Our latest movie reviews

If you’re feeling a touch downbeat about the state of the world, Eugene Jarecki’s (Why We Fight) searching but sympathetic doc about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not lift your spirits. With fly-on-the-wall footage, some extraordinary talking-head interviews, unexpected cameos (Lady Gaga, Pamela Anderson) and a sense of moral outrage, the American filmmaker takes on – and down – a global system of power that should worry the hell out of us all. Jarecki’s film, a conspiracy thriller in documentary clothing, provides a corrective to the public image of this deeply polarising figure, showing Assange as a warrior for transparency whose intelligence leaks embarrassed powerful national interests and who paid a terrible price for it.  We see Wikileaks growing from a small team led by the determined, spiky Australian as it broke through in 2007 by releasing US military footage of an Apache gunship gunning down unarmed civilians and Reuters journalists in Iraq. The viral video, dubbed ‘Collateral Murder’, turned the organisation into a name that everyone had heard of, even if they couldn’t quite pinpoint its exact aims. Ambiguity grew, fuelled when Assange was charged with rape in Sweden and hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The women he was accused of assaulting appear incognito here, revealing that the Swedish authorities pressed charges against the wills of the victims.  But the Wikileaks of The Six Billion Dollar Man is a more considered and journalistic...

Aside from an overlong film, there’s little more dull than hearing some overprivileged critic whining about film length. After all, an extra helping of 3D-enhanced escapism measured in hundreds of millions of dollars in bleeding-edge effects: what’s not to love? With James Cameron serving it up, it’s like complaining about a Michelin-starred chef adding four courses onto their degustation menu, no extra charge.  Forgive me, then, for being that critic but if ever a movie could give your eyeballs gout, Avatar: Fire and Air is that film. At three hours and 17 sometimes spectacular, occasionally stultifying minutes (two more than Schindler’s List), your mind will struggle not to wander as human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his blue clanspeople tackle new-yet-entirely-similar threats in a straining sequel that again zeroes in on Pandoran whale juice as its McGuffin. You will try to make it through this movie without needing a pee. You will not succeed.  Unlike the first two Avatars, which even haters would concede were epic journeys of discovery, with Cameron as an attentive guide to a dazzling alien universe, a sense of familiarity kicks in from the opening 3D shots of a guilt-ridden Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) soaring through the floating Hallelujah Mountains on a banshee. The death of his brother Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in Avatar: The Way of Water will send him off on his own redemption arc, one of a few half-hearted story progressions in a movie that’s largely...

American cinema’s fake-it-til-you-make-it brigade – Catch Me If You Can’s Frank Abagnale Jr, Moses Pray in Paper Moon, Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, Uncut Gems’ Howard Ratner, Barry Lyndon and all those other hustling antiheroes – has a dazzling new addition. But, with his skittish chutzpah and pathological lack of self-doubt, Timothée Chalamet’s ever-calculating ping pong player Marty Mauser has something most of those others lack: real talent to back up the front.  In Josh Safdie’s sports movie-cum-crime caper, Marty is a gifted but impoverished ping-pong player who’s only an inch or two from conquering all. By the terms of his own cutthroat world, he’s a loser who lives within touching distance of glory. One more push could make all the difference. Or get him killed.  Safdie, who co-writes with Uncut Gems’ Ronald Bronstein, spins this sorta-kinda true story into a mile-a-minute affair with a twinkle in its eye. (Marty is based on late ’40s table tennis champion Marty Reisman, whose nickname, ‘the Needle’, spoke to his jabbing wit as much as his wiry frame.)  And what a confederate Safdie has in Chalamet. The Dune star has been immodestly talking up his performance on the film’s press tour and, to borrow from Tropic Thunder, it seems a lot like a case of not dropping character until the DVD commentary. And let’s pray there is one because there’s a lot to unpack in this puckish figure whose pioneering outlook is articulated by Daniel Lopatin’s synth score and some ’80s...

History’s most devastating crises are often defined by the suffering of a single child. For the Vietnam War, the fleeing figure of Kim Phuc (‘Napalm Girl’); for Gaza, that voice belongs to six-year-old Hind Rajab. Tunisian writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama, The Voice of Hind Rajab, takes us onto the frontlines on January 29, 2024, when Hind Rajab and her family came under fire from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Roughly 335 bullets hit the vehicle, killing six of her family members and leaving her to make a series of emergency calls until her death was confirmed 12 days later. Ben Hania makes the daring choice to use these blood-curdling recordings as the spine of her film, expanding the back-and-forth with Palestinian actors playing the roles of Red Crescent dispatchers. Even with Hind’s mother’s blessing, some may question the film’s rapid 18-month turnaround, but in the context of atrocities in Gaza, urgency feels not only justified but essential. Its release during the ongoing crisis turns the docudrama into more than documentation, it becomes an act of intervention. Omar (Motaz Malhees), a wide-eyed Red Crescent responder, barely settles into his desk when he’s hit with a life-changing call. It’s the terrified voice of Hind Rajab. ‘Help me. I’m scared. Please come and get me,’ she pleads, flinching at nearby gunfire as she begs to be freed from the cocoon of mangled metal and deceased family members. Omar’s eyes flood instantly, as do those of his...

A delightful premise never fully comes to life in this sweet romcom, which is a real shame because it gets off to such a strong start. At a party to celebrate his impending grandchild’s gender reveal, elderly Larry chokes on a pretzel and dies. He suddenly finds himself in the afterlife, 50 years younger (in the shape of Miles Teller), and quite confused that ‘Heaven’ is like a big airport, where those who’ve recently popped their clogs are trying to decide where they want to spend eternity, with the help of an Afterlife Coordinator (Larry’s is played by The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randoph). Will they go for Paris World, Cowboy World, Studio 54 World, or for some reason, Smokers’ World? Before Larry can figure out where to travel, his wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) dies of cancer and joins him in the terminal. So now they can spend their death together…or they could, if it weren’t for the presence of Joan’s first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), who she hasn’t seen since he died in the Korean War. Does she stick with the man she grew old with or see what might have been if Luke hadn’t been taken from her? Lots to work with there, and director David Freyne gets plenty from it early on. The set-up is brisk and clear, so everyone’s dead and not loving it within about 20 minutes. Joan is torn between the familiar and the idealised. Larry is confused about how to seduce a woman he’s known for decades. Luke is feeling the pressure of being the perfect guy. It’s sparky, silly and...

Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World) understands something deep and complex about the human spirit. Sentimental Value proves it afresh, but with all the fangs and vanity of show business attached. The story mines the psyches of two sisters, Nora (Renate Reinsve, wound like a clock) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), when their mother passes and their estranged, egotistical father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) steps back into their lives. A once-famous filmmaker, Gustav now insists upon his rights to descend on their ancestral family home to make a new movie. Nora is a successful stage actor but a nervous wreck, carrying on an affair with her married co-star (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie), while Agnes, a mother to a young boy, seems better-adjusted but is deeply unsettled by childhood memories of being used in one of her father’s productions. Both were abandoned by Gustav when they were young, and have little patience with his demands on their time as adults.  It’s a slowly unfurling film, full of words and recriminations in the manner of Scandi master Ingmar Bergman, but with a good deal more dark humour. Gustav, for instance, typically tone deaf and self-absorbed, brings hilariously inappropriate DVDs to his grandson’s tenth birthday – including Gaspar Noé’s rape drama Irreversible. And since Gustav insists on casting Nora as her own grandmother in the film, and Nora resists, he turns to a Hollywood starlet (Elle Fanning) to play the part instead, igniting...

There have been better animated sequels and more epic ones, but has there ever been a fluffier follow-up than this bouncy, buoyant caper starring at least half the nature world? To Zootropolis’s bickering duo of frenemies-turned-partners, idealistic bunny cop Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and sly street fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), part 2 throws in a venomous pit viper called Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan) for slithering but cute sidekick antics and a message of prejudice-busting teamwork.  Gary’s gentle nature is wildly at odds with the lethal neurotoxins that course through his fangs, a neat central tension. The well-meaning serpent just wants a hug but stands to accidentally kill anyone who gets too close. Bateman and Goodwin are perfect as the snarky-and-sweet central duo, and Everything Everywhere All at Once star Ke ups the loveability levels in a voice cast that packs in cameos from Ed Sheeran, Dwayne Johnson and even Disney CEO Bob Iger (voicing weatherman Bob Tiger and presumably immediately ready to green light Zootropolis 3). Shakira returns too, to bash out a song as a pop star gazelle. The plot doesn’t measure up to the first Zootropolis’s ingenious Chinatown stylings, and younger viewers may need a grounding in noir storytelling to follow the action. But the quest for a McGuffin that will reunite Gary De’Snake and his ostracised viper brethren with their territorial birthright opens up a new map book to this colourfully imaginative world. The...

With Oasis, oversized clothes and outdoor raves all making a comeback, the ’90s revival is in full swing. The perfect time, then, for Portishead founding member (and frequent Alex Garland film composer) Geoff Barrow’s Invada Records to branch out into film – beginning with this tense, low-budget ’90s-set thriller.  The film starts promisingly, with a near-wordless 20-minute sequence intercutting a nocturnal rave with the aftermath of a woodland car crash that has trapped petty thief David (Prevenge’s Marc Bessant) in his upturned Austin Maestro. First-time director John Minton, best known for creating video backdrops for Portishead, Noel Gallagher, Peter Gabriel and others, juxtaposes the dunka-dunka bass with the silence of David’s post-crash predicament, and the rave’s lightshow with the car’s flashing warning lights, as Bessant struggles to extricate himself from the wreck. A violent encounter with a vicious German shepherd leads to a second collision, this time with a poacher – Sleaford Mods singer Jason Williamson in his acting debut – fed up with E’s and wizz-addled ravers swarming his hunting grounds, scaring his prey, and failing to take their litter home with them. You can’t help but feel that Ben Wheatley would have made more of the premise The stage is set for a tense two-hander, but screenwriter Rob Williams – whose comic book series Unfollow is being developed for HBO by Margot Robbie – fails to capitalise on the film’s early momentum, leaving Bessant and...

Shih-Ching Tsou, long the secret weapon of Anora director Sean Baker since the pair met on a filmmaking course in New York, gets her moment to shine in this solo directorial debut, a family drama. The connections don’t end there: the pair co-wrote this film and it’s very much in the spirit of Baker’s own 2017 gem The Florida Project, which Tsou produced. Oh, and Baker edits too.Left-Handed Girl pits a young girl’s naivete against the hard edges of adult life, zeroing in on the messy, tender dynamics of mother-daughter bonds. While Baker thrives on populating his worlds with narcissists and budding psychopaths, Tsou opts for a gentler touch, shaping a family drama where even the worst impulses are met with compassion. Shot on iPhones (just like Baker’s 2015 breakthrough Tangerine), the result is a gorgeously colourful Taipei-set film that threads drama, comedy and heart with the ease of her compatriot Ang Lee, landing as a rare ‘life sucks’ relationship drama with a genuinely uplifting afterglow. Told in a conventional arc, the action starts with Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) returning to the capital with her two girls: teenager I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and the irresistibly cute I-Jing (Nina Ye). Puppy-eyed I-Jing is the left-handed girl of the title, and she takes her grandfather’s berating of her ‘devil’s hand’ far too literally.  Left-Handed Girl threads drama, comedy and heart with the ease of Ang Lee She’s convinced her leftie is possessed and destined to do evil. Early dabbles in...

It’s weird, in the year 2025, that it seems necessary to point out that the Nazis were bad. But Nuremberg, an old-fashioned and satisfyingly complex morality tale in the guise of a courtroom drama and spy thriller, does that job in impressive style. Supercharged by James Vanderbilt’s smart script and snappy direction, and with an on-form cast, it plots a course through the immediate aftermath of World War II and into the legal nightmare of holding its German perpetrators to account.  If Russell Crowe seemed a cartoonish choice to play avuncular Nazi second-in-command Hermann Göring, he delivers his best performance since The Nice Guys a full decade ago, paradoxically dialling things back to prove that he’s not a faded force. Rami Malek returns to something like Bohemian Rhapsody form as the American psychologist, Douglas Kelley, sent to the Allies’ high security Nuremberg prison to evaluate him and his fellow Nazis.  Appearances are deceptive throughout this psychologically acute and entertaining dramatisation of the Nuremberg war trials of 1945. Göring seems jovial and harmless; Kelley seems in control of their sessions in the Nazi’s small cell. Straight-arrow American prosecutor Robert H Jackson (Michael Shannon) and his gin-sipping British counterpart (Richard E Grant) seem to have a copper-bottomed plan to send Göring and his fellow war criminals (including the deeply odious Robert Ley and Julius Streicher) to the gallows. ‘Eisenhower is not for hanging anyone without...