Highest 2 Lowest ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Spike Lee. Starring Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Aubrey Joseph, Jeffrey Wright, LaChanze, John Douglas Thompson, A$AP Rocky. No cert, Apple TV+, 134 min
Washington stars as a record executive dealing with a kidnapping in a fitful variation of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Lee begins with a bravura shot that, to the strains of Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’, travels across New York City to find Denzel triumphant on a balcony. It is, from there, downhill all the way. The action sequences are perfunctory. The old-bloke attempts to engage with the contemporary music scene border on the embarrassing. Some of the casting is unfortunate. The film is never boring, but, after that fine start, the action clunks where it should purr. Full review DC
The Cut ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Sean Ellis. Starring Orlando Bloom, Caitríona Balfe, John Turturro, Clare Dunne, Gary Beadle. 15A cert, limited release, 96 min
Bloom plays an ageing fighter – partner to an underused Balfe – who, Rocky style, gets one unlikely last chance for glory. The Cut is surely the only boxing film to feature more vomiting, weeing and, umm, self-pleasuring than prize fighting. This simultaneously weird and hackneyed picture is principally about the business of losing weight to qualify for a chosen division. John Turturro spares no tendon in his efforts to embody the ruthless (and, in this case, unscrupulous) boxing trainer of legend. But it is to no avail. The Cut is ultimately too broad and preposterous to take the belt. Full review DC
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Sanatorium ★★★★☆
Directed by Gar O’Rourke. No cert, limited release, 90 min
The Kuyalnik sanatorium has been through the wars, literally. Established in 1833 near Odesa, in Ukraine, the institution became one of the Soviet Union’s most renowned health resorts, famed for its therapeutic mud and mineral waters. In his impressive feature-length debut, the Irish documentarian Gar O’Rourke offers an immersive and mesmerising portrait of life in a still recognisably Soviet institution. It’s easy to imagine the Kuyalnik sanatorium as sharing a postal code with Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel. But, unlike that fantasia, the guiding principle of Ireland’s official submission for the best international feature Oscar at the 2026 Academy Awards is human connection. Full review TB
Honey Don’t! ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Ethan Coen. Starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Charlie Day. 16 cert, gen release, 98 min
Three cheers for Peggy Schnitzer’s fabulous costumes. They almost endow Margaret Qualley’s blank and tiresome gumshoe heroine – the Honey of the title – with some personality. The second instalment of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s unwanted lesbian B-movie trilogy casts Qualley’s deadpan private investigator in a meandering venture into a low-rent religious cult and multiple murders. The film’s self-aware, queered-up take on noir cliches ultimately amounts to nothing like momentum. Trashy stories need plots and character development, too. It’s an exercise in nothingness and insincerity. You can’t make a low-rent B-movie with A-list credentials and studio backing. Full review TB
