Our latest movie reviews

Misty Green is not, as they say, ‘likeable’. Not as a person, and not as a character. A B-list actress who believes she's an A plus, Misty is arrogant, irresponsible, and so prone to self-sabotage that we initially wonder if we're meant to root against her. But because she's imagined with so much regard by writer-director Chris Rock, and played with so much ferocity by Slow Horses’ Rosalind Eleazar, she is also spectacularly enthralling. We watch Misty Green on the edge of our seats, wondering where she will land even as we can guess at the likeliest trajectory.  Eleazar and Rock, however, manage to make a potentially clichéd story feel surprisingly fresh. He does it by openly acknowledging its depressing familiarity, through a lens of darkly wry wit. She does it by extraordinary force of focus and talent.  Misty is the sort of actor perpetually in demand at LA parties, which fools her into thinking the world is still at her feet. She is gifted, gorgeous, and, at nearly 40, a decade past her prime. She won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy in 2008, and now she's auditioning against young women whose parents loved her. That hurts, but she’s got bigger problems: she’s losing her free apartment (because her boyfriend's wife found her living there), her bipolar brother (Daniel Kaluuya, underused) seems increasingly unstable, and her reputation as ‘difficult’ has finally caught up with her. if there’s any justice, this will land Rosalind Eleazar on top of every casting director’s...

Movie hitmen don’t tend to come with complex motivations. They need the money. They had a lousy childhood. Or their beloved wife has died. Latif (Mahershala Ali), the hero of Bassam Tariq's Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, is indeed mourning his recently departed spouse. But it’s fair to say that he’s still the first assassin to be driven primarily by an urgent need for breastmilk. With his wife gone and his infant Aziza allergic to formula, he has to find a wet nurse, quickly. He rounds up his preteen son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) and his teenage daughter Fatiha (Adia), and they head to their family’s Houston mosque for help. But when the imam (Giancarlo Esposito) can't help, he runs into Mike (Laith Nakli), a mobster who thinks Latif owes him a favour. He’s calling it in now, by asking him to kill Pastor Hwan (John Cho). The gun-toting pastor is no angel, but he’s put himself in the mob’s crosshairs by publicly calling out their Muslim-themed porn business. As it happens, one of Mike’s actresses just had a baby, so she can help nurse. But that leads to more trouble, and soon Latif and his family are spending half their time trying to feed Aziza, and half their time dodging men determined to murder them. It’s a genre thriller, but Latif is no John Wick This isn’t the only overwhelming conflict they have to live with, though, because while Latif is a genuinely grieving widow, devoted father, and faithful Muslim, he's also a stone-cold killer. He'll swiftly remind you...

Every Jane Austen adaptation lives in the shadow of another. For Pride and Prejudice, depending on your vintage, it’s either the 1995 BBC one (Colin Firth in a lake) or the 2005 Joe Wright one (Keira Knightley in the rain). For Sense and Sensibility, it’s the elegant, witty 1995 Ang Lee-directed, Emma Thompson scripted-and-starring classic. This new take, by Blue Jean director Georgia Oakley, does more than enough to start casting shadows of its own. Following the bumpy path to true love are the Dashwood sisters, Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) and Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones). Marianne feels deeply and can’t help but express it. Elinor feels equally deeply yet can hardly bear to reveal it. After the death of their father, the Dashwood sisters and their mother (Caitríona Balfe) are left near destitute, with all their father’s estate inherited by his son (Tom Brooke), whose fabulously vile wife (Stacy Martin) guards their fortune with Smaug-like ferocity.  The Dashwoods move to a humble cottage in Devon, where the two eldest sisters yearn for love: Elinor for the jovial, gentle Edward Ferrars (George MacKay) and Marianne for the seemingly charming Mr Willoughby (Urchin’s Frank Dillane).  This Sense and Sensibility is in its element out in the elements Oakley’s version is more brooding than Lee’s, with wild, romantic landscapes playing a significant role in conveying all that stirs within the Dashwoods. Lots of Andrea Arnold-esque shots of sun-caressed faces, wafting grasses and...

Heart of the Beast features a dashing hunk with a great mane of hair, sparkling eyes full of careworn soul and a winning performance that conveys subtly shifting emotion with naught but the cock of his head. But enough about Uber, who plays combat service dog Odin. David Ayer’s latest also features the director’s old Fury star Brad Pitt as James Belmont, a bruised-hearted Green Beret who lost his entire company in Iraq and has since retired with his beloved German Shepherd, who lost a leg. The buddies didn’t just leave war behind; they’ve retreated from the rat race altogether, flying into the austere Alaskan wilderness in a Cessna and setting up camp next to an azure lake swaddled with ancient spruce. Of course, in these always-on times it’s impossible to grab a minute’s peace even in the wilds. Pitt’s Burn After Reading co-star JK Simmons is soon blundering into the midst of their wooded walk as camouflaged kayaker Watkins. He nearly gets his ankles shorn off by Odin for the imposition, but thankfully he’s not a Deliverance type. Instead, the men settle into fireside brown ales before the older gent paddles off in the morning, warning about a storm rolling in. Something you think a special forces guy would be on top of, but James seems caught out, suffering an exceedingly poorly timed health mishap as he soars above the maelstrom, plunging him and Odin into the frozen lake. Spun from a long-circulating Black List screenplay by debut feature writer Cameron Alexander, what...

Based on Salman Rushdie’s memoir of the same name and narrated by the novelist, Knife dives into the 2022 attempt on his life in a packed upstate New York amphitheatre. The brutal attack resulted in a prolonged recovery, with Rushdie losing the sight in his right eye and the use of one hand. Structured around his poet wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ video diaries from the hospital, Alex Gibney’s documentary serves as an intimate portrait of a celebrity author famous more for sensationalist headlines than even his era-defining literature. Opening with the stabbing, Knife plays out as a hallucinatory fever dream as the injured Rushdie looks back at the creative choices that lead him here. A brief flashback to his birth and upbringing in India is followed by his fame (and infamy) in the UK when his universally banned-and-burned novel The Satanic Verses invoked a fatwa (legal ruling) on on a point of Islamic law from Iran in lieu of his allegedly blasphemous retelling of Prophet Muhammad’s life. Workaholic documentarian Gibney – his next film is the four-hour-long Elon Musk doc – incorporates smartly curated archive material from that heated era that capture a younger Rushdie aggressively defending free speech and some scarily fascinating effigy-burning protests against him from the UK to Iran to Pakistan. The best archival bits humanise Rushdie as a man in hiding. It’s fascinating to see him in the ’90s, slouched in front of the telly in an undisclosed safe house and playing...

Ever felt like nobody can see you? That’s a daily reality for housewife Mona Friedman (Julianne Moore). She’s not literally invisible, mind you, but she’s constantly overlooked. Her kids barely register her existence, and people doing their shopping push her out of the way. At dinner, her husband and friends talk over her as if she’s not even there.  In Jesse Eisenberg’s wildly entertaining The Debut, Mona may have found the thing that makes people take notice: a role in a community theatre production. She has to audition for show director Jerry (Paul Giamatti), whom a fellow auditioner tells Mona is ‘the biggest name’ on the scene. When Mona gets the role, she’s thrust into the spotlight and forced to confront her demons to become a star. If she doesn’t want to face them? Too bad. Jerry’s going to push her to greatness, no matter the cost. Eisenberg paces the film in a way that perfectly reflects the nerves, preparation and giddy anticipation of the theatre scene. He’s proven his talent as a director twice previously (When You Finish Saving the World, which also starred Moore, and A Real Pain), but The Debut is his most accomplished film to date. It’s whip-smart and exceptionally funny. It’s whip-smart and exceptionally funny It’s impossible to talk about The Debut without talking about Moore. She’s been so great for so long, winning an Oscar for 2014’s Still Alice, and picking up multiple nominations through her 30-plus-year career. She has an inimitable ability to slip...

When times are tough, it’s always a comfort to know that somewhere in England’s west country a handful of animation geniuses are giving themselves backache crafting another wholesome stop-motion treat. And Aardman’s creations don’t come much more wholesome (or west country) than Shaun the Sheep, the adorable ruminant who first popped up in A Close Shave and is now onto his third – and funniest – big-screen outing. The little fella is on a solo tour that I, for one, hope never ends.   The Beast of Mossy Bottom has Shaun turning mad professor in the full Young Frankenstein mode. The Farmer has unwittingly stomped all over the flock’s prized pumpkin patch and Shaun has developed a quick-grow potion to return their veggies to their original state. One bottle-swap mix-up later and the Farmer is sprouting hairs in all directions and Mossingham has its own Bigfoot on the loose.  There’s a real genius to this kind of wordless storytelling Shaun creator Nick Park has long since vacated the director’s chair, and here the studio’s animators Steve Cox and Matt Walker fling sight gags, car chases, movie references, classic Aardman puns, and obscure references to overcomplicated British parking regulations at the screen almost as fast as you can absorb them. The hit rate is as high as you’d expect, bearing in mind it takes about a week to animate each one of them. Any kids in the audience will be left with the best kind of grounding in classic horror movies, including a Psycho...

The secretive world of sumo wrestling gets thoroughly demystified in this enthralling fly-on-the-wall documentary from Erik Shirai. The Japanese-American filmmaker has previous in exploring modern Japan’s relationship with its traditions: his 2015 doc took viewers into a 144-year-old saké brewery. This elegant follow-up humanises the incredibly famous but mostly hermetic figures who compete in the sport in eye-opening ways.  Although is it a sport? Or an art form? Spirit Weighs Nothing positions sumo more as a 1500-year-old ritual where sacrifice and hard work creates spiritual as well as physical strength. Sumo was once viewed reverentially as a Shinto ritual to ensure a good harvest, even a test of strength from the gods. These days, sumo fans present in much the same way as football supporters: fanatical and obsessive. It was once one sort of religion, now it’s another. Shirai embraces the best traditions of the sports doc, following a handful of established and wannabe stars from the Sakaigawa stable (or ‘heya’) in Tokyo over 12 months of training and competition. There’s the reigning champion Terunofuji, struggling to maintain his edge as osteoarthritis takes hold – yes, already – and 24-year-old rising star Hiradoumi, who could be the next major contender. Then there’s ‘the rookie’, sociable teenager Yonezawaryu, who is learning the art but questioning his path. An ill-fated bout with a close friend brings a sorrowful note to his quest for improvement. Overseeing...

‘It looks good, but scary it ain’t,’ was Time Out’s verdict on the very first console-to-cinema transplant of Resident Evil way back in 2002.  Twenty-six years, eight movies and approximately a billion splattery kills later, things haven’t changed all that much. The filmmaking has had an upgrade – from the journeyman efforts of Paul WS Anderson to the more elevated craft of Weapons and Barbarian’s Zach Cregger – but the new-look take on Capcom’s gory survival game is still more goofy and good-looking than actually frightening.   Our zombie-afflicted hero this time is Weapons’ Austin Abrams – who between this and the upcoming Whalefall, in which he gets swallowed by a sperm whale, is having the most gloopy breakout year in memory.  To say he is not in the ass-kicking Milla Jovovich mold would be understating it. His medical courier, Bryan, is closer to the second coming of McLovin in Superbad as he transports a top-priority organ container to Raccoon City General. As any gamer knows, awaiting him on his drive through the snowy forests of wherever-the-heck-we-are is a whole spectrum of gross-out monsters and apocalyptic mayhem, all courtesy of the nefarious Umbrella Corporation’s out-of-control bioweapon. For a zombie horror it moves at a leisurely pace. Cregger lets the peril unfold in a slow-burn sequence involving an infected woman tumbling over Bryan’s bonnet and who he, rather sweetly, tries to care for, ignoring the blood-soaked arm she keeps thrusting in his face....

The second half of Antonin Baudry’s two-film French historical epic (adapted from a Julian Jackson historical tome) ramps up the rollicking action spectacles. From the opening shot of tires crunching through the desert, which wouldn’t be out of place in a Mad Max film, the message is clear: this isn’t a polite teatime vision of World War II. It’s January, 1943. A tense and elegant cross-cutting sequence, typical of the pacy and propulsive storytelling as a whole, shows the different kinds of battles the French are waging across the world. In occupied Lyon, a French resistance wireless specialist Livia (Anamaria Vartolomei) is watching a man in a phone box. In the Libyan desert, Gaullist general Philippe Leclerc (a never more dashing Niels Schneider) leads a military ambush.  Meanwhile, from the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) and Franklin D Roosevelt (Campbell Scott) have requested the company of Free French leader Charles de Gaulle (Simon Abkarian), whose rise to power as figurehead for the resistance formed the basis of film one.  They want him to bury the hatchet with Vichy General Giraud (Thierry Lhermitte), the better to direct all energy at the common Nazi enemy. Offering light relief, in the mode of two bitchy aunties, Churchill and FDR speak in bon mots, a raised eyebrow all but audible in their voices. ‘You’re like Frankenstein, afraid of his own monster,’ says the American president. He might have an ulterior motive for trying to...