JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH****

It is with no small irony that the new Jurassic Park film asks us to imagine a world in which consumers are bored with dinosaurs, given that this franchise has offered diminishing returns to the viewer since its inception thirty years ago.   In this new film, boredom, climate change, and disease have combined to make dinosaurs irrelevant to anyone living beyond a narrow band around the equator where they still flourish, and humans are strictly forbidden. Of course, that won't stop unscrupulous capitalists trying to exploit them for cash. Cue a trip to the Caribbean for Rupert Friend's evil pharma exec,  Scarlett Johansson's special ops team leader and Mahershala Ali's ship's captain. And, because Jurassic Park, they will pick up some capsized cute kids en route.  

Set up complete. What about the execution?  Gareth Edwards (ROGUE ONE) has made THE BEST Jurassic Park film since the original and, whisper it quietly, perhaps even surpassed the iconic Spielberg original. A tight script from the original screenwriter, David Koepp combine with superb performances from a heavyweight cast to create character depth and backstory quickly and convincingly. I actually cared about these characters' moral choices and evolving emotional relationships.  

And what of the thrills and spills? It should comes as no surprise that the director who made MONSTERS knows what he's doing with simultaneously frightening and awe-inspiring beasties. We see them move through the water like Jaws, or nuzzle up to each other in fond embrace. It's all spectacular. I particularly liked a scene shot behind a character where a beastie we know well from the original is taken out by its predator. But the tour de force set piece is in the film's final act, where chiaroscuro lighting, tension-inducing editing, superb scoring from Alexandre Desplat and a truly mesmerising performance from Mahershala Ali combine to captivate us. And because of David Koepp's script we know enough about his character to truly understand and respect his motivations. The only bum note in the film is when Edwards chickens out with a bit of improbable schmaltz, more befitting a Spielberg film than one of this own. But we can't have everything I guess.

It also surprises me that social media trolls haven't labelled this film woke, and have instead directed their ire at SUPERMAN and SNOW WHITE.  After all, the message of this film (which I heartily endorse) is that "science is for everyone" not corporations with patents.  And in a lightly-done but profound scene, we hear a hispanic dad (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) tell his daughter's apparently feckless but actually rather lovely boyfriend (David Iacono) not to think the worst of himself - others do that already. This is what a David Koepp script gives you.  Subtle moments rather than heavy-handed exposition.  

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH has a running time of 133 minutes, is rated PG-13 and is global release.

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND****

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND is a delightful film.  By turns funny, charming, moving and wise. It's so low-key it might slip from notice but that would be a terrible shame.  

Tim Key (Alan Partridge) is a widowed lottery-winning millionaire who decides to pay his wife's favourite folk band to play a concert on his beautiful but largely unpeopled British island. Much like Simon and Garfunkel, the band was once successful but has long-since split and both of its members are on their uppers.  Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) still bitterly resents his writing partner for leaving him and the now married Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) needs the money from the gig, but resents Herb for living in the past. 

Over the next ninety minutes we watch these three people deal with their past with good humour and grace.  The initial set-up is comedic. Tim Key's islander talks constantly with an off-kilter sense of humour and an intrusive starry-eyed fandom that borders on, but never crosses the line into, creepiness.  Meanwhile Tom Basden is the awkward out-of-towner stuck in the middle of nowhere with the dawning realisation that he is playing a concert for one.  There's a running joke that he can never buy anything he needs in the village shob, which always seems to sell an adjacent but not helpful object. 

But as the movie progresses and Nell turns up we get further into the emotional backstory of our characters. The movie gains depth but never gives us easy, sentimental answers. The protagonist actually experiences a credible and compelling emotional arc. And I was truly charmed by its denouement.

Director James Griffiths (CUBAN FURY) and his writer-stars (Key and Basden) have created a truly lovely, uplifting but never twee film that deserves a wide audience. What an unexpected pleasure it is!

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 99 minutes. It played Sundance and SXSW 2025 and was released in the UK in May.

MR BURTON****

MR BURTON is a handsomely made, restrained, and surprisingly moving film about the creation of iconic actor Richard Burton.  When we meet him he is actually called Richie Jenkins. He is a lanky school kid in a poor Welsh mining town, living with his beloved sister and her husband. He shows some talent in school, but his first love is probably rugby, and he is forced to leave at school 16 and look for work.  And there might have been the end of Richie Jenkin's story were it not for an earnest and closeted English literature teacher called Mr Burton who fought for Richie to come back to school, to enter the RAF which in turn got him to Oxford University and thence to the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Mr Burton gave Richie his love of literature but also sloughed off his rough edges - whether his manners of his accent. By the end of the film the lanky kid is now a handsome young man with that iconic deep resonant voice.  He is the finest actor of his generation and perhaps of all time. But he remains riddled with demons and is already drinking heavily.  In a late scene he turns his wrath on his mentor, Hal to Mr Burton's Falstaff, but they cannot part.  It's a slow build to the only physical contact they will share. An acknowledgment that an adoption and name-change of convenience belie true paternity and care. It's a desperately moving moment.

Director Marc Evans (HUNKY DORY) handles all of this with elegance and assurance. A final act set around the theatre is beautifully put together - lighting, editing, score. And I also loved the screenplay by Tom Bullough and Josh Hyams. They never skirt the question of what Mr Burton's motives were but leave a lot unsaid, as befitting of the sexual mores of the time.  This suppression sets up the final act explosion of intense anger from Richie. Which brings me to the superb performances that anchor this film.  Aimee-Ffion Edward and Aneurin Barnard are impressive in small but important roles as Richie's sister and brother-in-law.  Lesley Manville and Toby Jones are - as ever - impeccable as "Ma" and Mr Burton.  But it's Industry's Harry Lawtey who truly impresses, turning from unsure boy into cocky but troubled man, and all while capturing Richard Burton's shifting accent and elocution.  It is quite the performance and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

MR BURTON has a running time of 124 minutes, is rated 12, and was released in the UK in April.

SUPERMAN (2025)***

Writer-director James Gunn (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) has jumped ship from Marvel to reboot the DC Universe, and the first film in this endeavour really suffers from setting up the chessboard.  It's a film that is overstuffed with ideas and characters and so many aliens that I couldn't give a shit about. There's also a scrappy dog called Krypto that is presumably adorable if you like scrappy dogs (I do not) and that's basically ripped off from Terry Pratchett's Luggage - a super-powerful, super-loyal chaos agent.  As a result, the real life human characters - whether Clark Kent's adoptive parents or his Daily Planet colleagues - are given way too little screen time.  Poor Wendel Pierce as Perry barely gets a line and even Rachel Brosnahan's Lois Lane feels sidelined.  All to make way for alien monsters, quirky robots (come on Alan Tudyk - do something new!)  and endless gonzo fight scenes.  This far into the Marvel universe it's just all so blah.  I would rather have seen Superman rescue a cat from a tree than yet another Big Bad ripping up Metropolis.

So for much of its running time I was basically quite bored by this film. I realised about two-thirds of the way through that I would probably rather just watch Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern doing his comedy schtick in his own film. I guess that's coming.

Part of the problem is that this film needs to pick a lane in its look and feel. Is it in a contemporary near-future in which evil mastermind Lex Luther (Nicholas Hoult) has super technology and sleek Marvel-style henchmen and headquarters? Or is it in a world where people actually care about newspapers, and take notes with a pencil and notepad, and record interviews on dictaphones rather than iPhones? The whole concept of the Daily Planet is basically anachronistic now and I don't think the film knows how to handle that. 

Thing is. Thing is.  By the denouement, despite all of its flaws. This film had me.  Because its core message is a good one. And a moving one. That to be kind and think the best of people and not be cynical is actually "punk rock".  And that to be human is to make your own choices and to make mistakes and to try to be better.  And that family is what you choose it to be. I want my Superman to be in day glow blue and red and to be earnest and kind.  I don't want moody post-modern dark Superman.  Superman has always been hokey and kitsch because that's what we need.  Onwards!

SUPERMAN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 129 minutes and is on global release.

SNOW WHITE (2025)****

Disney's live action remake of one of its most iconic and oldest properties, SNOW WHITE, came to our screens freighted in politics, as evidenced by it being ratings-bombed on IMDB.  So I came to the film with low expectations. However, I am delighted to report that I had a wonderful time watching this film! I found its production design and costumes beautiful and full of wondrous detail. I loved the look and characterisation CGI non-dwarves who take Snow White in.  I loved all three lead performances from Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot and Jeff Morrow.  And most of all I loved the reworking of the messaging - not as woke - but in a way that does not stretch the credulity of the modern viewer.

Let's start with the look and feel of this film. It's set in a lovely fairytale medieval middle Europe with endless beautiful detail in its architecture and costumes.  Gal Gadot's wicked stepmother has a ridiculously beautiful and stunning set of costumes - peaking in an epic sequinned dress and long cape in jewel bruise tones.  She leans into the camp. There is no back story justifying her evil. And I loved it. Snow White's iconic blue and yellow dress has been similarly beautifully rendered by designer Sandy Powell. Layers and layers of chiffon in the skirt. And yet somehow, despite all of this, a very young-looking Rachel Zegler, with a fresh face, makes Snow White seem like just a young girl rather than a princess. And we put it all together in scenes that again and again made me gasp with how gorgeous they looked - whether vistas in the forest or a particularly lovely rendering of Snow White's bier in the forest.

And on to the messaging. In this version of the story - nearly ninety years after the original - to be "fairest of them all" is to literally be fair, and kind, and beautiful from within. Snow White does indeed whistle while she works, but rather than becoming a servant to the dwarves she shows them how to clean up after themselves. We realise that poor Dopey doesn't like being so-called (who would!) and Snow White gives him the confidence to move into the spotlight. Most importantly, rather than a total stranger of a prince kissing Snow White awake, we now have a young man with whom she has already fallen in love doing the job - far easier for a modern audience to rationalise.  And yes, he is not a prince but a person living in the woods Robin Hood style.  As a result, the movie doesn't end with the kiss but with Snow White reclaiming her throne, inspiring her people to be better, to be kinder, to remember what it was to share and to hope.  Yes it's hokey. But it isn't woke. To quote the new SUPERMAN, maybe thinking the best of people is what's actually "punk rock" now.

Kudos to director Marc Webb (500 DAYS OF SUMMER) who has done a beautiful job with this film. And to screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN) who threaded the needle of keeping what we love in the fairytale but also making it more palatable for a modern audience.  I really hope the film finds its audience in due course away from all the controversy and hatefulness around its release. It's a lovely film full of heart and earnest good intentions.

SNOW WHITE is rated PG, has a running time of 109 minutes and is on global release.

THE AMATEUR***

THE AMATEUR is a handsomely made but ultimately mis-cast spy thriller based on a novel by Robert Littrell in which a behind-the-scenes intelligence officer (Rami Malek) goes out into the real world to avenge the death of his wife (SUPERMAN's Rachel Brosnahan).  In this version of the film, director James Hawes (ONE LIFE) creates a visually arresting stye and takes us from Washington to London, Madrid and Istanbul in a genuinely pacy and twisty thriller.  The cast is first-rate, and I particularly liked Mindhunter's Holt Macallany as a senior intelligence officer.  The problem is that while the screenplay by Gary Spinelli (AMERICAN MADE) and Ken Nolan (BLACK HAWK DOWN) is compelling, two of the key performances are genuinely off-putting.  Outlander's Caitriona Balfe simply cannot do a Russian accent. And Rami Malek simply cannot convince as a grieving husband and ordinary schmo.  He has a very arresting and unique look and way of delivering lines that just comes off as vaguely psychopathic and robotic and is not suited to a) conveying emotion and b) looking like he could blend into a crowd. This film could've been genuinely brilliant with a different male and female lead.

THE AMATEUR is rated PG-13, has a running time of 122 minutes, and is on global release.

THE SALT PATH*

Theatre director Marianne Elliott has adapted Raynor Winn's best-selling but now controversial book about her and her husband's epic walk around the south-coast of England. Sadly I watched this after the controversy broke so I am not sure how far I was influenced by accusations that key elements of the biographical book were faked.  I hope I just watched the film on its own terms.  But boy this is a tedious film.

It opens with middle-aged husband and wife Raynor (Gillian Anderson) and Moth (Jason Isaacs) destitute, homeless and hiking around the pretty southern coast of England.  They both have regional accents, with Isaacs pulling his off better than Anderson.  They look rough, sun-burned and stressed. They have no money - are reduced to busking - and Moth has a degenerative illness. So the film starts in bleak dull tones and a reduced aspect ratio.  However, the apparently literally regenerative power of being one with nature and walking in beauty allows the film's colour scheme to become sunnier and the aspect ratio to widen. I cannot imagine a more on-the-nose directorial choice.  But I saw no real signs of enlightenment and I was not moved by the couple's plight. The pace was slow and nothing really happens beyond the odd stranger donating a pot of hot water or momentary stress at whether their kids are okay. Apparently there is some malarkey about being "salted" but I was unconvinced and unmoved. I also thought the landscape and seascape photography would be more impressive.

THE SALT PATH is rated 12, has a running time of 115 minutes and is on release in the UK. It played Toronto 2024.

THUNDERBOLTS* - ****

I bugged out of the Marvel Universe after GUARDIANS 1. Too many movies. Too many big bads blowing up cities. Too many sardonic quips from Iron Man. It just all became so same.  But for whatever reason I decided to watch THUNDERBOLTS* and thoroughly enjoyed it!  

The first phase of the MCU is over. The po-faced Captain America type characters are gone.  This is a post-Avengers world. And we are dealing with its detritus and emotional baggage.  I like the beaten up, jaded look of the characters. Florence Pugh's little sister to Scar-Jo's deceased Black Widow looks she's coming off a bender.  The millennial, I-hate-my job-angst is both hilarious and relatable. I like the idea that rather than saving the world she's just a mercenary. I really like the idea that despite all the tedious fight scenes what really matters is having mates with whom one can be vulnerable and tackle all the demons that haunt us. That's a nice message.  

And it's wrapped in a genuinely very funny script Eric Pearson and Joanna Cala and SUPERB line delivery from Florence Pugh and David Harbour as the most ridiculously messed-up and adorable father-daughter superheroes seen on screen. We haven't seen the name Bob deployed for this much comic effect since Blackadder 2.  I also LOVE Julia Louis-Dreyfus in basically anything. Here, she's a billionaire arms-dealer - kind of like the successful version of her character in Veep - who wants to control the mercenaries.  She manages to pivot so quickly it takes your breath away.

Kudos to director Jake Schreier for pulling off a genuinely enjoyable, funny and moving Marvel film. It's certainly a handbrake-turn away from his wonderful ROBOT & FRANK but I am here for it.

THUNDERBOLTS is rated PG-13, has a running time of 127 minutes and is on global release.

SECRET MALL APARTMENT*****

SECRET MALL APARTMENT is a documentary about a bunch of artists in Rhode Island who were pissed off at the creation of a giant ugly mall in their home town but discovered a small cavity in its architecture and decided to create a cool hang-out space there.  It's a story you just couldn't make up. Over days and weeks and months they scoped out the security guards' routine and where the security cameras were and through no small effort managed to scramble up into this space and make it their own. They literally carried in a SOFA! It wasn't that habitable really - cold and damp. But the sheer audacity of the plan turned from a bit of a stunt into something more provocative and meaningful. A way to take back real estate that was poorly designed and alienating to its local community and turn it into something beloved and community-minded. 

Director Jeremy Workman's film is tightly edited and neatly constructed and utterly compelling. I discovered a whole new world of artists using their art for good. Michael Townsend - the man at the centre of it all - had used his "tape art" to commemorate victims of 9/11 and to cheer up severely ill kids. He seems to be a really earnest human and probably impossible to live with. I love that people like this somehow exist, defying The Man, and I love that they recorded their endeavours. This a truly unique film about a truly unique set of people doing something crazy. It deserves the widest possible audience.

SECRET MALL APARTMENT has a 91 minute runtime. It was released in the US last month.

NIGHT STAGE aka ATO NOTURNO*** - BFI Flare Closing Night Gala

NIGHT STAGE is a visually stylish and heavily Brian de Palma influenced queer erotic thriller about two men who sabotage their professional achievements with increasingly exhibitionist sex.  Gabriel Faryas plays Matias, a twenty something actor who is flamboyantly out but so ambitious that he's willing to shaft his own friend, colleague and room-mate to land the role in a major TV series. Casting directors and colleagues give him coded warnings about his public persona and he seems to buy into that but for his affair with Rafael (Cirillo Luna).  Rafael is a closeted politician on the cusp of becoming city mayor.  He has a bland "change" message but is in fact bankrolled by old school real estate developers and has a goon who serves as bodyguard and fixer.

The film is written and directed by Felipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon (SEASHORE) and they clearly have an assured visual eye. The actors all do a good job and the final message of the joy and relief of being out is a nuanced and tragic one.  But the film is about 20 minutes too long and it's never sinister enough in its thrills. The BFI Flare audience laughed uproariously at the appearance of a masked man.  To be fair, a lot of 80s and 90s thrillers of this type flirt with camp absurdity but I felt this went a bit too far. Also, I think it was pretty easy to guess the plot.  

NIGHT STAGE has a running time of 117 minutes. It played Berlin and closed BFI Flare 2025.

SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS*****

Think of the most sinister but beautiful surreal dream-like worlds created by early Lynch and now imagine that they are depicted mostly with intricately beautifully designed stop-motion puppets.  Imagine film-makers with the creativity and perfection and unspoken synchronicity of the Quay Brothers, working with the haunting, elegiac short stories of Bruno Schulz.  Imagine a world of pre-WW2 Central Europe, literature grappling with the new concepts of subconscious and science, but also treating with enduring emotional topics such as grief and the desire to somehow control time.

This is the world of SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS - a mesmerising, haunting and truly beautiful piece of art created by the Quay Brothers. I watched it in IMAX - a bizarre format for such an intricate miniature world, and yet wonderful because it really allowed us to see the detail of it.

The film opens with a live action framing device - an auctioneer atop a roof advertising his surreal and unique wares. And then we see him with a particularly wonderful box of tricks - a retina that liquifies under moonlight and little apertures that allow us to see the dying thoughts of our protagonist.

And so we enter the stop-motion world and our protagonist Jozef, lightly modelled on Bruno Schulz himself. He is travelling on a near-abandoned and anachronistic trainline to a strange sanatorium where his father is both alive and dead.  Dr Gotard explains that time is strange here. And we will see events played and replayed amidst the dusty gothic corridors that could have come from Nosferatu or Gormenghast.  The film resists easy explanations and conventional narratives. It evokes mood and emotion with few hooks for the casual viewer to hang his hat on. But those who know the works and life of Schulz will see his iconography in the film, and most poignantly Jozef clutching a loaf of bread, foreshadowing Schulz' execution by the Gestapo.

SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS has a running time of 75 minutes. It played Venice and London 2024 and Kinoteka 2025.

SALLY!***** - BFI Flare 2025

SALLY! is a superb documentary about "radical lesbian feminist" Sally Gearheart - a ridiculously intelligent, fiercely funny, and charismatic woman who argued for equality alongside Harvey Milk but has somehow been written out of history, not least via the Oscar-winning biopic.

Directed by Deborah Craig, Sylvia Turchin and Ondine Rarey, the film benefits from lots of archive footage of Sally addressing rallies and appearing in TV debates, as well as contemporary interviews with her and her fellow activists.

What emerges is a portrait of a well-educated woman in conservative Texas whose homosexuality threatened her career. So this outwardly conventional woman took the decision to give up tenure and went to San Francisco where she could finally be out and proud.  With her fellow academics she created the first ever women's history courses and with her fellow activists she lobbied against legislation that would restrict gay people's employment rights.  She even wrote a work of utopian fiction arguing for lesbian separatism! That ideal became a reality when she and her friends and lovers bought land in rural California and built their own cabins.  

But sooner or later these women left to rejoin mainstream society. Complex relationships started and ended. This clear-eyed documentary makes it clear that Sally could be challenging to be around: her charisma matched with bossy self-centredness.  But my goodness that charisma and good humour and love shines through as we see the older Sally interviewed, the last remaining commune dweller. It's evident how far she is loved in her local community and the goodwill that she has engendered.

I love documentaries like this - that take us into a part of the world or a slice of history that we should know about. It's education with a light touch, and with an importance beyond the LGBTQIA community given Sally Gearheart's importance to broader social history.  Sadly, the power of the film also lies in its relevance to contemporary battles that have to be fought once again against rising bigotry and prejudice.

SALLY! has a running time of 96 minutes.  The film is playing the festival circuit.

SANTOSH*****

British-Indian writer-director Sandhya Suri (I IS FOR INDIA) has created a beautifully nuanced, quiet and disturbing film in her debut feature SANTOSH.  The film stars Shanana Goswami (RA.ONE) as the eponymous protagonist. She is a young widow with few choices: live with the in-laws who resent her love marriage to their wealthier son, or return home to her parents to a life of domestic labour.  Improbably, but apparently this really exists, thanks to a government scheme that allows low-income widows to take their husband's old job, Santosh becomes a policewoman instead. Imagine the sudden transition from powerless to powerful, with your own house, a uniform and the ability to abuse power just as the men do.

There is little time for such contemplation as Santosh is soon investigating the rape and murder of a Dalit/low caste girl - the very same girl that her chauvinist and caste-superior fellow policemen refused to look for when she went missing. In the eyes of her boss, the girl was "asking for it".  It comes as no surprise that the investigation is similarly corrupt, scapegoating the girl's muslim boyfriend Saleem. For a moment we think there might be respite when Santosh is paired up with an older, more experienced, and deeply impressive female cop called Geeta (Sunita Rajwar).  But as a near-final scene in a  diner will show, whatever narratives Geeta spins for herself, she is as enmeshed in the corruption and bigotry as everyone else.   Case in point: is she being magnanimous and self-sacrificing in her final act, or merely preparing herself for the greater corruption of politics?

I love this film for its spare script, strong performances and avoidance of outrage and easy moralising.  The women take bigotry for granted.  There are no pure saviour characters.  We do solve our case. But we cannot solve personal or societal corruption. Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

SANTOSH is rated R and has a running time of 128 minutes. It was released in the USA over New Year and was released in the UK on Friday.

MICKEY 17*****

MICKEY 17 is Korean writer-director Bong Joon Ho's much anticipated follow-up to his Oscar-winning political satire, PARASITE. Once again, his concerns are with economic inequality and political hypocrisy, and as with PARASITE, MICKEY 17 contains moments of trenchant laughter.  But the mood here is lighter, zanier, looser, and altogether more.... gonzo than PARASITE.  The political satire is broad and crude, the violence is ultra, but at heart this is a gorgeous love story and a plea for humanity.

Robert Pattinson continues to make astonishingly good career choices and stars as the eponymous Mickey.  He's basically a harmless but feckless and aimless man in a near-future dystopia.  On the run from mafia loansharks, abetted by his supposed best mate Timo (Steven Yeun), Mickey stupidly signs up to be an Expendable.  He is basically an indentured slave to an exploitative space colonisation mission, put in harms way, killed again and again, and then just reprinted out.  As the film opens, we are on the seventeenth iteration.

Joy of joys! Feckless Mickey somehow falls in love and lust with Naomie Ackie's kickass space-cop Nasha and she loves him back! In fact, I would read this film as a love story most of all.  Improbable, hilarious, sexy, weird, but a love story nonetheless. But things get weird when Mickey 17 is somehow alive at the same time as his sassier, more mischievous reprint Mickey 18.  And both set out to rise up against the kleptocratic rule of a character clearly based on Trump, with a Macchiavellian wife modelled on Imelda Marcos.  Mark Ruffalo seems to be reprising his role in POOR THINGS here, but it's a no less fun turn for that.   But the star of the show is clearly Pattinson.  And the the Creepers. I won't say more for fear of spoiling the plot but I would pay a LOT of money for a plushy that looks like a baby creeper.

MICKEY 17 has a running time of 137 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.

THE WEDDING BANQUET**** - BFI Flare Opening Night Gala

Writer-director Andrew Ahn (FIRE ISLAND) reimagines And Lee's THE WEDDING BANQUET in a contemporary Seattle setting.  With Ang and long-time collaborator James Schamus' blessing, Ahn has the freedom to truly update the film's central premise. In a world where gay people can now marry, the question is do they actually want to, and what should they decide about having kids? After all, as Ahn said as he introduced his new film at the BFI Flare film festival this week, they can't just oopsie-daisy a pregnancy - their choices have to have intentionality.  The result of these musings is a film that is hard to categorise, and that contains wild swings in mood, but that is ultimately rather moving and rewarding.  

The structure of the film is farce.  Min (Han Gi-Chan) is a Korean expat who needs a Green Card so he can avoid being yanked back to Korea by his super-wealthy but homophobic family. Min asks his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chis (SNL's Bowen Yang) to marry him, but once rejected moves on to his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran - STAR WARS).  She agrees to the sham marriage because Min will fund her girlfriend Lee (KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON's Lily Gladstone) in her IVF attempts.

So, two gay couples, two halves of each reluctant to commit, and two maternal figures.  We have Angela's mum (the ever-beautiful Joan Chen) who is making up for lost time and past hurt with her aggressive and somewhat narcissistic allyship. And we have Min's Korean grandma, whose surprise visit sets off the events of the film, and whose eventual softening ends it.  She comes to see that despite the foursome's stupid decisions, they truly are a wonderful found family.  Her wisdom is complemented by that of Chris' young cousin Angela (Bobo Lee in a really beautiful cameo).  Nobody is good enough to be a spouse or a parent alone, but our friends and lovers can make us good enough.

There are some hilariously funny moments in this film - and while I know Bowen Yang can be funny it was Han Gi-Chan that really made me crack up with his naive, sweet Min.  But the overwhelming tone of this film is one of contemplation, and grappling with really intense issues. I loved how deftly Ahn and Schamus' script balances all the different storylines.  Even smaller characters such as the grandma and Angela had depth and a story - even if only hinted at or lightly referred to. I also appreciated just seeing things on screen that I have never seen before - a woman's IVF journey, or a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. This film broadened my perspective.

More than anything, I feel this is a film from a rapidly vanishing America. Inclusive, sensitive, vulnerable, not scared of laughing at itself, but also dripping in humanity and love. It's a film that genuinely moved me, but also made me laugh and applaud.  That's a rare feat.  My only wish is that audiences meet it on its own terms and go with those genre or tonal shifts as they come.

THE WEDDING BANQUET is rated R and has a running time of 102 minutes. It played Sundance and opened BFI Flare 2025. It opens in the USA on April 18th.

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.