Bob Marley: One Love ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. Starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Umi Myers. 12A cert, gen release, 107 min
Pointless biopic of the reggae legend that, sadly, weaves in all the cliches and compromises that have brought such opprobrium to the genre. Drippy flashbacks. The “discovery” by a local producer. And so on. It is standard with such projects — remember last year’s eerily similar Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody> — to absolve the talented lead actor of any significant blame. Sure enough, Kingsley Ben-Adir, who played Malcolm X in One Night in Miami…, grasps the opportunity with eager hands and almost wrestles it into respectability. Oh, well. There’s always the music. Full review DC
Madame Web ★☆☆☆☆
Directed by SJ Clarkson. Starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott. 12A cert, gen release, 116 min
Wretched Marvel superhero thing starring Johnson as a young New Yorker who gains Spidey Sense after falling in the East River. Soon she is protecting Sweeney and pals from an evil (and uncharacteristically bad) Rahim. If the recent travails of Disney’s MCU suggest the Fall of Rome (and they probably don’t), then these increasingly barking Sony Marvels call to mind some smaller, more demented empire on a windy isthmus untroubled by classical elegance. Maybe more fun than recent MCU, to be fair, but makes even less sense. The product placement is beyond belief. Full review DC
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The Promised Land/Bastarden ★★★☆☆
Directed by Nikolaj Arcel. Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Simon Bennebjerg, Amanda Collin, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Hagberg Melina, Gustav Lindh. 15A cert, gen release, 128 min
Ludvig Kahlen (Mikkelsen) is a formidable retired army captain of low birth seeking title and legitimacy by colonising the punishing, barren heath of Jutland, a wilderness characterised by roaming gipsies, wolves, and frozen ground. This handsome Nordic demi-western, inspired by real events and adapted from Ida Jessen’s 2020 novel The Captain and Ann Barbara, is powered along by Mikkelsen’s rugged charisma and various rustic and maggoty scene partners. The slow, tricky thaw between the splendidly isolated Kahlen and Romani orphan Anmai Mus (Hagberg Melina) is one of the movie’s great pleasures: an antidote to the surrounding savagery. Full review TB
The Taste of Things/La Passion de Dodin Bouffant ★★★☆☆
Directed by Trần Anh Hùng. Starring Juliette Binoche, Benoît Magimel. Limited release, 136 min
Turn-of-the-20th-century foodies Binoche and Magimel age elegantly in the countryside. A sun-dappled kitchen. Cast-iron pans. Belle Époque bustles. Gastro-porn doesn’t come more XXX-rated than this insanely pretty, airily vacant drama. Originally screened at Cannes as Pot-au-Feu, the purposely plodding picture in which the main characters prepare food, eat food, and talk about food is so French it could only have been made by a Vietnamese director. Copper-bottom pot fetishists may require smelling salts; people who are less impressed by veal will shrug and wonder why France selected this over Anatomy of a Fall in their deservedly unsuccessful Oscar bid. Full review TB
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