Film Reviews by PD

This piece is notable for a fine performance by Salma Hayek as the tender and dignified Beatriz, but whilst it's laudably well-intentioned the film is way too unsubtle to be entirely successful as an intended parable about haves and have-nots forced to mix socially with the inevitable disastrous results. It’s to the director's credit that they don’t make their title protagonist an eco-warrior secular saint, for Beatriz is a troubled soul, and putting her in the same room with the super-elite, notably the Trump-like Douglas Strutt, undoubtedly produces some telling, if excruciating, moments. But whilst it's hard not to agree with the disgust he feels at this privileged, entitled class’ complacency and complicity, unfortunately, a more nuanced approach to the dynamics of this culture clash would have made the film a lot more effective, and the final act feels like a cop-out, resolved with a magical-realist sleight of hand that cheats the viewer of a proper resolution while at the same time pushing the characters to the limits of credibility.

Simon Bird's big-screen debut is a tender but rather slight adaptation of Joff Winterhart’s 2012 graphic novel. Focusing on the fundamentally loving if frequently strained relationship between a middle-aged divorcee and her surly teen son, the sour-tinged comedy of excruciatingly English embarrassment deploys some talented performers on both sides of the camera, but the whole thing rather lacks the necessary depth to engage the viewer. The film depicts six semi-eventful weeks in the life of the amazingly patient and stoical librarian Sue (Monica Dolan) and her beyond-broody 16-year-old offspring Daniel (Earl Cave, son of Nick) who find themselves unexpectedly stuck with each other’s company for the duration of the school holidays. Over the course of three “chapters” plus a shorter coda, Sue and Daniel bicker their way through life and endure various mishaps of a generally minor nature, (although there are brief hints of greater pain underneath) but whilst there are some good moments between them, the script doesn't have the necessary weight to get us into their hearts, with the result that they both struggle to get beyond stereotypes throughout, particularly Cave's Daniel, whose sullen nihilistic teenager act gets very waring despite the director's attempt at sympathy - I just wanted to hurl him into the sea, frankly. The action isn't helped either by appearances from Daniel’s creepy history teacher, Sue's more worldly sister, a hippie-ish neighbour, and especially Daniel's best pal Ky, who's beyond irritating. Watchable enough, but ultimately rather forgettable.

Given his recent release from jail after being arrested last July (2022), Jafar Panahi's latest offering undoubtedly has a heightened impact as a result, but this artful telling of parallel narratives that intersect with Panahi facing the cost to himself and others of making films under an oppressive regime — completed before his arrest — would be a forceful statement even without the limits imposed on his freedom.

Deceptively simple at first, and then accumulating increasingly complex layers by almost imperceptible degrees, 'No Bears' deals with borders both physical and spiritual, with the divide between tradition and modernity, and the world of difference between Tehran and Iran’s rural backwaters. A character says at one point that it’s OK to lie if it’s in the service of peacekeeping; in the same way, the fear of wild animals in the title is revealed to be an unfounded superstition, designed to keep people in their place. But the film asks what do those restrictions really achieve and why do we give them such power.

While Panahi tries to keep a low profile to avoid being identified and reported to the authorities, he’s drawn into village politics as the elders descend to request a photograph he supposedly took of a young couple. As the situation escalates, the friction around him builds where once there was a welcoming curiosity. Meanwhile, there's a delicate reminder of how black-market traffic is the only commerce available to the village since the drought killed off farming. In a brief but memorable scene, Panahi jumps back as if on a rumbling fault line when he learns that the patch of dirt on which he’s standing is the invisible frontier separating Iran from Turkey. Thoughts sparked by that realisation are echoed in a film-within-a-film being played out before cameras in Turkey, with hesitancy prompted by questions about how much money is needed to survive in Europe, among other concerns. Late in the action, a character explodes in a stunning direct-to-camera rant about the frustration of spending ten years trying to get out of the country but being stuck there, forced to betray herself and others. The blurring of lines between scripted project and documentary is not new to Panahi, but it builds here with expert modulation to a shocking conclusion, whilst Panahi’s stoical presence at the centre of it all is rattled, forcing him to contemplate the repercussions of his work both to himself and to even his most guileless collaborators. The sobering final image resonates with the unspoken cry of an artist exiled in his own homeland, saying, “Enough.” Whether that means escaping the forces that would control him or seizing his creative liberty in more insurgent ways is the question that lingers. The one remaining certainty is that Panahi is among the world’s great filmmakers refusing to be silenced by authoritarian rule. Stirring stuff.

This absorbing Polish-Irish release is a showcase for Zofia Stafiej, a terrific young actor with a nuanced grasp of the complex protagonist Ola. The director succeeds in the difficult task of portraying a badly behaved young woman sympathetically - she may be a royal pain in the behind throughout, but she is also caring, smart and amazingly strong and uninterested in compromise - you mess with her at your peril. And whilst it's not the first time in fiction that a character has visited a foreign country to deal with a relative's death and learned queasy truths about that person's remote life, the personal element here is mixed with a a distinctly political undertow, namely, the gulf which still exists between the eastern and western ends of the EU, and especially the unkindness of the labour market and our wider responsibilities in society. Impressive stuff.

Perhaps one of those things that might have done better by being about a fictional character that we would have drawn comparisons to Diana, but this is still hugely enjoyable none the less, with a captivating performance from Kristen Stewart. She's on the edge of hysteria from the start - jittery, brittle, often abrasively defensive and yet deeply vulnerable in a film that puts her through a psychological wringer with shadings of outright horror. It's a world away from 'The Crown', for whilst the script certainly doesn’t lack compassion for the tragic figure at the centre of the whirlpool, the writer and director also make a lot of gutsy choices that deliberately put her at a distance from us — as Diana herself describes it in the film, like an insect under a microscope with its wings being tweezed off. Taking Diana’s maiden name as its title makes sense given that the Sandringham House weekend brings her back to the same estate where she spent her childhood in a neighbouring home - the arc of the film following her wrestling with the decision to stay and endure the agony of imprisonment in an artificial world that has proven inhospitable to her, or to bolt for freedom and reclaim her selfhood (although the film avoids the inevitable fact that this will mean sacrificing her children, which presumably must have been part of her mental torture in real life). Beautifully shot throughout, the opening of a simple shot of frost thick on the ground is an admittedly obvious but nevertheless apt metaphor for the reception that awaits Diana, and the first words we hear from her are “Where the fuck am I?,” muttered while she puzzles over a map. The regimented protocols of the royal holiday weekend are very well done, as is the ridiculously lavish catering supplies, and there's some very nice little touches, such as her the awestruck silence when she enters a motorway eatery, or her stopping to remove her father’s battered old coat from a scarecrow on the property. Monitoring Diana’s every move with hawk eyes and a permanent scowl is Major Alistair Gregory (Timothy Spall, excellent as always), balanced by beloved personal attendant Maggie (Sally Hawkins, also very good), whilst Jack Farthing's Charles and Stella Gonet's Queen Elizabeth remain predictably (and convincingly) inscrutable and silent except for a few, all-too brief encounters.

There's a fair few weaknesses - some of the symbolism is laid on with a seriously heavy trowel, and some of the motifs are rather clumsy, notably an attempt to shoehorn Anne Boleyn into the action, whilst an extended dreamy montage involving a re-visit to her childhood home doesn't quite work. But mostly it's a compelling piece because of Stewart, who plays Diana as a messy, free-spirited outlier in an environment of suffocating order whilst also revealing that beneath the rebellion is lacerating trauma, which manifests in her bulimia, self-harm, paranoia and a resistance that lurches between crippling fear and contempt. Meanwhile, the presentation of the Royal family as a sinister body corporate, ready to inflict wounds and ice out any interloper who tarnishes their brand is, sadly, all-too believable.

This highly original, wonderfully acted and beautifully shot film from Panah Panahi (son of Jafar Panahi) is set amid the winding desert highways and emerald valleys of northwestern Iran - the format being that of a family road trip, albeit one fuelled by the growing suspicion that its characters have taken a major detour away from our normal mortal coil at some point along the way. 'Where are we?' a grey-haired mother (a very delicate, bittersweet Pantea Panahiha) asks into the camera upon waking up from a restless catnap inside the SUV in which so much of this film takes place. 'We’re dead,' squeaks the youngest of her two sons (the superb Rayan Sarlak) from the back seat, a wonderfully annoying 6-year-old who never stops talking and moving restlessly throughout the film. They aren’t dead — at least not literally, even if the adorable dog who’s been brought along for the ride seems to be on its last legs — but the further Panahi’s foursome drives away from the lives they’ve left behind in Tehran, the more it begins to seem as if they’ve left behind life itself. A purgatorial fog rolls in as they climb towards the Turkish border, and with it comes a series of semi-competent guides (one amusingly trying to steer a motorbike from behind a sheepskin balaclava).

We never know why Khosro (tenderly played by Hassan Madjooni) and his wife so urgently fled their home in order to smuggle 20-year-old Farid (a truly tortured Amin Simiar) out of the country and away from the autocratic government their introverted first-born must have offended somehow, but it’s clear that this family is speeding down a one-way street. 'We lost our house and we sold our car for him to be able to leave,' one parent cries to the other. 'Do you ever think of the future?' And yet it’s the past that’s being forfeited to pay for it. Later, the little boy will take stock of the situation and ask his dad if they’re cockroaches. 'We are now,' Khosro grunts in response, most of his attention focused on the metal wire he’s using to scratch at the toes sticking out of his leg cast. So it goes in a beautifully tender dark comedy that swerves between tragedy and gallows humour with some skill, and knowingly sabotages all of its most crushing moments with a deadpan joke in order to keep Khosro’s family from running out of gas. It's a story about people who have to laugh in order to stop themselves from crying, and Panahi commits to that dynamic with the unwavering dedication of someone who knows that his characters don’t have any other choice. Very impressive work indeed.

This period melodrama tries earnestly to be many things at once: a tale of mismatched romance, a portrait of nervous breakdown, a snapshot of Thatcher’s racially charged Britain, a love letter to cinema, but unfortunately ends up not being about very much at all, for despite Olivia Coleman's fine performance as the tormented seaside cinema duty manager, none of these themes are treated in any depth. There's some nice touches - shots of the once-grand cinema interiors are very evocative, together with period-accurate production design that transports us back in time to the early 80s very effectively, and there's a good turn from Toby Jones (the only character, strangely, who displays any enthusiasm towards the films on offer), but none of this can hide a painfully thin script, whilst the central racial theme is far too often laid on with such a heavy trowel that it (of course) only loses its intended impact as a result. Undoubtedly heartfelt, but ultimately forgettable, I'm afraid.

This original, very austere but often playfully anachronistic piece by Marie Kreutzer centres on the later life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, aka “Sissi” (1837-1898), superbly played by a suitably regal and linguistically dexterous Vicky Krieps of 'Phantom Thread' fame. Kreutzer deliberately eschews any attempt to conform to the conventions of period drama, finding instead in the Bavarian-born wife of the Emperor Franz Josef a woman with a very modern spirit who happens to be locked in a 19th century marriage and desperate to assuage her frustration with having no real political power. Kreutzer’s script keeps a reasonably tight temporal focus on these few years in Sissi’s life, although it avoids some of the more dramatic events in the historical record, and substitutes a distinctly different ending to her life.

Kreutzer builds up an episodic but compelling portrait of a disaffected woman, with more than a touch of Coppola's Marie Antoniette and Diana, Princess of Wales, about her. For example, Sissi is seen suffering from an eating disorder brought on in part by a world that views her as little more than an 'influencer', whose slightest change of hairstyle ripples through society. In fact, at one point, in despair over a number of recent emotional shocks, she decides to hack off most of her locks, provoking one lady-in-waiting to cry with despair on seeing what she considers her own (not Sissi’s) life’s work ruined. Krieps brings a strong sense of intelligence to the role, and her own imposing physicality perfectly conveys the regality of Sissi’s presence, but the supporting characters are less well drawn, apart perhaps from Ida Ferenczy (Jeanne Werner), Sissi’s sister and emotional-support courtier, one of the few people with whom she can speak frankly and honestly. Indeed, without making a big fuss of it, there’s a distinct sense throughout that the mostly female key crewmembers are pulling together to tell this woman-centric story through the lens of female identity. Here, Sissi is more of a depressive rather than a narcissist or someone suffering borderline personality disorder - being desired and considered beautiful is practically the only power Sissi has, and as that power wanes there’s little to replace it. Well worth a look.

Following the template of “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight,” this one is a tense and absorbing film, one that sticks close to the nuts and bolts of what reporters do. We also see Twohey and Kantor at home, juggling work and husbands and children, and we feel their deep solidarity with the women they’re trying to coax into talking. Their reporting connects former assistants, film stars (including Ashley Judd, playing herself), as well as the financial executives who oversaw the payouts to silence Harvey’s victims. We see the journalistic juggling they have to do to build a sense of collective power in these women where there’s been none. This is a film about conversations in diners and restaurants, phone calls and surprise house calls, hunts for evidence that corroborates what is known intuitively. Schrader’s direction is restrained and respectful to the gravity of its subject matter, allowing the inherent drama to do most of the heavy lifting - moments which connect the past to the present establish one of the film’s most affecting threads: a generation of women forced to abandon their dreams and live alone with their nightmares.

However, after a compelling first hour, the film doesn't quite build to the electrifying payoff quite the way you want it to. This is, unfortunately, partly because of both Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan -there's a naturalistic chemistry between them as they develop a bond of their shared pursuit of the truth, but otherwise their performances are frustratingly bland and by-rote in a 'made-for-tv' kind of style - and partly because of a frustratingly stilted dialogue which dissipates the intensity at key moments. But the main problem is mainly because, despite an insistence at times in the script that the 'bigger picture' is Hollywood and a sinister corporate web, the film doesn't have the strength or scope to move beyond Weinstein himself. We learn a little about his method of buying his victims’ silence with expensive settlements and using non-disclosure agreements as a secret weapon against them, but Weinstein’s network of enablers—including the high-powered actors and directors who knew what was going on and looked the other way—get what’s essentially a free pass, remaining largely unmentioned. All in all, a worthy piece on a vitally important subject, but something of a missed opportunity, I fear.

This well-acted drama set at the time of Reagan's election has its moments but sadly ultimately fails in its depiction of its central theme of racial inequality.

James Gray's latest is presumably drawing on his own childhood to reflect on prejudice, privilege, and the eye-opening dangers of silence and complacency in American society, but whilst the intentions are admirable, the film isn't up to exploring the nuances of such complex topics in any depth and under-commits to sharing the truths of racial disparity when it comes to the American dream. Anthony Hopkins is unsurprisingly excellent as chorus-figure grandfather Aaron, whilst Michael Banks Repata turns in a worthy performance as his grandson Paul Graff, with good chemistry between him and Jaylin Webb as friend Johnny Davis - the childlike naivete of both is well-handled. But sadly Webb's character rarely gets beyond stereotype, his concerns being always in the background just as the privileged Graffs' are highlighted, and this means therefore that the attempts to explore class and race issues through the eyes of a child and his growing perspective fall rather flat. That's not to say that there aren't some telling moments - for example, when teacher, Mr. Turkeltaub's actions reveal that he almost expects delinquency out of Johnny, even when he’s not the culprit of classroom disruptions, thus neatly revealing the prejudice that Black children misbehave more often than their white counterparts, and these examples grow larger in scale as the film progresses. Yet, frustratingly, nothing ever comes from them on screen besides growing pains for Paul and his family, and whilst the family scenes are very well-done, this feels very uncomfortable indeed given the film's intended target. Ultimately, Gray's attempt to criticise how privilege paves the way to power and contributes to various levels of playing fields in pursuit of 'success', comes off as rather lazy and uninspiring.

This powerful piece is inevitably a difficult watch, but Alfre Woodard's admirably restrained, deeply felt performance means that you can't take your eyes off it for a second. Her burdened conscience takes centre-stage, but it’s the humanity and compassion invested across all the principal characters that makes this contemplative examination of the terrible weight of taking a life so commanding. Elegantly shot in widescreen compositions loaded with meaning, the film is perhaps a tad drawn out, but it’s never less than engrossing and often acutely affecting. A harrowing pre-titles sequence showing a botched state execution in agonising detail is very effective indeed, and whilst the film's core audience is likely to be people already ethically opposed to the death penalty, even some who are pro-capital punishment might find this persuasive food for thought.

There's some good moments in this adaptation of the now-famous musical, and includes a fabulous turn from Emma Thompson as the tyrannical Turnbull, but ultimately, as with the stage adaptation itself, it rather fails to do justice to the world as conceived by Road Dahl (something captured rather better in Danny DeVito’s 1998 live-action film adaptation). For by favouring a cleaner, more straightforward portrait of Matilda and highlighting its undeniably catchy and clever songs, this is at the expense of more complex reckonings with education, revolution, cruelty, and love, that you'd think are just waiting to be dusted off the page. Matthew Warchus holds close many elements from his stage creation, but this ends up being part of the problem (the great chocolate-eating scene for example is drowned in a mass of schoolchildren rotating in magenta-sequinned blazers, and at times it does feel you're watching the UK’s hottest new dance troupe on “Britain’s Got Talent.”). It’s also a shame that the obsession with television is totally ignored, and that the prospect of revolution is fully watered down, or, by contrast, reducing the parents to pantomime villains, which of course merely weakens the comedy. Meanwhile, Alisha Weir is all a bit too one-dimensional for me, for the real conflict Matilda’s qualities — talent, intelligence, emotional threshold — are subjected to is rather lost amongst all the song and dance routines.

And yet, and yet, enter stage right Emma Thompson. Underneath the fake nose and enormous pentagonal jawline, it’s a fully molecular metamorphosis that sings in ways every other part of the film pretty much falls short on. Thompson is fully convincing in displaying Trunchbull’s rage and resentment, reining in the pathetic comedy when fear takes priority, and cleverly sailing that thin line between comedy and horrific, outright abuse. The performance certainly saves the day, but ultimately this is a sanitised reproduction of the source material.

Wes Anderson's latest is very much in the same mould of 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' with its flights of imagination, exquisite visual flair and infectious sense of fun, and so if you liked that one you'll certainly enjoy this, although it never quite reaches the same heights. The very funny and darkly satirical first main sequence, 'The Concrete Masterpiece' is easily the best of the 'stories', involving an imprisoned sociopath-turned-artist and his muse, and featuring a wonderful Tilda Swinton who looks every the inch the part as art correspondent JKL Berensen, who narrates the story. The other sections are much less involving, but there's still much to enjoy, notably, in the final section, some gorgeous animated escape sequences in a bandes dessinées style reminiscent of Belgian cartoonist Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, while also evoking classic New Yorker covers.

Whilst the film may seem like a series of vignettes lacking a central theme, every moment is graced by Anderson’s love for the written word and the oddball characters who dedicate their professional lives to it. There’s a wistful sense of time passing and a lovely ode to the pleasures of travel embedded in the material, along with an appreciation for the history of American foreign correspondents who bring their perceptive outsider gaze to other cultures. The mission of the magazine is summed up thus near the end of the film: “Maybe with good luck we’ll find what eluded us in the places we once called home.”

This wonderful, subtle and delicate piece involves a depressive young dad at a Turkish resort with his pre-teen daughter, and anyone like me who has had to grab time, and maximise that time, with their young children after being separated from their partner will easily identify with the emotions he is going through - I left the film totally overwhelmed. Charlotte Wells’ highly sensitive film shows that no amount of play time and fruity drinks can keep either the past or future at bay. Paul Mescal is pitch-perfect at communicating an anxious, uneasy flipside to his casual, laddish charm, but its the remarkable duet between Mescal and 11-year-old Frankie Corio that carries the film as father and daughter reveal new, vulnerable facets of themselves to each other over the course of a tacky package holiday. There’s an edge of sibling-like complicity to their relationship, with their shared oddball jokes, loose conversational comfort with each other, and mutual resistance to patriarchal tradition, and this lends an additional urgency to the trip; it’s a chance for both Calum and Sophie to prove themselves to each other, showing off their responsibilities and capabilities, respectively. Wells’ taut script tells us little of Calum's life outside the immediate present, but stray asides and moments of solitary rumination — a fretful cigarette on the balcony when he thinks his daughter is asleep, a longing fixation on a Persian rug at a local market — hint at his unhappiness beneath the surface. Meanwhile, the perceptive Sophie notices some of her dad’s mood shifts, but is distracted with growing pains of her own, with boys showing an interest in her for the first time. With both father and daughter privately facing their own fears of getting older, there’s a sense that they may never share this innocent, breezy ease with each other again (in one brief, simple scene, her insecurities seep out during a brave-faced karaoke rendition of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” — a few minutes that appear to age her by three years). Whilst all this is going on, the director flashes both backwards (Calum's past) and forwards (Sophie's future) in time with some skill. 'Aftersun' is about trying to square the intimacy of being cared for as a child with the perspective that comes with being an adult. It’s about wanting to reach across time, and to meet a loved one in an impossible space where, for once, you’re both on the same level, and you can finally understand them for who they are — or who they were. Very impressive stuff indeed.

This very subtle but highly effective piece makes its point by avoiding any kind of melodrama or cliche often reverted to by these types of film, and is all the more powerful as a consequence. First-timer Sidney Flanigan as Autumn is so perfect in the role that it has the feel of a documentary, her defensive demeanour only slipping occasionally to show us the distress underneath, and it also successfully depicts the strength of female friendship (none of the male characters come off well, unsurprisingly). The title of the film comes from a key scene involving a set of responses Autumn is asked to choose from during a pre-abortion interview, over the course of which an intensely personal series of questions is gently posed to her which leads to her shield cracking and falling away completely. What’s left is a 17-year-old girl so inured to enduring in silence that she’s unable to respond to someone is actually taking an interest in her well-being, no matter how clinical that interest may be: 'Your partner has made you have sex when you didn’t want to — never, rarely, sometimes, always'. The camera holds on Flanigan’s face for a long, unbearable stretch in which she’s broken open by the act of being asked about herself and not just the pregnancy she has travelled across state lines to terminate. Impressive stuff.