IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT**

Famed Iranian director Jafar Panahi's IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT works better as political discourse than as a film. What I mean by this is that it poses interesting questions about political trauma and culpability. But the high-concept set-up is just too outlandish and absurd, and the characters too much like ciphers, for us to be emotionally engaged by the content.

The film opens in contemporary Iran. Husband, heavily pregnant wife and child are in a car bickering, when the husband runs over something, and needs to pull into a garage. The schlubby middle-aged attendant, called Vahid, recognises the husband as a prison guard who tortured him and makes the absurd snap decision to abduct him.  The problem is that Vahid isn't actually sure that this was the guard, as he is relying on aural rather than visual memory. So he drives his captive around in a white van, drawing in a group of fellow ex-prisoners to try and identify the man and adjudicate his fate. They are more or less ordinary middle-class people, far out of their depth in this brutal situation.  

I think Panahi wants to show us how ordinary people are coerced and made complicit in autocratic regimes and lose their moral compass.  And the movie has its moments of dark comedy as well as a haunting and truly tragic ending, no matter how you interpret it. But it somehow didn't cohere for me. It was a film I more admired than enjoyed.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated PG-13.  It played Cannes 2025 where it won the Palme D'Or, and London 2025. It was released in the USA last October and in the UK last December.

SIRAT**

Frack me, SIRAT is a steaming pile of pretentious wank. I rarely agree with Peter Bradshaw's reviews in the Guardian but he was absolutely spot on in calling this the most over-rated film of 2025.  He wrote that the final part of this film descends into Monty-Python-esque absurdity and once you see that it's hard to unsee it. I felt that writer-director Oliver Laxe might have been trying to make some deep and meaningful point about the savagery of life but got lost up his own backside.  It's actually a real shame because Laxe clearly knows how to create a stunning visual and how to score it. Maybe he should just do music videos?

The movie opens in Morocco where middle-aged schlubby dad Luis (Sergi López) and his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) are derping around raves trying to find their missing daughter/sister.  They join up with a group of feckless hippies on a humbug and start journeying across a desert in a convoy of vans trying to find another rave that the daughter might be at. It all seems rather vague.  There are some soldiers - it's unsafe - there are landmines.  Anyways, bad stuff starts happening and keeps on happening - to the characters and to the viewers.  The movie lurches off-piste and then gives up all hopes of any kind of emotional impact or gravitas. 

SIRAT is rated R and has a running time of 115 minutes. It played Cannes 2025 where it won the Jury Prize. It also played the BFI London Film Festival. It went on release in the USA last November and will be released in the UK on February 27th.

THE BALTIMORONS****

THE BALTIMORONS is an utterly delightful, low-key melancholy romantic comedy that absolutely won a place in my heart.  It stars Michael Strassner as a thirty-something stand-up comic recovering from depression, cancellation and alcoholism. He's engaged to his ever-vigilant fiancee Brittany (Olivia Luccardi) but still seems to be drifting and struggling.  The movie opens on Christmas Eve morning. Cliff needs an emergency dental repair and the only dentist open is the the world-weary but admirably strong middle-aged dentist Didi (Liz Larsen).  Her daughter bails on her for Christmas to spend it with her dad and his new younger wife.  The balance of the film sees Cliff and Didi just hang out, derping around the wintry quiet streets and shoreline of Baltimore. They seem to really connect, to be kind, earnest, hurt but open to each other. It's a genuinely beautiful romance in the making.

What I love about this film is how real and complex and nuanced the characters are. Even Cliff's fiancee Brittany is given the grace of genuinely caring for him and understanding how hard it is to move forward with a relationship intercut but recent trauma. I also love how natural Strassner and Larsen are together on screen. Despite the age gap and the financial gap they really seem like they could make it.  I also really like Jay Duplass' directorial style here. The film has a beautiful, gentle, earnest quality and could become a stealth Christmas favourite. There's something about the Peanuts adjacent soft-jazz score that makes everything feel cosy and heart-warming even as the film handles some pretty gnarly subject matter.

THE BALTIMORONS is rated R and has a running time of 101 minutes. It played SXSW 2025 where it won the Audience Award, and was released in the USA last September.

THE SECRET AGENT*****

Brazilian writer-director Kleber Mendonca Filho has created an operatic, beautifully acted, and fascinating film in THE SECRET AGENT. I am utterly unsurprised that it has wowed critics and is cleaning up this awards season.  

The film is basically about corruption, oppression and memory, and it takes place over many time periods to show us the corrosive nature of autocracy.  The heavy cloud of violence is shot through by an on-going absurdist folk-tale of the "hairy leg" and jaunty popular music, both of which seem to say, look what happened, isn't it insane?

As the film opens we are in the late 70s in Brazil.  The state is corrupt at every level.  The actor Wagner Moura (CIVIL WAR, Pablo Escobar in Narcos) is driving his beaten up car to his home town in the middle of carnival. He pulls into an isolated gas station where a decaying corpse lies under cardboard.  Pretty soon the police pull in but they aren't here for the body and provide no help to the petrol pump attendant. Rather they just want to shake our protagonist down.  Welcome to Brazil.

As the film goes on we realise that our "secret agent" is just a university professor called Armando and he's on the run because a local corporate boss with govenment contacts wanted the value of his research.  He shows up in Recife and stays in a safe house full of similar political "undesirables" including a couple who have fled from Angola. The eccentric den mother/landlady fits them out with new identities. In flashback, we see our young idealistic professor get ensnared in the corruption of the system.  In a third timeline we will see a young idealistic researcher uncover audio recordings and newspaper clippings describing the escape lines run by our den mother, what happened to Armando and to his now grown son, who claims to have no memory at all of the events.  Is he lying? Is it a coping mechanism? Is it just safer?

The film is beautifully constructed, not least in its visual and musical evocation of late 70s Brazil. The costumes, cars, locations, score are all superb in evoking a beautiful but oppressive culture. I loved the interweaving of the hairy leg stories and the patience to tell us about Angola and the various ways in which cruelty suffuses the world - not least in an iconic final performance from Udo Kier as a jewish immigrant. I also loved the construction and scoring of a final act chase scene.  But ultimately this film rests on the shoulders of Wagner Moura, who plays two roles in three timelines and captures the idea of a good but not perfect man caught in an inescapable trap. His performance is mesmerising and deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Leo DiCaprio in ONE BATTLE.  Speaking of which, there's an essay to be written on the thematic and plot similarities between the two films, and the sense in which the late 70s paranoia provides the perfect analogy to our present time.

THE SECRET AGENT is rated R and has a running time of 161 minutes. It played Cannes, where Wagner Moura won Best Actor, Telluride, Toronto and London 2025. It was released in the USA in November and will be released in the UK on February 20th 2026.

EAST OF WALL****

Writer-director Kate Beecroft's debut EAST OF WALL is a really fascinating and affecting drama set in a horse ranch in the Dakotas. Much like Chloe Zhao's NOMADLAND, the film mixes actors and a fictionalised story with real people and a real place. The result is a film that gives the audience a glimpse into a world they might not otherwise see.  

The real life, ludicrously charismatic horse trainer Tabatha Zimiga stars as a lightly fictionalised version of herself.  In life as in this film, she runs a ranch that takes in troubled teenagers and gives them purpose, all the while raising her own kids as a widowed mother. Her real life daughter Porshia also stars as an incredibly talented horse-rider who shows off the ponies that they try to sell for a profit.

Beecroft places two real actors into this real situation. The first is Jennifer Ehle (SHE SAID) as Tabatha's straight-talking mother.  It's a character that could be a bit of a cliche - feckless, not exactly top-draw parenting, but a heart underneath it all. Ehle makes her credible in comparatively short screen time.

The second fictional character is the rich rancher Roy Waters, played by Scoot McNairy (A COMPLETE UNKNOWN). He offers the financially struggling Tabatha the chance for financial security but it's no free lunch: he has emotional needs that he has to fulfil. 

This is a film that takes us deep into a slice of life we might not otherwise see. The cinematography is stunning - both of the landscape and in capturing the incredibly skilled riding. The characters are credible and charismatic.  It adds up to something unique and memorable.

EAST OF WALL is rated R and has a running time of 97 minutes. It played Sundance 2025 and was released in the USA last summer. It is available to rent and own in the USA and UK.

EEPHUS***

Writer-director-cineatographer-editor Carson Lund's EEPHUS is a low-key funny, low-key melancholy film about male friendship and baseball. The entire film takes place over the course of a day and in a single location - a local baseball ground where two local rival teams are playing their last match before their ground is lost to redevelopment.  We see them banter with each other as a desultory group of spectators watches. There's low-key shit-talking and some home truths about how far any of them are actually friends and will keep in touch beyond the singular bond of playing sports together.  In the film's final act we see the last holdouts attempt to keep playing, even though night has fallen and they're relying on car headlights to light the pitch. It's a none too subtle metaphor for trying to cling onto something that's lost.  It's a charming enough film but too meandering and ultimately weightess for its running time. But hey, at least I learned what an eephus is, and maybe the gentle, unhurried pace of this film is the point.

EEPHUS has a running time of 99 minutes. It played Cannes and London 2024 and was released in the USA last spring.