Film
Nick Hasted
No one was waiting for another Hellboy film, but here this rude, crude reboot is anyway, stomping all over Guillermo del Toro’s 2004 original with freewheeling energy. Based on Mike Mignola’s long-running comic about a grouchy demon summoned from Hell as a baby by Nazis, but raised to do monster-bashing good by adoptive dad Professor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane stepping into John Hurt’s ’04 shoes), this minor franchise has the advantage of existing outside Marvel and DC’s crowded universes.British genre specialist Neil Marshall draws deeply on Mignola’s stories. But where del Toro reverently Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was the fabled Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard who commented that country music is “three chords and the truth”. Rose-Lynn, the protagonist of Wild Rose, just happens to have the surname Harlan, and she has the “three chords” motto tattooed on her forearm. Singing country music is the only thing that has meaning for Rose-Lynn, a bossy, brassy 24-year-old Glaswegian single mother fixated on her dream of moving to Nashville and making a career in music. Only snag is, she has managed to blank out the whole motherhood aspect of the equation, and if she’s given it any thought at all Read more ...
Graham Fuller
There’s an admirable modesty in the way Jonah Hill has approached his first film as writer-director. The popular actor (Superbad, Moneyball, The Wolf of Wall Street) has taken a low-key indie approach to Mid90s, his gently humorous coming-of-age drama about a pint-sized 13-year-old, Stevie, who wills himself into a gang of older LA skateboarders. He’s played by Sunny Suljic, who’s as absorbed and absorbing here as he was in The Killing of a Sacred Deer.Stevie is an appealingly sweet kid with a big mop of hair and zero street wisdom. He’s first seen being beaten up by his older brother Ian ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The wilds of Maine have been favourite country for novelist Stephen King, and they form the setting for this new version of his 1983 supernatural thriller (previously filmed in 1989). Dr Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves his wife and two kids from big-city Boston and his stressful job as an ER medic to a rambling house in Ludlow, looking for more family time and a better quality of life. Dream on, doc.It all looks promising as the Creeds drive through winding, leafy lanes and admire the sprawling 50 acres surrounding their new abode. There’s a sudden menacing note, though, as the rural peace Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Italy has a romance with rural grit and innocence and – perhaps not surprising in a country where the links between village and city are still very strong: Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice) isn’t in any way derivative, but revisits some of the same territory as Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) and the Taviani Brothers’ Padre Padrone (1977) and Kaos (1984), all classics of the genre. These films share a worldview in which religious superstition, the cult of saints, a tradition of supernatural story-telling and the exploitation of the peasant class by the rich provide a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Finnish horror is a niche genre if ever there was one. Erik Blomberg’s directorial debut The White Reindeer is a seminal example, a beguiling, unsettling little film that’s two parts local colour to one part metaphysical thriller. Blomberg cut his teeth making documentaries (one of which is included as an extra in Eureka’s reissue) and if you’re curious to know about rural folk culture in 1950s Lapland, start here. Though set in what was then the present day, you sense that we’re watching a way of life that hasn’t changed in centuries. That Blomberg used a mostly non-professional cast and a Read more ...
Owen Richards
When Jason and Tracey were trying for a baby, the worst happened. Tracey was diagnosed with breast cancer, and although she eventually recovered, was unable to carry a child. For Jason, the answer was clear - as a trans man, he would become pregnant instead.The new documentary A Deal with Universe follows Jason and Tracey’s journey as they attempt to conceive. It might sound niche, but in reality, it’s a universal story of love and determination. Like many couples, they struggle with failed IVF treatments and miscarriages; Jason’s gender is almost an afterthought. Told through home Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The DC Universe continues to back out of its dark dead end with this satiric kids’ film about the other Captain Marvel. In reality sulky 14-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel), he stays a callow teenager inside when the magic word Shazam transforms him into an invincible superhero, a contrast which allows winning goofiness almost throughout.Drawing on the veteran character’s 2011 comic-book reinvention, director David F. Sanberg and screenwriter Henry Gayden slip between the origins of Batson and his eventual nemesis Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong) with sly sleight of hand, beginning with the Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
French director Jacques Audiard is a master at genre with a twist, most famously the prison drama A Prophet, but also a number of crime thrillers with atypical settings or themes, including The Beat that my Heart Skipped (classical music), Dheepan (political refugees) and Read My Lips (office politics). Audiard turns genre templates upside down, sometimes merges them, invariably with excellent results. Having now turned his attention to the western, it’s not surprising that he’s created one of the best I’ve seen for years. Based on Patrick DeWitt’ Read more ...
Graham Fuller
“Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you,” Al Roberts (Tom Neal) says in Detour (1945), as if his native pessimism and self-destructive choices had nothing to do with his inexorable descent into hell.Edgar G Ulmer’s minimalist film noir classic, which has been beautifully restored for this Criterion Collection release, tells a rancid tale. Roberts himself narrates it in an increasingly feverish voiceover. Early on, one of the flashbacks to his memories that comprise most of the movie, shows him as a talented pianist backing his singer girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake) in a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's all go – no, make that Van Gogh – when it comes to the Dutch post-Impressionist of late. Opening the same week as the Tate Britain's blockbuster exhibition about his years in London comes the artist-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel's biopic of the tragically short-lived artist, for which its star Willem Dafoe was an unexpected Oscar nominee last month for best actor. Ravishing to the eye as one might expect, and acted with a near-ferocious empathy by Dafoe (who, thank heavens, doesn't worry about an accent), the film as a whole is sure to divide opinion. Shot with a Read more ...
Tom Baily
At the start of Carol Morley’s noir mystery Out of Blue, detective Mike Hoolihan, bleary-eyed and slow, is carrying some burdensome weight. “This burger from last night is not sitting right,” comes the weary female investigator’s first line. Hoolihan’s fondness for late-night Louisiana diners does not prepare her well for the early morning murder call. Despite the ache, however, her indigestion is mostly a mental one. We see it in the face of Patricia Clarkson (in a strong, eerie performance) and her rumination-worn look, the creases of time etched under dark sunglasses. Hoolihan is so Read more ...