Our latest movie reviews

You might feel your done with Robin Hood – takes from the rich, gives to the poor, yadda yadda yadda – but Michael Sarnoski’s film finds new textures and humanity in the stock figure. The ‘death’ of the title refers to the demise of the legend, peeling the narrative and folklore from the so-called hero to reveal the fragile, troubled man beneath the myth. Bold, brutal yet surprisingly sensitive, it’s about as far away from Errol Flynn’s Technicolor tights or Kevin Costner’s mullet as you can imagine. Beginning in 1247 A.D. (the onscreen date roots it in reality) in the rugged, miserable landscapes of the Celtic Fringe, Sarnoski’s rich film is divided into two diametrically opposed halves. We meet Robin (Jackman) sporting a big coat and a bigger beard, barely existing on a mountainside, roasting rabbits on an open fire and brutally murdering a vengeance-seeking assailant – it doesn’t matter that she is a young girl.  Robin is found by former cohort Little John (an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård) whom he hasn’t seen for 15 years. Now with a wife, child and a new identity as ‘Edward’ – everyone in this world has fake names to hide their murky pasts – John recruits Robin to help him fend off some killers hell-bent on retribution for previous misdemeanours. Working in a similar downbeat register to his previous films Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, Sarnoski and long-time cinematographer Pat Scola paint a portrait of a grim world. The palette is cold and grey until the night-time...

The culture wars may have pushed the climate crisis out of the headlines – nothing to see there, apparently – but this powerful and poetic Nat Geo documentary is a stark reminder that even the most monolithic elements of our planet are under threat from environmental change. An icebound travelogue and haunting photo essay, given voice by a lovely electronic score from Dan Deacon, Time and Water is an often dispiriting but at times transcendent look at the death of an Icelandic glacier, and the ways we process loss.‘I wanted to know glaciers like my grandparents did,’ says Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason by way of scene-setting. Our narrator and guide to the film’s Gaudi-like cathedrals and cascades of ice, the poet and novelist introduces his homeland’s rugged terrain via the grandparents who inspired him. Two of them spent their honeymoon storm-bound in a tent on an Icelandic glacier. Everyone could guess how they passed the time, notes Magnason wryly.  It’s not a comforting night at the cinema Glaciers are in this clan’s blood, a part of its love stories, and Magnason and director Sara Dosa, whose 2022 doc Fire of Love charted the amour fou between two volcanologists, give Time and Water the feeling of a flick through a family scrapbook rather than a geology lecture. There’s grainy old Super 8 footage of the Icelandic landscapes, old photos and interviews with the ageing grandfolks. Most of all, there’s a sense of deep sadness at what they all stand to lose as the...

A forlorn widower campaigns to save the heritage of his small Scottish town from Hollywood-isation in this offbeat comedy-drama from first-time filmmaker Seán Dunn. A kind of tartan Taxi Driver, it combines Bill Forsyth’s whimsical Celtic charm with a slug of Ben Wheatley’s bitumen-black humour. It doesn’t all work, but it nails its ambitious, unusual tone nicely and Peter Mullan is a delight as the lowlands’ lonely man. The Tyrannosaur actor plays Kenneth McKay, a resident of the fictional town of Arberloch and the curator of a small museum dedicated to an Enlightenment-era aristocrat called Sir Douglas Weatherford. McKay proudly shares tales of Sir Douglas’s exploits with the smattering of tourists that pass through, and polishes the glass cabinets that hold tales of this forgotten figure’s achievements. But Sir Douglas’s own narration reveals that far from the paragon of virtue McKay thinks, he was a supercilious berk with a ruthless streak (although to be fair, calling Benjamin Franklin ‘a pervert’ is a good line). Seen Local Hero? Give ‘Local Antihero’ a spin This intense, one-sided relationship is clearly a reaction to the loss of his wife a year previously, and the awkwardness that’s set in with his grown-up daughter (Men’s Gayle Rankin). Then the cast and crew for a hit fantasy TV show, The White Stag of Emberfell, roll into town and the museum is turned into a Game of Thrones-y fanzone for cosplaying locals. This chintzy commoditisation of Scottish folklore and...

Not a flat-out fizzer but definitely nowhere near the ludicrously high standards he’s set for himself, Steven Spielberg’s return to sci-fi goes down as a mid-tier entry in his personal canon – albeit one elevated by Emily Blunt and a couple of the type of nuts action sequences that few others could pull off.  The fabulous Blunt continues her hot streak as Detroit TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild, whose life takes a freaky turn after a strange kitchen table encounter with a cardinal bird. Within moments, she’s speaking fluent Russian to her boyfriend (Thunderbolts*’ Wyatt Russell) and doing an alien-sounding clicking sound on live TV. ​Turns out ET isn’t phoning home any more, ​h​e’s presenting the weather.  Also​ on the run is cybersecurity wonk-turned-whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) with stolen files from ​a sinister agency that prove the existence of aliens – with his old boss (Colin Firth, growing into a rare villain role) in hot pursuit. Oh, and the world is on the verge of nuclear war over North Korea, albeit this is a backdrop that’s given scant attention.  It’s a lot to pack in, and even John Williams’ mercurial but hardly memorable score seems unsure which beats to underline. Boiled down, though, it’s the connection between Margaret and Daniel – plus Colman Domingo as Hugo, the Morpheus of the disclosure operation – that underpins the fugitive thriller that breaks out.  Russell gets the best lines as Margaret’s doofus musician boyfriend Jackson,...

‘Would I lie to you, baby?’ So sings Bond star Léa Seydoux’s pop-inflected concert pianist, Lucy, in a slow-burn reworking of the Charles & Eddie hit at the open of Corsage director Marie Kreutzer’s latest. A niggling worry that creeps around the corners of this austere, guarded film.  The first sign that something’s not quite right comes when Lucy must comfort her filmmaker husband, Philip (Laurence Rupp), who collapses mid-panic attack in the hall of their Munich apartment. He’s says he’s burnt out, insisting they move to a rustic rural homestead with their precocious kid, Johnny (Malo Blanchet). But no sooner has the bucolic bliss begun than Jella Haase’s detective Elsa bursts their bubble, rocking up with a cohort of cops while vaping and blasting techno in her car. They’ve come to seize Philip’s phone, computer, laptop and thumb drives. His face is a glistening sheen of sweaty guilt. Seydoux, an incredibly gifted actor, nails the flustered, frightened panic. It’s not until she arrives at the cop shop and takes the lift to Elsa’s office that she realises Philip’s accused crime: purveying paedophilic images. All denial, defence and disbelief, Lucy’s confusions gives way to the skin-crawling horror of betrayal as an incandescent rage whirls inside. Has Philip abused Johnny? For such a young actor, Blanchet shows incredible promise. Johnny’s giggles about hidden secrets muddy the waters just enough, even as the psychologist attached to the case insists there’s no overt...

Revered Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki adheres to the concept of ‘Ma’, or intentional emptiness. Likewise, Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer’s equal-parts effervescent and unsettling third feature, Rose, sings with thoughtful silence and enriching stillness. The mighty Sandra Hüller of The Zone of Interest, Toni Erdmann and Anatomy of a Fall fame plays the intriguing title character, a performance that has rightly earned her a Berlinale Silver Bear. An independent woman refusing to be hemmed in by the limiting realities of gender in 17th-century Mitteleuropa, Rose has assumed the identity, and privileges, of at least two men. First, she fought as a soldier of fortune in the devastating Thirty Years’ War, gaining ample coin and a facial scar, the latter thanks to the bullet she wears on a chain, occasionally sucking it absentmindedly in the film’s quieter beats. Rose then adopts the (unheard) name of a fallen comrade, returning to his village to claim his family’s long-abandoned stretch of fallow land. Intending on living alone, she employs well-treated farmhands. But her unexpected presence and strange appearance raises the grumbling suspicions of envious villagers.When Rose slays a marauding beast – an early iteration of ‘Would you rather meet a man or bear in the woods?’ – she gains their grudging respect. So much so, one neighbour insists on marrying ‘him’ to his daughter, an also-brilliant Caro Braun’s curious Suzanna. A further queering of the situation that sets...

You’d have to wonder what the South Korean tourism board makes of ferocious filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho. Catch public transport in downtown Seoul (Train to Busan) and you’ll be attacked by zombies. You’re no safer attending a biotech conference in the sprawling metropolis in his latest braindead maelstrom. Flipping the action from horizontal to vertical, this alternate spin on the time-honoured action/horror/comedy tropes plays out in a towering edifice that’s equal parts prison for corporate slaves and never-ending shopping mall for those shackled to late-stage capitalism. It’s into this more more more Babel that sharp bioscientist Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun) walks. A mega-brain, she’s nevertheless no use at reading a room and has a habit of driving folks away with her prickliness. She’s coaxed by her colleague and amicable ex-husband, Han Kyo-seong (Go Soo), to play nice and maybe rustle up some sort of future security in her gig. Theirs is a purely platonic bond – he’s very much in love with his new wife (Shin Hyun-been), also a scientist, and daughter. Then vengeful scientist Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) unleashes a real-time experiment in terror, sparking a rapidly spreading outbreak of frothing infected in the process.  What makes this a fun night out is how well the mayhem is staged With the authorities locking the building down and ringing it with busloads of heavily-armed riot cops, dynamic duo Se-jeong and Kyo-seong are left to rally a rag-tag band of generic...

Taking a little of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a sprinkle of Mike Nichols, a toke or two of stoner comedy silliness and a big huff of post-Woody Allen urbanite repression, Olivia Wilde’s latest slots into a rich lineage of hilariously awkward sex comedies. With a stellar cast  – Wilde, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, Penélope Cruz – finding alchemy in their contrasting styles, it’s daringly close to the bone and frequently fall-off-your-chair funny. And with apologies to Vanilla Sky stans, it’s comfortably the best US remake of a Spanish film yet. Cesc Gay’s Goya-nominated The People Upstairs is transplanted from Barcelona to the one-time home of free love, San Francisco, where fraying married couple Joe (Rogen) and Angela (Wilde) are finding love of any description hard to come by.  The bellyaching, jaundiced Joe has got back to their luxe apartment from his unfulfilling job as a music teacher to find Angela putting the finishing touches on a platter of cheeses and ‘jamon’. She’s sent their kid to the in-laws and invited the upstairs neighbours over for a soirée; the same neighbours who’ve been keeping them awake with noisy late-night sex. Nursing a bad back and a burning desire for a spliff, Joe is horrified by the whole idea. She’s seriously high-strung; he doesn’t seem to have any strings left at all. Meanwhile, the score, by Devonté Hynes, aka Blood Orange, scuttles through your brain like a spider in the bathtub.  Amusingly, the bickering doesn’t stop when Norton’s...

A sensitive drama touched by melancholy, Enzo is a bittersweet farewell to the late and often great Laurent Cantet. The French filmmaker, who won the Palme d’Or for The Class in 2006, conceived the idea for this queer coming-of-age drama and retains the directing credit, but it’s his long-time writing partner Robin Campillo who shepherded it over the line. Whatever the division of labour, it’s an effective marriage of the unblinking humanism of Cantet and the observational eye of the 120 Beats per Minute director. The rugged, sun-splashed landscapes of the Côte d’Azur provide the backdrop for a film that perfectly captures what it is to be young and uncertain in your skin. Rocky outcrops, sheer cliffs that reach to the skies, and the occasional turquoise lagoon could be metaphors for the rocky but seemingly idyllic life of 16-year-old Enzo. He’s struggling to make head or tail of his desires and the expectations – real or assumed – of his well-to-do parents, Paolo and Marion (Pierfrancesco Favino and Elodie Bouchez).  Played by open-faced newcomer Eloy Pohu, we meet him as an apprentice on a building site in La Ciotat – the setting for Cantet and Campillo’s 2018 drama The Workshop – where his inattentiveness and inertia draws the ire of the foreman. He’s marched back to his family’s hilltop villa and asked if he really wants the gig – and why? His hands are blistered and his heart doesn’t seem to be in it. His dad points to his older brother, who has uni in Paris ahead of...

It’s been interesting, over the last few years, to watch romcoms wrestling with the restrictive rules of modern dating and romance. Last year’s Materialists grappled with love on the apps, while more recently, Finding Emily sees a shy young man face a baying mob because he attempted a grand gesture. Now Office Romance has that hoary old cliché, the crush on someone at work, faced with the censorious rules of a post-MeToo workplace. Sadly for this Ol Parker-directed Netflix effort, there’s little that’s new or exciting to say about dating the boss, but at least their working relationship presents a reasonable roadblock to two outrageously attractive people who are hot to jump one another’s bones. Brett Goldstein is mild-mannered, foul-mouthed lawyer Daniel, who’s taken a job in-house at a US airline run by Jackie Cruz (Jennifer Lopez). When his immediate boss (Bradley Whitford) is injured, he steps in to cover a key deposition in a major lawsuit, and sparks immediately fly with Jackie. The two fight their growing feelings until, inevitably, giving in and hitting the sack – but with Jackie’s management under close scrutiny from her board and only semi-retired father (the always welcome Edward James Olmos), there’s every reason to keep their liaison under the covers. As with any romcom, there’s little real doubt about the outcome. The question is whether it’s funny along the way, and here we’re helped by Goldstein’s solid script (with co-writer Joe Kelly), because few...