The Post

You can see what attracted Steven Spielberg to this project. It was a chance to comment on two of the key issues facing America today. How should principled people behave in the maelstrom of bullying and dumbing down epitomised by the Trump presidency? And how should we combat the marginalisation of women brought about by…

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Ye see. This is how it can be when you get a talented and experienced playwright to pen an original script and give him the freedom to direct. Martin McDonah dazzled us in the past with the peerless ‘In Bruges’ and the flawed but fitfully brilliant ‘Seven Psychopaths’. Now he has produced another little gem…

Darkest Hour

Strange that a film, which in its simplest reading is a fairly subdued progression thro some of Churchill’s choicest wartime rhetoric, should find its greatest dramatic and emotional punch in silence. Winston’s reaction to the news from his new secretary Elizabeth Nel (Lily James) that her brother had failed to make it back to Dunkirk…

Rey

The weird and the wonderful get equal billing in Niles Atallah’s unique account of the adventures of Antoine de Tounens (Rodrigo Lisboa). He’s a provincial French lawyer who in 1860 and for reasons that are never explained, believes he has a claim to the throne of a remote Patagonian region and against all advice and…

Molly’s Game

This is Aaron Sorkin’s eighth screenplay but the first he has directed himself and the material, based on Ms Bloom’s autobiography, bears all his usual trademarks. Her book is titled “Molly’s Game: From Hollywood Elites to Wall St. Billionaires Boys Club, My High Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker”. Which works as a…

Suburbicon

There’s a scene towards the end of this where a blood spattered Matt Damon is frantically peddling away from a very violent situation on a small child’s push bike. It’s classsic Cohn brothers fare – hilarious and macabre in equal measure. The problem was that such moments were few and far between and there was…

All The Money in The World

Hastily reshot by Ridley Scott after the defenestration of Kevin Spacey and using Christopher Plummer as a stand in John Paul Getty, this is a film that disappoints dramatically whilst reflecting well on Scott’s moral compass and his ability to deal with the considerable technical and logistic challenges posed by the late substitution. Plummer was…