Pomona Rewind

An animated French language tale about a severed hand trying to locate its owner seems an unlikely contender to take on 'Toy Story 4' at the Oscars. But that is what is happening at the 2020 Academy Awards, with Jeremy Clapin's mesmerising Parisian story 'I Lost My Body' managing to make the Best Animated Feature shortlist when 'Frozen 2' didn't. Winner of the Nespresso Grand Prize last year during the Cannes Film Festival's International Critics Week, Clapin's story has gone on to scoop an Annie Award, as well as being honoured by the San Diego critics. It was also acquired by Netflix which potentially has given it a much wider audience if they are prepared to hunt it down despite the algorithm. Based on Guillaume Laurent's story 'The Happy Hand', the writer has teamed up with Clapin for the screenplay which begins with a hand scuttling out of a fridge in a hospital lab. As it takes its first steps on a journey aimed

Nominated for three Oscars, 'The Two Popes' is a vehicle for two of Wales' finest actors. However the vehicle Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles drives is not as lumbering as a Popemobile but glides more like a sleek Mercedes Benz.  It is powered by some clever casting, with Anthony Hopkins portraying the conservative German Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce depicting the more liberal Argentinian Jesuit Pope Francis. It would be glib to characterise this devilishly handsome film as some sort of theological 'Batman vs Superman' tale. The film is much more than that. In fact, it is a rather sweet study by screenwriter Anthony McCarten of two people with different philosophies acknowledging their differences but seeing the person beyond the dogma. At the start of Meirelles' film, Pryce's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is summoned to the Vatican for the election of a new Pontiff following the death of John Paul II  Hopkins&#