Deborah Ross

Queer, which is based on the novella by William S. Burroughs, is the latest film directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, Challengers) and stars Daniel Craig as an American expat who is gay, horny, sweaty, drug-addled and becomes infatuated with a younger man. It’s not exactly Christmassy, but it is very Burroughsy, and it may be the best performance of Craig’s career. I can’t think of any other actor who could have shaken off Bond in such a sexually daring way, not even Roger Moore. I can’t think of any other actor who could have shaken off Bond in such a sexually daring way – even Moore Queer is Burroughs’s follow-up to his better-known Junkie and it’s a sad tale that is highly autobiographical, which makes it sadder yet.

Nightbitch stars Amy Adams as a mother who is so full of rage about her loss of identity it makes her feral and she starts turning into a dog. It’s weird and there is nothing I can say to make it sound less weird – she grows a tail! Extra nipples! – but it’s actually a more regular and less wild story than you might have imagined. In other words: once you get over the dog, it’s fine(ish). If you can’t get over the dog, forget it. It is directed by Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood) and is an adaptation of the novel by Rachel Yoder. Growing up in a Mennonite community, Yoder saw how her mother had to sacrifice herself and swore that it would never happen to her.

Conclave is a papal thriller based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris and it stars a magnificent Ralph Fiennes. If he doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll eat my hat and also yours. Luckily, the film is also well written, smart, taut and visually stunning. You’d think the costume designer (Lisy Christl) wouldn’t find too much to play with, given it’s all vestments and cassocks, but they are gorgeous. The cardinals can be catty and bitchy and deceptive but I will say this for them: they know how to work red – and those little caps.

Sean Baker’s Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and is hotly tipped to win big at the Oscars and I know you won’t believe it’s as good as everyone is saying it is until you hear it from me so here you are: yes, it’s as good as everyone is saying it is. All the cast are stellar but Madison is mesmerising and carries the whole thing It stars Mikey Madison – who is a total knockout – as a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. But this is not Pretty Woman. This film takes Pretty Woman and smashes that fantasy over its knee, but with heart and soul and in a way that is as compelling as it is surprising. It came out a while ago but is still in cinemas so do yourselves a favour and get on it. It beats Gladiator II handsus downus.

It’s nearly 25 years since Ridley Scott’s Gladiator came out and you’ve probably been wondering what happened to the little boy in that film. I know I have. I can’t say it’s kept me up at night, but at the back of my mind it’s always been: where is Lucius, son of Maximus, nowus? Well, Lucius, son of Maximus, is nowus a strapping lad with thighs of steel who has been forced to become a gladiator and fight for his life just like his pop. This film borrows heavily from the first instalment. True, it does have some new elements. It has Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, monstrous man-eating baboons, sharks, a camp little monkey in a frock and all the historical inaccuracies we’ve come to expect from Scott.

Heretic is the latest horror film from writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quite Place) and stars Hugh Grant, now enjoying the villainous chapter of his career. (See: Paddington 2, The Undoing, The Gentlemen, etc.) Here, he plays a fella who imprisons two young Mormon missionaries as he seeks to torment and terrify them into renouncing their faith. What Grant’s most good at, it turns out, is being thoroughly bad Though the film doesn’t quite land and may not be as clever as it thinks it is, it builds tension nicely, and it’s enjoyable watching Grant have so much fun. All those years as a rom-com star when what he’s most good at, it turns out, is being thoroughly bad.

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodovar’s first film in the English language and if it is his last we can probably live with that. The film, which is adapted from a novel by Sigrid Nunez, stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, who are terrific whatever they do, and it is aesthetically divine (the knitwear, in particular, is sensational). But dramatically it’s thin gruel. The subject matter is euthanasia, so you’d expect Almodovar to hold back on his usual flamboyant playfulness, bounciness and humour. But what is there to care about? Why do these two women matter? Where is that knitwear from? Spoiler alert: no answers are forthcoming. Take the pill, Martha! Take the pill, then we can all go home!

The Apprentice is a dramatised biopic of Donald Trump, covering his early business years. He has called the film ‘FAKE and CLASSLESS’ and ‘garbage’ – but he wishes it well. I’m pulling your leg. ‘It will hopefully “bomb”,’ he has said. He hasn’t seen it, as far as anyone knows – I wish I could review films without seeing them; so time-saving – but even so, the writer, Gabriel Sherman, is ‘a lowlife and talentless hack’. If Trump had not trashed the film, you could say it had failed in what it was trying to reveal, which is: why does he behave this way? Where does his attacking mindset come from? It’s an origin story, if you like, and I was gripped throughout. It’s brilliantly acted and conceived, and it takes its subject seriously.

Joker: Folie à Deux is the sequel to Joker (2019), and you have to admire Todd Phillips for returning with a jukebox musical, co-starring Lady Gaga, and not giving fans what they expected – or wanted. (There were quite a few walkouts where I saw it.) It feels like a film that hates its audience. And itself But it’s not what anyone else wanted, either. It’s so inert and pointless that if staying the course isn’t the issue it’s only because staying awake is. I don’t blame Joaquin Phoenix; no one has worked harder at trying to sing since Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia!. He deserves some recognition for that – although whether acting as if you are in tune is enough to secure a second Oscar, I can’t say.

Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man is ‘a darkly comic psychological thriller’ that plays like an inverted Beauty and the Beast. What happens when the handsome prince turns out to be not all that? The three central performances are magnificent, and there’s a wry absurdist humour at work but unless you’re a fan of body horror it’s not an easy watch. I often had to look away. I can’t, therefore, say I particularly enjoyed seeing it, but now I have seen it I don’t regret it. Is that, dear readers, fudged enough for you? Sebastian Stan stars as Edward, an aspiring actor who lives in New York and has neurofibromatosis, the genetic condition where tumours grow under the skin. (This is not what the Elephant Man had; he is thought to have had Proteus syndrome.

Megalopolis, which draws parallels between the fall of the Roman empire and modern-day America, is a film by Francis Ford Coppola – and it couldn’t, in fact, be more by Francis Ford Coppola if it tried. He wrote, produced, directed and self-financed it ($120 million; ouch) and even found the time to be its greatest fan. On the film review sharing platform Letterboxd he has awarded it five stars. Way to go, Francis. We’re behind you even though, to be honest, you lost us quite early on. The movie is often baffling, and plainly nuts, but I’d prefer to see something baffling and plainly nuts by Francis Ford Coppola than, say, sit through Dune again.

The Critic is a period drama starring Ian McKellen as a newspaper theatre critic famed for his savagery and it did sound as if it had all the makings of an entertaining and nicely savage little film. But through a surfeit of plot, it rather loses the plot, and the result is a surprisingly bland melodrama with the small-screen feel of one of those Agatha Christies the BBC forces upon us every Christmas. When is anyone going to properly appreciate what we critics go through? It’s a pity, as critics don’t often make it on to the cinema screen, unlike war reporters. War reporters, war reporters, why is it always war reporters when I have to sit through a film each week that may be boring? When is anyone going to properly appreciate what we go through?

Firebrand is a period drama about Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr. It is sumptuously photographed – it’s as if Hans Holbein were behind the camera – and magnificently costumed. And Jude Law is tremendous as the monstrous, ailing Henry but be warned: it doesn’t play fast and loose with the facts so much as throw them out the window. This can work, if it’s for a good reason, but this, alas, never seems to find that reason. Law’s performance is so gloriously disgusting you can’t take your eyes off him The film, directed by Karim Ainouz and based on the book by Elizabeth Fremantle, states its aim at the outset with title cards: ‘History tells us many things, largely about men and war.

The Terminator is James Cameron’s first film, made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is celebrating its 40th anniversary – there’s a 4K restoration out in cinemas – and I’ve never seen it. I’m not wholly ignorant of 1980s action films, it may surprise you to hear. I’ve seen Diehard. I know a single fella in a vest can see off an entire army. But Terminator passed me by and now I’m glad to have rectified that. It’s engrossing, suspenseful, has a personality all of its own and absolutely stands the test of time. That last scene with the crawling, whirring, clanking arm? Best scene ever. Cameron, who would go on to make Aliens, Titanic and Avatar, was reportedly living out of his car when he sold the script to producer Gale Anne Hurd for $1.

August is known as ‘dump month’. It’s when the most forgettable films are released on the grounds that people don’t go to the cinema much in the summer. But maybe they don’t go because the films are so forgettable? Either way, the best film you probably won’t go and see this week is Widow Clicquot. You may wish to make a note of that. Shall I go on? With this film you probably won’t see? Better had. This space won’t fill itself. Some weeks I wish it would. But we all have our crosses to bear – plus it’s hardly coal-mining.

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is a new version of the 1979 Caligula that is still banned in some countries (Belarus). The most expensive independent production of its time, it was intended to prove an adult film could be a Hollywood hit – but not everyone received it in that spirit. ‘Sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash,’ wrote the late, great critic Roger Ebert, who walked out before it finished. Although this version is still violent and sexually explicit, it’s been reworked to show that, handled right, it had all the makings of a masterpiece. There are whippings and sex swings and I think I saw someone doing it with a swan In your dreams, pal. There’s no masterpiece, here.

Didi is a coming-of-age drama by the Taiwanese-American writer-director Sean Wang. It’s set in the summer of 2008 and based on his own adolescence – and here’s the bottom line: it’s an absolute joy. It’s funny, moving, authentic and takes you right back to being 13. (Agh!) The main character here is Chris (Izaac Wang), who is called ‘Didi’ by his family as that’s the Chinese for ‘little brother’. He is 13, lives in Fremont, California, and is about to start high school. There’s no father in the picture as he’s working back in Taiwan. His flustered, put-upon mother, Chungsing (the magnificent Joan Chen), can’t comprehend her children’s American ways and dispenses the kind of advice that no self-respecting teenager would ever take on board.

About Dry Grasses is the latest film from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan and it had better – I thought to myself as the lights dimmed – have a great deal to say about dry grasses that is fascinating and insightful, given it has a formidable running time of 200 minutes. (That’s nearly three and a half hours in old money.) It is, needless to say – with a title like that, few will mistake it for a Marvel flick – one of those films where the story unfolds obliquely and meditatively and may say everything or nothing, it’s hard to know. All I can tell you for sure is that I wasn’t ever bored even if dry grass doesn’t make an appearance until three hours and nine minutes in. A spoiler, yes, but best to be clear, so you don’t complain later.

Twisters is an action-disaster film that follows ‘storm-chasers’ and is so relentless in its own pursuit of tornadoes that plot, character and dialogue are also thrown to the wind. It has a classy cast (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell) and a classy director (Lee Isaac Chung) but if you believe, as I do, that once you’ve seen one big storm you’ve seen them all don’t expect any mercy. This never lets you off the hook and is so furiously and incessantly loud that a doze is impossible. God knows I tried. This film never lets you off the hook and is so furiously loud that a doze is impossible. God knows I tried That may be too harsh. The film does what it says on the tin, which is subject you to extremely bad weather over and over. You think tornadoes are rare events?

Fly Me to the Moon is a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum set during the 1960s space race but, unlike Apollo 11, this isn’t going anywhere we haven’t been before. The extent to which the film does take flight is largely thanks to Johansson’s charisma, even though I couldn’t help shake the feeling they’d fired up a Maserati for a job that basically required a pootle to the shops and back. Tatum, meanwhile, doesn’t have to do much but stand around and look beefy – but he does excel at beefiness. (The shoulders on this fella!) Tatum is 82 per cent shoulders,18 per cent neck. (This is aguess; don’t hold me to it) The film opens in 1969 with Johansson as Kelly Jones, a Madison Avenue marketing genius.