Film Talk: First festive flick of year with Red One and Lego life with Piece By Piece

With spooky season now behind us, Tinseltown is embracing its nickname to the fullest and starting to wheel out the Christmas crackers.

Where the first play of Mariah magic and Bublé crawling out of his cave used to herald the start of the Yuletide season, nowadays we have the festive flick drop on streaming services across the land to signal that it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. In line with this, the Hollywood gods are starting to shuffle stocking fillers to cinemas a little earlier than in days gone by, which means we have the first new festive film of the year landing this week.

Starring the heavyweight trio of Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Red One is looking to give us a Christmas kidnap flick to remember.

Directed by Jake Kasdan, this one sees Santa (Simmons) in something of a scrape, and it's up to our favourite pair of Marvel and DC alumni to deck both the bad guys and the halls and save the day.

It's not all about Crimbo this week, of course. But a certain flick also dropping down the chimney has harnessed the joyful power of one of the planet's favourite prezzies.

An insight into the life of musician and record producer Pharrell Williams, Piece By Piece uses the medium of Lego bricks to tell the intriguing tale of the American star's rise.

Featuring the voices of big names including Missy Elliott, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake alongside Williams himself, this documentary is punching hard for the music fan vote, along with attention from those who just can't resist a bit of Denmark's finest export.

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? Yippee ki-yay - let's take a look...

Musician and record producer Pharrell Williams has always danced to the beat of his own drum and assumed everyone else will eventually dance along too.

As one half of The Neptunes with friend Chad Hugo, who he met at summer camp, Williams has produced killer tracks with a dizzying array of talent including I’m A Slave 4 U by Britney Spears, Hot In Herre by Nelly, Work It Out by Beyonce, Rock Your Body by Justin Timberlake, Milkshake by Kelis, Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani and Give It 2 Me by Madonna.

Under his own name, he produced and featured on Robin Thicke’s chart-topping hit Blurred Lines, shared a Grammy Award for his contributions to Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, garnered numerous plaudits for the exuberant dancefloor filler Happy, and was one of the producers of Oscar-nominated drama Hidden Figures.

It’s fitting that a documentary about Williams’ life should also think outside of the toy box, choosing colourful bricks as a charming medium to chart his rise to fame from humble beginnings in Virginia Beach.

“What if life was like a Lego set and you could put it together however you want?” muses the musician in Morgan Neville’s picture.

The Oscar-winning director usually sculpts in live action such as 20 Feet From Stardom, which celebrated the contributions of backing singers to the music industry, and Won’t You Be My Neighbour? honouring children’s TV host Fred Rogers.

Animation allows Neville to indulge exuberant visual flourishes, conjuring a shimmering seascape as Williams fancifully links the Atlantis Apartments complex where he grew up to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis ruled by Neptune, god of the sea.

Neville appears fleetingly on screen as a lustrous figurine, gamely asking Williams questions to tease out nuggets about his synesthesia, the neurological condition which can stimulate multiple senses, and an extraordinary trajectory including schoolday friendships with Missy Elliott, Pusha T and Timbaland.

His first pay cheque was 10,000 US dollars.

“I blew it in two weeks,” chuckles Williams, “I was 19 years old.”

Collaborators, family and friends voice themselves in charmingly brickified forms and are effusive in their praise.

“He was like the young brother we all wanted to protect,” notes Jay-Z.

Piece By Piece is a conventional documentary portrait elevated by colourful visuals, which bolts together animated behinds-the-scenes footage with reconstructions of key memories.

Williams is an engaging subject but there is considerably more triumph than adversity and the introspection rarely ventures beneath surface level.

“Relevance is a drug,” warns the musician towards the end of the film.

Thanks to the enduringly popular construction blocks, he will remain relevant to modern cinemagoers but is still an enigma.

The fate of Christmas hangs in the balance in a festive action adventure directed by Jake Kasdan, who previously worked with Dwayne Johnson on Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle and its high-octane sequel.

Johnson portrays Callum Drift, the soon-to-retire head of North Pole security, ELF (Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification), who is responsible for overseeing the personal security of Santa Claus (JK Simmons) – codename Red One.

When Saint Nicholas is kidnapped on Christmas Eve, Callum begrudgingly teams up with bounty hunter Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) to track down the man in the red suit before the Yuletide season is ruined for children across the world.

Zoe (Lucy Liu), director of M.O.R.A. (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), coordinates the operation.

Santa’s estranged brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), creator of the original naughty list, is a prime suspect for the diabolically timed crime.

Polar bear Agent Garcia (Reinaldo Faberlle) and Mrs Claus (Bonnie Hunt) – codename Partridge – assist mismatched duo Callum and Jack as the clock ticks down to midnight.

Michael Bond’s beloved Peruvian bear with a passion for marmalade sandwiches heads home in a warm-hearted adventure for the whole family directed by Dougal Wilson.

Scripted by Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont, Paddington In Peru finds the titular hero (voiced by Ben Whishaw) in a wistful mood, yearning to visit Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) at the Home for Retired Bears in South America.

Mr and Mrs Brown (Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer), children Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) and Judy (Madeleine Harris) and eccentric housekeeper Mrs Bird (Julie Walters) join the bear.

Cantankerous river boat captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) and his daughter Gina (Carla Tous) ferry the clan on their grand adventure deep within the Amazon rainforest.

En route, they cross paths with a musically minded Mother Superior (Olivia Colman) and uncover a perplexing mystery.

Academy Award-winning writer-director Andrea Arnold returns to fiction storytelling with a gritty coming-of-age drama, which received its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Newcomer Nykiya Adams takes on the title role of 12-year-old Bailey, who lives in a squat in Gravesend with her single father Bug (Barry Keoghan) and wayward older brother Hunter (Jason Buda).

As she approaches puberty, Bailey is hungry for attention and affection, both of which are sorely lacking at home.

A mysterious stranger called Bird (Franz Rogowski), on a journey of his own, gate-crashes Nykiya’s world and encourages her to seek freedom from oppressive and unhealthy environments.

The Overlord novel series written by Kugane Maruyama was first published in 2010 and spawned a manga adaptation and a television series.

Naoyuki Ito directs the first standalone animated feature film about the long-running fantasy saga.

Remedios Custodio (voiced by Hitomi Nabatame) entreats beleaguered Sorcerer King Ains Ooal Gown (Satoshi Hino) to raise an army to battle demonic emperor Jaldabaoth (Masayuki Kato) and his hordes.

Remedios’s noble squire Neia (Yoshino Aoyama) is assigned to oversee the daring plan but Ains Ooal Gown is actually the avatar of an online RPG player, who has been trapped inside the game indefinitely.

Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom is released in cinemas as the original Japanese edition with subtitles and an English language dubbed version.

A mountainside community in the occupied West Bank faces eviction from their land in a timely documentary written, directed and edited by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

Basel Adra is a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, who has been living under military occupation for years and has been vigorously opposing his community’s mass expulsion by Israel since childhood.

He documents in painstaking detail each act of erasure as soldiers destroy the homes of families.

Basel finds a kindred spirit in Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who lives freely and without restrictions.

Together, Basel and Yuval fight side by side across a stark divide in their day-to-day situations to give voices to the people of Masafer Yatta.

Two cousins attempt to repair family rift in a gently paced Irish comedy directed by Chris Cottam.

New York real estate agent Barry (Paul Reiser) receives a telephone call out of the blue from his estranged cousin Ciaran (Colm Meany).

Ciaran’s father has recently passed away and his dying wish was to reunite the two halves of the clan, based in Ireland and America.

Consequently, Ciaran invites Barry to travel across the Atlantic and rehydrate his family roots.

The welcome from Ciaran and neighbours is initially warm but once Barry discovers that he has been bequeathed half the estate in the will, jealousy rides roughshod over pleasantries.