Month: May 2016

30 May 2016-05-30

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Marcelo Alonso and Robert Fariás in The Club

Out This Week The Club (Network, cert 18) Chilean film-maker Pablo Larraín’s seething drama is set in a remote safe house where a group of disgraced Catholic priests are living under the steely eye of capable nun Sister Monica (Antonia Zegers). Life is simple and ordered, with the only bit of excitement coming from the racing of the priests’ greyhound at a local track, though the priests themselves are symbolically watching the race from a distance, through binoculars. This cosy life of the exiled pariah changes when new priest Father Mathias (José Soza) arrives and, having been read the rules – no self-flagellating, no self-pleasuring, no contact with anyone outside – he resignedly settles in, complaining … Read more

23 May 2016-05-23

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Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant

Out This Week The Revenant (Fox, cert 15) Last year Alejandro González Iñárritu won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscar for Birdman. The gongs have clearly gone slightly to his head and he now thinks he’s Terrence Malick. If there’s one thing this thrilling, frequently brutal and historically fascinating film doesn’t need is slo-mo glides through the awesomeness of its natural beauties – grandiose waterfalls, snowy wastes, virgin forests and the like. But we get them anyway, and if you’re feeling gracious, you might take them as a palate-cleanser between attacks by Indians, bears and the elements as 1820s fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) fights his way from a severe ursine mauling … Read more

16 May 2016-05-16

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Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt

Out This Week The Big Short (Paramount, cert 15) What is a mortgage backed security, a sub-prime loan or a credit default swap? At an early stage in this hugely entertaining film about the financial crash of 2007, Ryan Gosling’s voiceover admits it’s confusing and exclaims, “so here’s Margot Robbie in a bubble bath to explain…” Cut to Margot Robbie up to her neck in suds, cradling a glass of champagne … “Whenever you hear the word ‘sub-prime’,” she tells us, “think ‘shit’…”. That’s The Big Short in a headline, a film unafraid to put on the brakes, wheel out a celebrity and roll out a colourful analogy – the chef Anthony Bourdain later … Read more

9 May 2016-05-09

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Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson in Room

Out This Week Room (StudioCanal, cert 15) Starting with 2004’s Adam & Paul, then continuing with Garage, What Richard Did and even in the comedic, less typical Frank, director Lenny Abrahmson has given us a series of intense psychological dramas examining human relationships under stress. Room continues the trend with a story about an abducted woman living in a shed with her son, he being the result of a rape by her abductor. The facts of the situation are dripped out in an un-explicatory way and keep things real, though it’s the current situation rather than the headline-grabbing aspects of the situation that fascinate Abrahmson: how the mother keeps her sanity; how she explains the … Read more

2 May 2016-05-02

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Hayato Ichihara and Lily Frankie in Yakuza Apocalypse

Out This Week A War (StudioCanal, cert 15) The Danes do Afghanistan in a bloody, tense drama that takes a left turn about halfway through. That’s after we’ve been given a long immersive bath in war at its foggiest, leadership at its most difficult, focusing on Pilou Asbaek’s company commander Claus Pedersen as he takes his men out on patrol after a particularly bloody IED incident has left one of them with no legs below the knee, and his men having shown little enthusiasm for the “rebuilding the country” speech Pedersen has just given. After this, it’s a fairly familiar, though undeniably suspenseful journey through the dust, the evasive looks of the locals and the first-meets-third-world … Read more