New Films 10th October 2025 by Mike Davies

Films showing this week either in cinemas or on streaming platforms

FILM OF THE WEEK

Tron Ares (12A)

Launched in 1982 with a sequel following in 2010, this is the third in the franchise and, directed by Joachim Rønning, firmly taps into the AI zeitgeist. Taking a cue from 3D printing technology, it runs with the idea that things from the digital world, the Grid in Tron terms, could be transferred to the real world in physical form and addresses concerns as to whether AI poses a threat or a boon to humanity/ After a spate of films adopting the former approach, while there are indeed nefarious elements at work, this comes firmly down on the side of a force for good.

Some years after Kevin Flynn, former ENCOM CEO and inventor of the Tron game, disappeared, programmer Eve Kim (Past Lives star Greta Lee showing action chops) has succeeded Flynn’s son Sam (Garrett Hedlund seen in a photo) as CEO (there’s a whole missing film’s worth of exposition somewhere between Legacy and this) with both ENCOM and rival tech company Dillinger, headed by the ruthless Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters),the grandson of the late treacherous ENCOM CEO Ed, who are racing to be the first find the ‘permanence code’ which will allow digital transfers to survive longer than 29 minutes. Locating a remote Alaskan station set up by Sam and rediscovered by her late sister Tess (more missing backstory), she and her assistant Seth (Arturo Castro) find the code, which she wants to use to grow crops, cure cancer, etc. Meanwhile, Dillinger, who wants it for power and wealth, has created a new security software program, headed up by Master Control codenamed Ares (a cool bearded Jared Leto), which he’s looking to sell to the military as an obedient and fully expendable and replaceable super-soldier and tanks. He just has to fix the 29 minute problem, about which he’s naturally kept quiet.

To which end, he gives a directive to Ares and his fellow security programs in their black and red armour, notably the ice-cold Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith all Grace Jones), to recover the code and eliminate Eve. What he doesn’t bargain on is Ares malfunctioning in having a self-awareness (bristling at Julian’s indifference to his existence) and, in encountering Eve, finding he has feelings too, leading him to disobey the directive and his programming, thus setting him up as a target for Athena who follows Dillinger’s directives to the latter.

Large chunks of the narrative involve Ares and Eve, in her blue-and-white snowsuit, going back and forth between the Grid and the real world while the last act is an extended light cycle chase sequence and high tech flying fortress battle involving them and Athena and her troops, while Seth and Eve’s colleague Ajay (Hasan Minhaj) seek to take Dillinger’s system offline and his mother, and former CEO, Elizabeth (Gillian Anderson) berates her son for his wild and dangerous actions.

Visually dazzling in its use of 3D technology (it’s ideally seen in IMAX) with a powerful industrial tech-noir score by Nine Inch Nails (Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor are not only exec producers but cameo as fighter pilots), it demands you pay attention to keep up with the switchbacking narrative. Packed with dynamic action, it also finds room for humour, notably in Ares (encounter a cameoing Jeff Bridges as Flynn program) remarking he prefers Depeche Mode to Mozart. References to Frankenstein and Pinocchio underscore its theme about what it means to be human (with an impermanence code) and adds the same sort of emotional kick as Terminator 2, the extended coda setting up a sequel with the now permanently physical Ares riding a real bike as some sort of wandering samurai and Dillinger, trapped in the Grid, plotting revenge. If you’re looking for a film that addresses the film’s existential concepts as to what comprises being human entails (it’s bluntly summed up here as “Being human is hard”), you’d be better directed to Ex Machina and Companion, but if you just want a basic primer and lots of dizzying and colourful popcorn action, the get with the program. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal; Vue)

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Good Boy (15)

Directed and co-written by Ben Leonberg, at under 75 minutes, this brings a novel twist to the familiar supernatural horror/haunted house genre in that it’s all seen (and mostly filmed) through the low angle eyes of a golden retriever. Acquired as a puppy, Indy, Leonberg’s own dog, is the loyal canine companion to Todd (Shane Jensen), who, recovering from surgery, has decided to quit the city and move to his late grandfather’s (Larry Fessenden) remote farmhouse where, surrounded by taxidermy trophies, he watches flickering home videos of the old man and low budget horror movies. From the start there’s an air of unease with strange noises, creaks and shadowy shapes caught in reflections in the windows; Indy senses all of this, his master does not.

It’s clear from the start that, his sister finding him unresponsive with blood dripping from his mouth, Todd is unwell, suffering the same ailment that killed his grandfather (whose own dog, Bandit, was never found). It’s something Indy senses as he vigilantly follows him around the house, whimpering when he coughs up blood into a handkerchief or standing guard by a closed door. When, not thinking clearly, an erratic Todd chains Indy to a kennel out in the rain, the dog ingeniously breaks free and gets back into the house.

Through deft use of sound, silence and lighting and mostly shot in chronological sequence, Leonberg builds the tension, ratcheting up the creeping horror and scares (in one scene a seeming mud-covered ghoul turns out to be a local hunter in camouflage) as Indy sees figures looming around the house’s shadows and slimy black hands encroaching on Todd. He even sees the apparent ghost of Bandit going up the stairs. The film deliberately aims to keep this ambiguous as to whether these are real or psychological (there’s several scenes that take the form of Indy’s dreams), but you don’t have to be a genius to work out that basically Indy’s sensing the presence of death and illness closing in on Todd, the dog’s reactions an empathetic mix of fear and concern.

While Jensen is quietly terrific as a man who has chosen to end his days in isolation, his relationship with his dog subtly etched in small gestures, it’s without question that Indy is the star of the film, delivering a performance with a nuance and emotional resonance many a human actor would struggle to match in capturing the weight of the impending loss of someone you love. In the end though, it comes to something of an inevitable low key anti-climax, all bark but no bite. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Mockingbird; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Royal; Vue)

I Swear (15)

In 2019, Galashiels-born John Davidson was awarded an MBE for his services to advancing awareness of Tourette Syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes uncontrolled movements and verbal outbursts, generally of a sweary nature. Standing in the room awaiting his turn, he shouted out “Fuck the Queen!” This is the launch point for writer-director Kirk Jones’s biopic, which then flashes back to the mid-80s with Davidson (Scott Ellis Watson), the eldest child of working class dad (Steven Cree), who hopes his son’s goalie skills might earn him a professional spot, and uptight mother Heather (a wonderfully brittle Shirley Henderson) as, a bit of a charmer, he starts secondary school.

But then the world changes when he develops physical tics that, first see him blowing his soccer prospects and them spitting out food and spouting obscenities over family dinner, prompting his mother making him sit in front of the fire to eat his food. Expelled for calling the headmaster a c***, he’s eventually diagnosed, though Tourette’s wasn’t then officially recognised, his dad leaving home in embarrassment and his mother hiding him away in shame and at 20 (now played by an outstanding Robert Aramayo), ostracised by society, he’s on disability benefits and rarely going out other than to help with the shopping. One such trip reunites him with former schoolfriend Murray (Francesco Piacentini-Smith), who simply accepts the tics and outbursts (“I suck cock’ is a favourite) and takes him home to meet his parents, Chris (David Caryle) and Dottie (a solid Maxine Peake), the latter diagnosed with terminal cancer, who are equally accepting.

With Heather unable to cope, Dottie, a former psychiatric nurse, invites John to move in and dedicates herself to helping him get a job and become independent, the former seeing him become assistant to Tommy (Peter Mullan), the crotchety but heart of gold janitor at the local community centre who tells him that Tourette’s isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that people don’t understand it. Life becomes more stable if no less sweary, although he hospitalised after being beaten with a crowbar for inadvertently insulting a girl and hauled up on as an assault charge following an involuntary arm movement in a nightclub (the courtroom scene is a humorous gem). But in the wake of Tommy’s death and Dottie’s diagnosis having been proven incorrect, with a catalyst where a young girl (Andrea Bisset) with the same affliction opens up to him, he sets about becoming an advocate and campaigner seeking to change that ignorance. And so it then returns to the MBE moment and follows treatment with an experimental drug to help alleviate but not cure his condition and John’s subsequent work to advance awareness holding workshops and seminars with fellow sufferers (a final act features real Tourette’s actors) and their caregivers.

Soundtracked by the likes of Blue Monday and Stop Crying Your Heart Out, it’s very much in the style of BBC uplifting dramas, albeit with considerably more swearing (the obscenities and four letter proliferations would normally get an 18, but that would run counter to the film’s objective and story), Jones using his comedic background in the likes of Nanny McPhee and Waking Ned to bring a light tone that steers clear of earnest melodrama. With end credits featuring footage of the actual Davidson, who served as executive producer, including from 1989 BBC documentary John’s Not Mad, one of several about him prior 2019, it’s something you need to see. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal; Vue)

The Lost Bus (15)

Another true life story, this stars Matthew McConaughey as Kevin McKay, a divorced down on his luck deadbeat father with an estranged and resentful teenage son (McConaughey’s own son, Levi) an incapacitated elderly mother (his actual mother, Kay), a hostile ex-wife, and a dog with terminal cancer, who was working as an elementary school bus driver in Paradise, California, when a spark on an electricity pylon set fire to the parched grassland and led to the 2018 Camp Fire, named for its origin near Camp Creek Road, that raged across the uplands, destroying Paradise and other communities as it went.

An evacuation order went out and McKay. who was on his way to take medication to his sick son, volunteered to pick up kids whose parents couldn’t collect them from their school and drive them to safety at the mustering point. Along with the 22 assorted youngsters, he’s accompanied by schoolteacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrara) as co-driver, although in actuality her colleague Abbie Davis was also onboard for what, with communications with depot dispatcher Ruby (Ashlie Atkinson),cut off and unaware of the nature and spread of the inferno, becomes a tense five-hour 30-mile journey, navigating blocked roads, burning buildings and armed looters with very little water inside a bus rapidly heating up and the kids scared out of their lives.

Directed by Paul Greengrass, its firmly in disaster movie territory, the blaze beyond the control of the fire crews and their beleaguered chief (Yul Vazquez) although here the heroics are real rather screenplay concoctions, though it still plays the redemption card and throws in some character shadings for McConaughey (wishes he’d been a better dad) and Ferrara (wishing she’d travelled). The flames may be CGI, but you can almost feel their intensity and danger, the film subtly joining the subtext dots about climate change and human culpability, with shots of cars desperately ramming into each other, a man engulfed in flames and residents fleeing for their lives all fuelling the drama. Go for the burn. (Apple +; Mon/Wed: Everyman)

Night Of The Zoopocalypse (PG)

When a meteor crashes into a Colepepper Zoo theme park in Canada unleashing a virus that causes a white rabbit to mutate into gelatinous gummy zombie Bunny Zero, infecting other animals in turn, it’s down to young timber wolf Gracie (Gabbi Kosmidis), gruff mountain lion Dan (David Harbour), movie-obsessed lemur Xavier (always commentating on the action), egotistical proboscis monkey Felix, feisty capybara Frida, sarcastic ostrich Ash and oblivious baby pigmy hippo Poot, to save the day while Dan wants to get the zoo key card so he can escape back into the wild. Soap and water turning out not to be the cure they thought. it transpired that is the parks theme music that can reverse the mutation (hey, music soothes the save breast, eh), if only they can turn it on.

Adapted from a short story by horror writer Clive Barker, there’s some amusing touches, such as the tree frog Gum-Beasts, and the film trots out a familiar theme about trusting others, finding yourself and working together, it’s pitched as family friendly pre-Halloween zombie movie for youngsters but while the cheap jokes and slapstick may keep the demographic entertaining, the so so animation, lacklustre dialogue and overly repetitious plot will have their significant elders wishing they where anywhere else than at the zoo. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Royal; Vue)

Plainclothes (15)

Part inspired by an L.A. Times article about an fairly recent undercover police sting operation at a popular Long Beach cruising site, writer-director Carmen Emmi’s feature debut is set in 1997 Syracuse, New York, where Lucas (Tom Blyth) is a young undercover cop who sets himself up as the (not exactly legal) entrapment bait at a mall so his fellow officers can capture on covert video and arrest gay men who follow him into the bathroom and expose themselves. They never contest anything as to do would mean exposing themes in a different way in court. Training up rookies to eventually take his place as he becomes a too familiar face, he’s not entirely comfortable with his line of work, the reasons for which become clear when he doesn’t blow the whistle on his latest target, the much older Andrew (Russell Tovey). You see, although he has an ex-girlfriend, (Amy Forsyth), Lucas is himself a self-loathing closeted gay and, with Andrew passing him his phone number, he begins a secret tentative relationship, telling him his name’s Gus (his father Angus’s nickname), pre-coitally flirting in a movie theatre, getting sweaty in alleys and having sex in a deserted greenhouse. They seem to have emotional and sexual chemistry, but Andrew, who’s married with a family, says he’s not looking for any commitment and never meets a sexual partner more than twice. Lucas, however, has fallen for him and, in an emotional trough following his father’s (Joseph Emmi Sr) death, tracks him down using his licence plate to try and renew the affair, eventually discovering to his shock that Andrew’s actually a reverend.

Exploring the sense of self-identity and conflicted feelings, the premise has dramatic potential; however, despite good performances from his two stars, Emmi fails to have a firm grip on the film’s consistency, narrative logic, timeline and tone, too often succumbing to character stereotypes and aesthetic showboating such as montages, digital photography and home video footage, at the expense of the emotional, ethical and psychological thrust, culminating in a heated domestic confrontation (Lucas not having come out to his family) involving his mother (Maria Dizzia) and her homophobic brother (Gabe Fazio), regarding a letter from Andrew addressed to Gus that is simultaneously melodramatic and poignant. Clearly wanting to be his own take on William Friedkin’s own 90s queer scene classic Cruising, it stalls before it ever really gets into gear. (Mockingbird)

Urchin (15)

Making his debut as writer-director, Babygirl star Harris Dickinson has opted to draw on Ken Loack kitchen sink realism for his story of Mike (Frank Dillane), a homeless East London junkie who, after mugging Simon, a good samaritan who offered to buy him a meal, emerges from seven months inside sober and conscientious, determined to stay clean, his no-nonsense social worker (Shonagh Marie) fixing him up with a hostel room and he getting a job as a commis chef in a low-end hotel. For a while things go well, Mike listening to self-help tapes, taking part in a restorative justice programme and hanging out with his co-workers, even joining for a karaoke session with Atomic Kitten’s Whole Again’. However, his erratic nature winds up with him being fired and joining a litter crew , striking up a relationship with immigrant drifter Andrea (Megan Northam) and falling off the wagon via her ketamine. Before long he’s back on the streets.

With Dickinson co-starring as Mike’s now sober frenemy Nathan, who in the early going he accuses of stealing his wallet, the social realism is decently handled but it’s offset by frequent excursions into surrealism with Mike seeing an old woman playing violin, psychedelic sequences, shots of a forest cave and a gothic abbey. Apologists argue these as intended to capture Mike’s addiction addled mental state, but they just feel like an affection with Dickinson self-indulgently exploring the medium’s different possibilities as a first time director but losing his grip in the process. Another frustrating problem with the film is that, while Dickinson’s homelessness observations and Dillane’s performance can’t be faulted, regardless the intrinsic self-destructiveness and abandonment issues, Mike’s unreliability and selfish behaviour make him hard to warm to or sympathise with. An undeniably ambitious debut with several flashes on insight and inspiration, but with an ending that just hangs – or rather curls up – there, this is more about future promise than present achievements. (Mockingbird)

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Anora (18)

Written and directed by The Florida Project’s Sean Baker, this catapults Mikey Madison from supporting character roles to Oscar winner as Anora (the Hebrew word for light or grace) aka Ani Mikheeva, a stripper of Uzbek heritage living in Brooklyn’s Russian-speaking neighbourhood Brighton Beach. Materialistic and looking to the world of lap dancing at her upscale Manhattan strip club. So, as the only one of the girls who speaks passable Russian, she’s introduced to Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn, Russia’s Timothée Chalamet), the spoiled, gangly, immature hard partying son of a wealthy Russian oligarch who lives in his parents’ lush gated mansion where he spends his time getting high, drinking and playing video games. Though vehemently denying she’s a prostitute, she takes up his lucrative offer for several bouts of sex, he then offering her $15,000 to stay with him for a week and pose as his girlfriend. This in turn finds them and his entourage flying to Las Vegas where he proposes (not least so he can get a green card and stay in America) and they end up getting hitched in one of the wedding chapels. So far so whirlwind romance as Ani quits her job to play shag-happy wife. However, when word gets out that Vanya’s ditched his clueless Russian-Armenian minders, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), whose job it is to clean up the messes he makes, and rumours spread on Russian social media, his Orthodox priest godfather Toros (Karren Karagulianis) is ordered by Vanya’s domineering mother Galina Zakharovato (Darya Ekamasova) to find him and get the marriage annulled, she and her husband Nikolai flying over to America to take him back home. However, when his minders turn up, a coked-up Vanya does a runner and, after a lengthy apartment-trashing tussle (there’s a lovely moment as Igor tries to restrain Ani while respecting her personal space), they, Tonos and Ani set out to try and track him down, she reluctantly agreeing to $10000 in return for the annulment but hoping to convince everyone their love is real.

A cocktail of After Hours, Uncut Gems and Pretty Woman, with copious scenes of energetic screwing and liberal doses of black comedy, it’s a tad overlong to get going with perhaps more naked, gyrating lap dancing than are strictly necessary, but once the tragi-comic farce is underway it crackles with real energy and emotion. As the panicking Tonos, his beleaguered brother Garnick and tough but placid enforcer Igor, Karagulianis, Tovmasyan and Borisov (at times suggesting an Armenian Ewan McGregor) make for a wonderful comedic hapless trio and, while neither of the two central characters are especially likeable (both in it for what they can get), Eydelshteyn is immensely watchable as the brattishly entitled and shallow Vanya while Madison sets the screen alight as the smart, unsentimental but vulnerable Ani, giving the touching final shot a real hammer to the heart. (Sky Cinema)

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)

The Bad Guys 2 (PG)

A sequel to the 2022 Dreamworks animation, for late arrivals this opens with a brief catch-up detailing how, in a car heist and a fast paced Cairo car chase, critter criminals (motto – the heist is never about the loot), fast talking dapper Mr. Wolf (a superb Sam Rockwell), slippery safecracker Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), toxically flatulent Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), unlikely prone to panic master of disguise Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), and snarky hacker Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), were eventually caught and turned over a new leaf. Cut to the present and they’re down on their luck and a crappy car, unable to get jobs on account of their records Wolf goes for an interview at a bank he robbed three times), only a newly ripped Snake, who’s reinvented himself as a yoga-and-kombucha health fanatic, seeming upbeat.

Things proceed to get worse when they’re framed for a series of robberies carried out by the Phantom Bandit, alias snow leopard Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks), who heads up a bad girls trio alongside raven Doom (Natasha Lyonne), the unwitting Snake’s girlfriend (kiddies’ eyes should be averted from their a make-out session), and literal-minded wild boar Pigtail Petrova (Maria Bakalova). They’re stealing a metal known (in a Hitchcock in-joke) as MacGuffinite, aiming to use its properties as a gold magnet to steal all the gold on Earth. It’s a plot that entails using a video of Wolf’s love interest, red fox state Governor, Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), that reveals her secret past as the Crimson Paw thief, to blackmail Wolf and his buddies into taking part in one last job, stealing one final MacGuffinite before hijacking the Moon X rocket from Musk-like tech billionaire (Colin Jost) and launching into space.

It’s a fairly twisty and convoluted plot, but it never loses momentum or sags, climaxing in a stunts-filled space sequence that adds a touch of Mission: Impossible and Moonraker to its Ocean’s Eleven meets Reservoir Dogs template. The voice cast and character chemistry is terrific, the core ensemble being augmented by the return of Alex Borstein as Misty Luggins, former Police Chief and now Commissioner, and Richard Ayoade as guinea pig villain Professor Marmalade, who, now in prison and bulked up, prompts a sly Hannibal Lecter homage when he’s visited by Diane. Visually dynamic, crammed with great gags, glowing with charm and sporting a very smart screenplay, it ends setting up a further sequel with our anti-heroes reconfigured as a team of anthropomorphic secret agents. Bring it on. (Omniplex Great Park)

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (15)

With a title that sounds like Trump named it, following his cerebral and intense grief-themed After Yang, Korean-American auteur Kogonada now becomes director for hire, reuniting with Colin Farrell for a wish-fulfilment romantic comedy road journey about love, relationships and self-awakening by two commitment-phobes written by The Menu’s Seth Reiss.

Invited to a wedding, New York loner David (Farrell) discovers his car’s been clamped but, fortuitously, there’s a poster for rental company on the wall. Turning up at the remote warehouse to collect his car, he’s met at reception by two oddball characters, The mechanic (Kevin Kline) and The Cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge who regularly drops f bombs and intermittently adopts a German accent), who insists he agrees to have a GPS in his 90s vintage Saturn because, you never know when your phone will crap out. At this point you know this isn’t going down any familiar Richard Curtis route

Arriving at the wedding in the pouring rain (which persists through most of the film) he encounters Sarah (Margot Robbie), also there on her own, declining when she asks him to dance and taken aback when she proposes to him, having already warned that, a self-confessed serial charter, it’ll end up with them hurting each other.

The next day, as he leaves, his sentient GPS tells him to pick up Sarah, who, of course, has also rented from the same company and whose car won’t start. Both have been asked if they want to go on a big bold beautiful journey, and so it is that together they set off, guided by the GPS to various stopping points where they find doors that lead them into their respective pasts so they can both come to terms with it. And so it is they variously revisit a Canadian lighthouse where he never experienced the epiphany he was hoping for, a hospital where he’s been born and meets his father (Hamish Linklater) who says his son has a potentially fatal heart condition, the modern art museum Sarah and her mother (Linklater’s wife Lily Rabe) frequented, another hospital where her mother’s died, she not present (she later confesses she was shagging her professor) and his high school open night where he had his heart broken by the leading lady in its production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Farrell proving a capable song and dance man) and, eventually, a NY coffee shop where each is telling their respective partners (Sarah Gadon, Billy Magnussen) how they’ll break up with them. All of which is intended to show whey the have both elected to not have attachments and, of course, after each visits their childhood home (he as the dad consoling his younger self (Yuvi Hecht), she being tucked in by her mum), how love is worth taking the risk even if you never know what might happen.

It’s an uncynically sentimental message that takes forever to reach a conclusion you can see coming from the moment they get into their cars, but rather like the magic realism journey it’s all over the place, self-consciously theatrical (some scenes play out in what looks like a rehearsal stage) and whimsically dreamlike (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is an invidious comparison), offering no more than the sort of shallow, surface insights you’d get on a greetings card. It even ends with someone singing Let My Love Open The Door. Farrell and Robbie have genuine emotional chemistry, the film has none. (Omniplex Great Park)

Brides (15)

Inspired by the case of London schoolgirl Shamima Begum, who, with two friends, left home to join Islamic State in Syria, working from Suhayla El-Bushra’s screenplay, first-time director Nadia Fall (a playwright and artistic director of the Young Vic) barely touches on the political dimension, indeed, ISIS are never mentioned and it barely scratches the surface of radicalisation. Instead, set in 2014, she delivers a compassionate portrait of teenage female friendship in the story of two British seaside town Muslim 15-year-olds, devout (a reaction to her Westernised mother and her no-good white boyfriend) but naïve Somali-born Doe (Ebada Hassan) and loud-mouthed, less devout British-Pakistani best friend Muna (Safiyya Ingar), looking to escape from a life of domestic turmoil, abusive father figures and racist social exclusion where anti-Muslim graffiti meets their eye wherever they go.

Persuaded by social media videos promising a better life, they decide to go to Syria to become ISIS brides, Muna seeking acceptance by any means necessary while Doe is more drawn to the cause, but also wants to reconnect with her crush, Samir (Ali Khan), who’s already made the trip out of a sense of Islamic duty. The journey will test their friendship, especially given Duo wants to text Samir and call her mother, something Muna, wary of the repercussions, is adamant she doesn’t.

Things go wrong from the start. Their online contact fails to meet them in Istanbul and then their passports and tickets are stolen. It’s patently a dangerous scenario but Fall leavens things with playfulness (a game of laser tag) humour (spraying each other with perfumes in a store) and poignancy that underline the girls’ innocence while the camera captures the exotic air of Turkey with its bazaars, mosques and whirling dervishes.

The characters friends but very different personalities, Hassan and Ingar deliver terrific performances that fully draw you into their lives, hopes and disappointments, very human figures rather than the media’s portrayal as incipient terrorists. Likewise, there’s warmth and good Samaritan human kindness in the bus station clerk (Cemre Ebuzziya) who befriends them and takes them to eat and sleep at her family home (though they end up stealing from her) and the widowed father who lets them tag along with him and his children.

The constant flashbacks, mostly involving Doe, do rather disrupt the narrative, but as we see how they first became friends and then how that friendship is tested, it becomes utterly compelling, making the final moments all the more wrenching. (Vue)

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. (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, directed by Edward Berger this is a grippingly tense thriller about faith and the nature of and desire for power and unequivocally one of the year’s best films, its success in America a welcome reminder that, amid the familiar CGI-littered blockbusters, 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. (Amazon Prime)

The Conjuring: Last Rites (15)

Twelve years and seven sequels/spin-offs on, the story of real life faith-driven paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorainne (Vera Farmiga) Warren finally wraps up (and with it presumably the workmanlike Wilson’s days as a headline star, unless there’s more Insidious sequels in the pipeline) with the case that brought their active spook hunting days to end. Opening in 1964 , the pair (Orion Smith/Madison Lawlor) are checking out an antique wooden mirror with the carved heads of three babies, but when she touches it the glass cracks and she sees a vision of an entity and her unborn child. Immediately sending her into labour, their daughter, Judy is stillborn, but comes back from death after a minute, her parents subsequently embarking on their controversial and well-publicised (the two stars are inserted into a real Larry King interview with the Warrens) adventures.

Fast forward to 1986, and moving into a two-storey house in Pennsylvania (presumably unaware of the murders committed on the site), the Smurl family (I defy you not to think Smurfs) Jack (Elliot Cowan) and Janet (Rebecca Calder), her in-laws Mary (Kate Fahy) and John (Peter Wight), and their four daughters, teenagers Dawn Beau Gadson) and Heather (Kila Lord Cassidy), and the young twins, Carin (Tilly Walker) and Shannon (Molly Cartwright), celebrate Heather’s confirmation by gifting her that self-same, still cracked mirror, as you do. Almost immediately, things start to turn freaky, the ceiling light crashing down and the girls hearing voices and seeing shadowy figures, the older sisters eventually deciding to throw it out with the trash. Except, while crushed in a dumpster truck, the next day Dawn vomits blood and shards of glass and Jack is himself assaulted by an unseen force and then find themselves subject to a media frenzy. So, who you gonna call?

Well, apparently not the Warrens who, after Ed’s heart attack, have called it a day and now find themselves lecturing on the paranormal to a handful of bored attendees, and getting mocked as B-list Ghostbusters. However, inheriting psychic abilities from mum, Judy (Mia Tomlinson), who’s just got engaged to ex-cop Tony (Ben Hardy with half-hearted backstory) at her disapproving dad’s birthday bash, is starting to have vision of the Annabelle doll and an elderly woman. When old colleague Father Gordon (Steve Goult, one of several returnees and cameos from the franchise, many of them birthday/wedding party guests like Lili Taylor, Mackenzie Foy, Frances O’Connor, Madison Wolfe and Julian Hillard, alongside the real Tony and Judy and producer James Wan) fails to persuade the Warrens to help, he duly takes off to visit the Smurls himself. It doesn’t end well, with Judy having another vision at his funeral that sends her too off to the harassed family, and, hey, wouldn’t you know, that just what the demon wants. So, finally, off trot mum and dad to do their thing one last time. And guess what else has made a return.

Helmed by returning director Michael Chaves, all of this takes a punishingly and interminably slow 75 minutes with creaking doors, unlit rooms, haunted basements, possessed dolls and jump scare ghoulish faces desperately trying to sustain the creepiness before, the Smurls all but consigned to the sidelines, the last act finally opens the floodgates for axe wielding ghosts, sinks flooding blood, apparitions and general paranormal mayhem. It does eventually pay off and Wilson and Farmiga are duly committed to delivering the goods, but having had to sit through woeful dialogue that includes lines like “our family is not like other families”, “fetch the book” and the unintendedly hilarious “there’s something in the attic”, not to mention Howard Jones’ overly optimistic Things Can Only Get Better, you’d be forgiven for not sticking around after the real life footage of the Warrens and their cases, and a resume of their lives, and thus missing the end credit reveal of the mirror and the franchise’s title. Let’s just let the dead rest in peace. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Vue)

The Damned (15)

With an unnerving score from Stephen McKeon and Eli Arenson’s striking cinematography, the feature debut by Icelandic director Thordur Palsson is one of the best of the recent best horrors, at times evoking thoughts of M.R.James. Set in 19^th century Iceland with an atmosphere so thick it threatens to choke you, it centres around a shipwreck just off the coast that serves as home to a small fishing community. It’s winter and times are hard, food scarce and the weather murderous. Seeing the wreck, the villagers are divided, some say it’s their moral duty to rescue the survivors, others take the pragmatic view that, with scant food supplies already, doing so would threaten their own survival. It’s the latter view that wins the day and ships are not put out, However, when they do take to sea the next day hoping to recover the ship’s barrels of salt pork, they’re shocked to discover that some of the sailors have made it to the jagged rocky outcrop known as “The Teeth”, and when they try to get aboard they have to be beaten off and left to drown, though it also costs the life of their helmsman Ragnar (Rory McCann).

When the bodies eventually wash up (a shocking scene suggests one’s still alive but the stomach moments prove to be an eel that got inside the body), they’re buried on the beach, the elderly superstitious Helga (Siobhan Finneran) telling that they must have their hands tied with rope, their feet nailed down, and their wooden coffins rotated three times in order to confuse their spirits and prevent them returning as Draugr, undead creatures of Nordic lore composed of skin, bone and blood, only capable of being destroyed by fire. What follows is a series of mysterious deaths and suicides as well as unnerving visions of a black figure that are inevitably taken to be rooted in hauntings by the drowned men. The truth proves both less and more horrifying. As Daniel (Joe Cole), who becomes the new helmsman says, the living are more dangerous than the dead.

Morality play and psychological horror, it’s a spartan affair, cold and dark, steeped in shadows and mist, drawing on folklore superstition and guilty paranoia alike, given gutsy strength by a strong cast led by Odessa Young as Eva, a young but steely widow who’s in charge of the fishing boat and gets to make the decisions, and Joe Cole as Daniel, their mutual feelings throwing up another ethical dilemma that further stokes the simmering tensions amid a community founded on tough masculine values and survival through strength. Damned good indeed. (Sky Cinema)

Dead Of Winter (15)

Set in a snowbound Minnesota that makes Fargo look like the tropics, Brian Kirk’s thriller has Emma Thompson playing firmly outside her familiar comedy and period drama comfort zones with an accent Frances McDormand would be proud of as Barb, who, recently widowed, has come to scatter her husband’s ashes, with whom she ran a fishing tackle shop, at the frozen lake where they went ice-fishing on their first date. Lost, she calls in at a remote cabin for directions and can’t help but notice fresh blood on the snow. Getting directions from the unnamed owner (Marc Menchaca), who says it from a deer, she duly heads to the lake to set up the portable hut, but, unable to shake her suspicions, returns and discovers that the basement holds a manacled and gagged teenage girl (Laurel Marsden) prisoner. She promises to help, but hasn’t reckoned on the man’s rifle-toting crackshot and crazy-eyed domineering wife (Judy Greer). To say more would ruin the narrative’s twists and turns in which the reason for the kidnapping (which the man seems uneasy with) is connected to the wife’s medical problems and her constant sucking on a Fentanyl stick.

There’s some glaring contrivances (no cellphone reception, dropped glove, car failure) and plot holes as Barb, eventually wounded and performing fish hook self-surgery a la Rambo, tries to rescue the girl (at one point, having caused the man to fall through the ice, she sabotages all heat sources at the cabin), and there’s an excess of flashbacks to her and her husband as their both young (she played by Thompson’s daughter Gaia Wise) and older selves as she plays carer when he falls terminally ill. Likewise, the ending goes for a sort of poetic sentimentalism that feel at odds with what’s led it there, but it still succeeds in maintaining the tension as it builds to the abduction reveal while, with Barb’s weathered looks, heavy grief, gritty determination and shambling gait (appropriately she’s no athletic Neeson action pensioner), a charismatic Thompson fully commands the screen.(Royal; Vue)

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (PG)

After The Conjuring, another franchise hangs up its boots, returning director Simon Curtis and screenwriter Julian Fellowes (who includes a line about the writer being the start of a film) bidding a fond farewell to the upstairs and downstairs folk at Downton as changing times bring changing circumstances and shifting social statuses. The final flourish is constructed around two core narratives and a sidebar with Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery) now a social pariah following her divorce from Henry, even though he had a mistress, and Downton struggling to keep its head above water, the Crawleys faced with crippling debts and the gears no longer turning smoothly in the wake of the death of the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith’s portrait dramatically staring down from the wall) and the loss of Cora’s (Elizabeth McGovern) mother in America. The two strands are intertwined when Cora’s brother Harold (Paul Giamatti) arrives to help Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) with the financial difficulties accompanied by suave business associate Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola) who promptly seduces Mary. However, Harold also has some bad news regarding their own family’s money matters and debts that need repaying.

It opens in 1930 with the Robert and Cora, at Grantham House (which, to his horror, Mary suggests they sell) for the London season, attending a West End performance of Noël Coward’s (Arty Froushan) operetta Bitter Sweet starring Guy Dexter (Dominic West),the actor who filmed at Downton in A New Era and now lives with secret lover and former Downton butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) thus setting up a plot device for the third act. The harmonious notes are swiftly thrown into discordance, however, when, the next day, after news of her divorce, a social scandal, breaks, Mary, in an ill-advised crimson dress, is asked to leave a party held by Lady Petersfield (Joely Richardson) because Royalty are due. Then, back at Downton, the ever-useless Harold arrives with news for Cora that a failed investment has lost their mother’s inheritance, which she was relying on to renovate Downton, and he wants to sell her home to pay off Sambrook who’s been bankrolling him. It doesn’t take a genius to realise Sambrook’s a bit of a shark. He also owns a racehorse, thereby enabling a scene at Ascot.

So, basically, what ensues is an attempt by Edith (Laura Carmichael) to engineer a scheme to ger her sister back into favour among the local snobbish socialites while Robert wrestles with the notion of ceding control of Downton to Mary and he and his wife taking up residence in his late mother’s property, Dower House (a block of flats he refers to as a “layer cake of strangers”), and Cora and her brother seek to navigate his financial woes and obligations. Alongside this there’s a comedic subplot involving the annual country fair with Lady Isobel Merton (Penelope Wilon), looking to take the reins from the committee’s ultra conservative old school chairman Sir Hector (Simon Russell-Beale) by enlisting Daisy Parker (Sophie McShera), who’s taking over from Beryl Patmore (Lesley Nicol) as Downton’s cook, and Mr Carson (Jim Carter), who’s retiring for the second time (but hard to be rid of) as Downton butler to be succeeded by Daisy’s husband Andy (Michael Fox), with his housekeeper wife Eslie (Phyliss Logan) advising the nervous premarital and virginal Beryl that sex is quite fun.

Thrown into the proceedings and returning characters too are Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the now remarried widower of the youngest Crawley sister, Sybil, who has news about Sambrook, former footman turned screenwriter Joseph Molesley (Kevin Doyle) who wrote Dexter’s hit film The Gambler and is desperate for an introduction to Coward (in a nice joke and Mary provide the title and inspiration for his play Private Lives), his wife and Cora’s lady maid Phyllis (Raquel Cassidy) Anna Bates (Joanna Froggatt), Mary’s now pregnant maid, and her husband John (Brendan Coyle, valet to Lord Granthan, and Beryl’s local tenant farmer love interest (and father to Daisy’s first husband) Albert Mason (Paul Copley).

It’s a veritable chessboard of characters that Fellowes keeps moving around while his screenplay focuses on themes of change (there’s early talk of London’s redevelopment), of the new generation taking over the torch from the old, cultural differences and social prejudices and attitudes and a solid dollop of female empowerment. If you’ve not followed the TV series and its spin-off films religiously, you may have a problem keep up but, for all the complicated interconnections, it’s actually fairly straightforward with that familiar and cosy BBC period drama glow. It ends with Mary reminiscing alone in Downtown with a flashback montage of scenes from the past, the late Maggie Smith, to whom the film’s dedicated and whose immortal ‘what’s a weekend” line is paid tribute, naturally stealing everything with one of her withering looks. At one point, Harold remarks that maybe the past was more comfortable. Downtown fans will doubtless agree. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Great Park; Reel; Royal; 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)

Havoc (18)

Tom Hardy seems to be all over the show at present, and, adding to his magnetic turn in Mobland, he now turns up in the Wales-set thriller as Patrick Walker, a bent cop who works as a fixer for corrupt politician and mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker) and is a pretty crappy divorced dad (it opens with him doing last minute shopping at a convenience store for his daughter’s Christmas presents). Saddled with an idealistic new rookie partner, Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), he finds himself in the thick of things following the hijacking of a truck full of washing machines (loaded with cocaine, as it happens) that results in one of the pursuing narcotic cops, Cortez, ending up in hospital.

As the plot unfolds, it turns out the heist was carried out by Beaumont’s estranged son Charlie (Justin Cornwell) and his girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) who take the coke to Triad head Tsui (Jeremy Ang Jones) only for three masked men to burst in and massacre everyone else. Now, Patrick has to somehow get Charlie and Mia to safety with Tsui’s mother (Yeo Yann Yann) flying in to exact revenge, her brother Ching (Sunny Pang), Tsui’s henchman, having claimed them as the killers, while also evading fellow corrupt cops Jake (Richard Harrington), Hayes (Gordon Alexander) and Vincent (Timothy Olyphant) who, as this is hardly a spoiler, are in league with Ching to whom they were planning to sell the drugs in the first place.

It’s all convoluted and complicated, but, directed by Gareth Evans who made the two Raid movies and clearly has a hard on for John Woo, it’s also wall to wall, with violent action, crushed skulls, severed limbs and geysers of blood spraying aesthetically on to the white snow, plus a grisly fishing harpoon death, all climaxing at a gunfight at a secluded cabin along with the redemption arc you could see coming a mile off and an ambiguous ending that leaves room for a sequel. For all the excess, Evans doesn’t really bring anything to the table you’ve not seen before, but you have to admit he puts on a pretty decent feast. (Netflix)

Heads Of State (15)

Having worked together on Suicide Squad, Idris Elba and John Cena reunite as co-stars in this ludicrous but hugely entertaining action romp playing respectively, army veteran British Prime Minister Will Clarke and US President Sam Derringer, a former Hollywood action star. Derringer, in the post for six months, is riding high in the approval rating, whereas, six-years into the job, Clarke is experiencing something of a Starmer moment. Neither has much respect for the other, so understandably their first meeting at a press conference to announce a NATO-supported energy initiative is prickly ego-jostling affair. So, to repair the PR damage of their very public argument, they’re persuaded by their respective Chiefs of Staff Quincy (Richard Doyle) and Bradshaw (Sarah Niles) to fly to the NATO summit in Trieste aboard Air Force One and present a united front.

All of this is preceded by the opening set-up wherein a joint MI6 and CIA mission in Spain, led by senior British agent Noelle Bisset (Priyanka Chopra), to capture Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine with a subtext of pathos to his brutality), goes pear-shaped leaving the team dead during the annual festival food fight and Gradov acquiring a link to ECHELON, the global surveillance program used by the Anglosphere intelligence alliance Five Eyes. All part of his revenge for his son being murdered when his plans do create nuclear safety were misinterpreted as terrorism.

So, it’ll be no surprise when there’s an attempt to assassinate both Clarke and Derringer in flight, the plane being shot down with both heads of state presumed dead. Except they managed to parachute out and are now stranded in Belarus, aware that someone in their inner circle is a traitor. At which point, re-enter the pun-loving Bisset, who survived the massacre and is on Gradov’s trail. She also happens to have a romantic past with Clarke. Now they have to make it to safety, all the while being pursued by Gradov’s relentless assassins Sasha (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) and Olga (Katrina Durden).

With a pedal to the metal plot that involves a hammily cameoing Hawaiian-shirted Jack Quaid as Marty Comer who runs a CIA safe house in Warsaw, Stephen Root as Gradov’s hacker with a conscience and Carla Gugino as the Vice President (giving a timely Trump-impression speech about dismantling NATO and putting America first), there’s shoot-outs and stunts a plenty, both Elba’s Clarke as the straight man, and Cena’s broader written Derringer well-tooled up and shooting off bullets alongside the quips while Chopra shows she can kick ass with the best. Director Ilya Naishuller never pretends he’s making anything more than a gleefully silly big bucket popcorn mismatched buddy movie (even if the script does slip in a message about partnerships) and as such it’s an absolute winner, leaving you hoping they all get re-elected for a sequel. (Amazon Prime)

Highest 2 Lowest (15)

Showing on a solitary screen but streaming on Apple, Spike Lee reunites with Denzel Washington for a reimaging of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 noir High and Low, itself based on Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom, in which a shoe company executive is forced to choose between certain financial ruin and saving his chauffeur’s son when a kidnapper mixes up their two sons. Transplanted from Yokohama to New York, here the man facing the moral dilemma is David King (Washington), the founder of Stackin’ Hits Records and acknowledged by the like of Quincy Jones as having the “best ears in the business” (magazine covers of him adorn his office along with images of Aretha, Stevie Wonder and others_. However, the hits aren’t coming any more and, having previously sold his majority interest. he’s looking to buy it back to avert a rival label buyout that he says will see new artists being shed and the music used in commercials. His plan means he has to buy out his partner’s (Wendell Pierce) share, to which end, despite his philanthropist wife Pam’s (Ilfenesh Hadera) reservations, he puts up most of his personal assets, including his penthouse home in Brooklyn’s trendy Dumbo neighbourhood and Black art collection (Jean Michel Basquiat’s Now’s the Time and Kehinde Wiley’s Investiture of Bishop Harold as the Duke of Franconia among them) as collateral.

However, the day the deal is due to go through, he gets a call saying his son Trey (Aubrey Jospeh), a promising basketball player he dropped off at practice, has been kidnapped with a ransom of $17.5 million in Swiss 1,000-franc notes for his safe return. Contacting the cops, although it could risk the business deal he and Pam agree to pay. But then comes the twist. Trey is found safe and it turns out that, in a mistake confusing their headbands, the kidnapper has instead abducted the son of King’s ex-con Muslim convert driver and best friend confidant Paul (a dramatically nuanced Jeffrey Wright), Trey’s best friend and fellow athlete Kyle (Wright’s real life son Elijah), racist white cop Detective Higgins (Dean Winters) suggesting Paul staged it himself.

The question now is whether King will stay pay the ransom, warned that refusing to do so will harm his and the label’s image. He does, eventually, agree, but the handover of the money, in a backpack containing a tracer, does not go as expected when, an emergency stop as he’s standing between subway train car carriages en route to Yankee Stadium sees it fall to the street, resulting in a lengthy chase involving it being passed between an extended series of moped riders weaving between a Puerto Rican Day Parade (an indulgent excuse to feature Latin Jazz bandleader Eddie Palmieri, Anthony Ramos and Rosie Perez appearing as themselves) before being retrieved only to find the money gone.

Kyle’s duly returned and King’s the hero of the hour, Stackin’ Hits records now back in the charts. But, with those who lent the $17.5 million demanding repayment within two weeks because he broke the terms of the contract by using it as the ransom, he’s determined to track down the kidnapper and recover his money. Kyle’s recalling of hip hop number he heard while being held captive and a demo tape of upcoming artists Trey compiled for his father to listen to, leads him and Paul to ex-convict and aspiring rapper Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky) and one of two outstanding rap battle styled face off scenes as he first confronts him at a recording studio and then in prison where Felon, whose crime has made his music a global phenomenon, tries to convince King to sign him. The final showstopping scene explains the film’s title, it being a number written by Sula (rising British soul star Aiyana-Lee in her film debut) a young singer-songwriter discovered by Trey, who auditions for the Kings for their new independent label.

A fairly straightforward thriller with some social commentary on the changing times injected, it’s not up there with Lee’s best, but, despite some unnecessarily prolonged sequences (it opens with a full rendition by Norm Lewis of Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’ from Oklahoma as the camera slowly zooms in on King’s balcony), it sustains the momentum and narrative with Washington delivering a performance as fluid and flexible as an improvised jazz riff. (Apple TV+)

Him (18)

Directed and co-written by Justin Tipping and produced by Jordan Peele (who’s unsettling horror influence seems to take over the final stretch), this stars an adequate but not great Tyriq Withers as Cameron Cade, his love of American football fostered by his late father translating into becoming a college quarterback touted as an heir apparent to his San Antonio Saviors hero and G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time) Isaiah White (a scenery-chewing Marlon Wayans) who suffered a potentially career ending injury while making a winning touchdown (Cade’s dad told him real men will make sacrifices for what they believe in).

Cade’s encouraged to train for the league combine where players demonstrate their potential to professional leagues and team scouts, but, practising at night on an empty field, he’s attacked from being by a figure in a goat costume, he too suffering a head injury that threatens his career. Although it risks permanent brain damage, his manager, Tom (Tim Heidecker) pushes him to take part in the combine and try out for the Savior’s role and, while he ultimately refuses, he does get an invitation from White himself who, revealing he’s considering retiring, offers to spend a week training him at a remote desert compound to prove himself a worthy successor.

That on arrival he’s met by crazed fans resentful of him replacing their hero (whose mantra is ‘football, family, God, declaring “He died for us so I play for Him”) should be an early warning that things won’t go smoothly, compounded by a session where White has a ball repeatedly slammed into one of the player’s faces to make a point. Then there’s the fact that Cade’s being given transfusions of |White’s blood by Marco (Jim Jefferies) the team doctor, supposedly as an energy booster, and starts experiencing nightmarish hallucinations of masked figures. He’s also attacked in the sauna by White’s demented fan Marjorie (Naomi Grossman), is seduced by his social media influencer wife Elsie (Julia Fox).

At this point, what has been just creepy and confusing becomes almost completely incoherent as a severed head, a masked pagan religion sports cabal and fight to the death all send the narrative spinning, as style (X-ray shots included) overwhelms substance in its unsubtle critique of the corrupt exploitation and manipulation (not to mention the brutality) and the price of fame and idolatry in the sporting world (and by association the American soul) and it all turns into a poor imitation Peele thematic cocktail of fame, family, religion, race and class that beats you around head until your mouthguard shatters. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Vue)

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 ). There’s sexual tension but nothing happens, they part and she returns to Boston to her 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)

Juliet & Romeo (12A)

Likely to incense Shakespeare purists even more than the Baz Lurhman modernisation with guns not swords, not only has writer-director Timothy Scott Bogart reversed the titular names, but he’s turned it all into a musical with songs by brother Evan Kidd and Justin Gray. More than that, as well as having taken several liberties with the story he’s audaciously drawn from the heart-slowing potion to give it a happy ending.

Set in Verona at the start of the 14^th century, there’s a fragile truce between the Montagues (headed by Jason Isaac and wife Lidia Vitale) and the Capulets (Rupert Everett and Rebel Wilson) while the latter’s daughter, Juliet (Clara Rugaard) is just back from boarding school. There’s already a tinder keg in waiting with Lord Montague’s adopted son Mercutio (Nicholas Podany) feeling he has to prove himself and in love with commoner Veronica (Martina Ortiz Luis), while biological son Romeo (Jamie Ward) has a rebel streak. The fuse is lit when Romeo and Juliet lock eyes, not at a masked ball, but in the local night market, but while romance quickly sparks, her things go awry when, as her cousin Rosaline (Tayla Parx) vaguely warned her, her dad announces that she’s to marry Lord Paris (Dennis Andres) and her hot-tempered cousin Tybalt (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) finds out about her relationship with Romeo. The only hope for them, marrying earlier than they do in the play, lies in Friar Lawrence (Derek Jacobi) and the Apothecary (Dan Fogler), as, playing with self-aware camp, arguably providing the best bits as it delves more deeply into the world of potions than did old Bill.

All of this punctuated by song and dance sequences mixing disposable but fun power ballads and pop like I Should Write This Down while Bogart ratchets up the set design (it was actually filmed in Italy) and costumes and, the final act, Rupert Graves entertainingly takes things rather more seriously than needed as Verona’s ruler, Prince Escalus, the film ending with the promise of Book Two, though, however mindlessly enjoyable it might be, any notions of recasting our star crossed lovers as Thelma and Louise seem unlikely. (Sky/Now).

The Long Walk (15)

Written during the Vietnam War, but not published until 1979 under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, this was Stephen King’s first novel, a dystopian thriller about a totalitarian regime in which, accompanied by soldiers, each year 100 young men walk a pre-arranged route and must keep a minimum pace of 4 miles per hour, with if they fall below this speed for 30 seconds. If a walker receives three warnings and again falls below the minimum speed for 30 second, he is shot. The walk continues until there is only one survivor, who can have whatever he wants for the rest of his life as his prize.

Working from a screenplay by JT Mollner reshaped for a Trumpian society, Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence halves the number of walkers and reduces the required pace to 3mph but otherwise largely stays true to the book, until, that is, the final sequence involving the eventual winner which is a very radical departure. Set in the aftermath of a civil war, America is in an economic depression and, to counteract an “epidemic of laziness”, each year 50 young volunteers, one from each state, are randomly selected by lottery and, under the supervision of The Major (Mark Hamill, inscrutable behind mirrored sunglasses), who created the idea and offers intermittent ‘pep talks’ (“I’m proud o’ y’boys! Y’all got sack”), walk to an undetermined finishing line until 49 have been given their ticket (i.e. shot), their progress beamed live by the cameras, the survivor being granted unlimited wealth and a single wish.

Prime among the participants are Ray Garretty (Cooper Hoffman), who’s eventually revealed to have a motive beyond financial gain and, sporting a facial scar, the relentlessly positive Peter McVries (David Jonsson), with whom he forms a bond. Among others singled out are underage Curly (Roman Griffin Davis), optimistic religious Arthur (Tut Nyuot) and annoying sharp-tongued wiseass Hank (Ben Wang), with the solitary Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), sociopathic redneck Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) and Collie (Joshua Odjick Parker) as the most antagonistic, as the walk proceeds (apparently without rest) across (as on screen captions relate) 300 miles and several days and nights while others fall by the wayside and are summarily, brutally (and graphically) executed. To boost their morale, they strike up a Fuck the Long Walk chant. En route, emotionless bystanders watch or cops salute as they pass and, at one point, Ray’s widowed mother (Judy Greer) reappears to urge him on.

The film title not appearing until 20 minutes in following the despatch of the first walker, it holds the attention far more than you might imagine from such a single-focused set-up, Lawrence slowing building the tension and inter-character frictions and friendships, a brotherhood of sorts even among the more dislikable who have their own vulnerabilities, affording the central walkers with personality and depth, Hoffman and Johnson delivering notably commanding performances that invest you in their fate. The final moments come as something of a shock but make sense in the context, and while an at times gruelling watch, the message that the state can never truly crush human dignity and the human spirit ensures you’re with it every step of the way.(Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; 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)

Night Always Comes (15)

Mostly set over a single night in a Portland, Oregon neighbourhood and adapted from Willy Vlautin’s novel, Vanessa Kirby stars as mid-30s Lynette, whose life is a litany of bad choices, demeaning jobs, escort sex work and rap sheets. She lives with her selfish, irresponsible mother Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Downs syndrome older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), of whom she’s fiercely protective, and they’re being threatened with eviction from her run-down childhood home – and Kenny being taken back into care – unless they can secure a purchase. However, on the day they’re due to sign at the bank, Doreen doesn’t turn up and Lynette finds she’s spent the $25.000 down payment on a new car. She now has until 9am the next morning to come up with the money.

Over the course of the day she attempts to raise the cash, including asking a former client, Scott (Randall Park), she’s still seeing for sex and when he refuses and a visit to friend and fellow escort Gloria (Julia Fox) doesn’t yield the $3000 she’s owed, she enlists her ex-con fellow worker Cody (Stephen James) to steal the safe belonging to Gloria’s senator lover. Inevitably, that too goes pear-shaped, and, still short $6000 and now accompanied by Kenny, ending with her first trying to get Cody to sell the Mercedes she impulsively stole from Scott and then visiting Tommy (Michael Kelly), the ex-boyfriend who got her into sex work when she was 16, hoping to offload the coke from the safe, he putting her in contact with dealer, Blake (Eli Roth). That too ends badly. And to cap it all, Doreen tells her she never wanted o but the house in the first place and is moving out with Kenny.

One of those long night of the soul affairs, Kirby (who also produces) delivers a compelling performance as the abrasive, desperate but good-hearted Lynette but is poorly served by a heavy handed and unsubtle screenplay, clumsy social commentary and poor support cast characterisation where the night may end but it feels the film never will. (Netflix)

Nosferatu (15)

There’s a certain degree of déjà vu among the cast of writer-director horror maestro Robert Eggers’ revision of the F.W. Murnau 1929 silent horror based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the 1923 Tod Browning adaptation. As real estate agent Thomas Hutter (based on Stoker’s Jonathan Harker), Nicholas Hoult recently played Renfield to Nic Cage’s Dracula while, as Albin Eberhart Von Franz, based on Stoker’s Abraham Van Helsin, Willem Dafoe previously starred in Shadow Of A Vampire, about the making of the original Nosferatu, as Max Schreck, the actor who portrayed Count Orlock, Murnau’s renaming of Dracula. Blood it seems is indeed thicker than water in the casting department.

Character names aside and with some excisions, while largely following Stoker’s narrative, it opens with the young Ellen (Lily Rose-Depp) praying to find relief from her loneliness, her cry of ‘come to me’ answered by a shadowy figure (its silhouette on the windblown curtain a nod to Murnau) that manifests as a terrifying monster that attacks her, leaving her in a seizure and setting up the call of psychosexual desire across time and distance that underpins what follows. Cut then to winter in 1883 Wisborg, Germany, with upcoming estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) being charged by his employer, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) with travelling to the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to sign a contract with the elderly and eccentric Romanian Count Orlock who wishes to purchase Schloss Grünewald, a decrepit Wisborg stately mansion. Hutter’s new bride, Ellen, is fearful, telling him of her terrifying dream prior to their wedding in which she married Death in front of a congregation of corpses, and disturbingly found herself enjoying it. Looking to boost his fortunes, Thomas ignores her pleas to stay at home and, leaving her in the care of his friend Friedrich (a Murnau nod) Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and his wife Anna (Emma Corin), sets off for his fateful date with the devil.

Warned by the local Romani not to venture to Orlock’s home, he witnesses or dreams the peasants impaling what they claim is a vampire’s corpse, before continuing his journey, being met by an unmanned coach and horses that transports him to the foreboding castle to be greeted by the Count (Bill Skarsgård) who (seen only in glimpses) insists on being addressed as befits his title, rasps in deep and low resonating tones (he speaks the extinct Dacian language), has skeletal fingers and long fingernails and generally exudes an icy sense of dread. It’s not long before he discovers the Count’s true nature, an undead blood drinker (Thomas himself becoming a victim) who sleeps in his coffin by day and, more frighteningly, has an obsession with Ellen, purloining the locket containing her hair. Thomas, though weakened, manages to escape but by now Orlock, through the ministrations of Knock, who, a la Renfield, he has made his servant), is in a crate full of plague rats aboard a ship bound for Wisburg (as opposed to Whitby).

Meanwhile, Ellen is suffering from sleepwalking and seizures and Knock incarcerated as a raving madman who feeds on living creatures (pigeon fanciers, look away now), to which end Ellen’s physician Wilhelm (another Murnau nod) Sievers (Ralph Ineson), enlists the help of his mentor, Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Dafoe), a scientist ostracized for his occult beliefs, who deduces both are under the spell of a Nosferatu, something Harding dismisses as nonsense.

Things gather to a head as Orlock, now ensconced in Schloss Grünewald, appears in a dream telling Ellen that he tricked Thomas into signing divorce papers and that she has three nights in which to affirm the covenant she made with him as a child, or he will kill Thomas and wipe out Wisborg with the plague, Anna and her two young daughters serving as bloody proof of his powers. Orlock has to be destroyed, but the only way to do this involves a willing sacrifice.

Shot in dark, drained and muted tones with a pervasive ominous soundscape, it ratchets up the gothic horror as it goes, but beyond the core vampire element Eggars (who researched Eggers French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot’s work on hysteria) delves into disturbing themes of sexual desire, the (linked) stigma of mental illness and its treatment, corruption and decay, and the fear yet allure of the Other. Visually chilling with its use of shadows and the way Orlock (brilliantly played by a prosthetics-laden Skarsgård) is, until the final scenes, never fully seen as the grotesque, corpse-grey, balding, moustachioed nightmare, it exerts a relentless grip as it builds to the climax. Even if a poker-faced Dafoe at times feels a little melodramatic in the way he delivers the expositionary dialogue and Taylor-Johnson’s a tad hammy as the devastated sceptic sunk into necrophilia, the performances from Hoult as the frantic husband and a mesmerising turn from Rose-Depp who apparently did all her own carnal-driven convulsions, are triumphant. Repulsive and intoxicating. (Sky/Now)

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. (Sky/Now)

The Old Guard 2 (15)

Released in 2020, written by Greg Rucka based on his comic book series and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, the original was about a group of centuries-old immortal (but that being of a somewhat arbitrary nature) mercenaries with regenerative healing abilities dedicated to protecting mankind. It was entertaining B movie action fun. Now, directed by Victoria Mahoney, comes the sequel, which is considerably less so.

Still led by Andromache/Andy (Charlize Theron), who’s now mortal, the team still comprises Joe (Marwen Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli), mortal CIA agent Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and, having joined them in the first film, Nile (KiKi Layne), former member Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) in exile after betraying them. The plot picks up several threads from the time around, namely Andy’s former best buddy Quynh (Ngô Thanh Vân) being rescued from the iron maiden and an eternity of forever drowning to which she was condemned as a witch (and about which Nile had dreams) by a woman going by the name of Discord (Uma Thurman) who, it transpires was actually the first immortal. With Quynh seeking vengeance for Andy’s apparent abandonment of her, Destiny has plans to use her for her own ends, the core of which, it’s eventually revealed, is using Nile (the last immortal) to render the others mortal. To which end, the team – Booker now back in play and joined by new immortal character Tuah (Henry Golding) who knows the secrets of their origins – are lured to a secret Chinese nuclear facility in Indonesia which she’s going to blow up.

Opening with a James Bond-like action prelude as, tentatively linked to the main narrative, they take out a gun runner, it settles into a tedious series of scenes where everybody sits around intensely talking to one another, occasionally punctuated by some so so combat sequences, primarily featuring Andy facing off against, first, Quynh and later Discord. Unlike the original, this feels drained of energy while going through any number of narrative hoops so that you’re never sure where loyalties actually lie. There’s a nice scene as Andy walks through a passageway in Rome, the background changing from one historical era to another, but invention and imagination is in short supply elsewhere.

Theron again proves herself a charismatic action woman who can maintain a decent hairdo while battling any number of assailants but her co-stars, Ejiofor in particular, are mostly underused, Thurman doing imperious haughty but never really feeling like someone who could snuff out immortality at a whim. With an act of sacrifice seeing Andy regain her immortality, it ends setting up a third chapter in which she and Quynh, have to rescue the others, but whether there’s enough life or interest left in the concept to get there remains to be seen. (Netflix)

One Battle After Another (15)

Following 2014’s Inherent Vice, this is the second Paul Thoms Anderrson film to be influenced by a Thomas Pynchon novel, namely 1990’s political allegory Vineland about a former 60s radical who, twenty years later, now spends his days drinking and smoking. Working from this basic premise, Anderson has expanded things considerably for a mix of comedy, action and drama that runs for over two and a half hours.

Set in a fascist America where police and the military have become fused, it opens with insurgency guerilla group French 75 (actually a cocktail made from gin, champagne, lemon juice and sugar) which includes Junglepussy (rapper Shayna McHayle), Mae West (Licorice Pizza’s Alana Haim), badass Deandra (Regina Hall) and cerebral Howard (Paul Grimstad) aka Billy Goat, and led by the uncompromising Perfidia Beverly Hills (R&B star Teyana Taylor) and her explosives expert lover Bob Ferguson (Leonardo Di Caprio), nicknamed Ghetto Pat, liberating a bunch of Mexican immigrants from a San Diego holding centre where she captures and sexually humiliates Captain Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a military creep who’s turned on by Black women. Despite his racist views, he subsequently has sex with her, though he’s in the submissive position, and several bombing and bank robbery montages later, a very pregnant Perfidia (the image of her spraying round from her Uzi is unforgettable) is captured by Lockjaw, strongarmed into selling out her fellow activists, goes underground in a witness protection programme he arranges but escapes to Mexico.

Fast forward 16 years to the strains of Steely Dan’s Dirty Work, and Bob, who got out of the game when their daughter was born, now slobs around in a plaid bathrobe and a beanie, drinking, taking drugs and playing a tough love daddy (no phones, no parties) to the teenage Willa (Chase Infiniti) who believes her mother died a hero to the cause. At which point, Lockjaw re-enters their lives. Desperate to become a member of the Christian right white supremacists cabal, Christmas Adventurers Club (Tony Golwyn among the leaders), he’s told them he’s never had carnal relations with a woman of colour. Which means eliminating the incriminating evidence that Willa represents. To which end, sending the militia to Baktan Cross, rounding up migrants as a pretext for finding Bob and Willa, the film basically becomes a catch and rescue chase movie by the two dysfunctional fathers, one from the left, one from the right, with the abducted Willa at the centre, her karata Sensei (Benicio Del Toro), who happens to run an immigrant underground railway, joining forces with Bob.

The narrative’s packed with car chases (the final act involving a three car roller coaster across the desert highway), betrayals, shoot-outs, ICE-like raids (the film was made before Trump returned to power but carries a political immediacy) and locations that include a convent of radical nuns. Scored to nerve lacerating effect by Jonny Greenwood, there’s plenty of dramatic and emotional tensions but equally Anderson laces things with absurdist comedy, notably in a telephone exchange between Bob, who’s trying to find the group’s rendezvous, and a by the book operative who insists he gives him a password Bob’s weed-fogged brain’s long since forgotten.

As a befuddled flawed but very humanised father DiCaprio, gives his best turn since The Revenant while Penn, with weathered features, menacing steely scowl and a semi-limping gait is ferocious Oscar bait, their core performances given solid and striking support by Infiniti in her film debut and, though she’s only in the first act, Taylor. Jena Malone also gets to cameo as the voice of the greeting code.

Narratively sprawling, overflowing with provocative ideas and disturbing images of contemporary America and undeniably overlong, even so it never once feels didactic or out of Anderson’s control. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; MAC; Mockingbird; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Royal; Vue)

September 5 (15)

In the early hours of the morning of Sept 5, 1972, gunshots were heard in the Olympic Village where the Summer Games were being held in Munich, the first time in Germany since Hitler. A Palestinian terrorist group calling itself Black September had broken into the Israeli team’s apartments and taken 11 athletes and their coaches hostage, two dying in the process. Directed and co-written by Tim Fehlbaum, the film unfolds what happened over the course of the next 24 hours leading up the FUBAR West German police attempt to rescue the hostages at Fürstenfeldbruck airbase that was, in the confusion, initially announced as a success but eventually revealed to have seen the deaths of all hostages and five terrorists.

All this is shown from the perspective of the ABC Sports crew covering the games who, led inexperienced young TV producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), operations manager Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) and Sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) resisted Network demands that News take over the story, and, aided by engineer Jacques Lesgards (Zinedine Soualem), provided the first ever real-time coverage of a terrorist crisis (some 900 million watched, Arledge noting that was more than the moon landing), moving a hefty camera out onto a mound overlooking the Israeli quarters and even forging an athletes pass to enable one of the crew (Daniel Adeosun) to smuggle cans of film in and out of the Village, among them the infamous black-and-white shot of a masked gunman on the balcony.

With Arledge negotiating more advantageous satellite time slots to block out rival CBS and, at one point, ordering armed police out of the control room, Fehlbaum builds a tense, atmospheric thriller that brilliantly captures media in action as, improvising as they go, the team, among them star reporter Peter Jennings (Bejamin Walker) who with a small camera rig accessed a room overlooking the Israeli apartments and, crucially, fictionalised idealistic German translator Marianne Gebhart (Leonie Benesch), understandably horrified that Jewish blood was again being threatened on German soil, monitoring police channels, report what’s going down. But it also addresses the moral and ethical issues involved as things get increasingly competitive in maintaining their scoop. At one point Bader asks if they can show someone being killed on live television and if so whose narrative is it supporting, theirs or the terrorists, while another comes with the realisation that their images are being watched by the terrorists on the hotel room television, causing a rescue attempt to be called off. When the authorities negotiate with the terrorists to take everyone to the airfield by bus, Mason, again with a scoop in mind, sends Marianne too, armed with sound equipment in the event of any shootout. He also reports the ZDF announcement that the hostages have been freed (albeit with an as we are a hearing caveat) to beat other channels to the punch.

Making very effective use of archive footage, including negotiations with the Black September and that of ABC anchor Jim McKay and Peter Jennings (played by Benjamin Walker in the whose announcements (as well as a clip of Trevor McDonald) are seamlessly woven into the highly focused proceedings, it brilliantly captures the intensity of the moment and how, in reporting, often difficult and professionally callousness split second decisions have to be taken in order to get the story and where responsibility lies in doing so (it forever transformed the nature of live TV reporting) while also refraining from making any political comments (Arledge emphasises that emotions and people are more important), though inevitably prompting the still raw memories of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Though the tragic outcome may be know, the film never loses its white knuckle grip as it travels there. (Sky Cinema/Now)

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 Cinema)

The Smashing Machine (15)

Written and directed by Benny Safdie in his first solo project, opening grainy footage shows Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson with curly hair, his familiar shaved head not appearing until the final stretch), brutally win his first amateur Mixed Martial Arts bout at the World Vale Tudo Championship 3 in São Paulo in 1997, subsequently becoming an undefeated Ultimate Fighting Championship star until losing his first fight at the Pride 7 championships in Japan in 1999 to Igor Vovchanchyn’s (real life Ukrainian boxing champ Oleksandr Usyk) illegal knee strikes. Based on a 2002 documentary of the same title, Safdie’s film (which never once mention the nickname of its title) follows Kerr’s career from rise to fall to comeback and, as such sits comfortably alongside similar sporting movies like The Wrestler and Rocky, except this is all real.

For those unaware of the ‘sport’, full contact MMA entails (or did until regulations where put in place) a variety of brutal moves, from bare-knuckle punching your opponent in the face or kneeing them while they’re on the canvas, while Pride was an MMA organisation in Japan where such fighters were idolised. Kerr (who plays himself in the final pre-credits scene) was its undisputed champion until that fateful night in 1999, although the film conflates this into one of three further Pride defeats in 2000, 2001 and 2004, Kerr quitting Pride after the last. The film, though, is not concerned with slavishly charting the timelines, rather its focus is on the psychological and emotional effect on Kerr, who declared winning the greatest feeling in the world, as he becomes addicted to opioid painkillers and the volatile dysfunctional relationship with his codependent girlfriend Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt who co-starred with Johnson in Jungle Cruise) that resulted as an outcome of his rehab (first indicated when he chides her for making his proteins shake with skimmed rather than full fat milk and complains about her cat sitting on the leather couch). Here, as it falls apart, both thinking it’s all about then and pushing each other’s buttons, we’re presented with Kerr as a haunted figure and Dawn, both his anchor and his kryptonite, as the no less broken party girl who feels shut out from his life, eventually having a mental breakdown.

An anchor in Kerr’s life is former rival turned best buddy and sometimes trainer Mark ‘The Hammer’ Coleman (former MMA fighter Ryan Bader) who won the Pride 2000 Open Weight Grand Prix tournament and $200,000 and, ratcheting up the psychological tension, the film teasing a showdown between him and Kerr that doesn’t eventually materialise after the latter’s defeat at an earlier. Nonetheless, the body blows their friendship lands are solid.

Being a sports movie at its core, Safdie doesn’t shy away from the bloody action or some genre cliches, notably a training montage (with Kerr’s trainer Bas Ruten playing himself in a shirt with the motto “pain is temporary, pride is forever”), but he still rings the changes scoring it not to some Eye Of The Tiger rousing anthem but Presley’s version of the melancholically defiant My Way. But, above all, this is an unsentimental character study of a man who may have lost the fight in the ring but won the battle with himself and as such it sees a transformative performance from Johnson who, having already proved himself a movie star, now shows he’s an actor of real depth too, digging into Kerr’s vulnerability, breaking down into tears when he loses the fight, and, as embodied in his soft voice, the surprisingly gentle man and conflicted personality behind the hulking musclebound physique, anger (after one row with Dawn he smashes the kitchen door in half) and fists, well-captured when, in hospital after a bruising, he gives a shy young fan an autograph, telling him “no fighting”. There’s deserved talk of an Oscar nomination, something that should also be accorded the equally outstanding Blunt. And, before the Pride championship begins, you also get to hear the Japanese national anthem as Jimi Hendrix might have played it. A total knockout. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe, West Brom; Omniplex Great Park; Reel; Royal; Vue)

Speak No Evil (15)

A remake of the unrelentingly grim 2022 Danish film (an in-joke nod concerns a Danish trio obsessed with food), complete with title, plot and even large chunks of dialogue, but with a change from the original’s devastatingly nihilistic ending, Eden Lake writer-director James Watkins’s thriller cautions that kindness to strangers may have an ulterior – and sinister – motive. Their marriage having problems since he lost his job and she quit hers in PR, not to mention a dash of infidelity, holidaying in Italy with their anxiety-prone (she can’t bear to be separated from her stuffed rabbit) 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler), might just be the tonic Americans Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) need. Life certainly brightens up when they’re befriended by retired doctor Paddy (James McAvoy) and his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), who have their own young child, the mute (his tongue apparently shorter than the norm) and distant Ant (Dan Hough), who invite them out for meals, ward off the annoying Danes and are generally friendly, solicitous and outgoing to a fault. When it’s time to go, Paddy invites them to come visit their farm in the West Country and, while Louise is hesitant, she agrees and off they duly go,

Everything seems great. Their hosts are charming and considerate, even if they seem to forget Louise is vegetarian (she nevertheless accepts a slice of their prize goose, as it would be rude not to given it was roasted in their honour). Paddy plies Ben with his homemade cider and, in touch with his alpha male, takes him out in the wilds for some primal scream therapy, their kids hang out together and the foursome go for a dinner of locally sourced food at a friend’s restaurant. But something feels off, and not just that Paddy happily lets Ben pay the bill or that they wind them up faking under the tablecloth fellatio and Paddy saying he’s not actually a doctor when Louise cuts herself.

Louise is put off by the stained bed blankets and resents Ciara calling Agnes out on her table manners, but is apologetic when told the reason. At one point, Louise having found Agnes in the couple’s bed, they pack up and leave before dawn, forced to return for the forgotten toy. Again Ciara offers a reasonable explanation. And, as Louise tells herself, they are British after all. Nevertheless, it’s harder to ignore red flags like the bruises Ant shows Agnes, or how Paddy loses his cool when his son can’t dance in time to Cotton Eye Joe, later saying he’d had too much to drink.

Things take a turn for the terrifying, however, when Ant, whose previously showed Agnes Paddy’s watch collection and passed her an indecipherable message, steals the keys to the locked barn and reveals its and his secrets. Now, it’s a case of trying to get away as soon as they can, Ben forcing himself to man up. But Paddy, who’s professed he prefers the hunt to the kill (someone says he likes playing with his food), and Ciara aren’t about to let that happen.

The core cast are all in solid for, but this is very much McAvoy’s show as he brilliant channels Paddy’s passive-aggressive and controlling nature, his forced smile and predatory eyes speaking volumes, before going full over the top berserker in the last act as Watkins switches from uneasy dark social comedy of manners to full on visceral Straw Dogs intensity. And you’ll never hear The Bangles’ Eternal Flame the same way again. (Sky Cinema)

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (15)

Back in 1984, director Rob Reiner and stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer created an instant cult class with a spoof documentary about a fictional heavy metal band who were as clueless as they were loud and whose drummers had a habit of dying. Now, 41 years later they reunite for a sequel, reprising their role as filmmaker Marty DiBergi, guitarists Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins and bassist Harry Smalls.

Following an acrimonious split, the members have gone their separate ways, Smalls composed a rock opera called Hell Toupee and now runs a glue museum, St. Hubbins plays in a mariachi band and composes for naff commercials and phone on hold music, while Nigel has set up a shop in Berwick-Upon-Tweed selling or exchanging (according to weight) cheese and guitars. The film opens with Marty telling how, after not speaking to one another for 15 years, the band made a comeback with a one-off concert in New Orleans in a slot vacated by Stormy Daniels. It seems that Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman), the daughter of their late manager Ian Faith has discovered that the band are contractually obliged to play one more show. Thus, Marty follows proceedings, interviewing the individual members and those who worked with them, including groupie Jean Cromie Schmit (June Chadwick) who’s become a nun after mistaking The Police’s Every Breath You Take for the voice of God, former artist liaison manager turned Buddhist Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher) and incompetent promotions man Artie Fufkin (Paul Shaffer), as preparations are put in place for the much-anticipated reunion. To which end, Hope enlists the services of tone-deaf shyster PR man Simon Howler (dryly hilarious Chris Addison) whose clients include a Nicaraguan K-pop boy band, and who suggests one or two of the band dying on stage would cement their legacy.

Living in a house that holds regular ghost tours and serve roast alligator, finding a drummer willing to risk the curse (they’re turned down by Lars Urich, Questlove and Chad Smith) proves a problem until the slot’s eventually filled by young lesbian rocker Didi Crockett (Valerie Franco) whose drum kit is coloured in tribute to the two late Stumpys while Caucasian Jerry (C. J. Vanston) comes aboard as the keyboardist. Rehearsals are fraught with tensions between Derk and Nigel resurfacing, an argument about a chord change sees Paul McCartney offering his thoughts (Big Bottom, which features as a duet by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, is apparently “almost literature”) and siding with Nigel (David subsequently calling him a toxic personality) while, a long-time fan, Elton John drops by and sings Flower People, before agreeing to join them for Stonehenge at the concert. Finally, the old childhood friends reconciled, all’s set for the big night, complete with a full-sized Stonehenge prop this time, but, as ever, things inevitably don’t go to plan.

Adopting the same deadpan poker faced buts elf-aware approach as the original, it’s packed with a flood of stingers, some of which may or may not be improvised, and silliness, notably Nigel revealing how he as a slot inside his Union Jack guitar where he stores cheese and a grater in case he fancies a nibble mid-tune and how he received a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rejection letter saying “Fuck off, Sincerely yours”. Then there’s Derek’s new song about music and mortality called Rockin’ The Urn. It may not go quite up to 11 as the original did, but it’s still a brilliant send-up of rock’s so often self-serious nature. And it has the best visual fart gag of the year. (MAC)

Steve (15)

Getting a one-screen preview prior to landing in Netflix next month, adapted with a character focus shift by Max Porter from his 2023 novella Shy, Cillian Murphy reteams with Small Things Like These director Tim Mielants and again shows why he’s regarded as one of the greatest actors of his generation. Here, set in 1996, a time of social care resources being cut to the bone, he plays the titular Steve, headmaster of Stanton Wood, a private reform school for troubled youths with mental health issues and violent tendencies who would otherwise be locked up in a detention centre.

The film’s rhythm and busy handheld camerawork (part SD Betacam, part film) mirroring the drum and bass drive to which several of the teens (a mix of actors and non-professionals) listen, Murphy plays Steve, still recovering from a tragic car accident that left him riddled with guilt and substance and drink abuse, as a bundle of nervous energy and anxiety, his emotional pain echoed in that of those in his charge, primarily Shy (a breakout turn by Jay Lycurgo), a shy, smart and introverted teen who, following a phone call from his mother in the wake of another volatile explosion, sinks into a depression as heavy as the backpack in which he keeps his collection of rocks. But, living life like a permanent and physical rap battle, all of the boys are likely to kick off at any point and for any reason, the most volatile being Jamie (Luke Ayres), always ready to poke the bear, Ash (Joshua Barry) and Tyrone (Tut Nyuot), the latter having had his privileges revoked following sexually inappropriate behaviour towards new teacher Shola (Simbi Ajikawo).

All this unfolds over the course of single chaotic day, one in which a TV crew, with an insensitive director and presenter, are filming a segment for a clearly negatively-biased news piece about Steve and his work at the school, several altercations erupt among the boys, and Steve and his staff, among them deputy head Amanda (Tracey Ullman) and tough love therapist-counsellor Jenny (a measured Emily Watson), that the trust have sold the school and it will be closing by Christmas, causing Steve to erupt in rage just like the boys in his care. But they still have to put on an upbeat front for the cameras and a visit by condescending pompous local MP Sir Hugh Montague Powell (Roger Allam), who gets verbally taken down by Ask in one of the film’s funniest moments.

The boys inevitably play to the cameras, massing behind a window and pretending to masturbate, and responding to such banal questions as what would your 1996 self say to your 1990 self with lines like “Always carry a blade”. These, however, are offset by a piercingly poignant interview with Shy (“Sometimes you want to be four years old and start again but not fuck it up this time”) and Steve’s interview on how he feels about the boys the presenter calls society’s waste product.

It’s clear throughout that, while battling with being underpaid and under resourced, all the teachers passionately care for and are fiercely committed to the boys, for whom they are their likely last chance, walking a fine line between tolerance and discipline, friendship and authority. Pitched somewhere between the rawness of Alan Clarke’s Scum and the sentimentality of To Sir, With Love, it seems to be leading to a tragic denouement but, switching between the school and Steve returning to wife and kids at home pulls back from the brink for notes of salvation, redemption and hope. It’s the only time the film doesn’t feel real. (Apple+)

The Strangers: Chapter 2 (15)

Having rebooted the 2008 home invasion horror with a largely by the book first chapter retread in which three masked sociopaths terrorise a young couple, director Renny Harlin’s looking to deepen things and move beyond the source material with the remaining two parts of the shot simultaneously trilogy. Unfortunately, the second chapter is a confused and jumbled botched misfire devoid of any cohesive story or logic.

Picking up events from the end of the previous film, having survived the attack that took the life of her lover, a hospitalised Maya (Madelaine Petsch) quickly finds the masked threesome haven’t done with her yet. And so, over the course of the night, she has to try and avoid them while also realising that without the masks they could be anyone, nurses, doctors, the town sheriff included. As such, it’s a prolonged stalk-and-prey chase film through the Oregon woods with one narrow escape following another (piss poor CGI giant wild boar included), pausing only to sew up her stitches, though knowing another sequel’s in the wings, does rather dissipate the will she survive tension. More problematic is the fact that Harlin and the screenwriters have opted to give the Strangers flashback backstories and interior lives which at a stroke, totally negates the original’s chilling premise of their anonymity and that their random killings were totally unmotivated. Even Michael Myers had an agenda.

To her credit, Petsch fully commits to demanding physical action but is less assured in handling the uninspired dialogue while the film just lumbers repetitively around her with no seeming purpose or direction. A monumental bore, the only reason you might leap out of your seat is to leave the cinema. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza Luxe; Omniplex Great Park; Vue)

The Surfer (15)

From the style of the opening credits, this is stylistically very much in the mode of a 70s exploitation B movie, complete with a surrealistic ride into the psychedelic hallucinatory breakers in the final stretch. Directed by Lorcan Finnegan from Thomas Martin’s screenplay, it stars Nic Cage as an unnamed businessman, credited only as The Surfer, who, after time in America, has returned to Australia looking to buy his old family home on the hilltop overlooking Luna Bay on the Australia’s south-western coast where he, wife and son, can live. Except she’s waiting for him to sign the divorce papers. And he only has a few days to raise the extra cash to counter another offer.

Set in the run-up to Christmas and in a single location, as the film opens he brings his somewhat reluctant teenage son (Finn Little, credited only as The Kid), who he’s pulled out of school, to the beach to surf the waves he used to ride. Which is where he’s immediately confronted by the obnoxious Bay Boys, a bullying territorial clique of socially privileged figures, one of whom, Pitbull (Alexander Bertrand), tells him in no uncertain terms, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here”, a point they bloodily make to a couple who come along later. The alpha male ringleader Scally (Julian McMahon) advises him to just move on without a fuss, but, his son going back to mum, he has no intention of capitulating and is resolved to surf there (a series of confused flashbacks that involve his father dead on the beach and a suggestion of an incident for which he blames himself, serve to explain why). Things quickly begin to unravel. All the locals tell him he’s not wanted, his Lexus is vandalised by a gang of teenagers, his surfboard’s stolen by the Bay Boys and the local cop is patently on their side. His phone dead, his money and possessions stolen, he can’t pay for a cup of coffee or call his broker, so he makes a deal with the local food hut vendor, handing him his late father’s watch as collateral, only to find he’s been ripped off and conned. He resorts to living out of his car in the parking lot but then that’s stolen and he left with no option but to sleep in the rusting Volkswagen belonging to a crazed old man (Nic Cassim) whose son was a local surfing champ and is looking for the dog he swears the gang has killed along with his missing son. Here he finds a bullet. Reduced to drinking the polluted tap water from the beach toilets, scavenging the bins for food and almost chomping into a rat he’s killed (later to become weapon), he’s once well-groomed, well-dressed appearance is replaced by the look of some beach bum, watching the gang through the binoculars the old man traded for his sunglasses. Already a man on the edge, as the humiliations, the ridicule and the abuse mount up and sanity shrinks, inevitably it’s only a short time before he goes full on Nic Cage gonzo.

A study of mid-life crisis, identity, toxic masculinity and its rituals (“before you can surf you must suffer” is self-appointed guru Scally’s mantra) as well as the illusionary nature of home, it works well until it doesn’t, descending in to a climactic cathartic freak out that twists the bullying into some sort of gaslighting initiation and the reintroduction of the gun from several scenes earlier. Having built the intensity of Cage’s character’s psychological, physical and emotional degradation, it feels like the filmmakers don’t really know how to tie it together, where to take it or resolve in a satisfying fashion, with an ending that basically just stops. That said, shots of snakes, spiders and rats add to the poisonous nature of the whole environment, Miranda Tapsell has a brief role as the photographer whose image of him by his car reasserts his grip on sanity and the Bay Boys cast are suitably odious, but this is unquestionably Cage’s film and it’s his unhinged, raw, volcanic performance that keeps you gripping the film’s board as it plunges into the riptide. (Sky Cinema/Now)

The Thursday Murder Club (12)

Adapted from the Richard Osman series of novels and directed by Chris Columbus, this is very much the sort of cosy Sunday afternoon elderly amateur detective fare as (obliquely referenced here) typified by Rosemary & Thyme, Miss Marple and, currently, Only Murders In The Building, the title referring to a bunch of pensioners in Cooper’s Chase, a retirement home with emotional support llamas on the site of an old convent, who regularly assemble to try and solve cold cases.

It features a stellar lead cast lining up as former MID operative Elizabeth (Helen Mirren whose role as The Queen provides an in joke), former trade unionist figurehead Ron (Pierce Brosnan and wandering accent), erstwhile psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingley) and, the latest recruit, nurse Joyce (Celia Imrie with a running gag about making cakes), their latest case being the 1973 murder of a young woman who was stabbed and, witnessed by her boyfriend Peter Mercer, pushed from her bedroom window, ostensibly by a masked man, and Mercer’s subsequent disappearance. The case was investigated by Penny Grey, who founded the Club and now lies comatose in the home’s hospice wing attended by her devoted veterinarian husband (Paul Freeman).

While this is the film’s launch pad, it’s put on the backburner until the final stretch, as a series of present day murders occupy the group’s attention, starting with rough round the edges builder Tony Curran (Geoff Bell) one of the investors in the property, who’s at odds with his unethical partner Ian Ventham (David Tennant), who, strapped for cash and facing an expensive divorce, wants to dig up the cemetery and turn the place into luxury flats, kicking out the residents in the process. Eliciting the help of newly arrived policewoman Donna (Naomi Ackie), the foursome proceed to follow assorted clues to arrive at the identity of the killer/s (some poignancy thrown in as to the motivations), their investigations unearthing presumed dead gangster Bobby Tanner (Richard E Grant) and variously involving Ron’s boxing champion turned TV celebrity son Jason (Tom Ellis), DCI Hudson (Daniel Mays, Polish immigrant handyman Bogdan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), Elizabeth’s dementia-afflicted author husband Stephen (Jonathan Pryce) and Joyce’s financier daughter Joanna (Ingrid Oliver).

It’s self-aware and lightly handled, perhaps too much so, to appeal to the grey pound audience (though Imrie does get to say what the fuck), and, to be fair, the whodunnit(s) leaves you guessing until the end, while the cast, a sly twinkling Mirren doing most of the heavy lifting, give watchable performances without ever really themselves. There’s no bite to trouble the dentures, but it’ll go down nicely with a cuppa and a couple of biscuits. (Netflix)

Touch (12A)

A departure from his usual action movies, adapted from the novel by Olaf Olafsson, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur delivers a decades and continents-spanning romantic melodrama of memory, ageing, loss and love that will inevitably but also deservedly prompt comparisons with Past Lives. An elderly Icelandic widower who owns a restaurant in Reykjavik and sings in a local choir, Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson) learns he has early onset dementia and is advised by his doctor that it might be a good time to settle any unresolved business. To which end, much to his somewhat overbearing daughter’s consternation, he heads for London just as pandemic lockdown looms (the only guest at his hotel with the 2 metre rule giving the title an extra resonance), to try and find his first love, the less conservative daughter of the stern but fatherly owner of Japanese restaurant Nippon, Takahashi-san (Masahiro Motoki), for whom, he worked as a dishwasher after dropping out of the London School of Economics some 50 years earlier (the reference to John and Yoko’s bed-in places it in 1969), his Marxism at odds with his studies.

As such, the film moves back and forth between Kristofer’s present day search, the restaurant now a tattoo parlour, and 60s flashbacks to his youth (Palmi Kormákur, the director’s son) and the growing but clandestine romance with Miko (Yôko Narahashi) as he teaches himself Japanese, the tones of the cinematography changing accordingly. There’s a poignant backstory involving Hiroshima regarding why Miko and her father moved to London after the war that adds further emotional resonance to the narrative, the relationship coming to abrupt end when Kristofer discovers they have closed the restaurant at short notice and just vanished. Back in the present, he learns they moved back to Japan, setting up the third act as he travels to Tokyo to finally reunite with the now older Miko (Yoko Narahashi, also the film’s casting director) and learn of her new life and why she left the old one.

Switching languages and locations, a film about accepting your life and the changes that accompany it, it slowly build its melancholic warmth in its tale of compassion, understanding and forgiveness, interspersed with amusing and touching sidebars such as the older Kristofer’s sake bar encounter with a Japanese “salary man” widower (Masatoshi Nakamura) that ends up with them doing karaoke together, and the younger man being persuaded to sing for his Japanese friends not to mention a truly sensual scene of Kristofer preparing a Japanese breakfast for Miko.

With grace notes support from Meg Kubota as Nippon waitress Hitomi, Tatsuya Tagawa as opera-singing chef Arai-san and Ruth Sheen as young Kristofer’s nosy landlady and a soundtrack that takes in Nick Drake and The Zombies, it’s a beguilingly bittersweet gem that truly puts the touch into touching. (Sky Cinema)

Weapons (18)

Writer/director Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian has the same intricately constructed, slow-burn creepiness and knotted twists, playing out in character chapters, returning to the same events to offer different perspectives before tying it all together in the final moments.

The fulcrum of the plot is that at exactly 2.17am, 17 children from a single smalltown Pennsylvania town third-grade school class get up and leave their homes, running with arms out as if playing aeroplanes, and just disappear. All the children that is bar one, young Alex (a mesmerisingly calm and composed Cary Christopher), a regular target of the class bullies, who duly turns up the next day. The class teacher, borderline alcoholic Justine (a suitably nervy fragile Julia Garner), quickly becomes the scapegoat for the angry parents, most notably Archer (Josh Brolin), though she insists she’s as shocked and upset as anyone. That doesn’t stop her becoming the target of understandable parental grief and rage, getting threatening phone calls and someone (clearly Archer) painting the word witch on her car in bright red letters. The school principal, Marcus (Benjamin Wong) forces her to take a leave of absence and warns her not to approach Alex. Naturally, she does only to find the windows of his house all papered over and, peering through a crack, two motionless figures sitting inside.

Justine is the first chapter, followed by Archer, a builder who starts seeing a pattern in the trajectory of the disappearances, then Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a married cop with self-worth issues unable to resist either the drink or Justine. The remaining chapters put the focus on James (Austin Abrams) a junkie that Paul busts and who accidentally stumbles on the answer to the disappearance riddle while attempting to rob Alex’s parents (), Marcus and finally Alex, for the big reveal involving his visiting disturbingly oddball aunt, Gladys (a chilling Amy Madigan), who has a very dark agenda of her own wherein the film lays bare its Grimm colours; suffice to say the accusation levelled at Justine is misdirected.

Tapping into the American zeitgeist unease, teasing things out with the interlinked characters as the tension builds to the violent and richly metaphorical climax but largely avoiding jump scares (even if he does overdo the it’s just a dream horrors), Cregger may eventually lay bare the mechanics but he deliberately never offers any motivation behind what’s happening. Evil just is. In the final stretch he also uncorks some a dark and grim humour, well aware that the climactic scenes while shocking and horrific can only be played for intentional almost silent movie slapstick laughs. Bring Her Back remains the year’s best horror, but this comes a very close second. (Odeon Broadway Plaza Luxe)

The Wild Robot (PG)

The last DreamWorks in house animation, based on Peter Brown’s 2016 novel, it unfolds on a remote island where a cargo ship from robotics corporate Universal Dynamics has crashed during a typhoon, with only one of its all-purpose people pleaser domestic products, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o), surviving. Charged with providing whatever assistance is needed, she attempts to offer her services the local wildlife, who, rather inevitably, see her as a monster. Even learning how to speak their language doesn’t help and, she’s about to activate her retrieval signal when she’s chased by a Thorn (Mark Hamill), a grizzly bear and, in the process, manages to crush a goose nest and its occupant, leaving only a single egg. Preventing it from being eaten by Fink (Pedro Pascal), a wily but friendless red fox, it hatches and the young gosling runt immediately imprints itself on her and manages to break her beacon transponder. Now, stuck on the island, after being informed by Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), a mother opossum, that the chick thinks she’s his mother, she now has a task, to feed him, teach him to swim and ensure he learns to fly in time to join the winter migration. And a ROZZUM always finishes their task.

She now calling herself Roz and naming the gosling Brightbill (Kit Connor), the film follows her and Fink’s efforts to get him into shape, while, discovering others of his kind, he’s treated as a laughing stock for his size, ungainly swimming and living with the monster that killed his true family. As such, the film has familiar messages about belonging, family, thinking with your heart, love and working together, but it’s also a poignant commentary on how, as Pinktail explains, being a mother is a case of making it up as you go along and not just checking boxes (breaking programming), especially if the kid’s adopted.

Eventually, with mentorship from a falcon (Ving Rhames), Brightbill learns to fly in his own individual fashion (we all have to find our way to soar) and is taken under the wing of Longbill (Bill Nighy) for the migration, he and Roz bidding each other goodbye, possibly not to meet again.

After the geese depart, a particularly harsh winter sets in, and Roz and Fink rescue the other animals and bring them to the shelter she’s build, Fink firmly telling them that they have to work and live together if they want to survive (they also promise to not eat each other once things improve, which makes you wonder if the food chain goes vegetarian). They also come together to rescue Roz when Vontra (Stephanie Hsu), a retrieval robot, arrives to capture her and take her memories for Universal Dynamics to study, albeit the ensuing battle setting the forest ablaze.

Roz is wonderful creation, with her extending limbs, remarkable expressive spherical head, detachable self-functioning hand and the ability to mirror any animal’s movements as she ‘goes native’, and barely a second goes by without a stunning visual design, inspired animation, heartfelt emotion or droll and refreshingly unsentimental humour (Pinktail’s litter are all hilariously obsessed with death), Headed up by sterling performances from Pascal and Nyong’o, the voice cast are faultless, their number also including Matt Berry as Paddler, a sarcastic beaver who’s mocked for trying to gnaw down a massive tree. While following in the lineage of The Iron Giant and Wall-E, two earlier animations about robots with similar themes, this is on an entirely different level and one of the most beautiful and moving films you’ll see this year. (Sky)

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 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)

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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