Wicked ★★★☆☆
Directed by Jon M Chu. Starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum. PG cert, gen release, 160 min
The first part of Chu’s adaptation of the hit musical gets by on inspired casting at the top of the tree. Erivo is clever and aggrieved as the girl who grows up to be the Wicked Witch of the West. Grande is flute-voiced and candy-coloured as the future Glinda the good. Their complementary energy powers us through Stephen Schwartz’s endlessly catchy songs. Opinions will be divided on the CGI visuals. Much of the film — there is no grey Kansas in this Wizard of Oz variation — plays like a nightmare in digital wax. Full review DC
Housewife of the Year ★★★★☆
Directed by Ciaran Cassidy. Featuring Gay Byrne. PG cert, limited release, 81 min
Touching documentary on the titular competition, popular until its demise in 1995, that really did seek out Ireland’s best cook, comforter and cleaner. This is a film filled with much sadness. Women abandoned. Women who survived institutions. But it also allows a fair degree of celebration. Nobody here is wagging figures at surviving contributors for participating in a competition that allowed them a smidgeon of recognition and renown. There is inevitably a degree of nostalgia at play, but this remains a serious piece of work with much to say about how Ireland has changed. Full review DC
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Joy ★★★☆☆
Directed by Jack Thorne. Starring Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton, Joanna Scanlan, Charlie Murphy. 12A cert, Netflix, 133 min
Moving biopic on the British scientists who first achieved IVF in the late 1970s. Nighy is head researcher Patrick Steptoe and McKenzie the often-overlooked collaborator Jean Purdy. With spot-on lead performances and canny supporting players, not least Tanya Moodle as an operating-theatre matron, Joy makes space for the “ovum club”, which brings together Purdy and those women who know that their part in the IVF programme is more likely to benefit future participants than it is they themselves. The film, which always feels like classy telly rather than a full-scale movie, might have made more of this dilemma. Full review TB
Witches ★★★★☆
Directed by Elizabeth Sankey. Mubi, 90 min.
The director of the doc Romantic Comedy turns toward another set of cinematic archetypes and tropes: the occult-adjacent women of the title. A welcome gallimaufry of familiar visual cues – The Wizard of Oz, Practical Magic – ushers in questions about women, mental health and motherhood. The movieverse also provides a springboard for Sankey to discuss her own harrowing experiences with postpartum psychosis. She carefully consults historical records of the witch trials. Several accounts suggest that women preferred to confess to witchcraft and burn at the stake to evade the mental-health issues that followed childbirth. A fascinating hypothesis. Full review TB
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