Da’Vine Joy Randolph

Eternity

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Joan with Larry and Luke

A supernatural comedy just like Hollywood used to make – that’s the big idea behind Eternity, Irish indie film-maker David Freyne’s arrival in the bigtime, a knowing nod to Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch with a touch of Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death thrown in for fun. To be fair to Freyne and co-writer Pat Cunnane, they don’t overdo the allusions, possibly to strangle compare-and-contrast criticism at birth. Though the plot – a recently dead woman is asked which of two men she wants to spend eternity with: her first love or her husband of many years – feels like it’s straight from the era of The Ghost Goes West and … Read more

Shadow Force

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Omar Sy points a gun while lying on the ground

Lacking the crackle and wit of the usually fairly mad Joe Carnahan movie, Shadow Force is full of charismatic performers angling for a moment in the sun. Which, for most of them never comes. Gunplay and banter are there, but they’re swamped by slack verbiage and scenes full of characters never properly introduced. So when the trademark Carnahan Big Finale arrives – guns blaze, wisecracks spark – ignition does not happen. It should be good, with its mix of Kill Bill, John Wick and Mr and Mrs Smith plotting. Omar Sy and Kerry Washington play Issac Sarr (codename Sombra) and Kyrah Owens (codename Ombra), two members of a crack black-ops squad who, years before … Read more

The Holdovers

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Mr Hunham teaching

It’s easy to see The Holdovers as Alexander Payne’s riposte to all the moaning that Martin Scorsese and a few other members of the old guard were doing not so long ago about the predominance of superhero movies and how, you know, they don’t make ’em like they used to etc etc. Payne has gone out and made one like they used to, a film set in 1971 attempting to look like a film from 1971 (right down to the “copyright MCMLXXI” buried in the credits) – grainy, human-focused, often ensemble works like American Graffiti or The Godfather or the entire oeuvre of John Cassavetes. The action is set at a fancy school … Read more