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 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.

1 of 5 | Anya Taylor-Joy is “Furiosa.” Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

So Dementus keeps Furiosa hostage, even bringing her to The Citadel to attempt to overtake its warlord, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his army of War Boys. Much later, and now played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Furiosa plots her escape and revenge against Dementus.

The Mad Max world George Miller created supports different forms of storytelling in each film. Fury Road was propulsive and bombastic while Thunderdome was more localized to one region of the wasteland, and a second that Max discovers after being exiled.

The first sequel, The Road Warrior was more of a vehicular heist movie while the original film was more of a drama than an action movie. Closer to Thunderdome, Furiosa lives in the worlds introduced by Fury Road but it is no less epic.

Because Furiosa is a prequel to Fury Road, fans know that Furiosa ends up with Immortan Joe, shaves her head and loses her arm. Still, those events occur naturally, sometimes incidentally, and never stop the movie to point out the callbacks.

The Citadel and Immortan Joe’s harem of concubines were first seen as Fury Road plowed through them in chase scenes. Here, entire scenes get to play out in those realms.

Furiosa visits the neighboring Gastown and Bullet Farms, who provided armies for Fury Road’s chase but now are settings for plot and action. Dementus’ encampment is a new enclave of the wasteland.

The film introduces awesome new vehicles for chases between Immortan Joe and Dementus’ men, with Furiosa in the middle of it all. But, in a bittersweet irony, the longevity of the Mad Max franchise now means that the current film employs more screen work than its predecessors, which simply didn’t have that luxury.

Perhaps Miller’s imagination finally got bigger than could be built in the real world. There is still real vehicular work, but many sequences appear to use The Volume technology to allow the filmmakers to film in front of backgrounds unfolding on a screen behind them.

Fury Road combined shots and enhanced backgrounds digitally, but a tanker chase in the middle of Furiosa is particularly glaring. It looks like they used Fury Road as the backdrop for the new movie.

Coloring the sky to look more apocalyptic is fine. Putting the sky on a screen behind actors looks far less natural.

The sequence is still full of new contraptions, like parasails and a metal claw like a full size version of a claw machine in an arcade. Miller still uses the camera dynamically in these sequences, judiciously following the assault on a tanker from all sides.

But when it cuts to Taylor-Joy standing on a real outback road, it’s a relief to be back in the real world.

The Citadel was already a digitally enhanced set in Fury Road. Having more stationary dialogue scenes on those sets allows more time to notice the background when characters are chatting on impossibly high catwalks.

There’s still probably more vehicular work than any other Hollywood movie, just less than Mad Max films used to employ. They do drive over a dozen War Boys standing atop a tanker down the desert road.

The final chase looks like they’re really driving on sand dunes, except for closeups but that’s fair to cut to reaction shots. A shootout occurs on an outdoor set.

So these are still Mad Max action sequences created by George Miller, and designed by Guy Norris. They’re playing with more tools than used to be available, and watching War Boys fling themselves off moving vehicles to self-immolate never gets old.

In the score, Junkie XL himself, Tom Holkenborg, employs some of the memorable cues from his Fury Road score for relevant action scenes. But elsewhere, he lets the music be subtle for this film’s dramatic attention.

The world Miller created in 1979 continues to generate worthwhile new stories and engrossing places to explore. With Furiosa as compelling as Max Rockatansky, that world grows even more vast.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.