Deborah Ross

Sylvie’s Love is an exquisitely styled, swooning, old-school, period Hollywood romance and while it has been described as ‘glib’ in some quarters, it’s Christmas, we’ve had a rotten year, and it may be just what the doctor ordered. And if it is glib — I’m not convinced it is, actually; it may even be quite groundbreaking — it is, at least, adorably and cheeringly so. (My heart was warmed.) It is written and directed by Eugene Ashe, and opens in Harlem in the summer of 1957 with Sylvie, played by a luminous Tessa Thompson. She works in her father’s record store but is obsessed by television and dreams of becoming a TV producer.

This pantomime was filmed by ‘legendary Blue Peter presenter’ Peter Duncan in his back garden over the summer. It was intended for online release only but it’s also gone into cinemas because this is the world we now live in. Oh no it isn’t. Oh yes it is. Oh no it isn’t. Seriously, it is. Why are you arguing like this? Stop it. As many theatres are still closed, and as most pantomimes have been cancelled, it makes sense to show it in cinemas and for cinemas to have something to show. During normal times the Christmas period is The Favourite and Portrait of a Lady and, while we’re at it, have David Copperfield and Little Women too.

County Lines is the kind of social realism that the British do so well, if not too well. In other words, a hard watch. In fact, at times it’s so unbearable you might find yourself pressing pause because you’ve suddenly remembered the fridge needs a clean, say. Or the hall: couldn’t it do with a tidy-up? But this tale of a young boy caught up in transporting drugs has to be tough. And there is sympathy, tenderness and hope, too. As for the kid, who is a sort of modern-day Billy from Kes, you will certainly take him to heart. The film is written and directed by Henry Blake, a one-time actor who was a youth worker in London for 11 years.

When I recommend this documentary to people, telling them it follows the journalistic investigation into a fire that broke out in a Bucharest nightclub, killing 64, with the majority not dying of their injuries but later in hospital, their look says: ‘Not a chance.’ Their look says: ‘This film is not something I wish to see.’ I felt similarly, but trust me on this. It’s gripping. It’s electrifying. It’s explosive. It plays like a crime thriller yet with real consequences. There are revelations that will make you gasp. And it opens a can of worms. Literally. The fire broke out at Club Colectiv in 2015 when a band’s pyrotechnics ignited the building’s soundproofing foam.

Hillbilly Elegy is an adaptation of the best-selling memoir, published in 2016, by J.D. Vance and it’s quite a story. He was brought up in the American rust belt amid poverty, violence, addiction, trash heaps, burning cars, hopelessness and, on top of all that, a grandma who, we now know, was the spit of Catherine Tate’s Nan. (It’s Glenn Close, but check it out.) Still, if you can get past Nan — if, if — this film should be an emotionally stirring and moving account of, ultimately, achieving the American dream. (Vance went on to Yale and became a successful investment banker.) But as directed by Ron Howard it isn’t any of that. Instead, this is like being trapped in a seemingly never-ending episode of The Jerry Springer Show.

This documentary about Billie Holiday is transfixing. Not just because it’s about Billie Holiday — I am not into jazz yet her version of ‘Strange Fruit’ is obviously incredible — but for the previously unheard audio tapes recorded by Linda Lipnack Kuehl in the 1970s with the people who knew her. This includes, for instance, Billie’s cousin, John Fagan, who chucklingly says he pimped her out as a child — ‘girls started young’ — and that women who ‘step out of line’ like to be knocked about and are proud of having a black eye as it shows ‘someone loves them’.

The Life Ahead stars Sophia Loren, and if there is one reason to see The Life Ahead it is this: Sophia Loren. And if you need a second reason, it is this: Sophia Loren. Also, it is the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh reason. And probably the eighth. She is magnificent, truly. Directed by Edoardo Ponti, Loren’s son, the film is based on the 1975 novel The Life Before Us by Romain Gary. It was filmed in 1977 as Madame Rosa, starring Simone Signoret, and won the Oscar for best foreign film. Here, the action has been transposed from France to Italy and the port city of Bari which is, from what we see of it, rough and poverty-stricken rather than picturesque. And our Madame Rosa is Loren, in her first proper film role for 11 years.

This week, two electrifying performances in two excellent films rather than two mediocre performances in the one mediocre film — see: Rebecca — so things are looking up. Firstly, Mogul Mowgli, starring Riz Ahmed, directed by Bassam Tariq and co-written by the pair. Ahmed plays Zed, a British-Pakistani rapper who has lived in New York for two years and is on the brink of stardom when he returns home to his family in London. It’s intended as a brief visit but then he is struck down by an autoimmune disease that is never named but is something like multiple sclerosis. The point is, I think, even his body doesn’t recognise him any more.

The Climb is, essentially, a bickering bromance as two longtime pals bicker bromantically down the years, and it doesn’t sound like a film you’d especially wish to see and it didn’t sound like a film I’d especially wish to see. Bromances are bad enough, so God save us from a bickering one. But it’s actually quite the marvel: original, sometimes absurdist, touching, funny, and it also takes male friendship seriously, which is a novelty. So you do wish to see it. You just didn’t know till now. It was written by Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin, directed by Covino, produced by Covino and Marvin (among others) and stars Covino and Marvin who play characters called Mike and Kyle.

Rebecca is a new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic, twisted, never-out-of-print tale of sexual jealousy. It’s directed by Ben Wheatley, with a script by Jane Goldman, and stars Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristin Scott Thomas. High hopes? Me too. But though it’s perfectly watchable, it’s not at all daring. Would the second Mrs de Winter be more fully formed and less of a pallid, round-shouldered meek little thing? Would sinister Mrs Danvers have more substance? Would it be a modern interpretation for modern times? No, is the short answer. And also it just isn’t sexy enough. Meanwhile, I forgot to start this with: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…’ as it’s how every other review will begin, I’m sure.

Saint Maud is a first feature from writer-director Rose Glass and it’s being billed as a horror film. But it’s not your common-or-garden horror film. There are no chases through woods. No one watches a doorknob being twisted from inside the room. Also, there are no maypoles. (Always bad news, maypoles.) Instead, it’s more of a character study, as well as a study of religious fervour, told in the high gothic style, grippingly, with wonderful originality and no dilly-dallying. Eighty minutes, and that’s it. (Sorkin, Nolan, Scorsese, Tarantino… please take note.) The film stars the terrific Morfydd Clark who, I think, you cast when you can’t get Molly Windsor who, in turn, you cast when you can’t get Morfydd Clark.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 — don’t worry, you haven’t missed six earlier films — is a courtroom drama based on true events featuring a stellar cast: Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong. You may be wondering: hang on, no Michael Keaton? But he tips up too! What, no Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Don’t worry. He’s here. But while the performances are ace and the script is one of those Sorkin scripts where the dialogue is one zinger after another — zinger ping pong, I call it — it will leave you cold emotionally. This is a film to admire, in some respects, but it will never make you feel. I wasn’t bothered who did or didn’t go to prison in the end.

The Painted Bird opens with a young boy (Jewish) running through a forest and clutching his pet ferret. He is being chased by some other boys (not Jewish) who beat him to the ground, douse his ferret in petrol and set it on fire. The boy watches as his pet burns alive and I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed a ferret being burned alive, but my God, I’m not going to get those high-pitched cries out of my head any day soon, just as I’m not going to get this film out of my head any day soon. You’d think, after those opening few minutes, things could only get better. But they don’t. They really, really, really don’t. And there are still two hours and 47 minutes to go.

Mulan is Disney’s latest live-action remake, coming in at 120 minutes, compared with the 1998 animation, which ran to 80. So it’s a third longer, and very much seemed it — and half the fun, if that. No songs. No jokes. No crazy grandma. No Eddie Murphy. Instead, this is a workaday action-adventure that is unlikely to entrance a new generation and won’t cut it for nostalgic adults either. I watched with two twentysomethings who had adored Mulan growing up and were genuinely excited but who wandered from the room after 40 minutes. So I was lonely as well as bored but couldn’t come up with a reason to summon them back. Quick, quick, or you’ll miss one of those dreary battle scenes that seem to go on forever?

Tenet is the latest high-concept, time-bending blockbuster from Christopher Nolan and it’s the film that (unofficially) reopens cinemas in the UK. It has everything that fans of Inception or Interstellar might want. There are spectacular set pieces. There’s time going forwards and then reversing, so it’s bullets flying back into the gun as crashed cars right themselves. There is a relentlessly pounding soundtrack. There is Sir Michael Caine playing Sir Michael Caine — his character is called Sir Michael Crosby but I wasn’t fooled — and as for the plot? Incoherent. Which fans seem to like. (‘I can’t explain any of it but it’s genius,’ I heard one say on the radio the other day. ‘A masterpiece.

Matteo Garrone’s live-action version of Pinocchio is visually sumptuous and there are some enchanting characters (my favourite: Snail). And unlike Disney’s version (1940) this is, apparently, far more faithful to the darker, original 1883 tale by Carlo Collodi, even if the Disney version was quite dark enough for some of us. (I screamed so much when Pinocchio turned into a donkey I had to be taken from the cinema, says my mother.) But while this may be more authentic it’s not narratively powerful for some reason. It should be. It’s a terrific (if twisted) story, after all. But it’s so episodic, and this Pinocchio is so unendearing, that the film itself never properly comes to life.

American Pickle is a comedy based on a short story by Simon Rich, originally published in the New Yorker, and I was sold on the synopsis alone: ‘An eastern European Jew falls into a vat of pickles and is brined for 100 years before emerging in modern-day Brooklyn.’ It’ll be a fish-out-of-water film like Crocodile Dundee, I thought. But more Jewish. And it felt like I’d been waiting all my life for a film like Crocodile Dundee, but more Jewish. In fact, where have the more Jewish versions of Crocodile Dundee been until now? You think: an entire factory left un-redeveloped for 100 years? It’s prime real estate, isn’t it? But.

Make Up is the first full-length film from writer--director Claire Oakley, set in an out-of-season holiday park on the Cornish coast where the wind blows, waves crash, rain lashes and gulls screech so you know it’s not a rom-com (foxes shriek in the night too). But while it’s easy to say what it isn’t, it’s harder to say what it is. It’s a thriller but not quite a thriller, and a horror flick but not quite a horror flick, and a psychosexual fantasy but not wholly a psychosexual fantasy… It may be we can settle only on one thing, and the one thing is this: it is very, very good.

Two films about young women this week, one at the cinema, if you dare, and one to stream, if you don’t. Saint Frances requires the daring and I’d dare, if I were you, as it’s splendid and funny and tender and involving and taboo-busting, and if you do contract a deadly virus, it’ll be worth it. Only kidding. Of course it won’t. But, on the other hand, the government is currently encouraging us to venture into town to save Pret A Manger and I think this has more to say than a baguette. Or one of those pricey salads.

Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as a prison warden on death row whose job is beginning to take its toll, and if you think it sounds like a tough watch, you’d be right. But it is also a masterwork, won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance, and doesn’t at any juncture call on the uplifting, healing power of cake — see: Love Sarah — so it has that going for it too. This film held me so fast I was outbid on eBay on a vintage sideboard I’d had my eyes on for ages It’s yet another film that you’ll have to stream digitally. (July was meant to be the month new films began opening in cinemas but at the moment it feels as though we’re waiting to see which of the major film companies will blink first and take the risk.