Our latest movie reviews

Has there ever been a more ambitious filmmaker than David Lean? Even Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve, both lionised today as makers of jaw-dropping epics, would bow to this giant of British cinema, a man who recreated the Arab Revolt in pretty much 1-to-1 scale in Lawrence of Arabia in locations few westerners had even been to. And all at a time when ‘visual effects’ meant waiting weeks to send cast and crew into the teeth of an Atlantic storm, as he did on Ryan Daughter. Villeneuve is one of the formidable talking heads looking back at Lean’s life in this enthralling, stylish doc. (Nolan is absent, presumably busy creating his own crackers epic in The Odyssey.) Paul Greengrass, Nia DaCosta, Joe Wright and Celine Song are a few of the other modern-day luminaries who share insights and adulation. Cate Blanchett provides husky narration and Spielberg shares stories of Lawrence of Arabia’s vice-like grip on his own consciousness.  Like Kevin Brownlow’s definitive 1997 biography of Lean, Maverick follows the great man from a painful Surrey childhood to a lifetime of adventure and epics, via a ground-up filmmaking education as first a tea boy and later master editor at Gaumont-British Studios. No one has travelled further from Croydon than the man who made The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India.  And maybe no one has had as much reason to. The ghost of Lean’s frosty, adulterous father is summoned in letters narrated by Kenneth Branagh that...

Like Point Break retooled for the era of Luigi Mangione and post-Occupy discontent, David Leitch’s sharp-witted action-thriller comes with a surge of adrenaline and an unexpected political punch.  You may leave wondering how a film that has one of its lead characters utter an explicit warning to the super rich straight into the camera was even greenlit by the multi-billionaire owner of Amazon – yet it’s at the Jeff Bezoses of the world that How to Rob a Bank aims its punky, insolent energy.  The ever-excellent Nicholas Hoult is Ryan, ringleader of a gang of Pittsburgh bank robbers called the ‘How To Rob a Bank’ crew. With wolf-mask disguises, do-no-harm weapons handling, clever getaway routes and the desire to perform unnecessary somersaults, they’ve got all the skills needed to prosper and look cool doing it. Plus, one more – editing. The gang aren’t in it for the money but the virality. When they refer to 900 million, it’s clicks not dollars. With handheld cameras and drones, they capture their heists, cut them into pop-art-style videos and post them online with how-to tips and even links to merchandise. They’re not stealing to surf, they have revolution in mind. With Anna Sawai’s (Shōgun) getaway driver, Rhenzy Feliz’s tech whiz and a soulful Pete Davidson’s army veteran providing muscle, they’re not breaking the mold on heist movie archetypes in a first half that prioritises action and Deadpool-alike quips (Leitch directed Deadpool 2 and it rubbed off). But Mark...

Mike Leigh is a giant of cinema. Like his fellow colossus of British social realism, Ken Loach, he continues to make award-winning films into his eighties. Whereas Loach’s I, Daniel Blake won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Leigh took the Golden Shell at San Sebastián for Tender Loving Care, a film he says is ‘very likely’ to be his last. If this is to be his swan song, it’s a fitting final look at ordinary British life from one of its most extraordinary filmmakers. Set in the world of social work, Tender Loving Care centres on Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson, who welcomes her friend and colleague Amy (Kate O’Flynn). These thirtysomething women don’t have much luck with men, but they always have each other’s understanding and support. They also have Amy’s retired parents, Birdie and Geoff, played by Marion Bailey and Paul Jesson, whose concern about the direction of their lives is never intrusive. They represent the kind of loving, supportive relationship that Amy and Rosie might hope to find themselves one day. Together, they are among the most endearing characters Leigh has ever portrayed. Some may think this is Leigh going soft, particularly when contrasted with the eccentricities and contradictions of the central characters in Naked, Happy-Go-Lucky and Vera Drake. But being with Birdie and Geoff makes you want to drink a warm cuppa and cuddle up on the sofa. Perhaps this is the point Leigh has been making throughout his career: that, at heart, most people have good intentions,...

In Charlotte Regan’s delightful coming-of-age film Scrapper, an unprepared dad returns to London to connect with his tweenage daughter. This equally lovely, if tougher-edged coming-of-fatherhood drama from New York comedian-turned-filmmaker Jordan Firstman tells a similar tale with the same effervescent energy. It also offers a trip into New York’s hedonist nightlife scene with a cast of larger-than-life scenesters. All the fun of a big night out, no hangover.  Like Regan’s film, Club Kid has the cool breath of freshness on its side, with remarkable young acting performances and a writer-director-star who nails all three aspects of this funny, heady and tender film.  Young Brit Reggie Absolom gives a debut performance of miraculous naturalism. He plays the loveable Arlo, a clued-up 10-year-old Londoner whose mother has recently died. He’s left at club promoter Peter’s (Firstman) Manhattan apartment by his mum’s old friend (Barry’s Kirby Howell-Baptiste). They’ve never met but the queer thirtysomething Peter is his biological dad, thanks to a drugged-up nightclub tryst ‘a decade or so’ ago (hazy memories are a Club Kid motif).  Firstman’s script gives us that 2016 prelude in full with Arlo’s mum-to-be dropping so much London slang, Peter and his clubbing coterie quickly nickname her ‘Innit Babe!’. The club scenes are immersively staged in hip spots like Bushwick’s Market Hotel (‘Club Labor’ here) and at nomadic rave night Pit//Stop, cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra’s...

A two-and-a-half hour historical epic so good, you almost wish it was twice as long. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to describe La Bola Negra as both a landmark work belonging to a thrilling new wave of queer cinema and an old-fashioned foreign-language breakout sensation. Written and directed by brilliant Spaniards Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, aka Los Javis, it’s surely Oscars bound. Hopefully Hollywood types will take note of what can be achieved with $15 million and boundless ambition.  Majorly expanding on Alberto Conejero’s 2015 play The Dark Stone, La Bola Negra (‘the black ball’) spans three timelines. In 1932, Carlos (Milo Quifes), the young gay scion of an affluent Granada family, wants to join an exclusive club. Its committee vote by choosing a marble ball: white for yes; black for no. The film’s title will tell you how Carlos’s sexuality is viewed in this closed-off Catholic society.  In 2017 Madrid, twentysomething historian and blocked writer Alberto (Carlos González) is dealing with a lack of purpose, a spiky mum and waning self-esteem. His daily existence, lit up by occasional throwaway Grindr trysts, is sparked into life when the death of his grandfather sends him to northern Spain in pursuit of a mysterious inheritance. But it’s in the immaculate middle section set in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War that Los Javis’ tongue-in-cheek aspirations to ‘make the gayest war movie ever’ come into full focus. La Bola Negra opens with an operatically violent...

Being Heumann is inspiring on many levels: it tells a story most people don’t know, offers representational diversity many viewers never see, and treats its characters with a respect that remains rare onscreen. What’s too often missing, unfortunately, is the three-dimensional humanity that would elevate an undeniably admirable project into an artistically creative one. You can understand why Siân Heder chose to adapt a chapter in Judy Heumann’s life as her follow-up to the Oscar-winning CODA: simply put, Heumann – who used a wheelchair throughout her life after contracting polio as a toddler – was a remarkable person with a remarkable history. And what better bedrock can there be for a crowd-pleasing biopic? Most of the film is set in 1977, when Heumann (Ruth Madeley) is fed up: she’s been waiting years for Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act to be fulfilled. Disabled Americans are finally, legally entitled to curb cuts, ramps, interpreters, and other accessibility changes. But the politicians who can actually implement them – and most particularly Joseph Califano (Mark Ruffalo), the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare – simply aren’t interested. So Heumann decides it’s time to take control. She and her colleague Kitty Cone (Madeline Delp, lovely) organise a San Francisco sit-in with other activists that eventually gathers national attention, thanks to a young newscaster (Dylan O’Brien). The scenes in which the protesters have to design their own adaptations...

‘Are you not entertained?’ Russell Crowe’s Maximus bellowed to a leering Colosseum in Gladiator. Those blood-lusting crowds might have enjoyed ‘To Catch a Predator’, an NBC hidden camera show that lured pedophiles into the full glare of America’s TV screens in the mid-2000s. Primetime is never much interested in holding the rapt masses who lapped this stuff up to account, but it’s still a thriller that finds satire everywhere it looks. And as the show’s real-life circus master Chris Hansen, Robert Pattinson puts in his best performance in a golden year. Convincingly decked-out by production designer Alex DiGerlando, who remembers what 2004 looked like a lot better than most of us, its suburban, formica-clad kitchens are where the accused are unmasked and left to face their personal ruin by the slick, suited Hansen. ‘You see how this looks, right?’ he asks them – and it looks really bad. But the show’s gotcha M.O. becomes ever more questionable: fresh-faced wannabe actor Dan (a fabulous Skyler Gisondo) is recruited to entice and lure potential sexual predators out into the open. ‘Decoy Dan’ is groomed to attract the groomers. Even producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), a hard-nosed veteran untroubled by too many qualms, is queasy at the corruption of this young soul.   Director Lance Oppenheim, enjoying career lift-off with this and his Nathan Fielder collaboration You Can See Everything, has a keen eye for the venal, grasping world of primetime TV networks. Bathed in neon...

Few films arrive wearing as much visual flair as Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters. A splurge of colour, audacious costume and playful typography gives this fashion satire an unmistakable visual identity.  It’s a visual sugar rush; the kind of film you could daydream about for days. The story, sadly, leaves a fainter impression. Keke Palmer plays Corvette, an aspiring designer who runs the ‘Velvet Gang’ with Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige). The trio shoplift from Metro Designers, a luxury clothing chain run by Christie Smith (Demi Moore). When Corvette spots her own design in the shop, being sold by the woman at the top, the theft becomes personal. Who gets labelled a visionary, and who gets branded as the thief? That question gives Riley’s leftist satire its bite. Beneath the polished surfaces of luxury retail, underpaid workers’ voices are muffled by pounding music. Across branches, a vacuum device sucks the racks bare and sends them to China, where the factory workers who made the garments protest. The film blurs the line between criminality and capitalism, exposing an industry that profits from the very exploitation it hides behind the racks. Whatever you make of the story, the fashion sweeps the board as the main event. Shirley Kurata’s costumes are expressive enough to steal scenes, while the colour-coded store interiors and graphic titles give the film the feel of a mood board let loose. Almost every frame feels like a page torn from an eccentric fashion...

This exhilaratingly brilliant film might be stop-motion animation’s answer to The Odyssey. It’s another of those cinematic spectacles you walk away from wondering how they did it and feeling incredibly glad that they did.  Wildwood is Laika’s best film, no mean feat with classics like Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings behind them. Oregon’s answer to Aardman and Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon, the stop-motion studio dedicates itself to the craft pioneered by giants like Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen. Wildwood took a mindblowing 231 weeks to make but looks like it might have taken a thousand. Soaking up the detail of its hand-crafted worlds is an all-enveloping experience: from dark, Grimm brothers-esque woods and thunderous battles to the more relatable surrounds of a boho present-day Portland full of artisanal coffee shops and beard-and-beanie hipsters.  Somewhere in there is a sequence borrowed from Hitchcock’s The Birds, an early sign that director Travis Knight and screenwriter Chris Butler are about to one-up the scarifying shocks of Coraline with proper, 12A-rated perils. Crows gather on a Portland climbing frame as stubborn teenager Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) watches her baby brother, Mac, play. When he’s carried away by the birds to the nearby ‘Impassable Woods’, she’s off on a rescue mission, sweeping up her nerdy, plucky classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) in her wake. It’s everything her parents have warned her about, and all the legends in her...

Whether he’s mixing up Buzz Aldrin and Buzz Lightyear or WMDs and BLTs, Ali G has always been at his best when he’s been utterly ignorant but fantastically front-footed. So America’s endless cultural wars seem like the perfect place to parachute in Sacha Baron Cohen’s ’90s TV character. He is among friends. Written and directed by Baron Cohen, the results of this second Ali G movie are as scattergun as you might expect from Staines’s thinly sketched white-boy wannabe rapper. They’re also occasionally properly funny and often choke-on-your-popcorn disgusting. There are gross-out stunts here the Jackass crew would turn their noses up at. That Ali G is now in his fifties and still wearing the same wraparound shades and NBA gear oddly works in the film’s favour. The character has always been a deliberate pastiche of rap wannabes and now that he’s middle-aged too, his delusions are even sillier. With long-term girlfriend Julie (now played by Morgana Robinson), he’s struggling in the job market and running from his responsibilities as a dad-to-be. So when an old fax machine spits out a lucrative HBO contract offer for a third season of his TV show, he’s off to LA to seal a deal that’s very obviously two decades out of date. So, yes, Ali G: Who Iz I? is set in a world in which Alistair, as Julie endearingly calls him, has had an HBO run successful enough to warrant a second season. And one where he still thinks he’s Black after five decades on Earth. The plot, such as it is, is...