Cert 15 101mins Stars 4

Bleak, compassionate, and powerful, this frighteningly realistic portrait of modern Britain by veteran director Ken Loach, is very much a companion piece to his devastating 2016 drama, I, Daniel Blake.

Kris Hitchen and Debbie Honeywood play a decent hardworking couple struggling to survive working as a delivery driver and a carer in the unforgiving regime of zero hours contracts, a system which values efficiency over humanity.

And in their damp and cramped rented home, their increasingly desperate and exhausted existence begins to impact on their two teenage kids.

Once again Loach fails to exploit the possibilities of Newcastle Upon Tyne as a location which offers plenty of opportunity to visually illustrate the UK’s wealth gap.

Plus there’s scant music and the dialogue is so functional and camerawork so perfunctory, it feels we’re watching a radio play.

Sadly there’s not much chance of this changing the world but it does make you think more kindly of white van men.

Cert 12A 112mins Stars 2

The talent of two of Hollywood’s greatest screen actresses is squandered in this solemn, superficial and dull drama.

Michelle Williams is happily running an Indian orphanage when she told she must travel to New York to secure a multi-million dollar donation from Julianne Moore’s mega successful media entrepreneur.

While there she attends a wedding where a devastating family secret linking the pair is revealed.

Lacking the wit to be satire or the campy fun of a soap opera, the super-wealthy characters mostly spend their time defending their right to be upset.

Taking itself far too seriously the script shamelessly uses an empty bird nest to illustrate the changing nature of parenting, and it’s passed about in the manner of a fizzing cartoon bomb.

Plus seeing Williams in a pashmina and meditating barefoot in an exclusive hotel suite, recalls Paul Hogan in 1980s comedy Crocodile Dundee, but without the acute social observations or self-mocking sense of humour.

Cert 15 96mins Stars 4

Steven Soderbergh returns to the big screen in playful mood with this Netflix production to lay bare 2015’s Panama Papers scandal, which he turns into a smart, brisk, gleefully inventive and black comic drama.

It combines the social conscience the director demonstrated in his 2000 Oscar winning Erin Brockovich, and his keen eye for a contemporary issue as seen in his work such as 2011’s Contagion.

To make the rampant illegality on show palatable – though no less enraging – his dynamic visual approach makes deft work of clearly illustrating complex financial systems, and alongside a first class cast he employs flights of fantasy, some animation, and an occasionally jolly tone.

He skilfully weaves several stories together to illustrate the human cost of the industrial scale corruption, tax evasion and money laundering which was revealed when a hacker published millions of secret documents belonging to a Panamanian law firm.

Meryl Streep is full of surprises as a grieving granny who we follow on her search for a crumb of responsibility or accountability after her insurance company weasels on a payout.

She discovers contracts are not worth the paper they’re written on as she tries to penetrate a world of shady financial trusts where people literally moving bits of paper around to take advantage of favourable tax codes.

David Schwimmer’s on-screen likeability and ability to essay a good person greatly out of his depth is put to huge effect as a little guy getting screwed by big money.

Plus Sharon Stone, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeffrey Wright, James Cromwell and Robert Patrick are among the talented supporting cast.

Meanwhile Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas are a wonderfully theatrical double act as the self-justifying lawyers at the heart of affair, washing their hands while turning a blind eye as they launder eye-watering sums of money for the global elite.

Wearing tuxedo’s and sipping Martini’s, they justify in layman’s terms the amoral secret life of money, how ere privacy laws exist to protect the rich and powerful, and are indifferent as the criminality extends to fraud, extortion, organ harvesting and murder.

And as Streep makes clear in an impassioned plea for the liberty of information, the meek will not be inheriting the earth – or much else – anytime soon.

Cert 15 149mins Stars 2

There’s a downward change of gear for Baby Driver star, Ansel Elgort, in this lethargic and melancholy mystery drama which begins to peter out as soon as it starts.

He plays a smart young art dealer involved in forgery, for whom a famous painting called The Goldfinch, is of special significance to him as a result of his mother dying during a terrorist bomb attack when he was a child.

Weighed down by it’s desire to impress, the dialogue often resembles a deathless list of composers, artists and authors, and is full of trite observations about art, memory and identity.

Adapted from a novel by Donna Tartt, it uses the always impressive cinematography of Brit Roger Deakins as a fig leaf to hide the soap opera plotting full of coincidence, betrayal and abandonment.

It’s all the more disappointing as it’s directed by John Crowley, who made Brooklyn, one of my favourite films of 2015. I suggest you give this one the bird.

Cert 15 122mins Stars 5

Murder is no laughing matter in this savage, disturbing and extraordinary thriller. And though it’s a comic book superhero origin story for Batman’s arch-enemy, Joker, it’s definitely not for the kids.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as the uneducated, disenfranchised, self-pitying fantasist, Arthur Fleck, an aspiring stand-up comic and part time clown who lives with his mother.

Repeatedly ridiculed and failed by society, his sadness leads to anger, crime and civil unrest, and he achieves a degree of celebrity which brings meaning to his life.

A dirty, rotten and violent reflection of his increasingly tortured psyche, Gotham City is in desperate need of hope, but young Bruce Wayne has yet to create the Batman suit, and his arrogant father is very much alive and running for mayor.

Phoenix has always been a gloriously intense and uncompromising performer and here he achieves greatness with a mesmerising turn as Joker, which drags you kicking and screaming inside the worldview of a man as he goes violently insane.

A certainty to be up for the major awards, Phoenix makes Heath Ledger’s Oscar winning turn as Joker seems as mad and threatening as Cesar Romero’s pantomime version from the 1960’s Batman TV series. Phoenix is so immersed in the character I was worried for the actor’s sanity.

Classic films such as The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver are major influences with the star of those films, Robert DeNiro appearing here as a talk show host and is clearly in the joke.

DeNiro’s taking part has the air of his passing to Phoenix the mantle of the greatest Hollywood actor working today. And in losing over 3 stone in weight for the role, Phoenix demonstrates a dedication to his craft of which DeNiro would be proud.

Never afraid of offending his audience, director and writer Todd Phillips is best known for his bad taste Hangover films, and was Oscar-nominated for the screenplay for Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 provocative satirical comedy film, Borat.

And this film is already proved controversial with Warner Bros. Studio having to issue a statement denying the film endorses gun violence.

Phillips and Phoenix sat next to each other after my screening and were clearly enjoying each other’s company as they discussed the movie, with Phillips described his film as a ‘deep dive character study’, and Phoenix called it ‘fresh, exciting and terrifying’. And they’re not wrong.

As tragedy twists into comedy and back again you’ll laugh even though you know you really shouldn’t. And despite being an extremely uncomfortable and stressful watch, I absolutely loved it.

Cert 15 Stars 4

Fantastically funny and heartwarming, this US high school comedy sees a pair of nerdy classmates determined to catch up on the two years worth of partying they’ve missed out on, the night before graduation.

Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are joyous with a winning chemistry, and are deftly directed with sympathy and care by actress Olivia Wilde, on her debut feature.

She gets the very best from her young cast, including an outrageous by turn by Carrie Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd, soon to be seen in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker.

Cert 12A 122mins Stars 4

Brad Pitt aims for the stars in this grandiose and epic existential sci-fi drama, a breathtakingly beautiful journey to the loneliest edge of the solar system which explores humanity’s need for companionship.

As the obsessive astronaut sent on a mission to find his father and save the Earth from destruction, Pitt displays none of the humour demonstrated so recently in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Instead Pitt is required to be at his most insular and least starry, and smartly calibrates his performance to the material in order to establish and anchor the melancholy tone.

Tommy Lee Jones is cast as his father and is equally subdued even while playing god in space, and much like  poor Liv Tyler as Pitt’s wife, he isn’t overburdened by dialogue.

As a psychological examination of the inability of men to communicate with each other, this is far from boldly going where no film has gone before.

Mind you, grief, isolation and a troubled father-son relationship is the familiar stomping ground of director James Gray. And it follows a similar path as his repetitive 2016 period adventure, Lost City of Z, which saw TV star Charlie Hunnam carry on up the jungle.

Yet the craftsmanship is typically superb as Gray takes the journey into darkness of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Vietnam war masterpiece, Apocalypse Now, and takes it into space – we even have a bloody episode with space baboons.

Plus Gray ambitiously apes the visual and sound design from Stanley Kubrick sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. But where Kubrick explained nothing, With Pitt’s voice-over fully explains his feelings of remorse and regret.

On my first viewing I found Ad Astra ponderous and pretentious, yet on the second time around I found it’s blockbuster action scenes more exciting, and far more enjoyed it’s thoughtful, elegant and graceful rhythms. On a third visit I’ll probably love it.

Cert 15 103mins Stars 3

There’s lots of heat but not enough spice in this unevenly cooked crime drama which sees Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss muscle in on the mobster action in 1970’s New York’s Hell’s Kitchen.

When their husbands are jailed for armed robbery, the women take over the running of the local protection rackets and graduate to bribery, blackmail, and murder.

Thriving in work environment empowers the arresting anti-heroes to make drastic changes at home, but despite fate serving up a helping hand in the form of Domhnall Gleeson’s black clad hit-man, their success is unconvincingly quick.

Individually great, the female trio’s distinct acting styles are far from complementary and adds to a confused tone which veers from caper to tragedy, and fails to successfully make a palatable blend of the black comedy and domestic violence.

And though the cauldron of sexual and racial politics bubbles over to become a blood bath, the drama never really comes to boil.

Cert PG 100mins Stars 3

Gloriously described as being based on an actual lie, this comedy drama uses quiet humour to peel away cultural facade of honesty, to expose how lies, fakery and charades are a necessary and accepted social grease which enable family relations to function.

A Chinese grandmother is unaware she has less than three months to live as her family are conspiring to withhold the truth from her and are using a wedding as an excuse for one last family gathering.

As her grand-daughter, Rap star Awkwafina plays Billie delivers a mature and subtle performance of unexpected range. She is as far away from her outrageous exuberant persona of 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians, as the humdrum industrial Chinese city of Changchun of the film’s setting is from New York, where she begins the film.

This is the second feature film from upcoming director, Lulu Wang, whose Beijing born American raised background clearly filters into and informs her thoughtful, funny and well observed work.

 

Cert 12 Stars 4

You’ll need to hold your breathe while watching this handsome, gripping and sombre real life story of 2000’s Kursk Russian submarine disaster.

Matthias Schoenaerts is the stern-faced Navy captain-lieutenant who is one of twenty-three sailors trapped underwater after an onboard explosion has crippled his vessel and killed many of his crew during a military exercise in the icy Barents Sea.

Bond girl Lea Seydoux worries as his onshore wife, and Colin Firth is the British Commodore trying to navigate the heavy political weather in order to launch a last minute rescue.