A Real Pain ★★★½ JESSE Eisenberg’s second film is a nicely observed and quietly funny study of a family relationship. In A Real Pain, Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play cousins David and Benji who embark on a trip to Poland to honour their grandmother who survived the World War II […]

A Real Pain is painstakingly real

Megalopolis ★★½ IT TOOK Francis Ford Coppola 40 years and $120 million of his own money to bring his magnum opus Megalopolis to the screen. But it only took free admission and a few hours for some critics to tear the film apart. Like the baying crowds filling Coppola’s alternate […]

Coppola’s Megalopolis flawed in execution

Better Man ★★★½ MUCH has been made of the decision to use a chimpanzee as the stand-in for a human Robbie Williams in Better Man. The biopic could have gone horribly wrong from the start, and maybe it will for some people. But trust me, it doesn’t take long to […]

The evolution of Robbie

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation ★★★ APPARENTLY, in real-life actor Chevy Chase is a bit of a wanker. But that doesn’t take away from the fact he created one of the funniest modern film characters in the hapless Clark Griswold. Clark’s long-suffering wife and kids are forced to put up with […]

Chasing the laughs

Kraven the Hunter ★★★ IS Kraven the Hunter the most violent Marvel film? I suspect so. You don’t see Iron Man or Thor tearing peoples’ throats out or slamming bear traps onto their heads. Aaron Taylor-Johnson does a decent job as Sergei Kravinoff, the son of a Russian crime lord […]

Kraven an adult Marvel

Carry-on ★★½ IF airport thriller Carry-On was a drink it would be diet Die Hard. Taron Egerton is a security officer and Jason Bateman is the bomber playing a cat-and-mouse game with him on Christmas Eve. We’ve seen it many times before, most notably in Die Hard 2, but the […]

Carry-on copying Die Hard

Mufasa: The Lion King ★★★ IF YOU’RE wondering why Barry Jenkins is directing Mufasa: The Lion King you’re not alone. The maker of contemplative dramas like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk doesn’t seem the obvious choice for a studio, CGI-generated family film. Possibly Jenkins’ African American heritage prompted him […]

Voice cast lifts Mufasa origin story

Juror #2 ★★½ CLINT Eastwood is a titan of American film culture. Love or hate some of the man’s politics, you can’t deny his impact as both actor and director over six decades. The quality of his output has waned in recent years – the guy is 94 after all […]

The verdict on Eastwood’s latest

Anora ★★★★ SEAN Baker has made some very good films – Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket – but has remained largely unknown outside the art-house cinema world. Until now. His latest, Anora, is a kinetic blast of film making from start to finish that has achieved mainstream attention and […]

Baker breaks through with Anora

Mayhem ★★★ IN THE film streaming era the action genre share is significant. Go to any service and there is no shortage of releases from every corner of the globe, as opposed to the previous US domination of the video store shelves. A recent French offering worth seeking out is […]

More mayhem from France

Brokeback Mountain ★★★★ ANG Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is one of the great modern romance films. Initial credit where it’s due – the script is based on a 1997 short story by American author Annie Proulx. But Taiwanese director Lee also brought his sensitive approach and cinematic flair to the tale […]

Ang Lee’s great modern romance

Heretic ★★★ AFTER holding us tightly in its grasp for 90 minutes, Heretic loses its nerve and opts for a conventional ending. Unlike other recent intellectual exercises in high-concept psychological horror, like Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, 2024’s Heretic doesn’t carry its plot through a […]

Hugh’s heretic a hoot