Our latest movie reviews

From Serpico to LA Confidential to Training Day, stories of straight-arrow cops navigating corruption on the force are a Hollywood staple. Will that cheeky free donut lead the principled officer spiralling into a life of backhanders and dodgy deals, or can they hold onto their morals and bring the big apples on the force to book? Ultimately, the good guy wins out – and it is invariably a guy. Sandhya Suri’s terrific slowburn drama is the non-Hollywoodised version of that story, depicting life as a woman in India’s rural police as a far murkier and less predictable affair. The British-Indian director diagnoses a problem far too deep-seated for one well-meaning, inexperienced young constable to solve, leading you into a maze of compromised ethics, police brutality, caste violence and misogyny, and refusing to point to the exit. That constable is Santosh, an emotionally bruised young woman played with tentative gumption by Shahana Goswami. When her husband of two years is killed policing a riot, she takes up the option of a so-called ‘compassionate appointment’, a real scheme in India that enables women to take up their deceased husband’s old jobs.  Suri’s sharp-edged screenplay doesn’t find much admirable in Santosh’s new police colleagues, a lazy, bribable bunch of layabouts. One bullying female officer takes particular delight in humiliating trysting couples, enforcing a strict moral code noticeably absent back at the station. The cops laugh over a meme comparing China and...

To the list of the world’s most dazzlingly imaginative animators – America’s Pixar and Laika, Japan’s Studio Ghibli, England’s Aardman, Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon – you can officially add a 30-year-old Latvian with a laptop. Flow’s Gints Zilbalodis is now a Latvian with a laptop and an Oscar, and boy, is it deserved. His DIY animation, made partly with freely-available open-source software, takes the promises of his eye-catching 2020 debut Away and fulfils it in spellbinding style. A survival epic full of mysteries and magic, it’s an animated epic worthy of Ghibli. Set in the aftermath of an inexorable, unexplained flood, it follows a small band of animals floating on a small sail boat towards an uncertain future. Its small posse of furry and feathered adventurers include a slinky, inquisitive cat; a ring-tailed lemur; an aloof secretary bird; and the hipster’s mammal of the moment, a capybara. It’s been ages since anything articulated the spirituality of the natural world as breathtakingly as this Their voyage is not Disney’s mushy The Incredible Journey redux and there’s no Life of Pi metaphor behind these characters – they behave like animals in a way that speaks to many hours’ studying at the local zoo (in one cheat, the capybara sounds were provided by a baby camel). But Flow still finds behaviourisms that are touchingly relatable. Teamwork, friendship, ingenuity and common interest are themes that run below the surface like one of the mythical whales that occasionally...

Disney’s animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was released almost 90 years ago, so it makes sense that it would need a fair bit of updating for this live-action remake. There’s a determined effort to make this story feel modern, but despite plenty of invention and some very spirited performances, this Snow White still feels peculiarly old-fashioned and ultimately quite confused.  Written by Erin Cressida Wilson (Girl on the Train) and directed by Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) the retooled version still begins with a young princess, Snow White (Rachel Zegler), confined to a life of servitude when the widowed king marries a wicked sorceress (Gal Godot). After the king disappears, the evil queen, jealous of Snow White’s beauty, casts her stepdaughter into the forest to die. Instead, she’s taken in by a group of seven strangers. From here, it begins tying itself in knots trying to undo all the iffy outdated bits. Snow White is now a strong young woman who wants to reclaim her crown and lead her people, rather than a helpless naif who does housework for strangers while waiting for a prince to rescue her. Her songs about wishing for love have been replaced with new ones about simply wishing. The queen, however, is still driven by pure vanity and terror of ageing. Sexism is so baked into Snow White that you can’t eradicate it all without destroying the premise. Equally, Disney’s reluctance to use people with dwarfism for comic relief seems entirely right, but then...

Obviously, it’s impossible to watch a Mob biopic directed by Barry Levinson (who also made Bugsy), written by Nicholas Pileggi (who co-wrote Goodfellas and Casino), produced by Irwin Winkler (Goodfellas and The Irishman), and starring Robert De Niro (surely you see where this is going) and not think about the genre-defining classics that came before it.  So let’s just acknowledge up top that comparisons won’t serve anyone well. But if you take The Alto Knights on its own terms – as an eccentric but engaging curio – there’s still plenty of fun to be had. This is particularly true regarding the two central characters: true-life Mafia frenemies Frank Costello, played by De Niro, and Vito Genovese, played by… De Niro. Though his double duty presence is an obvious gimmick, the actor remains invested enough to keep us watching all the way. De Niro imbues New York crime boss Costello with shrewd intelligence and an almost gentle gravitas, as though he genuinely wishes other people didn’t constantly require him to bribe, cheat and steal. And he plays the paranoid, hot-headed Genovese as though nobody was able to drag Joe Pesci out of retirement, so he figured he might as well just do it instead. The only thing left for De Niro to do is play warring gangsters all by himself Sure, it’s all a little quixotic, especially when the pair face off against each other. But it’s also entertaining, as long as you’re willing to go with it. And why wouldn’t you? At this point, it almost seems...

I’m old enough to remember when every trip to the cinema involved not a barrage of adverts for mobile phones but a ten-fifteen minute short, usually a documentary on a subject of almost parodic dullness, like ‘cheese-making in France’. Louise Courvoisier’s debut Holy Cow takes that concept and runs with it, but the result is far from dull. Instead, what we get is a moving and humorous coming-of-age story which is told with brio, avoiding the usual divots of social realism misery. Totone (Clément Faveau) is a teenager, whose summer is full of fêtes, fights and hangovers until a sudden tragedy leaves him alone with his young sister (a phenomenally cute Luna Garret), and all the responsibility as the head of the house. Neighbours offer help but their offers are soon revealed to either be empty or compromised by Totone’s feud with the sons of another cheesemaker. His solution is to try to win a cheese-making competition which will pocket him 30,000 euros, with the help of his stock-car driving chums. There will be missteps and acrimony and an unsentimental romance that smells of dung and sex with Marie-Lise (Maïwenn Barthelemy), a much more capable young woman from a neighbouring farm and from whom he’ll learn self-discipline and cunnilingus. It’s a summer film of late nights and early mornings Holy Cow is set in the agricultural region of Jura, home of the Comté cheese which Totone is trying to make – and you can tell that the director is a local. Despite Elio Balezeaux’s...

The last time James Bond star Ben Whishaw worked with Love is Strange director Ira Sachs, his sweet-natured printer Martin was stuck in a hot mess tug-of-war with Franz Rogowski’s savagely self-centred filmmaker and his new lover (Adèle Exarchopoulos) in Passages. It was a lot – in the best way.  In the lilting, graceful Peter Hujar’s Day the vibe is more laidback but no less scintillating. Whishaw is the eponymous, gifted New York photographer, who mixed with the likes of Susan Sontag and Andy Warhol when New York was at its most indulgent and the groovy ’70s were morphing into the big hair and brash fashion of the ’80s. One of far too many artistic lights snuffed out by the HIV/AIDS crisis, Hujar deserves broader recognition than he got during his short life. Sachs, a true believer in the necessity of honouring queer artists, hopes to correct that with this miracle of a film.  It’s adapted from a 1974 interview conducted by Hujar’s friend, non-fiction writer Linda Rosenkrantz of Talk fame (played by Rebecca Hall). We learn that she intended to write a book detailing a day in the life of several creative friends. Only the book never eventuated, and the recording was lost. Then, many moons later, a transcript was discovered in Hujar’s archive. It’s this miraculous document and its unguarded insights into the life of a remarkable artist in into which Sachs breathes cinematic magic. Whishaw is always a wonder – and he’s especially good here Shooting in an apartment in...

‘Blue moon, you saw me standing alone’ runs the line from songwriting double-act Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s classic ballad. But as Boyhood director Richard Linklater’s bittersweet film about the estranged pair proves, you don’t have to be on your own to be alone. Linklater’s long-term collaborator Ethan Hawke transforms into the rumpled, melancholy Hart. He slouches in the washed-up man’s shrunken frame and balding crown. Down on his luck and drinking heavily, his once-grand writing partnership with Rodgers (a sharply tuxedoed Andrew Scott) has been dashed, thanks to his increasing unreliability. It hurts on a bone-deep level.  Slipping out of Oklahoma!’s opening night in March 1943, the semi-closeted Hart slinks round the corner to the afterparty at Broadway haunt Sardi’s to bitch about the musical. Blue Jasmine’s Bobby Cannavale plays a charismatic barman who listens to the older man’s grousing, while valiantly trying not to pour him whiskies. As they shoot the breeze while a young serviceman (Jonah Lees) playing piano, the subject of Casablanca crops up. You can expect Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman-like banter from Robert Kaplow’s finely-tuned screenplay, an expert evocation of the ‘40s.   Linklater knows how to draw the most intimate performances from Ethan Hawke The sense of theatricality fits the subject matter perfectly. Cinematographer Shane F Kelly’s camera slinks nimbly through Sardi’s confined spaces as Hart holds court. He’s mooning after The...

Alex Parkinson’s adventure thriller, a remake of his own 2019 documentary about a miracle at sea, pumps a steady stream of adrenaline by conjuring the setting of one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. Off the coast of Aberdeen, 300 feet below the surface of the North Sea, saturation divers are tasked with maintaining telecommunication pipes. Although it comes with an above-average risk of death, there are rewards for such a cool job. Or so Chris (Peaky Blinders’ Finn Cole) tells his fiancée with a mock-swagger. That Chris’s cockiness is about to be tested is telegraphed as starkly as a red distress flare will later glow in the depths of the ocean. Parkinson rushes through the obligatory life-stakes set-up before hustling Chris aboard the good ship Tharos. Here, Chris reconnects with ‘Sat Daddy’ Duncan (Woody Harrelson), an affable dive veteran under threat of being retired, and meets brusque ace Dave (Shang-Chi’s Simu Liu), a focused pro who will be diver 1 to Chris’s diver 2 once the job is underway.  As the lads bed down in the silver, oxygen-boosting cylinder they call home, a grudging bonhomie starts to bloom. It’s the soothingly familiar kind found in every male bonding movie from Top Gun to Cool Runnings. The dark subaqueous world becomes a stage for a gripping survival drama Those tropes are not an issue for a film whose originality stems from its attention to the procedural detail of a fascinating job. Parkinson’s documentary about this story (the real-life...

With this quick-witted and sexually supercharged espionage caper, Steven Soderbergh and his screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park) have just remade Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the Industry generation.  Cerebral rather than action-packed, it’s like a classic le Carré (or, with its Harry Palmer allusions, Len Deighton) thriller, brought bang up to date with stylish direction, outrageously thirsty acting, and some bone-dry wit. There’s also a Ukraine invasion subplot to keep things uncomfortably topical.Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are married couple George and Kathryn Woodhouse – a pair of British spies who bring far too much work home with them. He has the calm, measured air (and glasses) of his namesake George Smiley, and a fastidiousness that’s perfect for his job but could be deeply annoying on date night. She’s cool with it – she’s cool, generally. The so-called ‘black bag’, a metaphorical mechanism employed by spooks to keep some semblance of work/life balance, helps keep the intel and intimacy apart. At least, it should. But a slick opening Steadicam sequence through a Mayfair nightclub sees George learning that there’s a traitor in his team’s midst – and Kathryn’s name is firmly on the shortlist. It’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the Industry generation Soderbergh gathers all the suspects – agency shrink Zoe (Naomie Harris), tech whiz Clarissa (Marisa Abela), cocky field agent James (Regé-Jean Page) and morally compromised veteran Freddie (Tom Burke) –...

Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, The Hand of God) is known for making wonderfully cinematic films, typically with male protagonists, so it’s refreshing to see him focus on a female hero in this languorous, gorgeous-looking period piece.  Parthenope is born in Naples, 1950, and grows into a conventionally beautiful young woman (newcomers Celeste Dalla Porta). So beautiful that she’s getting flirty looks from her own brother, Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo), as well as friend Sandrino (Dario Aita). Imagine the chaos when this threesome heads to Capri, the playground of the rich and famous. Heads turn wherever Parthenope goes. Acting agents scout her. Men in helicopters invite her for picnics. An intelligent anthropology student, Parthenope navigates this with grace and humour, choosing to hang out with a drunken novelist, John Cheever (Gary Oldman), who prefers boys. An incident in Capri changes Parthenope’s life forever, and we follow her over the ensuing years as she meets an array of eccentric characters. Parthenope is split into chronological sections, and the superior early chapters have shades of everything from Death In Venice to The Dreamers. Porta puts in an enjoyable performance, whether delivering sharp one-liners or affecting that glassy straight-ahead look that all pretty young women must – especially in 1970s Italy.  It’s refreshing to see Sorrentino focusing on a female hero Given that context, the attention Parthenope receives seems...