Parky At the Pictures (14/3/2025)

(Reviews of Day of the Fight; All Happy Families; Sicilian Letters; and Away)

DAY OF THE FIGHT.

Taking its title from a 12-minute documentary made by Stanley Kubrick in 1951 and sharing DNA with grandfather John Huston's Fat City (1972), Jack Huston's Day of the Fight is an accomplished directorial debut that pays homage to the American boxing film, while also brazenly borrowing from it.

Waking on the 1989 morning of his comeback fight at Madison Square Garden, middleweight Mike Flannigan (Michael C. Pitt) pounds the pavements of Brooklyn before putting himself through a punishing workout routine in his makeshift gym. As he skips and shadow-boxes, he thinks back to the medical diagnosis of brain damage that he had received after he had been arrested for the death of a child while driving under the influence.

Aware that his time in prison has cost him much, `Irish Mike' decides to spend the day before the bout trying to make amends to the people he has let down. He starts with his tweenage daughter, Sasha (Kat Elizabeth Williams), to whom he waves from across the street as she's ushered through the school gate by a stern nun. Accepting the good wishes of a neighbour who bums a couple of smokes and a diner lady who gives him a gratis breakfast, Mike makes his way to the Jersey Shore to see his maternal uncle (Steve Buscemi).

He's pleased to see his nephew and glad he's been given a shot of redemption, as he knows what a tough life he's had. They reminisce briefly about Mike's mother, who had died when he was 12 after enduring regular beatings from his brutal father. Mike asks if he can have her engagement ring and his uncle takes it from the office safe before wishing him well for tonight, as he is too nervous to attend the fight in person.

Lingering on the docks and gazing at a photo of Sasha and her mother, Mikey heads to a butcher's shop, where he haggles over a sale price for the ring. Taking the $9000, he drops into the dry cleaner's run by his pal, Saul (Anatol Yusef), who agrees to lay a bet at 40-1 that Mikey wins his fight.

Feeling good about the transaction, Mikey reports to the gym, where trainer Stevie (Ron Perlman) gives him hell for stepping into the ring to teach a loud-mouthed pug a lesson. Stevie has stuck by Mike through thick and thin, but gives him a hard time because he was his meal ticket and he has struggled while his prodigy was behind bars. He urges him to stay out of trouble and be at the Garden by 6pm, as his fight is well down the card.

Continuing with his errands, Mike heads for the Catholic church where childhood friend, Patrick (John Magaro) is now the parish priest. They joke about the past before Mike confides that he has lost sight of who he is since the accident and confesses to attempting to hang himself in his cell. But he wants to put things right and hopes that tonight can be the start of a new chapter. Patrick wishes he could say something profound to ease his friend's pain, but he promises to be ringside to give him support.

Summoning his courage, Mikey calls on Jessica (Nicolette Robinson), the ex-wife he hasn't seen since his release. She goes to slam the door, but he persuades her to take a walk and remembers the pride he felt in Sasha on her first day at the beach. However, Jessica recalls the event differently, as they had called on Mike's father, who had humiliated him so badly that he had got fighting drunk. Going down on one knee to apologise, Mike persuades Jessica to go for a pizza lunch and she tells him about her job tending bar and lounge-singing to patrons who don't care. He tells her about waving to Sasha and how bitterly he regrets messing up and they manage a kiss when he swears that he still loves her.

With time slipping by, Mikey takes the subway to the care home where his father (Joe Pesci) is living with dementia. Sitting in an armchair facing the window, the old man seems oblivious to his visitor. But, as Mike informs him that he was always his hero, even when he let himself down, the father's hand starts to shake and something like recognition and regret flashes through his eyes. As he had once been a promising crooner, Mikey puts one of his old albums on the record player and bids his father farewell, as he remains silent, but appears visibly shaken.

As dusk descends, Mike gives his coat to Sam (Milan Marsh), a girl who remind him of Sasha who has been sent out while her mother attends a gentleman caller. Racing home to pick up his kit and only just catching a train into the city, Mike gets a rollocking from Stevie who bundles him into the changing-room to make last-minute preparations. During the ring walk, Mikey is struck by the size of the venue and the noise of the crowd. But he composes himself and finds his range against the champion, Lemarcus Fletcher (Cameron Williamson). The commentator points out that Irish Mike is hanging on, but his tenacity starts to tire an opponent who has won all his previous fights by a knockout.

Between rounds, Stevie keeps encouraging his boy and reminds him of the ploy they have prepared for the closing minutes. Mike survives a knockdown and a slip, but refuses to go away. As Fletcher becomes increasingly desperate, Stevie signals for Mike to switch to a southpaw stance and the tiring champ is confused. Blows rain in and we see Mike flat on his back on the canvas. As he struggles to his feet, however, he sees Fletcher out for the count and he realises that they had hit each other at the same moment, only for his shot to have been the clincher.

As Jessica and Sasha watch on television at home and Fr Patrick smiles proudly in the green room, Mike dodges the ballyhoo. Despite feeling woozy, he knows he has made enough money to give his daughter a decent start in life. Staggering on to the street, he is picked up by a sympathetic cabby (Joe Lisi), who checks he's okay, as Mike thinks back to the night of the crash and the beffudled, guilt-striken anguish he had felt on seeing the dead child lying on the tarmac. When the driver turns to reassure Mikey that everything is going to be okay, he thinks he sees his father talking to him. Stumbling into the house, he pours biscuits into the cat's bowl and crashes on the bed. His right eye is badly bruised, but he stares upwards with his left before closing it - to sleep or slip away?

Although riddled with clichés and caricatures, this owes more to underdog melodrama than real life. But that doesn't mean it's any less potent. Of course, the borrowings from everything from Robet Rossen's Body and Soul (1947) and Robert Wise's Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) through to John G. Avildsen's Rocky (1976) and Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980) are hoary. Yet, Huston makes such sincere use of them and Michael Pitt plays them so straight that they sneak under the guard.

The scenes with Steve Buscemi and Joe Pesci are masterclasses in concision and precision, with the latter's wordless distress being excruciatingly effective. The reunion with Nicolette Robinson feels a bit more contrived, as Mike seems to get under Jessica's skin a touch too easily. Equally unpersuasive is the fact that Mike's first fight after a 10-year stretch that destroyed his reputation is a title shot at the most iconic venue in world boxing. But such backstory glitches blur into the background with the flashbacks that rather lack finesse.

Otherwise, Huston (who worked with Pitt and Buscemi on Boardwalk Empire, 2010-14) directs steadily, with Peter Simonite's monochrome imagery helping him establish a palpable sense of place. Ben McDiarmid's score similarly controls the emotional timbre without resorting to mush, as Huston channels the sincerity with which he references bygone classics into a redemption saga that only once lose its way, when the ring walk is crosscut with Jessica's tearful piano bar rendition of Creedence Clearwater Revival's `Have You Ever Seen the Rain?'

ALL HAPPY FAMILIES.

Any trepidation that one might feel about writer-director Haroula Rose borrowing Leo Tolstoy's opening line from Anna Karenina for the title of her sophomore follow-up to Once Upon a River (2020) should quickly be allayed, as All Happy Families manages to set itself apart from so many studies of domestic dysfunction by deploying the very sense of everyone simultaneously competing for each other's attention that permeates every chaotic household.

When Sue (Becky Ann Baker) and Roy Landry (John Ashton) moved across Chicago, brothers Will (Rob Huebel) and Graham (Josh Radnor) bought their childhood home. As Will is a successful actor in the TV soap, Winsome Falls and Graham can barely land an audition (although he is writing), he agrees to stay in the property and let the other floor. Eventually, old friend Dana Allen (Chandra Russell) takes it and Roy and Sue come to help decorate, as she has just retired and needs a distraction after being fondled at her leaving party by boss Jerry Hoyt (David Pasquesi).

Graham finds himself with a fuller house when Will turns up out of the blue at midnight and breaks the news that teenage son, Noah, has come out as trans and wishes to be called Evie (Ivy O'Brien). He milks the greeting he gets from his parents and Graham feels put out when Will is invited to speak when they take a river tour of the city. Over dinner, however, Roy's tactless remarks about Evie cause tension that is exacerbated when gossip breaks online about Will being accused of being inappropriate with the actress who plays his daughter on the show.

He drives off in his car, while Roy takes himself to the nearby bar where he's tempted to log on to a gambling site on his phone. Dana calls round and is sharing a catch-up joint with Graham when Sue finds them chatting and remembers they were classmates. When Roy comes home, she tells him to be smart so they can get through their mini-financial crisis (as he's lost hours at his shop because of a back problem). He goes to give her a consoling pat on the arm in bed, but thinks better of it.

Over breakfast, Sue disbelieves Will's story about merely paying his co-star a compliment, although Roy feels she's seeking publicity and thinks someone is coaching her. Graham holds his counsel, but sighs when everyone flounces off to leave him with the washing up. His sulk doesn't last long, as agent Lila (Colleen Camp) comes with news that his spec script for Will's show has been accepted. However, he is furious because Graham wrote him out of the episode and he feels this will prompt the runners into dropping him, as one of the crew heard the `compliment' and an invitation to champagne in Will's trailer.

Roy talks Will into going out drinking, while Sue slopes off with Lila. Graham gets asked to hang out by Dana, only to be told by drainage engineer Phil Love (Antoine McKay) that his pipes need replacing or seepage could undermine the property. At the restaurant where Dana cooks, Graham discovers that a fellow chef has a crush on her. At the bar, Roy asks Jerry to give Sue her job back, but she's just given him the cold shoulder at a show house he's selling and Roy's mood isn't improved when Will informs him about the party grope.

Meanwhile, as Evie shows up at the family home, Sue goes to a bar with Lila and gets invited to jam with the band, as she was once a talented singer. However, she's soon driving around looking for Roy, who has punched Jerry in the eye. Graham is also cross with Will because he has gone into the kitchen to tell Dana that it would be a bad idea to move in because his brother is just using her as an excuse to avoid devoting himself to writing.

Having found the basement covered in effluence, Graham attacks Will for consistently messing up his life. When their parents try to intervene, Graham hits Sue, who can't believe she's part of such a screwed-up family. Evie rushes in to console her grandmother and call out her father for being such a loser. Will goes out and skims the messages on his phone.

Next morning, Sue agrees to drive back to Nashville with Evie, while Graham gets a lift from the Phil to tell Dana he loves her and gets teased for being cute on the street. As the credits roll, we see everyone getting on with life as best they can, with Graham and Dana getting a dog.

Realism is at a premium in this enjoyable, if superficial indie dramedy. The Landrys are very much a movie family, as the fortysomething sons of a shop worker and an estate agent's assistant only get to be a successful soap actor and a struggling screenwriter in a screenplay. Rose and co-scenarist Coburn Goss have also shoehorned too many hot-button issues into the action, with #MeToo exploitation, toxic masculinity, inappropriate workplace behaviour, gambling addiction, and teenage transitioning being ticked off alongside such age-old staples as sibling rivalry, marital ennui, misguided parenting, and emotional growth.

Fortunately, Rose handles each topic with skittish wit, as she flits between the characters and their crises. She also coaxes solid performances out of her ensemble, with John Ashton being crankily insensitive to everything going on around him, Rob Huebel being insufferably self-obsessed, Becky Ann Baker kicking against matriarchal responsibility, and Josh Radnor reminding us why he was so appealing for so long as the similarly self-sabotaging Ted Mosby in How I Met Your Mother (2005-14). Chandra Russell and Ivy O'Brien are sold a little short as ciphers Dana and Evie (who, nevertheless, have grab-bags full of their own problems), but the busyness of the criss-crossing situations enables Rose to cut the occasional corner.

Johanna Coelho's photography is unobtrusively effective, but Ania Bista's production design deftly allows Rose to use the state of the house - with its creaky floorboards, flooded basement, and over-stuffed garage - to reflect the flaws in the family dynamic. With Michael Shannon among the producers, this satisfyingly leaves lots of loose ends for viewers to discuss afterwards. But, despite often feeling like a pilot for a sitcom, this isn't the kind of picture that gets a sequel, even though it would be nice to know how Will's on-set scandal turns out.

SICILIAN LETTERS.

Returning for a fifth year, CinemaItaliaUK's Donne di Mafia mini festival twins Pasquale Scimeca's The Judge and the Mafia Boss (Il giudice e il boss) with Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza's Sicilian Letters (Iddu). And it's the latter they have been kind enough to share.

Chosen by his father to be his successor after he had the guts to slaughter a goat as a child, Matteo (Elio Germano) becomes head of a Sicilian Cosa Nostra family after the death of Don Gaetano (Rosario Palazzolo). This coincides with the release from prison of his old friend, Catello Polumbo (Toni Servillo), a disgraced headmaster and mayor who is appalled to find wife Elvira (Betti Pedrazzi) living in a cramped apartment with daughter Letizia (Dalila Reas), who is pregnant by doltish janitor's son, Pino (Giuseppe Tantillo).

When Catello attends the funeral, he is brought in for questioning by police colonel Emilio Schiavon (Fausto Russi Alessi) and his brusque sidekick, Inspector Rita Mancuso (Daniela Marra), who has no truck with crime families and the latitude they receive from the local authorities. They want Catello to enter into a correspondence with Matteo so they can lure him into the open and suggest using a hotel project that has fallen into abeyance during Catello's incarceration as bait. They insist he uses the traditional form of `pizzini' (tightly folded and taped missives that are smuggled by hand between recipients) and Catello is surprised when Matteo (who is his godson) responds, through a letter typed by Lucia (Barbora Bobulova), the blackmailed widow with whom he is laying low.

Using his contacts with Matteo's older brother, Giovannino (Filippo Luna), Catello wins the approval of their uncompromising sister, Stefania (Antonia Truppo), who is intrigued by the hotel as a means of boosting the family's dwindling resources (as being on the run isn't cheap). However, the town council is against Catello's involvement because he has a criminal record and it bothers him that Rita has such a jaundiced view of him, even though she realises that the grieving Matteo sees Catello as a father figure and trusts him because of their shared love of literature.

As Matteo had a habit of disobeying his father and getting involved with unsuitable girls, Catello writes that he had always sympathised with his plight as the heir in waiting. But Rita is getting impatient and Schiavon has to remind her that she has already blown one operation against Matteo and Stefania. She confides in Catello that she thinks her boss is actually protecting Matteo and that this mission is an elaborate front to seem proactive. This scares him because he worries that Matteo will learn of his involvement. But Rita promises to protect him if he does things her way and exploit Matteo's estranged son as his weak spot. However, Stefania is also protective towards the boy and she is outraged when a teacher gives him homework on Father's Day. As Pino has played her a recording of the mayor being rude about her (which costs him his job), she asks him to get Catello to send the boy's essay in his next pizzini.

Meanwhile, cooped up in a single room, Matteo is also getting twitchy, especially when the jigsaw he has been doing is missing its final piece and Lucia's neighbour bangs a hole through an adjoining wall because he wants a window. In order to exact his revenge, he sneaks out with Lucia to burn down the man's vineyard during the night and they admit to having enjoyed their illicit excursion.

Much to Catello's dismay, Matteo agrees to meet his son in the dunes and an ambulance collects the old man and the boy from the rendezvous. Rita follows at a distance and watches as Catello has a heart attack and the frightened kid wanders away in the direction of the same goat bleating that Matteo has heard from his hiding place in the reeds. They find the animal trapped in a hole, but by the time Rita reaches the scene, Matteo has gone and she only finds the child cradling the goat.

Schiavon reprimands Rita for disobeying orders, but arrests Giovannino and Stefania to make it look like the police are on the case. He also lets Matteo know that Catello had betrayed him and he exacts his revenge by having Pino tossed into the sea. From a room with the shadows of barred windows on the wall, Matteo also sends a final pizzini, in which he informs Catello that he will punish him by letting him live, with his family disowning him, the hotel demolished, and the townsfolk knowing he's a traitor. As the film ends, Lucia places the final piece in the jigsaw and has coffee with Schiavon, while the prized statue of Ephibus of Salinunte (or `u pupu') in the local museum has been replaced by a replica of Matteo.

While not of the same standard as Salvo (2013) or Sicilian Ghost Story (2017), this is a satisfyingly complex third feature from Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza. Based on the case of Matteo Messina Denaro (who was apprehended after a 30-year search in 2023), the action is slightly hamstrung by the need to show the pizzini being written and read (although letter-writing is massively more cinematic than text-messaging). But the co-directors impose a cautious pace that reflects the suspicions and fears of the correspondents and the growing suspense, as Rita becomes increasingly impatient at playing a waiting game.

Despite being saddled with some clichéd dialogue, Daniela Marra is bristlingly intense as the cop on a mission and her brooding contrasts with the simmering fury of Antonia Truppo's Stefania, the weary contempt of Antonia Truppo's Elvira, and the couched resentment of Barbora Bobulova's Lucia. Whether flashing back to encounters from his past or pondering the worthwhileness of his existence, Elio Germano gives Matteo an aura of melancholic menace that couldn't be more different from Catello's muddled scheming. With his hilarious comb-over, Catello proves a figure of fun from the moment a pigeon poops on his lapel as he leaves prison. But he has a disconcerting capacity for ruining other people's lives with a lack of self-awareness that belies his supposed intellect. He's brilliantly played by Toni Servillo, but when did we expect anything less?

Shooting on home turf, Grassadonia reveals a sure sense of place with cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, who also makes evocative use of dimmed light to reinforce the sense of confinement and incapacity conveyed by Gaspare De Pascali's sets. Editor Paola Freddi also weaves together the plot strands without loosening the grip of the cat-and-mouse game that is drolly counterpointed by Lorenzo `Colapesce' Urciullo's score. Yet, this never quite sustains the wit and intrigue of the early response to the line from Ecclesiastes line about evil under the sun: `And we have so much sun here in Sicily.'

AWAY.

With the Oscar-winning Flow about to hit cinemas, audiences are being given a welcome chance to catch up with Gints Zilbalodis's debut feature, Away. The most remarkable thing about this captivating film is that it exists at all. After all, how many other feature-length animations have been produced by just one person? He even composed the score. No wonder it took him almost four years. It wasn't exactly a first attempt, as the 25 year-old Latvian had also produced four shorts. But he cut a few corners along the way and admits to having made it up as he went along. If, at times, it shows, this does nothing to detract from a charming and involving adventure that, ultimately, turns out to be an allegory about its own making.

Having awoken dangling from a parachute that is entangled in the branches of a bare tree, a teenage boy sees a shadowy creature approaching him across the barren wilderness (think the Iron Giant with glossily translucent tar-like skin). Unhooking the harness, he evades the entity's enveloping grasp and runs through the desert - with the monster padding steadily, if unthreateningly behind him - until he reaches the verdant uplands of the Forbidden Oasis.

Turning to see that his pursuer has remained at the circular opening in the rocks, the boy flips up the goggles he's wearing and starts to explore. He finds an old motorbike on a ledge overlooking the sea and wanders inland to find the oasis, as well as a tree bearing delicious fruit. As he swims in the cool water, the youth notices a flightless yellow bird, straining to reach the fruit on the branches that are just out of its reach. Befriending the creature, he passes through what resembles a graveyard, with tall plants towering over rows of black slabs with circles in their middle.

Noting that the creature has remained motionless at the entrance to the glade, the boy finds a rucksack hanging from a branch. In addition to such useful items as a telescope, a knife, some matches and a water bottle, the bag also contains a map that seems to reveal the existence of a port on the far side of the island. Clutching a silver key, he fires up the motorbike and feels like a child when he falls off, with the hulking humanoid looking on. He traces an image of his nemesis in the black earth and wonders how he can ever get past.

After a swim and a night under the stars, the boy tries to master the machine. But he is distracted by a flock of white birds flying overhead, which cause the yellow bird to stray too close to the entrance to the enclave. Seeing his friend in trouble, the boy pushes his way into the moiling shape-shifting mass and nurses the bird back to health. As his companion sleeps, the teenager strolls around the oasis and realises he has no option but to make an escape bid when he finds a skeleton in a cave surrounded by dirt drawings of the colossus.

Gathering provisions and placing the yellow bird in a side pocket of his knapsack, the boy revs up his bike and steers past the shape, which does nothing but turn to watch him go. Naturally, they are followed along a winding road that passes through a series of identical rock arches. But, unlike the eagle that swoops down to snatch a rabbit when they stop for a break, the monster keeps its distance (although it does wrap itself around a deer that had been grazing in a flower-filled field).

Having pulled the yellow bird from a ledge after it watched a lookalike white bird fly off into the sky, the boy dismounts to wheel the bike across a wooden bridge that creaks ominously on its impossibly elongated arches. As he rests, however, he sees the monster through his telescope and rushes to the top of an incline to push a boulder that he hopes will smash the bridge.

A white fox appears and eyes up the yellow bird, which tries to hide in the rucksack, as the youth scrambles down the slope to start pushing the rock towards the edge. Despite the efforts of the white bird to distract it, the fox spot its prey. But, with the entity already on the bridge, the boy is too busy to protect it. In trying to run, the bird flaps its wings and makes an unconvincing takeover. Indeed, it seems to be plummeting down into the gorge with the giant when the white bird flies alongside it and they soar upwards, as the music swells. Relieved to see his companion is safe, the teen picks it up and peers over the precipice into the misty depths.

Riding on, they reach Mirror Lake. Three elephants walk across the frozen surface, as hundreds of white birds are reflected in the ice. Realising it can bear his weight, the boy drives across. But the yellow bird pops out of its pocket to revel in the sensation of flight and gazes down on the dot that the boy and the bike have become from its lofty vantage point.

That night, the child dreams of the plane crash that had left him stranded. As he floats down to earth on his parachute, silhouetted figures resembling his pursuer tumble past him and he is powerless to prevent them free falling to their doom. He wakes with a jolt and, through the flames of his campfire, he thinks he sees the colossus beneath one of the arches. But, even though it's an optical illusion and he tries to drift off, he struggles to sleep because he's missing the bird.

Next day, the boy makes good progress, as he passes through a forest of tall trees. He stops when he sees dozens of black cats sitting beside a geyser and follows them down the spiralling white path after it shoots a jet of water into the air. Kneeling, he drinks with the felines, who take it in turns to lap at the pool before purringly falling asleep on the soft grass amidst some ruined temple buildings beside the Dream Well. Wooden chimes clunk gently in the breeze, as the youth settles down for a nap and dreams of the yellow bird gliding through the clouds in the middle of a white flock.

On waking, he sees a large tortoise trudging towards the geyser. The cats follow it, with one hitching a ride on its shell. They all sit to watch the water spout and the boy follows them down the snail-shell path to fill his water bottle. As the cats snooze, he wheels his bike away and speeds on (with his seemingly inexhaustible supply of fuel) to sleep rough near some fluttering prayer flags. In what appears to be a dream, the yellow bird passes over the bridge and sees the giant climbing the framework. It keeps watch, as the creature reaches the geyser and crouches in a black ball before rising up with the water.

Meanwhile, the youth has come across the wreckage of the plane. As he stares into the sheared fuselage, shadow figures with large white eyes lean out from the seats to peer at him. It starts to rain and he shelters inside the cabin and watches the tortoise plod past. He encounters it again on a steep stretch of road and flips the reptile over when it loses its balance and lands on its shell.

The way ahead proves treacherous, however, as a snowstorm whistles around the road through some high peaks. Forced to push the bike up an incline, the boy collapses in the snow, just as the beast catches up with him. It oozes over him and the somnolent child plunges downwards into a swirling black morass. However, the yellow bird has been following and it dives into the fray and hauls the boy up in its beak, as the contents of his rucksack spill out. Seen from the outside, the black ball pulses and spikes before seeming to explode into nothingness, leaving the boy lying in the snow.

As the tortoise is reunited with his wife and child, the lad comes round and hears the bird chirping. He strokes its beak with his finger before hauling himself to his feet. Through the haze, he sees Cloud Harbor on the horizon and fires up the bike for the last leg of his journey. An avalanches rumbles down the slopes and funnels along the road, as the boy strains to stay ahead of it. The white bird joins its yellow counterpart in flying overhead, as he realises that he has reached a dead end and will have to hurtle off the end of a promontory and trust himself to the sea.

Dropping like a stone, the boy sees the motorbike sinking into the depths. But he pushes to the surface and manages to swim (in what doesn't appear to be particularly cold water) to shore. Removing his goggles, he gazes into the distance and, with the yellow bird fluttering over him, he makes out people coming towards him.

Closing with admirable modesty with a credit reading simply, `A Film By Gints Zilbalodis', this is looks set to become a landmark in the history of animation. It looks magnificent, with Zilbalodis's draughtsmanship being matched only by his technical ingenuity with the Maya programme (complete with its own virtual camera) and the breadth of his imagination. The sequence with the cats and the geyser is an absolute delight and will have ailurophiles everywhere in raptures, while the mournfully wide-eyed expressions on the departed souls inside the plane will haunt many a nightmare.

The spirit of Hayao Miyazaki courses through the action, although the influence of Michael Dudok de Wit's The Red Turtle (2016) is also readily apparent. Yet there are lengthy stretches that will give some the impression that they have strayed into a video game. Zilbalodis's use of extended zooms and swooping drone shots reinforces this sense, although he is more than entitled to employ them given the modesty of his resources. Budgetary constraint also makes it possible to excuse the absence of fine detail, such as shadows, and the functional texturing of the human, supernatural and animal characters. But, in a film running only 75 minutes, the surfeit of mid-shots range tracking the bike from the side as it passes sometimes bland and repetitive scenery begins to grate. At other times, however, the landscape is spectacular and mysterious. with the Mirror Lake sequence being the standout.

Keeping the unnamed boy's expressions simple also makes it difficult to identify with him, especially as he doesn't speak and has no interior monologue. His friendship with the yellow bird is sweet, but the creature isn't exactly Tweetie Pie or Woodstock from the Peanuts strips. By contrast, the spectre is fascinating and many debates will be had about whether he is a threat to the youth or a guardian, as it never encroaches upon him when he is safe or content. It could also be a figment of a traumatised imagination and represent either the boy's survivor guilt or his fear of death (or both). Then again, it could be something more symbolic or personal to Zilbalodis. It could also be a bogey man to which we can attach our own particular meaning.

Wherever the truth lies, this marks its maker as an exciting talent and it will be intriguing to see whether he remains a one-man band (his electro-score is splendidly atmospheric, as it flits between anxiety and exhilaration) or whether he will bring in collaborators to share the digital spade work and also, perhaps, sharpen his storytelling. While we wait to find out, could someone release Zilbalodis's four shorts, please: Aqua (2012), Followers, Priorities (both 2014) and Inaudible (2015)?