Film Digest: 22 new movies to watch
Tenet (12A)
French writer-director Ladj Ly focuses intently on one quotation from the 19th-century novel - "There are no bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators" - for a nerve-jangling thriller, which lights the fuse on civil unrest in the housing projects where Victor Hugo penned his masterpiece.
Opening with jubilant scenes in the capital as France beat Croatia by four goals to two in the 2018 Fifa World Cup final, Les Miserables momentarily unites desperate characters to patriotic swells of La Marseillaise.
The national anthem's chorus implores men, women and children to form battalions and march against the bloody standard of tyranny.
Scriptwriters bide their time responding to this impassioned call to arms, stacking powder kegs of rage and resentment beneath crime-riddled communities, which feel neglected by the upper echelons of power.
When violence inevitably erupts, Ly captures these frenzied exchanges in exhilarating yet sickening close-up on handheld cameras, which offer us no room to hide or draw breath.
Four stars
James Mangold's Oscar-nominated 2017 action thriller Logan opened the door to a new generation of mutants in the X-Men universe.
Josh Boone's long-delayed rites-of-passage drama slams the door shut again.
Filmed more than three years ago, The New Mutants draws inspiration from super-powered Marvel Comics characters, who embark on fantastical adventures separate from Professor Xavier's other gifted youngsters.
Alas, there is nothing remarkable about Boone's film, which taps into the adolescent angst of his previous picture, The Fault In Our Stars, and channels those raging hormones into a hoary horror set in an abandoned hospital that yearns to replicate the chilling isolation of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
A tidal wave of digital effects blights an overblown final act, drowning out solid performances from an ensemble cast of bright young things including Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy, who deserve a better vehicle for their talents.
Two stars
Time is a fluid construct in Tenet, trickling backwards and forwards and occasionally eddying into rippling pools of possible pasts, presents and futures.
Writer-director Christopher Nolan's espionage thriller is a rush of blood to the head that demands to be unscrambled on a big screen.
Shot on 65mm and large-format Imax cameras, Tenet is neither a sequel nor prequel to the 2010 dreamscape Inception but a standalone, intricately assembled puzzle box inlaid with outlandish action set-pieces and eye-popping special effects.
To visualise pivotal moments when time flows simultaneously in opposite directions, Nolan repeatedly performs a simple sleight of hand: reversing chronology to seemingly pull a rabbit out of a hat, which he placed in plain sight earlier in the story.
Sometimes, magicians show you how the trick is done, or fool you into believing that's what you're seeing.
Four stars
Towards the end of writer-director William Nicholson's portrait of a marriage in crisis, an embittered wife muses aloud, "That's the thing about unhappiness. After a while it stops being interesting."
Hope Gap is evidently aware of its flaws.
Adapted from Nicholson's 1999 play The Retreat From Moscow, this dialogue-heavy three-hander struggles to escape the gathering dust of its stage origins despite the efforts of cinematographer Anna Valdez Hanks to swoop endlessly over the chalk cliffs of the south coast, where iridescent rock pools are exposed by a retreating tide.
Composer Alex Heffes' unobtrusive, sombre orchestrations herald the gathering storm when a bookish, emotionally repressed husband prepares to abandon his outspoken spouse for a new life.
Love hurts much more than this.
Two stars
More than three years in the making, Away is a mesmerising computer-animated odyssey, which disproves the notion that film is a collaborative experience.
Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis directed, wrote, edited, produced and composed the score for his impressive debut feature - a dialogue-free labour of love that nods affectionately to puzzle-solving video games including the PlayStation adventures Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus.
From the tantalising opening image of a boy dangling from a tree, the canopy of his parachute snagged on gnarled fingers of a sun-scorched branch, we are spellbound passengers on a fantastical journey along the spine of an unnamed island.
In the space of 75 minutes, Zilbalodis subjects his young hero to various weather systems and orchestrates some impressively elaborate sequences including a vertiginous walk along a rotting wooden bridge and a hair-raising mountain descent in the shadow of an avalanche.
Three stars
Love means letting go in Shannon Murphy's emotionally shattering debut, a stylistically bold rites-of-passage drama comedy, which secured the Australian director a berth behind the camera of the third series of Killing Eve.
Death also becomes Babyteeth as screenwriter Rita Kalnejais deftly navigates first love in the shadow of terminal illness a la The Fault In Our Stars without resorting to emotionally manipulative tropes that often bedevil characters confronted by their mortality.
The heat of a summer in suburban Sydney ripples off the screen thanks to Andrew Commis's saturated cinematography, exacerbating tensions between dysfunctional family members who have forgotten what it means to suck the marrow out of life.
Eliza Scanlen, who faced a similarly grim prognosis as Beth in Greta Gerwig's recent reworking of Little Women, delivers a fearless lead performance as a teenager at peace with her premature demise.
Murphy accomplishes potentially awkward tonal changes and delivers a flurry of knockout blows in a beautiful and conventional setting - the beach - that make juddering sobs in the dark an inevitability.
Four stars
Life was beautiful for Italian writer-director Roberto Benigni in 1999 when he collected two Academy Awards, including the golden statuette for best actor in a leading role.
His response was to spearhead a lavish passion project - a visually sumptuous but misguided adaptation of Carlo Collodi's timeless fairy tale Pinocchio.
Almost 20 years later, Benigni redeems himself as ageing woodcarver Geppetto in Matteo Garrone's live-action adventure, which reintroduces darker elements from the book that were tempered by Walt Disney's classic 1940 animation.
Emboldened with stunning set design, costumes and jaw-dropping prosthetic make-up courtesy of two-time Oscar winner Mark Coulier, this Pinocchio is a fantastical feast for the senses tightly strung to the episodic structure of Collodi's 1883 novel.
Benigni plumbs deep wells of pathos while young Federico Ielapi subtly carves out childlike wonder and regret beneath the wood grain.
Three stars
Time doesn't heal wounds in director Brandon Trost's fish-out-of-water comedy, which promises of two Seth Rogens for the price of one.
In An American Pickle, the Canadian actor plays generations of the same Jewish bloodline, who are miraculously brought together in present-day Brooklyn thanks to a ludicrous plot device that evokes memories of the 1992 comedy Encino Man, which thawed out a Stone Age caveman in the urban jungle of Los Angeles.
Screenwriter Simon Rich encourages us to ignore the plausibility of his dramatic set-up by introducing the time-frozen protagonist at a press conference where a sceptical media horde blindly accepts the explanation of a scientific expert: "Makes sense", "Absolutely", "Very clear".
These opening scenes pack the highest concentration of salty-mouthed gags and relish taking potshots at obvious targets (Donald Trump, social media giants, fake news) as characters navigate clashing cultures.
Unlike the titular kosher treat, Trost's picture becomes less flavourful and enjoyable over time, hurriedly adding spoonfuls of syrupy sentiment to contrive peace and understanding in the aftermath of conflict.
Rating: Three stars
Forgiveness and friendship are stronger than intolerance and fear in the third computer-animated sequel to the award-winning 2012 Russian film The Snow Queen, based on the wintry Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.
The latest instalment in the franchise, which arrives four years after The Snow Queen 3: Fire And Ice, makes few concessions to audiences unfamiliar with narrative arcs and dangling plot threads from earlier chapters.
The return of one supporting character, presumed dead in a lava-filled cavern, necessitates some clunky expository dialogue to summarise their betrayal of the series' plucky heroine and lay the uneven foundations of their redemption.
Plotting is linear and obligatory life lessons are distilled as greetings card epithets - "One who cannot forgive has no friends" - in between competently executed action set-pieces including an airborne pursuit and a bruising final battle engineered with similar moving parts to Transformers.
The quality of the animation matches the sophistication of the storytelling.
Rating: Two stars
Rush-hour road rage escalates into a bloodthirsty fight for survival in Derrick Borte's wince-inducingly violent thriller.
Scriptwriter Carl Ellsworth signals his sadistic intent in the opening 10 minutes with a horrific double murder and a ham-fisted attempt to destroy the crime scene with sloshes of petrol.
A glowering Russell Crowe with bulging, blood-shot eyes is the lunatic responsible for the inferno.
Action sequences are well staged but show little restraint, with on-screen destruction including one unnecessarily grisly demise for a police officer.
In that brutish sense, Borte's film makes good on the promise of its title.
Three stars
Taking its title from Norse mythology's notion of heaven as an astral plane where souls linger invisibly after they depart the mortal realm, Summerland is an elegantly constructed drama set on the Kent coast under threat from the Luftwaffe.
Olivier Award-winning playwright Jessica Swale makes her feature film directorial debut with a self-penned meditation on womanhood and female empowerment, broadening her canvas beyond the confines of the stage to ebb and flow between three timeframes: 1926, 1940 and 1975.
She reunites with Gemma Arterton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who both starred in her boisterous and bawdy 2016 play Nell Gwynn, to chart forbidden romance in a time of conflict and self-sacrifice, when two women in love was considered wickedness and a sin.
The lead actresses catalyse simmering on-screen chemistry and Swale reflects discriminatory behaviour towards the couple in gentle brush strokes without labouring the point.
Salty humour punctuates the measured introspection - an opening punchline about Help The Aged sets the tone magnificently - delivered with impeccable timing by an ensemble British cast that includes national treasures Sir Tom Courtenay and Dame Penelope Wilton.
Three stars
Let there be light... less blurring of foreground detail and a more satisfying payoff to confidently sustained tension in writer-director Keith Thomas's modest supernatural horror.
The Vigil unfolds predominantly on three floors of a dimly-lit house in Borough Park in Brooklyn, New York, which is home to vibrant Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities.
The religious practice of the shomer - typically a family member or friend who stands guard over the body of the deceased and recites the Psalms to ward off unseen evil - provides Thomas with a neat dramatic conceit to mine for jump-out-of-seat scares.
Our reward for steadily cranked tension is meagre, including a nightmarish showdown between forces of good and evil that is so low key, you feel certain it has to be a false dawn with a concealed last-gasp twist.
Alas, the ace remains stuck up Thomas's sleeve after the end credits rolls.
Rating: Three stars
A top dog requires the biggest heart not the shiniest coat or sharpest teeth in director Alexs Stadermann's life-affirming computer-animated adventure.
Based on the 2009 book by Jayne Lyons, 100% Wolf howls familiar life lessons about individuality, self-expression and friendship within the framework of a teenager's coming-of-age in the aftermath of personal loss.
Fin Edquist's script plays up narrative similarities to The Lion King: a self-doubting heir who must temporarily abandon his kingdom to discover the courage to fight for his inheritance, a scheming uncle determined to seize a throne he doesn't deserve, a cliff-top tragedy and hard-fought redemption.
Life as man's best friend provides fart gags and obvious chuckles like when the hero, trapped in the body of a poodle, discovers the dizzying pleasure of dragging his bottom along the floor.
Young audiences could lap up the underlying shaggy dog story but parents may find it harder to wag tails at such simplistic delights.
Two stars
Life begins at 34 in director Alex Thompson's award-winning comedy drama about a rudderless singleton, who confronts deep-rooted fears and insecurities after she fumbles her way into a position of responsibility caring for a six-year-old girl.
Saint Frances coolly navigates hot button topics - abortion, postpartum depression, breastfeeding in public - with understated elegance and candour.
The script, co-written by Thompson and lead actress Kelly O'Sullivan, revels in the minutiae of everyday life and, refreshingly, doesn't blow out of proportion the central character's stumbles on her way to hard-fought self-enlightenment.
The menstrual blood-soaked aftermath of a one-night stand, which might be played for gross-out giggles or discomfort in clumsier hands, is a catalyst for genuine tenderness.
Pacing is deliberately slow to allow contemplative words to breathe and the cast to fully inhabit richly drawn roles, including a star-making turn from wunderkind Ramona Edith-Williams, who strikes a perfect balance between cuteness and precocity.
Four stars
Motherhood comes in many forms in Thom Fitzgerald's fish-out-of-water comedy, which transplants a Southern Baptist wife from the heartlands of Texas to the mascara-ed melting pot of present-day California.
Screenwriter Brad Hennig gleefully dips into the wig boxes of La Cage Aux Folles, The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and Kinky Boots to use the art of drag performance as a lesson plan for tolerance, empathy and dogged determination.
Two-time Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver adds another feisty yet lovable matriarch to her repertoire, essaying a quietly spoken woman of God, who draws parallels between the women in her local church choir and the volatile egos clamouring for adulation at her late son's drag bar.
"Different songs, same divas, some of the same wigs too," she quips, establishing a brisk tempo for one-liners that co-stars are happy to mimic.
Fitzgerald applies just enough glitter to the film's most touching moments including a timely intervention with one of the drag sisters to shepherd his picture to its unapologetically uplifting final chorus.
Three stars
Life and death are confirmed by last-minute telephone calls in Clemency, a quietly devastating drama told through the eyes of a death row inmate bound for the chamber and a long-serving warden, who must remain emotionally detached until the final injection of potassium chloride stops heart function.
Writer-director Chinonye Chukwu wanders the same echoing corridors as Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile and Just Mercy, exploring different facets of the American criminal justice system.
Her second feature is emboldened by a fearless central performance from Alfre Woodard as the sleep-deprived warden, who is as much a prisoner of her hulking facility as hundreds of men in her care.
Over the course of two riveting hours, Woodard chips away at her character's armour, which she wears to protect against visible twinges of doubt, until trickles of saltwater break through and smear her unmovable, cold facade.
A three-minute close-up of her face finally registering everything we have been feeling, her posture perceptibly sagging as the piercing scream of a flatline on a heart monitor steadily increases in volume, is almost unbearable.
Four stars
A resourceful girl abuses the power to shape her night-time imaginings in a colourful Danish computer-animated adventure co-directed by Kim Hagen Jensen and Tonni Zinck.
Dubbed into English language for its cinema release, Dreambuilders teaches wholesome messages of sisterhood, compassion and compromise, laced with sticky sentiment.
A linear script visualises our dream states as prop-filled wooden theatre stages, suspended in mid-air on long metal chains, which are accessed by mine carts on rollercoaster tracks.
It's a neat concept, providing Jensen and Zinck's picture with a couple of vertiginous set pieces as cutesy characters careen along the undulating metal pathway at dizzying speed, slaloming above and below myriad fantastical dream performances.
Repeatedly, the film encourages young viewers to let their imaginations run amok when they snuggle down quietly in bed but Dreambuilders doesn't always heed its own excellent advice, following a linear narrative trajectory with minimum emotional distress.
Two stars
Combine two cups of human drama with one cup of gently simmered romance, stirring in a generous splash of tragedy until the mixture thickens to a gooey consistency.
Half-bake on a medium heat until beleaguered characters rise nicely and serve with a generous dollop of sweetened wish fulfilment.
Love Sarah is a heartfelt drama about grief and female empowerment, made to a well-thumbed recipe in scriptwriter Jake Brunger's cookbook.
He doesn't introduce any unusual ingredients as three generations of women seek solidarity over platters of sticky Baklava, preferring a light, fluffy concoction that is methodically constructed like one of the Matcha mille crepe cakes made to order by the titular bakery for a Japanese customer craving home comforts.
Great British Bake Off champion Candice Brown makes fleeting appearances as the titular chef, whose death greases the wheels of a linear plot.
Three stars
Writer-director Bong Joon-ho mines a mother lode of deliciously cruel intentions in his wickedly entertaining and genre-bending satire.
Careening wildly from slapstick and scabrous social commentary to full-blooded horror, Parasite gleefully inhabits the cavernous divide between South Korea's haves and have-nots.
The script, co-written by Han Jin-won, lulls us into a false sense of security with a gently paced yet engrossing opening hour before Joon-ho tightens the screws on his desperate characters, setting in motion a jaw-dropping second act that leaves our nerves in tatters.
The film-maker dissipates tension with staccato bursts of ghoulish humour but belly laughs are soaked with bile - primal screams of despair aimed at a world that repeatedly kicks the poor and disenfranchised when they are down.
Five stars
There's a line in Can't Stop The Feeling, the infectious Justin Timberlake dancefloor anthem from the first Trolls film, which perfectly summed up my giddy response to the colour-saturated assault on the senses of the 2016 film: "I can't take my eyes up off it, movin' so phenomenally".
Regrettably the sunshine in my pocket and the good soul in my feet are not as pronounced in Walt Dohrn and David P Smith's disappointing sequel.
Made to the same recipe as the original, Trolls World Tour promotes a timely message of unity in the face of adversity - "You can't harmonise alone" - to a rumbustious soundtrack of energetic cover versions and new songs co-written by Timberlake.
Nothing comes close to the irresistible catchiness of Can't Stop The Feeling but a climactic full cast rendition of Just Sing is suitably rousing.
The inevitable declaration of gooey love between best friends is strung out for almost the full 91 minutes and Rachel Bloom's chief villain, modelled on a hellraiser from Mad Max: Fury Road, fails to turn up the volume on her underlying feelings of loneliness and alienation.
Two stars
I spy with my little eye something beginning with F.
Formulaic. Fun-filled. Fanciful. Family-friendly. Froth.
Take your pick when it comes to director Peter Segal's fitful action comedy, which pairs a musclebound man and a precocious, resourceful moppet in a cartoonish battle of wits that ultimately - and oh so predictably - enriches both characters' lives.
Screenwriting brothers Jon and Erich Hoeber follow the same lesson plan as Arnold Schwarzenegger's lumbering 1990 caper Kindergarten Cop, which was reused for Mr Nanny starring Hulk Hogan, The Pacifier starring Dwayne Johnson and Playing With Fire starring John Cena.
Retired professional wrestler and bodybuilder Dave Bautista, best known as potty-mouthed Drax The Destroyer in the Guardians Of The Galaxy films, takes the requisite tumbles on an ice rink and bruises to his ego as the emotionally closed hero, who learns to love and trust again by kowtowing to a child's whims.
Two stars
True magic is the invisible bonds between family and friends in Disney Pixar's life-affirming tale of two siblings who repair their strained relationship on an epic quest of self-discovery.
Inspired by the childhood loss of director Dan Scanlon, Onward is an unabashedly heartfelt valentine to brotherly love set in a fantastical world, which has gradually surrendered ancient tradition to the steady onslaught of technological innovation and convenience.
The script, co-written by Jason Headley and Keith Bunin, trades predominantly in goofy humour, concealing the inevitable knockout blows in a final act that will have grown men weeping uncontrollably in the dark.
Compared to Disney Pixar's recent offerings Coco and Toy Story 4, Onward feels emotionally lightweight and lacks some of the verve and wildly imaginative flourishes we have come to expect from the California-based animation house.
However, the film towers above the best efforts of many rival studios and is utterly ruthless when it comes to targeting leaky tear ducts.
Four stars
