Our latest movie reviews

Finally, someone has returned to The Damned United’s cunning formula for a good football movie: don’t show any football.  Happily for co-directors Lisa Barros D’sa and Glenn Leyburn’s (Good Vibrations) sports flick, a psychological drama full of quirky touches and dry wit, not much of the Republic of Ireland’s pre-2002 World Cup prep on the Pacific island of Saipan made it as far as the pitch. As still-traumatised Irish fans will tell you, the reward for seeing their team qualify for the tournament in Japan and South Korea was to witness their star player and manager fall out in spectacular fashion. The two antagonists were Manchester United’s superstar midfielder Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) – these days the furious face of dog walking and TV punditry; back then Ireland’s greatest player – and the team’s wry, Yorkshire-born manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan).  Already minded to stay home, and nursing grievances against McCarthy, whom he considers a ‘plastic Paddy’, Keane is ready to explode when the squad touches down at its training base. Throw in a crappy hotel, rubbery cheese sandwiches, a bumpy training pitch and no practice balls and a full atomic meltdown is ensured. ‘Some people are unmanageable, aren’t they?’ McCarthy notes sanguinely to Mrs Mick (Alice Lowe), before the full horror unfolds. It’s a prophetic remark.  Normal People’s Hardwicke is striking as the fierce, brooding and ultra-competitive Keane. Coogan’s McCarthy, 50 percent proper football man, 50...

In Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir H is for Hawk, a young woman named Helen trains an ill-mannered goshawk and eventually sees it off to an aviary for moulting season. Part meditative exploration of grief in the wake of the sudden loss of her father, part exhaustive detailing of the process of training a complicated and challenging creature, the film adaptation hews closely to the same description. You don’t need a PhD to understand that the two processes feed into one another in alarming and honest ways; so in BAFTA-winning director Philippa Lowthorpe’s moody adaptation, the visual metaphors are striking – even as the running time outstays its welcome.  The film stars Claire Foy as a rather stiff-upper-lipped protagonist, an academic who avoids moping at all costs even after her beloved photojournalist father passes away suddenly of heart failure. He’s played by Brendan Gleeson with warmth and humour in occasional mournful flashbacks, and the relationship between dad and daughter is poignantly sketched as a special one: supportive, cerebral, and one of shared hobbies like ornithology. The goshawk Helen adopts is one she might have found on a bird-spotting trip with her dad; she names it Mabel, and a new relationship of sorts springs out of the depths of her loss of another. Difficult, alienating, and even violently gauging Helen in the face, it’s hardly a fluffy companion; this is as good a metaphor for living with loss as any. Helen’s friend Christina (Denise Gough)...

When a murder-mystery opens with the Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’, it’s fair to assume you’re about to see something blandly unoriginal or boldly unique. So there’s something oddly appealing about the fact that Rebecca Zlotowski’s (Other People’s Children) understated thriller, A Private Life, stubbornly refuses easy definition – other than as a modest romp that allows Jodie Foster to perform in another language. And if you’ll watch Foster acting in anything, you’re gonna love watching her do it in French. She is effortlessly interesting as Lilian Steiner, an imperious American psychiatrist living in Paris. Lilian’s got the whole sophisticated expat thing going on: beautiful scarves and cashmere coats, a multilingual family, a charming apartment filled with books. She’s also sharp enough to know that she’s been emotionally untethered for some time. But her life is busy and full, so she doesn’t truly feel the impact of her alienation until her longtime patient Paula (Virginie Efira) dies under mysterious circumstances. Much to Lilian’s shock, Paula’s distraught daughter (Luàna Bajrami) and unhinged husband (Mathieu Amalric, underused) seem to blame her. She really has no choice, therefore, but to defend herself. And the only way to go about this is to thoroughly upend her carefully regimented existence, reconnect with her ex-husband Gabriel (a delightful Daniel Auteuil), and work with him to find out what really happened. Or so she insists, even as she ignores all logic...

Trains and heroin. There are moments when you have to remind yourself that it’s Nia DaCosta (director) and Alex Garland (screenwriter) behind this quick-fire 28 Years Later sequel and not Danny Boyle and John Hodge reimagining that heady slice of ’90s pop-culture in a bled-out Britain. Here, though, it’s the English who are blissed-out on junk and the Scots who are the wankers. The trains are a bit more overgrown, too. The zombies are thinner on the ground in this instalment, presumably biding their time for Danny Boyle’s threequel, and that’s okay. There’s still some hyper-kinetic action – DaCosta (Candyman) and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt mix visceral GoPro sequences with stately long shots to deliver the best-looking film in the franchise – but most of the horror plays out with sticky intimacy here as the focus switches to two humans and an Alpha.  A fabulously malevolent Jack O’Connell is Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, introduced by 28 Years Later as a Scottish preacher’s son narrowly surviving the zombie apocalypse and as a Jimmy Savile-styled cult leader in its jarring epilogue. He roams the land with a gang of wig-and-tracksuit-wearing acolytes, executing Satanic violence on anyone they come across in the name of ‘Old Nick’. The infected aren’t the source of the greatest cruelty here. Like Christopher Ecclestone’s soldiers in 28 Days Later, humanity has reclaimed that crown.  On the side of the angels (or perhaps the only one left), Ralph Fiennes returns as...

Rental Family might be on the mawkish side, but Hikari's comedy-drama, about a struggling American actor seeking connection and purpose in Japan, has its charms. It opens with the hustle of Tokyo, the world’s most densely populated capital, where its swarms of residents and tourists can make you invisible. That is the case for Phillip (Brendan Fraser), a thespian living a sad, solitary life. His dreary, washed out existence mostly involves watching the lives of others play out through his tiny apartment window, engaging a sex worker for intimacy, and failing to convert his talent into substantial work. Fraser is perfect for a role that perhaps mirrors with his own career decline in the early 2000s. He brings a melancholy gentleness to a middle-aged man in quiet crisis.  Enter ‘Rental Family’, a niche agency, based on real life, that specialises in using actors to play roles in the lives of its clients. Whether it’s a depressed man hearing kind words at his own mocked-up funeral to find a reason to live, or a closeted lesbian getting married to Phillip's ‘Canadian groom Brian’ so she can move on with her lover, the agency offers emotional catharsis and forward momentum in a culture that doesn't always make it easy. Every once in a while, a sweet, hopeful ending is exactly what audiences need The ‘east vs west’ culture clash between Phillip, agency owner Shinji and agency actor Aiko (played by Monarch: Legacy of Monsters' Takehiro Hira and Mari Yamamoto, respectively) makes...

Unlike so many big budget productions, the first movie instalment of JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth trilogy doesn't condescend to a teenage audience, but creates a sophisticated universe which abides by its own laws: a primordial world older than history and legend, back in the realm of myth. Here young hobbit Frodo Baggins (Wood) comes into possession of the ring of power - a talisman of evil so potent it corrupts everyone who touches it. Under the guidance of the wizard Gandalf (McKellen), Frodo escapes the clutches of the fearsome ring wraiths along with his faithful friend Sam (Astin), and heads for the kingdom of the elves, where they hope to thwart the encroaching forces of doom. Mostly, the film makes light work of Tolkien's richly Celtic imagination. You don't so much admire its virtuoso camerawork as lose yourself in the grandeur of the Gothic design, the bucolic Shire and mountain ranges riddled with mines and fire pits. Granted, there's a sermonising element which invites parody, but it never wants for menace (parents should probably steer young children clear). In unveiling the Holy Grail for action-fantasy aficionados, director and co-writer Peter Jackson has begun a series to rival Star Wars in the pantheon.

Movie monsters come in all shapes and sizes, but they’re rarely as diminutive and deceptively cuddly as the pet chimp-turned-brainy-hell​-beast in this endearingly daft B-movie​ horror. Because for a portion of its runtime, Primate feels a bit like Jaws if instead of a great white shark, Steven Spielberg and co had plumped for a peckish sea bass – or Samuel L Jackson had starred in ‘Snake on a Plane’. Can one modestly sized ape really rain down gory terror on a group of grown-up humans, and do for chimps what Stephen King’s Cujo did for mountain rescue dogs?  Well, kinda. With cleverly claustrophobic staging in a walled clifftop house, director and co-writer Johannes Roberts (47 Metres Down) smartly mines the premise for thrills. Though rarely scary, Primate is tense, unpretentious fun. Its antagonist (played by movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba and augmented with VFX) is menacing enough to make you see why a group of swimsuited teens would feel outmatched – especially after a spliff or two. Beneath that fur, after all, this little ape is as hench as peak Stallone. The mayhem unfolds at the Hawaiian home of Coda Oscar winner Troy Kotsur’s crime novelist, Adam. The pet chimp, Ben, has been inherited from his late wife, a linguistics professor who’d been teaching it to communicate with humans. When Adam is called away on a book tour, his daughters Erin (Gia Hunter) and Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), and a few vacationing pals, are left to hold the fort. You could do worse than...

With its brutal balls-to-the-jail-wall action, Cal McMau’s directorial debut Wasteman feels like yet another overly familiar entry to the prison movie genre – until it taps into a universally relatable nightmare: the dodgy roommate. This semi-found footage experiment follows mild-mannered inmate Taylor (The Long Walk’s David Jonsson) as he eyes early parole after a decade inside. Sentenced for a crime he’s long since repented for, Taylor is the institution’s resident barber, stew chef and junkie. When no one’s looking, he snorts pills and smokes the occasional spliff to take his mind off the monotony. But when our likeable hero crosses paths with new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth), the film turns into a study of a roomie from hell. Dee makes his presence felt with a truckload of contraband chocolate bars, cereal boxes, and drone-delivered drugs as he plots to unpick the prison’s existing power structures. As the older alphas pass their time on outdated PlayStation 3 consoles, Dee represents a new age with the detachable controllers of his Nintendo Switch.  When not engaging in power politics, Dee comes across as a helpful aide to Taylor, bribing him with pills, an air-fryer (no more stews brewed in a water kettle) and even a phone to connect with his estranged son.  Wasteman is a prison film for the social media generation That father-son bonding plays out via TikTok and stealthy videocalls, making Wasteman a prison film for the social media generation. Shakycam cell brawls and...

If you’re feeling a touch downbeat about the state of the world, Eugene Jarecki’s (Why We Fight) searching but sympathetic doc about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not lift your spirits. With fly-on-the-wall footage, some extraordinary talking-head interviews, unexpected cameos (Lady Gaga, Pamela Anderson) and a sense of moral outrage, the American filmmaker takes on – and down – a global system of power that should worry the hell out of us all. Jarecki’s film, a conspiracy thriller in documentary clothing, provides a corrective to the public image of this deeply polarising figure, showing Assange as a warrior for transparency whose intelligence leaks embarrassed powerful national interests and who paid a terrible price for it.  We see Wikileaks growing from a small team led by the determined, spiky Australian as it broke through in 2007 by releasing US military footage of an Apache gunship gunning down unarmed civilians and Reuters journalists in Iraq. The viral video, dubbed ‘Collateral Murder’, turned the organisation into a name that everyone had heard of, even if they couldn’t quite pinpoint its exact aims. Ambiguity grew, fuelled when Assange was charged with rape in Sweden and hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The women he was accused of assaulting appear incognito here, revealing that the Swedish authorities pressed charges against the wills of the victims.  But the Wikileaks of The Six Billion Dollar Man is a more considered and journalistic...

Aside from an overlong film, there’s little more dull than hearing some overprivileged critic whining about film length. After all, an extra helping of 3D-enhanced escapism measured in hundreds of millions of dollars in bleeding-edge effects: what’s not to love? With James Cameron serving it up, it’s like complaining about a Michelin-starred chef adding four courses onto their degustation menu, no extra charge.  Forgive me, then, for being that critic but if ever a movie could give your eyeballs gout, Avatar: Fire and Air is that film. At three hours and 17 sometimes spectacular, occasionally stultifying minutes (two more than Schindler’s List), your mind will struggle not to wander as human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his blue clanspeople tackle new-yet-entirely-similar threats in a straining sequel that again zeroes in on Pandoran whale juice as its McGuffin. You will try to make it through this movie without needing a pee. You will not succeed.  Unlike the first two Avatars, which even haters would concede were epic journeys of discovery, with Cameron as an attentive guide to a dazzling alien universe, a sense of familiarity kicks in from the opening 3D shots of a guilt-ridden Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) soaring through the floating Hallelujah Mountains on a banshee. The death of his brother Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in Avatar: The Way of Water will send him off on his own redemption arc, one of a few half-hearted story progressions in a movie that’s largely...