Films showing this week either in cinemas or on streaming platforms.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (15)
The fourth and final entry into series, based on Helen Fielding’s third novel and with her credited as one of the writers, directed by Michael Morris this plays the usual British middle-class embarrassment rom-com cards but at its heart is a poignant study of coping with grief. As the film opens it’s four years since she was widowed when her lawyer husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth seen in flashbacks and imaginings) was killed while on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. Now in her early 50s, Bridget (Renée Zellweger on irresistible form) is trying to cope as a sex-starved single mother in Hampstead, raising their two preteen children, serious-minded Billy (Casper Knopart) and the precocious Mabel (a scene-stealing Mila Janković), who, when she does get a night to herself and they’re not dancing to Modern Love in the kitchen, are babysat by their rascally ageing playboy ‘uncle’ Daniel Cleaver (a terrific as ever Hugh Grant who wrote most of his own lines), still an inveterate womaniser with a son he’s not seen in years, even if teaching them how make ‘dirty bitch’ cocktails may not be terribly woke. Both kids go to a posh prep school where pupils have names like Atticus where uptight new science teacher Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has an annoying habit of establishing order and herding the children by blowing a whistle. While out in the park, the two kids and Bridget all get stuck in a tree, she insisting to the passing Wallaker that they don’t need any help. But then along comes 29-year-old park attendant and biochemistry student Roxster (Leo Woodall, getting to have his own wet shirt Darcy moment to the strains of Dinah Washington’s title song) ) and, when he responds to the profile her friend’s set up on Tinder and given the constant nudges by her mates (a returning cast list that includes Sarah Solemani, James Callis, Shirley Henderson, Josette Simon and Sally Phillips) as well as down-to-earth gynaecologist Emma Thompson (sparking an amusing scene in her office where Mabel becomes fascinated with pamphlets about sexually transmitted diseases), they begin dating.
On top of which, she’s persuaded to go back to work as producer on a women’s magazine talk show (co-hosted by Josette Simon’s Talitha), both of which put a spark back into her life – and. as Mabel puts it, Roxster giving mummy a special hairstyle every night. But then that age gap elephant in the room trumpets and it’s back to frumpy, sexless square one, except now the kids spend most of their time with new ultra-efficient nanny Chloe (Nico Parker). Until she’s roped in to join the school’s outward bounds Lake District trip and discovers a soulful, gentle side to Wallaker when he befriends the withdrawn, grieving Billy. And gets to take his shirt off to a “ding fucking dong” voiceover.
With cameos from Isla Fisher as the new neighbour, Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent (a deathbed farewell) as Bridget’s parents, and a very brief glimpse of Celia Imrie, and a solid balance of laughter (shopping for condoms, a dark web lip serum that turns her into a Kardashian clone), some mild smutty innuendos and stifled tears, you’d be mad to miss it. And yes, the big knickers get a cameo too. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Vue)
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Captain America: Brave New World (12A)
The harsher reviews have declared this a two-star movie, And to some extent, they’re right, except the two stars are a soulful Anthony Mackie in his first lead role as a super-serum free Sam Wilson taking on the Captain America mantle and Harrison Ford taking over from the late William Hurt as Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross who has now graduated from General to the moustache-free new U.S. President. Both have something to prove, the former that he’s worthy of the shield (not to mention the wings and a variety of different costumes) and the latter that’s changed, less volatile man, largely in the hope of reconnected with estranged daughter Betty Ross (Liv Tyler in a last minute cameo. In a plot that entails Ross trying to negotiate a treaty to share the adamantium (vibranium’s bigger muscled brother) that’s been found on Celestial Island (the formation that resulted in The Eternals), Samuel Sterns aka The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson on franchise ice since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk), seeking revenge for being locked up and experimented on for 30s after being promised his freedom, does indeed want Ross to change, specifically to unleash his pent-up rage and, with the help of gamma irradiated pills, transform (via some dodgy CGI) into the Red Hulk (not orange but still a tantrum-prone POTUS), again with conveniently expanding trousers, as prominently showcased in the trailer.
In the process, the convoluted narrative involves Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbley), a former super soldier now free after being falsely imprisoned, being subjected – along with several agents and soldiers – to mind control in an attempt to assassinate Ross, Captain America and sidekick Joaquim Torres aka The Falcon (Danny Ramirez) retrieving a stolen adamantium sample from the Serpent Society and leader Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), eventually setting up Cap and Falcon trying to stop a dog fight over the Pacific between American and Japanese planes before the big Wilson/Ross face-off.
There’s plenty of high-octane action but, directed by Julis Onah (who, lest we forget, made the awful The Cloverfield Paradox) even so the film somehow feels empty, throwing in franchise references (Shira Haas as Ross’s head of security Ruth Bat-Seraph is a former Widow member) and cameos such as Sebastian Star turning up as Bucky Barnes – aka The Winter Soldier – for a pep talk scene that only serves to highlight how clunky some of the dialogue is (and which relies on an awful lot of backstory exposition). It’s worth more than a two-star rating but at the end of the day (and the long wait for the end credits scene), it’s nevertheless never more than the sum of its parts as an entertaining action time-filler until the Avengers assemble once again. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Vue)
Heart Eyes (18)
A Valentine’s Day romantic comedy slasher, director Josh Ruben has tongue in cheek as he slyly parodies the horror clichés (as well as the heroic slo-mo walk) while piling on plenty of visceral gore. Indeed, the opening has a couple being despatched in gruesome graphic form, including a head being pulped in trash compactor. The villain of the piece is a serial killer who, for the past several years, has, perhaps the result of a soured romantic relationship, has been targeting couples in different cites every Valentine’s Day, the nickname (abbreviated to HEK for ease) coming from the infra-red heart-shaped lenses in their mask. This year, they’ve targeted Seattle.
The couple marked for a bloody end are buttoned-up twenty-something jewellery company marketing executive Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding), the idealistic freelance consultant with whom she had a coffee shop meet cute earlier that day. Except, as she insists to the killer every time they attack, they’re not a couple at all. He’s just there to help come up with a new campaign after her last, a montage of clips from films about doomed lovers in the wake of being dumped, didn’t exactly go down well with either her shrewish boss Crystal (Michaela Watkins channelling The Devil Wears Prada) or the public. ‘Consumer cupid’ Jay’s her last chance to save her job and their meeting up is to discuss strategy rather than a date before he flies out the next morning. Of course, when he sees her impulsively kissing Jay after bumping into her ex, HEK doesn’t see it that way, and, hey, there does seem to be a chemistry between them that goes beyond the purely professional. And, yes, you know how that will ultimately play out.
Next thing you know, they’re back in her apartment after he cuts himself and guess who’s hiding in the closet (don’t even try to work out how they got in or know where she lives) and, in the ensuing fracas, Jay’s arrested by the cops as a HEK suspect. That the two bumbling detectives are called Hobbs (Devon Sawa) and Shaw (Jordana Brewster), but are oblivious to the in-joke, is just part of the screenplay’s self-aware wit as it knowingly borrows on similar pastiches like Scary Movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream, in particular Scream VI, and includes a send-up of the moment the killer’s unmasked to be revealed as… nobody anyone knows.
The bulk of the film involved Ally and Jay on the run from the HEK who, armed with knifes, machete and crossbow (decidedly not cupid’s arrows) graphically, slices dices, spears his way not just through a series of unfortunate couples (one girl having sex in a van gets impaled with a wheel brace through her mouth) but anyone who gets in their way.
With Gigi Zumbado as Ally’s relentlessly encouraging best friend Monica always going about her arthritic sugar daddy and giving a pep talk involving rom-com movie titles, a steady flow of joke and jump scares and piss-takes of make-over montage and race to the airport rom-com cliches and the comic timing of its two stars, this is a killer date movie in every sense. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Vue)
The Seed Of The Sacred Fig (15)
Clandestinely shot at no little risk to all involved by exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof (he was granted asylum in Germany after being forced to flee a draconian prison sentence) and incorporating actual footage of 2022 civil unrest on the streets of Tehran, this takes its title from the fig species whose roots penetrate the stem of the support tree, eventually splitting it from within and supposedly underneath which Buddah found enlightenment. Both are apt metaphors here.
Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) lives in Tehran with her two daughters, college student Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and teenage schoolgirl Sana (Setareh Maleki), and husband Iman (Misagh Zare), a devout and honest lawyer loyal to Iran who’s just been appointed as an investigator for the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, affording him a better salary and a larger apartment, along with the prospects of further promotion to a judge. However, he soon discovers that his legal skills are irrelevant, all the authoritarian government wants is for him to rubber stamp death sentences without assessing the evidence, something that shakes his conscience but he does anyway. As such, he’s ordered not to tell anyone to avoid being pressured by threats to friends and family. He’s also given a gun by his colleague Ghaderi (Reza Akhlaghirad) for protection.
As the Woman Life Freedom protests gather following the in-custody death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested for not wearing hijab, gather in strength and he’s signing hundreds of death sentences a day, he becomes increasingly paranoid. His feminist daughters (the rebellious Sana wants to dye her hair blue) having expressed their horror at what’s going on, he, over an angry dinner scene, dismissing it all as enemy propaganda, spouting the official line that she died of a stroke, his equally religious wife advises them to be “irreproachable” in how they behave and dress, and cease contact with their liberal-minded friends. Then, when one such of Rezvan’s friends, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi), is shot in the face during a demonstration, Najmeh and her daughters provide first aid (a gruesome scene of removing buckshot), but keep this a secret from Iman. Not long afterwards, Sadaf is arrested. Matters come to a crisis when, one morning, Iman cannot find the gun, and, with a potential prison sentence of three years and the end of his ambitions, convinced someone in the family has taken it, has them blindfolded and separated for interrogation by Alireza (the actor remaining anonymous), a colleague and family friend, and when Imam’s details are posted on social media, he and the family take off to his childhood mountain home, Ghaderi lending him another gun.
A powerful narrative about politics and religion dividing family (Golestani, who was herself arrested, impressive as a rule-following wife gradually readjusting her perspectives) as Imam transforms from father to monster, wrapped up in a taut thriller involving Imam, trying to force his family to confess and then locking them up before a deadly game of cat and mouse, it also features and ends with actual mobile phone footage of young people protesting on the streets of Tehran and being beaten by the riot police. Outstanding. (MAC)
NOW SHOWING
Anora (18)
The first American film to win the Palme D’Or at Cannes, written and directed by The Florida Project’s Sean Baker, this catapults Mikey Madison from supporting character roles in the likes of Scream to Oscar-buzz potential as Anora (the Hebrew word for light or grace) aka Ani Mikheeva, a stripper of Uzbek heritage living in Brooklyn’s Russian-speaking neighbourhood Brighton Beach. Materialistic and looking to the world of lap dancing at her upscale Manhattan strip club. So, as the only one of the girls who speaks passable Russian, she’s introduced to Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn, Russia’s Timothée Chalamet), the spoiled, gangly, immature hard partying son of a wealthy Russian oligarch who lives in his parents’ lush gated mansion where he spends his time getting high, drinking and playing video games. Though vehemently denying she’s a prostitute, she takes up his lucrative offer for several bouts of sex, he then offering her $15,000 to stay with him for a week and pose as his girlfriend. This in turn finds them and his entourage flying to Las Vegas where he proposes (not least so he can get a green card and stay in America) and they end up getting hitched in one of the wedding chapels. So far so whirlwind romance as Ani quits her job to play shag-happy wife. However, when word gets out that Vanya’s ditched his clueless Russian-Armenian minders, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), whose job it is to clean up the messes he makes, and rumours spread on Russian social media, his Orthodox priest godfather Toros (Karren Karagulianis) is ordered by Vanya’s domineering mother Galina Zakharovato (Darya Ekamasova) to find him and get the marriage annulled, she and her husband Nikolai flying over to America to take him back home. However, when his minders turn up, a coked-up Vanya does a runner and, after a lengthy apartment-trashing tussle (there’s a lovely moment as Igor tries to restrain Ani while respecting her personal space), they, Tonos and Ani set out to try and track him down, she reluctantly agreeing to $10000 in return for the annulment but hoping to convince everyone their love is real.
A cocktail of After Hours, Uncut Gems and Pretty Woman, with copious scenes of energetic screwing and liberal doses of black comedy, it’s a tad overlong to get going with perhaps more naked, gyrating lap dancing than are strictly necessary, but once the tragi-comic farce is underway it crackles with real energy and emotion. As the panicking Tonos, his beleaguered brother Garnick and tough but placid enforcer Igor, Karagulianis, Tovmasyan and Borisov (at times suggesting an Armenian Ewan McGregor) make for a wonderful comedic hapless trio and, while neither of the two central characters are especially likeable (both in it for what they can get), Eydelshteyn is immensely watchable as the brattishly entitled and shallow Vanya while Madison sets the screen alight as the smart, unsentimental but vulnerable Ani, giving the touching final shot a real hammer to the heart. (Sun: Mockingbird)
Babygirl (18)
Despite scenes of Nicole Kidman masturbating to porn on her laptop after, as ever failing to orgasm with her husband, despite the certificate Halina Reijn’s darkly comic erotic thriller, her follow-up to Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, is, set over a Christmas that seems to last forever, a generally sexually restrained affair that goes easy on the nudity and heavy breathing, unlikely to prompt much crossing of legs or coats over crotches in the cinema. Kidman, who to be fair gives a fearless performance though not on the same scale as Demi Moore in The Substance, is Romy Mathis, the CEO of Tensile, a “robot business” a logistics firm that runs a successful Amazon-like warehouse delivery scheme. She has a plush apartment in the city and a mansion in the country where she lives with her successful theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), whom she genuinely loves, and two teenage daughters, the girly Nora (Vaughan Reilly), who likes dressing up and dancing, and the older, more grounded Isabel (Esther McGregor), who wears her hair as a lesbian banner.
She has it all, except there’s still something missing. Well, that would be a sex life that matches up to her fantasies, generally about being dominated (a cliched reversal of her corporate power status). The answer soon presents itself in the figure of twenty-something new intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who she first encounters in the street when he calms a German Shepherd that’s apparently going to attack her. She’s drawn to his cool confident testosterone and only puts up a token resistance when, clearly single-minded in what he wants, he selects her as his mentor. Maybe, she wonders, he can dominate and tame her like he did the dog with whatever metaphorical cookies he has in his pocket. That he’s charismatically young and she’s feeling the years taking a toll (she has Botox and (cryo chamber sessions), is further fuel to the fire.
So, after some charged unprofessionally close encounters in the office and lift and his loaded comments, they’re soon going at it in the gents to the sound of INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart, he tapping into her need to be told what to do. That would include drinking the milk he orders for her at a swanky bar (“Good girl”, he whispers as she passes) as well as getting on all fours and licking a saucerful of it, this time to the Freudian tones of George Michael’s Father Figure. She gets off on being dominated (finally getting those climaxes going) but also the threat of being exposed (“Does it turn you on when I say that?”) that he uses as a leash as the power balance shifts in his favour.
It’s inevitably going to end badly, with an ambitious young assistant Esme (Sophie Wilde), who Samuel’s casually dating, and then her husband discovering what (or indeed who) is going down, though, in a sly take on sisterhood, the former uses her boss’s “bad example” as a feminist bullying bargaining chip for promotion.
Inevitably likely to draw comparisons with the similarly themed 50 Shades of Grey saga, though considerably less erotic, it’s a certainly daring and provocative piece of work even if Samuel’s motives are never really clear (is he seducing her because he can, is he looking to climb the career ladder on her back, does he have real feelings for her?), which makes the coda hotel room scene with him and that dog problematically ambiguous. Nevertheless, it elicits compelling turns from Kidman, a mess of pleasure and guilty conscience over having it, Dickinson’s self-satisfied cocky chaos agent and the wise beyond her years McGregor, although Banderas feels somewhat undeveloped and one dimensional, his eventual emotional breakdown and tussle with Samuel more embarrassing than poignant. It ends, though, with a satisfying go girl punch, Romy having reclaimed her office politics power and self-assurance in telling a lecherous colleague where to shove it. Henceforth, no one, it seems is going to put babygirl in the corner. (Mockingbird)
Back In Action (12)
The title carrying a double meaning in that this is Cameron Diaz’s first film in 10 years, reaming with her Annie remake co-star Jamie Foxx, himself returning after being hospitalized, directed by Seth Gordon it’s a generic thriller that mines a familiar narrative involving kids who don’t know their parents are spies. Or at least they were. Fifteen years ago, more than platonic partners, she discovering she’s pregnant, CIA agents Emily (Diaz) and Matt (Foxx) narrowly escaped from a plane crash after apparently being betrayed by Baron (Andrew Scott, making the most of a thin role), an MI6 agent.
Resolving to retire, they’ve given up espionage and forged new lives and workaday mundane careers, now living in Atlanta with their two kids, snarky Alice (McKenna Roberts) and her younger rule-following techie brother Leo (Rylan Jackson). However, when a video of Matt losing his cool in a disco after discovering Alice isn’t actually studying with friends goes viral, their old handler Chuck (Kyle Chandler) turns up warning them their cover’s blown. But no sooner has he done so than he’s shot and the pair have to quickly grab the kids and hit the road, being pursued by both Polish KGB agent turned terrorist Balthazar Gor (Robert Besta) and his mercenary henchmen and Baron, who’s still nurturing a running gag crush on Emily, both believing they have the master-key, which they stole during Gor’s kiddies’s birthday party for his daughter, that will give its owner the ability to control any system in the world and which was never recovered from the plane wreckage. All of which means, clearly enjoying being back in the game, they have to, to the confusion of the kids, adopt new names and head to London to seek help from her long-estranged mother, Ginny (Glenn Close), a still formidable former British spy who’s living with her wannabe MI6 agent toyboy Nigel (an amusingly bumbling Jamie Demetriou as a nascent Johnny English).
Unfolding into a road movie with a series of brawls, parenting messages and boat and motorbike chases along the way, while it may be relentlessly rote there are some enjoyable spins, such as the couple improvising weapons out of a petrol pump, a bottle of Diet Coke and a tube of Mentos, an amusing joke at the expense of Jason Bourne and fights staged to Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag at the Tate Modern and Dean Martin’s Ain’t That a Kick in the Head as they literally kick thugs in the head. Trading off one another, Diaz and Foxx have palpable chemistry, Close sinks her teeth into the ham while Roberts and Jackson step up to the not exactly demanding mark as the kids finding mum and dad aren’t the bores they seemed. Undemanding fun, but fun nevertheless. (Netflix)
Blitz (12A)
When your star is Saoirse Ronan, it’s going to takes real effort to sink the credibility and quality she brings, but, his third feature after the Oscar-winning 123 Years A Slave and gritty crime thriller Widows, which were followed by the acclaimed Small Axe TV series and documentary Occupied City, Steve McQueen does rather fumble the ball with this tonally uneven and at times clunkily written wartime drama.
Set during the London Blitz of WWII, Ronan plays Rita, the mother of nine-year-old bi-racial George (a winning Elliott Heffernan), her Grenadian partner Marcus (CJ Beckford, seen in a hot club dance flashback), in absentia, living with her dad Gerald (Paul Weller in a decent acting debut and getting to sing Ain’t Misbehavin’ round the old joanna) in Stepney and working in a munitions factory where, a decent singer, she gets to perform for a Down Your Way-like morale-boosting BBC outside broadcast before her feisty fellow workers take the opportunity to call for better civilian protection against the air raids instead of locking the Underground stations.
When, on account of the bombing, London’s children are packed off as evacuees, George, feeling guilty at the way he angrily treated her for sending him away, jumps off the train and sets off to walk back to London. It’s a picaresque journey of adventure and self-discovery that will involve him with Ife (Benjamin Clémentine), a kindly Nigerian ARP warden (who he meets in a particularly clunky scene in an arcade with dioramas portraying Africans as savages), and, in less friendly circumstances, an embarrassing subplot straight of Oliver Twist involving a gang of Cockney scavengers (Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke hamming like panto villains) who enlist him to pilfer the corpses’ pockets in the bombed out ruins.
Meanwhile, back home, Rita’s helping out in shelters set up by socialist community organisers and, learning George has done a runner, going frantic and determined to find him. Added into her story is Jack (Harris Dickinson), a shy firefighter with a crush on her, but that never really goes anywhere.
Cobbling together the old-fashioned spirit of The Railway Children, Powell and Pressburger, and the those Children’s Film Foundation films, when not indulging in period drama cliches (and Haley Squires as Rita’s Cockerney sparra colleague) and repeatedly showing close-ups of bombs on their way to cause devastation, McQueen lurches from a sentimental road movie in the manner of Disney’s The Incredible Journey with a plucky child instead of animals to broad brush commentary about the era’s casual racism (George’s often called a monkey. There’s moments when, such as the scenes at a ballroom after a bombing with the hoi polloi in frozen death postures, crowds trying to escape a flooding tube station, and the opening shot of a fireman trying to grapple with an errant hose, he manages to capture wartime authenticity, but mostly it’s all rather politely tableaux through which Ronan wanders. All that and some surrealistic images of flowers. A cosy if at times uncomfortable Sunday afternoon watch in front of the telly, but for McQueen a major disappointment. (Apple TV+)
Bring Them Down (15)
Another low-budget indie co-starring Barry Keoghan, the directorial debut of writer Christopher Andrews, the film opens with a young Michael O’Shea recklessly driving down a rural Irish country road with his mother Peggy (Susan Lynch) who’s just announced she’s leaving her husband, and his girlfriend Caroline (Grace Daly), resulting in an off-screen crash that leads the former dead and the latter facially scarred.
Cut then to years later as Michael (Christopher Abbott) tends the family sheep farm for his paraplegic mean-spirited father Ray (Colm Meaney, the pair’s dialogue in Gaelic) who’s unware of his part in his wife’s death, while Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), who still has feelings for Michael, is now married to neighbouring sheep farmer Gary ((Paul Ready) who’s training their wayward son Jack (Keoghan) to run the business, but, feeling suffocated, is herself is planning to take Jack away and start a new life in Cork. Michael learns that two of his prize rams have been found dead, Jack saying he’s disposed of the bodies, but at a sheep market he finds they’ve actually been stolen and disguised as part of Gary’s flock, thereby setting in motion events that turn the already simmering rivalry, compounded by the guilt and self-loathing consuming Michael, into bloody and brutal hostilities.
Following reports that rustlers are hacking off the sheep’s’ back legs and selling them on while leaving the mutilated animals to die, one night Michael disturbs them butchering his own sheep but is unable to stop or identify them, leaving to have to kill each sheep one by one. It’s little surprise then when, adopting Rashoman approach, it’s revealed just who the perpetrators were as the film builds to its bleak climax.
The ambiguous title partly referring to Michael bringing the sheep down from the hills to the farm, steeped in physical, emotional, verbal and psychological violence with Hannah Peel’s percussive sparse score and striking cinematography by Nick Cooke that focuses in on Michael’s facial expressions and telling body language, almost like a classic Western it’s drenched in themes of toxic masculinity, father-son conflicts, desperate misery and, dashed hopes with electrifyingly intense performances that fully capture the twisted darkness inside the male characters. A gruelling but compelling experience. (Until Sun: Mockingbird)
The Brutalist (18)
Brutalism, if you didn’t know, is a minimalist architectural style that, evolving in the 50s and 60s involves a lot of concrete block-like forms and harsh angles. Here it’s the platform but not ultimately the heart of director and co-writer (with wife Mona Fastvold) Best Director nominee Brady Corbet’s monumental, Oscar-baiting epic (215 minutes, including a 15 minute intermission), in which Adrien Brody (Best Actor favourite) plays the title character, Bauhaus-trained Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor architect Holocaust survivor László Tóth, who is the style’s pioneer. He’s fictitious but likely based on two real Hungarian-Jewish architects, Marcel Breuer and Ernő Goldfinger (and yes, he was the inspiration for the Bond villain), though telling – given the film’s commentary on capitalism and art, shares his name with the Hungarian-born Australian geologist who vandalised Michelangelo’s Pietà statue in 1972.
Shot in VistaVision, the film’s divided into two parts, bookended by an Overture and Epilogue, the former of which, largely featuring voiceover by his wife Erzsébet (Supporting Actress nominee Felicity Jones, compelling despite only being in half the film), from whom he’s forcibly separated by the Russians, has him escaping to America and meeting up and staying with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and his Catholic wife Audrey (Emma Laird).
Part 1, The Enigma of Arrival, opens in 1947 as László goes to work for Attila’s furniture business, landing a commission from Harry van Buren (Joe Alwyn) to renovate the library at the home of wealthy industrialist Harrison (an oily Guy Pearce oozing bigoted privilege to Bet Supporting Actor effect), only to have the father enraged at it being done without his knowledge, firing them, Harry refusing to pay and Attila severing ties. Flash forward three years and Tóth’s now a heroin addict, living in a shelter with Gordon (an understated Isaach de Bankolé), an African-American single father he befriended when he arrived in America and who becomes his fellow junkie workmate.
Attila demands that László leave their home, blaming him for the failed project and falsely accusing him of making an advance on his wife Audrey. Three years later, László, now a heroin addict, is living in charity housing with Gordon. Things take an upturn when, after a glowing article about the library, Harrison turns up, pays the money and, discovering he was a renowned architect back home, commissions László, who has ambitions to forge a monumental legacy, to design and a construct a community centre comprising a library, theatre, gymnasium, and, at the urging of religious forces, a chapel grand as a tribute to his late mother. It’s not too hard to see Citizen Cane influences at work. He also introduces him to his lawyer (Peter Polycarpou), who offers to expedite Erzsébet’s immigration.
On then to 1953 and Part 2, The Hard Core of Beauty, with László finally reunited with his wife and orphaned niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), only to discover the former’s wheelchair bound with osteoporosis, and the latter an elective mute, the result of their time in a concentration camp. Suffice to say, his relationship with Erzsébet becomes problematic.
As work on the project gets under way, frictions surface the perfectionist and volatile László erupting over consultants hired by Harrison altering his designs, Harry viciously taunting him as being “tolerated” and making lewd remarks about Zsófia whom, its implied, he sexually assaults. A derailment of a train carrying materials also leads Harrison to stop the project in its tracks, moving the narrative to 1958 New York, László employed by an architecture firm, Erzsébet a writer, and Zsófia no longer mute, married, pregnant and moving to Jerusalem. Once again Harrison has a change of mind and work resumes but an incident in Carrara, where they’ve gone to purchase marble, leaves László traumatised, turning on George and almost killing his wife with a heroin overdose, the family deciding to all move with Zsófia, but not before Erzsébet visits the van Burens with a shocking confrontation about (a heavily symbolic) male rape.
It ends then with the Epilogue, with a retrospective of László’s work at the First Architecture Biennale in Venice, as the now adult Zsófia pays tribute to her father and reveals the traumatic historical inspiration for the now completed centre’s design, closing with the overarching message that “No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey”.
While architecture – and attendant visionary ambition/obsession- provides the building blocks, this is in reality a film about the immigrant – and especially Jewish – experience in America (a lop-sided view of the Statue of Liberty speaks silent volumes) alongside the construction of the nation’s post-war American lie design, the brutalism of the title patently having resonances beyond concrete blocks and also echoed in the caption In Memory of Scott Walker before the credits. Like the similarly-themed Megalopolis, it’s a grandiose, widescreen work, but unlike Coppola’s folly, it has a rich and complex narrative, grounded on human pain, desire, hubris and emotion, with well-crafted thoughtful dialogue and stupendous performances, Brody, as angular as his character’s designs, delivering his best work since The Pianist. Minimalist it might not be, but as both journey and destination Corbet has sculpted a masterpiece. (Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Vue; Sun: Mockingbird )
Carry-On (12)
Though indisputably Die Hard lite (or more accurately, given the time and setting, Die Hard 2), taking time off from having Liam Neeson kill people, set on Christmas Eve director Jaume Collet-Serra turns in some watchable if credibility stretching B-movie action hokum anchored by a central cat and mouse battle of wits between Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman.
The former is Ethan Kopek, sleepwalking through life as a Transportation Security Administration agent at Los Angeles International Airport after being rejected for the police academy after concealing his father’s criminal history. He’s given a wake-up call when his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson), who’s just been promoted to a senior role at the airport, announces she’s pregnant. To which end, he finally asks his boss (Dean Norris) about possible promotion and more responsibility and is given a trial period in charge of scanning luggage on one of the security lines, substituting for his friend and co-worker Jason (Sinqua Walls), and dealing with a steady stream of obstreperous passengers.
This, as it turns out, is rather unfortunate, since Bateman’s character, only ever known as the Traveller, had put in place a plot to force Jason, whose family he was going to imperil, into letting a passenger’s suitcase pass through unchallenged. So now, instead of Jason, Ethan becomes the mark, with Sofia’s life as the bargaining chip. And, after initially assuming it’s a prank, with his every move monitored by the Traveller’s sniper and surveillance accomplice (Theo Rossi), who’s holding someone captive in his van, with no way of alerting anyone, he reluctantly agrees to play ball, placing Nora’s life above the lives of everyone on the plane. What he doesn’t know is that the case, carried through by one Mateo Flores (Tonatiuh), contains a vial of Novichok, the world’s most lethal nerve gas. Meanwhile horrified to learn on the case’s contents, having framed Jason as drinking on the job in order to get back on the security line, Ethan is now frantically seeking a way of foiling the plot, but the Traveller, who’s feeding him instructions via an ear piece, is always one step ahead, as the death of the cop he passes a message to illustrates.
And as he racks his brain looking for a solution – finally confronting the Traveller, in his black coat and hat, who is clearly in total control, having investigated a fire that took the lives of two Russian mobsters at the start of the film, dogged LAPD detective (Danielle Deadwyler) has intuited something’s not right and called in Homeland Security as she starts putting all the pieces together, trying to figure out who the bomb may be targeting. It’s not a huge surprise to learn everything’s down to corporate profits.
There’s a few twists written in to its otherwise fairly simplistic narrative as not everyone involved turns out to be a bad guy while Collet-Serra throws in some messy but thrilling action sequences, variously involving a showdown among the luggage belts and an in-car struggle set to Last Christmas. It’s not one that stands up to scrutinising the logic, but Egerton again effortlessly carries off the action hero, albeit here a reluctant one, while Bateman sinks his teeth into a rare chance to play the villain, amusingly offering Ethan relationship advice in-between his demands. Ultimately, they’re not McClane and Gruber and there’s no rousing yippee ki-yay moment, but the film ably rises above the baggage it’s carrying. (Netflix)
Champions (12)
The Farrelly brothers have always had a thing about comedies featuring characters with intellectual disabilities, but never for cheap laughs. Now, making his solo directorial debut, Bobby returns to the source for an underdog sports movie in the Bad News Bears tradition in which a disgraced character is given a chance to redeem themselves by coaching a team of misfits. Here, adapted from 2018 Spanish film Campeones, itself based on a real life team, Woody Harrelson plays Des Moines assistant basketball coach Marcus Markovich (Harrelson), a hot head with NBA ambitions who gets fired from his minor league team for shoving his boss (Ernie Hudson) over ignoring his strategies and is subsequently convicted of drinking and driving after crashing into a cop car. In an amusing court scene with as the judge (Alexandra Catillo) and his attorney (Mike Smith), he avoids a prison by accepting 90 days community service coaching a rubbish local team with intellectual disabilities nicknamed The Friends who operate out of a run down, budget-challenged rec centre run by Julio (Cheech Marin), who also gets to deliver the exposition about the different players and how they have full lives.
All played by ten actors with special needs, among them are Craig (Matthew Von Der Ahe), who keeps going on about having sex with his girlfriend, Showtime (Bradley Edens) who will only shoot the ball backwards, and always misses, Marlon (Casey Metcalfe) who wears a padded helmet and quotes obscure trivia, and the outgoing Johnny (Kevin Iannucci) who has Downs Syndrome, works in an animal care centre, refuses to shower and whose protective sister turns out to be Alex (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Kaitlin Olson), a struggling actor first seen as Marcus’s didn’t end well Tinder one-nighter, which adds further complications but also the developing romantic subplot.
It’ll come as no surprise to find that Marcus goes from initially feeling humiliation and apathy about the task and his team to coming to love them and pushing them to win at the upcoming Special Olympics championship in Winnipeg. Nevertheless, Farrelly ensures the predictable (save for the final winning shot moment) journey with Marcus learning to care for others and not just himself is heartwarming, funny, inspirational and never patronising. Harrison and Olson are engaging characters while the Friends are an irresistible bunch, each getting their moment to shine with particular stands outs being Iannucci, James Day Keith as Benny, a restaurant dishwasher who gets to stand up to the abusive restaurant boss who refuses to give him time off for games (setting up a hilarious sting), Joshua Felder as star turn Darius who, for reasons revealed in a later poignant scene, refuses to play for Marcus, and especially a scene stealing Madison Tevlin as Consentino, another Downs Syndrome player who’s brought in to replace him and takes no shit from either her coach or fellow players. It’s minor league, but it certainly deserves its spot on the court. (Netflix)
Companion (15)
After a spate of films sounding warning notes about AI, writer-director Drew Hancock impressively flips the narrative from perpetrator to victim in a cautionary tale about technology and relationships woven with a commentary on toxic masculinity.
Meeting romcom cute in a supermarket, Iris (Heretic’s Sophie Thatcher) is in a relationship with underdog nice guy Josh (The Boys’ Jack Quaid), though there’s something uneasy about how, docile and submissive, she professes she’s wants to ensure all his wants and desires are fulfilled. Her opening voice-over sets you up for that’s to come as she says the two most important moments of her life where when she met him and when she killed him.
They’re off on weekend getaway to a remote luxury home owned by adulterous billionaire Russian Sergey (Rupert Friend with bristling moustache and thick accent), joined by Josh’s standoffish ex Kat (Megan Suri), who’s also Sergey’s girlfriend, and, also in their first flush of romance, mutually besotted gay couple by catty Eli (Harvey Guillén) and the hot but dim, anxious to please Patrick (Lukas Gage), who coincidentally also have their own meet-cute, although Iris feels uncomfortable and unwelcomed in their company. Well, not that unwelcomed by Sergey who, alone by the lake, attempts to rape her. We next see her walking back into the house, covered in his blood. At which point the film upends everything to reveal that Iris is in fact a humanoid, a lifelike fuckbot companion Josh is renting (flashbacks show her being delivered and programmed – her intelligence, level of aggression, voice, etc., all remotely controlled), theoretically programmed to not harm humans,.
It turns out that killing Sergey, apparently a drugs dealer, also throws a spanner in the works regarding the real reason the others are there, namely to steal $12million. But, as events spiral out of control into a cat and mouse battle of wits and survival between them and Iris, that’s not the only secret being hidden, but to reveal more would spoil the thrills as they unfold.
Thatcher is terrific in the way she handles Iris coming to terms with who or what she is (learning her tears are just fed from an internal reservoir), gaining Josh’s smartphone app controls and trying to become autonomous and overcome the restrictions of her programming and the feelings with which she’s been implanted. Playing counter to his character in The Boys, Quaid is also compelling in Josh’s mix of spinelessness and ruthlessness, and while Suri’s character is less developed, Guillén and Gage throw some clever curves as things develop.
Sporting an ingenious screenplay and working with themes of manipulation, appearances and reality, control, emotional abuse, the weaponisation and commodification of feelings and , it consistently takes off in unexpected directions, fusing moments of comedy with ones of sudden violence and horror, it’s already on the year’s best of list. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Mockingbird; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Vue; Sun: Everyman)
A Complete Unknown (12A)
As any Dylanologist will know, the infamous moment when an audience member called out Judas at his playing an electric guitar and he replied “I don’t believe you”, occurred at the Manchester Free Trade Hall on May 17 1966. However, in Best Director nominee James Mangold’s biopic of those formative years where the young Dylan transitioned from acoustic folk to electrified folk rock, it takes place at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It’s artistic licence, but, since Dylan was indeed booed by the audience during his first show playing electric (trampling mud on the carpet in Johnny Cash’s words), the film featuring guitarist Mike Bloomfield (Eli Brown), bassist Jerome Arnold, drummer Sam Lay, pianist Barry Goldberg – and Al Kooper (Charlie Tahan) on Hammond performing Maggie’s Farm, and Like A Rolling Stone (it was Kooper who laid down that iconic opening organ riff on the studio recording), it makes dramatic sense in context, before giving the crowd an acoustic bone with the retrospectively pointed It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.
That aside, while it deliberately offers no Robert Zimmerman Minnesota background, based around Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric! starring a literally note perfect Best Actor nominee Timothée Chalamet, it’s a largely faithful account (given the urban myths and Dylan’s own secretiveness) of his arc from arriving in New York in 1961 age 19 and ending with the fractious Newport set in 1965. The first thing he does after being dropped off with his distinctive cord cap, scarf, rucksack and guitar case, is head out to see his hero, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), dying of Huntington’s Disease in a New Jersey hospital and unable to speak, where, in this telling, he meets Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, excellent), impressing them by singing his first composition, Song To Woody.
Seeger very much becomes Dylan’s champion and fatherly mentor, inviting him to stay with the family and facilitating gigs on the Greenwich Village folk scene where he meets his first girlfriend, the politically active and highly influential Suze Rotolo, famously featured on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, but here, at Dylan’s request, renamed Sylvie Russo (a terrific Elle Fanning, expressively wounded with a world of hurt), and, later the self-determined and already famous Joan Baez (a stellar Monica Barbaro) who would record many of his songs and with whom he had an on-off tempestuous relationship (their duet of It Ain’t Me Babe speaks metaphorical volumes, also resonating with a watching Sylvie), as well as subsequent manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler) who signed him on the spot at an open mic show and set up his deal with Columbia Records boss John Hammond (David Alan Basche), resulting in his poor-selling 1961 debut of folk covers.
While Russo’s away, he begins to develop his socially-honed songwriting, starts his affair with Baez (deserving her own biopic) and becomes the rising new folk star, but it’s clear he’s frustrated by the scene constraints, both in terms of song content and musical form as well as the insistence he perform his popular songs of their shared tour rather than his new material, leading him to refuse to sing Blowing In The Wind and walk offstage. All of which builds to his spilt from Russo and the divisive Newport Festival where, the organisers, Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz) and Seeger prominent among them, demand he not play anything electric which, here urged on by Cash (Boyd Holbrook), bad boy devil to Seeger’s folk saint, he duly does, leading to his rift with Pete who, in this account, is seen threatening to cut the sound before being dissuaded by his photographer wife and Newport co-founder Toshi (Eriko Hatsune). It ends the following morning with a brief exchange between him and Baez and a final visit to Guthrie and a ritual passing of the torch, or at least harmonica.
Mangold clearly wants to celebrate Dylan and his music (snatches of which range from teasing out The Times They Are Changing to playing Masters of War in the Gaslight Cafe during the Cuban Missile Crisis), a complex and complicated genius who would forever change the face of folk music, but doesn’t shy away from also showing him as egotistical, volatile and difficult, or a real asshole as Baez (whose songs he likens to polite oil paints at a dentist) puts it, playing to his subject’s often self-mythologising (he claimed he worked in a travelling carnival) enigmatic nature. It’s also a bit of a name spotting gala, some fleeting others longer, with the cast portraying real life characters such as Maria Muldaur, Peter Yarrow, Theodore Bikel, Dave von Ronk, Joe Boyd and singer turned Dylan road manager Bob Neuwirth (Will Harrison) with Big Bill Morganfield as fictional bluesman Jesse Moffette with whom Bob duets on Seeger’s television show.
While ultimately, a fairly conventional if phenomenal biopic, the film doesn’t try to decipher or explain Dylan, a complete unknown as the title says, it simply presents him for you to take away whatever you choose, but through it all it’s that poetic brilliance and magnetic charisma that compels you to not think twice, mount your metaphorical Triumph motorcycle and follow in that jingle jangle morning. (Cineworld 5 Ways; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal Sutton Coldfield; Vue; Until Tue: Mockingbird)
Conclave (12A)
Adapted by Peter Straughan from the Robert Harris novel and the follow up to director Edward Berger’s Oscar-winning All Quiet On The Western Front, despite a seemingly unpromising plot pivoting round the election of a new Pope, this is a grippingly tense thriller about faith and the nature of and desire for power and unequivocally one of the year’s best films, its success in America a welcome reminder that, amid the familiar CGI-littered blockbusters, alongside Heretic, there’s still an audience for intelligent, thought-provoking filmmaking.
The central figure is the conflicted Cardinal Lawrence (an inscrutable, nuanced turn by Best Actor nominee Ralph Fiennes), who, when the Pope dies in his room in Domus Sanctae Marthae, is charged with overseeing the conclave, an assembly of fellow cardinals who, sequestered in the Sistine Chapel, charged with electing his successor (a problematic task foreshadowed by the difficulty in removing the Papal ring). It’s not a position Lawrence, whose resignation from his post as Dean of the College of Cardinals amid his crisis of faith in the church the Pope had refused, welcomes and he certainly harbours no ambitions for the position himself. That’s not the case, however, for the narrow-minded Tedesco (John Tuturro lookalike Sergo Castellitto) who wants to return the Papacy to the old, pre-liberal days with everything in Latin, or Tremblay (an almost salivating John Lithgow),who lusts for the power it brings. Lawrence’s fellow liberal friend Bellini (an edgy Stanley Tucci) claims he’s not a viable candidate, but for the sake of the Church, would rather himself than his rivals. Also in contention is the equally conservative and homophobic Nigerian Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati).
Amid the conspiratorial machinations, matters are complicated by Lawrence learning that Tremblay apparently had a meeting with the Pope just before he died and was apparently sacked for conduct unbecoming, though he insists this never happened. There’s also an incident with Adeyemi and a nun from Nigeria who was flown in to the Vatican at the express wish of one of his rivals. With all the cardinals secluded from any outside communication and forming their own cliques, as a web of secrets unfolds, there’s also the surprise arrival of the soft-spoken Mexican cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) who wasn’t on the list and whose posting in Kabul was unknown to all and who, it transpires, had a planned visit to Switzerland paid for by the late Pope. All of this is being quietly observed by the head nun, Sister Agatha (Isabella Rossellini, scene stealing in an almost dialogue-free role that’s earned her her first Oscar nomination).
As Lawrence stars digging into the rumours, while becoming increasingly worried that he’s getting votes himself, working with Bellini to try and stave off the election of either Tremblay or Tedesco, more hidden secrets come to light and there’s more coldly calculated backstabbing, as, bolstered by a tremendous score from Volker Bertelmann, Berger ratchets up the suspense to nail-biting levels while the screenplay throws up provocative debates about the state of the Roman Catholic Church in present times, as well as a sudden .intrusion by political events beyond the Vatican walls.
Amid the raft of outstanding performances, Fiennes gets a terrific Oscar-baiting sermon, declaring that he fears certainty to be the biggest threat to faith and encouraging the cardinals to embrace doubt while, amid the sea of red robes and detailed rituals, there’s some riveting visual moments, most notably an overhead shot of the cardinals gathering in the courtyard with white umbrellas that could easily become an iconic poster. Climaxing with a twist you’ll never see coming, it’s a masterclass in filmmaking and storytelling. (Vue; Until Wed: Mockingbird)
Dog Man (U)
Adapted from the hugely popular children’s graphic novels by Dav Pilkey, the creator of the equally successful man Captain Underpants, this is a DreamWorks animated origin story in which, in the set-up, having fallen victim to a bomb trap by feline villain Petey (Pete Davidson), the body of famed cop Officer Knight is grafted to the head of his dog Greg to become Dog Man. Now, with Petey continuing his plan to control the world, our hybrid hero, living in a Tardis-like kennel after his girlfriend left him and sold the house, has to try and take him down while having to prove himself to Ohkay City’s no-nonsense mayor (Cheri Oteri), his jealous overworked Chief (Lil Rel Howery) and sceptical reporter Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher), on whom his boss has a crush. Meanwhile, having escaped Cat Jail on numerous occasions, Petey has ordered up a cloning machine to make his villainy twice as effective only to find himself saddled with a cute innocent kitten version, Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon). So, until he can corrupt him, he decides to rescue and reanimate the corpse of the depraved telekinetic Flippy The Fish (Rickey Gervais) using Living Spray. Meanwhile, abandoned by Petey after screwing up his plans, his cloned offspring winds up being taken in by Dog Man.
Admirably silly with a mix of broad juvenile and more adult humour (watch for the Apocalypse Now nod), a hand-drawn styled storyline that involves and a man whose job is to answer the “life’s not fair” phone and giant living buildings (one of which farts) it also has a sentimental streak about fathers and son in which Li’l Petey uses Petey’s delightfully named orb-shaped robot 8DHD. to track down Grampa, Petey’s grumpy father who abandoned him when he was a child, setting up the eventual redemptive finale, part of which hinges on a green tennis ball. Quite literally barking. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe,. West Brom; MAC; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Vue)
Emilia Perez (15)
France’s official entry for Best Foreign Film but now mired in controversy over its leading actress’s racist tweets, directed by Jacques Audiard and loosely based on a chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute, it’s a tonally jarring affair that, initially imagined as an opera, marries songs and sung dialogue to an overcooked, melodramatic narrative that, based in Mexican crime territory, explored themes of identity (a constant in his films) and moral conscience.
Having got her wealthy client off for murdering his wife but with her boss taking the credit , Mexico City lawyer Rita Mora Castrio (Zoe Saldana, Best Supporting Actress nominee), is approached by Manitas (transgender Best Actress nominee actress Karla Sofía Gascón), a notorious cartel boss, who wants her to help his disappear so that he can transition to the woman he’s always felt himself to be, the gender reassignment surgery performed by Dr Wasserman whom she sources in Tel Aviv (following a musical montage in Bangkok to a song called La Vaginoplastia) who’s persuaded after hearing Manitas’s recollections of gender dysphoria as a child.
Four years later, Manitas declared dead, he now returns, surfacing in London and posing as his long lost cousin, Emilia Perez, enlisting Rita to relocate her ‘widow’, Jessi (Selena Gomez, making more of the role than the script offers) and two children from Switzerland, where they were sent for safety, back to Mexico, moving in to live with her. Jessi only agrees, however, so she can be reunited with Gustavo Brun (Édgar Ramírez), with whom she had an affair.
A chance encounter with the mother of a missing child, stirs Emilia’s conscience over his former life and, with Rita’s help, she sets up a nonprofit, charity for the victims of cartel violence and the ‘disappeared’, their bodies exhumed for identification, proper burial and closure, prompting an amusing moment when a woman, Epifanía (Adriana Paz) declares she’s relieved her abusive husband’s dead, she and Emilia beginning a relationship. Meanwhile, while having freed herself from a corrupt justice system, while herself somewhat morally compromised, Rita’s troubled that many of the charity’s donors are themselves dangerous shady characters. When Jessi announces she intends to marry Gustavo, taking the children with her, Emilia’s reaction sets up the inevitable poignantly confessional and tragic climax.
An exploration of the complexities of human nature, told largely through Rita’s eyes and her bon with Emilia, driven by powerful performances from Saldana and Gascón, it’s a strong melodramatic and emotional narrative (Audiard initially conceived it in operatic terms) with a sharp political edge regarding the grip criminals and corrupt businessmen and politicians exercise over Mexico. However, it’s debatable whether it really needed the song and dance sequences that punctuate it, not to mention the way characters sing their lines, especially when so few of them are especially memorable or stirring (though Saldana’s showpiece at a charity event in Mexico City where she dances in a red velvet power suit while delivering a critique of the country’s corrupt ruling class is easily the strongest). That said, given the tonal rollercoaster, conceiving it as a highly theatrical musical was probably the only way it would work without feeling like some sub-Aldomovar cheesy soap opera. (Netflix: Sat: Mockingbird)
Flight Risk (15)
Given he made Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, it’s astonishing that Mel Gibson’s direction here is so shoddily clumsy and half-hearted, but then this single location three-hander (there are over the radio/phone voice contributions) doesn’t really warrant much more. After a case that ended badly two years earlier (details saved for later in the film), Deputy U.S. Marshal Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) is given a second chance and charged with escorting Winston (Topher Grace) whose struck deal to turn stated witness against the mob boss for whom he cooked the books. She has to fly him in a single propeller plane from Alaska, where he was hiding out, to New York, but unfortunately it turns out that the pilot, supposedly named Daryl Booth (a career low Mark Whalberg in a bald cap), is a hitman who’s there to ensure they never make it.
Ignoring such logical holes as to why she never asks to see his ID before they take off, it’s so half-heartedly, repetitively (Booth manages to free himself not once but twice, cutting through a seat belt holder with the aid of Madelyn’s sunglasses), illogically (Winston’s manacled and chained to his seat as a flight risk – in mid-air?!) and predictably (a flare gun in act one will inevitably go off in act three) plotted you wonder of writer Jared Rosenberg tossed it off in a lunch break.
Having managed to overpower and handcuff Booth, Madelyn’s left to try and fly the plane, a task for which she has absolutely no experience, though soon learns how to read the gauges and flick the switches, but manages to make contact with someone who can give her instructions. The other problem is that, given how the hitman seems to know all her personal and career background, as well as where Winston’s mother lives, she realises there must be a leak in her department, though it takes a while for the revelation as to how high up the chain it goes.
Devoid anything resembling thrills, Dockery delivers a performance that takes things far more seriously than they deserve but Grace is beyond irritating as the constantly whining Winston and Whalberg shamelessly and embarrassingly hams it up, chewing scenery and the abysmal dialogue (Y’all need a pilot?”, he smugly drawls) alike. The sort of C-movie knock off that would have once gone direct to video and which even Gerard Butler might snub, even the most a cursory risk assessment would advise you not to board. (Cineworld NEC; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Vue)
Get Away (15)
Written by and starring Nick Frost, this is another of his genre spoofing excursions, turning the lens this time on folk horrors such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar with a plot that follows the familiar trope of outsiders being caught up in deadly rituals. The clueless targeted victims are middle-aged couple dorky dad Richard (Frost) and condescending Susan (Aisling Bea) Smith, who call each other mummy and daddy, and have brought their reluctant, bickering adolescent kids, sarcastic vegan Sam (Sebastian Croft) and surly misanthropic Jessie (a drolly deadpan Maisie Ayres), for a holiday stay on the fictional Swedish island of Svalta to watch the annual Karantän festival, an eight-hour re-enactment of a cannibalistically murderous 19th-century history incident when the locals killed and ate the four British soldiers who’d starved the island.
The family’s warned by the local storekeeper not to take the ferry, advising they won’t be made welcome, but, naturally, as in all such horrors, the blithely proceed, arriving to face a hostile reception led by veteran Karantän organiser Klara (Anitta Suikkari) before checking into the Airbnb they’ve rented off Matts (Eero Milonoff), who turns out to be a creepy pervert who steals Jessie’s underwear and watches her through a two way mirror.
As the islanders make no secret of how they feel about those culturally-deaf interlopers (having a dead rodent thrown at them seems pretty indicative), the Smiths are left in no doubt that more than theatrical blood may well be spilled. And indeed, things do finally erupt in knife-slicing and stabbing carnage with eviscerations and severed limbs and heads. But, as Frost delivers a wicked Psycho-spun twist, not quite in the way you might have assumed.
Directed by Steffen Haars with an enthusiastically scattershot narrative, it is, of course, all utterly but deliberately silly, ridiculous, and wildly overacted as it bathes in geysers of blood and gleefully sends up the genre conventions, complete with a punchline motto I can’t possibly reveal. Great fun. (Sky)
Hard Truths (12A)
Were it not for the Demi Moore factor the BAFTA Best Actress would be a walkover for Marianne Jean-Baptiste, reunited here with director and co-writer Mike Leigh for the first time since her breakout role in 1996’s Secrets and Lies, a wordless scene focused on the gamut of emotions conveyed through just her face, laughter and sobs one of the best you’ll see this year.
She plays Pansy, an obsessively tidy middle-aged Afro-Caribbean suburban London housewife with a severe case of clinical depression that manifests in the way she berates her long-suffering taciturn plumber husband Curtley (David Webber) and directionless introverted 22-year-old son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who spends his time reading about planes, playing video games and going for solitary walks where he’s bullied by the local gangs.
Pansy’s daily life is one of unremitting rage, snapping angrily at anyone who annoys her or who she things is being patronising, from a supermarket check-out girl, a sofa salesgirl, doctor and dentist to her warm and wise single mother hairdresser sister Chantelle (a warm Michele Austin). For Pansy, as a Black woman, everything is a grievance, real or imagined. Terrified of animals or insects getting into her house, she has a panic attack meltdown when a fox turns up in her garden. She’s gripped with overwhelming psychological pain and desperately needs help. But she won’t admit it to herself and, save for Chantelle, others are too frightened to mention it. And husband and son have long since retreated into a zone of silence (Moses with his headphones) around her.
As such, Jean-Baptise gives a heartwrenching performance as someone who’s both impossible to be around but also agonisingly lonely, overwhelmingly damaged and in need of help. While engaging and with points to make, slightly less successful are the film’s subplots involving Chantelle’s daughters, trainee lawyer Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and skincare company chemist Kayla (Ani Nelson) who both have to deal with problems and dismissive people at work, but find way to build on this. Even so, the performances are lovely, as is that of a deadpan Jonathan Livingstone as Curtley’s talkative, trivia-fount co-worker Virgil although Samantha Spiro, one of the few non-Black actors, seems a touch overdone as Kayla’s abusive boss.
For a film that digs deep into the suffering of depression, it’s also often very funny with some hilarious lines, such as Pansy complaining her doctor should not be at a funeral because he’s supposed to deal with the living or, moaning about a baby in a onesie, “What’s a baby need pockets for?”, but it’s the emotional hammers that sound loudest as it builds to that aforementioned sequence as the family gathers for the minefield that is Mother’s Day and Pansy and Chantelle’s fraught visit to their mother’s grave where the former finally admits “I’m so scared”. Often uncomfortable to watch in its truths, there’s a catharsis of sorts, but the pain still pierces. (Mockingbird; Vue)
Joy (12A)
Taking its title from the middle name bestowed on Louise Joy Brown by the medical team responsible for her birth in 1978, directed by Ben Taylor with a screenplay from Jack Thorne inspired by his wife Rachael’s struggles with infertility, the film unfolds the decade long pioneering development of IVF. A scientific breakthrough that has subsequently changed the lives of millions of childless couples, the story begins in 1968 when gifted embryologist Jean Purdy (a quietly understated Thomasin McKenzie) becomes laboratory manager for visionary scientist Robert Edwards (James Norton, solid if not dazzling) who’s working in trying to find a way to combat infertility. Together they recruit outstanding obstetrician Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy in familiar curmudgeonly but kindly mode), first seen haranguing a fellow surgeon giving a lecture about medical procedures with which he disagrees, and follows them from setting up base in a makeshift lab at the latter’s hospital in Oldham, where he was Director of the Centre for Human Reproduction, through recruiting women willing to let them harvest their eggs (they dub themselves The Ovum Club) while being told the chances of any success are slight, being rejected for funding by the British Medical Council, a trial and series of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory to the shutting down and the restarting of the programme, finally culminating in the first test tube baby.
Alongside the dogged scientific determination, the film also shows the sacrifices the work cost Edwards, forced to spend months away from his family in Cambridge and castigated by the media (he’s forced into a TV debate against James Watson who won the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA to defend his work that does not go well) and the public (he was dubbed Dr Frankenstein), and Purdy who, a Christian, was rejected by her church and mother (Joanna Scanlan) for playing God and found herself facing a moral dilemma on learning Steptoe performed abortions, now legal, because his fellow surgeons refused. As the hospital’s no nonsense Matron, Muriel (Tanya Moodie) tells her, both their work and terminations are about giving women a choice. There’s an added note of poignancy to Purdy’s involvement as she was medically unable (severe endometriosis) to have the children she so desperately wanted. If she couldn’t, she wanted to ensure others could.
It’s a solid workmanlike and very British period drama that’s probably is best suited to the small screen, exposing the snobbery and misogyny of the scientific community (it took 30 years and crusading by Edwards for Purdy’s name to be added to the commemorative plaque at the hospital, she having died in 1985), while also throwing in a somewhat superfluous sidebar about a young doctor (Rish Shah) fruitlessly attempting to woo Jean. More might have been made of the feelings of the prospective hopeful mothers (one says she feels like they’re cattle), but regardless this is heartfelt, affecting and uplifting account of how the passion and dedication of three people brought life to where life could never be. (Netflix)
Love Hurts (15)
Set on Valentine’s Day, this brings together Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose and wastes both on a sub-par but often graphically violent generic martial arts action comedy that’s loaded with clunky expositionary dialogue, confused narrative and a mind-boggling romantic sub-plot where a depressed woman falls for a poetry writing assassin.
Quan plays the punningly named Marvin Gable (though there’s no soul evident here), a successful real estate agent who works for Cliff Cussick (a cameo reunion with his onetime Goonies co-star Sean Astin with stage school Southern drawl), his Stetson-wearing Milwaukee real-estate boss, mentor and surrogate brother. As an opening montage shows, he’s dedicated to finding couples happy new homes, baking heart-shaped cookies to share; however, we quickly discover there’s more to him than that when a hitman named Raven (Mustafa Shakir) who throws feathered daggers turns up and, incredibly unheard by his manager Ashley (Lio Tipton) or other staff, his office becomes a furniture trashing combat zone. This all ties in with a Valentine card Marvin’s received from Rose (DeBose), an accountant on whom he had an undeclared crush and was ordered to kill after she apparently stole millions of dollars from his crime boss brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu) for whom he worked as a hitman and who uses a video store (Hong Kong movie posters and a Mortal Kombat II arcade machine suggest the prop hands put in more work than most). Except he let her live and now she’s returned, learning she was set up and looking for the actual money she and Knuckles’ henchman Renny (Cam Gigandet) stole, he, of course, needing to eliminate her before she can spill the beans on his double-crossing. To which end enter his chit-chat swapping goons for hire Otis (André Eriksen) and King (former football star Marshawn Lynch), the former providing a running gag about his wife leaving because he’s emotionally constipated, who’ve been ordered to kill them both, while Rhys Darby is Rose’s whiny Kiwi replacement accountant who was also in on the scam. Now Marvin has to reluctantly again become the man he left behind.
The directorial debut by stunt co-ordinator Jonathan Eusebio whose credits include John Wick and The Fall Guy, the fight scenes (one of which has Marvin trying to keep his World’s Best Estate Agent certificate safe) are at least decently choreographed, but little compensation for its stars having to spout lines like “I know I have to face my past to truly be free” when not being forced to provide reams of backstory. Even at just 83 minutes, it’s laboriously overlong, the only thing love hurts is your tolerance for such nonsense. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Vue)
Moana 2 (PG)
Initially conceived as a television series but now full blown feature that’s simultaneously empty and overstuffed, set a few years on from the original, ocean-commanding (and there’s far too many high fiving with waves) Polynesian heroine Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) is now an official wayfinder, her task being to restore the natural order of things and reunite the people of the ocean who were separated and scattered by the evil god Nalo in order to keep them divided. Returning to her island with an artefact she discovered, experiencing a vision and visited by the spirt of her ancestor Tautai Vasa, she learns that the island of Motufetu and its inhabitants were submerged by power-crazed storm god Nano and, if it can be raised it will restore all the peoples as one.
And so, much to the upset of her young sister (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda), bidding goodbye to mum (Nicole Scherzinger) and dad (Temuera Morrison) off she sets on another mission in the one-note company of her wilful brattish friend Loto (Rose Matafeo), grumpy farmer Kele (David Fane), and the gormless Moni (Hualalai Chung), who spends his time drawing illustrations of her and his tribe’s stories and has a crush on her. Plus, of course, her relentlessly annoying pet pig Pua and rooster Heihei (clucked by Alan Tudyk), amusingly called bacon and egg by Maui (Dwayne Johnson whose daughters play Moana’s fan club Mo-wannabes), the egotistical demi-god with the animated tattoos who Moni hero worships. However, despite a couple of early brief scenes, he doesn’t put in much of an appearance until the final third.
Along the way to Oceania to break the curse, they again encounter the Kakamora, a tribe of coconut shell pygmies, and she has a run-in with villainous bat lady goddess Matangi (Awhimai Fraser) who has been holding Maui captive but, if she ever had any real narrative purpose, seems to have mislaid it along the way and vanishes from the plot never to be seen again. It’s a slim proposition extended beyond endurance by innumerable ‘hilarious’ scenes of characters falling/being knocked over, washed into the sea, or slimed, along with a giant clam, purple storms, lighting flashes and, whirlpools, all punctuated by songs so unmemorable you’ll have forgotten them ever before they end. Oh yeh, Moana raises the island but is killed in the process, resurrected by her ancestors (and yes, gran’s there too) with her own demi god tattoos on the off-chance of a third revenge of Nano outing teased in the mid-credits scene with the cameo return of giant coconut crab Tamatoa.
Cobbled together by three different directors, none of whom seems to have spoken to one another, it’s visually thrilling but nothing else measures up to the way it looks, making the prospect of the planned live action remake of the original more depressing and redundant than it was in the first place. (Vue; From Mon: Mockingbird)
Memoir Of A Snail (15)
Perhaps best known for his 2009 debut feature Mary and Max featuring the voiced of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Eric Bana, stop-motion claymation film-maker Adam Elliott is Australia’s answer to Aardman, his minimalistic films a fine cocktail of humour, social observation and poignant emotion with an affinity for the underdog and outsider. This, his second feature, finds him, both narratively and technically, at the peak of his powers, and, while not as elaborate as The Wild Robot, taking its cues from Delicatessen and Amelie, is most certainly its equal.
Opening with incredibly detailed credits as the camera pans across an array of objects and artefacts, set in Melbourne it begins with reclusive hoarder Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) attending dementia-afflicted surrogate mother Pinky (Jaki Weaver) on her deathbed, gasping potatoes before she expires. A collector of snails, both living and artificial, Grace then decides to set them free, relating her story top her favourite, Sylvia (after Plath), as it slithers across Pinky’s vegetable patch. And so, things flashback to the 1970s with Grace and her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) living with their paraplegic French alcoholic former Paris juggler and stop-motion animator father Percy (voiced in a nod to Delicatessen and Amelie by Jenout and Caro star Dominque Pinon). She collects snail-themed objects, a hobby inherited from her late mother who died in childbirth, and sports a snail-styled beanie made by her dad, and is defended by Gilbert, who’s a bit of a pyromaniac, from the school bullies who call her rabbit-face on account of her cleft lip.
He dreaming of following in dad’s footsteps as a fire breather and she wanting to be an animator, the siblings have a close bond but, when Percy does in his sleep (his ashes preserved in a jar to be scattered from his favourite rollercoaster ride) , social services force them apart, Grace sent to Canberra to be raised by self-help addicts Ian and Narelle (Paul Capsis) whose swingers lifestyle means she’s often left alone, while Gilbert is packed off to religious fundamentalists who worship the baby Jesus and grow apples in Perth and a life of cruelty and abuse, especially at the hands of family matriarch Ruth (Magda Szubanski) and pastor husband Owen (Bernie Clifford), the pair only remaining in contact by letter.
Grace remains friendless and aimless, the snails her only company and when Ian and Narelle go off to join a nudist group, she’s taken in as a teenager by the eccentric free-spirited and Castro confidante Pinky (so named for losing a finger to an overhead fan while dancing in Barcelona) who sports outsize glasses and “smells of ginger and second-hand shops” (just as Gilbert smelled of burnt matches). Life looks to improve when she meets and falls in love with microwave repairman Ken (Tony Armstrong), but her wedding day is ruined when she receives a letter and box of ashes from Ruth telling her Gilbert, who had struck up a friendship with her rebellious young son Ben, has perished in a fire at their church. Sinking into depression and overeating on microwave sausages, plagued with regret, her life goes from bad to worse, culminating in Pinky’s death. Only a last minute epiphany stops her from suicide as the film finally opens up to embrace light and hope.
The sight of rutting guinea pigs probably tells you this isn’t really for the children, but it’s aglow with a gentle innocence and classical score by Elena Kats-Chernin that warm the pain and anger with a message about not living our lives in shells of our own making, carrying our burdens on our back and, as Pinky says, living life forwards (snails can’t travel backwards). Packed with such visual delights as Grace and Gilbert reading an array of literary classics (from Lord of the Flies to Cahiers du Cinema) and watching The Two Ronnies, it’s a thematically and emotionally rich work and compelling character study that, with voice cameos from Nick Cave and Eric Bana, balances pathos and whimsy to expert effect in recalling the Japanese art of kintsugi as a reminder that “All things can be repaired, and our cracks celebrated”. A definite escargot go go. (Odeon Birmingham)
Mufasa: The Lion King (PG)
A far cry from his Oscar triumph Moonlight, director Barry Jenkins comes aboard the Disney train for this prequel to its 2019 photo-realistic remake of the Oscar-winning 1994 coming of age animation. With Simba (Donald Glover) and Nala (Beyonce Knowles-Carter) off to give birth their second cub, Kiara (Beyonce’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter) is left at Pride Rock in the care of Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), they soon being joined by the mandrill Rafiki (John Kani) who tells her the story of her grandfather and how he became the Lion King. Punctuated by several irritating interruptions from Timon and Pumbaa (who also sing a reprise of Hakuna Tamata and crack a jarring gag about Disney’s legal department), we learn how the young Mafasa (Braelyn Rankins) was separated from his parents (Anika Noni Rose, Keith David) in a flood and rescued by Taka (Theo Somolu), the son of Obasi (Lennie James), the king of another pride. Embraced as a brother by Taka but rejected by Obasi as a stray, Mufasa’s taken under the wing of Taka’s mother Eshe (Thandiwe Newton) and forced to live with the lionesses. Growing up alongside Taka (now voiced by Levin Harrison Jr), the now older Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) is embraced into the pride when he saves Taka from an attack by a murderous pride of white lions led by Kiros (Mads Mikklesen), known as The Outsiders, whose son Mufasa kills when Taka backs away in fear. The pair sent a way for their safety, Taka’s pride are all killed by Kiros and his subjects.
Eventually hooking up with the young Rafiki (Kagiso Ledika), who’s been exiled by his fellow monkeys and baboons for being different, and Sarabi (Tiffany Boone), a huntress who’s lost her pride (and who will eventually become Mufasa’s mate, thereby sparking Taka’s jealousy as he has his heart set on her) and her hornbill companion Zazu (Preston Nyman), they head off in search of the fabled land of Milele, pursued by Kiros and his lionesses, seeking vengeance.
The animation is outstanding , especially in rendering water, wet fur and the lions’ eyes (their smiles rather less so), but the film it serves rather less, the early going slow and repetitive and lacking the original’s emotional dynamic before it eventually gets to its message about working together. Along the way it unveils the origins of Rafiki’s stick, the formation of Pride Rock and how Taka came to be known as the grudge-bearing Scar, but little really engages just as any trace of Jenkins’s personality and his ability to capture human emotion is lost amid the CGI, confined by the dictates of predictability. There are flourishes of real excitement and energy, as in the final confrontation between Mufasa and Kiros and the voice work is generally solid, but it’s generally rather average and, despite being penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda, there’s not a memorable song among them, the best of a weak bunch being We Go Together, based around the aphorism: “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far go together”. It will, of course, prove a blockbuster, but creatively it gives a whole new meaning to how pride comes before a fall. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Royal Sutton Coldfield; Vue; From Mon: Mockingbird)
My Old Ass (15)
Written and directed by Megan Park, this is a bittersweet comedic riff on the what if your adult self could go back and advise your teenage version. The latter here is Elliott (Canadian actress-singer Maisy Stella and star of Nashville making her feature debut), a slightly brattish, gay 18-year-old who, along with her middle brother Max (Seth Isaac Johnson), a budding golfer, and the precocious younger Spencer (Carter Trozzolo) , lives with her parents (Alain Goulem, Maria Dizzia) on their Ontario cranberry farm. With no interest in carrying on the business, she’s going away to college at the University of Toronto in a few weeks.
Motoring out on her boat to spend the night on an island with her besties, Ruthie (Maddie Zeigler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks) getting high on shrooms, Elliott hallucinates meeting her sarcastic older self (Aubrey Plaza ever wonderful in her few scenes) in an amusing set-up that knowingly wrings laughs from how they don’t look similar and how the former thinks 39 is middle-aged. She’s materialised to tell her she’ll grow up to take a PhD, advise her to be less distant from her folks and siblings and, most importantly, avoid anyone called Chad. She refuses to give more details as to why.
Returning to normality, she dismisses it all – until, out swimming, she meets a personable young man called Chad (Percy Hynes White) who’s got a summer job on her dad’s Ontario farm, returning to check out his family’s roots and is a dab hand at things mechanical. It’s a shock, but as much as discovering her phone now has a number under the name My Old Ass (a phrase she used when flirting with her older self) and that she can text and speak to her in the future (there’s no explanation how, just take it on trust).
She tries hard to avoid Chad but inevitably, with confused feelings, she begins to fall for him and also learns from Max, who was going to take it over, that her parents are selling up the farm. It hits hard because while she wants to leave, she also assumed she could always return. All of this is part of the film’s life lessons about savouring the moment because, as Chad tells her, you never know when it’s the last time you’ll experience something and how “The only thing you can’t get back is time”. Having been out of contact while she’s been overwhelmed with confused feelings, older Elliott then suddenly turns up just after younger Elliott and Chad have had, as she puts it, dick sex, leading to finally explaining, in a heartbreaking moment, why she told her to avoid him.
With a wistful tone that complements its end of summer photography, it’s both touching and humorous, the core actresses lighting up the screen with their charisma and comic timing, Stella having the look and vibe of a young Reese Witherspoon (and getting to sing a Justin Bieber cover), while White is charm personified. Park also sneaks in some sly filmic nods, a clip from Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, a nod to teen TV series Euphoria and having Spencer decorate her room, which he’s pre-emptively taken over, with pictures of Saoirse Ronan. Nestling in a similar YA coming of age zone to Booksmart and The Edge of Seventeen, it’s a low key but immensely engaging joy. (Amazon Prime)
Nosferatu (15)
There’s a certain degree of déjà vu among the cast of writer-director horror maestro Robert Eggers’ revision of the F.W. Murnau 1929 silent horror based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the 1923 Tod Browning adaptation. As real estate agent Thomas Hutter (based on Stoker’s Jonathan Harker), Nicholas Hoult recently played Renfield to Nic Cage’s Dracula while, as Albin Eberhart Von Franz, based on Stoker’s Abraham Van Helsin, Willem Dafoe previously starred in Shadow Of A Vampire, about the making of the original Nosferatu, as Max Schreck, the actor who portrayed Count Orlock, Murnau’s renaming of Dracula. Blood it seems is indeed thicker than water in the casting department.
Character names aside and with some excisions, while largely following Stoker’s narrative, it opens with the young Ellen (Lily Rose-Depp) praying to find relief from her loneliness, her cry of ‘come to me’ answered by a shadowy figure (its silhouette on the windblown curtain a nod to Murnau) that manifests as a terrifying monster that attacks her, leaving her in a seizure and setting up the call of psychosexual desire across time and distance that underpins what follows. Cut then to winter in 1883 Wisborg, Germany, with upcoming estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) being charged by his employer, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) with travelling to the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to sign a contract with the elderly and eccentric Romanian Count Orlock who wishes to purchase Schloss Grünewald, a decrepit Wisborg stately mansion. Hutter’s new bride, Ellen, is fearful, telling him of her terrifying dream prior to their wedding in which she married Death in front of a congregation of corpses, and disturbingly found herself enjoying it. Looking to boost his fortunes, Thomas ignores her pleas to stay at home and, leaving her in the care of his friend Friedrich (a Murnau nod) Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and his wife Anna (Emma Corin), sets off for his fateful date with the devil.
Warned by the local Romani not to venture to Orlock’s home, he witnesses or dreams the peasants impaling what they claim is a vampire’s corpse, before continuing his journey, being met by an unmanned coach and horses that transports him to the foreboding castle to be greeted by the Count (Bill Skarsgård) who (seen only in glimpses) insists on being addressed as befits his title, rasps in deep and low resonating tones (he speaks the extinct Dacian language), has skeletal fingers and long fingernails and generally exudes an icy sense of dread. It’s not long before he discovers the Count’s true nature, an undead blood drinker (Thomas himself becoming a victim) who sleeps in his coffin by day and, more frighteningly, has an obsession with Ellen, purloining the locket containing her hair. Thomas, though weakened, manages to escape but by now Orlock, through the ministrations of Knock, who, a la Renfield, he has made his servant), is in a crate full of plague rats aboard a ship bound for Wisburg (as opposed to Whitby).
Meanwhile, Ellen is suffering from sleepwalking and seizures and Knock incarcerated as a raving madman who feeds on living creatures (pigeon fanciers, look away now), to which end Ellen’s physician Wilhelm (another Murnau nod) Sievers (Ralph Ineson), enlists the help of his mentor, Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Dafoe), a scientist ostracized for his occult beliefs, who deduces both are under the spell of a Nosferatu, something Harding dismisses as nonsense.
Things gather to a head as Orlock, now ensconced in Schloss Grünewald, appears in a dream telling Ellen that he tricked Thomas into signing divorce papers and that she has three nights in which to affirm the covenant she made with him as a child, or he will kill Thomas and wipe out Wisborg with the plague, Anna and her two young daughters serving as bloody proof of his powers. Orlock has to be destroyed, but the only way to do this involves a willing sacrifice.
Shot in dark, drained and muted tones with a pervasive ominous soundscape, it ratchets up the gothic horror as it goes, but beyond the core vampire element Eggars (who researched Eggers French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot’s work on hysteria) delves into disturbing themes of sexual desire, the (linked) stigma of mental illness and its treatment, corruption and decay, and the fear yet allure of the Other. Visually chilling with its use of shadows and the way Orlock (brilliantly played by a prosthetics-laden Skarsgård) is, until the final scenes, never fully seen as the grotesque, corpse-grey, balding, moustachioed nightmare, it exerts a relentless grip as it builds to the climax. Even if a poker-faced Dafoe at times feels a little melodramatic in the way he delivers the expositionary dialogue and Taylor-Johnson’s a tad hammy as the devastated sceptic sunk into necrophilia, the performances from Hoult as the frantic husband and a mesmerising turn from Rose-Depp who apparently did all her own carnal-driven convulsions, are triumphant. Repulsive and intoxicating, this sets the year’s horror benchmark. (Wed: Mockingbird)
The Order (15)
A 1978 ‘children’s’ novel about a right wing nationalist insurrection by neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, The Turner Diaries has provided a blueprint and impetus for several white supremacist incidents, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 2021 storming of the Capitol along then. It also provided the name for The Order, an Aryan Nation breakaway neo-Nazi organisation led by Bob Matthews that was responsible for numerous porn shop and synagogue bombings, bank and armoured car robberies designed to fund a race war, and the June 18th, 1984 murder of Alan Berg, a confrontational talk-radio host who took on anti-Semites and other fate mongerers, who was shot down outside his home in Denver.
It was his murder that finally swung the FBI into action, director Justin Kurzel tense true-crime thriller, based on The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, following the dogged work of composite fictional federal agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) who, a broken marriage in the rear view mirror, has transferred to smalltown Idaho looking to take things easier after working in New York on cases involving the KKK and Cosa Nostra, and with an obligatory burden of guilt over an informant’s death.
Digging into robberies that suggest a white supremacist link, he partners up with local family man deputy Jamie (Tye Sheridan) and fellow jaded agent Joanne Carney (Jurnee Smollett), piecing together what he sees as plot leading up to a domestic terrorism militia uprising, the trail leading him to Matthews (an icily cool Nicholas Hoult), the charismatic mastermind behind The Order with both a loyal wife (Alison Oliver) and a pregnant lover (Odessa Young) and a small gang of followers. It’s not, however, until a gun is left behind following a multi-million armoured car heist, that there’s any tangible link to Matthews, the film gradually building the frustrations, tension, and shoot-outs as it heads to its stand-off in Whidbey Island, Washington where Matthews perished in a fire at the safe house where he was hiding.
Sporting bristling moustache and few extra pounds, Law is terrific as the coiled, troubled anti-hero wrestling with both the case and his personal demons while Hoult brings an unshowy quiet intensity Matthews, both a loving dad and an angel-faced ruthless monster a man with a persuasive tongue (The Order’s motto “Victory forever, defeat never”) but rarely taking a hands-on part in the action, generally leaving the dangerous work to his followers. There’s strong work too from Sheridan, although his fate is pretty much signalled from the outset.
Gripping as both a fact-based docudrama and detective thriller, with the likes of Mann, Lumet and Friedkin as touchstones, sounding a concerning timely note about the American right-wing racism and its Trump poster-boy. At one point, a white supremacist figurehead says “In 10 years, we’ll have members in the Senate”. Talk of retrospective prophecy. (Apple TV+)
Paddington In Peru (PG)
Dougal Wilson taking over the directorial reins, opening with a flashback to Paddington as a cub plunging into the river trying to grab an orange and being rescued by his adoptive Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton), there have, the film announces at the start, been some changes in the Brown household, not least that Mrs Brown is now being played, far less engagingly, by Emily Mortimer rather than Sally Hawkins. Narratively, however, they entail daughter Judy (Madeleine Harris) preparing to fly the nest for university, son Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) having become a room-bound chill-out inventor of Heath Robinson-like contraptions, and spiderphobic Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville) finding himself with a new American boss at his insurance company advising him to embrace the risk rather than being risk averse. And Paddington (endearingly voiced as ever by Ben Wishaw) has got UK citizenship and (cue photo booth slapstick) a passport.
That’s particularly useful when he gets a postcard from Mother Superior (Olivia Colman) , the nun who runs Peru’s Home for Retired Bears, saying his Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) is pining for him, this prompting the whole family and housekeeper Mrs Bird (Julie Walters) hopping a plane to see her. Except, when they arrive they learn she’s gone missing in the Amazon, with only an ankle bracelet and her glasses to be found. So, naturally, they hire a riverboat, crewed by Hunter Cabot (a hammy Antonio Banderas) and his daughter Gina (Carla Tous) and set off upriver.
All of this is a quest set-up involving Cabot’s search, goaded by the ghosts of his equally avaricious ancestors, for the fabled lost Incan city of El Dorado and its reputed gold. And he’s not the only one with a hidden agenda regarding the treasure, Paddington apparently unknowingly holding the key to its location.
Echoing the embrace risk maxim, it’s a more adventure-oriented action offering than the gently winsome British comedy of its two predecessors, it loses a great deal of its charm in the process, at times teetering on the bland before gathering some sort of impetus in the final stretch. There’s several movie allusions, among them a rolling rock straight of Indiana Jones, a nod to Fitzcarraldo in the gramophone on Cabot’s boat and, in a wholly redundant musical number, Colman channelling Julie Andrews as a guitar playing nun, but, rather like the Peru setting (though it gives good rainforest), the characters and cast are generally underused by its disappointingly generic, predictable and repetitive screenplay.
The animation is once again top notch in its ursine realism, even if the CGI effects falter elsewhere and it comes with a cosily sentimental message about home and the difference between your tribe and your family. Past cast members Jim Boadbent, Ben Miller and Sanjeev Bhaskar have brief moments and former writer Simon Farnaby also gets a cameo, while a mid-credits scene grants, ahem, a reprise to a character from Paddington 2 alongside an array of new bears with London railway station names that you kind of hope never make their way into a spin-off. It will of course delight its intended audience, but, while marmalade sandwiches are still the order of the day, the taste is diluted and thin cut rather than tangily chewy. (Vue; From Tue: Mockingbird)
Portraits Of Dangerous Women (15)
A quirky British dramedy from Swiss film-maker Pascal Bergamin, while driving her car down the country lanes, and quarrelling with her art gallery owner dad Jon (Mark Lewis Jones), stressed out primary school teacher Steph (Jeany Spark) hits a dog which, it transpires, has already been hit, though not necessarily killed, by Tina (Tara Fitzgerald), the school caretaker with a shady past. As they get out to survey the incident, troubled teen Ashley (Yasmin Monet Prince from Supacell), who’s standing at the roadside, distraughtly announces that the dog was hers.
The question as to who was to blame and what to do with the deceased canine is just the start of a series of events and unlikely connections that bring all four together with Ashley approaching Jon with a view to exhibiting a series of found photographs she’s been collecting depicting ‘dangerous women’, and essentially appointing herself his assistant and taking on aspiring painter Claude (Joseph Marcell) as a client. Meanwhile Steph adopts (briefly) an elderly cat of an elderly cat that’s a mirror of her boring partner Paul (Gary Shelford), and (equally briefly) flirts with the pet shop owner Steve (David Mumeni) while Tina, dressed up in a gold number, decides to throw a secret party in the school hall to celebrate, her divorce, something which ends up involving Jon’s police officer sister Cathryn (Abigail Cruttenden) and Steph being taken to hospital. Meanwhile, Ashley admits the dog wasn’t hers and the three women try and track down the real owner. All of which serves to explore how all three are lonely, lost and needing connections, the way they dress (Steph all floral, Tina in dungarees) acting as signposts to their self-image. Oh, did I mention the roadside grappa bar?
There’s some droll British humour as well as flashes of poignancy that keeps you engaged even if the dialogue can feel mannered and storyline and its focus on the everyday mundane tends to wander all over the place, dropping plots and characters as it goes but the cast, which includes Annette Badland and Sheila Reid as dotty old dears, are, if not exactly dangerous, extremely entertaining company. (Amazon Prime; Apple TV+)
Presence (15)
Clocking in at a tight 85 minutes, working from David Koepp’s screenplay, Steven Soderbergh puts a new spin on the haunted house genre with a first person viewpoint from the perspective of the ghost. The titular presence is already in residence, the camera prowling the stairs and rooms of the sprawling recently upmarket home with, as the realtor points, out a rare 100-year-old mirror, before a new family move in. That’ll be Rebecca (Lucy Liu), a control freak involved in dodgy financial dealings, her bullying champion swimmer teenage son, Tyler (Eddy Maday) for whom she has an unhealthy obsession, his unstable younger sister Chloe (Callina Liang) who he calls a weirdo and is screwed up following the overdose death of her best friend Nadine and another girl, and put-upon weakling husband Chris (Chris Sullivan), who’s fretting over Chloe, things Tyler’s an asshole and wants to divorce Rebecca. So, a familiar troubled family invites poltergeist activity then. Well, yes and no.
The first indication of something spooky is the presence tidying up Chloe’s bedroom, which expands into a protectiveness that involves trashing Tyler’s room after one of his cruel verbal bullying attacks and bringing down the clothes rails when his school buddy Ryan (West Mulholland), whop attempts to make out with Chloe, telling her he’s lonely and estranged from his highly religious mother. Although her folks don’t initially take Chloe’s concerns seriously, they eventually agree to have a psychic visit, who confirms the presence, but they then dismiss as a con. With their parents away, Ryan, with whom Chloe’s now had sex, comes to stay over and things get darker from this point.
At its core, an observation of a disconnected dysfunctional family and parenting (Rebecca refuses to get therapy for Chloe, insisting she work it out herself, while dad’s just at a loss), Soderbergh serving as his own cinematographer structures it as a series of scenes punctuated by cuts to black, a technique which, like the roving camera, becomes somewhat frustrating. Likewise, the mystery as to who the presence might be has no answers the suggestions it might be Nadia not really holding up given the house is haunted before the family move in while what Rebecca sees in the final moments makes little sense either. Even so, while ultimately more of a technical exercise, or gimmick, it has a definite creepiness and the central performances are all solid enough to keep you involved in the outcome. (Vue)
A Real Pain (15)
The sort of character-driven low-key indie that characterises Sundance, the second feature from writer director Jesse Eisenberg is a sort of Holocaust road trip dramady about unarticulated grief and discontent as, having already earned co-star Kieran Culkin a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe and Oscar nomination.
Eisenberg and Culkin respectively play chalk and cheese Jewish cousins David Kaplan, a sharp-tongued repressed married New York digital ads salesman with OCD, and Benji, a charming chaotic unwed idler with a steady stream of nervous patter and no filter between brain and mouth, but a genuine interest in people. One is uptight and detached, the other gregarious but feels things too intensely; each wishes they could be more like the other. Estranged for a while, they’re reunited in travelling to Poland to visit the homeland to fulfil the wishes of their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, and address their own historical trauma guilt.
They join a group of fellow tourists, all with their own connection to trauma or being Jewish. among them hard-edged, self-loathing LA divorcee Marcia (Jennifer Grey) whose grandparents fled the Holocaust, self-described ‘boring’ elderly couple Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and Diane (Liza Sadovy) who have Polish Jewish ancestry, and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan, a delight) escaped the Rwandan genocide and converted to Judaism in Canada. Their unlikely guide for the tour round the war and Holocaust memorials is James (Will Sharp), an Oxford educated non-Jewish Brit who Benji rebukes for simply regurgitating local colour facts rather than connecting with them.
Filmed in Poland and including scenes in Warsaw, Lublin and at the site of the Majdanek concentration camp, it’s an edgy and often uncomfortable but very funny comedy (a scene where Benji has an emotional outburst over riding first class on a train to the concentration camp), the cousins separating from the others to go and visit their grandmother’s old hometown and, following the Jewish tradition of placing stones on the gravemarkers of the deceased, attempt to do same by putting one on their grandmother’s former doorstep only to be amusingly rebuked by a neighbour because it could cause the elderly woman who now lives there to have an accident.
Bittersweet and unsentimental but with sudden confessional explosions of disarming poignancy, it’s a pain you really need to share. (Mockingbird; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe)
Saturday Night (15)
While legendary in America, given the show has never been televised in the UK on anything but streaming platforms, it’s hard to see a huge audience for director Jason Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan’s behind the scenes in Studio 8H in the halls of 30 Rock account of how the very first Saturday Night Live comedy sketch show made it to air. Following the dress rehearsal (though some of the sketches were actually in later episodes), it all unfolds in virtually real time on October 11th, 1975, as, 90 minutes to broadcast, showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) struggles to define what his show is to producer Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) and more importantly persuade NBC television exec David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) to give the green light and not rerun an episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”. At the same time he’s wrangling a competitive, sniping or just plain confused crew, many The Not Ready for Prime Time Players, such as Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), a Julliard graduate and opera star frustrated at playing Black stereotypes, an exuberant Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), the neurotic Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Michaels’ writer wife Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) who’s flirting with motor-mouthed Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), a fretting Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and the egotistically smug and arrogant Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith on the Weekend Update desk), not to mention trying to get difficult and mostly high bad boy John Belushi (Matt Wood) to sign his contract and wear the now infamous bee costume.
Along with these now famous names, not all of whom are seen in a complimentary light, the cast of characters also includes musicians Billy Preston (Jon Batiste), Janis Ian (Naomi McPherson) singing At Seventeen, Andy Kaufman performing his Mighty Mouse routine and, the subject of a maligning running gag about The Muppets, a dorky self-serious Jim Henson (both played by Nicholas Braun) while also putting in appearances are Matthew Rhys as the show’s first host, a bewildered coked-up George Carlin (tagged by head writer Michael O’Donoghue – Tommy Dewey- as a “ponytailed vulture feeding off the corpse of Lenny Bruce”) and, paying a set visit that probably never happened, a very funny JK Simmons as cocky and supposedly well-hung self-styled Mr. Television Milton Berle, one of the comedians whose acts would be torpedoed by this irreverent new wave.
Having been one of the production teams on OTT, Chris Tarrent’s 80s live anarchic late night Tiswas spin off, I can attest as to how well the film captures the frenetic sheer pre-show chaos with sketches being rewritten or material cut because there’s just too much, technical adjustments made, cast members having panics as the clock counts down to going live. We never had a humourless censor like Catherine Curtin (bluffed into being blindsided to the innuendos) or a wandering llama on the set, though. (MAC)
September 5 (15)
In the early hours of the morning of Sept 5, 1972, gunshots were heard in the Olympic Village where the Summer Games were being held in Munich, the first time in Germany since Hitler. A Palestinian terrorist group calling itself Black September had broken into the Israeli team’s apartments and taken 11 athletes and their coaches hostage, two dying in the process. Directed and co-written by Tim Fehlbaum, the film unfolds what happened over the course of the next 24 hours leading up the FUBAR West German police attempt to rescue the hostages at Fürstenfeldbruck airbase that was, in the confusion, initially announced as a success but eventually revealed to have seen the deaths of all hostages and five terrorists.
All this is shown from the perspective of the ABC Sports crew covering the games who, led inexperienced young TV producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), operations manager Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) and Sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) resisted Network demands that News take over the story, and, aided by engineer Jacques Lesgards (Zinedine Soualem), provided the first ever real-time coverage of a terrorist crisis (some 900 million watched, Arledge noting that was more than the moon landing), moving a hefty camera out onto a mound overlooking the Israeli quarters and even forging an athletes pass to enable one of the crew (Daniel Adeosun) to smuggle cans of film in and out of the Village, among them the infamous black-and-white shot of a masked gunman on the balcony.
With Arledge negotiating more advantageous satellite time slots to block out rival CBS and, at one point, ordering armed police out of the control room, Fehlbaum builds a tense, atmospheric thriller that brilliantly captures media in action as, improvising as they go, the team, among them star reporter Peter Jennings (Bejamin Walker) who with a small camera rig accessed a room overlooking the Israeli apartments and, crucially, fictionalised idealistic German translator Marianne Gebhart (Leonie Benesch), understandably horrified that Jewish blood was again being threatened on German soil, monitoring police channels, report what’s going down. But it also addresses the moral and ethical issues involved as things get increasingly competitive in maintaining their scoop. At one point Bader asks if they can show someone being killed on live television and if so whose narrative is it supporting, theirs or the terrorists, while another comes with the realisation that their images are being watched by the terrorists on the hotel room television, causing a rescue attempt to be called off. When the authorities negotiate with the terrorists to take everyone to the airfield by bus, Mason, again with a scoop in mind, sends Marianne too, armed with sound equipment in the event of any shootout. He also reports the ZDF announcement that the hostages have been freed (albeit with an as we are a hearing caveat) to beat other channels to the punch.
Making very effective use of archive footage, including negotiations with the Black September and that of ABC anchor Jim McKay and Peter Jennings (played by Benjamin Walker in the whose announcements (as well as a clip of Trevor McDonald) are seamlessly woven into the highly focused proceedings, it brilliantly captures the intensity of the moment and how, in reporting, often difficult and professionally callousness split second decisions have to be taken in order to get the story and where responsibility lies in doing so (it forever transformed the nature of live TV reporting) while also refraining from making any political comments (Arledge emphasises that emotions and people are more important), though inevitably prompting the still raw memories of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Though the tragic outcome may be know, the film never loses its white knuckle grip as it travels there. (Cineworld 5 Ways, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Vue)
The Six Triple Eight (12)
While there are flaws, you can help but think that some of the acidic criticism it’s received is more about attitudes to its director Tyler Perry than the actual film which, telling the story of the real-life second world war battalion composed entirely of Black women and the only such group to serve in Europe, is a solid, well-acted and inspirational tribute that hits all the right emotional and indignation notes.
The pivotal figure is Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian), a young small town Black woman whose best friend is the white Jewish Abram David (Gregg Sulkin), a relationship that naturally does not sit well with the white folk, especially her bitchy bigoted blond classmate Mary Kathryn (Sarah Helbringer). Before he ships out, having signed up as a pilot, he gives Lena a ring asks her to wait for him. Tragically, he’s destined never to return, shot down and burned beyond recognition, a bloodied letter to her recovered by the soldier that pulled his body from the wreckage.
Grief struck, Lena too resolves to enlist, joining the Women’s Army Corps where, inevitably, she and her fellow Blacks find the same bigotry, racism and segregation they faced in civilian life. At boot camp at Fort des Moines, they’re put through basic training under the command of Charity Adams (Kerry Washington) , her tough, no-nonsense approach fuelled by a determination not to give her white male colleagues any reason to claim her soldiers weren’t up to the task, reporters always looking to embarrass the military for accepting Black women into its ranks.
Constantly pushing to be deployed to Europe, Adams (eventually promoted to Major, the highest ranking Black woman to serve in the US Army), and, a result of a campaign by activist Mary McCloud Bethune (Oprah Winfrey) who bends the ear of Eleanor (Susan Sarandon) and Franklin Roosevelt (Sam Waterson), her troops are finally assigned a mission as the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion and deployed to Birmingham, and, without formal orders and adequate resources, lodged in freezing wooden buildings at King Edward’s School in Edgbaston, their job being to sort some 17 million letters to and from home that have piled up in enough bags to fill several aircraft hangers, having the knock on effect of damaging morale at both the front and back home. Given just six months, it’s a task the bigoted Southern General Halt (Dean Norris) believes they are incapable of pulling off and is determined to seem the fail. He, however, fully underestimates the 855-strong battalion and especially, Adams who, when threatened with being relieved of command and replaced by some white Lieutenant, responded “over my dead body, sir”.
With Lena’s lost letter naturally among those being sorted (setting up a moving cathartic moment), Adams comes to realise their job is far from demeaning, but of vital importance to the war effort, as the women devise ingenious ways of identifying otherwise undeliverable mail from fabrics, logos and even perfume scent.
While the real-life Derriecott and Adams are the central characters, this is very much an ensemble piece with Sarah Jeffery, Kylie Jefferson, Sarah Helbringer and Shanice Shantay among Lena’s circle, the latter scene-stealing and providing sharp comic relief as the straight-speaking Johnnie Mae (who may or may not be based on Pvt Johnnie Mae Walton) while Jay Reeves give charm as the soldier who takes a shine too (and eventually married) Lena.
Other than the opening battlefield scenes and a sudden UXB incident that claims to women’s lives, the action and tensions are wholly embodied in the combat against prejudices, Adams and the others fighting with a verbal armoury to prove themselves and seek equality and respect. Ending with photos of the real women and credit notes on what happened to some of them along with an oration by Michelle Obama celebrating the 6888, it’s not in quite the same league as the similarly themed Hidden Figures, but, like the women it portrays, it deserves far more respect than it’s been afforded. (Netflix)
Small Things Like These (15)
His first film since Oppenheimer, though the scale is smaller Cillian Murphy (who served as producer) and the intensity of the story are no less intense. Set near Christmas in 1985 New Ross, Ireland, Bill Furlong (Murphy) is a successful coal merchant, married with five daughters. One day, delivering coal to the local convent where young girls are supposedly trained for their future, he sees something that gives him pause, a women being dragged inside while her mother ignores her pleas. Going inside, he finds young women, supposedly the school’s pupils, being made to scrub the floor and one who asks for his help so she can escape and drown herself. It’s pretty clear –and one unspoken common knowledge – that the convent is, in fact, one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries, Catholic institutions little more than workhouses where unmarried sex workers and pregnant women, so called ‘fallen women’ – were sent for supposed rehabilitation, their babies taken away. Bill can sympathise, he himself being the illegitimate son of an unmarried teenage mother, though, while ostracised by her family, she was fortunate as a wealthy woman took her in as her maid.
Troubled but reluctant to get involved, his conscience is pricked on his next visit to discover Sarah (Zara Devlin) shivering in the coal shed, ostensibly locked in by accident, who asks him to help find her baby. They’re interrupted, however, by Sister Mary (Emily Mortimer) who, feigning kindness, says the girl is mentally unwell and bribes him with a hefty bonus for his wife who – along with the local publican – tells him to not get involved. After all, the church treats the townsfolk well in exchange for turning a blind eye. But, finding Sarah again in the shed, he can no longer stand idly by, reputation be damned.
Directed by Tim Mielants and based on the novel by Claire Keegan, it’s a slight story but still carries a heavy weight about, to borrow the old phrase, how evil thrives when good men stand by and do nothing. Bill’s discovery of his father is, essentially, a redundant element when the film’s thrust is the cruelty and moral turpitude of the outwardly respectable Catholic Church in a repressive Ireland as well as the underlying toxic masculinity. There’s no melodrama and dialogue is sparse, Murphy conveying his emotions through his eyes and expression while Mortimer is chilling as the corrupt and cruel Mother Superior with a fierce and intimidating stare, and the film, which is dedicated to the more than 56,000 young women who suffered in the laundries up until 1996 and the children taken from them, is drenched in a devastating melancholy. It may lack the incendiary power of Peter Mullen’s The Magdalene Sisters, but its quiet anger is no less compelling. (Amazon Prime; Apple TV+; Sky)
Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (PG)
With Sonic (Ben Schwartz), fox Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and echidna (or spiny anteater) Knuckles (Idris Elba) now come together as Team Sonic, life in Green Hills, Montana, seems to have quietened down as they spend time with their adoptive father sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) and his wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter). It’s fated not to last, however, when, in secret G.U.N.) prison facility off the coast of Japan, the systems are hacked, awakening and freeing Shadow the Hedgehog (a suitably quietly intense Keanu Reeves) after 50 years in suspended animation when a project went pear-shaped and, in a vengeance rage for the death of his young friend Maria (Alyla Browne), proceeds to create chaos in Tokyo and Director Rockwell (Kristen Ritter) arrives to recruit the team to stop him. However, Shadows overpowers them, leading them to have no option but to join forces with their arch nemesis Dr Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey, returning from retirement), whose drones supposedly killed G.U.N. Commander Walters, a mission that takes them to an abandoned G.U.N base where the team’s captured and Robotnik comes face to face with Project Shadow’s leader, his equally bushily moustachioed estranged grandfather Gerald Robotnik (Carrey) who has plans to activate his Eclipse Cannon an orbital laser and destroy Earth in revenge for the death of Maria, his granddaughter.
Taken at a breakneck pace, the fairly formulaic plot variously involves Tom getting wounded while trying to steal a vital keycard and Sonic going solo and using the Master Emerald to transform into the golden Super Sonic while Shadow absorbs the Chaos Emeralds’ energy to become Super Shadow as they lock horns, or perhaps spines, in a final showdown while the two Robotniks have their own confrontation.
With the simplistic message that love is more important than revenge, the plot really takes second place to the action and humour, to which end Carrey does derangedly terrific double duty (if his scenes aren’t improvised he surely scripted the dialogue), the end result delivering everything it promises in the package, complete with two end credit already in the works sequel set-ups that introduce Amy Rose and the Metal Sonics and confirm at least one of those consumed in the final fireball is coming back for more. (Cineworld Solihull; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Vue; From Mon: Mockingbird)
The Substance (18)
A body horror so extreme, even David Cronenberg might feel it was excessive, channelling The Elephant Man, Jekyll & Hyde, Frankenstein and Sunset Boulevard among others with homages to Vertigo and The Shining a dose of Brian Yuzna’s Society in the climax, French writer director Coralie Fargeat affords Demi Moore a career-defining, awards magnet comeback after a decade or more of fairly ho hum roles. She plays Elizabeth Sparkle, a former Oscar winning actress with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame now reduced to hosting Sparkle Your Life, a daytime aerobics television show in outdated leotards. It’s her remaining claim to fame but, taken to lunch (during which we’re given sickening close-ups of him chewing shrimp) by her boorish producer Harvey (a leeringly wonderful Dennis Quaid), surely named for Weinstein, having already heard him slagging her off while in the men’s lavatory, she’s bluntly told, thanks for your service but having now turned 50, she’s surplus to requirements and a new, young presenter will take her place in a revamped version.
Tipped off about some sort of anti-aging drug called The Substance that “makes you a better you”, she duly signs up and us given the location of a secret locker to get her package. Naturally, it’s something of a Faustian deal, whereby she injects a fluid that births (through her ripped open spine a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers), a younger doppelganger clone (Margaret Qualley). There are, of course, rules. She has to regularly inject a stabiliser and the two versions of herself can’t exist simultaneously, each gets a week while the others fed nutrient, and they must switch back, but always remembering, ominously, “you are one”. While the one’s active, the other lies comatose in a secret compartment in the bathroom of her luxury apartment.
Fairly predictably, naming herself Sue, her new self auditions to be the new Sparkle, Harvey practically wetting himself over his sexy new find, the drooling stakeholders likewise. She’s an overnight sensation, promoted to a new slot as rating go through the roof and is even lined up to host the network’s New Year’s Eve special. However, being only able to work one week in two (she claims she has to care for her sick mother, which is essentially true) starts getting irksome and, her narcissism coming though, she begins stretching out the seven days rule. Matters are further complicated when she takes a lover. There are, of course, consequences for Elizabeth, the first signs of which are a withered finger. It gets worse the longer the gaps are until, as it heads for its deranged, geysers of blood delirium climax, both incarnations literally learn what “you are one” means, as the prosthetics department runs amok.
Variously awash with feminist satirical themes of toxic misogyny, Hollywood’s downer on older women, body image (there’s an electrifying scene as Elizabeth stares at herself and her make up in the mirror, becoming increasingly disgusted with what she sees, the perceived flaws rather than the beauty, and the fetishising nature of the beauty and movie industry (with self-aware irony the camera pointedly dwells on close ups of lithe young female flesh as well as of both Qualley and Moore’s naked bodies).
The cinematography, garish colours, sound design (lots of squelching and cracking) and synth-heavy score all add to the cumulative effect, while the central performances are jawdropping. As the ruthlessly ambitious manipulative ingénue, this is Qualley’s starmaking breakthrough while, garbed in a suit as flashy as his persona, Quaid chomps down into the role, at one point, told his assistant’s name is Isabella, he retorts “Who has time to say that” and call her Cindy instead. But this is Moore’s shining moment, a fearless performance utterly devoid of vanity (as the effects take hold she becomes an increasingly, physically twisted and decrepit hag, though that does raise the question of how she manages to run given the state of her legs) in a film that, with both style and substance, is even more insane that it sounds. (Mon: Mockingbird)
Vermiglio (15)
The setting is the titular remote Alpine village in 1944, the community including stern and petty tyrant schoolteacher Cesare (Tommaso Ragno) who runs an adult literacy class and indulges in buying gramophone records of Verdi and Chopin they can’t afford, his seemingly ever-pregnant wife Adele (Roberta Rovelli) and their assorted sons and daughters, among them sulky ne’er-do-well hard drinking Dino (Patrick Gardner) and dutiful Ada (Rachele Potrich). Dad’s not aware, however, that she has an intense friendship with Virginia (Carlotta Gamba) and is given to secretly poring over his porno photographs and masturbating behind the wardrobe door, for which she repents by submitting herself to such penances as lying in chicken shit. Then there’s the academically strong, sharp-witted Flavia (Anna Thaler), due to be the only one sent away to boarding school to further their education, and the oldest of them all, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), who anually takes the lead role in the festival of St Lucia and becomes involved with Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), an illiterate Sicilian conscript who saved the life of his fellow deserter, her cousin Attillo (Santiago Fondevilla), and, although Germans are unlikely to ever visit, now hides out in the barn. Kissing leads to pregnancy and marriage but then, the war over, he returns to Sicily to see his mother. And nothing more is heard until they come across a report in a newspaper, a scandal that throws everything into disarray.
Directed by Maura Delpero and partly derived from her own family history, it’s a beautifully shot, unassuming and unsentimental melancholic affair (the death of a baby early one captures the tone) that, well-observed, gathers in intensity as it unfolds, with a minimum of dialogue yet strong performances from its mix of both trained and non-actor cast. (Sun-Wed: MAC)
We Live In Time (12A)
The narrative’s simple. Set in London, following a meet cute where she accidentally knocks him down with her car, Almut Brühl (Florence Pugh), a former figure skater turned competitive rising star chef about to open her new restaurant, and Tobias Durand (Andrew Garfield), a low-level Weetabix rep who’s just got divorced and is living in his dad’s spare room, strike up a romance. They fall in love, she’s diagnosed with ovarian cancer and has a partial hysterectomy, she then gets pregnant, they have a daughter Ella (Grace Delany) and then the cancer returns at stage 3. It’s fairly familiar territory about love, life and death, but, working from a script by playwright Nick Payne, director John Crowley gives it a refreshing spin with a non-linear structure, jumping back and forth through time, the emotional switchback following suit, while the chemistry and understated star wattage of Pugh and Garfield provide the anchor and grounding in a compelling and natural honesty as it switchbacks from those early jubilant courtship scenes (like Past Lives, a children’s carousel is backdrop to a romantic moment) to the gravity of hard decisions.
With a sterling supporting cast that includes Lee Braithwaite as Almut’s exuberant cooking assistant, Douglas Hodge as Tobias’s father, warmly stirring together uplifting humour (a gag about Terry’s Chocolate Orange is a delight) and wrenching poignancy with small (the candle-lit proposal) and big moments (chaotic childbirth in a petrol station bathroom) alike and building to Almut taking part in the Bocuse d’Oran international cookery competition (which she enters without Tobias’s knowledge and has a nailbiting climax) to validate herself, it’s ultimately about making the most of the time you have and living life (ice skating here serving as the metaphor) rather than subjecting yourself and those you love to pain and distress on the off chance. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll also learn the best way to crack an egg. (Wed: Vue)
Wicked (PG)
Debuting in 2003, created by Stephen Schwarz and loosely based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire a backstory that put a revisionist spin on the witches from The Wizard Of Oz, the musical went on to become one of the most successful of the past two decades, Broadway’s second-highest grossing behind The Lion King. Now, directed by John M. Chu comes the film adaptation (curiously the trailer gives no indication it’s a musical, perhaps wisely given the Joker fiasco), this being Part One (ending at stage version’s intermission) with Part Two due next November.
It opens with Galinda, the Good Witch of the North announcing that the Wicked Witch of the West is dead, melted by a bucket of water, with subsequent celebration by all in Munchkinland (now red heads rather than of small stature). However, when one girl has the temerity to ask if they weren’t once friends, flashback takes over, starting with the unfaithful wife of the Governor of Munchkinland (Andy Nyman) giving birth to a green-skinned baby (why she is never explained), he ordering the bear nanny to take the thing’ away. As she does so the child manifests some sort of magical powers.
Years later and the now grown Elpheba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) accompanies her paraplegic younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), whose condition her father blames on Elpheba, to become a student at Shif University (a sort of Oz version of Hogwarts) where she first crosses paths with Galinda (Ariana Grande), an insufferably spoiled brat with a fondness for pastel pinks whose come to study sorcery. However, when in her anger Elpheba again manifests her powers when her sister’s mocked, it’s she that Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), the Dean of Sorcery, takes on as her sole student, ordering the reluctant Galinda to have her as roommate.
From the start there’s friction between the two, exacerbated with the arrival of the self-satisfied bad boy Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) on whom Galinda sets her sights though, having literally bumped into her on the way, he’s more taken with Elpheba. The thrust of the narrative gets underway when there’s a decree issued forbidding animals, such as goat history professor Doctor Dillamond (Peter Dinklage) from being teachers, all part of a purge to stop animals, figuratively and literally, from having a voice in Oz. Elpheba and Fiyero (who gets to sing Dancing Through Life in the university library set-piece) having rescued a caged lion cub, the two girls, who’ve become unlikely friends, though Galinda’s no less self-preoccupied (and did give Elpheba that pointed black hat as a cruel joke), now come together to fight against the injustice, she declaring she’s now to be called Glinda in honour of how Dillamond pronounced her name. And when Elpheba gets a personal invite to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), she joins her as it’s finally revealed who’s behind the purge of animals and Elpheba finds herself grasping her destiny and, as Kermit once said being green. Not to mention explaining the origin of those winged monkeys and the yellow brick road.
Lavishly filmed and orchestrated with CGI and AI environments all over the show, the film’s resolutely faithful to the musical with its not entirely subtle messages about tolerance of difference and the Orwellian fascist repression and ostracisation of outsiders, exercising control through offering a common enemy. And, of course, animal lib.
With its many musical numbers, it’s full of energy though, it’s fair to say it never fully comes alive until the train to Emerald City arrives along with the eventual appearance of the musical’s showstopper, Defying Gravity. Eviro is quite magnificent as the kind-hearted girl whose had to bear cruelty and rejection from everyone, around, her father included on account of her skin colour, alluding to how villains are often the people we make them become, while Grande does a good job of making Galinda more approachable than her popular (her signature song) high school Mean Girl character bitch might otherwise have been. There’s solid support too from Yeoh and the ever reliably creepy Goldblum, neither of whom are quite what they appear to be, while the cast also includes Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James as Galinda’s arse-kissers, and Ethan Slater as Boq Woodman, a Munchkin in love with Galinda but persuaded to strike up a romance with Nessarose (whom, of course, becomes the Wicked Witch of the East). There’s brief cameos too by Schwartz himself and Winnie Holzman who wrote the book for the musical as well as original Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth as co-presenters of the Wiz-O-Mania show telling of the Wizard’s arrival to Oz in his hot air balloon, and, for those who know their Oz, nods to the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man and even Dorothy, who’ll all figure in Part Two when we get to go back over the rainbow. (Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Vue; Mon-Wed: Mockingbird)
Woman Of The Hour (15)
Ana Kendrick not only stars but makes a very impressive directorial debut in this true crime recounting of 70s serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) who, when eventually caught, was convicted of five murders though the estimated number of victims was far higher (he killed two, a woman and young girl, while out on bail). As seen in the opening in 1977 Wyoming, posing as a photographer looking for models, he would lure women to a remote spot before killing them during a sexual assault. The film depicts two further victims, that of young runaway Amy in 1979 San Gabriel (she escaped, leading to his arrest) and, in a change of routine, flight attendant Charlie in 1971 New York City whom he kills after helping her move into her apartment.
The story centres, however, in 1978 Los Angeles where, after a string of failed auditions, struggling aspiring actress Sheryl (Cheryl) Bradshaw (Kendrick) is persuaded by her agent to appear as a contestant on the TV show The Dating Game. She thinks it’s beneath her but with the potential to be spotted as well as meet potential suitors, she agrees, turning up to her episode in which she has to ask questions of the three bachelors hidden behind a partition. Bachelor #3 is revealed to be Rodney.
Much to the annoyance of the host (Tony Hale), Sheryl ditches the banal prepared questions and starts asking her own, confusing dim-witted Bachelor #1 with one about philosophy and exposing Bachelor #2’s sexism. Alcala, though, is smooth and charm her, they winning a romantic trip for two to Carmel. However, a member of the audience recognises him as the man she saw with her friend, who was later found murdered but, just as the police didn’t respond to reports by survivors, isn’t taken seriously by the show’s security. Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, after the show, Sheryl’s having reservations about her intended date, especially when, having brushed him off after they’ve been for drinks and his mood shifts, he starts following her.
As director, Kendrick adeptly builds the tension and navigates the film’s themes of sexism and misogyny and how women so often have to bear the burden of proof when reporting assault, though is less assured in the generic narrative mechanics, the abrupt ending feeling somehow tossed away, leaving the end credits to wrap things up. However, as Sheryl she delivers another strong and multi-faceted performance while Zovatto is suitably chilling and the creepily smooth but compassionless long-haired Alcala. An impressive debut, it’ll be interesting to see how she builds on this. (Netflix)