Deborah Ross

Tornado is a samurai spaghetti western starring Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Takehiro Hira (among others). Samurai spaghetti westerns aren’t anything new. In fact, we wouldn’t have spaghetti westerns if it weren’t for the samurai genre – Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964) was, as Clint Eastwood conceded, an ‘obvious rip-off’* of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) – yet this may be the first one set in 1790 and filmed in Scotland. It may also be the first one to feature thick woollens and tweed. That makes it sound twee which it isn’t. It’s a super-bloody revenge story filmed in just 25 days with a running time of 90 minutes. We love a 90-minute film, so I feel bad saying this, but it does feel as if it needed more time to cook.

Falling Into Place is a love story written by Aylin Tezel, directed by Aylin Tezel, and starring Aylin Tezel. That’s a lot of Aylin Tezel so I was nervous going in. What if it’s too much Aylin Tezel? What if Aylin Tezel and I don’t get along? Who even is Aylin Tezel? But I knew within the first few minutes we were in safe hands and I was set to like this Aylin Tezel. In Falling Into Place she’s created a literate and sensitive romance that is allowed to unfold gently. If it’s ‘high-octane action’ you’re after, then your better bet this week is Ballerina, the John Wick spin-off. This is strictly for the low-octane crowd. Do not expect octane.

The Salt Path is an adaptation of the best-selling book by Raynor Winn. It tells the true story of how she and her husband, Moth, lost their home and lost all their money. At one point they go to a bank to withdraw all their funds: £1.38. And if that wasn’t bad enough he’s then diagnosed with an incurable neurodegenerative disease. So what do they decide to do? They decide to embark on a 630-mile walk along the South West Coast Path. Isn’t that what any of us would do, given the circumstances? It is a remarkable story and while this may well frustrate those who like a juicy plot arc – does working out if you can stretch to a bag of chips count as plot? – it stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs who make it rather glorious.

Leni Riefenstahl: what are we to make of her? What did she know? Often described as ‘Hitler’s favourite filmmaker’, she always claimed that she knew nothing of any atrocities. She was a naive artist, not a collaborator in a murderous regime. This documentary wants to get to the truth. But even if you’ve already made your own mind up – I had! – it’s still a mesmerising portrait of the kind of person who cannot give up on the lies they’ve told themselves. Riefenstahl died in 2003 at the age of 101. A striking, Garbo-esque beauty in her youth she looked like a haunted Fanny Craddock by the end.

Slade in Flame was glam-rock band Slade’s first foray into film – and also their last. It was a flop on its release in 1975 and that would have been that, end of story, gone and forgotten, except it has been rediscovered in recent years, with critic Mark Kermode even hailing it as ‘the Citizen Kane of British pop movies’. That, I think, may be something of an overstatement but it’s still a highly watchable 90 minutes, does offer some banging tunes, and Noddy Holder, who plays the lead, does not embarrass himself on the acting front. (The other band members play lesser roles, perhaps mercifully.)  Newly remastered by the BFI for its 50th anniversary, the film is currently out in cinemas and will be available on Blu-Ray/DVD from 19 May.

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?

You could say it’s impossible to make a poor documentary about the writer Edna O’Brien as she’s never said or done anything uninteresting in her life. Point a camera and we’re away. But Sinead O’Shea’s Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story is especially rewarding as it is not only beautifully constructed but also includes diary entries that have never been made public before, plus an interview conducted with O’Brien in July last year just before her death. She was 93 and frail but as extraordinarily vivid as ever. She was born, she says, ‘ravenous for life’ and, blimey, what a life it was.

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).

Disney’s new Snow White is a live-action remake of the beloved 1937 classic that was cinema’s first full-length animated feature and is still regarded as Walt’s greatest masterpiece – even if fans of The Jungle Book will always have something to say about that. It stars Rachel Zegler, which set the cat among the pigeons, as she is Latino so doesn’t have ‘skin as white as snow’. However, because I’m not a stickler for ‘historical accuracy’ when it comes to fictional characters in fairy tales, this didn’t bother me. The problem with the film isn’t that it’s gone ‘woke’, it’s that it contains workaday narrative, blandly generic characters and a leaden script that wrings all the magic from the story.

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.

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.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is by the Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and all you need to know is that it is extraordinary. What you don’t need to know, but may like to know, is that Rasoulof, who has already been imprisoned multiple times by the authorities, filmed it clandestinely while directing remotely from an undisclosed location and then had to flee Iran on foot. The journey was extremely complicated and dangerous and took 28 days. You could never accuse Rasoulof of taking filmmaking lightly. But that’s not the bottom line. The bottom line is: it’s enthralling cinema. The film follows a family in Tehran. Iman (Misagh Zare) is the patriarch who has just been appointed an investigating judge in Iran’s revolutionary court.

Pansy is meant to be a sympathetic figure, but I felt sorrier for those who had to put up with her The central character in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths is Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an angry, bitter, late middle-aged woman who rages against everyone and everything. Against her husband, her son, chuggers, dogs in coats, shop assistants, babywear with pockets: ‘What’s it going to keep in its pocket?’ Everyone, Leigh has said, ‘knows a Pansy’. Or is one, he might have added. Or is in touch with their inner Pansy. Why does babywear have pockets? This is not a cheerful film and, as with Leigh generally, there is no neat redemptive arc. The first thing I said to my companion when it finished was: ‘Well, that was horrible.

The Brutalist, which is a fictional account of a Jewish-Hungarian architect in postwar America, has attracted a great deal of Oscar buzz and has been described as ‘monumental’ and ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘an inversion of the American dream’ and ‘up there with Citizen Kane’. It’s three and a half hours (including a 15-minute intermission) and while the running time isn’t an issue, as it is engrossing enough, it did frequently feel familiar. What film about the American dream isn’t an inversion of the American dream? I couldn’t fathom if it had anything new to say. It felt more like classy potboiler – love! Sex! Money! Power! Raw concrete! What film about the American dream isn’t an inversion of the American dream?

It doesn’t have anything new to say, which is right. If you could figure Dylan out, it would all be over A Complete Unknown is the Bob Dylan biopic from James Mangold, who also made Walk The Line about Johnny Cash. It stars Timothée Chalamet, who is astonishing, and does his own singing. He may even be better at singing Dylan than Dylan is at singing Dylan. (Same sound but fewer of those bum notes that make you go ‘ouch’.) It doesn’t have anything new or insightful to say, which is right and proper. If you could figure Dylan out, it would all be over. Instead, the focus is on the four years leading up to his use of electric instruments at Newport Folk Festival in 1965. This was greeted by fans with such horror and outrage it was as if, live on stage, he was kicking puppies.

Maria is a film by Pablo Larrain, who appears to have a soft spot for the psychodramas of legendary women (Spencer, Jackie) and has turned his attention to the prima donna Maria Callas. It stars Angelina Jolie, who trained as an opera singer for the role, God bless her, and while her voice is sometimes blended with Callas’s – isn’t that like adding ordinary plonk to a Château Lafite? – it still feels like karaoke, albeit karaoke of the most elevated kind. It’s not Mamma Mia!. It’s not your standard biopic either. This is Larrain, remember. Plus linear cradle-to-grave narratives are no longer in vogue – even though I wish they were. (I miss the moment when talent is first discovered, as well as, of course, those peeling posters noting the venues played.

We Live in Time is a rom-com (of sorts), starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. They have terrific chemistry and elevate the material by around 1,000 per cent (a conservative estimate), but it’s still deeply annoying. It’s a weepie – a cancer story as well as a love story; at some screenings tissues were handed out beforehand. But though I am a crier by nature, my tears were not jerked. I checked – and double-checked: eyes dry as anything. I couldn’t get beyond the phoniness. You might do better. Pugh (Almut) is an ambitious, high-end chef about to open an ‘Anglo-Bavarian restaurant’ serving ‘Douglas fir parfait’. (Each to their own.