Haunted Mansion ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Justin Simien. Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Daniel Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto. 12A cert, gen release, 123 min
Hopeless comedy horror based around Disney’s venerable theme-park ghost train (essentially). Stanfield plays an astrophysicist fallen on hard times after the death of his wife. Now half-heartedly running the dead woman’s ghost tour in New Orleans, he joins forces with a comedy priest (Wilson), a sassy clairvoyant (Haddish) and a ruffled academic (DeVito) to help rout out the ghosts haunting a recent New York blow-in (Dawson). Even that fine cast cannot save this fatally compromised farrago from sinking into the Louisiana swamp. Confused. Unfrightening. Lame. Constantly selling you stuff. Full review DC
Face Down ★★★★☆
Directed by Gerry Gregg. Featuring Tanya Williams-Powell, Rachel Williams-Powell. 12A cert, limited release, 88 min
Gripping documentary about the IRA’s fatal kidnapping of German businessman Thomas Niedermayer in 1973. Working from a script by screen veteran David Blake Knox, Gregg’s properly enraging film implicitly speaks to current creative amnesia about paramilitary violence. The film digs up some still startling horrors, but it also restores fleshed out humanity to a decent man — more than a victim — who, like so many others, is often remembered just as a name spoken grimly on a distant news report. The lasting damage to Niedermayer’s family is addressed with great sensitivity. Full review DC
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Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story ★★★☆☆
Directed by Neill Blomkamp. Starring Archie Madekwe, David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Darren Barnet, Geri Halliwell Horner, Djimon Hounsou. 12A cert, gen release, 134 min
Unusual, amusing take on the cursed genre that is the video-game adaptation. (The Gran Turismo racing simulator remains a 90 million-unit selling staple for PlayStation.) Archie Madekwe, the star of Midsommar and the incoming Saltburn, is hugely likable as Jann, a Cardiff teenager who can’t quite persuade his professional footballer dad (Hounsou) and concerned mum (Geri Halliwell) that he isn’t wasting his time playing games in his bedroom. And then he beats 90,000 PlayStation gamers and wins a chance to drive for Nissan at the Dubai 24-hour race. Great racing sequences. Winning family entertainment. Full review TB
L’immensità ★★★☆☆
Directed by Emanuele Crialese. Starring Penélope Cruz, Vincenzo Amato, Luana Giuliani, Patrizio Francion. Limited release, 99 min
L’immensità is Crialese’s first film in 11 years is as considered and heartfelt as that hiatus suggests. Here we have an autobiographical drama concerning a transgender preteen, Adri (Giuliani), in 1970s Rome, many years before gender recognition became a battleground. “You and Dad made me wrong,” 12-year-old Adri (formerly Andrea) tells his sparky, vulnerable mother (Cruz). The gorgeously staged fantasies offer a happy detour that, perhaps, undermines the film’s emotional gravitas. But this remains a charming portrait of coming-of-age with a poignant sense of time and place. Full review TB
