Films showing this week either in cinemas or on streaming platforms
FILM OF THE WEEK
A Minecraft Movie (PG)
The world’s most successful videogame, as I’ve never played I can’t tell you about the Easter eggs and in-joke references, but you don’t really have to be a gamer to get caught up in the fun of this frantic and often very silly adaptation directed by Napoleon Dynamite’s Jared Hess.
For the uninitiated, Minecraft’s a “sandbox game” set in the Overworld part of a universe where everything, foliage, animals, buildings, people, is cube-shaped and you can basically create anything just by thinking about it. For newcomers, there’s a lengthy exposition at the start wherein Steve (Jack Black as the game’s original default skin)) tells how he was obsessed with going down the mine as a kid and when he finally got the chance as an adult found the glowing blue cube that opened the mortal into the Overworld dimension, where he buddied up with a wolf he named Dennis.
Back in the real world, the plot kicks in with the narcissistic pink-jacketed Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), a video-game champion in 1989 whose corner store Game Over World is heading for bankruptcy. His path crosses with Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a teenager artist-cum-inventor who’s just arrived in town with his sister Natalie (Emma Myers) to make a new start after their mum died. When his jet-pack invention is sabotaged and wrecks the local crisps factory mascot where his sister’s working, he gets Garrett to pose as his uncle.
But this is just a preamble until he, Natalie, Garrett and Dawn (Danielle Brooks), a realtor with a literally mobile zoo, get transported through the same portal, via the Orb of Dominance which Steve had Dennis hide in his old house and has now come into Garrett’s possession, lose the Earth Crystal that can get them home, hook up with Steve and find themselves having to save Overworld from Malgosha (Rachel House), a gold-obsessed evil piglin and her porky underlings from The Nether, who wants to destroy all creativity. Cue a series of battles with piglins (once killed they become pork chops), skeleton archer warriors, blockish baby Frankenstein zombies, the Great Hog, a wrestling bout with Chicken Jockey and forging weapons with the Crafting Table as they fight their way to the Woodland Mansion to retrieve another Crystal so they can escape. Just try not to think about ordering a Lava Chicken.
Unlike comparable outings like Sonic, Super Mario and Dungeons and Dragons, there’s no real plot just a case of advancing though various levels, foes and obstacles to reach the goal, but as popcorn goes it’s certainly buttered-up although, given Momoa and Black are given full rein to unleash their craziness (as well as sing some rock songs), the rest of the cast don’t really get much chance to do anything but wave from the sidelines. That said, a cameoing Jennifer Coolidge as the divorced school principal (her ex is Jermaine Stewart’s teacher) has an amusing running gag subplot as she goes on a date with a pacifist monobrowed vegetarian monk who’s wandered into Earth, prompting the film’s funniest line in a nod to its Swedish origins, the waiter being game co-creator Jens Bergensten. The second of two credit scenes sets up a sequel involving Steve’s feminine counterpart Alex.
Game nuts will get more from it that anyone going in cold, but it’s unlikely anyone of them will leaving feeling blocked. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal Sutton Coldfield; Vue)
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Death Of A Unicorn (15)
Emotionally estranged from her corporate lawyer father Elliot (Paul Rudd) following her mother’s death, college student Ridley (Jenna Ortega) is reluctantly accompanying him to the isolated Canadian Rockies wildlife reserve estate of the Leopolds, a mega-rich pharmaceuticals family comprising entitled incompetent ex-junkie nepo son Shep (Will Poulter), obsequious materialistic wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and billionaire patriarch Odell (Richard E Grant), who, terminally ill with cancer and not having faith in his son’s acumen,, is looking to bring Elliot on board to act as legal liaison after his death . Ridley is naturally cynical about their professed altruism (“Philanthropy is just reputation laundering for the oligarchy”) and, indeed she’s quickly proven right.
Distracted by arguing and allergies, dad hits an animal in the road which, turns out to be a baby unicorn, bleeding purple blood and its horn glowing which, when Ridley touches it, gives her a hallucinatory trip into some otherworldly realm. But then dad beats it to death with a tyre iron, dumps in the back seat planning to not mention it to his hosts and bury it later that night.
Except it seems it’s not quite dead as everyone sees the car bouncing (indeed a plot point hinges on how unicorns can’t actually die). The baby breaks free and is quickly shot through the head by Odell’s PA, Shaw (Jessica Hynes). Which is when Elliot notices that the blood that splashed on Ridley’s face has cured her acne as well as his allergies and faulty vision. Naturally, the Leopolds are immediately alert to this healing power potential, especially when an infusion of horn dust eliminates Odell’s cancer. Just think how this can benefit the world. Or, more accurately, just think how they can sell it exclusively to their super-rich associates, promoting all three speed dialling and making deals. The only spanner in their profit-frenzy plans is that a pissed-off mum and dad unicorn have come looking for their offspring, dad skewering Odell’s head of science Dr Song (Steve Park) as he and his assistant Dr Bhatia (Sunita Mani) are transporting the body out into van to be taken to a lab for experimentation.
They really should have listened to Ridley who’s been researching unicorn myth and history via illustrations from the (real, save for the imagined new panel) 15th century Unicorn Tapestries and concluded they really aren’t creatures you should mess with. Certainly not the sparkly figures in little girls’ storybooks. Which, of course, means things get progressively worse with an ill-fated hunt into the wood to kills the wounded parent, a rising body count, Shep snorting horn dust, ordering Bhatia to cut of the baby’s horn so he and his mother than exploit it and realising that the only way to calm the beasts is with a pure of heart maiden – guess who. But Ridley has a deeper connection to them than anyone knows.
Written and directed by Alex Scharfman, it initially sets itself up a comedy horror eat the rich satire about self-absorbed greedy capitalists (America’s pharmaceutical corporates in particular) and indeed there’s fun to be had at the sight of the Leopold literally and metaphorically rubbing their hands at the opportunity that’s fallen in to their laps. It goes somewhat off the rails, however, as it swerves into Jurassic Park territory – as well as a visual nod to Aliens, with its unicorns vs humans slaughter fest and never quite figures out what the whole horn-induced magic realism trip is trying to say about grief, loss, healing and the whole cosmos of emotions. Scharfman does, though, have Elliot explain that he’s been a seemingly arse-licking, money-driven asshole to try and ensure Ridley’s secure future, to which end there’s also a predictable self-sacrificing redemption, even if that proves rather anti-climactic.
Well-aware of the whole silliness of its premise (and the dodginess of some of the unicorn CGI), it distracts with the copious gore and some decidedly scenery chewing performances from Grant, Leoni and Poulter with Ortega providing the moral grounding, although arguably the star turn comes from Gotham’s Anthony Carrigan as Griff, the Leopold’s put-upon butler, always at their demanding beck and call, including preparing Odell a unicorn steak. Closing with a not the cliffhanger it thinks fade to black ending as the unicorn family chase the cop car taking Ridley and Elliot to jail, it’s serviceable enough for what it is, it’s just that what is doesn’t really amount to much. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Mockingbird; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal Sutton Coldfield; Vue)
Last Swim (15)
It’s A-Levels results day and, like her friends, Iranian-British Ziba (Deba Hekmat) is nervous about how she’s done, especially as she’s just had a positive interview at UCL to study astrophysics. There was no need to worry, she’s sailed through with top grades, so she and her buddy group, wild child Tara (Lydia Fleming), mischievous Merf (Jay Lycurgo), and the defensively aloof and more vulnerable than he acts Shea (Solly McLeod) set off in his decidedly uncool 80s motor, later switching to bicycles and train, to celebrate with a tourists’ day out round the London landmarks. To her annoyance, they’re joined by Malcolm (Denzel Baidoo), an older former pupil who’s in the youth training programme of a London football club and who she doesn’t know. However, Ziba has the itinerary all planned out, the day ending with them watching a meteor shower and, at 11.59, a ‘last swim’.
That takes on an ominous allusion given that we’ve already seen her scoffing down pills, suggesting she has substance abuse issues while her mannerisms point to ADHD. The truth is darker: she’s been diagnosed with a potentially fatal condition. Could she be intending suicide? Although her friends sense something’s wrong, she’s kept her health problems to herself, just as Malcolm hasn’t mentioned that he’s been let go from his contract, something only Ziba knows as she witnessed him tell his mother in a humiliating confrontation when she called to pick him up.
As the day progresses, and the film has flashbacks to her diagnosis, her mother and family life, she and Malcolm form a tentative romantic connection. It takes a traffic accident for which Ziba blames herself to provide the catalyst to confess all to Tara and perhaps come to realise that, as her caring mother (Narges Rashidi) tenderly says, life is still worth living even if the future may not be something you can rely on.
The debut feature by London-based Iranian-Indian director Sasha Nathwani, it’s a freewheeling, heartfelt coming-of-age, edge of adulthood drama that deftly mixes humour and poignancy to engagingly unsentimental effect while lightly touching on society’s attitude to those of a non-white and different cultural background. Although London’s oddly largely empty of characters other than the five teenagers (they’re the only ones on the Tube, where Merf dances up and down the carriage), the individual performances of the five young actors, Hekmat in particular, and the chemistry between them as hidden insecurities, anxieties and self-loathings surface, provide all the world you need to be fully immersed in their lives. (Vue; Until Sun: Mockingbird)
Mr Burton (12A)
Directed by Marc Evans, this biopic of his fellow countrymen, acting legend valley boy Richard Burton and his teacher cum strict mentor Philip Henry Burton, has the sensibility, feel, essence and quality of a vintage BBC drama (even if some CGI industrial backdrops are less than persuasive) anchored in two standout performances by Harry Lawtey, looking like and channelling a cross between Endeavour’s Shaun Evans and a younger David Tennant, and Toby Stephens in the respective roles.
Opening in 1942 in the Welsh mining town of Port Talbot, living in rooms rented from his landlady, Ma Smith (Lesley Manville), the middle aged Burton teaches English, and Shakespeare especially, at the local secondary school as well as writing dramas for BBC regional radio. Like Ma, his acting ambitions thwarted, he has a love of theatre and an eye and ear for talent. Which he senses in one of his pupils, Richard Jenkins, who, estranged from his drunken miner father Dic (Steffan Rhodri), who can never remember which son he is, lives with his doting sister Cis (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) and her less than amenable husband Elfed (Aneurin Barnard). Academically promising, he tells Burton, or PH as he comes to call him, he’d like to be an actor and, Pygmalion-style, is subsequently taken under his wing, getting pronunciation and voice modulation lessons (involving him standing on a Welsh hilltop and screaming, venting his frustrations in the process) and, when Elfed forces him to give up school to help with the household finances, Burton not only argues for his reinstatement but uses his connections to get him an RAF Cadet scholarship and a place at Oxford. And, of course, helps him find his literal and figurative (baritone) voice,
An offhand remark about Ma having a spare room, leads to Richard moving in, an arrangement Elfed and Cis are fully supportive of for different reasons, but, as Ma cautions, it might fuel speculation about the pair’s relationship (Burton’s never shown as gay but a scene between him and an accusatory drunken Richard certainly alludes to as much). To which end, Burton proposes to adopt him, Dic demanding £50 to agree, and although the adoption never went through he did become his legal guardian with Richard taking his name.
Following the above row, the pair become estranged and the film moves on to 1951 with Richard now at the RSC (again through Philips connections to a famed theatrical casting agent Daphne Rye, played by Hannah New) preparing to tackle the role of Prince Hal in Henry IV, the play’s theme of his transformation from hedonist to figure of gravitas not lost on the film’s own. However, hewing to the mining tradition of starting drinking from 5, Richard’s having clashes with his director and other actors, his self-doubt and self-loathing manifesting in getting drunk, trying to get off the women and forgetting his lines. In a drunken fog, he phones Ma who duly packs PH off to the rescue, leading to reconciliation, Burton’s acclaimed break-through triumph and his oft quoted declaration that he owed his ‘father’ everything.
Released in the centenary of the actor’s birth, it follows familiar small-town boy makes good and mentor-protege arcs, touching on class prejudices and curtain twitching gossip along the way and, while the fledgling romance (where he professes himself a gentleman) with a schoolgirl (Mali O’Donnell) fizzles away, it does respectable justice to the story it tells. (Omniplex Great Park; Vue)
Restless (15)
A suburban kitchen sink drama that mixes Mike Leigh with Guy Ritchie, set on a run-down estate, first time writer-director Jed Hart explores the emotional and psychological outcomes of sleep deprivation. At its centre is Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal), an opera-loving, cake-baking understaffed care home worker whose son has left the nest leaving her with just her cat, Reggie, and billiards on TV. Her parents, who lived next door, have recently died and she’s got a new neighbour, Deano (a brilliantly obnoxious Aston McAuley), a total shirtless, tracksuit dickhead who likes nothing more than having cocaine-fuelled parties with is brutish mates, blasting out relentless rave music into the early hours every night of the week. Politely, scared of confrontation, she summons up the courage to ask if he’d mind turning it down. Feigning concern, promising to be a better neighbour, he does. But only briefly. Then it’s full blast again, she unable to drown out the noise and neither the council, the police or her other neighbours wanting anything to do with it. And Reggie’s gone missing
She asks again. This time he doesn’t even pretend to be friendly. So, sleep deprivation a catalyst to her self-awakening, she decides to take matters into her own hand. A little revenge with a cake containing dog shit, then letting herself in and trashing his gear. But, claiming he has mental health issues, nothing changes. Kevin (Barry Ward), her traffic warden would be love interest (though he still gives her a ticket when she sleeps in her car) tries to play hero and ends up with a broken nose At the end of her tether, intimidated, threatened, jumping at shadows, she (straining credibility) abducts one of his mates and (returning to the film’s opening scene) threatens to bury him alive in the woods unless he confesses about her cat, eventually breaking in via the connecting loft and discovering the means to put an end to the nuisance without having to do anything herself other than put the word out on what Deano’s getting up to as (with a cameoing Kate Robbins as the local battleaxe) he gets what coming in a pleasing dialogue-free finale scored to Bizet’s Carmen.
A character-led vigilante black comedy-thriller spin on Michael Caine’s justice dispensing Harry Brown that embraces themes of bullying, abuse of women, council estate politics, twattish macho neighbours, and society falling apart at the seams with its own metaphorical sleep deprivation, its vicarious justice pleasures are best watched at full volume. (Cineworld 5 ways; Mockingbird; Omniplex Great Park)
Under The Volcano (15)
Roman (Roman Lutskyi), his kids, six-year old Fedir (Fedir Pugacho) and the adolescent Sofiia (Sofiia Berezovska), and their new stepmother Nastya (Anastasiia Karpienko) are on the last day of their holiday in the Canary Islands, their biggest concern being whether than can find a parking space near enough to the beach. Bags packed they get to the airport ready to return home. Except their home is Ukraine and it’s just been invaded by Russia.
Now they find themselves stranded but, thankfully, the hotel allows them to extend their stay for free, meals included. But the longer they’re there the more the already simmering tensions in the new family dynamic (dad’s bawling out wife and daughter about not charging their phones or carrying a power bank when they go out), Sofiia not warming to her stepmother, start to come to the boil as each of them become increasingly self-involved, his wife feelings he needs to hold things together. The news of the situation back home from friends and relatives naturally adds to the pressures, at one point Nastya rounding on a Russian family in the hotel restaurant who she thinks are staring at them. Sofiia, meanwhile, has made friends with Mike, a beach hawker refugee immigrant from West Africa she meets when he tries to sell them bracelets and who relates his tragic backstory of how the friend he travelled with died before they reached Spain.
Borrowing its title from the Malcolm Lowry novel, the reference here being a visit to Mount Teide in Spain where Fedir believes the burnt ash is snow falling, an image that bolsters the themes of illusion and the reality but also hinting at emotions erupting, a trouble in paradise, life in stasis, survivor guilt drama, it’s directed by Damian Kocur, acknowledgedly influenced by Michael Haneke ,from a screenplay by Marta Konarzewska and showing as part of the Kinoteka Polish film festival. Filtering in reports from back home, the attacks on Kiev and other cities, news of friends and relatives, compounds anxieties, with Roman planning to send wife and children to safety at a friend’s while he returns to Kiev to do his part.
The film’s emotional centre, the bulk of the film centres on Sofiia, Berezovska doing a solid job with the heavy lifting, as, plagued by body image and self-confidence issues, her life online rather than in the now, she wanders alone through the town, often filming videos of bikini-clad young tourists, a scene with fireworks going of clearly evoking thoughts of very different rockets. In a rare moment of levity, there’s an amusing scene as she argues with Michael who’s convinced Titanic starred Brad Pitt, though this too resonates with the theme of people can see the same thing from a different perspective. Likewise, there’s a touching moment as father and son (whose had nightmares bought on by his parents fighting) trade musical tastes and bond over the former’s past glories as a rap artist.
It doesn’t really end, we see Sofiia wandering off into the distance and a coda has Michael singing a song from back home, leaving resolutions, pain and confused emotions all pointedly up in the air. (Thu: Mockingbird)
NOW SHOWING
Aftermath (15)
When Eric (Dylan Sprouse), a former army ranger, is crossing the Tobin Memorial Bridge in Boston with his 16-year old sister Maddie (Megan Stott), they suddenly find themselves in a terrorist situation when group of disaffected mercenaries, led by a decidedly unstable pill-popping Jimmy (Mason Gooding) blow it in half, their aim being to extract a police transport prisoner, Samantha “Doc” Brown (Dichen Lachman), a former member of their group who has apparently betrayed them and is due to testify. Confiscating all cell phones and tying drivers’ hands to the steering wheel, everyone’s being held hostage with the police unable to take any action. So, having freed himself from his ties on account of being able to dislocate his thumb, it’s down to Eric to take down the revolutionists, who are broadcasting live footage with the ultimate goal of getting Doc to read out a confession saying she falsely testified that Retcon squad one three killed innocent civilians without sanction and that the Pentagon was culpable before she’s executed.
Communicating with Maddie by phones they’ve managed to retain and with the help of a couple of the stranded drivers, Eric duly eliminates the opposition until it’s just down to him and Jimmy who, it turns out, has wired everything with a dead man’s trigger to go boom.
A routine and predictable B-movie thriller directed by Patrick Lussier, it has very few surprises but does deliver the goods in terms of the suspense and action, a notable if somewhat unrealistic scene having Eric and Maddie trying to do an Evel Knievel on a motorbike to leap the gap between the shattered roadway, his sister ultimately also ending up in need of being rescued. The dialogue is clunky, the performances uneven, although Sprouse makes a decent fist of his lone hero character, and the narrative confused (it seems the bad guys have the right motives but the wrong tactics) but as an action timewaster there have been far worse. (Netflix)
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)
Black Bag (15)
A blackly comic espionage mole hunt spin on Mr and Mrs Smith, with the husband and wife spies rather than assassins, written by David Koepp and directed (and filmed) by Steven Soderbergh, the title referring to secrecy, buttoned-up George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender sporting Harry Palmer-styled black spectacles and a dab hand in the kitchen in a nod to The Ipcress File ) and the sexier Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) work for Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, headed up by a steely Arthur Steiglitz (Pierce Brosnan). Apparently ace at detecting lies, George has been charged with investigating someone from the agency leaking to the Russians details of a virus called Severus which can cause nuclear reactors to meltdown and kill thousands (though never stated the Ukraine war is the backdrop). He’s got one week to identify the traitor and a list of five suspects. One of whom is his wife.
Also in the narrative melting pot of suspects is erotic fiction fan agency therapist Dr Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) who’s dating gaming-obsessed Col James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), and uncouth alcoholic Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) who’s resentful of being passed over for promotion and involved with the volatile Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), a relative data expert rookie with daddy issues. The agent who gave him the dies of a suspicious heart attack.
Two dinners are pivotal, the first where he serves chana masala laced with a truth serum to everyone but his wife turns into Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf series of confessions and a steak knife through someone’s hand but reveals nothing about the leak. The second, after administering polygraphs, is of an Agatha Christie drawing room nature with a gun on the table awaiting whoever lies. In-between all this, it seems that both George and Kathryn are being set-up to distrust and spy on each other, especially when he discovers his wife has been keeping things from him in her own black bag.
While a car blows up and there’s a last act gunshot, this follows more of a cerebral John LeCarre spy thriller path rather than Bourne or Bond territory, meaning there’s a lot of clever sparring dialogue and psychological misdirections and manipulations, while the audience tries to figure out who’s the one behind the leak. Tongue-in-cheek with several nods to other films in the genre, the whole traitor plot is really a bit of a MacGuffin with the film more accurately an examination of truth and trust (and the difference between them) in relationships where lying is a stock in trade as several layers of duplicity are exposed. As such the chemistry between the different couples really works (and also in the power play therapy session between Zoe and Kathryn), Fassbender and Blanchett especially, Soderbergh slickly navigating the screenplay and keeping you involved and guessing up to the last moment. No big bangs maybe, but intelligently explosive all the same. (Cineworld 5 Ways, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Until Sun: Mockingbird)
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 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+)
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 NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Reel)
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. (Vue)
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. (Apple TV+)
Conclave (12A)
Peter Straughan’s take on the Robert Harris novel , despite a seemingly unpromising plot pivoting round the election of a new Pope, director Edward Berger’s follow-up to All Quiet On The Western Front 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 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).
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 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. (Royal Sutton Coldfield)
Disney’s Snow White (PG)
Dircted by Marc Webb, the latest in Disney’s live action remakes of the studio’s animated classics, most of which have proven less than magical, arrives overshadowed by anti-woke protests about casting West Side Story’s Oscar winner Rachel Zegler, of darker-skinned Columbian heritage, in the title role and the pro-Israeli pronouncements of Gal Gadot who chews the scenery (but somewhat chokes on the singing) as the Evil Queen, but while it has some glaring flaws it can be counted alongside Beauty & The Beast as one of the more successful.
Explaining away Zegler’s Snow White as being named for the weather when she was born rather than the colour of her skin, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, whose past credits include The Girl on the Train, has turned the original’s romantic story into one of female empowerment, dispensing with princes and true love’s kiss in favour of a overcoming self-doubt and a power struggle while retaining the staple magic mirror and poison apple.
Heir to the kingdom following the death of her mother Good Queen (Lorena Andrea) and then dad Good King (Hadley Fraser), who rides off into battle never to return, Snow White finds herself under the heel of her stepmother, Evil Queen, who, when not oppressing the population, turning farmers into soldiers, and treating her stepdaughter like Cinderella, likes nothing more than to stand narcissistically in front of her Magic Mirror (voiced by Patrick Page) to be told that she’s the fairest of them all. Until that is, annoyingly bound to speak the truth, it tells her Snow White will supplant her in terms of fair beauty and – in this revision- fairness. Clearly she has to go.
So, as per the fairytale, she orders her loyal Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to take Snow White apple picking in the forest and kill her. He of course can’t bring himself to do the deed, setting her free to flee into the forest where she finds herself awash with cute woodland creatures drawn to her purity. And, of course, stumbles on a cottage which, it turns out, is home to (and here’s where the film shoots itself in the foot with cartoonish CGI) ) by seven small (never called dwarfs) and odd magical men stereotypically named Doc (voiced by Jeremy Swift), Grumpy (Martin Klebba), Bashful (Titus Burgess), Sleepy (Andy Grotelueschen), Sneezy (Jason Kravits), Happy (George Salazar) and Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman), who work in a diamond mine,. Finding her asleep, they take pity and she moves in.
As you’ll know, the Queen learns Show White’s alive and, disguising herself as an old crone, tricks her into eating that poisoned apple, revealing she had her dad killed and sending her into a Sleeping Death from which she’s awakened, not by some passing prince, but Jonathan (Andrew Burlap), the handsome bandit leader of a band of rebels who she encountered earlier stealing spuds from the castle and let him go, thereby renewing his hope of things going back to the good old days. Now, Snow White rallies him, his men and the not dwarfs into revolt to overthrow the Queen. And so it goes.
Along with the core narrative, the remake also throws in some of the much-loved songs, among them Heigh Ho and Whistle While You Work (though, inevitably, not Someday My Prince Will Come) while The Greatest Showman duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul add new numbers such as Zegler’s Waiting On A Wish, Gadot’s evil anthem All Is Fair and the wryly self-aware showstopper Princess Problems. Far better than expected, though I’d still hold my breath on Bambi. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal Sutton Coldfield; Vue)
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. (Vue)
Emilia Perez (15)
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), is approached by Manitas (transgender 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)
Flow (U)
While not persuaded it warranted the Best Animation Oscar over Wild Robot, this Latvian offering from Gints Zilbalodis, his follow-up to Away, is a remarkable piece of work, a wholly dialogue-free fable set against a post-apocalyptic Noah-like backdrop in the wake of a great flood that’s gradually engulfing quite possibly the entire planet. There are no humans, no traces of civilisation other than a couple of boats and drowned buildings. Instead the cast of characters are all animals, the first to be introduced being a black cat in a forest staring at its reflection in a puddle. Then comes a rabbit being chased by a pack of domestic dogs themselves, later, running from a herd of stampeding deer. The waves sweep through, the waters constantly rising, but never with any explanation as to why. The cat will eventually be joined by one of the dogs, a Golden Retriever, the pair climbing aboard a passing wooden sailboat, their numbers swollen by the arrival of a lazing capybara, a lemur scavenging shiny objects and a predatory but ultimately helpful secretary bird as the boat is carried along the flood through the landscape, among which are several giant cat statues. At one point the cat falls overboard and is rescued by a humpback whale, while in turn the mismatched crew comes to the rescue of the other dogs.
While the bird proved unlikely adept at steering the rudder, there’s no Disney-style anthropomorphism , the film relying on squeaks, barks and meows for their communication (actual corresponding animal sounds even if the capybara’s dubbed by a camel) with the creatures staying mostly true to type (dogs easily distracted, cat sharp-witted but still prone to chase a moving ball of light). But it’s not exactly difficult to identify the message about putting aside differences, learning to trust, adapting to change and working together for survival (the secretary bird is violent ostracized by the flock for breaking ranks) and, while it’s not exactly subtle and prone to repetition, there’s only so many times the cat can fall into the water and struggle to get on the boat, and the watercolour-styled designs of the characters and the backdrops are simple, the film’s gentle flow, both visually and emotionally, keeps you utterly beguiled. (Cineworld 5 Ways; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; 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)
It Ends With Us (15)
Directed by and co-starring Justin Baldoni, and adapted by Christy Hall Colleen Hoover’s 2016 bestseller about the cycle of domestic abuse and denial, this may be a melodramatic soap opera (as is the ongoing legal battle between director and star), but it’s one from the top shelf, and, while overlong and reliant on contrived coincidence, has a dark edge and unfolds with some twists you don’t readily see coming.
Blake Lively stars as aspiring flower-shop entrepreneur Lily Bloom who we meet as she returns home to read the eulogy for her estranged father’s funeral but, scarred by the abuse she saw him (Kevin McKidd) mete out to her mother (Amy Morton), can’t find a single thing to say, her list of five point remaining blank. Later, she has a flirty rooftop encounter with neurosurgeon Rile Kincaid (Baldoni), a textbook tall, dark, and dashing self-styled stud (“Love isn’t for me. Lust is nice though”) with a line in smooth chat-up patter, who startles her by angrily kicking a chair though, as he explains, he’s upset because, a neurosurgeon, he’s failed to save a young boy following an accident with a gun (and yes, this does cycle back at the end). There’s sexual tension but nothing happens, they part and she returns to Boston to oher shabby chic florists, Lily Bloom’s where she hires the irrepressible Allysa (Jenny Slate), even though she confesses to hating flowers, who rapidly becomes her best buddy. And, wouldn’t you know it, when Rile wanders into the store it turns out he’s her brother. And so the pair reconnect, she keeping things cool but agreeing to give him a dating chance. As the romance blossoms they, Allysa and her husband Marshall (Hasan Minhaj in a virtually identical role to that in Babes) go to a new upmarket restaurant which, back after eight years in the Marines, turns out to be owned by Atlas (hunky newcomer Brandon Sklenar), a former classmate and Lily’s first love.
Their backstory’s told in flashbacks with him (Alexander Neustaedter) apparently living homeless opposite her parents and the young Lily (a convincingly lookalike Isabela Ferrer) bring him food and the pair eventually falling in love (take note of the heart carved out of oak and the tattoo on her shoulder) before her irate father puts a brutal end to things.
Time moves on, Allysa gets pregnant, Lily and Rile get married and all seems roses. But Atlas’s suspicious of her bruise she says she got by accident and there’s an altercation between him and Rile at the restaurant. Then, after blow up about her relationship with Atlas, Rile apparently falls down the stairs. It’s not though, until later that, in hospital and learning she’s pregnant, the veil of denial’s torn away and she remembers exactly what happened to cause those bruises and wounds.
Both predictable and unpredictable in equal measure as it explores how we find ourselves repeating dysfunctional patterns in our lives (though not why the characters have such bad taste in clothes), it does rather want to have its cake and eat it when it comes to the central abuse and how we’re supposed to feel about Rile. We’re asked to despise him because of his abuse, but at the same time sympathise when we learn of the tragedy that made him who he is and also because he clearly want to try and be a better man, giving him a grace note in the way things end between them. Still at least her wife-beater dad’s 100% vile.
Bolstered by solid supporting turns, the two (three if you factor in young Lily) central performances are strong, complex and layered Lively on terrific form as a woman coming to realise she has to make the right choices, difficult though they may be. And if the screenplay can’t resist ending on the promise of a happy new future, it’s probably earned it. (Sky Cinema)
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)
Last Breath (12A)
Saturation diving is when the inert gas breathed by a diver dissolves into the body’s tissues and reaches equilibrium with the ambient pressure at the diver’s depth, they becoming fully saturated. It’s one of the most hazardous of jobs and decompression can take weeks. On 18 September 2012, Chris Lemons and more experienced fellow saturation diver Dave Yuasa were carrying out repairs 100 metres below the surface of the North Sea while third member of the team, the veteran Duncan Allcock remained in the diving chamber to supervise and feed out their umbilical cable providing the heliox to breathe and hot water to heat his suit as well as powering his light and providing communications link to the surface. However when a storm hit their support vessel and all its systems failed, causing it to veer off course, Lemons’ cable snagged and then snapped, leaving him with just a few minutes of breathable gas. Managing to tether himself to the gas line manifold, he waited for Yuasa to return and rescue him.
All this was detailed in the 2019 documentary Last Breath and co-directed Alex Parkinson has now turned it into a dramatised feature that stars Peaky Blinders’ Finn Cole as Scottish relative rookie Lemons, Shang-Chi star Sima Liu as the cool and collected Yuasa and Woody Harrelson as soon to be reluctantly retired Allcock with support from Cliff Curtis as the captain of the Bibby Topaz having to decide whether to risk an ecological disaster to save one man, MyAnna Buring as his First Officer and Mark Bonnas the dive supervisor. Other than opening it up with some shots back on land featuring Bobby Rainsbury as Lemons’ pregnant fiancé Morag, this is pretty much a reconstruction of events from the documentary fleshed out with scenes on the ship (the actual Bibby Topaz) as the crew try and run repairs to get it back on course and no man left behind dialogue between Allcock and Yuas, resolving to bring Lemons home, be it alive or dead. Given he’s unconscious pretty much from the time he scrambles on to the manifold, Cole’s job is to just lie there, occasionally moving his hands. It’s no spoiler to reveal that, although deprived of oxygen for some 30 minutes, for reasons science can’t fully explain (and to its credit the film never plays the faith card) Lemons was recovered alive and suffered no long-term effects.
As such, as a survival thriller, a bit like Apollo 13 underwater, its grip lies in Atkinson capturing the tension as the minutes tick down while tapping into the personalities of the three divers, something he does rather more successfully with the former than the latter given the screenplay’s less than stellar dialogue. That said, the trio are grounded enough to make it work, Harrelson giving his familiar flip performance while Atkinson trusts in the power of the true events – and the complementary score – to provide the film’s pulse as the post-accident action plays out in real time. You won’t forget to inhale, but it’s effective enough. (MAC; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe)
Marching Powder (18)
Following his revelatory, low-key performance in Rivals, for his first film in ten years, reunited with kindred spirit The Football Factory director Nick Love, Danny Dyer reverts to type to play Jack, a 40-something foul mouthed, coke snorting, lager guzzling, flabby gut, football hooligan Cockney who, in order to avoid jail following a match day brawl, is inexplicably given six week’s probation to turn his life around and, in the process, try and save his marriage to his equally sweary wife Dani (Stephanie Leonidas, far better than the material), who gave up her art college dreams for him, but, while professing she still loves him, has frankly had enough.
So this means giving up drugs, drink and match day battles with rival firms, getting some sort of job and attending couples therapy sessions with the wife (something the film portrays as embarrassingly woke) rather than hanging round with his arrested development, bad influence knuckle-dragging mates who are all dedicated to keeping him off the straight and narrow.
To mollify his grizzled, hard-nosed scaffold company boss father-in-law (Geoff Bell), on whom he relies for a roof over his head, he also has to play babysitter to Dani’s bipolar brother Kenny Boy (Calum McNab), who’s just come out of a mental hospital and has a thing about robbing drug dealers at knife-point. It’s an uphill struggle, into which Jack puts precious little effort to stop backsliding, especially when someone’s always on hand with a pack of powder. Meanwhile, Dani’s gone back to art college and taken a fancy to her tutor.
There is a sort of self-mockery, such as the sight of Dyer slapping his beer gut and stuffing his mouth full of Wotsits, one lodging on his hairy chest, and there are a few genuinely humorous lines (Tranmere’s described as a place where e most of the population are “on smack or mobility scooters”), but this doesn’t really make up for an unsubtle screenplay that uses the c word virtually every other sentence to the extent of numbing any shock value it might have. On the grounds that no other child actor would be allowed to take the part of Jack’s son and be subjected to the toxic language and porn references, Dyer cast his own son, Arty, which might seem like parental abuse but apparently, a chip off the old block and actually quite funny, he was apparently eager to say the c word.
The film has an undeniable energy and, while not exactly a stretch, Dyer fully commits to the role (complete with an ironic riff on Trainspotting’s choose life monologue at the end, just before he wades into another football fight), but while it wants you to hope he matures and finds redemption as he laments he’s done nothing with his life, all you actually want is for him to overdose or get his head kicked in. When, in his big confession scene to Dani, he says “I’m a c**t”, it’s hard not to agree. Love, who pushes his own envelope by having Jack talk to camera, seems to imagine himself as a sort of low rent Mike Leigh in saying he wants the film to show the values, lives and culture of the working class. If this is his vision of it, the working class should tell him to fuck off. (Cineworld NEC; Omniplex Great Park)
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. (Sat-Mon; MAC)
Mickey 17 (15)
Adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, with an added 10 or 11, this is Bong Joon-ho’s long delayed follow-up to Parasite, a dystopian sci-fi satire in which Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattison), with no prospects, blaming himself for his mother’s death (a symbolic red button figures prominently) and crippled with debt after a business venture went under, and his best friend partner friend Timo (Steven Yeun) seek to avoid a murderous loan shark by signing up for space programme. Timo bluffs his way into a pilot’s position while Mickey signs on as an expendable without bothering to read the paperwork. It turns out that his job is to become a disposable clone who dies testing out drugs or in high risk situations and is then ‘reprinted’ using waste by-products, a process banned on Earth after one of its inventors cloned himself as a serial killer, with the same memories to do it all over again.
The film opens with him trapped and left to die after falling into an ice cavern inhabited by creatures that look like armadillos with tentacle limbs and mouths. It then flashes back to explain how he got there, part of the crew on a mission to set up the fledgling colony of Niflheim (in Norse mythology the cold, dark world of the dead), led by intellect-challenged preening despotic failed politician and self-appointed cult prophet Kenneth Marshall (a scenery-chomping Mark Ruffalo, bearing a clear resemblance to a certain US President) and his scheming sauce-obsessed power behind the throne wife Ylfa (Toni Collette).
In all his incarnations, the meek and mild Mickey, now up to 17, has a girlfriend, security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), although Marshall’s banned all sex until they set up Niflheim when he will lead a sexpedition to spread humanity’s seed on a new planet. Of course, he’ll first have to exterminate the locals (the aforesaid creatures, which he dubs Creepers and described by the missus as looking like a croissant covered in shit).
Things take an unexpected turn, however, when, left behind by Timo, Mickey doesn’t die in the cave and returns to the colony ship only to find Mickey 18, a rather edgier version, has been printed off. Unfortunately, that makes him a multiple, and Marshall’s decreed that all multiples, including the prime, are executed and their memory bans wiped. Which, after an amusing moment in which Nasha contemplates an interesting ménage a trois, means either one Mickey killing the other or working together to help overthrow Marshall.
Over its two hour plus running time, it ranges – often incoherently – through any number of issues, genres and themes, from the experience of death, class politics and what it means to be human to the misuse of science, xenophobia and an allegory of fascism in Marshall’s plan to create a genetically pure race. The tone also wanders, from offbeat comedy to serious space the species drama, Pattison managing to navigate both, revealing a rarely shown flair for comedy, even if his nasally narrating accent can be grating in the early going. Come the second half, however, it all starts creaking at the seams in a plot-heavy second half and it all gets a bit messy as plot strands and characters vanish and you struggle to keep up with whatever’s going on and who is on whose side.
It’s an ambitious project and all involved commit fully to whatever vision Bong is having at any given moment, but those messages – as well as some characterisations – too often get swallowed by the narratively confused and visually muddled attempts to put them across, leaving you bedazzled but bewildered. (Cineworld 5 Ways; MAC; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Vue)
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)
Novocaine (15)
Suffering from the rare real-life genetic disorder Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, assistant bank manager Nate (Jack Quaid, fresh off Companion) can’t feel pain (REM’s Everybody Hurts is ironically played over the opening credits), hence his college nickname. To which end he has to set his watch timer at three-hour intervals to use the bathroom and avoid his bladder bursting and has an all-liquid diet to prevent him biting his tongue off.
Shy and introverted he does, however, fall for flirtatious new bank clerk Sherry (Prey’s Amber Midthunder), who brings him out of his shell and even gets him to eat some cherry pie. So when, the day after they sleep together, she’s taken hostage in a bank robbery with the perps (Conrad Kemp, Evan Hengst and Ray Nicholson, son of Jack) robbers wearing Santa suits, killing the manager and threatening to shoot Sherry unless Nate opens the safe, following the shoot-out carnage he impulsively steals a cop car and sets off to rescue her. A cross-city chase leads to a confrontation with one of the robbers who, pulling a gun out of a deep fryer, he accidentally shoots. Now with the pursuing detectives (Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh) suspecting he was in on the job from the beginning, he recruits his online gaming buddy Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), who’s not quite the martial arts macho man he claims, in his quest to identify the robbers (entailing a bloody trip to a neo-Nazi tattooist) and track Sherry down, one that involves him being subjected to but not feeling numerous booby traps, burns, beatings and tortures (the nail-removing and bullet retrieval scenes are not for the squeamish). The twist, revealed early one, is that Sherry is not quite what she seems.
Co-directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen with Crank and John Wick as its touchstones, it’s graphically brutal and gratuitously ultra-violent (skin’s torched, bones snapped), but also funny and quite sweet with Quaid an engaging cocktail of loveable sucker and panicked bad ass and, while it’s shot full of plot holes with a repetitive drawn-out ending before the somewhat hard to accept romantic coda, it’s a painless enough time-passer. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Royal Sutton Coldfield; Vue)
One Of Them Days (15)
A Black female buddy stoner movie, this stars Keke Palmer and, making her film debut, R&B singer SZA as, respectively, the uptight but responsible Dreux who, after failing to finish her business degree, works the night shift at Norm’s diner but is looking to land a franchise manager deal, and the more free-spirited but self-absorbed and dick-addict corporate-sceptical aspirant artist Alyssa. Childhood friends, they share a run-down apartment in South L.A.’s Baldwin Village, its increasing gentrification represented by the arrival of perky new white resident Bethany (Maude Apatow) and her rescue dog. However, Alyssa’s freeloading boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal) has taken off with both their valuable sneakers collection and the rent money to fund his crappy T-shirt scheme. And now, while all Dreux wants to do is sleep before her interview, unless they can scrape together $1,500 by the end of the day, their unsympathetic landlord Uche (Rizi Timane) is evicting them. So they don’t have time to get high and wasted.
And so, directed by Lawrence Lamont, the film follows their misadventures in an attempt to raise the cash, variously involving retrieving a pair of vintage Air Jordans belonging to local gangster King Lolo (Amin Joseph) from a power line, which has him giving them until 10pm to pay $5000 or they’ll die, a visit to a blood bank where a stripper turned incompetent nurse (Janelle James) lets Dreux sell more than the authorised amount, a pay day loan operation that charges exorbitant interest and Dreux having a run in with her Mercedes-driving crush Maniac (Patrick Cage) who she assumes is some sort of criminal, all while Deux is trying to get to the important interview which, given she gets involved in a girl fight outside the office between Alyssa and Keyshawn’s volatile new girl Berenice (Aziza Scott), does not end well. Thankfully, an impromptu art auction does save the day.
With a supporting cast that includes Vanessa Bell Calloway as a woman who’s turned her home into a community refuge, Katt Williams as the ill-named doomsayer Lucky, Dewayne Perkins as a hairdresser, Keyla Monterroso Mejia as the contemptuous Payday loans officer and Lil Rey Howery as the con artists who buys the sneakers, despite its very American-specific nature it’s undeniably energetic and at times quite funny as bad decisions inevitably see the best buddies fall out and then make up. Even so, it’s a bit depressing that female screenwriter Syreeta Singleton feels the need to resort to tired clichés and stereotypes by having her characters say nigga and hos every few beats in an effort to be down with the urban. (Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe)
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+)
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+)
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)
The Woman In The Yard (15)
Depressed and an emotional wreck following the death of her husband David (Russell Hornsby) in a car crash, herself in a leg brace, Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) can barely bring herself to get out of bed let alone stock up on groceries to feed her two kids, combative teenager Tay (Peyton Jackson) and his sparky young sister Annie (Estella Kahihi), or contact the power company to get the gas back on. Then looking out of the window of their unfinished dream house, she sees a woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) dressed in black, lace covering her head, sitting in their Georgia farmyard in an iron-cast chair. She hobbles out to confront her and, sound clearly travelling the distance well, hears her say that today’s the day and reveals hands with blood on them. Going back in, she tells the kids she’s probably confused and wandered from some mental home. But the woman remains. Not just that but she moves closer to the house. On top of which the dog disappears and we see the chickens in the hen roost are bloodied and dead.
For a long time not a lot happens but director successfully build a creepiness Jaume Collet Serra as Ramona, a former artist gets edgy, losing her temper with her children and having flashbacks to the accident. A further flashback to herself and Daniel indicates that the perfect life in the country she thought she was getting isn’t so perfect after all, she losing her sense of self in having to devote all her time to help build the fixer-upper dream and look after the kids. At some point, seemingly propelled by the woman’s shadow, objects start flying around, terrifying Annie. The woman also prompts Tay to push his mother for the truth about how the accident happened
The question, of course, is who or what is this woman. Is she death, is she a metaphor for Ramona’s trauma, is she fate come to provide deliverance. And today’s the day for what? At one point you might find yourself asking who among the characters is dead. There’s some teasing cues, the film Ramona and Daniel are seeing visiting is The Mirror Has Two Faces and, in practising her writing, Annie always reverses the ‘r’. But even come the cathartic climax, involving the woman, Ramona and a rifle with a single bullet pointing to perhaps suicide as escape from guilt, it’s still muddled and obtuse, a vague riff on The Shining perhaps, that never quite seems sure of where it wants to go. Nonetheless, the suffocating dream it conjures in just that simple image as well as the metaphorical unravelling scenes of Ramona imagining unpicking her stitches or yanking up the dog’s buried chain, should keep Black Mirror fans happy. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Vue; Until Sun: 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)
A Working Man (15)
Adapted from a novel titled Levon’s Trade after its protagonists name, this reunites Jason Statham with The Beekeeper director David Ayres but a wholly generic but watchable enough thriller along the lines of Taken, except here, Levon Cade, a former black ops Royal Marine turned Chicago construction site foreman who, after a bried moment of reluctance. is forced to reawaken his old self and rescue Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas), the feisty daughter of his boss Joe (Michael Peña) who took him in when none else gave him a chance, who, it transpires has been kidnapped for sex trafficking in a convoluted plot variously involving Russian mobsters (Jason Flemyng is prominently billed but quickly gets drowned) , privileged predators, the facilitating kidnappers and a veteran turned drug dealing biker gang leader (Chidi Ajufo). To which you can also throw in Cade’s blind former army buddy (David Harbour) whose life he saved.
To flesh out the psychological impetus, Cade’s wife committed suicide and his resentful father-law restricts access to his cutely precocious daughter ( ), which is why he’s sleeping in his car and living in grubby digs to save money for a custody battle. Co-written by Ayres and Sylvester Stallone, it’s full of holes (why would he stake out the target house parked a few feet away barely concealed by bushes?) and well over half of the film (repetitively drawn out over two hours) simply Statham bloodily working his way through an army of goons, colourful characters including Didi (Maximilian Osinski), Flemyng’s flamboyant middleman son and seriously fashion-challenged underlings Viper and Artemis. Ultimately, it’s Statham 101 with no surprises and preciously interest in character, but undiscriminating fans will get exactly what they pay for. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal Sutton Coldfield; Vue)
Screenings courtesy of Cineworld 5 Ways & Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe
CINEMAS
Cineworld 5 Ways – 181 Broad St 0871 200 2000
Cineworld NEC – NEC 0871 200 2000
Cineworld Solihull – Mill Ln, 071 200 2000
The Everyman – The Mailbox 0871 906 9060
MAC – Cannon Hill Park 0121 446 3232
Mockingbird – Custard Factory 0121 224 7456.
Odeon Birmingham, 0871 224 4007
Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe – Ladywood Middleway 0333 006 7777
Odeon West Bromwich – Cronehills Linkway, West Bromwich 0333 006 7777
Omniplex Great Park, Rubery www.omniplexcinemas.co.uk/cinema/birmingham
Reel – Hagley Rd, Quinton, Halesowen 0121 421 5316
Royal – Birmingham Road, Maney, Sutton Coldfield 0121 492 0673
Vue Star City – Watson Road 08712 240 240