Jeremy Allen White

The Iron Claw

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Kevin flies through the air towards an opponent in the ring

The family is a cult and the cult a family in the films of Sean Durkin. After Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest, The Iron Claw continues Durkin’s excavations with a biopic of the Von Erichs, a famous wrestling clan whittled away by a tragic curse. After a quick black-and-white preamble sketching paterfamilias Fritzā€™s own career as a fighter who failed to win the big prizes, Durkin goes curtain-up on the era of the retired fighter’s sons, the sun-kissed 1970s and beyond. Fritz, now a ballsy uncompromising martinet of the old school, is in charge of training his boys and of the wrestling franchise they fight in. By this point the family … Read more

The Rental

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Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Dan Stevens and Jeremy Allen White

Take your pick ā€“ The Rental is a deliberately confounding amalgam of genres or a film that canā€™t work out what it wants to be. It starts out looking like one of those cabin in the woods things, and we meet two couples ā€“ Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Michelle (Alison Brie), Josh (Jeremy Allen White) and Mina (Sheila Vand) ā€“ as theyā€™re arriving at a secluded and fabulous place by the coast, complete with ocean view and hot tub. They also have a dog in tow, which the rules of the rental explicitly forbid. But theyā€™re entitled ā€œwhite privilegeā€ kind of guys and so those rules donā€™t apply. Actually, one of them, Mina, isnā€™t white … Read more