AT ETERNITY'S GATE ★★★★☆
Directed by Julian Schnabel. Starring Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Mads Mikkelsen, Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Niels Arestrup
There are some of the usual visual correlatives in Schnabel's Vincent Van Gogh biopic – the yellow room has rarely been yellower – but there is much more besides. Here is a film that makes a genuine effort to engage with the artist's mental torments while putting forward fresh (albeit contentious) suggestions about his route to a bloody death. It's an attractive piece of work as well as a thoughtful one. Dafoe excels as the painter. 12A cert, QFT, Belfast; IFI, Dublin, 111 min DC
BEING FRANK: THE CHRIS SIEVEY STORY ★★★★☆
Directed by Steve Sullivan. Featuring Jon Ronson, John Cooper Clarke, Paula Sievey, Martin Sievey, Johnny Vegas, Ross Noble, John Thomson, Dave Arnold
A documentary on Frank Sidebottom, the macrocephalic alter ego of Chris Sievey, was always going to deal in oddities. The loose inspiration for Lenny Abrahamson's Frank, Mr Sidebottom was an unshakable presence in English popular culture from 1984 until his creator's death in 2010. Such venerable experts as Cooper Clarke, John Thomson and Ronson (co-writer of Frank) turn up for an engrossing study of the creative fecundity that gathered around Manchester in the post-punk years. Essential for fans. 15A cert, QFT, Belfast, 105 min DC
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? ★★★★★
Directed by Marielle Heller. Starring Melissa McCarthy, Richard E Grant, Dolly Wells, Jane Curtin
McCarthy excels as boozy Lee Israel, the real-life biographer of Estée Lauder and Tallulah Bankhead, who, in the early 1990s, launched a second career as a forger of literary correspondence. Grant (like McCarthy, Oscar-nominated) is her even boozier, serially untrustworthy pal. The compactness of Can You Ever Forgive Me? has invited inevitable under-appreciation. It's a great New York movie. It's a great film about friendship. It's also a great cat movie (if that's your bag). 15A cert, gen release, 108 min DC
CAPTAIN MARVEL ★★★☆☆
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Starring Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Annette Bening
It's a shame the first episode in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a female protagonist isn't just a little better. Larson does well enough in a role that would better suit an actor less wedded to underplayed naturalism. The 1990s nostalgia is played for laughs. Sadly, an amusing centre is squeezed into a wafer by a silly framing space operetta that tries the patience. 12A, gen release, 123 min DC
DUMBO ★★★☆☆
Directed by Tim Burton. Starring Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green, Alan Arkin, Nico Parker, Finley Hobbins, Roshan Seth
The new Dumbo does hit many of the familiar beats. Had Tim Burton and his team cut Baby Mine they would have deserved any horsewhipping that came their way. But we should be grateful that, unlike the recent Beauty and the Beast, this is not a straight retread of the original. Burton makes good use of his cast: Farrell is sympathetic as a circus all-rounder; Green is glamorous. Unfortunately, Dumbo himself is stranded in the unhappy valley between anthropomorphism and verisimilitude. PG cert, gen release, 112 min DC
FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY ★★★☆☆
Directed by Stephen Merchant. Starring Florence Pugh, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Jack Lowden, Vince Vaughn. Dwayne Johnson
The Rock plus The Office and Extras co-creator Stephen Merchant sounds like an unlikely tag-team, but this cheery comedy inspired by the life of Saraya-Jade Bevis (aka Paige) who went from the less salubrious boroughs of Norwich to WWE Divas Champion at age 21, makes for a winning alchemy. It's hard to argue with the results, however formulaic, and even when the material is thin, Pugh is there to, literally and figuratively, do the heavy lifting. 15A cert, gen release, 108 min DC
GREEN BOOK ★★★☆☆
Directed by Peter Farrelly. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Dimiter D Marinov
Farrelly moves from Dumb and Dumber to the quasi-true story of an Italian-American goodfella (Mortensen) who drove an African-American pianist (Ali) about the segregated South in the 1960s. It's not the subtlest film: the racial politics are crude; the two actors lay it on with a trowel; the denouement is shamelessly sentimental. And yet the darn thing works. The gears engage. The motor runs smoothly. The destination is achieved. There are worse things in heaven and earth. 12A cert, gen release, 130 min DC
HAPPY AS LAZZARO/LAZZARO FELICE ★★★☆☆
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Starring Nicoletta Braschi, Adriano Tardiolo, Sergi López, Alba Rohrwacher, Luca Chikovani
Saintly, tousle-haired youth Lazzaro (Tardiolo) lives in an isolated hamlet where he is generally treated like the village idiot. He represents the bottom rung of an already lowly social class: the people around him are sharecroppers toiling on a tobacco farm run by the tyrannical "Queen of Cigarettes", Marquise Alfonsino de Luna (Braschi). The estate's callow scion Tancredi (Georgian YouTube star Luca Chikovani) ensnares the amiable Lazzaro in a phony kidnapping plot. Those with a low threshold for magic realism will not be amused by Rohrwacher's third narrative feature. Although markedly less wispy than her award-winning The Wonders, Happy as Lazzaro, like its elusive protagonist, is dreamy, lightly comic, and unfailingly nice. 12 cert, AccessCinema (accesscinema,ie), 130 min TB
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD ★★★★☆
Directed by Dean DeBlois. Voices of Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Kit Harington, Kristen Wiig, F Murray Abraham
When dragonslayer Grimmel (Abraham) threatens, Hiccup (Baruchel) and the good denizens of Berk have little option but to move their dragon to the possibly mythological realm of the title. The Night Fury- obsessed Grimmel, however, has other plans. The Hidden World introduces a "wild and skittish" Light Fury love interest for Toothless and zips along, punctuated by credible action sequences and gleeful silliness. Sit tight for the emotional finale. PG cert, gen release, 104 min TB
INSTANT FAMILY ★★★☆☆
Directed by Sean Anders. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Isabela Moner, Margo Martindale, Julie Hagerty, Octavia Spencer, Tig Notaro
A happily married couple fumble their way into foster care adoption by taking on three siblings, including a rebellious 15-year-old girl with predictably tumultuous and mostly amusing results. Poised indelicately between smaltz and slapstick, Instant Family may be blunt and messy, but it's easily a career best for the director of Sex Drive and Horrible Bosses 2. 12 cert, gen release, 118 min TB
THE KEEPER ★★★☆☆
Directed by Marcus H Rosenmüller. Starring David Kross, Freya Mavor, Dervla Kirwan, John Henshaw, Harry Melling, Dave Johns
It is astonishing that we are only now seeing a biopic of Bert Trautmann (Kross), the former German prisoner of war who became a legendary goalkeeper for Manchester City. This was the same man who played the last 17 minutes of the 1956 FA Cup final with a broken neck. There is some clunky stuff here (spinning newspapers, laboured metaphors), but this is a delightful slab of Hovis-commercial film-making that efficiently orders the vital elements in Trautmann's story. 15A cert, lim release, 119 min DC
THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING ★★★☆☆
Directed by Joe Cornish. Starring Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Rebecca Ferguson, Patrick Stewart
Cornish's retelling of the King Arthur myth in suburban London looks and feels like something the BBC might have broadcast on an afternoon in the mid- 1980s. The juvenile actors are satisfactory without doing anything to trouble the scorers at Bafta. It engages with social issues, but remains firmly in the middle ground mapped out by Grange Hill and Blue Peter. The special effects are so-so. It's grand, but how it came to cost $60 million is anybody's guess. PG cert, gen release, 120 min DC
LAST BREATH ★★★☆☆
Directed by Richard da Costa, Alex Parkinson
This diverting documentary concerns a dive that went disastrously wrong for a crew working in the North Sea. An IT failure sent their vessel into a spin and left one diver, Chris Lemons, dangerously stranded at the end of straining lifeline. The problem is that the entire incident lasted barely half an hour and was mostly taken up with rebooting the system manually steering the submersible. Though the divers are good talkers and the blend of dive-cam footage and dramatic recreations is effective, Last Breath still feels a little stretched. Club, lim release, 85 min DC
THE LEGO MOVIE 2 ★★★☆☆
Directed by Mike Mitchell. Voices of Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Charlie Day, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman,Maya Rudolph
"Everything is not awesome," sing the Lego Movie collective at a late, crucial juncture in this serviceable sequel. The fourth Lego movie sees the jolly borough of Bricksburg transformed into the Apocalypseburg and under siege from alien Duplo invaders. It falls to everyman master builder Emmet (Pratt), his far more capable chum Lucy (Banks) and a collective that includes Batman (Will Arnett) to take on the marauders. It lacks the snap and crackle of both its predecessor and The Lego Batman Movie, but there are some good jokes and a winning self-awareness. G cert, gen release, 107 min TB
THE LIMIT OF ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Alan Mulligan. Starring Laurence O'Fuarain, Sarah Carroll, Sonya O'Donoghue, Ally Ni Chairain, David Murray, Gail Fitzpatrick, Kevin McCormack
Messy, low budget film concerning an Irish banker who hatches a complex (not to say ludicrous) scheme aimed at spreading some of the wealth. A former tax consultant who quit the rat race, director and writer Mulligan has the most admirable intentions. His anger at the banks is justified. His desire for a moral upending is commendable. Unfortunately, the threadbare plot makes little sense and the characters' motivations are too often incomprehensible. 15A cert, lim release, 93 min DC
LORDS OF CHAOS ★★★★☆
Directed by Jonas Åkerlund. Starring Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Jack Kilmer, Sky Ferreira
Music video veteran Åkerlund's account of the pandemonium that defined black metal in late 1980s Norway is, by turns, grisly, grim, and darkly hilarious. As narrated by black metal pioneer and guitarist Euronymous (Culkin), Lords of Chaos charts the turbulent relationship between Euronymous and the intense neo-Nazi bass player Varg Vikernes (Cohen). When Euronymous founds his band Mayhem various line-up changes ensue in the struggle to be the most metal of them all. Åkerlund accentuates the squabbling, misogynist clubhouse mentality of what became the "Black Circle". The kids are not alright, but they are, nonetheless, just kids. 18 cert, Light House, Dublin (Fri/Sat/Mon only), 118 min TB
THE MAN WHO WANTED TO FLY ★★★★☆
Directed by Frank Shouldice. Featuring Bobby Coote, Ernie Coote
For 50 years and more, Bobby Coote has dreamed of flying. Shot over five years, this delightful documentary follows the Co Cavan octogenarian on his eventful journey to the clouds But this is not just Bobby's story: His 80-something brother Ernie thinks Bobby is a genius yet believes that flying is best left to the birds. Bobby is helped toward his goal by friends and neighbours and flying experts at Newtownards. Working with cinematographer Dave Perry and a lovable cast of characters, director Shouldice has fashioned both a marvellous feel-good movie and a compelling portrait of life in rural Ireland. 12A cert, IFI/Light House, Dublin, 86 min TB
MISSING LINK ★★★★☆
Directed by Chris Butler. Voices of Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, David Walliams, Timothy Olyphant, Matt Lucas, Amrita Acharia, Zach Galifianakis
Daredevil explorere Sir Lionel Frost (Jackman) longs to be recognised for his feats but has, thus far, failed to impress the snoots at the club. When an expedition to photograph the Loch Ness monster goes wrong, Sir Lionel heads westwards in search of Bigfoot. When he finally meets the lonely sasquatch (Galifianakis), he hatches a plan to travel to Shangri-La, where, in theory, the loveable creature can finally be among his own kind. Director Butler, cowriter of Kubo and the Two Strings and codirector of ParaNorman, has fun with British colonialism. A vertiginous sequence on an ice-bridge is as nail-biting than any live action (or CGI) scene you care to mention. There are good jokes, a playful sensibility, and a genuine sense of jeopardy. PG cert, gen release, 94 min TB
ON THE BASIS OF SEX ★★★☆☆
Directed by Mimi Leder. Starring Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Sam Waterston, Kathy Bates, Jack Reynor
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jones) is a first-year student at a male-dominated Harvard Law School. When her husband (Hammer), a second-year student, falls ill with cancer, she attends both his lectures and her own. No law firm will hire Ruth, so she ends up in academia until her husband brings a tax code case to her attention. Might Section 214 of the Internal Revenue Code allow the future US supreme court judge to take on the entire damned system? There's nothing in the screenplay that captures the sense of mischief and discovery that jollies along the recent RBG documentary. On the Basis of Sex is well-intentioned, cheesily enjoyable and rather uninspired. 12A cert, gen release, 120 min TB
OUT OF BLUE ★★★☆☆
Directed by Carol Morley. Starring Patricia Clarkson, Jacki Weaver, James Caan, Toby Jones, Mamie Gummer, Devyn Tyler, Yolonda Ross, Aaron Tveit, Jonathan Majors
Clarkson stars as a glum New Orleans police detective investigating the homicide of an astrophysicist (Gummer) who specialised in black holes. The victim was found shot to death in an observatory managed by a shifty Toby Jones. Other suspects include a colleague and lover (Majors), her menacing wealthy father (Caan) and her mad-as-a-balloon mother (Weaver). Loosely based on Martin Amis's book Night Train, Out of Blue plays with temporal jumps and scientifically themed meditations on Schrödinger's cat and dark matter. It doesn't quite come together, but there are enough reliable, muscular performers to steal scenes and keep things interesting. 15A cert, QFT, Belfast, 109 min TB
PET SEMATARY ★★★★☆
Directed by Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer. Starring Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Obssa Ahme
Dr Louis Creed (Clarke) and his family, including winsome daughter Elle (Laurence) relocate to a small town in Maine amd into a home that backs onto ancient tribal lands where the barrier between life and death is permeable. The family are soon plagued by horrible visions. And that's before Louis and kindly neighbour (Lithgow) decide that they'd rather not tell Ellie that her beloved cat has been killed on the dangerous Chekovian road out front, opting instead for the titular graveyard that brings animals back as evil shadows of themselves. This superior horror often resembles Mary Lambert's 1989 adaptation, but it has more than a few nasty surprises. 16 cert, gen release, 101 min TB
SHAZAM! ★★★☆☆
Directed by David F Sandberg . Starring Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou, Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand
The latest DC romp concerns a teenager (Angel) in overcast Philadelphia who somehow or other gains the ability to transform into an adult superhero with Batman's jaw and a circus strongman's leotard. Feels like a family film from the dying years of the first Bush administration. The jokes have a good-nature roughness to their edges. But Shazam! doesn't seem quite comfortable in its own universe and outstays it welcome some time before the bish-bash ending. 12A cert, gen release, 131 min DC
THE SISTERS BROTHERS ★★★☆☆
Directed by Jacques Audiard. Starring John C Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rebecca Root, Rutger Hauer, Carol Kane
Adapted from Patrick deWitt's novel by Audiard and his screenwriting partner Thomas Bidegain, The Sisters Brothers concerns two fraternal bounty hunters. Eli Sisters (Reilly) and his younger brother Charlie (Phoenix) work for a crime boss known only as the Commodore (Hauer). Their latest assignment is to hunt down a chemist, the Hermann Kermit Warm (Ahmed), a mission that is complicated by a tracker (Gyllenhaal) who has a significant head start. The film is often fun but hovers unconvincingly between tones. – a scene in which Reilly tries tooth powder for the first time could have featured in Holmes and Watson. Still, there's some terrific back and forth between Reilly and Phoenix. 15A cert, gen release, 122 min TB
US ★★★★☆
Directed by Jordan Peele. Starring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright-Joseph
Peele follows up the era-defining Get Out with a horror film about an African-American family meeting their doubles while on holiday. Us follows in a grand tradition of Doppelgänger horrors that stretches back to The Student of Prague more than 100 years ago. Michael Abels's choral jabs increase the unease. Mike Gioulakis's camera risks impenetrable levels of darkness. Nyong'o is stunning in twin roles. But the film does lack its predecessor's satirical punch. 16 cert, gen release, 116 min DC
WHAT MEN WANT ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Adam Shankman. Starring Taraji P. Henson, Aldis Hodge, Richard Roundtree, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Tracy Morgan, Erykah Badu
The likable Henson stars in a gender-swapped version of the Mel Gibson hit about a person who can read the other gender's mind. The star falls over, swishes into rooms, dresses fabulously, provides carefully calibrated reaction shots, and is generally game. But there are too few actual jokes and the film has a disappointingly conventional denouement. Where's the movie with the career-minded heroine who overhears the term "ball-breaker" and decides to break more balls? 16 cert, gen release, 117min TB
THE WHITE CROW ★★★★☆
Directed by Ralph Fiennes. Starring Oleg Ivanko, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Chulpan Khamatova, Ralph Fiennes
A young Rudolf Nureyev stares at The Raft of the Medusa byThéodore Géricault, picking out meaningful details. His swooning appreciation is matched by The White Crow's appreciation of its subject, a metatextual case of Stendhal Syndrome. The White Crow recounts the confusion around Nureyev's defection to the West in 1961, a snap, characteristically impetuous decision that had more to do with squabbling than politics. It moves between Nureyev's provincial childhood in Ufa, his education in Leningrad, and his feted performances in Paris with the Kirov Ballet. Ukrainian soloist Ivenko, in his first acting role, is hardly a ringer for Nureyev, but he has the comportment, the eyelashes, the attitude, and Mike Eley's camera understandably loves him. Fiennes's circumspect turn is matched by his considered direction. 15A cert, QFT, Belfast; IFI/Light House, Dublin, 127 min TB
