Our latest movie reviews

There’s nothing wrong with being old-fashioned. Padraic McKinley’s Great Depression gold heist flick has a welcome ’70s vibe and a careworn charm, mostly emanating from the always trusty Ethan Hawke. Hawke, Oscar-nominated for his melancholic turn in Blue Moon, is down-but-not-yet-out dad Samuel. With no work to be found, he’s scraping by on the generosity of neighbours, who create odd jobs for loose change. But this can’t keep the bailiffs from their door, sneakily evicting him and peppy daughter Ava (A Quiet Place: Day One’s Avy Berry) while they’re at church.  Spying a vacant apartment in the local paper, he attempts to break in so they can squat, but is accosted by brutal cops and promptly sent to a labour camp, clearing a gold mine closed by order of President Roosevelt. With at least six months’ back-breaking work ahead of him, he stands to lose his daughter too: Penny, now a ward of the state, may well be adopted out before they can be reunited. However, Samuel’s resourcefulness in applying smart thinking to a stubborn boulder attracts the favour of his boss, Clancy (the appealingly grizzled Russell Crowe). Though this gift horse comes loaded with hidden perils. Clancy recruits Samuel, plus confederates Olson (Borgen’s Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen), Singh (Avi Nash), an Indian-American with a head full of socialism, and the sketchy Rankin (Austin Amelio) to help him smuggle out bricks of bullion. Having closed all the mines, President Roosevelt has ordered them to be...

Family can be hell. But tearing them apart on film is pure paradise for us bloodthirsty drama queens. A hunger that gonzo Brazilian filmmaker, visual artist and festival fave Karim Aïnouz (Motel Destino) is more than happy to satiate with his latest bonkers, horny offering. Leading the stacked cast is Callum Turner, the latest grist for the James Bond rumour mill, who provides narration. He plays Ed, a sharp-suited, cold-hearted chap in an astonishingly privileged pack of cutthroat fashion-lovers. They have little in common besides their impossibly priced threads. Under the imperious command of their blind patriarch father (Tracy Letts), the clan includes Ed’s older brother Jack (Jamie Bell), who drinks animal blood for kinks and fetishises the gun purportedly used to kill Gianni Versace. Epilepsy-prone baby bro Robert (Lukas Gage) dons lingerie for kicks. Their equally pent-up sister, Anna (Riley Keough), will have what anyone’s having. Each wants shot of the rest, though Robert wants Jack to shoot his incestuous shot with him. (What is it about The White Lotus cast members?) Anna mercilessly mauls Jack’s girlfriend, Martha, who is pointedly lower class but still pretty spoiled and insists he must move out. Anna latches onto Martha’s dress, damning it as being from either Kos or Zara in this year’s answer to Triangle of Sadness’s Balenciaga/H&M moment. Fitting, as Rosebush Pruning feels snipped from both Ruben Östlund’s eat-the-rich satire and Pasolini’s Teorema. Why are...

As diehard fans go, Australian showman Baz Luhrmann has done more than most to spread the gospel of Elvis. He pretty much reinvented the wheel with his big, brash 2022 biopic on the music icon. Elvis – a wild rollercoaster of a ride on the singer’s life – made a star out of Austin Butler, snagged a pile of awards, cleaned up at the box office and introduced the singer to a new generation. Suddenly, everybody knew who Elvis was again. Empowered by this, Luhrmann went back through the 60-plus boxes of concert archive he’d hauled out of Warner Bros.’ deep storage (literally, they were in a salt mine in Kansas) for his original research. Finding reels of ‘lost’ footage shot for two 1970s docs on the King was like discovering gold. Why not, he thought, turn it into one epic concert movie? Here, then, is a glorious mash-up of that material, preceded by a speedy summary of pre-1970s Elvis for those who don’t know. Elvis Presley shocked white America by popularising rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s. But then, the former dirt-poor truck driver from Tupelo got drafted for national service in the US Army. When he got out, his wily manager, the self-titled Colonel Tom Parker (not his real name) turned him into a lucrative family entertainer in Hollywood, pumping out three increasingly inane musicals a year. By the end of the 1960s, Elvis had had enough and put his foot down  Which is where EPiC takes off. A joyous, energetic and inclusive experience Drawing from 10 professionally shot...

No matter how powerful or pampered, celebrities are still human. They have their own foibles and panic attacks. So we all feel it when Charli xcx’s looks are mercilessly savaged in Aidan Zamiri’s anarchically absurdist mockumentary, The Moment. Charli escapes to Ibiza for a few days to get away from the fractious implosion of her Brat concert movie, being shot in a pigeon-infested warehouse in East London. Skipping the huge waiting list to see the hotel’s in-demand facialist results in the singer’s ego being blow-torched. Apparently, her dry skin physically drains said specialist to the point of snoring. Tossed out unceremoniously, the Apple singer crumbles. A collapse further crumpled on bumping into Kylie Jenner, who raves about the barking mad facial-abuser and the documentary filmmaker who has caused Charli so much grief: Johannes, played with passive-aggressive condescension by Alexander Skarsgård.  He’s a tacky stuntmeister who wants the show, and therefore his film, to lean into giant cigarette props and a less vomit-hued green, dolling up Charli in the drag queen sheen favoured by Chappell Roan. Johannes breathes down the neck of Marty Supreme actor Hailey Gates’ creative director, Celeste, who’s battling to move on from Brat. But the singer is so wigged out she doesn’t know who to trust, let alone her gut. A wild ensemble of celebrities playing warped caricatures includes Rachel Sennott, who speedily overcomes caution to huff K on camera. Some disappear – into...

Adolescence and Top Boy actor Ashley Walters’ startlingly assured debut feature opens in darkness. We hear, but don’t see, the panicked aftermath of a knife crime and voices in heated debate as a siren announces the arrival of the police. Cut to Troy’s rabbit-in-the-headlights stare in the back of a cop wagon. Played by The Long Walk actor Tut Nyuot, he’s a good, if waylaid, kid caught up in a furious world he’s vastly unprepared for. Thrust into a foreboding brick youth detention centre, all the crueller for its positioning by the freedom of the sea, Troy is stripped naked alongside two fellow detainees. They’re destined to be his good and bad angels.  Doe-eyed Ukrainian actor Vladyslav Baliuk plays Krystian, a gentle Polish lad even more out of his depth in a brutally unforgiving place where the kind-hearted have no protection from a shiv’s skin slice. That his goofy crime, revealed later, is entirely undeserving of this imprisonment has no bearing on an unbending system.There’s a crackle of energy between Krystian and Troy that suggests their deep bond could be more than it seems, a source of calm amid this storm of teenage testosterone.The bad angel, a lithely unnerving Dion (What It Feels Like For a Girl actor Sekou Diaby), has other ideas. Not his first stint inside, Dion holds court as a dealer with a bevy of boys at his command. He presses fellow Black kid Troy into his service, leaving Krystian adrift Dion is only half Troy’s trouble, with the loose unit energy of...

From Thor and Hulk to (basically) McCauley and Hanna. The reunion of two of Marvel’s mightiest heroes, Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, as a meticulous but troubled thief and the schlebby, Columbo-alike detective on his case across LA evokes unenviable Heat comparisons. They’re overblown but not outrageous.  Crime 101 doesn’t have quite the operatic sweep of Michael Mann’s 1995 crime masterpiece or its army of supporting characters, but it’s a serious and satisfying throwback to the golden days of the crime thriller, full of crackling dialogue, noirish LA locations and adrenalised car chases, all briskly overseen by talented British writer-director Bart Layton (The Imposter). The title, of course, has a double meaning: Hemsworth’s hangdog jewel thief Mike Davis has a simple code – he’s courteous, avoids violence and his back story is a blank – and targets marks along LA’s 101 freeway. The road, which runs along the Pacific coast, represents something spiritual for Mike, who carries scars from a former life in the city. His spartan oceanside apartment offers more common ground with De Niro’s thief in Heat. When he falls out with his growly fence and mentor (Nick Nolte), who replaces him with Barry Keoghan’s loose-cannon biker, the stakes ramp up. Mike needs to pull off one last job. Ruffalo’s detective and his loyal but wary partner (Corey Hawkins) are hot on his heels. You know the drill. The Heat comparisons are overblown but not outrageous  Caught up with them both is a...

It’s 1870 in Friendship, Wisconsin when Sheriff Jacob Hansen (Johnny Flynn) discovers a feverish, ranting woman in a field adjacent to the dead body of a soldier he’s just removed from an out-of-town homestead. This bizarre, mysterious and macabre blend sets the uncommon tone for A Prayer for the Dying. When she and the unknown corpse reach local physician, ‘Doc’ (John C Reilly), concern turns to panic when he diagnoses diphtheria. Aside from wife Marta (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and new baby at home, Jacob has a head awash with dark secrets from the Civil War, which ended five years previously. This backdrop of trauma, encroaching disease and wildfires nearing town make for a challenging tenure, which escalates when the dead bodies pile up in town and nearby woods where cult leader Chase and his all-female followers reside. Quarantine is the only solution, for what good it will do. All of which makes for a tense, tough western low on the usual gunfights and saloon brawls but high on apocalyptic foreboding and suspense. The pacing is assured and the action plentiful, whether this encompasses the inspection of a cadaver or last-gasp train escape.  It’s a western low on gunfights but high on apocalyptic foreboding  There’s also bizarre humour – the arrival of a long-awaited circus is weirdly hilarious – and, in Jacob’s gruesome dreams and the vividly infernal conclusion in particular, startling imagery. Though it packs more action, Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff and her...

‘What you are about to see is something you’ve never seen before,’ we're promised at the start of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. That may be true for some of us, but not for all: Nirvanna the Band the Show was actually a culty and beloved Canadian sitcom based on an early aughts web series – which has now, as advertised, been turned into a full-length movie. Totally confused? Lean all the way in. There is little logic to be found in this cheerfully bananas mockumentary from Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, who have been playing the fictional Matt and Jay for nearly two decades. Their latest misadventure, deftly directed by Johnson and hilariously scripted by both, should by all rights break the world. Like the series and sitcom, the movie follows two clueless friends determined to book a gig at Toronto’s famed Rivoli music club. Unfortunately, they don’t have a manager, an agent or much of a setlist. What they do possess, besides a band name that causes infinite confusion, is a refusal to flag in the face of eternal rejection. Matt and Jay don’t spend much time on actual music, but they’re fully committed to hatching schemes. These run the spectrum from painfully misguided (parachute into a stadium, impress thousands of potential fans) to utterly insane (build a time machine, travel to the past, secure a booking for the future). It’s easy to underestimate the intelligence it takes to make something so silly To say more would ruin the fun. Taking equal inspiration from...

Sometimes, an Oscar nomination is almost as good as a win. Little Amélie may have scant hope of beating the mighty K-Pop Demon Hunters to Best Animated Feature, but its nod puts some deserved attention on a sweet and thought-provoking movie.  It begins with the birth of God. Or at least, that’s how one newborn sees it. When Amélie emerges into the world, her parents are told she’s ‘a vegetable’. Seemingly incapable of movement or speech, she stares fixedly ahead, absorbing everything around her. With her family orbiting around her, she believes she’s the centre of the universe.  At the age of two, Amélie is sparked into animation by two events: an earthquake that hits her family’s home in Japan, and a taste of white chocolate. She’s awoken simultaneously to life’s many pleasures and the constant spectre of death and destruction. Both will inform her understanding of the world in her earliest years. She’ll look death squarely in the face several times. Adapting a memoir by Amélie Nothomb, debut feature directors Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han do a beautiful job of conveying the overwhelming feeling of being brand new. The animation initially looks like something produced on an early Nintendo console, but what it lacks in finesse it more than makes up for in feeling. It makes sense of how a small child sees the world, saturated and magical but not yet subtly detailed.  A trip into a small girl’s life that leaves you with plenty of big things to ponder It works perfectly...

Emily Brontë’s only published novel has always been utterly batshit, and director Emerald Fennell’s take on the gothic ‘romance’ of Wuthering Heights follows suit, as peculiarly cold as it is visually decadent. The destructive aspect of Cathy and Heathcliff’s obsessive love is front and centre, yet it’s hard to care about Margot Robbie’s bratty Catherine Earnshaw – who seems too old to be acting this teenage – and Jacob Elordi’s boring, one-note Heathcliff. In the book he is ‘wild’ and deeply charismatic. In the film, he is… tall?  For those unfamiliar with the unhinged masterpiece, Cathy has been infatuated with Heathcliff since her widowed father brought this mysterious boy to their Yorkshire home. Fast forward to adulthood and Heathcliff has buggered off, while Cathy has married their neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), who in Fennell’s delirious vision lives in a kaleidoscopic Rococo palace. Heathcliff then returns, stonkingly rich. She wants him, and he wants her, but they cannot be together as Cathy is now pregnant with Edgar’s child.  In the book, this leads to much unconsummated yearning, but Fennell – who infamously made Barry Keogan stick his dick in a freshly dug grave in Saltburn – gets the pair romping with impunity. This is, naturally, after Cathy experiences her sexual awakening while spying on household servants having a kinky stable-based encounter. But despite all this shagging, Wuthering Heights is not even Fennell’s horniest film. It’s hard to care...