Had a fab day of film overdose with three very different films
First was Elton John: Never too late, the new documentary which takes a retrospective look at his career with the backdrop of his personal life.. Produced by David Furnish, this was never going to be a hatchet job and some parts of John’s biography are a bit glossed over but that didn’t detract from the overall film which spends a lot of time in the early years and with some great archive material and some moving snippets I had never seen before, A great companion piece to Rocketman which was much more focused on his personal life The biggest annoyance was a couple behind us, obviously fans but who thought they were in their living room, chatting their way through the interesting bits and occasionally singing along. A Disney+ production, I hope and assume it will be on streaming soon, but great to see it in such a big space.
Next was The Wild Robot, an animation with some huge names doing the voice work. Lupita Nyong'o as Ros the robot, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor taking the other leads and with Bill Nighy, Catherine O’Hara and Matt Berry in the supporting cast. It looks beautiful and has a sweet and moving story. Lovely! Great to see Nyong'o, Pascal and Nighy amongst others opening the film too, after last year when the festival had no engagement from artists because of the strike.
The final film of the day was Jesse Eisenberg’s film A Real Pain. We did the red carpet walk for this one. Spending some time peering from weird angles and over heads to get glimpses of the cast getting their photos and Eisenberg doing a very long interview. Almost all of the ensemble cast were present on stage to open the film and I enjoyed the extra long discussion although I started to get a bit twitchy in case it made me miss my train (spoiler - it didn’t!). The film itself is a road trip, odd couple movie with Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin playing cousins joining a holocaust tour of Poland. Lots of wit - there were some proper laugh out loud moments for the whole audience- but this was also a moving meditation with great performances from the two leads on what is the right way to remember, love, or deal with pain of all sorts. Not a film with tidy answers; I really liked it for that and will be watching it again when it is released next year.
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