Film

Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Oppenheimer, is about the second biggest bang in history. Yet at its London premiere on Thursday, there was another explosion that, in its own way, was no less seismic than anything put on screen. Its star-studded cast, including Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr., assembled dutifully on the red carpet for interviews and selfies, but by the time that the film itself was about to screen, none of the actors were anywhere to be seen.  As Nolan said of his “incredible cast” in his introductory talk, “You’ve seen them here earlier on the red carpet.

The trailer for Ridley Scott’s eagerly awaited magnum opus Napoleon has finally arrived — and it does not disappoint. Boasting what looks like another Oscar-worthy performance from Joaquin Phoenix, the trailer teases an intoxicating mixture of full-throttle battle scenes, executed and shot on a scale unparalleled in modern cinema, as well as insight into the complex psyche of the French emperor, to say nothing of his often-tortuous relationship with his wife Josephine (played here by Vanessa Kirby.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?

When The Flash opens at cinemas this week, its production company DC Studios and distributor Warner Brothers will no doubt be hoping that attention is diverted away from its troubled, pronoun-wielding star Ezra Miller and towards its multiverse qualities. To the uninitiated, this sounds simply as if the studio has rounded up every actor who ever played Batman (save Christian Bale, who has wisely moved onto other things), chucked a Supergirl into the mix and even produced a truly bizarre Nicolas Cage cameo as Superman. Even Christopher Reeve appears, from beyond the grave. But to its now-desperate makers, mindful of the massive financial success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film has to succeed.

Pretty Red Dress is a debut feature starring a one-time X Factor winner so, you know, kill me now. But it’s a thin week and I’ll cut it some slack and be kind, like it says on the T-shirts. That was my thinking, because, as is now obvious, I can be a patronising fool. This is a terrific film. It’s original, has heft, is magnificently performed, and it blew me away. The writer-director is Dionne Edwards who, as I also now know, was named one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow in 2019. One of her shorts, We Love Moses, is available on Disney+ and it is totally worth 15 minutes of your time. The X Factor winner isn’t Harry Styles, for once, but Alexandra Burke, who triumphed in 2008.

Chevalier is a biopic of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whom you’ve probably never heard of, as I hadn’t. He was an 18th-century French-African virtuoso violinist and composer who wowed everyone in his day – in 1779, John Adams, then the American ambassador to France, called him ‘the most accomplished Man in Europe’ – but was erased from history and is only lately being rediscovered. Fascinating, you would think, and he was fascinating. Even a cursory look at his Wikipedia entry is thrilling. But this is not a fascinating or thrilling film. It is handsomely mounted yet strangely bland and strikes too many false notes. I was going to say it’s as if Disney had made it but then remembered: this is Disney.

Nobody liked Bama Rush: not the viewers, not the sorority sisters at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa (where the film is set), not TikTokkers. It is a remarkably unlikable film that ostensibly attempts to position itself as a “shocking” inside look at sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama. Meandering, self-absorbed and lazy, it somehow even manages to fail as anti-Greek life propaganda. Props to director Rachel Fleit for that though: it might be the film’s only achievement in a climate where people are frothing at the mouth to vilify anything resembling a uniquely American and time-honored tradition. (HBO Max/YouTube screenshot) Bama Rush is first and foremost a transparent attempt to cash in on the 2021 viral success of #RushTok.

Reality is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that isn’t like any edge-of-your seat thriller you’ve encountered before. Trust me. It’s a docudrama that isn’t ‘based on a true story’ because it is a true story. It’s an enactment of the FBI’s interrogation of American whistleblower Reality Winner. Taken directly from the transcript of the audio recording, the word-for-word screenplay includes every cough, every ‘um’, every dog bark, every banality, no embellishments. Yet it’s more terrifying than any film that has set out to terrify (see: Sisu). You should trust me on this too. The film is directed with clarity and precision by Tina Satter, a playwright who discovered the transcript online and first turned it into a theatre piece (Is This a Room).

When I went into the Sisu screening I knew only that it was a Finnish film, so was expecting an arthouse drama, maybe featuring bearded men in nice fisherman knits and herrings being salted, rather than this hyper-violent, viciously bloody exploitation flick from which I may never recover. It is a swift 90 minutes and will please those who desire this experience, and it is clever in its simplistic, empty way. But if it’s not your genre, you will almost certainly find yourself praying: ‘Dear God, I’ll never tell another lie if you just make this end.’ The film begins with a title card saying that ‘Sisu’ is a Finnish world that can’t be translated.