Reviews - Hollywood Authentic

June 11, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Writer-director John Maclean follows off-beat Western Slow West with more genre-spliced fare – this time a Scottish oater/samurai actioner. In the blustery 1790 glens we meet a young Japanese woman (Kôki) running for her life across moors and through forests. In pursuit, a motley team: leader Sugarman (Tim Roth), his son Little (Jack Lowden) and a crew of desperate thieves and murderers who’ll slice the throat of a random circus performer as easily as a colleague who failed a mission. The Sugarman gang are looking for gold that they believe the girl knows the location of – and in a midsection flashback, we’ll discover if she is merely another pawn in their path of destruction or if she has skin in the game.

Jack Lowden, Joanne Whalley, John Maclean, Kôki, Tim Roth, Tornado — Norman Wilcox-Geissen/IFC Films

As the marauders trash a stately home, the wagon of the girl’s father (Takehiro Hira) and the camp of an acting troupe (led by Joanne Whalley), the woman at the centre of the story turns from quivering quarry to an avenging force, and Sugarman’s infantry start to drop. ‘Remember my name, Tornado…’ she intones darkly while wielding a blade. There will be blood – spurting out of slick throats and lopped-off limbs…

Roth can play this sort of casual menace in his sleep and his relaxed brutality towards his lads, his son and anyone in his path is chillingly effective. Lowden, playing off Roth’s energy, becomes a nasty piece of work, while Kôki manages to sell her arc from girl to goddess in a screenplay that asks for little sympathy for anyone. The characters all circumnavigate a boggy lake and damp woods as their morality play unwinds – like souls in purgatory, tethered to a place. Audiences will need to accept this conceit to get the most out of people constantly bumping into each other when there’s plenty of directions to run. But, welcome the dreamlike quality of proceedings (helped by beautiful lensing by Robbie Ryan of brackish waters, auburn grasslands and fairytale forests whipped by gale-force winds) and Maclean’s rain-lashed, dark fable will cast a spell. And make you yearn for a cosy blanket.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of IFC Films
Tornado is out in cinemas now

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FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK: BALLERINA

June 6, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

That title is somewhat cumbersome but Ana de Armas’ off-shoot of the Keanu Reeves action franchise is thankfully more cut and thrust. No such exposition in this brisk 90-minute knock-em-down set during the third John Wick instalment which opens with flashback as a wide-eyed child watches her father killed by ‘The Chancellor’ (Gabriel Byrne) and is taken in by Angelica Huston’s ‘The Director’ of the Ruska Roma to be trained as both a ballet dancer and an assassin. Growing into de Armas’ Eve Macarro, the ballerina begins to question the ethos of the shadowy world in which she lives when she discovers a lead to The Chancellor during a protection gig. Like Wick before her, Eve may trade in death but the demise of a beloved sets her on a scorched earth path to revenge – tracking The Chancellor and his cult to New York, Prague and a delightful alpine village full of contract killers in cosy knitwear.

Ana de Armas, Ballerina, Gabriel Byrne, Ian McShane, John Wick, Keanu Reeves, Norman Reedus — Lionsgate

Throughout her odyssey Eve does what she was taught at Ruska Roma – to ‘fight like a girl’. That means inventive deployment of household objects (pans, skates, ice picks, plates), using her smaller stature to outsmart hulking goons (grenade headache being a highlight) and fighting yin with yang (a fire hose vs flamethrower set piece sizzles). Like Wick, she seemingly has rubber bones and doesn’t spill a great deal of blood apart from the most attractive of grazes, but Ballerina isn’t much interested in logic or reality. Those who’ve already spent time at the Continental Hotel will understand the drill and de Armas displays as much charisma as Reeves in making relentless stunts entertaining (the Director might as well be saying ‘again’ repeatedly as she does during dance rehearsal). De Armas more than matches Reeves when they meet for a brief, bruising encounter and ensures he’s not missed when he departs.
Consolidating the action promise she showed as a scene-stealing Paloma in Bond’s No Time To Die, and sharpened in Ghosted and The Gray Man, de Armas is setting up Ballerina for a franchise and has zero figs to give about pausing for breath, let alone an exploration of who Eve is away from a fight. That will surely come in future films – which, based on the star’s assured performance, are as much of a given as the fact that this pirouetting killer will definitely make use of everything in an armoury (including a covetable flame retardant coat) when she breaks into it. ‘Cool,’ she nods in approval on opening a box of lethal weaponry. Well, indeed.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of LIONSGATE
From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is in cinemas now

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DANGEROUS ANIMALS

June 6, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Last year Cannes boasted Ozploitation The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage as a wave rider who becomes unhinged when tested by locals at an Australian surf spot. This year, the festival saw Jai Courtney get his crazy on in a similarly willfully silly but entertaining horror-actioner that features surfers in the land down under.

Dangerous Animals, Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston, Sean Byrne — Mark Taylor/Vertigo Releasing

Premiering in Directors’ Fortnight, Sean Byrne’s video nasty stars Courtney as a salty seadog, Tucker, who trawls for female victims, not just fish, and gets off on feeding them to sharks while taping them with a camcorder. ‘So no-one knows you’re here?’ he asks a dopey backpacking couple who arrive at his Gold Coast boat looking for a day trip, and within ten minutes we’re treated to his bloody MO. Cut to feisty surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) who meets-cute with a local, Moses (Josh Heuston) before taking off for some dawn tubes and falling victim to Tucker’s abduction techniques. Will the surfer outsmart the psychopath aboard his rusting ship before the great whites circle for dinner time?

Courtney is clearly having great fun as a leering shark enthusiast with Mummy issues and an inexhaustible line of fishy analogies in a grindhouse-style film that has little truck with logic and a squeamish moment involving a thumb and a pair of handcuffs. Harrison makes good work of fighting for survival while maintaining perfect hair and the CG sharks chew on people inconsistently (yes to one struggling, splashing girl; no to another swimming, splashing girl).
It’s not designed to test the brain or bum, but if you like a brisk, nasty little horror that understands its genre and purpose, Dangerous Animals is decent bait.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of VIRTIGO RELEASING
Dangerous Animals premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival and is in cinemas now

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THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

May 22, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

The scheme at the centre of Wes Anderson’s latest is as precisely matriculated and detailed as the auteur’s work. Wily 1950s business tycoon Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) decides to go full hog on a business plan to build an Empire via infrastructure, deals and percentage financing after surviving his sixth plane crash (one of the film’s best sequences). A Charles Foster Kane crossed with Trump egotist who wants to win at all cost, Korda is determined to leave a legacy – in business via his scheme, and generationally via his offspring. Though he has nine sons, he reconnects with his 20 year-old daughter Leisl (Mia Threapleton), a nun who carries unresolved family hurt and a pipe. Korda’s biggest deal then involves globetrotting via complex sets and dioramas, to raise capital and outwit a bureaucratic group who are falsely inflating costs – all while handing out hand grenades as gifts and outrunning a mysterious assassin who keeps trying to pop him. Along for the ride: Michael Cera’s delightful Norwegian tutor Bjorn, who has a dazzling collection of insects and ends up working above his paygrade as Zsa-zsa suffers another plane crash, quicksand and a battle to the death in a luxury hotel.

Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Mia Threapleton, Scarlett Johansson, The Phoenician Scheme, Tom Hanks

Del Toro, in practically every frame, is a hoot as Zsa-zsa, a man who is casual about death, serious about cards and a fan of hot baths. He’s matched by deadpan Threapleton who can transmit an exasperated eyeroll without actually moving her peepers. Another newbie to the Anderson stable, Riz Ahmed, makes an impression as Prince Farouk, while the returning troupe (Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray et al) do their fast-talking, comedic thing. But it’s Cera who really steals focus with a performance so singularly sweet and a lilting Scandinavian accent so charming that one wishes Anderson had given this character a whole film to himself.

Though there’s plenty of physical gags and willfully opaque business speak which could be interpreted as Anderson criticising capitalism, the matter at the core of the hijinks is the redemption of a man and the relationship between a father and daughter. And to that end – and the film’s end – there is emotional satisfaction. As expected, production design is a whimsical trove and monochrome scenes set in heaven (with Murray as God) are quirky sojourns. Anderson fans will likely not be unduly disappointed.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of TPS PRODUCTIONS/FOCUS FEATURES
The Phoenician Scheme premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival

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THE HISTORY OF SOUND

May 22, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Ben Shattuck’s short story about two young men falling in love with each other and folk music is a thing of absolute beauty, filled with yearning, want and bucolic imagery. Shattuck has also written this screenplay and built out his fragile tale to a two hour movie that though handsome, well intentioned and delicately acted, fails to fully match the source material’s emotional resonance.

Josh O'Connor, Oliver Hermanus, Paul Mescal, Peter Mark Kendall, The History of Sound — Gwen Capistran

We first encounter Lionel (Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Conner) as they meet-cute – a couple of music students at a Boston Conservatory in 1917 who connect over a piano in a bar, and then in bed later that night. Their fledgling romance is interrupted by WW1, with David getting drafted and Lionel returning to his family’s Kentucky farm. Lionel pines for his lost love so when David reappears post-conflict and invites him on a song collecting trip around New England, he jumps at the chance. The two men camp and hike to remote communities, archiving folksongs on a phonograph, cuddling in their tent and not saying what’s really on their minds like a folksy Brokeback Mountain. But David is tightly-wound, clearly rattled by his experiences in Europe and the trip cannot last forever…

Shattuck’s short story is economic with detail but gives more lived-in texture to the affair than Oliver Hermanus’ stately film does which is as coy with its sex scenes as it is in showing the duo’s passion for music. The ‘history of sound’ is what Lionel yearns for in recalling his relationship with David as an older man (played by Chris Cooper) – not the ditties picked up and preserved on wax cylinders but the vibrations of being with someone in nature, in love. ‘Sound is invisible but can touch something, make an impression,’ Lionel explains at one point in a beautifully composed farmhouse tableau. Audiences might want more evidence of this than they are afforded in a film that creates striking visuals (an old man collapsed in a sun-bleached tree, the crystalline lake beneath an oar, Rome at magic hour) and haunting audio of fluting harmonies. Mescal and O’Conner are excellent, of course – carrying regret like the backpacks they shoulder – and production values are exemplary. But The History Of Sound offers something akin to blank sheet music, requiring the viewer to add notations.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GWEN CAPISTRAN Courtesy of FAIR WINTER LLC
The History of Sound premiered at the 78th Cannes film festival

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THE PLAGUE

May 20, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

In his debut feature Charlie Polinger riffs on The Lord Of The Flies but makes it entirely his own and pertinent to today’s politics, social media pile-ons and the cowardice of allowing cruelty to another to ensure one’s own safe passage. An adolescent study in social hierarchy and coercion, The Plague is what the 12 and 13 year old boys at a 2003 water polo camp call the rash that one of their number has developed during the summer. Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) is a ‘weird kid’, and his skin condition is deemed to be highly contagious by ringleader Jake (Kayo Martin) who has already bullied a boy over it in a previous summer session. When mild-mannered Ben (Everett Blunck) turns up, the fractured dynamics in his home and a speech impediment make him self-protect – he’d rather allow cruel taunts and ostracising than make a stand. Their coach (Joel Edgerton) is no ally anyway. A well-meaning man who sees unkindness as a right of passage based on his own high school experiences, he may shout at the group about compassion but he’s not willing or able to do anything about it.

Charlie Polinger, Everett Blunck, Kenny Rasmussen, Lennox Espy, The Plague, Joel Edgerton — Spooky Pictures

Foreboding sound design, score and cinematography make The Plague an uneasy watch from the start, the muffled underwater world of a swimming pool strafed with diving boys, the queasy chlorinated lighting of locker rooms and dark corners of a brutalist sports centre. This is a world of hard surfaces and no digital escape via cell phones or social media. The claustrophobic society created in the changing rooms and dorms is what we, and Ben, are stuck with as Jake smirkingly controls the group by picking apart any perceived weakness. Ben can’t pronounce his ‘t’s, cannot enunciate ‘stop’, so is christened ‘Soppy’ and ridiculed for his vegetarianism. It’s enough to not want to make him protest as Eli is humiliated in the lunch room, showers and, in a particularly vulnerable moment, when the arrival of girls causes an embarrassing reaction.

Polinger teases horribly recognisable performances out of his young cast; Blunck’s panic is infectious while Rasmussen is unexpected in every scene as a boy who is being bullied for being different but trying to own it. A moment where he dances like nobody’s watching (even though every one is) is heartbreaking and triumphant. But the standout is Martin who wears a knowing smile most of the time and has charisma to burn. Playing like a young Michael J Fox turned feral, he has a sweet face, a smart mouth and the instincts of a killer. The way his lips curl as he detects fallibility, ready to weaponise it, is the stuff that haunts all our memories of adolescence. And the ease with which his controlled community abuses a teammate is something we can all recognise in all social groups, both intimate and global. Ben’s ultimate question of ethics is one posed to every audience member.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of SPOOKY PICTURES
The Plague premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival

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MY FATHER’S SHADOW

May 20, 2025

Photography by LAKIN OGUNBANWO
Words by JANE CROWTHER

‘I will see you in dreams,’ says one of the delightfully cheeky children at the heart of this haunting tale of hindsight, loss, identity and love from Akinola Davis jr. The film, co-written by Davies and his brother, Wale, is like a vivid dream; loaded with so much evocative imagery that one can practically smell the food cooking in the teeming streets of Lagos, feel the heat from the dusty road and taste the salt of the beach where a key moment plays out. It is a loving portrait of both West Nigeria and a parent who comes sharply into focus when remembered on one adventurous day in 1993.

Akinola Davies, Chibuike Marvelous Egbo, Efon Wini, Godwin Egbo, My Father’s Shadow, Sopé Dìrísù — Lakin Ogunbanwo/BBC Films

The father in question, Fola (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), is largely absent from the lives of two brothers, Akin and Remi (Godwin Chimerie Egbo and Chibiuke Marvellous Egbo) who live in a rural town, constantly awaiting the return of both their parents from work. One day, as the wind whispers through the trees and fruit rots on the ground, Dad arrives home. As he moves through the house alighting on various personal possessions, he brusquely suggests his sons accompany him on his trip into the capital to collect money owed to him from shift work. The three of them squash into a bus for the journey but amid the petrol shortages and political unrest of the recent elections, it breaks down. Now begins the real odyssey, as the trio hitchhike to Lagos and are consumed within its messy, chaotic, bright and busy centre – zipping around on motorbikes, hanging out with Dad’s friends, visiting a closed-down fairground, watching the city hold its breath waiting for the election results in a bar as beer bottles sweat.

Daddy suffers from nosebleeds, has an unspoken past and is wary of the soldiers patrolling the streets with watchful eyes. His trauma and possible infidelity flutter within the periphery of a day that crystallises both boys’ image of their father. In their jumbled recollection Fola is a stern parent, a swimming teacher, a protector, a provider, hurt by his own childhood and filled with hope for better days, politically and personally. He feels so fully formed by all the aspects of himself coming together during this day, that a stunningly beautiful beach scene begins an emotional ache that lingers to the final, sorrowful moments. Throughout, decay and rot is catalogued via decaying fruit, bones, the circling of vultures – and once linked by a deft foreshadowing twist, Davis’ film packs real emotional punch.

Dìrísù is magnificent in a role that may see him on the same trajectory as Paul Mescal when he arrived in Cannes with Aftersun, ably supported by plucky performances by his young co-star brothers. The film also makes non-fiction history in being the first Nigerian film to be in competition at the festival, despite the power of Nollywood. And what a gorgeous, evocative, smart and tender portrait of Nigeria and a family it is.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photography by LAKIN OGUNBANWO
My Father’s Shadow premiered at the 78th Cannes film festival
Read our interview with Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù here

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THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER

May 18, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

No bodily fluid is left untouched in Kristen Stewart’s raw, unflinching poem to wetness, adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir. Adapted (with Andy Mingo) and directed by the actor with Imogen Poots as Stewart’s front-of-camera proxy playing Lidia, it charts the non-linear, tortured path of a girl who is sexually abused by her father and finds sanctity in the chlorinated depths of her school swim team. Her prowess in the pool is what sets her free to some degree, taking her away from a somnambulist mother and her father’s fingers to college where sex, drugs and the healing power of writing led to pregnancy, addiction, self destruction and the redemption of art. And always there is immersion in water: in baths, lakes, pools, showers, rain. ‘In water, like in books,’ Lidia intones in one of many overlapping, murmured voiceovers offered like dream-state remembrances, ‘you can leave your life.’

Imogen Poots, Jim Belushi, Kristen Stewart, The Chronology of Water, Thora Birch

Told in four chapters, it explores the legacy of trauma, the physical/emotional pain of losing a child, BDSM and the difficulty and release of becoming an artist. A writer from childhood, Lidia’s confronting prose finds purpose when she joins a writer’s class with author Ken Kesey (Jim Belushi) at the University Of Oregon. But can she trust an older man who values her work? Or is he another predatory male? And does the sweet college boy who becomes her partner (Earl Cave) deserve the disdain she literally spits in his face?

Impressionistic yet graphic, The Chronology of Water shows a woman experiencing all her body is capable of: female ejaculation, excretion, birth, orgasm, destruction. And It seems that Stewart pours all of the teaching she’s gained from the dazzling array of filmmakers she’s worked with as an actor into the production of a woozy, elemental, bruising mood piece that is like its protagonist; messy, unbridled, in need of structure. Stewart has described her film presented to Cannes as a ‘first draft’ and in that regard it could use some corralling; but equally, like Lidia, it shows fierce potential. As Kesey notes, ‘you can write, girl’.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photography courtesy of Scott Free Productions
The Chronology of Water premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival

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EDDINGTON

May 17, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

‘Hindsight,’ runs Eddington’s tagline on its poster depicting buffalo tumbling off the side of a cliff, ‘is 2020’. For Ari Aster’s latest, that means training his quirky eye on America, linking where we are now to events of 2020 when Covid bred paranoia, conspiracy and MAGA like a socio-polical petri dish. Popping the pandemic in a neo-noir Western set in the appellative New Mexico town during May of that year, Aster picks at virtue signalling, bandwagonning, social media, fake news, radicalisation, trauma and first amendment jingoism via the moral and emotional meltdown of the town sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix).

Ari Aster, Austin Butler, Eddington, Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Luke Grimes, Pedro Pascal

A mild-mannered chap in a fraught marriage to his doll-making, damaged wife Lou (Emma Stone) and living with his conspiracist mother-in-law (Deidre O’Connell), Joe is law-abiding until medical mandates come around. An asthma-sufferer, the sheriff does not believe anyone should wear a mask if they don’t want to (or that Covid is a real threat) and clashes with mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). The two men have history involving Lou and Joe is fired up enough to run for office against his romantic rival, leaning into NRA/MAGA sentiments and further losing his rag when Lou brings home a charismatic cult leader (Austin Butler) and gazes at him in a way she hasn’t looked at her husband in many moons. Suddenly, this is no longer a movie in the vein of John Sayles’ Lone Star and takes an Asterian turn to something darker, more febrile and explosively ludicrous. As Aster films go, it’s less challenging than the big swings of Beau Is Afraid but not as startlingly fresh as Hereditary.

Peppered with as many fatalities as delicious performances, Eddington is surprisingly droll, luridly violent and has the prescience to use a Katy Perry song in a film that worries about the potential stranglehold of big tech in all aspects of life. (The proposed data bank that promises infrastructure and jobs for the area looms throughout as bellwether commentators warn of political control, ecological impact and wealth disparity.) There’s gallows humour to be found as characters declare Covid is ‘not a here problem’, espouse the virtues of Bitcoin and watch TikTok videos as news. The ranting homeless man who staggers into town at the start muttering incoherently about perceived wickedness is no longer the anomaly as ideologies burn brighter, fuelled by misinformation, frustration and ultimately, actually gasoline.

This is an accomplished cast so it’s no surprise that Phoenix holds focus despite playing an insubstantial man with shifting morals, ably supported by Pascal (stoic), Stone (fragile), Butler (scene-stealingly slithery) and Michael Ward, faultless as an ambitious sheriff department officer who becomes a pawn. Nothing so horrific as the decapitation of Hereditary, but Eddington offers a seething discomfort in recognising the start of the slip towards the dumpster-fire rolling-news reality we now live in. Which is truly terrifying.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photography courtesy of A24
Eddington premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival

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HALLOW ROAD

May 16, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Student Alice is used to being picked up and brushed off by her parents whenever she stumbles. Though we never see her, we hear and know about her via her parents; over-protective Frank (Matthew Rhys) and his exasperated paramedic wife Maddie (Rosamund Pike). Early in the small hours, Alice calls her sleep-deprived mum in a panic – she has taken her dad’s car and driven to the titular road in a nearby forest where she’s accidentally knocked over a pedestrian. The parents jump into Maddie’s car to reach her, their SatNav informing them of the distance to reach their daughter while an increasingly upset Alice keeps them abreast over the speakerphone of the terrible, fatal mess she’s got herself into.

Babak Anvari, Hallow Road, Matthew Rhys, Megan McDonnell, Rosamund Pike — Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Essentially a real-time bottle episode in the vein of Locke, Hallow Road then unfurls, one mile and minute at a time, in the car as the couple struggle to help their child remotely, question their parenting and reveal the fractured family dynamic that preceded Alice storming out of the house earlier. And as the country roads become more labyrinthine and dark, a folk horror aspect begins to hover over proceedings as both parents’ psychological secrets come to the fore.

Hallow Road starts with a warning – a battery depleted smoke alarm chirruping – and grows in tension and disquiet as Rhys and Pike master myriad emotions while the green dashboard light casts a queasy hue over their distraught faces. To give more detail would be to spoil, but if you’re familiar with director Babak Anvari’s previous work in Under The Shadow, the fact that the crisis at the start of this thriller morphs to something more primal and primordial at its close should come as no surprise. Like the fraught relationship between parents and daughter (voiced by Megan McDonnell), there is something else going on in the trees – what exactly is open to interpretation by each viewer. And, based on a post-credit sting, those interpretations will not necessarily align.

Playing like a lost episode of Inside No 9, this disorientating, brisk thriller is an easy way to spend 80 minutes this weekend while also opening conversations of guilt, grief, helicopter parenting and the inherent creepiness of deep, dark woods.

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TORNADO

June 11, 2025

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FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK: BALLERINA

June 6, 2025

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DANGEROUS ANIMALS

June 6, 2025

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THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

May 22, 2025

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THE HISTORY OF SOUND

May 22, 2025

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THE PLAGUE

May 20, 2025

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MY FATHER’S SHADOW

May 20, 2025

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THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER

May 18, 2025

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EDDINGTON

May 17, 2025

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HALLOW ROAD

May 16, 2025

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