FAHRENHEIT 11/9 ★★★★
Directed by Michael Moore. Featuring Michael Moore, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton. Club, limited release, 120 min
Michael Moore is back doing what he does: satirical montage, dubious stunts and powerful if sometimes unreliable reporting from the front line. This time round, we get (inevitably) a report from the front line of the Trump Wars. There's something on the Parkland shootings. There's something on the water scandal in the director's hometown of Flint, Michigan. It may be familiar, but the jokes are still good and the anger is still righteous. If you like Moore you'll like this. Full review/trailer DC
HALLOWEEN ★★★
Directed by David Gordon Green. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Virginia Gardner, Nick Castle. 18 cert, general release, 105 min
The 11th film in the Halloween franchise hovers somewhere between reboot and sequel. Forty years after the murderous events of the 1978 original, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a survivalist granny with PTSD whose paranoia and fears around Michael Myers has alienated her from her daughter (Greer) and granddaughte (Matichak). An early scene in Halloween 2018 dismisses the notion that Michael and Laurie are biological siblings. Boom. – everything you knew since 1981 is wrong. It's the only innovation in this perfectly entertaining, decently scary, entirely predictable bit of fanservice. TB
THE LONELY BATTLE OF THOMAS REID ★★★★
Directed by Feargal Ward. 12A cert, limited release, 80 min
Thomas Reid was the stubborn Kildare man who, in the middle part of this decade, refused to sell a hunk of land, earmarked for "strategic industrial development", to a dumfounded Industrial Development Authority. Ward's hugely impressive, often beautiful documentary (bordering on docu-drama) uses recreations, interviews and a wandering camera to create a portrait of a genuine original: eccentric, determined, infuriating. Two worlds exist in parallel here: the modern and the ancient. Neither has, at time of release, encroached significantly on the other. Full review DC
DOGMAN ★★★★
Directed by Matteo Garrone. Starring Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Alida Baldari Calabria. 15A cert, limited release, 103 min
Marcello (Fonte) is a small, timid, kindly man who runs a dog grooming parlour on a largely abandoned sweep of the southern Italian coast. The neighbourhood is routinely terrorised by a coke-addled ex-boxer (Pesce), a monstrous variant of La Strada's Zampano. Fonte, who was deservedly named best actor at Cannes earlier this year, brings an unforgettable pathos and a doleful expression pitched somewhere between Peter Lorre and Charlie Chaplin to his wronged beta-male hero. TB
FIRST MAN ★★★★
Directed by Damien Chazelle. Starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Patrick Fugit, Christoher Abbott, Ciarán Hinds, Olivia Hamilton. 12A cert, general release, 141 min
Fine study of Neil Armstrong from the director and star of La La Land. The film is great on the sensual assault of space travel, but it is most notable as a character study. Who better to play such a famously unknowable character than the perennially blank Gosling? Foy will get more demanding roles in her career, but she may be relieved that her dreaded "wife part" is more fleshed out than is usually the case. Spectacular, but also intimate. Full review/trailer DC
ROSIE ★★★★
Directed by Paddy Breathnach. Starring Sarah Greene, Moe Dunford, Ellie O'Halloran, Ruby Dunne, Darragh McKenzie, Molly McCann. 12A cert, general release, 82 min
Working from a script by Roddy Doyle, Breathnach gives us a troubling, moving study of how homelessness now functions. Greene and Dunford are super as a couple flung into a hotel when their landlord sells up. Rosie is claustrophobic throughout, but Doyle's durable humanism does provide some light in the darkness. The mechanism of society has become clogged, but the film wastes no time blaming those who merely maintain the cogs and levers. Full review DC
More ★★★★ and ★★★★★ movies out and about: Black 47, BlackKkKlansmen, Cold War, Columbus, Faces Places, Mandy, A Star Is Born, The Wife
