LOLLIPOP****

Writer-director Daisy-May Hudson's debut feature LOLLIPOP is a beautifully acted, deeply moving portrait of a single-mother ex-con caught in a well-meaning but ultimately brutal social care system.  As the film opens, our protagonist Molly (Posy Sterling) is shocked to discover that her young son and daughter are not with her mother, as she had thought, but have been given up to social care. The problem is that she cannot apply for housing for all three of them until she gets them back, but can't get them back until she has a place for them to live.  

Living with her mother is unfeasible.  Her mum only has a two bedroom house but it's also really clear that beyond the logistical issues, it would be completely unsuitable emotionally.  Molly's mum is a grieving widow and alcoholic who is deeply manipulative of her daughter. We see this in a chilling scene where she forces her daughter to sing at a wake. That said, she's not a pantomime villain:  we understand that there is deep loss and sadnes at her core, and that a lot of her isolation and drinking is a coping mechanism.

And so we see poor Molly driven to distraction and anger by well-meaning but ultimately "computer says no" bureaucrats who cannot help right an entire system that is set-up to thwart her.  We often see Molly lose her temper, in a way that would seem to justify the system's judgment that she is a borderline unfit mother, except that we know what she's going through. Her judgment is often bad, her reactions volatile, but we know beyond doubt that she does love her kids.  

Apparently the writer-director wrote this film based on her own experience and it absolutely comes across on screen.  There's a grinding authenticity to the way women like Molly are judged and boxed-in and given no substantive help.  There's also a lot of brilliantly depicted internalised self-judgment.  When Molly comes across a childhood friend, who is also a single-mother, called Amina, we soon realise that Amina is being standoffish because she's ashamed of living in a half-way house.  The kids are also really well-portrayed - the mixture of loving their mum but being frustrated by her broken promises and their unsettled lives. 

This is a quiet, brilliant film featuring a really strong central performance from Posy Sterling that's really worth seeking out.

LOLLIPOP has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated 15. It was released in the UK in June 2025 and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

THE CEREMONY****

Writer-director Jack King's directorial debut is a fascinating and beautiful social realist drama.  It takes us into the lives of people we might see at car-washes in our supermarket and municipal car-parks but not really give a second thought.  His film is set in a car-wash in Bradford, in the north of England, that is staffed by a hodge-podge of illegal immigrants from Central Europe and beyond.  The action begins when a client accuses one of the car-washers of stealing his Rolex from his BMW.  Cue lots of bigotry, not just from the client, but from within the workers, with men of all nations mistrustful of each other, not least because they don't speak the same language.  The tension is greater because the men know that any police investigation is going to put a spotlight on their illegal immigrant status. And so, when the accused man (Mo’min Swaitat) shows up dead, the gang boss Zully asks Romanian migrant Cristi (Tudor Cucu Dumitrescu) and Kurdish Yusuf (Erdal Yildiz) to throw the body in the back of a white van and dump it somewhere out of sight.

The first half of the film is sparky and spot on in its depiction of contemporary Britain's diverse official and unofficial population and the thin economic thread upon which everyone's lives are built.  But for me it's the quieter, more melancholy, more contemplative second half of the film that really impressed. The black and white cinematography of the bleak, oppressive Yorkshire landscape is stunning and I loved Yuma Koda's off-kilter, spare score. We get snatches of backstory and a deeper understanding of their situation.  The final burial scene is one of beauty. 

This really is an extraordinary, sometimes beautiful, insightful and deeply humane film.

THE CEREMONY has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated 15. It was released in the UK last August. It is available to rent on all the major streaming services.

SONG SUNG BLUE**

I have no idea why Kate Hudson has been nominated for an Oscar for her performance in SONG SUNG BLUE other than that she seems really nice, is probably very popular in Hollywood, probably should have been nominated for her work in ALMOST FAMOUS, and is unlikely to ever get a meaty dramatic leading role like this again.  Her performance is good, don't get me wrong.  And it's by far the best thing in this deeply mediocre musical biopic.  But man, what a mid film this is. 

Hudson and Hugh Jackman star as a husband and wife musical tribute act to Neil Diamond working the small bar circuit in small-town 1980s America.  Of course, this being a biopic, we know something super-bad is gonna happen, and when it does we get to see some of Hudson's talent in depicting a strong but angry and frustrated woman at risk of losing herself.  And then of course we see the redemption or recovery arc before Chekhov's medical check-up strikes again.  Along the way, we see lots of Neil Diamond songs performed, although it's kind of a running joke that Jackman's character really doesn't want to perform Sweet Caroline because there's so much more to Diamond's catalogue than that. 

Writer-director Craig Brewer (HUSTLE AND FLOW) moves through the story in a fairly conventional and plodding manner. I am really not sure why this needs to be a film.  Hudson seems to be having a good time. I liked the 80s fright wigs and bedazzled outfits. But there was nothing that really gripped me or got me. Maybe because Jackman seemed to mechanical and... tired. 

SONG SUNG BLUE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 132 minutes. It was released in the USA on Christmas Day 2025 and in the UK on New Year's Day 2026.

THE LIBRARIANS*****

I was a nerdy, poor immigrant kid insatiable for books and my local public library and my school library were like treasure caves. I will forever be grateful to the librarians who guided me to books I might like based on my reading and provided a wonderful childhood of expanding horizons. The idea that anyone could villify and dox and physically threaten this wonderful profession of largely mild-mannered nerdy women is shocking to me.  And yet that's what's happening in Trump's America, where bigoted, illiterate, judgmental politicians and their activist lackeys are banning books and attempting to prosecute those that defend free speech and children's access to what are actually harmless titles.  Because this is never about child protection, and always about censorship and coercion. You may NOT learn about being gay or queer or feminism or racial or social injustice. I grew up with this bollocks too, in the shape of Section 28 of the Local Government Act, that banned teachers from being openly gay or "promoting a gay lifestyle".  

Kim A. Snyder's documentary is urgent, angry-making, and beautifully constructed. It foregrounds the real heroes - ordinary teachers and librarians and community activists who are showing up, week-in week-out, to school board meetings and local government meetings, often at extreme personal risk. They are people who are being coerced out of their jobs, forced into hiding, to arm themselves. It's beyond absurd. A lot of the footage is taken from meetings where we, in turn, see activists on either side of this issue taking iphone footage of each other, to be used later on social media and to whip up a storm.  And as Snyder points out, this so-called grassroots movement of conservative moms is in fact funded by major oligarchs.  

This is a fantastic must-see documentary.  I know that when people are literally being shot down by ICE the ability to read books might seem trivial. But this is where fascism starts. Almost a year ago we were in Berlin for the Film Festival and our hotel room overlooked the public square where the Nazis burned books.  Tourists were taking selfies at the commemorative spot. Let's not sit still on history when it's repeating itself before our eyes. Watch. This. Now.

THE LIBRARIANS has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated 15. It played Sundance and SXSW 2025. It was released in the USA last September and is available to stream in the UK on BBC IPlayer.

PILLION****

I thoroughly enjoyed writer-director Harry Lighton's brave, bold and strangely heart-warming coming-of-age drama PILLION. Harry Melling, last seen as Call-Me Risley in Wolf Hall, stars as geeky, shy Colin, who lives in a bleak British town and sings in a barbershop quartet with his dad. As the movie begins, Colin meets the desperately handsome Ray (Alexander Skarsgard) and begins a relationship that is all about being subsmissive and not at all about genuine intimacy or romance. At first, Colin seems genuinely happy, adopted by Ray's biker friends and experiencing his first true physical fulfilment. But as the movie and Colin develop, we and he realise that he needs and deserves more. He asks Ray for a normal day-off where they can on a date, and as much as Ray is willing to give it a go, it's just not him.

What I love about PILLION, aside from its moments of genuine hilarity, is that it deals with a lot of serious stuff in what feels like a real and authentic way. I loved a scene where Ray goes for dinner with Colin's parents (Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge) and we see their concern for their son played back to them as bigotry. And I also loved the denouement. Without spoiling it, it's fascinating to see which of the characters is truly brave.  

PILLION has a running time of 107 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London 2025. It was released in the USA last October and in the UK last November.

ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOU**

Writer-director-actor Cherien Dabis's ALL THAT IS LEFT OF YOU is an ambitious multi-generational story of a Palestinian family.  

It begins with the death of a young sprightly man called Noor during the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1988, at which point his grieving mother Hanan tells us that to understand her son, we have to understand his father. And so we go back to the 1948 "Nakba" when the father Salim is a young man, watching his own father Sharif forced to grapple with whether to leave Palestine as the new Israeli state is established, or stay and protect the family farm.  We discover that the choice to stay is a tough one. They are moved off their family farm and into town.  

We then fast forward to 1978 in the West Bank, and the young Salim is now himself married and a father.  Even small things like picking up medicine from a pharmacy is complicated by arbitrary curfews and humilating police interrogations.  Salim's son Noor grows up seeing his father humiliated, frustrated, angry, so is it any surprise that he is swept up in the demonstrations of the First Intifada? 

The problem with Cherien Dabis' clearly heartfelt film is that it's so simplistic in its politics. Everyone in the family is good, and the Israelis are all bad. The military, policy, the heartless bureaucrats....  Maybe there is some hope for nuance in the final more contemporary act, but not really, because that's not what this film is interested in. So it's heartfelt, and I have a lot of sympathy with the predicament of the protagonists, but it would have felt more earned if it hadn't felt like such a heavyhanded piece of agitprop. 

ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOU has a running time of 145 minutes.  It played Sundance 2025. It went on release in the UK last November and in the USA last week.