Film

The Friend is an adaptation of the novel by Sigrid Nunez starring a harlequin Great Dane. If I remember rightly, Naomi Watts and Bill Murray are also in the mix somewhere but I can’t be sure. Who could notice anything but Apollo in all his noble, giant, majesty? Watts and Murray are fine – if they are even in it? – but Bing, who plays Apollo, is astonishing. It’s his first role, yet he must be a shoo-in for the Palm Dog prize at Cannes this year. Even if you’re not into the ‘non-action’ genre it’s worth it for the dog To be clear, though, this isn’t your usual cute-doggo movie. This isn’t Turner & Hooch. In fact, if you’ve read the book you’ll be wondering: how can it even be a film?

Uberto Pasolini’s The Return stars Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche in a retelling of the last section of Homer’s Odyssey. He is Odysseus and she is Penelope in a stripped-back tale that presents the pair as psychologically plausible human beings rather than characters from Greek myth. Fiennes and Binoche are, of course, spellbinding. I could look at their faces all day. But the narrative is so parched and meditative it’s ultimately enervating and seems as depressed as the hero himself. I ended up longing for a Cyclops or at least a six-headed monster. Written by John Collee, Edward Bond and also Pasolini, the film throws no Gods or monsters in the mix and makes no mention of them. Instead, it’s a homecoming film that opens with Odysseus washing up on the shores of Ithaca.

Mr Burton is a biopic of Richard Burton’s early years and an origins story, if you like. It stars Harry Lawtey as young Richard and Toby Jones as Philip Burton, the inspirational teacher whose name he would take. It’s a fascinating story. In essence, Richard’s drunkard father sold him for £50. But the film is too devoted and sedate to fly as a cinematic event. It has the feel of a Sunday evening television drama. Nothing wrong with that – although you could just stay home on a Sunday evening and watch television if that’s what you’re after. Cheaper, and much less bother.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End is a ‘post-apocalyptic musical’ starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon that is being sold as a ‘bold vision’. And as you know I’m all for bold visions – except perhaps ones that go on for two and a half hours (I genuinely feared The End would never end) and give the impression throughout of being like a premise in search of a story. The musical, however, does definitively answer one question: can Swinton and Shannon carry a tune? Spoiler: not really. This is the first dramatic feature from Oppenheimer who is best known as the documentarian behind two stunning films about the 1960s Indonesian genocide (The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence).

Cher Horowitz, the central character in Clueless, is one of the most irritating heroines in the history of movies. She’s a rich, slim, beautiful Beverly Hills princess obsessed with parties, boys and clothing brands. According to her, the world’s problems can easily be settled by using the solutions she applied to the seating plan at her dad’s birthday dinner. But Cher is also a creation of genius because she draws us into her life and makes us understand the raw, damaged reality that lies behind her superficial perfection. She’s not a privileged brat. She’s all of us. At the start of this musical remake, Cher takes us on a tour of her luxury home. ‘The Greek columns date all the way back to 1975,’ she says.

Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and made Snowpiercer and Okja. It’s a dystopian sci-fi satire starring Robert Pattinson twice over (all will be explained) but while it initially kicks some decent ideas around, it eventually descends into a cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper with, as far as I could ascertain, nothing fresh to say. It’s not the biggest disappointment I’ve had in my life but it’s up there. The film is set some time in the future and Pattinson plays Mickey 17, a crew member on a space-colonisation mission who, in the opening sequence, has fallen into a deep crevice on the ice planet that is Niflheim. (I’ve always had my reservations about Niflheim; ask anybody.

The Last Showgirl stars Pamela Anderson as a Las Vegas dancer who has reached the end of her career (too old). And she is wonderful, a revelation. I’d like to say I saw it coming but I did not. Did you? When she was doing all that bouncing in slo-mo along the beach in Baywatch did you ever think: Pammy’s going to make a fine dramatic actress one day? But she’s better than the film itself. It would be flimsy without her – plus her own backstory adds a whole other layer. ‘What you sold was young and sexy,’ her character is told at one point, ‘you aren’t either any more.

The monkey is an organ-grinder’s monkey toy. Wind up the key jutting out of its back, and its lips will part to reveal two rows of yellow grimacing teeth. Then its clockwork arms will wheel up and down, banging a little drum as fairground music plays. And then someone nearby dies in an extremely gory freak accident. Maybe their head will be sliced off in a knife-twirling incident at a teppanyaki restaurant and slide gently on to the grill. Maybe they’ll fall through the stairs and into a box of fishhooks and then set their head on fire over a gas hob, and then run outside and impale themselves on a wooden spike. Maybe some huge Rube Goldberg arrangement of faulty wiring and loose roofing tiles will cause their body to explode in a shower of soft crimson globs.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is the fourth outing for our heroine as played by Renée Zellweger and I was not especially hopeful. Who can still be bothered? Particularly after that silly Thai jail business (second film) and then all that flailing about in the mud at a music festival (third). But this takes you right back to when you did care. The franchise (this time directed by Michael Morris) seems to have finally grown up a bit, and explores loss and grief with surprising depth. That said, it still knows exactly what it is, and what to deliver, and is in touch with its former self via nostalgic nods to blue soup, big pants and those penguin pyjamas first seen 24 years ago. They’re faded but still going strong. (I think we can safely assume they are not from Primark.

Next week, after the première of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera Festen, the cast and conductor will take their bow. All being well, there’ll be applause; and then a brief lull as the creative team takes the stage. There’s often a ripple of curiosity in the audience at this point, because it’s rare that we get to see just how many people it really takes to make an opera. Standing near the composer will be Lee Hall, the writer of Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters, and now part of the most maligned – and indispensable – profession in all of music. He’s the librettist. In short, Hall wrote the words, and in the world of opera there’s no more thankless task. ‘There’s this snobbery about it, an English snobbery, I suppose,’ he says.