British auteur Andrea Arnold follows up her last feature, the poignant, non-verbal slice-of-farmyard-life that is the documentary Cow, with a new member of her cinematic menagerie: drama Bird, an uplifting competitor for Cannes’ Palme d’Or.

With mostly human characters and actual dialogue, in some ways this is taxonomically more like her gritty-as-asphalt, early social-realist work, especially Fish Tank and Oscar-winning short Wasp, which, like Bird, were shot in the southerly county of Kent, U.K., where Arnold grew up. But then suddenly, out of the milieu’s marshy semi-urban landscape of empty beer cans, cigarette butts, domestic abuse and despair, the film takes magical-realist flight and transforms into something unlike anything Arnold’s done before. Thanks to the director’s magisterial knack with actors (especially non-professionals such as terrific adolescent discovery Nykiya Adams, who, as the protagonist, is in nearly every frame of the film), the result is quite entrancing.

That said, at times this teeters on the brink of sentimentality, as if all that time Arnold has spent in the U.S. directing episodes of upscale television (Big Little Lies, Transparent, I Love Dick) has rubbed off and added a kind of American-indie-style slickness to the script — a tidy, over-workshopped tightness that the raw early films and American Honey mostly eschewed. But that may be exactly what some viewers will love about Bird. Given the presence of stars like Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski (both of them amping up the Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski-ness of it all to the max), this could be Arnold’s most commercial feature film.

Like nearly all of Arnold’s previous films, even Cow at a stretch, Bird takes pains to show all the beauty and the bloodshed, to borrow a phrase from Nan Goldin’s life, of working-class life. That means copping to the fact there is violence, addictive behavior and outright neglect within families, the sort of stuff middle-class folks primly call “bad parenting.” At the same time, “neglect” can also produce self-reliance and independence in children, who in this film are often seen running around the streets by themselves, playing unsupervised, older ones looking after younger ones, inventing their own games like “jump on the disused mattress in the front yard” and so on. All of it is exactly the sort of stuff kids got up to in the proverbial old days, the golden-hued mythical past that was also supposedly so much better than things are now.

Twelve-year-old Bailey (Adams) certainly has a remarkable amount of freedom, maybe a little too much. She lives in a large, squatted building in Gravesend, a ramshackle property — festooned with graffiti and furnished with furniture that looks like it was salvaged from a dumpster — that houses quite a few people in apartments on each floor, many of them animal lovers like Bailey and her family. On the floor Bailey lives on, she shares a space with her dad Bug (Keoghan, having an absolute blast), an unemployed party animal whose latest get-rich-quick scheme is to harvest the hallucinogenic slime off an imported toad, called “the drug toad” throughout. Bailey’s slightly older half-brother Hunter (Jason Edward Buda), who was born when Bug himself was only 14, also lives there, although he spends a lot of time with his “gang” (really just a bunch of kids) and his girlfriend, Moon.

As the film opens, Bailey learns that Bug plans on marrying Kayleigh (Frankie Box), his latest squeeze whom he’s only been dating for three months. The wedding is set for this coming Saturday, and when Bailey refuses to wear or even try on the sequined, pink, leopard-skin patterned catsuit Kayleigh has picked out for her and her own daughter to wear as bridesmaids, there’s a noisy row between Bailey and Bug that gets a little physical.

Later on, we meet Bailey’s mother Peyton (Jasmine Jobson), who lives in another house across town that seems perpetually full of high 20somethings in the living room. Upstairs in Peyton’s bed, there’s a monstrous new boyfriend named Skate (James Nelson Joyce). Peyton’s kids, Bailey’s three younger siblings (it’s not clear who their dad is), fend for themselves as best they can. Subtly dropped hints in the dialogue suggest Bailey went to live with Bug at a young age, and feels unwanted by her mother. Guilt, anger, recrimination and hurtful words drift all around this family, like poplar tree fluff in June.

It’s a crowded extended community where everyone kind of knows each other and Hunter and his buddies dish out vigilante violence to people rumored to have hurt kids or their friends. But one day, a stranger arrives among them: Bird (Rogowski). Dressed in a swingy skirt and a complexly cabled thrift-shop sweater, the German-accented Bird has a fey, otherworldly quality about him. Like the seagulls and ravens that Bailey is drawn to and often films on her cellphone (clearly she’s a budding filmmaker), Bird is enigmatic, itinerant, restless and fundamentally other. After doing a charming, flappy dance around a field for Bailey’s camera, he flounces off to town to look for his parents in a tower block. Gradually, he and Bailey become friends — or as much as two wild creatures of different species can be friends.

Arnold starts dropping little hints early on that some supernatural or fantastical force is at work here, and it would spoil the movie to reveal too much. It all gets quite plot-heavy for an Arnold film. For example, nothing much at all happens in American Honey for massive stretches, which was charming and tedious in equal measures. This one has last-minute dashes to stop people leaving on trains, a melodramatic backstory reveal, and even visual-effects-generated surprises involving visits from yet more members of the animal kingdom. (Spoiler: It’s an adorable fox!) Indeed, throughout, there are shots of bees, butterflies, crows and all manner of urban beasties, underscoring the fecundity of the Kentish landscape: a compellingly primal mix of wild estuarine marshes with factories, beaches fringed with lurid amusement arcades and unattractive attractions, a sense of faded, sticky and sand-flecked splendor gone to seed.

And yet, despite the palpable darkness in the corners of the story and the pervasive sense of melancholy, the film ends on a gloriously optimistic, cotton-candy-scented note of joy. Nearly the whole ensemble enjoys a line dance to “Cotton Eye Joe,” a needle drop almost as good as the opening electric-scooter ride sequence set to Fontaines DC’s punky, atonal song “Too Real.” As per usual, Arnold picks a killer soundtrack, and she loves to get her cast dancing.

Keoghan, of course, obliges, offering a little throwback to his end-reel naked romp in Saltburn. (A character can be heard at one point dissing that viral moment’s backing track, “Murder on the Dance Floor,” only for another character to confess he loves that song.) Rogowski, who threw a mean shape or two in such films as Disco Boy and Passages, also contributes a very physical performance, cavorting around Gravesend like a shy woodland faun or fowl. It’s enough to send an audience out feeling giddy and a smidge weepy in the best sort of way.

“The Strangers – Chapter 1” is the third film in an ongoing franchise, following the surprise hit of 2008’s “The Strangers” and its diminishing-returns 2018 sequel, “The Strangers: Prey at Night.” The new film is also the first of three movies shot concurrently and intended to be released within the next year.

Director Renny Harlin, new to the series, is no stranger to sequels, with a long resume that includes “Die Hard 2” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.” There is a journeyman’s proficiency to “Chapter 1” but little in the way of real spark.

Young couple Maya (Madelaine Petsch, also an executive producer) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) are on a road trip across the country so Maya can interview for a job at an architecture firm in Portland. After a bit of car trouble, they find themselves unexpectedly staying the night at a remote Airbnb in a small Oregon town. A stranger knocks on their door asking for someone who isn’t there and they soon find themselves besieged by a man and two women, all wearing eccentric masks.

The wittiest moment comes just a few minutes in when a title card declares how many violent crimes have occurred in America since the film began. There is little else in the movie that signals that kind of self-awareness aside from scattered acknowledgment of elements lifted from the first film, such as a specific song by Joanna Newsom on a record player. The most visually inventive idea in the entire movie is the placement of the camera inside a refrigerator as Gutierrez sets a six-pack of beer down and his face remains perfectly framed by the bottles.

Before the masked invaders have fully launched their attack, Maya and Ryan enjoy a post-coital cuddle on the sofa of their sketchy rental place, with Maya wearing only a shirt that skims the top of her thighs. Ryan goes into town under some pretense or another — there is much needless business in the film about a missing inhaler — leaving Maya by herself. As the Strangers methodically begin their sordid work, Maya hangs out, smokes pot, checks the door and noodles on a piano. Rather than wanting to scream for her to look out for what’s behind her, audiences may want to shout for her to just put on some pants.

The first “Strangers” movie had an air of creepy suspense, as the besieged couple often looked off into blank space, bringing an unnerving tension to what was often nothing. The new film never conjures the same feelings of rustic menace.

“The Strangers – Chapter 1” ends with a — spoiler alert! — title card that reads “To Be Continued.” (Plus a brief mid-credits stinger scene.) Building out the mythology of the attackers or making this anything other than a brief, inexplicable and random encounter, as the subsequent films apparently promise to do, diminishes the core terror of the essential premise of the first film, that sometimes bad things just happen.

There is a strange courage to assuming that your horror sequel will demand/deserve two more outings. Wanting audiences to sit through a warmed-over rehash of a preexisting film to get to even the possibility of something new in the story of the upcoming installments feels like a big ask.

The original “Strangers” made the walk to the parking lot after feel weird, or inspired some securing of doors and windows at home. Not so with the rote stylings of the new film. The knock at the door of “The Strangers – Chapter 1” can simply go unanswered.

The director’s previous film Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey also centred on marriage and was a black comedy but this one is a comedy drama that’s centred around Vinu Ramachandran’s (Basil Joseph) wedding.

The premise

Vinu works in Dubai and after suffering from a heart break-up for five years, he finally decides to get hitched. It is all thanks to his future brother-in-law Anandan, (Prithviraj Sukumaran) who constantly advises him to forget his ex-girlfriend Parvathy and marry his sister Anjali (Anaswara Rajan), that Vinu agrees to get hitched. As Vinu grows closer to Anjali, he develops a very strong bond with Anandan whom he considers an elder brother and confidante.

He soon learns that Anandan has had some issue in his marriage and as a return favour, convinces him to get back with his wife so they can all be one big happy family. However, fate seems to have others plans for both Vinu and Anandan and Vinu’s past life and wrongdoings come back to haunt him right before marriage. A shocking revelation throws their friendship and Vinu’s marriage in jeopardy and everything he touches turns to disaster. What is this revelation? And does Vinu finally get married to Anjali?

Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil is a Vipin Das-directorial that has been written by Deepu Pradeep. Both the director and writer seem to be in complete sync as the comic caper they have delivered is a laugh riot, despite some of the cliches. Pradeep has written a wedding drama that has humour interwoven beautifully into the situations that arise at every turn. He establishes the comic factor right from the get go and as the film progresses you see various characters being slowly introduced to take the story forward. So if you have Yogi Babu at one point, then you have his office colleague at another.

The performances

While one may say there are too many characters at one point, it luckily doesn’t spoil the narrative of this wholesome family entertainer. As for Vipin Das, he has on board a talented cast who have made this film all the more festive thanks to their strong performances.

Prithviraj Sukumar, who is a co-producer on this project, comes off the back of his serious survival drama Aadujeevitham (The Goat Life) into this comedy drama. The role of Anandan requires perfect comic timing and expressions to suit the funny situations, and the talented Malayalam star has shown that he can deliver in such a role too. Prithviraj has tried to break out of stereotypes time and again and this film shows that he can not just essay roles with emotional depth but light-hearted ones as well. In fact, he seems to have thoroughly enjoyed playing Anandan in this film.

Final thoughts

In Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil, Das has once again teamed up with Basil Joseph with whom he worked in his 2022 blockbuster, Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey. Basil is known for his restrained performances where the humour comes off his expressions and dialogue delivery. And he is a delight as Vinu, someone who lacks confidence and believes he’s a lion though he’s just a cat. Nikhila Vimal and Anaswara Rajan have smaller but impactful roles while the rest of the large cast deliver what is required.

Music director Ankit Menon, who has worked with Vipin Das earlier, has scored the music for this film. He has combined some new age beats along with traditional music, like the wedding song. If we saw Ilaiyaraaja’s Tamil song from Guna (1991) being the highlight of the recent Manjummel Boys, in this film it is the Tamil song Azhagiya Laila from director Sundar C’s Ullathai Allitha (1996) that is the highlight.

Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil is a complete laugh riot, coupled with splendid performances, that families will thoroughly enjoy. Prithviraj Sukumaran has another winner on his hands.