CRY THEM A RIVER (WE LIVE IN TIME & WICKED)

WE LIVE IN TIME (John Crowley)

According to a story in the Daily Mail in 2011 (okay, I know..), two scientists identified movie clips that they claimed were the ultimate tearjerking moments.

One was Ricky Schroeder's TJ blubbing over the beaten body of his dad, Jon Voight's Billy in Franco Zeffirelli's boxing drama 'The Champ'.

The other was the infamous scene where we watch an increasingly distressed Bambi wander alone in the snow looking for his mother after she has been shot in David D Hand's animated classic.

Erich Segal's 1970 box office smash 'Love Story' is another film that has a reputation for leaving viewers in floods of tears.

It's impossible not to think of that movie while watching John Crowley's new release 'We Live In Time' and not just because the lead female character, Florence Pugh's Almut has cancer.

Just like Segal's movie, there's an ice skating scene in it which the Irish director clearly has no qualms about referencing.

However Crowley and writer Nick Payne deliver a much more narratively ambitious version of 'Love Story,' jumbling up different episodes in its couple's lives in a non linear screenplay that shuttles back and forth between them.

As a result, we initially see Almut and Andrew Garfield's Tobias dealing with a second diagnosis of cancer before we get the meet cute moment 15 minutes into the film.

It's as if the director and his screenwriter are aiming to tell the story of a relationship as people tend to remember it - through memories of highlights and lowlights that come in waves and in no particular order.

That they are able to pull it off is largely down to the central performances of Garfield and especially Pugh.

They are ably supported by Douglas Hodge as Tobias' dad Reginald, Lee Braithwaite as the commis chef Jade, Adam James as Simon the head of Team UK in the Bocuse d'Or (the culinary World Cup) Simon, Aoife Hinds as Almut's friend Skye and Grace Delaney as the couple's miracle daughter Ella.

Comedian Kerry Godliman and Nikhil Parmar amuse as petrol station attendants in a sequence that will suddenly make you realise that Texaco does deliveries.

Garflield and Pugh prove they are just as adept at handling comedy as they are at managing the film's most poignant moments.

And while occasionally some of the film's sequences slightly drag, it still remains a rewarding watch with Pugh in the more demanding role inevitably coming out on top.

A film for fans of 'Normal People' and 'One Day,' 'We Live In Time' may not wind up on the best of lists of 2025 but it's still worth watching nonetheless.

WICKED (Jon S Chu)

It's not easy being green.

Just ask Kermit the Frog or Imelda May.

And if you've ever seen the musical 'Wicked' in the theatre, you'll know it's not easy for Elphaba either.

Played in the movie version by Cynthia Erivo, she's detested by her father Andy Nyman's Governor Thropp, bullied by other kids and often patronised.

Taken under the wing of Michelle Yeoh's Madame Morrible, the Dean of Sorcery at Shiz University, she finds herself rooming with Ariana Grande's popular student Galinda Upland.

Elphaba's paraplegic younger sister, Marissa Bode's Nessarose Throp is also a student at Shiz and after being looked down upon because of the colour of her skin by her fellow students, Elphaba eventually develops friendships with Galinda and Jonathan Bailey's Fiyero Tigelaar, the Prince of Winkie Country.

When she receives an invite from Jeff Goldblum's Wizard of Oz to join him in Emerald City, it presents her with an opportunity to do some good by raising concerns about the persecution of talking animals like her history professor, Peter Dinklage's Dr Dillamond.

But is anyone listening?

It would be easy to take the mick out of 'Wicked' whose core message appears to be:  "isn't prejudice terrible?"

Jon M Chu's film of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's hit musical isn't deep at all and very Broadway.

However it's to the credit of the 'Crazy Rich Asians' and 'In The Heights' director, production designers Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales, costume designer Paul Tazewell, a 591 strong visual effects team and a 105 person hair and make up department that it looks really gorgeous like a really decorative dessert.

Fans of musicals will lap up every single song and dance sequence which the cast belts out with gusto.

In the end, though, it is Erivo's performance that towers over everyone else (especially in the 'Defying Gravity' sequence), even though Grande is well cast as an irritating Queen Bee.

Does 'Wicked' deserve to be feted over films like 'Emilia Perez,' 'Blitz,' 'Bird,' 'The Outrun,' 'Small Things Like These,' 'The Substance' or 'Sing Sing' when it comes to the big prizes at this year's Oscars?

No - not on your nelly. 

It's a lot of spectacle but it's not spectacular.

It's conventional but not boundary pushing like 'Emilia Perez'.

And that's ok because that's clearly what mainstream audiences want, as the box office testifies.

If it does walk away with the big movie award gongs in the next few months, it will not be because it's the best film.

It will be because it's 'Popular' and wouldn't that be ironic?

('We Live In Time' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on January 1, 2025. 'Wicked' was made available for streaming in the UK and Ireland on January 3, 2025 after receiving a cinema release on November 22, 2024)