpeachable, the hair and make-up masterful.

But the film comes unstuck in trying to find the soul. Michael is defined only by his hurt and his publicised childlike, messianic qualities (his menagerie of pets, his visits to hospitalised kids, the donation of his payout from Pepsi to a burns unit, his love of Neverland). We are never invited in to understand his unique and bewildering point of view. ‘I want to be a mystery,’ he tells his team, and he certainly remains that here. His motivation, his damage is kept as intangible as all the CGI animals (yes, even Bubbles is rendered in uncanny valley visuals). And leaving the film in 1988 with the promise ‘his story continues…’ allows for any later unpleasantness to go unaddressed.

Viewed merely as a jukebox musical, Michael works – as shiny and showbiz as a bejewelled white glove. As an intimate portrait of an artist and a person, it fails to wrestle with the man in the mirror.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of Lionsgate
Michael is in cinemas now

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