Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery ★★★★☆
Directed by Rian Johnson. Starring Daniel Craig, Ed Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr, Jessica Henwick, Ethan Hawke, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Madelyn Cline. 12A cert, gen release, 141 min
Detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) is back for a lively, elegantly made sequel to Knives Out. Learning from Agatha Christie’s habit of sending a bunch of ghastly suspects down the Nile or up the Orient Express, the second episode takes such a vulgar shower to a squillionaire’s island some quiet miles from the Greek mainland. It is Ed Norton and he fancies himself a “disrupter”. Soon someone dies and the plot closes in upon itself. It being the current way, there are many postmodern shenanigans, but Glass Onion still works well as a straight-up mystery. Janelle Monáe is the standout. Full review DC
She Said ★★★★☆
Directed by Maria Schrader. Starring Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, Ashley Judd. 15A cert, gen release, 129 min
The folk behind this newspaper yarn began with challenges. Everybody knows how Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s investigations into Harvey Weinstein for the New York Times worked out. Working from the journalists’ eponymous book, Schrader has managed to turn a story whose ending we know into a taut drama that reminds us how hard it is to construct a solid news story in the face of resistance from powerful men with fat wallets. Mulligan and Zoe, as Twohey and Kantor, put feminine distance between themselves and male predecessors. The casting is rigorous from to bottom. Highly recommended. Full review DC
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Bones and All ★★★★☆
Directed by Luca Guadagnino. Starring Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper. 18 cert, gen release, 131 min
Two young people (Russell, Chalamet) have a terrible secret. Adapted from Camille DeAngelis’s YA novel, David Kajganich’s script can’t avoid being Twilight, but with cannibals. Still, Guadagnino’s dreamy anthropophagic-themed adventure has plenty to offer any viewer not deterred by the prospect of intestine chewing. Guadagnino has flirted with horror tropes before, not least in his odd remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Bones and All deftly segues between teenage romance, hinterland tableaux and genuinely unsettling encounters. Russell is excellent while Rylance channels The Night of the Hunter. Unsettling. Heart-racing. Full review TB
Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical ★★★☆☆
Directed by Matthew Warchus. Starring Alisha Weir, Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Emma Thompson. PG cert, gen release, 117 min
Film version of the hit West End take on Roald Dahl’s plucky schoolgirl. Matilda the Musical bops along to Tim Minchin’s shouty tunes and stomping choreography without ever convincing us that it’s a screen musical. But Irish preteen star Alisha Weir makes for a compelling, spirited heroine. The scenes she shares with Lynch’s big-hearted Miss Honey are especially affecting. Thompson, buried and barking orders under latex and padding, is the most authentically pigtail-pulling Dahlian presence in the film. The children, one of Minchin’s catchiest tunes suggests, are revolting. They’re not nearly revolting enough, but plenty of fun. Full review TB
