IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU**** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Rose Byrne finally gets the starring role worthy of her talent in writer-director Mary Bronstein's scabrous dramedy IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU.  It's the film that Marielle Heller's NIGHTBITCH could have been if it had only had the courage.

Byrne plays a woman struggling to reconcile herself to what is effectively single motherhood of a child with a severe eating disorder.  Her apartment has been flooded, she's living in a crappy motel, she is condescended to by her daughter's therapists, and pretty much every man she encounters is demanding that she "just handle it" because THEY have work to do. No matter that she herself works full time.  

Naturally, Byrne's character turns to self-medication and occasionally screaming into pillows to get through both day and night. But there are no easy answers. Even as we build to a dramatic spontaneous medical intervention we know that the daughter isn't suddenly cured, and just because the husband finally came home it doesn't mean that our protagonist is finally understood or supported.

There are many things to love about this movie.  The performances are uniformly superb, and Byrne deservedly won the Silver Bear at Berlin for hers.  In smaller roles I was genuinely surprised at how good both Conan O'Brien and A$AP Rocky were. Perhaps it's no coincidence that they both play the only men who show some empathy and put down boundaries.  Indeed A$AP Rocky's motel worker Jamie may well be the moral centre of the film, even as he's ordering a brick of cocaine.

Behind the lens I loved Mary Bronstein's script and most of her directorial choices. (She also plays the deliciously passive-aggressive Dr Spring.) She absolutely skewers the delusional myths that society pedals young girls and women.  The sick daughter hankers after a hamster because she has a vision of it being her fluffy best friend as is then horrified when it's as scared and anxious as she is.  One of Byrne's patients is a young mother who secretly started seeing a therapist when she fell pregnant and is petrified that she will do violence to her child.  And Byrne's character herself is a wide gaping hole of guilt and shame at her prior choices around motherhood and whether she is cut out to be a mother at all.  Society tells women that childbearing is inevitable and that the experience will be joyful. This film is about what happens when it isn't.

The only thing stopping me giving this film five starts is its running time. I think that when you have a film this deliberately claustrophobic in its concerns and shooting style - and so desperately, frustratingly, sad and angry - that there's a limit to what an audience can take.  If this film had been twenty minutes shorter it would have been perfect. That and taking out a final shot of the child which I found its only slight turn to mawkishness.

IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated R. It played Sundance and Berlin 2025.

DREAMS aka DROMMER*** - Berlin Film Festival 2025 Golden Bear Winner

The third part of Dag Johan Haugerud's trilogy, DREAMS (SEX, LOVE), is a slippery, nostalgic and occasionally hilarious movie about a teenager's sexual awakening. 

Johanne is a 17-year old schoolgirl who falls desperately in love or in lust with her new French teacher and inveigles herself into Johanna with an A's life.  They hang out together at the teacher's apartment and for much of the film we are unsure of what exactly happening. Is Johanne with an E just a naïve schoolkid over interpreting every act of kindness or is she being groomed by a teacher who loves basking in her student's attention. This latter theory is given more weight when we meet another of the teacher's ex-students, though an adult, who says "there are many of us".  At this point one wonders how the schoolgirl will react? Mope and sulk or erupt into violence. And I love how quietly ambiguous the film is and for how long it refuses to give any clear answers.  Even in a final scene with the schoolteacher it is unclear just how complicit she was in what happened and how we should interpret this teenager's passionate and perhaps imagined love affair.

All of our uneasiness and questioning is given voice by the two older women in Johanne's life - her mother and her grandmother. Indeed, it's worth noting that men are almost entirely absent from this story except as a rather banal looking boyfriend or a rather banal therapist.  These scenes of inter-generational tussling are often hilarious but also signal how we, as adults, seek to pigeon-hole and explain and exploit the complex and sometimes unexplainable feelings of teenagers. 

These discussions are narratively induced by the fact that Johanne wrote her experience of her love affair in a book that is apparently preciously brilliant, and then gave the manuscript to her published poet grandmother and then to her mother.  At first Johanne's mother thinks her child has been the victim of sexual abuse.  But she quickly moves to thinking that the brilliant manuscript should be published as a queer feminist coming-of-age story.  And in some ways the disagreement between mother and grandmother over whether to publish is far more about their own tussles when the mother was a child than about Johanne at all.  I point you to an hilarious argument over the movie FLASHDANCE!

Ella Overbye gives a startlingly assured turn as 17-year old schoolgirl Johanne but all the female performances in this film are strong. I also loved the production design and directorial choices that show us cosy interiors with a romantic gauzy haze and feature endless beautiful architectural shots of staircases.

But this film is not without its flaws. I know that it needs to allow us into Johanne's experience of her love affair but the voiceover of banal teenage thoughts became rather tedious. I found myself clinging on for the comedy scenes between mother and grandmother. I also didn't find her voiceovers to be preciously brilliant (as described by them and by an editor) but to be the usual self-involved meanderings of a teenager.  Was this the point? Was it satire?  It was nonetheless boring for that.

DREAMS aka DROMMER has a running time of 100 minutes. It won the Golden Bear at the 2025 Berlinale.

BLUE MOON***** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Ethan Hawke (TRAINING DAY) gives his career-best performance as the charismatic but despairing lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater's latest film, BLUE MOON.  

The entirety of the film takes place in the iconic Broadway restaurant Sardi's lending the film the air of a filmed play, but no worse for that.  This is because Hart's kinetic wit and a clever use of different sections of the restaurant keep us enlivened and riveted.

The entire movie also takes place on a single evening in the early 1940s.  Hart's old composing partner Richard Rodgers is debuting his latest musical with his new lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II. Just this little thing you may have heard of called Oklahoma!  Hart is in despair because he recognises that the musical will be a smash hit - bigger than anything that he wrote with Rodgers - and also that it's not very good.  He is also in despair because both of his loves are unattainable.  

The first of these loves is the beautiful 20-year old college girl Elizabeth Weiland (Margot Qualley - THE SUBSTANCE).  Elizabeth uses Hart for his connections and basks in his flattery but has no real interest in him.  The idea that they could ever be a real couple is a delusion that Hart knows is a delusion but indulges all the same.  Their scenes snap and fizzle in the same way that gossip between young female best friends snaps and fizzles.  Hart feels more like a gay best friend than a putative lover. The inevitable blow is well telegraphed and (literally) pathetic.

The second, and more significant unattainable love is that of Hart's friend and long-time collaborator Richard Rodgers. Their scenes are far more delicate and heart-breaking  than those between Hart and Elizabeth because the love has lasted longer and the break-up was more devastating.  Andrew Scott's Rodgers is a man with incredible respect for Hart as a lyricist, and his evident love for the man is signalled in every look and line. But Rodgers is also a man who has lived with the pain of being let down and let down again by an alcoholic and who cannot bear to see Hart himself more.  It's a performance of rare subtlety. In the wrong hands their scenes could have been soapy and melodramatic.  But the genuine love and hurt and need for self-protection are telegraphed with a delicacy and tenderness that moved me greatly.

I cannot speak highly enough of a film that will has the confidence to sit comfortably within its single location, that allows Rodgers to be the quiet straight man to Hart's brilliant and performative showboat, and that trusts its audience with its Easter Eggs - the inspiration for E.B. White's Stuart Little, or a cameo from Little Stevie (Sondheim).

Kudos to all in front of the camera but most of all to Robert Kaplow (ME & ORSON WELLES) for a script of rare insight and humanity.

BLUE MOON has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated R. It had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

HOT MILK** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

HOT MILK is the directorial debut from screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (IDA) based on a novel by Deborah Levy.  Fiona Shaw gives a characteristically superb performance as a narcissistic manipulative mother, Rose, who may or may not be faking her inability to walk to keep her only daughter, Sofia, captive.  Sofia is in her mid-20s and while mother and daughter do seem to have genuine affection for each other, the narrative arc of the film is seeing Sofia slowly embracing her suppressed anger at her mother's constant passive-aggressive criticism and unwillingness to embrace the very expensive medical treatment they have come to Spain for.  We are meant to read this journey to action as being mediated through Sofia's sexual awakening by Vicky Krieps' vulnerable but charismatic boutique owner. Sadly there isn't enough meat on the bones of the character development or plot in this 90 minute film that feels 120 minutes long.  In particular, the side-quest to Athens and a final dramatic showdown seem insufficiently explored or signalled.  I feel really sorry for the talented young actress Emma Mackay (Sex Education) who is let down by a film too thin for her talents, and within which the only real star turn goes to Fiona Shaw.  

HOT MILK is rated R and has a running time of 92 minutes. It had its world premiere at Berlin 2025.

LURKER** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

LURKER is the derivative and directionless directorial debut of screenwriter-producer Alex Russell (The Bear, Beef) whose underwritten screenplay lets down its talented young cast.

It's a story that we have seen many times on screen, typically done better, from ALL ABOUT EVE to THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY. A slightly creepy acolyte of a charismatic star becomes a cuckoo in the nest, usurping the places of the hitherto best friends and ultimately of the star themselves.  In LURKER, the star, a feckless young musician called Oliver, is played by the charismatic young British actor Archie Madekwe, who has graduated from usurped friend in SALTBURN to object of attraction here.  His stalker, Matthew, is played by Theodore Pellerin, all innocent, voluble face and seething jealousy.

Over the course of the film we see the star, Oliver, quickly pick his lurker, Matthew up, and make him Instagram-famous. Of course, when Oliver and his crew then turn their attention to Matthew's colleague Jamie, Matthew quickly becomes violently possessive.  Only Oliver's solo female friend Shai (played beautifully by Havana Rose Liu) is on to Matthew from the start.

The performances are all good, and there are some genuinely hilarious moments of Entourage-style bros hanging out and social satire of vapid, narcissistic stars. But I felt like Alex Russell didn't have the courage of his convictions or the willingness to push the film into more edgy psycho-sexual areas. The result was a film that kind of meandered its way into an ending that felt - dare I say it - derivative of HBO's awful TV series The Idol.  In that show we spent a lot of the episodes thinking the star was captive to the lurker only to find out that it was the lurker who was being exploited all along.  I don't know who wrote which ending first, but needless to say that this LURKER felt like a stitched together version of so many similar films and shows that I was never surprised by it and never entranced by it. 

LURKER has a running time of 100 minutes. It played Sundance and Berlin 2025.

THE THING WITH FEATHERS**** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Whether or not you enjoy writer-director Dylan Southern's new film THE THING WITH FEATHERS will probably depend on how far you buy into his visual rendering of the high concept at the heart of the beautiful book upon which it was based.  Because novelist Max Porter chooses to tell the story of a grieving widower and his two small sons by imagining their grief as a large black crow who pokes, prods and even punches them into accepting their devastating loss.  What can be imagined from the page often appears clunky or laughable on screen and I was desperately worried that seeing a man-sized crow with a thick Northern accent wouldn't work. But I am delighted to say that for me, at least, it really did.

I found myself deeply engaged with this small family in its brutal fight for survival.  Benedict Cumberbatch is in almost every scene and perfectly embodies a dad who wasn't hands on before his wife's death and struggles to navigate family breakfast. And what superb work by casting director Shaheen Baig to find two young boys - Richard and Henry Boxall - to play the two sons -  who are rambunctious and confused and sad and angry and tender by stages.

Southern's script, closely following the book, captures the banal and sometimes insulting cliches of the grief industry and the well-meaning but prying acquaintances.  How many times was Cumberbatch's dad asked "how he was doing?" How does one even put it into words?  But these tone-deaf inquiries are balanced by Sam Spruell's cameo as a caring brother, Vinette Robinson as a good friend, and of course, Crow, voiced by David Thewlis - masterful as always.

I came through the film feeling both that I really knew and cared for this family, and also that I had seen a raw and vulnerable exploration of grief. The book is wonderful and this film probably comes as close as one can to translating it to the screen. 

THE THING WITH FEATHERS has a running time of 98 minutes. It played Sundance and Berlin 2025.

LA CACHE aka THE SAFE HOUSE**** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Writer-director Lionel Baier's LA CACHE is by turns a delightful, whimsical comedy and an increasingly profound discourse on trauma and co-dependence.  Based on the memoir by artist Christophe Boltanski, it tells the story of a multi-generational family living in a ramshackle apartment in central Paris during "les evenements de 1968" with flashbacks to 1942.

The family is led by the indomitable matriarch known as The Hinterland, played beautifully by the iconic Liliane Rovere. She smokes like a chimney, self-mythologises her childhood in Odessa, and her many lovers while a dancer in a Ballets-Russe style company.  She casually asks her young great-grandson if he wants a cigarette; flips the bird to her stuck up neighbours; and feeds her grandchildren as a mother hen.

Next we have grandma and grandpa - the former a fearless social documentarian who drives the family around in her crazy Citroen - the latter an anxious and kindly doctor.  

And then we have their three sons - a struggling artist - an academic - and an activist journalist - who is himself father to the young charismatic kid through whose eyes we see much of the early parts of film.

For the first half hour, LA CACHE plays like a cross between THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and a Michel Gondry film. Full of marvellous production period detail, zany costumes, zanier characters, all with their own particular neuroses. Just as I was starting to tire of its arch style, the film pivoted to something darker and more complex, a turn similar in itself to Wes Anderson's greatest film, GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL.

We realise that grandpa isn't just anxious, he has PTSD from his experiences in WW1 and WW2.  We realise that the kids aren't just co-dependent in their reluctance to leave their familial enclave, but find in it a genuine refuge and a literal safe house.  We realise innocent little posters telling residents not to play ball in the courtyard can soon escalate into far more sinister interdictions. And that snobbish neighbours can have far more sinister intentions.

I loved the careful and deliberate layering of motifs and emotions building to two pivotal scenes - one in which we flashback to a husband and wife in 1942 - and one in which grandpa explains to a surprise guest what his words meant to him in that dark time. It takes real chutzpah to try and shift tone from comedy to profundity but I feel that Lionel Baier absolutely pulls it off. Indeed the more I think about this film, the more genuine pathos I find in it, and the more hilarious lines I remember.  If you have watched it, just remember, "Cuba does not yet have this technology"!

LA CACHE has a running time of 90 minutes and had its world premiere today at the Berlin Film Festival.

THE LAST SHOWGIRL***

THE LAST SHOWGIRL is a slight film at just shy of 90 minutes and slighter still in plot and characterisation.  The pull is that Pamela Anderson gives a lovely performance as an ageing Vegas showgirl called Shelly whose long-running and old-fashioned Revue is being shut down.  This prompts her to attempt to connect with her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd).  Hannah is resentful that Shelly put her "nudie show" ahead of being a good mother, but Shelly rightly points out that she was doing the best with what she had. It's an exchange that drips with sincerity from Anderson's Shelly but Lourd is just not giving anything as her scene partner.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a script that never surprises, Shelly is more of a mother to her "found family" - two younger dancers played beautifully by Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song. All three have to some extent bought into Shelly's myth of following one's passion and being a dancer, but in a brief and heartbreaking scene, Shipka's character hints at what happens when you take on an unconventional job to your family's disapproval. We feel that the younger girls may have a future, but what of Shelly? She shouts to an uncaring but honest producer (Jason Schwartzman) that she's 57 and beautiful but we know her career is basically done.  Is her delusion dancing on stage any better or worse than that of her best friend who waitresses and gambles and is now homeless? Jamie Lee Curtis was nominated for a Bafta for her role, and it's vulnerable and bold, but as with so much of this film never really moved beyond the obvious.  I just wanted more depth from Kate Gersten's script and more from the lo-fi direction from Gia Coppola.

THE LAST SHOWGIRL is rated R and has a running time of 88 minutes. It played Toronto 2024 and was released in the USA in December 24.  It will be released in the UK on February 28th 2025.

SLY LIVES! AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS*****

Questlove returns to our screens with another banging music doc, and the second this month, with his investigation of the genius that is Sly Stone.  We begin in the 60s in the Bay Area where this gangly multi-talented multi-instrumentalist is DJ'ing across genre-lines. Pretty soon Sly forms a band that will cross colour and gender-lines and make some of the most iconic funk tracks of the late 60s and early 70s. These are tracks that suffused by childhood on my parents' vinyl and then dominated the airwaves when sampled by the artists who decorated our walls and filled our bedrooms in the 80s - from Prince to Public Enemy.

Musical talent from Andre 3000 to Chaka Khan to Nile Rodgers to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are on hand to tell us just why Sly and the Family Stone's tracks were so gripping and so continuously influential. They are interspersed with archive footage of the band rehearsing and playing, and contemporaneous interviews with Sly. We see a man who is evidently a musical genius and demanding of his collaborators.   A man whose progressive message and musical style were overtaken when the 70s turned bad.  And a man who ultimately wasted his talent on decades of drug abuse.  He could have become an influential producer himself - like Nile Rodgers. 

Questlove's message is ultimately hopeful. Sly Lives! through every artist influenced by him today.  But I wasn't convinced by his thesis that there is something uniquely difficult and burdensome about black genius. The film argues that black artists are disposable commodities for a cruel entertainment industry and still predominantly white audience.  But having just watched heartbreaking documentaries about Boyzone and Robbie Williams (and I am NOT claiming equivalence of genius), I think the perils and pitfalls and exploitation are endemic in the industry no matter the colour of the artist.

SLY LIVES! AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS has a running time of 112 minutes. It was released on Hulu earlier this week.

BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY****

First the irritating stuff.  Why oh why must London-set dramadies always be set among the 1 percent? Because let's be clear, most newly widowed mothers don't go back to work for a rebrand. They go back to work because they are financially insecure.  Most of them don't live in lavish picture-perfect Hampstead houses and have two kids in private school.  Most can't afford a full-time nanny. And most can't just waltz back into the same job they had a decade prior.

Second irritating point.  Renee Zellwegger.  The whole awkward tampon up the arse walk. The gurning.  The ditziness that is impervious to ageing and wisdom. The fact that she seems to have an endless stream of handsome men declare their underlying love for her.

Okay so that's two pretty major problems with this film.  BUT I still enjoyed it!  Why? Because author and screenwriter Helen Fielding has something moving and hopeful to say about grieving a loved one and about emotional growth.  We see Bridget as a widow navigate grief with her two small children, have a passionate summer fling with a hot younger man (The White Lotus' Leo Woodall) and then form a more mature attachment with her son's teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).  I believed in her grief, her joy, her contentment. Because Renee Zellwegger is actually a good actress when given something meaningful to do.  

And what of the emotional growth? Well that's all on the part of Hugh Grant's delicious rake Daniel, who comes to the realisation that he ought to forge a relationship with his teenage son. He has all the best lines and provides all of the film's comedy. Oh, except for a really superb cameo from Isla Fisher. Renee's prat falling does NOT count. (Shirley Henderson and the other best mates are all sadly underused.)

BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated R. It is in cinemas in the UK and on Peacock in the USA.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT*****

I am very late to watching ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT but I can confirm that all of the good things you heard are true.  Payal Kapadia's second feature is a beautifully observed, delicate, emotionally impactful story of three women who comfort and support each other in contemporary Mumbai.  They embody Durkheim's industrial ennui, unnoticed and under appreciated cogs in a brutal wheel of commerce and onward development.  This shows on their faces, darker-skinned than Bollywood heroines. In a funny and cathartic scenes they deface a billboard showing a shining vision of India's middle class dream - light-skinned and affluent.  Despite being professional women, this comfortable picture of a conventional family unit is something denied to them. Especially to Chhaya Kadam's Party who is desperate to save her home from developers when she has basically no property rights. 

But it is Kani Kusruti who anchors the film with her role as Prabha, an earnest small-town girl desperately lonely in arranged marriage with absentee husband.  Prabha's narrative arc will see her work through those frustrations and emotions with a touch of magic realism. It's no surprise that this happens when she is away from the City and grounded in village life.

Prabha is shocked at her friend Anu (Divua Prabha) an affair, but Anu's sex positivity is a breathe of fresh air in contrast with Prabha, as well as her ability not to over-complicate having an affair across religious lines in Modi's India. It's also a breath of fresh air to see a woman being pleasured in any kind of cinema let alone Indian cinema.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT has a running time of 118 minutes. It played Cannes, Toronto, Telluride and London 2024. It is available to stream.

SEPTEMBER 5*****

SEPTEMBER 5 is a stunning film depicting the horrific and murderous attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. Where Kevin Macdonald's superb and comprehensive documentary ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER gives us all the angles and the whole story, this new film tells the story from the perspective of the ABC sports journalists who were in the Olympic Village.  As it happened, this was the first Olympics that took advantage of satellite broadcasting to bring live coverage to the world.  As a result, this was the first terrorist attack broadcast live to the world - well before Mumbai or 9-11.  And it created both iconic images which are used as live in this film - but also deep moral questions about how far live coverage enables and recruits for terrorists.

As the film opens we are in the dark, claustrophobic ABC sports-room recreated by director Tim Fehlbaum in precise detail.  The journalists hear shots fired and suddenly realise they are in the midst of an attack.  They have to figure out how to wheel heavy camera equipment out to the village to shoot footage of the apartments where the Olympians are being held.  And they have to wrestle satellite slots to broadcast what they have.  In a powerful and pivotal performance, Leonie Benesch (THE WHITE RIBBON) plays a young German journalist who has to become an impromptu translator, listening in to police radio and local news reports.  Meanwhile, the always brilliant Peter Sarsgaard plays the Sports-journo boss who has to wrestle with his home news team who argue that mere sports reporters are out of their depth, and retain control of "his" story.  

There are two iconic and notorious moments. The first is when the journalists realise that the terrorists are actually watching their footage, and can see German cops attempting a rescue operation, because no-one switched off the TV feed to the apartment block. It's then that we get that iconic image of the hooded terrorist looking out of the apartment window and straight down the barrel of the TV camera.  The second iconic and notorious moment is when an ABC journalist (played brilliantly here by John Magaro) chooses to relay an unconfirmed report that all the sportsmen have been released alive and well. He wants the scoop. Simple as. 

Kudos to Fehlbaum, his production team and in particular his editor Hansjoerg Weissbrich, for creating a film of such taut, spare, suspense and high stakes.  The look and feel of it take you right into 1972 and into the fast-paced need for judgment.  It gives you sympathy for real people making tough choices in uncharted territory. Most of all, I loved the way in which the real footage of on-air broadcasts was seamlessly woven into the fictional recreation. So you can see Magaro's character speaking apparently to an on-air presenter and that presenter relaying the information he has been given. It's a masterclass of editorial brilliance.

SEPTEMBER 5 is rated R and has a running time of 95 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and Telluride 2024. It was released in the USA on January 17th and in the UK on February 6th.

THE ORDER****

I bloody love the films that Justin Kurzel makes.  They focus on disturbed and disturbing people committing or manipulating people to murder.  They feature spare stark scripts and searing brutal performances. And long-time collaborator and DP Adam Arkapaw often sets the moral corruption of man against a backdrop of stunning landscapes.  SNOWTOWN, MACBETH and most recently NITRAM gave us character portraits of tortured evil.  Kurzel's latest film, THE ORDER, casts that character study within a police procedural.

We are in early 80s small-town mid-western America and this film is based on a real-life story.  The Feds are on the trail of a young charismatic neo-Nazi who is orchestrating a series of bank robberies to fund his war on America.  His foundational text is the same one that inspired the Jan 6 insurrection.  Nicholas Hoult is the cult-leader Bob Mathews - handsome and convincing.  Mathews is sinister in how low-key he is but also how swiftly he can whip up a mob.  Jude Law continues to give career-best performances in his middle-career - following his turn as a truly sinister Henry VIII in FIREBRAND - with this self-effacing performance as a decent but scarred and often ill-judged Fed called Terry Husk.

Screenwriter Zach Baylin (CREED III) crafts a spare and slowly-ratcheting anxiety-inducing script.  The pivotal relationship is between Husk and Mathews who contain enough humanity to somehow not be able to take that pre-emptive shot. But I also loved the scenes between Hoult's Mathews an his father, a David Duke type figure played convincingly by Victor Slezak.  

THE ORDER plays like an old-fashioned police procedural, much as the recent JUROR NO 2 (also starring Hoult) played like an old-fashioned courtroom drama. I am here for it. I love the feeling of being in a handsomely-made, well-played, slow-burn, patient, unflashy, grown-up thriller.  There is nothing not to like about this film.

THE ORDER played Venice and Toronto 2024 and is available to stream on Amazon Prime. It is rated R and has a running time of 116 minutes.