Harry Potter Reunion: What Are The Actors Best Movies Since The Wizarding Franchise Ended?

 

The 10 Best Movies From The Stars Of Harry Potter

What is Harry Potter?

Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's struggle against Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who intends to become immortal, overthrow the wizard governing body known as the Ministry of Magic and subjugate all wizards and Muggles (non-magical people).

Since the release of the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, on 26 June 1997, the books have found immense popularity, positive reviews, and commercial success worldwide. They have attracted a wide adult audience as well as younger readers and are often considered cornerstones of modern young adult literature.^[2] As of February 2018, the books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, making them the best-selling book series in history, and have been translated into eighty languages.^[3] The last four books consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history, with the final instalment selling roughly 2.7 million copies in the United Kingdom and 8.3 million copies in the United States within twenty-four hours of its release.

The series was originally published in English by two major publishers, Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom and Scholastic Press in the United States. All versions around the world are printed by Grafica Veneta in Italy.^[4]

A play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, based on a story co-written by Rowling, premiered in London on 30 July 2016 at the Palace Theatre, and its script was published by Little, Brown. The original seven books were adapted into an eight-part namesake film series by Warner Bros. Pictures, which is the third-highest-grossing film series of all time as of February 2020. In 2016, the total value of the Harry Potter franchise was estimated at $25 billion,^[5] making Harry Potter one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.

A series of many genres, including fantasy, drama, coming of age, and the British school story (which includes elements of mystery, thriller, adventure, horror, and romance), the world of Harry Potter explores numerous themes and includes many cultural meanings and references.^[6] According to Rowling, the main theme is death.^[7] Other major themes in the series include prejudice, corruption, and madness.^[8]

The success of the books and films has allowed the Harry Potter franchise to expand with numerous derivative works, a travelling exhibition that premiered in Chicago in 2009, a studio tour in London that opened in 2012, a digital platform on which J. K. Rowling updates the series with new information and insight, and a pentalogy of spin-off films premiering in November 2016 with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, among many other developments. Most recently, themed attractions, collectively known as The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, have been built at several Universal Parks & Resorts amusement parks around the world.

How to watch the Harry Potter reunion

Emma Watson says she felt "quite overwhelmed" before reuniting with members of the original cast of the Harry Potter movies for a one-off TV special.

But the actress, who played bookworm Hermione Granger, ended up being "pleasantly surprised" to relive the years spent making the eight-film series.

The movies, which took 10 years to film while Watson and her co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint were mostly teenagers, propelled the youngsters to international fame.

In a clip released by HBO Max, which produced the special, she said: " Some of us haven't seen each other for years.

"It's just been a joy, an unexpected joy. I really didn't know how it would feel.

She added: "I felt quite overwhelmed this morning and I've just been quite pleasantly surprised by just getting to relive it all.

In an earlier clip, she said: "It feels like no time has passed and loads of time has passed." 

When is the programme on?

In Return to Hogwarts, which airs on Sky and streaming service Now TV from New Years Day, Watson is filmed being reunited with Radcliffe, Grint and a host of other famous faces on the 20th anniversary of the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first film in the series.

They joined the director of the first two films, Chris Columbus, to discuss the beloved movies and explore their creation.

Since the films were released, the author of the books on which they are based, JK Rowling, has attracted controversy over her comments on transgender identity, including from stars Watson, Radcliffe and Grint.

For The Love Of Jennifer Lawrence: Pictures Of The Sexy Hollywood Superstar

 

10 Times Jennifer Lawrence Made Us Go Weak At The Knees

Actresses Sarah Tither-Kaplan And Toni Gaal Said The Star Was "Blind About Power Dynamics".

Lawyers for two of the women accusing actor James Franco of sexual misconduct have said his admission that he had sex with students from his acting school is "completely insensitive".

The statement, given to US media by lawyers for actresses Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, said the star was "blind about power dynamics".

They called the drama school a "sham".

Franco told a podcast earlier this week that while teaching, he "did sleep with students, and that was wrong".

The actor was nominated for best actor at the 2011 Oscars for Danny Boyle's 127 Hours and is also known for his roles in Milk and the Spider-Man films.

He agreed to pay $2.2m (£1.6m) in July after being sued for engaging in "sexually-charged behaviour towards female students".

A statement from two law firms added: "It is unbelievable that even after agreeing to a settlement he continues to downplay the survivors' experiences and ignore their pain, despite acknowledging he had no business starting such a school in the first place.

"In addition to being blind about power dynamics, Franco is completely insensitive to, and still apparently does not care about, the immense pain and suffering he put his victims through with this sham of an acting school."

They said his behaviour "wasn't a misunderstanding over a course name, it wasn't the result of him being overworked - it was, and is, despicable conduct".

They added that "nobody should confuse this interview with Franco taking accountability for his actions or expressing remorse over what happened", calling it a "transparent ducking of the real issues released just before a major holiday in hopes that he wouldn't face any scrutiny over his response".

Tither-Kaplan said on Twitter: "Platforming abusers while excluding survivors causes even further harm. Survivor blacklisting is still a very real problem."

Spider-Man: No Way Home: First Pandemic-Era Film To Top $1bn

The latest instalment of the Spider-Man franchise has become the first pandemic-era movie to make more than $1bn (£750m) at the global box office.

Spider-Man: No Way Home also took the title of highest-grossing film of 2021.

It beat out Chinese-made Korean War epic The Battle of Lake Changjin, which has grossed more than $905m worldwide.

The last movie to gross more than $1bn was 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, according to media data analytics firm Comscore. 

No other Hollywood production has come near to reaching that box office milestone since the pandemic began two years ago.

Over the weekend, global box office takings for the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film reached $1.05bn.

The co-production between Sony and Disney hit its milestone less than two weeks after its premier even as the Omicron variant of Covid-19 has spread rapidly around the world, raising fresh concerns about indoor events.

The film has not been released in China, which is currently the world's biggest cinema market.

Spider-Man: No Way Home sees Tom Holland return as the third iteration of Peter Parker alongside Zendaya's MJ and Benedict Cumberbatch as the sorcerer Doctor Strange.

The franchise's 2019 offering Spider-Man: Far From Home was the first Spider-Man film to break the $1bn mark at the box office and is currently the highest-grossing movie in the franchise with $1.132bn in global ticket sales, according to Comscore.

The latest film follows on from Far From Home, in which the villainous Mysterio unmasked Parker before dying.

The series is a collaboration between the Disney's Marvel Studios and Sony.

In 2015, Disney, Marvel Studios, and Sony agreed to share the film rights for Spider-Man, which led to a new iteration of the character being introduced and integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Before No Way Home, MGM's latest James Bond movie No Time to Die, which made $774m at the box office globally, was the highest-grossing Hollywood film of both 2021 and the pandemic.

Best Movies Of The Matrix Resurrections Star Keanu Reeves

 

The top 10 action movies of Keanu Reeves' career. 

Keanu Reeves biography courtesy of biography.com

Actor Keanu Reeves has starred in the movies 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure,' 'Speed,' 'The Matrix' and 'John Wick,' among many other projects.

Who Is Keanu Reeves?

Keanu Reeves was born on September 2, 1964, in Beirut, Lebanon, and was raised in Toronto, Canada. He first gained attention for his performance in River's Edge, while the comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, brought him major recognition. Reeves has developed an eclectic film roster that includes the action flick Speed and the sci-fi blockbusters The Matrix and its sequels, as well as more art-house fare like My Own Private Idaho and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Reeves made his directorial debut in 2013 with Man of Tai Chi.

Movies

'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'

Reeves was featured in U.S.-oriented teen movies such as Youngblood (1986), starring Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze, and River’s Edge (1986). More television and film roles followed before Reeves joined the ensemble cast of the scandalous period drama Dangerous Liaisons (1988), starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich. The following year marked the release of a film for which the young actor would become associated with for quite some time — Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Co-starring Alex Winter, the popular comedy followed two high school students and their time-traveling high jinks, eventually spawning a 1990 animated TV series and the 1991 movie sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

'My Own Private Idaho,' 'Point Break,' 'Speed'

Though Reeves would often face criticism for his deadpan delivery and perceived limited range as an actor, he nonetheless took on roles in a variety of genres over the ensuing decade, doing everything from introspective art-house fare to action-packed thrillers.

My Own Private Idaho (1991), directed by Gus Van Sant and co-starring River Phoenix, chronicled the lives of two young sex workers living on the streets, while Point Break (1991) turned the actor into an undercover FBI agent who gets caught up in the criminal lives of surfing bank robbers. Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), co-starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder and Anthony Hopkins, saw Reeves embodying the calm resoluteness of character Jonathan Harker. 1994 saw the actor starring opposite Sandra Bullock in the hit action flick Speed, followed by work that included the romantic drama A Walk in the Clouds (1995) and the supernatural thriller Devil’s Advocate (1997), co-starring Al Pacino and Charlize Theron.

'The Matrix' 

At the close of the decade, Reeves starred in a sci-fi film that would become a genre game changer — The Matrix. Directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski, the 1999 movie followed Reeves as prophetic figure Neo, slated to lead humanity to freedom from an all-consuming simulated world. Known for its innovative fight sequences, avant-garde special effects and gorgeous fashion, The Matrix was an international hit. Two sequels were filmed together and released in 2003 to a more mixed reception, though the second instalment, The Matrix Reloaded, was a bigger financial blockbuster than its predecessor.

In summer 2019, 16 years after the release of The Matrix Reloaded, it was announced that a fourth film in the franchise was in the works, with Reeves set to return as Neo.

'Something's Gotta Give,' 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

Even with mainstream success, Reeves continued working in different genres, as seen with his roles as an abusive man in The Gift (2000), starring Cate Blanchett, a smitten doctor in Something’s Gotta Give (2003) opposite Diane Keaton, and a Brit demon hunter in Constantine (2005). Reeves returned to sci-fi as alien Klaatu in the 2008 remake of the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, co-starring Jennifer Connelly and Jaden Smith. 

'Man of Tai Chi,' 'John Wick,' 'Toy Story 4'

The following decade saw the actor making his directorial debut with Man of Tai Chi (2013). Martial arts–based themes continued in Reeves' next feature, the widely panned 47 Ronin (2013), which was followed in 2014 by the more critically well-received John Wick, co-starring Willem Dafoe and John Leguizamo and its sequel John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017). After co-starring with Winona Ryder in the rom-com Destination Wedding (2018), Reeves faced a busy 2019 with the release of the sci-fi thriller Replicas; a return to action fare in John Wick 3: Parabellum; a supporting role in the Netflix rom-com Always Be My Maybe and his entry into a major animated franchise as the voice of stuntman Duke Caboom in Toy Story 4.

Daughter

In 1999 Reeves and his girlfriend Jennifer Syme had a daughter, Ava Archer Syme-Reeves, born eight months stillborn. The loss of their daughter devastated the couple and caused the end of their relationship.

Two years later, Jennifer was involved in a fatal car accident where she rammed into three cars and was thrown out of her vehicle. It was later reported she was on anti-depressant medication.

Other Interests

His artistic aspirations not limited to film, Reeves co-founded the band Dogstar in the early 1990s. Dogstar enjoyed modest success, releasing two albums during Reeves' decade-long run as its bass player. He later played bass for a band called Becky for about a year. 

Reeves is also a longtime motorcycle enthusiast. After asking designer Gard Hollinger to create a custom-built bike for him, the two went into business together with the formation of Arch Motorcycle Company LLC in 2011. 

Reported to be one of the more generous actors in Hollywood, Reeves helped care for his sister during her lengthy battle with leukemia, and has supported such organizations as Stand Up To Cancer and PETA.

In August 2018, while promoting Destination Wedding with Ryder, Reeves seemed surprised to learn that he may be legally married to his co-star. Ryder said it was the result of filming their wedding scene for Dracula, as a real Romanian priest had conducted a full marriage ceremony. 

Background and Early Career

Keanu Charles Reeves was born on September 2, 1964, in Beirut, Lebanon. Of Chinese-Hawaiian heritage on his geologist father’s side, Reeves’ first name translates from Hawaiian to English as “cool breeze over the mountains.” Reeves’ mom worked in entertainment as a performer and later a costume designer. Upon his parents’ split, the youngster moved with his mother and sister to New York and then Toronto. Reeves developed an ardor for hockey, though he would eventually turn to acting, garnering TV roles and making his big-screen debut in the 1985 Canadian feature One Step Away.

The 1980s Greatest Christmas Movies

The Best 1980s Christmas Movies - what's number one from the decade?

What are the best Christmas films of the 1980s? What are your favorites? Scrooged? Gremlins? Die Hard?

Maybe your favorite Christmas movie of the 1980s is Lethal Weapon?

From CinemaBlend:

Does Lethal Weapon Meet The Standards Of A Christmas Movie?

Knowing what we know about Die Hard, we can begin to look into just what makes Lethal Weapon a Christmas movie more effectively. Is the film set at Christmas? Like most, if not all of writer Shane Black’s filmography, yes it is. Does the film have a message of selfless devotion to duty and family togetherness? Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh exemplifies those values perfectly, and we see that through his relationship with his own family around Christmas time.

But the one big thing that really ties Lethal Weapon into the Christmas movie canon, besides the opening usage of “Jingle Bell Rock,” or even the fact that the film has an action set piece set in the middle of a Christmas tree lot, is Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs. A suicidal mess who’s a loose cannon, Riggs isn’t exactly the jolliest cop on the LAPD beat when we meet him.

And yet, through the caper that throws him together with Murtaugh as a partner, Riggs goes through a Christmas Carol style journey that helps him become a better man. Making a friend in Roger Murtaugh, Martin Riggs eventually becomes a better person after a harrowing Christmas, and even spends Christmas with the entire Murtaugh family; allowing him to give a symbolic gift that proves he’s a changed man. Does Lethal Weapon meet the standards of a Christmas movie? It absolutely does, and to help prove that fact we have evidence provided by none other than Die Hard writer Steven de Souza, who freely admits that thanks to Lethal Weapon, Die Hard was inspired to become a Christmas classic in the making!

The eighties definitely brought us some of the best Christmas films!

For The Love Of Margot Robbie - Hollywood's Hottest Actress

Ask any red-blooded man who the hottest Hollywood star is, they'd likely pick from a small handful of sexy actresses that would include 50 Shades of Grey sex bomb Dakota Johnson or the saucy Jennifer Lawrence. Giving those two a run for their money for hottest Hollywood female is my personal favourite - Margot Robbie. 

For the love of Margot Robbie

MUBI announces the UK and Ireland theatrical release date for Great Freedom

MUBI, the theatrical distributor and global curated film streaming service is thrilled to announce the UK and Ireland theatrical release date for Great Freedom, from acclaimed director Sebastian Meise, on 4 March 2022.

Featuring rising star Franz Rogowski (Luzifer, Transit), Berlinale Silver Bear winner Georg Friedrich (Bright Nights, Wild), Anton Von Lucke (Frantz, Bad Banks) and Thomas Prenn (Why Not You, Biohackers), Great Freedom had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it picked up the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize Award. A searing depiction of love in the face of injustice, the film has also recently been selected as Austria’s submission for Best International Feature FIlm at the 2022 Academy Awards®. 

In post-war Germany, liberation by the Allies does not mean freedom for everyone. Hans has been found guilty for his homosexuality, deemed grounds for imprisonment under Paragraph 175. Over the course of decades, he is spied on and repeatedly jailed as a result.

As Hans returns to prison again and again, he develops an unlikely bond with his cellmate Viktor, a convicted murderer. What begins as revulsion blossoms over time into something far more tender.

MUBI WILL RELEASE GREAT FREEDOM IN CINEMAS IN THE UK AND IRELAND ON  4 MARCH 2022 

Star Wars Eclipse™ the new action-adventure video game created by Quantic Dream revealed at The Game Awards™

Star Wars Eclipse™ is an upcoming video game in development by award-winning studio Quantic Dream in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games.

Star Wars Eclipse™ is the first video game to be set in an uncharted region of the Outer Rim during The High Republic era, known as the golden age of the Jedi. The game will build upon Quantic Dream's expertise in delivering deeply branching narratives and will go beyond their already established acclaim. Player’s choices will be at the heart of the experience, as every decision can have a dramatic impact on the course of the story.

Crafted by a diverse team of writers, game creators, and interactive storytelling experts, all with a deep affinity for the Star Wars™ franchise, Star Wars Eclipse™ will feature new places to explore through untold stories with unique characters, each with their own path, abilities, and roles to play.

Star Wars Eclipse™ is currently in early development in Paris, France, and Montreal, Canada and will be published globally by Quantic Dream. The team is recruiting in both locations for top talents in the world to work on this exciting new project.

Visit StarWarsEclipse.com to stay up to date on the latest news about the game.

Pig Killed for Scene in ‘Drive’ Director’s New Netflix Series, PETA US Says ‘Cut!’

After a whistleblower informed PETA US that a pig was shot and killed for Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn’s upcoming Danish Netflix series, the group sent a letter to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings asking for the scene be cut.

“No animal should suffer or die for human entertainment,” says PETA Vice President of International Programmes Mimi Bekhechi. “Taking the life of a sentient animal for a series is unacceptable and may be illegal. Netflix needs to cut any footage that might glorify this pig’s needless, senseless death.”

PETA US has been told that the farmer who supplied live pigs admitted that one was going to be killed specifically for a scene in the show. Copenhagen Zoo confirmed it received a dead pig from the production, and Danish police are currently investigating. Danish animal welfare law states, “Animals shall not be trained or used in shows, circus performances, film shootings, or the like if the animal thereby suffers significant discomfort.”

PETA urges anyone who witnesses cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry to report it by calling the PETA US whistleblower hotline at 001 323-210-2233 or by visiting PETA.org/Report. Whistleblowers’ anonymity will be taken very seriously.

Top 10 Movies Of 2021

What's the best movie of 2021? 

The answer to that is...

For me, the best film of 2021 is The Father, here's why...

It was a favourite of The Guardian which wrote: "The Father has something of Michael Haneke’s Amour in its one-apartment setting, and also something of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 stage-play Woman in Mind, in which the heroine retreats from reality. Its effects are essentially theatrical – but they are powerfully achieved, and the performances from Hopkins and Colman are superb. It is a film about grief and what it means to grieve for someone who is still alive."

"This is what makes The Father so brilliant – the film seamlessly blends genuine fear with overwhelming sadness," adds FilmCompanion. "In places, Anthony’s disorientation, which is also ours, seems straight out of a horror film. In one scene, he hears the voice of his second daughter Lucy and walks out of his bedroom but the apartment transforms into a nursing home. We also see flashes of viciousness in his behaviour, especially with his caregivers. Early in the film, we are told that the third one recently left – among other things, he called her a bitch. There are moments in which a hint of Hannibal Lecter seems to flutter over his expressions."

Why The Father is the best film of 2021

Said The Spectator: "Colman is, of course, terrific, but it’s Hopkins’s film, as he rages King Lear-style one moment, and is a scared, abandoned child wanting his mummy the next. Or is vicious one moment, and extraordinarily vulnerable the next. There is stand-out scene after stand-out scene, including one where he convinces his new carer (Imogen Poots) that he had been a tap dancer — he’d actually been an engineer — which is kind of joyful, but also excruciatingly heart-breaking. I’d like to say a scene like that is something I will never forget but, as this film tells us, you can never say that for sure."

"Without resorting to exploitative, amped-up mystery or obfuscation, Zeller and co-writer Christopher Hampton — adapting the former's play to resourceful, Oscar-winning effect, with a subtly cinematic eye — have fashioned a sort of gaslight thriller in which the mind is both predator and prey, as it keeps short-cutting and short-circuiting, going directly to jail without passing go," says Film of the Week.
"There's no unreliable narrator here, since no one is being misled: Anthony's reality, with all its unchosen confusions, is fully and authentically his. Hopkins, earning every gold-plated inch of his second Oscar, inhabits it with gut-punching empathy and conviction, making us alive to every moment until, in another devastating reversal of perspective, we stand outside him once more. It's not fair to recommend The Father without a certain kind of trigger warning: if dementia has been a part of your life, Zeller's film will cut as close as you think it will. But not cruelly so, for once the sobs subside, there is a strange kind of comfort to be found in its understanding."

Tell me more about The Father

The Father is a 2020 psychological drama film co-written and directed by Florian Zeller, in his directorial debut; he co-wrote it with fellow playwright Christopher Hampton based on Zeller's 2012 play Le Père. A French-British co-production, the film stars Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, and Olivia Williams, and follows an aging man who must deal with his progressing dementia. It is the second adaptation of the play after the 2015 film Floride. The Father had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 27 January 2020, and was released in the United States on 26 February 2021, in France on 26 May 2021 by UGC Distribution and in the United Kingdom on 11 June 2021 by Lionsgate UK. It grossed $28 million on a $6 million budget and was acclaimed by critics, who lauded the performances of Hopkins and Colman, as well as the production values and its portrayal of dementia. At the 93rd Academy Awards, Hopkins won Best Actor and Zeller and Hampton won Best Adapted Screenplay; the film received six nominations in total, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Colman).[5] At the 78th Golden Globe Awards, the film received four nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, and it received six nominations at the 74th British Academy Film Awards, winning Best Actor (Hopkins) and Best Adapted Screenplay. In addition, Hopkins and Colman were nominated for Outstanding Leading Actor and Outstanding Supporting Actress respectively at the 27th Screen Actors Guild Awards. [Source: Wikipedia]
Writing for The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis said The Father is "stupendously effective and profoundly upsetting" and described it as a "majestic depiction of things falling away". The Guardian's Anne Billson ranked Hopkins's performance in the film as the best of his career.
Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman said "The Father does something that few movies about mental deterioration in old age have brought off in quite this way, or this fully. It places us in the mind of someone losing his mind—and it does so by revealing that mind to be a place of seemingly rational and coherent experience."
For The Guardian, Benjamin Lee wrote of Hopkins's performance: "It's astounding, heartbreaking work, watching him try to rationally explain to himself and those around him what he's experiencing. In some of the film's most quietly upsetting moments, his world has shifted yet again but he remains silent, knowing that any attempt to question what he's woken up to will only fall on deaf ears. Hopkins runs the full gamut of emotions from fury to outrage to longing for his mother like a little child and never once does it feel like a constructed character bit, despite our association with him as an actor with a storied career."
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "The best film about the wages of aging since Amour eight years ago, The Father takes a bracingly insightful, subtle and nuanced look at encroaching dementia and the toll it takes on those in close proximity to the afflicted. Fronted by a stupendous performance from Anthony Hopkins as a proud [man] in denial of his condition, this penetrating work marks an outstanding directorial debut by the play's French author Florian Zeller." Writing for Indiewire, David Ehrlich said: "Zeller adapts his award-winning play of the same name with steely vision and remarkable confidence, as the writer-director makes use of the camera like he's been standing behind one for his entire life. ... In Zeller's hands, what appears to be a conventional-seeming portrait of an unmoored old man as he rages against his daughter and caretaker slowly reveals itself to be the brilliant study of a mind at sea, and of the indescribable pain of watching someone drown."

More great films from 2021

The best movies of 2021: what makes The Father stand out over all the rest?

"What is deeply scary about The Father is that, without obvious first-person camera tricks, it puts us inside Anthony’s head. We see and don’t see what he sees and doesn’t see. We are cleverly invited to assume that certain passages of dialogue are happening in reality – and then shown that they aren’t. We experience with Anthony, step by step, what appears to be the incremental deterioration in his condition, the disorientating time slips and time loops. People morph into other people; situations get elided; the apartment’s furniture seems suddenly and bewilderingly to change; a scene which had appeared to follow the previous one sequentially turns out to have preceded it, or to be Anthony’s delusion or his memory of something else. And new people, people he doesn’t recognise (played by Mark Gatiss and Olivia Williams) keep appearing in his apartment and responding to him with that same sweet smile of patience when he asks what they are doing there. The universe is gaslighting Anthony with these people." [Source: Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian]

"Uniquely, this is told mostly from Anthony’s point of view as we’re taken into his bewildering, distressing world. We experience his confusion as if it were our own. Cut to the next scene and the kitchen in the flat is different, or chairs from the doctor’s office are stacked in the hall. What’s going on here?, he is asking himself, and we are asking the same. Is this even his flat, as he seems to believe, or has he moved in with Anne and her partner, Paul (Rufus Sewell)? He is starting to fail to recognise people. Why is Anne no longer Anne and now being played by Olivia Williams and why is Paul now being played by Mark Gatiss? He must negotiate one illogical situation after another as if trapped in a puzzle that can never be solved. We lose our grip on reality with him and comprehend his suffering — most painfully, a once-controlling man is no longer in control — as well as Anne’s. She is deeply attached to her father, even if her younger sister was his favourite, and even if he was probably never a particularly nice man. Anne sometimes fantasises about putting a pillow over Anthony’s head but when, at one stage, she helps him put his sweater on, that scene is so suffused with compassion and love it will undo you." [Source: The Spectator]

"Florian Zeller is something of a sensation in the theatre world, where starry productions of his plays The Mother, The Truth, and The Height of the Storm have been scooping up awards for more than a decade. With this film version of The Father – a play previously adapted for the big screen in France as Floride (2015) with Jean Rochefort – Zeller has added the Oscar for best adapted screenplay to his tally. Working with Dangerous Liasons screenwriter Christopher Hampton and the brilliant production designer Peter Francis, he has crafted a very moving dementia drama, albeit one that can’t wholly escape its theatrical origins. Much of the project’s power is derived from Anthony Hopkins’s Oscar-winning central performance. Where previous successful attempts to bring Alzheimer’s to the screen have, like Away from Her, centred on the carer’s experience, The Father distorts and disorients in keeping with its protagonist’s increasingly confused view of the world." [Source: Financial Times]

"The play upon which this film is based was described by The Times as “one of the great theatrical experiences of the decade”. This extraordinary adaptation, by turns beguiling, disturbing and profoundly upsetting, is one of the great cinematic experiences of the decade. And by “cinematic” I mean that the director Florian Zeller, adapting his work, has deployed almost every formal weapon in the film-maker’s arsenal — from horror lighting to elliptical edits to asynchronous sound to clever casting twists — to create a visceral viewing experience that is as thrilling as anything in Tenet, John Wick or a million Marvel movies. Only it’s also crushingly sad." [Source: The Times]

Top 10 Movies of 2021