A PALE VIEW OF HILLS***

Writer-director-editor Kei Ishikawa has finally brought a version of Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel to screen, nearly 50 years after it was first published. It's a story about generational trauma and conscious and subconscious dissembling through memory. 

The primary expression of this is through the character of Etsuko (the word "character" used advisedly here.)  In the early 1950s she is a submissive pregnant housewife recovering from the trauma of having survived Nagasaki.  Her husband is a typical salaryman, but she seems to have a fondness for her father-in-law.   She is attracted to the strength and radical modernity of a woman called Sachiko - also a Nagasaki survivor, and single-mother to her young daughter Machiko. Sachiko dreams of escaping to America with her lover Frank - a dream that Etsuko may or may not believe in. Both women are trapped and seeking escape. Friendship with Sachiko encourages Etsuko to be braver. Both suffer from prejudice, trauma and fear.  Nagasaki survivors are seen as tarnished and damaged: and perhaps contagious.  

The secondary expression of the theme of confronting the past and one's own role in it, is played out in the story of Etsuko's father-in-law.  He seems like a lonely old man desperate to reconnect with his son Jiro. But in reality he is visiting Etsuko and Jiro to facilitate a confrontation with an ex-pupil, now teacher, who denounced the father as a nationalist who preached propaganda in the classroom. As the ex-pupil says - Japan has changed - it's a brave new world - and everyone must change with it.

Just how far they have indeed changed, and own that change, or whether that change is authentic or appropriated, is part of the slipperiness and puzzle-aspect of the film.  I really enjoyed seeing the characters in the Japanese setting, even though the pace of the first hour of the film was too slow for me.  The cinematography and production design are beautiful, with some lovely tableaux. I also love how the small-town feel contrasts with the forbidden dangerous wild grassland across the river, cordoned off because of nuclear contamination. This is a world where conventional bourgeois life lives knowingly and perhaps dangerously right alongside danger.

Where I thought the film suffered was in its early 80s framing device. A now widowed Etsuko, having settled in Britain, is selling the family home. Her daughter Niki is an aspiring journalist, and thinks that the personal story of her mother's experience of Nagasaki will make for a good story.  But this too is a ruse. She wants to know her family history and this is a means to coax it from her reluctant mother.

The film gave me a lot to think about and I really loved some of the performances.  Suzu Hirose and Fumi Nakaido as young Estuko and Sachiko are superb.  But I really didn't like the framing device and found both the dialogue and performances of Camilla Aiko as Niki and Yo Yoshida as the elder Etsuko stilted and uninvolving.

A PALE VIEW OF HILLS played Cannes Toronto and London 2025. It will be released in the UK on March 13th. It has a running time of 132 minutes.

DRAGONFLY****

Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams (LONDON TO BRIGHTON) has created a really haunting and stunningly well-acted film in DRAGONFLY. It's basically a two-hander between Brenda Blethyn as Elsie and her next-door neighbour Colleen, played by Andrea Riseborough.  As the film opens, Elsie has had a fall so her well-meaning but distant son arranges for her to have a carer come to the house. The carers are heavy-handed and cut corners and don't actually listen to what Elsie wants and needs. This is where Colleen steps in.  She is a traumatised and introverted woman hiding away from life with her gigantic dog - menacing to all others but clearly providing some kind of emotional safety support to its owner.  

The brilliance of Williams' script and Riseborough's performance is that we can never quite figure Colleen out. Is she using Elsie financially, or even emotionally? They seem to form some kind of genuine odd-couple friendship, bound together by mutual loneliness in a world that wants to park the damaged and the elderly out of sight and out of mind. This is the attitude summed up in Elsie's son, played in a brilliant cameo by Jason Watkins. He seems to be suspicious of, and resent, Colleen's help but unable to step up and provide that care himself. Something that Colleen is not afraid to point out, with devastating conseqences.

I really loved this film. It's spare and taut and keeps us in an increasing state of suspense and anxiety. The ending is brave and will sit with me for quite some time.  Kudos to all involved. 

DRAGONFLY has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated 15. It played Tribeca 2025 and opened in the UK last November.

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.

GOODBYE JUNE**

Kate Winslet has been evolving behind the camera, producing the biopic LEE and now making her directorial debut with this new mawkish family Christmas movie GOODBYE JUNE.  Helen Mirren plays the titular protagonist, dying of cancer in her most unglamorous role to date.  Her four children, husband and assorted grandkids gather around and try and sort through their various emotional issues before giving her a twee Christmas nativity play send-off. Winslet plays the financially successful, stoic elder sister.  The wonderful Andrea Riseborough plays her resentful younger sister.  Toni Colette plays a hippie dippie third sister who returns from Germany and apparently is desperate to be pregnant. And a dishevelled Johnny Flynn plays the sensitive son Connor.  Timothy Spall plays the rather loveable but apparently emotionally disengaged dad who deals with his forthcoming grief by, I kid you not, singing karaoke.  It's testament to Winslet's pull that she could assemble such a sterling cast, and as a result, this film could never be a total failure. But it's a shame that her son Joe Anders' script resorts to cheap devices to try and wring tears from our eyes. I cringed when Spall's dad began his karaoke act and the final nativity scene made me gag.  Your mileage may vary.

GOODBYE JUNE is rated R and has a running time of 114 minutes. It was released on Netflix earlier this month.

STRAIGHT CIRCLE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025

British film-maker Oscar Hudson's debut feature film is a darkly surreal black comedy about the futility of war and the pointlessness of divisive populist politics.  It's visually audacious and features stunning central performances from real-life twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor. Each plays a soldier stationed in a lone building guarding the border between their two countries. There's barren desert on either side and seemingly nothing of any value to guard.  But guard it they do!, releasing ceremonial pigeons each day to symbolise peace but each day loathing each other. Tensions ratchet up when one day, one of the guards lets off a pigeon without the other! So follows a journey of discovering that maybe they aren't that physically or emotionally different. Maybe they both just miss having a loving mum.  So what will happen when a General shows up telling them they actually are at war now, and to defend their territory?

The story is spare and violent and surreal.  I absolutely loved it! It reminded me of the best of Beckett and Ustinov.  I loved the use of vertical split screen to show each nation and brother mirroring the other, but was also relieved in those scenes that let the audience relax and just watch the characters mentally unravel.  I found the middle sections maybe a tad overlong but the final act is a bravura piece of storytelling that I absolutely adored. I cannot wait to see what Hudson does next.

STRAIGHT CIRCLE has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Venice where it won the Critics Week award.

THE SON AND THE SEA**** - BFI LFF 2025 Preview

Writer-director Stroma Cairns' feature directorial debut, THE SON AND THE SEA is a beautifully rendered story of four young British men trying to find their place in the world. The film stars the director's brother, and debut actor, Jonah West as Jonah, a frustrated twentysomething man trapped in the nihilistic London party scene. He decides to take a train to a coastal northern Scottish town to visit his ailing great-aunt, now in a dementia-care nursing home. His best mate Lee (Stanley Brock) tags along but their relationship is one of alternative laughs and bickering as Lee tells Jonah he needs to stop making excuses and sort himself out. Once they get to Scotland, Jonah and Lee meet two more young men: Charlie and feckless twin brother Lee (Connor and Luke Tompkins). Both have hearing disabilities but it's great to see this treated in a very straightforward way rather than as a plot device. 

Stroma Cairns captures something really beautiful and perceptive about how young men are with each other and the drifting, aimless vulnerability of not having a plan for your life. It's a patient film that watches them derp around but also face moments of real crisis, lensed beautifully by DP Ruben Woodin Dechamps, with a banging soundtrack from Toydrum (Slow Horses).

THE SON AND THE SEA has a running time of 102 minutes. It played Toronto and will play the BFI London Film Festival 2025.

ISH***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

Writer-director Imran Perretta's ISH is a beautifully made and emotionally searing coming-of-age drama, set in contemporary Luton - a shitty post-industrial town an hour north of London. I know it's shitty because I grew up near there, and it comes as no surprise to see that this multicultural town is still facing the same racially motivated policing and tug of war for the souls of its teenage boys as it did when I was growing up in the eighties. 

The movie stars newcomer Farhan Hasnat as Ishmael, or Ish for short, a young teenage boy living in a multi-generational family, dealing (or not) with the death of his mum. He is at that age where, depending on when puberty hits, you can look and sound completely different from your best mate, in this case a much older-looking boy called Maram (Yahya Kitana).  Where Ish is a bit naive and looks younger than his years, Maram is more cynical and world-wise. He wants to hang out with the cool older kids, and is swept up in low-level politics.  Like it or not, world events now infect our country. What happens in Israel has a profound impact on our Jewish and Muslim kids.  For Maram, the "opps" are the "IDF" and he feels his people are under attack.

The film is about two kids being pulled apart.  Partly because Maram is maturing faster, but mostly because he is unanchored by the strong and loving family that Ish is part of.  There's something really beautiful about the relationship between Ish and his grandmother, and this film gives us a depiction of a centring and positive Muslim faith that is all too rare in contemporary British media. By contrast, Maram is left to his own devices by his fierce father, and all too vulnerable to having his head turned.  The motivating device of the film that really seals their separate fates comes about a third of the way through the film, when both kids are picked up by the police in a stop-and-search operation.  The episode is quick and brutal and a real eye-opener for those who haven't seen one of these first hand. 

It's hard to believe that this is a first-time feature directorial effort from Imran Perretta. The film feels so tightly scripted (kudos also to co-writer Enda Walsh -HUNGER) and beautifully captures the liminal nature of being a second-gen immigrant - how language and even names are slippery - and identity gets channeled through shifting patois. I also loved the monochrome lensing from DP Jermaine Canute Edwards, capturing the Luton I knew from my youth. This is a really impressive film and one that people wanting to understand contemporary Britain should watch.  It would pair well with the superb BBC Three series Man Like Mobeen.

ISH has a running time of 89 minutes and played Venice. It will play the BFI London Film Festival where it is in competition for the Sutherland Trophy for debut feature directors. Both screenings are sold out.

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.

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.

JOY**

Director Ben Taylor (Sex Education) and writer Jack Thorne (ENOLA HOLMES) deliver a rather earnest but tepid biopic about the scientists who developed IVF.  Maybe earnestness is what this topic requires, but it does rather strain the two-hour running time.

The cast is, however, mostly great.  James Norton plays biologist Robert Edwards, fizzing with excitement and energy and impatient with barriers.  He teams up with near-retirement obstetrician Dr Patrick Steptoe (an understated and moving Bill Nighy) whose ability to delicately extract the candidates' eggs allows Edwards to attempt to fertilise them in vitro. Tanya Moodie is wonderfully stern and pragmatic as the fictional NHS Nurse who has to manage the patients and the ward.  The only weak link is Thomasin McKenzie as the real-life research nurse who project managed the entire affair, Jean Purdy.  There is something in her line delivery that I found unconvincing. 

My suspicion is that there is a far more interesting film to be made about the opposition to the research - whether religious (represented here by Purdy's mother - an always excellent Joanna Scanlan) - scientific - or simply bureaucratic. We get some of that here but it is rather lightly skated over. I also feel that the film would have been more interesting if it had focussed on why Jean Purdy was not given due recognition for decades and despite Edwards' campaigning.  Basically I wanted something grittier and more nuanced than the rather Keep Calm and Carry On plain vanilla approach taken here.

JOY has a running time of 115 minutes, is rated PG-13, and was released on Netflix last month.

THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA*

Writer-director Matt Winn doesn't know what his film THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA is meant to be. Scabrous social satire on the superficial and selfish metropolitan elite? Deeply felt drama about a fragile woman barely mourned by her so-called friend? Caper comedy?  What we end up with is a little of all three and none of it satisfying.

For the most part, this film reads like a stage-play in a single location, with more or less unlikeable characters dealing with a contrived set-up.  That set-up is that Tom and Sarah (Alan Tudyk and Shirley Henderson) need to sell their beautifully appointed home fast to avoid bankruptcy. They announce this while hosting their good friends Richard and Beth (Rufus Sewell and Olivia Williams) as well as their unwanted surprise guest Jessica (Indira Varma).  Jessica proceeds to flirt with both men, decry the success of her new book, criticise both women for leading superficial pathetic lives, before committing suicide in the back garden. Obviously the remaining four adults should call the police. But what if that skewers the sale of the house?

At this point the film could have gone very dark and very funny, and the jaunty jazzy score makes us think it might. Sewell threatens to go full Armando Iannucci with comedy swearing but then the film reins him in, and inserts some moral qualms, and then limply concludes its brief running time.  I might have given it another star for a lovely cameo from Anne Reid as a nosy neighbour but had to dock it a star for being so condescending to its audience as to use flashbacks.

THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA has a running time of 89 minutes and was released in the UK in April 2024.

BLITZ** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Opening Night Gala

Steve McQueen made a series of powerful TV specials under the banner of Small Axe, showing the experience of black people living in London in the 1960s.   In doing so, he was showing stories that had been under- or mis-represented.  The mission of his new feature film, BLITZ, is exactly the same. He wants to show the viewer just how multicultural London already was two decades before Windrush, and how the same prejudice blighted the lives of its black residents.  

As with Small Axe, some of the best scenes in BLITZ are those centred around music.  There's a tremendous flashback scene set in a dance hall where you feel the music pulse. There's an even better scene set in a luxurious Cafe de Paris style nightclub with a Cab Calloway style performer and the real-life pop star Celeste. And music is woven into other scenes - whether cockneys playing a washboard or gathered around a piano in the pub.  

It's hard to fault the way the film is put together. The recreation of bombed out East End streets - the peril and terror of houses on fire - the smouldering vistas the next morning. It's all immaculately recreated.  And it's hard to fault McQueen's earnest message of brotherly love. The problem is that this isn't a series of music -centred short films (as it probably should've been) but a feature film - and a feature film needs narrative propulsion and characters we care about.

We don't care about these characters because they are thinly drawn avatars.  Good guys vs racists. Saoirse Ronan's single mum Rita is good. The Fagin-style thieves played by Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham and Roddy from Slow Horses are bad. The almost angelic air raid warden Ife is good. And really good because he let's Rita's mixed-race son George feel proud of his blackness.  The nasty racist cockneys who want to put a sheet up to isolate the Sikhs are bad.  It goes on and on.

To make it worse, thin characterisation is met with thin dialogue.  And the poor kid - Elliott Heffernan - is given very little to do as George. He only exists to allow McQueen to follow his steps through the various vignettes that McQueen is actually interested in showing us.  

I also feel that - fatally - this film is miscast in its lead role. Ronan cannot do a convincing East End accent and she also cannot sing.  Having her lip sync to someone else's voice brings us out of the film.  For a character whose life is expressed in music - whose love for her son and father is shown through music - this is a real problem.

BLITZ is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes.  BLITZ will be released in cinemas on November 1st and on Netflix on November 22nd.

FIREBRAND****

Karim Ainouz's FIREBRAND is the story of Henry VIII's sixth wife, Catherine Parr.  Fair warning, this is a highly fictionalised account of her life, as told by screenwriters Jessica and Henrietta Ashworth and based on a novel by Elizabeth Fremantle.  The real Catherine did not apparently know and admire the radical preacher Anne Askew (the marvellous Erin Doherty - the best of the Princess Annes in The Crown).  And what happens in the final act stretches credulity.  And yet I do feel that this earnest and handsomely made film gets to a deep truth about the aged Henry and Catherine.

From what we can tell, Catherine does appear to have been fiercely capable, a generous educator and mother to Henry's various children, and an intelligent religious thinker. Her influence on England through shaping the thought of the young Princess Elizabeth is profound.  As played by Alicia Vikander she manages to make herself quiet and amenable but also has the courage of her religious convictions AND the ruthlessness to humiliate a younger rival.  She is a power player within the bounds that society allows her. 

And from what we can tell, the aged Henry was a deeply unhealthy, spoiled and irascible man, capable of cruelty and tyranny. Indeed, the lens through which this film tells the marital story is one of domestic abuse. We have a wife who must watch her words in order to pacify a terrifyingly quick-tempered husband.  Her every move is designed to preserve her own life and enable religious reform.  But she is physically terrorised, doubted for her loyalty, not just to Henry as a man and but to the Crown.  He loves her - we think - as much as he has loved any of his wives - but he will viciously physically attack her if provoked. 

All of this adds up to a claustrophobic and horrific atmosphere at court.  The forces against Catherine are variously the male relations of Henry's children, jockeying for power, and Bishop Stephen Gardiner (Simon Russell Beale) who is against religious reform. And then there is Henry himself, as played by Jude Law, obese and sneering but with the odd flash of charm that makes us see why Catherine may well have convinced herself she is in love with him. This is truly a fantastic performance from Jude Law.

But the really pivotal relationship in this film turns out to be between Catherine and Anne. It is Anne who urges Catherine to action and holds her to account, and Anne who sheds a tear for Catherine's lost soul in a deeply moving final act. 

A film - and performances - not to be missed.

FIREBRAND is rated R and has a running time of 121 minutes. It played Cannes 2023 and was released in the USA in June. It opens in the UK this weekend.

BACK TO BLACK****

Marisa Abella (Industry) delivers a stunning central performance as Amy Winehouse in this new biopic of the singer. She captures Amy's caustic wit, her physical mannerisms, and most impressively, her spoken and singing voice.  Director Sam Taylor-Wood (NOWHERE BOY) tackles the audience's apprehension head on in an opening scene showing Winehouse's Jewish parental family singing together. Abela freestyles Fly Me To The Moon and the audience relaxes, safe in the knowledge that Abela's Amy is spot on. Her Amy is straightforward to the point of rudeness, full of energy and sheer talent. But also troubled way before she meets her much vilified husband Blake Fielder-Civil. She is already bulimic and alcohol dependent with a self-acknowledged streak of self-sabotage, particularly when it comes to men. This is something that Matt Greenhalgh's script, using her own lyrics, explores from the first scenes.

About forty minutes into the film, Amy's first album has been a breakout success but she has been told to restyle herself for America. This plays into all of the insecurities that have fed into her self-abuse. And at that moment we meet Jack O'Connell (UNBROKEN) as Blake Fielder-Civil. He is charming and fun and has a deep knowledge of music over which he and Amy can bond. It's another powerhouse performance. There's an immediate spark and we are swept up in young, heedless romance.  According to this version of the story, it was a genuine love affair on both sides at first, and while he was already using Class A drugs she stuck "only" to alcohol and weed. It's only when they reunite after a break-up that he was motivated more by her fame and money and ability to fund his smack habit.  Once inside prison, he cleans up and realises what's obvious to the rest of us - that this is a desperately toxic codependent relationship with competitive self-harm. He wants to break free. Fair enough. But it breaks Amy in the process.

Needless to say, this is a more nuanced and sympathetic portrait of Fielder-Civil than we got from contemporary news reports, or from Asif Kapadia's superb 2015 documentary AMY. My only criticism of Kapadia is that he often creates pantomime villains in his films - whether Alain Prost in SENNA or Fielder-Civil and Mitch Winehouse in AMY.  Greenhalgh and Taylor-Wood may have swung the pendulum back too far in BACK TO BLACK but I really appreciate the attempt to treat humans as flawed real people. And we have to remember that Fielder-Civil was also a young man and an addict at the time. 

The whitewashing of Mitch Winehouse, played by the innately sympathetic Eddie Marsan, is probably going to be even more controversial.  In this film, he is portrayed as an indulgent father who is totally out of his depth when it comes to Amy's addictions. This kind of tracks with Amy's mother saying, in Kapadia's documentary, that when Amy told them about her bulimia they just kind of ignored it and hoped it would pass. We don't see the avaricious exploitative father of Kapadia's doc at all.

But let's not be fooled into thinking this film is a whitewashing of the brutality of addiction and bulimia.  Amy's descent into full blown class A drug addiction is shown explicitly, but never exploitatively. We see her ability to go clean for periods, but that she is, in the scripts words, always on edge, so that it doesn't take much to push her over. In this film, it's always heartbreak that does it - whether Fielder-Civil leaving her, or her inability to get pregnant and have the stable family life she craved.  The narrative is convincing, and Abela's central performance is heartbreaking.  I love that we spent so much time with Amy and her beloved Nan (Leslie Manville) and saw that Amy's heart was rooted in jazz. I felt I had an understanding of her deep familial musical heritage that I didn't get from Kapadia's doc.  And this is, I think, one of the most important things that we need to know about her.

BACK TO BLACK is rated R and has a running time of 122 minutes. It went on release in the UK today and goes on release in the USA on May 17th.

THE GENTLEMEN (TV)****

Guy Ritchie comes to our TV screens with a series that is a highly satisfying greatest hits mash-up of his mockney gangster films, like LOCK, STOCK to SNATCH. All the classic Ritchie tropes are here. Colourful East End gangsters in well-cut tweed. Thick as mince posh boys snorting coke getting rinsed by aforementioned gangsters. A cool, smart, stunning woman at the  centre of it all. Vinnie Jones in a cameo role. Illegal boxing. Travellers. Ganga farms on country estates. And a handsome protagonist who spends most of his time sorting out other people's bullshit. Oh and let's not forget the plotting - so complex, so full of double-crosses - and yet all resolving beautifully in the final act.

The good news is that while this show is set in the same world as Ritchie's feature film of the same name, you don't have to have watched that to enjoy the TV show. It opens cold establishing the bona fides of our hero, Eddie Horniman. He's a British soldier serving with UN Peacekeepers - and his skill for refined violence and defraying anger are going to come in handy. Eddie is played with suave cool by Theo James, of White Lotus season two fame. James treats this is a James Bond audition and is highly convincing in the role. 

The action begins when Eddie's father dies, leaving his title and estate to Eddie rather than his feckless big brother Freddy. Turns out daddy was leasing out the estate to Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone) to grow industrial quantities of ganga, managed by Bobby's daughter Suzy (Kaya Scodelario). Oh, and Freddy is in hock to some mean Liverpudlian cocaine-dealers who funded his drug-induced gambling binge.  Meanwhile, Giancarlo Esposito plays a mega rich American dealer who is keen to take over the business, and Eddie just wants to clear his brother's debts and get his estate back.  The series arc is effectively the process of Eddie discovering that as much as he says he wants out, he's actually pretty good at being a gangster. 

I really enjoyed this show. The lavish country house settings are beautifully filmed. The characters are compelling, the costumes stunning and the music propels the action scenes. Ritchie knows exactly what he's doing with this material, and while the the tropes are familiar, it still felt fresh and I was genuinely struggling to figure out how it would all resolve. I absolutely loved the final final final twist and really hope we get a second season.

Of the performances, Daniel Ings is the break-out star, with an instantly iconic chicken scene - you'll know what I mean when you see it - at the end of the first episode. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Vinnie Jones deliver a modulated performance, rather than just playing a pastiche of his bad boy football persona. I can't believe I am saying this, but it's Jones who delivers the one genuinely emotional scene in the whole series. Kudos to him.

THE GENTLEMEN is an eight episode miniseries available on Netflix.

SILVER HAZE*****

Dutch writer-director Sasha Polak's SILVER HAZE a lightly fictionalised depiction of actor Vicky Knight's life story.  As a young child, Franky (Vicky's on-screen avatar) was badly burned in a fire in her uncle's pub, and still holds her father's new wife Jane responsible. This film picks Franky up as a young woman who is filled with anger and resentment.  She lives in a chaotic crowded family home in an economically-deprived part of East London. The threat of verbal or physical violence is always just under the surface and Franky gives as good as she gets.  

The narrative is propelled by Franky's relationship with Florence (Esme Creed-Miles), a privileged but troubled girl who now lives with her grandmother Alice in Southend. It begins as a liberation, allowing Franky to discover she is gay, and allowing her to create a found family with the wonderfully supportive Alice, and Florence's younger brother Jack.

I really admire this film for its delicate balance between laugh-out-loud family banter - genuine menace in a scene of a London bus - and joyous emotional release.  Sacha Polak handles the shifts in tone and mood so beautifully that you emerge from a film that deals with epically profound topics feeling uplifted. I also admire how brave the film is. Not just Vicky Knight having the body confidence to be naked on screen, and to show her unique beauty, but her real-life siblings playing her on-screen family and revisiting a traumatic experience. In a sub-plot, Franky's sister explores converting to Islam, and her need for that is treated with respect but also good humour. That feels brave in the current climate.  Finally, I am grateful to any film that lets me spend time with the charismatic Angela Bruce.  As Alice, she is no pushover, but radiates warmth. A tricky balance to pull off.

Behind the lens, Polak's largely Dutch crew create some memorable visuals of Southend, and a beautiful soundtrack, on what must have been a low budget. It just cheers my soul that unique, brave, entertaining and moving films like this can still be made and released. I really hope it finds the audience it deserves.

SILVER HAZE has a running time of 102 minutes. It played Berlin and London 2023, and will play BFI Flare 2024. It will be released in the UK on March 29th.

HOW TO HAVE SEX*****

Writer-director Molly Manning Walker's debut feature is an astonishingly raw, brave and affecting drama about a teenage girl's summer holiday turned horror.  I am unsurprised to learn that Manning Walker won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes for her work, and can't wait to see what she does next.

The film stars Mia McKenna-Bruce as Tara, a sixteen-year old girl hoping to have some post-exam summer fun in Crete.  She is travelling with her two best friends, but we soon learn that friendship only goes so far when you both fancy the same boy.  We root for Tara to hook up with Badger (Shaun Thomas), who at least seems to have something of a moral conscience, but she inevitably ends up with his friend Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) who it is implied is more typical of the kind of guy you are going to meet on a party island.  Molly Manning Walker unflinchingly shows us the misogyny and sexual violence embedded in toxic holiday destinations like Cancun and the Med resorts. The most brutal part of all of this is how it manifests in the girls - the internalised misogyny of shaming someone for being a virgin, and the internalised pressure to have sex. You watch in terror as you realise the inevitable outcome of lots of booze, lots of pressure, and high-risk situations. All of this is portrayed with complete credibility by McKenna-Bruce and culminates in a final heartbreaking scene in an airport where she confesses the reality of what happened to her, and the evasive, equivocal reaction of her best friend. If you weren't worried about how teenagers think about consent before watching, you will be when you leave.

HOW TO HAVE SEX is rated 15 and has a running time of 91 minutes. It played Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival in 2023 and was released in the UK on December 29th. It will play Sundance 2024 before a February 2nd release.

THE KITCHEN** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 Closing Night Gala

Acclaimed actor Daniel Kaluuya (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH) turns his hand to writing and directing in partnership with Joe Murtagh (AMERICAN ANIMALS) and Kibwe Tavares respectively.  Together they have crafted a film that is superficially a dystopian political nightmare about gentrification and police brutality.  But it soon becomes apparent that the film's real themes are of fatherhood and community. 

The film takes place in The Kitchen - the last piece of social housing in London. The government wants the residents cleared out so that they can build luxury flats instead, and when the residents refuse to leave they are punished by having their utilities cut off and periodic brutal police raids. Against this backdrop we meet Izi - a cynical man desperate to leave The Kitchen for luxury housing but constrained by the sudden appearance of a young boy called Benji who may be his son. What are the stakes of this film? At first we think they are whether Izi will have the money to move out. Then we think it's going to be a struggle for Benji's future - on the straight and narrow with Izi or joining a biker gang. 

Part of my problem with this film is that actually the dystopian future idea is never particularly well fleshed out. We are just meant to understand - instinctively - as contemporary Londoners - that the housing situation is rigged. Maybe we do - but will global audiences?  My second issue is that there are literally zero female characters that matter. In 2023. In a progressive, politically aware film.  Seriously? I guess the writers might say that this is because the entire point of the film is to focus on fatherhood, and that its key narrative arc is a selfish man taking on that responsibility. Maaaaybe. Overall, the film just feels underwritten and lugubrious. I enjoyed the creation of The Kitchen in the first hour but very little actually happened.  As I said, I could and did enjoy derping around with these characters for a while. I really enjoyed the more informal banter about cardamom flavoured pancakes and Hawaiian dancer lamps. But at some point we need to get out of The Shire.

In front of the lens, Kane Robinson/Kano (Top Boy) shows little range as Izi, playing him as looking conflicted and staring into the middle distance all the time. He doesn't have much help from a script that makes him taciturn so this role needed some good, nuanced facial acting and we just didn't get it.  We are on far more impressive ground with Jedaiah Bannerman, who is both heart-breaking and hilarious as Benji. He is an actor to watch.  I will also confess that I got a thrill from seeing Ian Wright playing the voice and heart of The Kitchen, a DJ who spins classic vinyl while preaching solidarity. As a Gooner, I could happily watch hours of Wrighty vibing along to classic tracks. I am pleased and relieved to say that this is no cheap cameo either: Lord Kitchener is the emotional heartbeat of the plot.

Behind the lens, production design did wonders with what I suspect was a small budget. I loved the grungy, vibrant, rotting, exciting, space of The Kitchen.  It felt real somehow, and something worth fighting for, which is really important. This also felt disturbingly like the present - maybe because the budget to do anything too radical wasn't there - maybe because the film-makers were making a point - maybe because I am so familiar with the shooting locations I knew exactly where they were. Isn't it funny how people wanting to create the future always come back to my beloved brutalist notorious Barbican Centre?  I also really loved the aural landscape of this film - the richness and diversity of hearing a cappella gospel; bass-thumping EDM; and classic tracks from Lord Kitchener. But films start and end with scripts and this one needed another pass.

THE KITCHEN has a running time of 104 minutes, is rated R, and will be released on Netflix in 2024.