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A t 93 years old, Thelma Post (June Squibb) remains fiercely independent, living in the California home she shared with her late husband despite her family’s concerns that she’s too frail to be on her own. Her grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) has more faith in her – maybe because she’s the only one who seems to have any faith in him – and visits regularly, helping Thelma learn how to use her computer and filling her in on how things are going with his ex-girlfriend. But one morning, Thelma gets a frantic phone call from someone claiming to be Danny, explaining he’s been in a car accident and needs her to bail him out of jail. Sweet Thelma springs into action to help her grandson and promptly posts $10,000 to a PO box…only for it to transpire that Danny was fast asleep in bed, and Thelma has been the victim of a particularly insidious phone scam. When the police are indifferent to Thelma’s plight, she refuses to take no for an answer, and sets out on a mission to reclaim what was tak...

O f all the creature comforts in her family’s home, Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller) is most proud of the manicured gardens – she shows them off to her mother on a bright summer’s day, highlighting the vegetable patch, and the cheerful flowerbeds. There is even a modest swimming pool for their five children to play in. “This was a field three years ago,” she explains proudly. Beyond the boundary wall loom the chimneys of Auschwitz. Every so often, the sound of gunfire or screaming pierces the air. Hedwig does not seem to notice as she chatters pleasantly about her rural idyll. Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, loosely inspired by Martin Amis’ novel of the same name, depicts a period of roughly one year in the lives of the Höss family, who lived next door to Auschwitz from May 1940 until September 1944. Their patriarch, Rudolf (played here by Christian Friedel) was the commander of the camp, responsible for the death of at least 1.1 million inmates, primarily Jewish people deported ...

E veryone knows that Salt Bae is one of the most awful humans currently roaming the planet, and you’ll be happy to discover that the folks over at Illumination Animation Studios concur with that fact. A nameless, voiceless parody of Salt Bae turns up as the knife-wielding, indoor micro sunglasses-wearing antagonist in Migration, a light comic caper about a family of mallards (always referred to here as mallards, never ducks?) who accidentally migrate north for the winter and end up in New York City. The evil chef is introduced as someone who keeps a tropical macaw locked up in a very small cage, and he’s shown violently humiliating one of his sous chefs for what he construes to be an inferior plate of food. Yet rather than steak wrapped in gold leaf, duck à l’orange , that 70s classic, is the chef’s speciality, and he’s depicted fetishising a sharp carving blade in every shot he appears, either spinning it around his finger like a six-shooter, or scraping it along the crispy skin o...

A grieving mother and grandfather attempt to go about their daily routine after the death of her young son. An elderly woman says goodbye to her recently deceased partner. A husband is devastated after his wife dies in car accident. These three narratives never quite converge, but all find their trajectories altered when a mysterious event reanimates the dead in Thea Hvistendahl’s debut feature. Adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel of the same name (the author behind Let the Right One In and Border ), Hvistendahl’s take on the zombie genre deviates from the familiar with its glacial pace. The sparse script and sparing use of the typical violence associated with zombie movies are a refreshing change; we learn precious little about the characters on screen, which adds a growing uneasiness to the storytelling. Although it’s hinted that the phenomenon has awoken the dead across the city (and potentially the world) the story remains steadfastly focused on the three separate stor...

S ometimes the slovenly industrial mechanisms of traditional film production are just not the right fit for certain projects. British filmmaker Marc Issacs, known for his eccentric riffs on classical documentary form, heads out to the metaphysical wilds of Thaxted in Essex for his strange and intriguing new film, This Blessed Plot, which seeks to demolish certain truisms about that fragile line between objective reality and subjective performance. This is the story of softly-spoken Chinese filmmaker Lori (Yingge Lori Yang) who has travelled to Thaxted in search of a subject for her new work. When she encounters and converses with the ghost of Conrad le Despenser Noel, a socialist priest who died in 1942, she decides that it’s probably best she stick around and see what other spectral shenanigans that this sleepy burg has to offer. Soon after she meets Keith (Keith Martin), a rabid Arsenal football fan and long-time collector of signed trinkets. He invites her to his house to survey...

T he cinema to broadway musical and then back to cinema pipeline is big news in Hollywood, CA, right now, with a glossy, toe-tapping new version of The Color Purple coming to our screens mere weeks after a movie musical update of highschool hit, Mean Girls, made its bow. It’s an understandable commercial gambit: instead of repackaging a beloved story or a robust franchise property, why not at least bring a fresh twist to the table? Yet in this instance, there’s something vital that’s been lost in translation, where the primal political power of Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has been subverted, diluted and, sadly, softened around the edges. There’s a lot to like in the film, and one would have to be exceptionally untalented to ruin the story outright, but an constantly oscillating tonal barometer doesn’t make this an easy one to love. The story consists of a wrenching, continent-straddling drama set at the turn of the 20th century in postbellum Georgia and focuses...

T he first shot of I Saw The TV Glow is quite the opening salvo. The camera creeps along a suburban street just after dusk, passing over tangled veiny chalk art, the world covered in a blue so deep it seems to spill off the screen. The image precedes a film no less vibrant or eerie; its brash, attractive color palette pulls you under, and only when you’re fully submerged does it start to feel like you’re drowning. Director Jane Schoenbrun, whose debut film We’re All Going to the World’s Fai r was shot almost entirely through webcams, announces themself as a vital new cinematic talent. In their sophomore film, Schoenbrun focuses on two outcast teens, sheltered Owen and antisocial Maddy, who bond over The Pink Opaque, a Buffy and The Secret World of Alex Mack-inspired fantasy television series. On The Pink Opaque, the two spunky leads use their telepathic connection to fight surprisingly gruesome monsters – a dynamic which unsettles and entrances the pair. What we see of The Pink Opaq...

F or years a fixture in the film-festival circuit’s more rarefied corners thanks to visually striking, entrancingly enigmatic shorts such as 2012’s Mountain in Shadow and 2022’s The Sower of Stars, 40-year-old Lois Patiño breaks out to significantly wider renown with his third feature-length picture Samsara – the first to obtain UK release. A tripartite docufictional reverie that begins in Laos and ends in Zanzibar, the film’s USP is a 15-minute bridging mid-section whose nature will not be divulged in this review as its effectiveness depends heavily on the element of surprise. Suffice to say that, A) it feels like new cinematic ground is being broken before our eyes, and B) the impact is exponentially increased if experienced with people in the dark of the cinema. Bottom line: even if you must travel a long way to catch Samsara, all effort and expense will be rewarded and then some. Like many of his fellow filmmakers hailing from Spain’s north-western province of Galicia, his appr...

A s the wintery, back-to-work blues of January finally begins to subside, we have news of a very bright near-future, as at the end of February the Glasgow Film Festival opens its doors once more for a special 20th anniversary jamboree of cinephile frolics. And we can tell you from experience that it’s a city that’s perfectly calibrated and designed for total immersion in that blissful festival vibe, and with their freshly-minted 2024 line-up all locked down and out in the world, we can’t wait to do it all over again. Opening the festivities is Rose Glass’ violent opus, Love Lies Bleeding, the filmmaker’s follow-up to Saint Maud that stars Kristen Stewart and Katy M O’Brian, which comes directly off the back of a triumphant premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Things will round off in a more homely fashion with the world premiere of Janey, a profile documentary about the Scottish comedian and activist Janey Godley. The festival is set to present 69 features culled from 37 countri...

A sleek but cold skyscraper in Croydon is the primary setting for Andrew Haigh’s queer adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel ‘Strangers’. Screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) is working on a script about his parents, who died in 1983 when he was 12, but despite mining the physical mementoes he keeps, the words just won’t come. A chance encounter with his mysterious, charming neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other resident in the building, invites the possibility of romance into Adam’s life after years of solitude, and with it comes a strange new complication. When he returns to his childhood home in search of inspiration, Adam finds his parents exactly as they were before they died. Affable Dad (Jamie Bell) and doting Mum (Claire Foy) greet him warmly, eager to catch up. Meanwhile, the process of reconnection allows Adam to let love in. His blossoming relationship with Harry begins as a hook-up; a way for them to stave off unspoken loneliness. But slowly something ...

G ottleib is in trouble. Since the death of his wife, Ben (Jason Schwartzman) has found himself in a place of personal and professional crisis. He’s moved back in with his mothers, Meira (Caroline Aaron) and Judith (Dolly de Leon), following the sudden death of his wife a year ago, and still can’t perform his job as the cantor for his local synagogue because he’s lost his voice. Depression and loneliness lead Ben to a dive bar, where, after one too many mudslides (that’s vodka, Irish cream, coffee liqueur and heavy cream in case you were wondering) he gets into it with another patron, who promptly knocks his lights out. When he comes to, a kindly older lady – who had earlier been performing karaoke in the back room – is standing over him concerned. Carla Kessler (Carole Kane) helps Ben to his feet and insists on driving him home. Later, she turns up at the bar and bat mitzvah class he’s teaching…hoping to become his latest student. It turns out that Carla used to teach Ben music whe...

F ilmmaker. Dream-weaver. Footwear-epicure. Whatever your impression of Werner Herzog is, this affectionate docuprofile is unlikely to drastically alter it. And that’s no bad thing. Within the opening minutes of Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer, impassioned tributes from such luminaries as Patti Smith, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, Wim Wenders and, yes, Carl Weathers, paint a picture of an almost mythological figure – a rare and enigmatic creative spirit without parallel. This doesn’t necessarily tally with the image Herzog presents of himself, which lands somewhere between kindly uncle and glint-eyed loon. That, of course, is the paradox of Werner Herzog: somehow, all these things can be true at once. Clips of his acting gigs in The Simpsons and The Mandalorian are introduced early on to show how far the cult of Werner has spread throughout contemporary pop culture. The film retraces Herzog’s humble upbringing in the Tyrolean Alps and surveys his arrival on the international film ...

“T hey can only stop We, if We see We as I” is the mantra that rings out over The Kitchen, the last standing social housing estate in a dystopian near-future London. The voice belongs to pirate radio host and beating heart of the block, Lord Kitchener, played with gravitas by legend Ian Wright. In their feature directorial debut, Daniel Kaluuya and Tavares Kibwe deliver a parable on the strength of community and the violence of gentrification, thinly veiled in a father/son drama. Our anti-hero, Izi, is a cold character to get in bed with. Played by the always-understated Kane Robinson, he embodies an archetype of Black masculinity that has been sculpted into callous stoicism, catering to no woman or child. Izi’s focus is to get out of The Kitchen, or what he calls the “shithole”. Having had enough of dealing with frequent police raids, surveillance drones and shut off water, Izi grafts at Life After Life, an ecological funeral home aptly shot in Barbican’s conservatory, and saves up...

W hen Jeymes Samuel exploded onto the scene with 2021’s bombastic all-Black western The Harder They Fall , it heralded the arrival of a fresh, intriguing perspective. Doubling down on his yen for reviving retro genres, Samuel’s subsequent proclamation takes the form of the offbeat biblical comedy, The Book of Clarence. The opening shot cuts straight to the point with its eponymous character nailed to a cross. Music booms dramatically and Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) stares sombrely into the camera with strong ‘You’re probably wondering how I ended up here’ energy. We jump back in time to see Clarence and his best friend Elijah (RJ Cyler) – a pair of streetwise hustlers who have just lost a Ben-Hur-like chariot race to Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor). Things go from bad to worse as it transpires that Clarence is now in debt to local gangster, Jedediah the Terrible, and must pay him back or face death. Savvy as ever, Clarence notes the increasing popularity of a local man named Jesus ...

F or the last decade, it seemed that Alexander Payne had lost his touch. After the critical success of Nebraska in 2013, the American director fell short with 2017’s Downsizing , a messy film featuring a thumb-sized Matt Damon unrecognisable from Payne’s early comedic masterpieces. His highpoint came with the effervescent Sideways from 2004, a gentle and delicious comedy about a wine-soaked road trip. The essential ingredient for that film was Paul Giamatti, who takes on his first leading role in years as classics professor Paul Hunham for Payne’s The Holdovers. The director and actor work together like port and Stilton at the end of a college feast, blending with ease into the film’s 1970s 35mm aesthetic, courtesy of cinematographer Eigil Bryld. There’s the sense of homecoming after an arduous winter term. Rather feeling indulgently nostalgic, it is easy to forget that the film was made in the 21st century. Hunham is a curmudgeonly old sod, adorned with fusty corduroy and a rovin...

S artre wrote that “Hell is other people” but I’ll be more specific: Hell is teenage girls. Whether you’ve been one, raised one, or merely survived an education among the ravenous hoards, it’s a jungle out there. This zoomorphism featured heavily in Mark Waters’ 2004 coming-of-age comedy Mean Girls, which centred on the social politics of a suburban Illinois high school through the eyes of a new transfer student, Cady Heron (then played by Lindsay Lohan). Waters’ film became a critical and commercial hit, catapulting rising stars Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried into the mainstream. Two decades later the film is still widely regarded as a high point of the teen movie canon, sitting pretty next to Heathers and The Breakfast Club for its humour and only slightly exaggerated take on the high school food chain. In the age of endless IP, perhaps it was inevitable that the huge success of Mean Girls would spawn a musical adaptation, which debuted on Broadway in 2017. Seven years ...

L eaning into his reputation as the director behind films that exist purely for your dad to fall asleep watching in his favourite armchair, George Clooney’s latest outing concerns the story of the University of Washington’s rowing team, who beat the odds to become Olympic champions in 1936. While those Olympics are best remembered for Jesse Owens ‘ staggering achievements and as an aggressive propaganda event staged by Adolf Hitler, the Washington Huskies won the hearts of their home nation and royally pissed off the Führer by taking home the gold in the men’s eight, beating Italy into second place by .6 of a second. Based on Daniel James Brown’s book of the same name, The Boys in the Boat focuses primarily on one boy: Joe Rantz, played by a bleach-blonde Callum Turner. A taciturn working-class boy from a small town in Washington, he raised himself from the age of 14 after being left to his own devices by his father, who had remarried. He tries out for the University of Washington’s...

A few minutes into David Ayer’s The Beekeeper, there’s a charming exchange between gruff retired secret agent Adam Clay (Jason Statham) and his landlady, sweet old lady Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad). After taking care of a hornet problem on her property, Clay earnestly mumbles, in his 75% British, 25% American accent, “I just want to thank you for putting up with me…and all my bees.” This exchange gave me the false hope that Ayer’s action-revenge yarn would focus quite heavily on literal bees – perhaps Clay, a beekeeper, can harness their power against his enemies – but unfortunately, most of the apian content in The Beekeeper is purely symbolic. What a missed opportunity. It turns out that Clay, now a literal beekeeper, used to be a figurative Beekeeper – an elite, classified agent hired to “protect the hive” (the United States) from any threats, by any means necessary. He’s long since retired but liked the concept of beekeeping so much he chose to pursue it as a vocation, and h...

W e all know that social media is the main reason why public discourse has lost any sense of courtesy and diplomacy in the modern age. What Nicole Newnham’s documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite presupposes is, maybe it isn’t? On the evidence neatly laid out here, it would appear that we’ve always found a way to be mouthy, illogical, obfuscating, narcissistic and just plain rude when it comes to interacting with people we don’t agree with. Maybe social media has empowered us to do it more often and with more ferocity, but the seed of intellectual antagonism was there way before electronic keyboards were a fancy new thing. This is the story of bestselling author, sexologist and one-time glamour model Shere Hite, an ethereal, silky-voiced go-getter who, following her rejection from various traditional seats of learning, took it upon herself to answer some tough questions about the sex lives of the punch-clock American. Her project was born as a response to the cosseted, male-sk...

T ower Bridge. The chime of a bell. We see the back of a brunette woman’s head against a leaden sky, her hair tightly tucked in a bun. Then, her cobalt blue gown flaps in the wind as she flings herself off the bridge. In the opening of Yorgos Lanthimos’ sensational eighth feature, Poor Things, one woman falls into the film’s rich, icy colour scheme, while another one emerges in black and white. That curious person is then seen drumming a few piano keys with her long hair getting in the way. She has little in common with the elegant (but suicidal) lady from before; yet they are one and the same. Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is learning to walk and talk in the body of a twenty-something woman while under careful supervision. She is banned from leaving her opulent premises. Dr. Godwin Baxter, who is fondly, symbolically referred to as “God” (Willem Dafoe), oversees her development under the auspices of an “experiment” at his home. He enlists a medical student named Max McCandles (Ramy You...