Society of the Snow ★★★★☆
Directed by JA Bayona. Starring Enzo Vogrincic, Agustín Pardella, Matías Recalt, Esteban Bigliardi, Diego Vegezzi. I5A cert, gen release/Netflix, 144 min
Another retelling of the still chilling tale of the 1972 Andean plane crash that caused surviving rugby players to take the most extreme survival measures. Following considerable consultation with survivors and families of victims, JA Bayona, the Catalan director behind A Monster Calls, has fashioned a tactile, empathetic account of the tragedy. A welcome innovation is the foregrounding of the dead; previous iterations have focused only on the survivors. The casting of mostly unknown Argentine and Uruguayan actors adds to the novelty, as does the film’s compelling depiction of survivors’ guilt, after the “Heroes of the Andes” return. Full review TB
One Life ★★★★☆
Directed by James Hawes. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn, Lena Olin, Romola Garai, Alex Sharp, Marthe Keller, Jonathan Pryce, Helena Bonham Carter. 12A cert, gen release, 109 min
One Life would not exist without a 1988 segment on the BBC’s That’s Life that invited Nicholas Winton, an elderly London stockbroker, to discuss his rescuing of 669 endangered, mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia before the Nazi invasion. That segment allows a way into a fascinating tale — divided between the young man’s quiet heroics and a quietly magnificent Hopkins as the older gent fighting with his own legacy in Thatcher-era suburbia. One Life breaks no new cinematic ground. But it tells a story worth hearing. Great support from HBC as the young Winton’s mum. Full review DC
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Scala!!! ★★★★☆
Directed by Jane Giles, Ali Catterall. Featuring Barry Adamson, Stewart Lee, Beeban Kidron, Kim Newman, John Waters, Jah Wobble, Nick Kent. Limited release, 96 min
Rollicking documentary on the eponymous London rep cinema. Scala!!! talks us through the cinema club’s history from early days off Tottenham Court Road to its long stay at what, 30 years after the organisation went bust, is still the Scala in King’s Cross. Celebrity attendees, squatting by stairwells, talk us through a programme that stretched from the highest arthouse to the lowest exploitation: Tarkovsky one night, Thundercrack the next. Along the way, Scala!!! takes in a wider history of post-punk London. DC
Good Grief ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Dan Levy. Starring Dan Levy, Ruth Negga, Himesh Patel, Luke Evans. Netflix, 100 min
Marc (writer-director-coproducer Levy) has friends and an apparently devoted partner in Oliver (Evans) when, following a lively Christmas party, Oliver dies. One year later, Marc asks his two best friends — former lover Thomas (Patel) and party girl Sophie (Negga) — to accompany him to Paris for a blow-out trip. The excursion turns into something like a detective story. It doesn’t quite work. Actors as talented as Negga and Patel can’t enliven the “zany” auxiliary friend roles. Levy’s script, more damningly, can’t quite reconcile grief with the film’s romcom ambitions. TB
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