A House of Dynamite ★★★★☆
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, Gabriel Basso, Jason Clarke, Tracy Letts. 15A cert, limited release, 112 min
Chilling, urgently paced treatment of the top-level response as a nuclear missile hurtles towards the US midwest. We go over the final 20 minutes from an array of perspectives: Ferguson as a senior communications officer, Basso as deputy national-security adviser, Letts as bellicose general, then, finally, Elba as an insecure president. The screenplay, written and rigorously researched by the former journalist Noah Oppenheim, has no good news for us. Can something so depressing and nerve-racking count as entertainment? With a director as comfortable with action as Bigelow one can comfortably answer in the affirmative. Full review DC
Re-Creation ★★★☆☆
Directed by Jim Sheridan, David Merriman. Starring Vicky Krieps, Jim Sheridan, Aidan Gillen, Colm Meaney, John Connors. 15A cert, limited release, 89 min
To say that this uneasy engagement with the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier is inspired by 12 Angry Men is to understate the case. The film is essentially a reimagining of that Sidney Lumet classic with the late Ian Bailey, found guilty in absentia by French authorities, replacing the accused “slum kid” in the 1957 original. Vicky Krieps’s lone voice for not guilty – the film-makers imagine a trial that never happened – is even called “Juror 8”, like Henry Fonda in the earlier film. Well researched, but there is always a sense of a thumb on the scale. Full review DC
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The Smashing Machine ★★★★☆
Directed by Benny Safdie. Starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandr Usyk. 15A cert, gen release, 123 min
Safdie’s solo directorial debut, a bruising, subdued character study based on the life of the 1990s mixed martial arts pioneer Mark Kerr, is not so much a sports movie as an anti-sports one. It eschews punch- the-air moments for quiet implosion, unhappy domesticity and total burnout. It’s a story about the other guys: the ones who don’t become brand ambassadors. Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, trading blockbuster bombast for bruised vulnerability, has seldom been better as he channels Kerr’s rise and fall during the early, uncertain years of UFC MMA. Full review TB
Urchin ★★★★☆
Directed by Harris Dickinson. Starring Frank Dillane, Megan Northam, Karyna Khymchuk. 15A cert, limited release, 99 min
Dickinson, the consistently exciting star of Beach Rats, Triangle of Sadness and Babygirl, takes an impressive leap behind the camera with Urchin. The actor’s directorial debut is a gritty and surreal portrait of a man clinging to recovery. Dillane plays a homeless addict whose attempts at stability and sobriety are constantly undone by old habits and a society all too willing to let him slip through the cracks. Visual flourishes set Urchin apart from traditional kitchen- sink social realism, intersecting with both Andrea Arnold’s similarly dreamy Bird and the helter-skelter energies of the Safdies’ Good Time. Full review TB
