Lara McDonnell | Through the Shattered Lens

When it comes to the Oscar race, there will often be a film that is anointed at the front runner just to falter once it’s actually released. It may be hard to believe now but, way back in 2013, almost every Oscar pundit spent the early part of the year predicting that George Clooney’s The Monuments Men would be a major contender. Martin Scorsese’s Silence suffered a similar fate in 2016. Sometimes, it’s because the films in question are truly flawed. The Monuments Men pretty much confirmed that Clooney’s directorial instincts were aggressively middlebrow. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself turns out to appeal to a very narrow audience. That was the case with Silence, one of the most Catholic films ever released by a major studio. Unfortunately, when these front runners falter, they tend to get hit by a backlash, with some critics and audience members seeming to take it personally that the film was not as much of a triumph as they were expecting.

That was certainly the case with Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Released in 2021, Belfast spent much of the year being touted as the obvious front runner for Best Picture. Seriously, how could the Academy resist it? Not only was the film in black-and-white but it was said to be Branagh’s most personal film. One of the best actors in the Western World, the man who had revived cinematic interest in Shakespeare, had now written and directed a film about his youth in Belfast. The film would deal with growing up as a protestant during the early days of the Troubles. Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe where playing Branagh’s parents. The great Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds were playing his grandparents. For all the acclaim that he had received over the years, Kenneth Branagh had yet to actually win an Oscar. Indeed, some felt that, pre-Belfast, it was a bit embarrassing that he had only been nominated for twice for his acting and once for his direction.

However, when Belfast came out, critics were complimentary but, at the same time, there was a slight undercurrent of disappointment in most of the reviews. Belfast was good, they seemed to be saying, but it wasn’t as good as they were expecting. Some members of Film Twitter was practically savage towards the film, as if Branagh had personally insulted them by making a nostalgic film about his childhood. Belfast received seven Oscar nominations but it was no longer the Oscar front runner. That role had been assumed by the technically impressive but emotionally remote The Power of the Dog.

Belfast has its flaws. Some scene works better than others, the ending is a bit overdone, and, for a film that was sold as being a memoir, some of the scenes do feel a bit familiar as if Branagh spent his childhood imitating moments from other coming-of-age films. That said, I liked Belfast and I don’t think it deserved all of the criticism that it received. Young Jude Hill did a wonderful job as Buddy, the Kenneth Branagh stand-in. Jamie Dornan proved that he was capable of more than one might have suspected based on his work in the Fifty Shades of Grey films. He and Caitriona Balfe were a compelling couple and the actors had such a strong chemistry that I found myself wishing that the film had been even more about their marriage. At this point, we take actresses like Judi Dench and actors like Ciaran Hinds for granted but both of them are truly wonderful in this film. At its best, Belfast captures the feeling of being young and not realizing that the world is basically collapsing around you. Buddy may be growing up in the shadow of The Troubles but, until the unrest literally comes into his home, he just wants to enjoy movies and have fun with his friends. Belfast is nostalgic and sometimes a bit predictable in its storytelling but it’s gorgeous to look at and the acting won me over.

In then end, the Academy honored neither Belfast nor The Power of the Dog for Best Picture but instead another film about family, the far more straight-forward CODA. Branagh, however, did win his first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

What exactly is Artemis Fowl about?

Basically, it opens with news reports about the home of millionaire businessman Artemis Fowl (Colin Farrell) being raided by the police and the discovery that Fowl has apparently been stealing ancient artifacts from across the world. A bearded man named Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad) is arrested at the house and is interrogated by …. someone. I guess he’s being interrogated by an intelligence agency, I don’t know. Mulch explains that he’s a dwarf and that he’s about to tell a story that will prove that magic exists which …. okay, I guess.

The story is about Artemis Fowl’s 12 year-old son, who is also named Artemis Fowl (Ferdia Shaw). The younger Artemis Foul is a criminal mastermind, just like his father, and he wears a suit and dark glasses and basically, he looks like a 12 year-old who dressed up like one of the Men In Black for Halloween. Artemis Fowl the younger is investigating the disappearance of Artemis Fowl the older which leads to a search for a missing magical object. Somehow, it all involves faeries and other magical figures. Judi Dench pops up a few times, looking stern. There’s a lot of chase scenes and a few fight scenes, none of which really make much of an impression.

The plot of Artemis Fowl is pretty much impossible to follow, especially if you haven’t read (or, in my case, recently reread) the books on which the film is based. A huge part of the problem is that the film itself doesn’t really develop any sort of individual personality. For a film about a 12 year-old wearing a suit and concocting criminal schemes, Artemis Fowl is surprisingly bland. It feels like a collection of scenes from other YA adaptations. We get the slow motion fight scenes. We get the magical scenes that feel as if they were lifted from a lesser entry from the Harry Potter series. Indeed, a huge chunk of the film seems to be made up of discarded scenes from director Kenneth Branagh’s previous excursion into the world of fantasy and vaguely defined magic, Thor. The film moves quickly but since nothing interesting or unusual is happening, you find yourself wishing that maybe the film would slow down for a just a minute or two and spend a bit of time exploring the world in which the two Artemis Fowls live. It’s a remarkably undetailed fantasy world that Artemis Fowl presents us with. I spent the majority of the movie wondering whether Judi Dench was supposed to be an elf or a faerie. One of the great actress, Dench spends the entire film wearing pointed ears and looking rather annoyed.

Much like Dolittle, Artemis Fowl ends with the promise of more cinematic adventures, though it’s doubtful that promise will actually be fulfilled. Also — and again like Dolittle — it’s hard not to feel that Artemis Fowl would have worked much better as an animated film than as a live action spectacular. Unfortunately, Artemis Fowl is just too bland and borderline incoherent to really make much of a lasting impression.