Screening Room

November 7, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

They say you can’t reinvent the wheel, but Dan Trachtenberg seems able to find new and nimble ways to revisit the Predator franchise after Prey and Killer of Killers – his latest, a surprisingly funny and heartfelt entry. The killing machine alien and apex predator, a Yautja of the Badlands, may have all the horrific accouterments of Schwarzenegger’s original (double mandibles, an impressive arsenal, a relentless bloodlust) but the tables are turned on both him and audiences as the hunter becomes the prey, the baddie becomes the goodie.

Dan Trachtenberg, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Elle Fanning, Predator: Badlands — 20th Century Studios

We meet Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) as a young Yautja warrior trying to earn his invisibility cloak and tribal respect from an unyielding father who thinks him a runt. Forced to prove his worth he’s sent to the inhospitable planet of Genna where every animal and plant kills, and the ultimate trophy awaits slaying: the ‘unkillable’ Kalisk. That’s if he can get to the monster on a planet where flora shoots anesthesia darts, tree vines are murderous and even the grass is razor sharp. What a floundering Dek might need is a buddy. And he finds two in chattering severed robot, Thia (Elle Fanning), who’s lost her legs but not her tongue, and a spitting blue simian-esque creature with cute eyes and an instant devotion to the alpha alien. Together they create a misfit gang who, via a series of eye-popping misadventures, take the piss out of each other and learn about honour, wolf pack analogies and that family isn’t necessarily the one you’re born to. Touching on themes of colonial plundering, parental toxicity and AI, Badlands serves up a more human and humane predator than we’ve seen before.

Franchise purists might be apoplectic over the idea of a softer, caring protagonist, but there’s no shortage of badass action, cool tech, inventive slayings and CGI wonderment as Dek goes on a true ‘hero’s journey’. And despite having a face full of fangs and only speaking in grunts (made understandable by Thia’s translator capability and subtitles), murder-fuelled Dek becomes a fully rounded character who elicits compassion. It’s the equivalent magic trick of making audiences shed a tear for The Terminator in Cameron’s second outing. Dek’s interactions with Genna are also made amusing courtesy of Fanning’s perky performance and smart narrative beats that leave space amid the propulsive set pieces. It’s fun, funny and fresh – things we haven’t been able to say about this film collection in the slump before Trachtenberg got his hands on it. It bodes well for what he might do next…

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Predator: Badlands is in cinemas now

TRAIN DREAMS

November 6, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Clint Bentley co-wrote Sing Sing and his adaptation (with Greg Kwedar) of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella is just as heartfelt, gem-like and profound – the seemingly specific experiences of American men rendered universal in their poetic handling. Taking Johnson’s slim but gorgeous prose and building out to a treatise on grief, memory, time, the unstoppable march of progress and mankind’s mark on the world, Train Dreams is a haunting, spellbinding experience that recalls the dreaminess of Malick and asks the audience to leave the theatre newly appreciating the beauty of the small things in life.

Clifton Collins Jr., Clint Bentley, Felicity Jones, Joel Edgerton, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy — Netflix

Opening in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century with a sonorous voiceover narrated by Will Patton (like a meditation in itself), we meet lumberjack Robert Grainer (Joel Edgerton), a quiet man who goes where the work is. That takes him through cathedral groves of ancient forests, felling trees and building bridges to accommodate the railroad that will change the continent. It’s a hard life – poorly paid, hard graft and laced with death and racism – but one that blooms with the arrival of Gladys (Felicity Jones, luminous) into his life. A vibrant, capable woman who sees the interior story of this stoic man, Gladys provides happiness and a joyous filter on the world so that Robert can see its wonder. As the couple build an idyllic cabin together and welcome a baby, Robert has an anchoring home to return to from his nomadic labouring.

When he’s away he pines for his family and begins to appreciate people and places anew; Arn (William H Macy) the explosives expert who acknowledges the majesty of the trees the men work among, a religious chatterbox (Paul Schneider) whose background isn’t as virtuous as his bible quotes, the nameless men crushed like ants beneath falling logs, their boots left nailed to trunks as proof of their existence. And it’s this opening of his heart that fells him when tragedy occurs, forcing him to take solace in nature, the compassion of a Native American man (Nathaniel Arcand), the companionship of dogs and the resilient outlook of a forestry fire warden (Kerry Condon) who has returned from nursing duties in WW1. As technology advances, as man lands on the moon and as his particular way of life disappears, Robert moves through life nursing pain as evidence of love, of life.

Breathtakingly lensed by Adolpho Veloso using natural light, Robert’s seemingly unremarkable life becomes extraordinary – a man forgotten in the footnotes of history turned heroic figure. Damp forests shiver in the breeze, sunsets glow over babbling brooks, a humble chicken supper glows in candlelight, a train tunnel frames a tableaux that could be out of a painting… tracking Robert through his world. His capacity to yearn is clear in the cabin he builds and which is eventually subsumed back into the forest, the biplane he whimsically takes as an older man exhibits an ability to continue to grow, observe, persevere, like the trees around him. Though Robert doesn’t say much, Edgerton imbues him with such rich inner life that his homespun experiences feel complex, divine, intense. And though very much set in a specific, vanished time, they feel resonant. Covering themes of racism, immigration, deforestation, environmentalism, Train Dreams feels both intimate and global – a film like its lead character; deceptively simple but teeming with life, ideas and, ultimately, hope. By the time Nick Cave is singing plaintively on the end credits audiences will want to hug their loved ones (and a tree) a little closer.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of NETFLIX
Train Dreams is in cinemas now and on Netflix from 21 November

Screening Room

HEDDA

October 24, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Nia DaCosta puts a new spin on Ibsen’s classic Hedda Gabler by shifting the action from 19th-century Oslo to a sprawling country pile in 1950s England where the titular wife of an academic (Tessa Thompson, with a clipped accent of disdain) throws a house party – impulsively inviting a friend, Eileen (Nina Hoss) who, it transpires, is her ex-lover. ‘Hedda loves to eat out,’ one party wag announces tartly when discussing the dinners the newlyweds have enjoyed on their lavish honeymoon.

Imogen Poots, Nia DaCosta, Nina Hoss, Tessa Thompson, Tom Bateman — Amazon MGM Studios

Eileen is a scholar and rival to Hedda’s hubby George (Tom Bateman), and arrives at the soirée touting the manuscript of her new book, a barely controlled drinking problem and a new love interest (Imogen Poots). If the book is published, Eileen will eclipse George and threaten the precarious life the Gablers share, one party away from not affording their affluent lifestyle and in need of a professorial job which will be bestowed by another party guest, Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch). To assure her sexual dominance, social standing and financial security all Hedda needs to do is manipulate her guests during one bacchanalian night of boozing, dancing, skinny-dipping and gun-play…

DaCosta’s decision to bring the party described in the play into the forefront of the action is a dramatic improvement, giving this adap a danger and kineticism as Sean Bobbitt’s camera glides from room to room, out into garden mazes, up staircases to whispered power negotiation and to a lake as dark as the secrets of the players.

Like a Gatsby party unravelling in real time, relationships are tested, rage and jealousy boils and sex simmers – while the band plays on and chandeliers crash to the floor. At the heart of it all is Thompson in a fabulous dress; sardonic, feral, cruel. It’s an imperious performance that will likely garner noms chatter as well as dislike, while an ambiguous ending change might enrage purists. But for audiences looking for a fresh take on a classic – and one which teases feminism, equality and sexuality from a well-worn text – Hedda is a party invite worth taking up.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of AMAZON MGM STUDIOS
Hedda is in cinemas now

Screening Room

I SWEAR

October 10, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Tourette’s Syndrome is often misunderstood as merely cursing – and I Swear gives plenty of that to comedic effect. But as a study of a debilitating and socially ostracising condition it’s also loaded with compassion, serving as both a useful educational tool and a feelgood Brit film with the social conscience DNA of The Full Monty or Billy Elliot.

I Swear, Kirk Jones, Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan, Robert Aramayo, Shirley Henderson — Graeme Hunter/StudioCanal

Following the story of Galashiels local John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) as he looks back on his life from an MBE ceremony (where he tells the Queen to F-off), the film charts his difficult journey from developing uncontrollable tics as an 80s teen (Scott Ellis Watson) in an unforgiving school, through an adolescence marked by parental disdain and dust-ups with people taking offence at his outbursts. By the time he’s a young man (now played by Rings of Power’s Aramayo), his prospects of getting a job, friends or a life look bleak. But when he meets a mental health nurse, Dottie (Maxine Peake) and the gruff caretaker of a community centre, Tommy (Peter Mullan), John gets the love and respect he needs to forge a path to becoming a leader in the Tourette’s community and a campaigner for greater understanding. Along the way he’ll suffer false arrest, assault and cruelty, as well as moments that restore a belief in humanity.

If that sounds dry, it isn’t. Though the script by writer/director Kirk Jones aims to enlighten, there’s inescapable fun to be had in tracking John’s misadventures. Aramayo is supremely charming as a cheeky chap who involuntarily shouts his innermost thoughts, spits food and punches people while also apologising profusely. The hurt in his eyes is as readable as the bravura of his posturing, and his delivery of the tics that mark his condition feels authentic. The resigned dismay on his face as he’s shouting ‘I’m a pedophile!’ or ‘spunk for milk!’ while making a cuppa (and worse) is both undeniably funny and heartbreaking.

He’s surrounded by similarly excellent performances; Peake is warmth incarnate while Shirley Henderson (as John’s cold Mum) is brilliantly brittle. Very nearly stealing the show, Mullan essays patience and no-nonsense kindness that is a delight to watch. Along the way audiences may learn something – not only about Tourette’s, but also about the resilience and magnificent power for empathy of people. In our current dark times, that feels like a gift at the cinema. It’s also got a banging soundtrack and is likely to figure in the BAFTA shortlist come February. So worth getting a F-ing ticket…

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of STUDIOCANAL
I Swear is in cinemas now

Screening Room

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

September 24, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

For what is ostensibly a stoner comedy, One Battle After Another moves pretty fast. Opening with a militant counterculture group, The French 75, in El Paso freeing border-crossing detainees from a military compound via gunplay and fireworks, the pace starts at running and doesn’t flag in Paul Thomas Anderson’s most commercial, entertaining project to date. Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the pot-smoking explosives expert of the gang, led by charismatic agent of chaos Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, electric). The duo are lovers and, during their US/Mexican border compound attack, taunt – in every way – tightly wound Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn). A man so coiled his walk is a jerking strut, Lockjaw’s disgust/desire for Perfidia then powers a manhunt for the group, also conducted at a (literal) sprint. Those battles that come one after another are the constant state of flight Pat finds himself in, when 16 years after key events, Lockjaw is still on his tail. And Pat is still baked. As he tells an underground switchboard operator demanding the secret passwords when he dials in for help: “I’ve smoked a lot and I can’t remember…”

Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor — Warner Bros. Pictures

Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, Anderson takes in themes of immigration, white supremacy, racism and corruption by making them a lot of fun and a lot of a mess. Pat is a befuddled fool who cocks up escapes and rescues but is driven in his mission to protect his teen daughter (Chase Infiniti, superb). He may run around like a headless chicken in a mangy dressing gown, throwing himself inexpertly from a car and falling off roofs, but his paternal love is sure. DiCaprio is a hoot to watch as he careens from one disaster to another, the funniest and loosest he’s been in his career. His nemesis, Lockjaw, is another Penn masterclass. Sketched as a psychological soup of neuroses and kinks, Penn takes Anderson’s character and physically inhabits him to grotesque and fascinating effect. Bulging out of his clothes and, it seems, skin – with a comedy haircut, southern drawl and a barely contained rage – Lockjaw is like a psychotic Foghorn Leghorn on steroids, and a dirty pleasure to watch.

Though DiCaprio and Penn are the main adversaries in this story of 21st-century America, every player is sensational. Benicio del Toro is a cool sensei who likes a beer as he saves the day, Infiniti aces her debut as a collected teen parenting her lackadaisical dad and Tony Goldwyn brings a MAGA chill to proceedings as an industry leader with a secret basement HQ and views that are only missing white hoods. But the absolute comet who blazes through it all – and leaves a vapour trail when off-screen – is Teyana Taylor; magnificently, unapologetically fierce, with two lone eyelash extensions and a semi-automatic, she is one of cinema’s great female creations.

Filmed in VistaVision with a propulsive Johnny Greenwood score and numerous sequences you’ll want to watch on repeat (DiCaprio trying to keep up with parkour dudes, badass nuns, a Christmas meeting in a kitsch bunker, an undulating car chase), One Battle After Another is funny, witty, salient and thrilling. Plenty of bang for your buck.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Pictures courtesy of WARNER BROS. PICTURES
One Battle After Another is in cinemas now

Screening Room

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY

September 19, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

What would happen if The Penguin and Harley Quinn went on a road trip date? Possibly more realistic a proposition than this whimsy from Kogonada which begins with potential but will likely only bring the most gooey romantics along for the whole ride.

Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Phoebe Waller Bridge, Kevin Kline, Kogonada, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey — Matt Kennedy/Sony Pictures

Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie star as David and Sarah (don’t worry, you won’t forget their names, they say them to each other in pretty much every sentence), a pair of singletons at a soggy wedding who bristle at the idea of marriage and commitment. They have both arrived in rental cars hired from a quirky outfit run by Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge doing a German accent. In an opener that plays like Charlie Kaufman, David has found his way there to be offered a crappy 90s car with a weird GPS system by a profanity-dropping saleswoman who sits in a warehouse like a soundstage and instead of going through the collision damage waiver, suggests that all of life is a performance.

Certainly, we get performance from the two incredibly charismatic leads as a Burger King meet-cute (seriously, you’ll want a Whopper with cheese) morphs into a phantasmagorical odyssey where the magical GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) takes the duo to a series of picturesque doors which open to seminal moments in each of their lives. Moments that might explain why they both struggle to maintain a relationship, why they might desperately need each other. David has issues from a high school romantic wipeout and parental expectations of perfection; Sarah is a ‘quirky girl’ who visits museums at night and didn’t tell Mommy she loved her… Everything is colour coded (him: blue, her: red), pretty, whimsical, lens-flared, rainy.

There are moments of delight: David performing the lead in his high school play on muscle memory, Sarah returning home for teen-years mashed potatoes and Big on the telly. Together, Farrell and Robbie are electric – but trapped in a film that doesn’t know if it wants to be cute or deep, or both. Tonally, it zig-zags, making it hard to get an emotional read on characters who are both intriguingly self-obsessed and drearily idiosyncratic. The takeaways are that love must be entered into, not just fallen into; that Farrell can sell the hell out a musical number, that Robbie once again proves her ability to make fast food romantic and appetising after Birds Of Prey’s perfect egg sandwich.

A sweet film with good intentions and great collaborators. But one that doesn’t ever transcend the page it’s written on.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photography courtesy of SONY PICTURES
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is in cinemas now

Screening Room

DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAND FINALE

September 12, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Downton Abbey has bewitched the world over six series with its celebration of a bygone world and Britishisms – and this farewell feature is a fond one, loaded with everything one would expect from such an undertaking. By now we’re in 1930 and the clothes are slinkier, the morals looser and times a-changing. The toffs of Downton are facing financial tightness, the Wall Street crash is wreaking US havoc, social stratas are softening and unbeknownst to anyone, World War II is gestating.

Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Michelle Dockery, Paul Giamatti, Simon Curtis — Rory Mulvey/Focus Features

In this between-wars moment Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) causes controversy when she attends a London party as a divorced woman (and of course, wearing a stunning red dress), the Earl and Countess of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern) are contemplating moving into the granny flat recently vacated by the late Dowager Countess Crawley (the late Maggie Smith), and Noël Coward (Arty Froushan) and Uncle Harold (Paul Giamatti) turn up with money woes and lessons in acceptance. Goodbyes are the order of the day; below-stairs Mr Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol) are retiring and their send-off allows for audiences to process their own letting go of all the characters.

As reliably cosy as the cup of steaming tea served in the library, The Grande Finale ticks all the Downton tropes as it bows out. Society snobbery (at a Mayfair ball and the local agriculture show), a spiffing day out at the races with fabulous period fashions, the servants being sweet on their masters, the aristocrats being the ‘nice’ kind, a huge dinner party causing chaos in the kitchen and, in a button-pushing finale, the ghosts of beloved characters being given their flowers under the gimlet eye of Maggie Smith’s portrait hanging in the main hall. There’s no particular drama (aside from a bit of sauce from Alessandro Nivola’s bounder American visitor) and the silver still gets polished while people sigh about giving up the London town house. Those who have not been along for the ride might wonder about the attraction, but die-hard fans will get their tweed-and-pearls fix.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photography courtesy of FOCUS FEATURES
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is in cinemas now

Screening Room

DEAD MAN’S WIRE

September 3, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

There’s a nice nod to Dog Day Afternoon in casting Al Pacino in this real-life hostage negotiation story of the little man breaking over a loan and sticking it to the mortgage company one frosty morning in Indianapolis. Gus Van Sant’s latest feels as though it’s come from the same era (impeccable seventies production design) and deals with similar feelings of frustration.

In 1977, small-time land developer Tony Kiritsi (Bill Skarsgård) walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company HQ and took the son of the big cheese, Dick Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage – looping a ‘dead man’s wire’ around his neck. Attaching the wire to the trigger of a shotgun and to himself, Kiritsi’s crude booby-trap ensured that if he was felled, or his captive tried to escape, Hall would be killed instantly. Kiritsi was aggrieved that Meridian’s CEO (Pacino, with a molasses accent) had ruined his real-estate deals and caused his business to collapse. As cops and the local DJ (Colman Domingo) got involved, Indianapolis was gripped by the stand-off as Kiritsi holed up in his bomb-rigged apartment with Hall.

Van Sant taps into the dark humour of amiable mid-westerners negotiating a high-pressure situation as Tony and Dick are unfailingly polite to each other despite their situation, the cops personally know their perp and unbelievably cool DJ Fred Temple (Domingo, who was made for this role) has chats with Tony during the crisis. In the days before a more coordinated and tech response, the law enforcement and media approach to the situation seems almost quaint. Skarsgård is jittery-righteous as a man who believes that he is making a stand for many people crushed under the boot of big business, while Montgomery exudes the dejected calm of a man who’s got Daddy issues and has never been good enough for his flashy Pa, who continues with his vacation in Florida during the stand-off.

With things to say about corporate America and social media (Kiritsi uses local TV and radio unchecked as a platform for his beliefs), Dead Man’s Wire is both a history lesson on a largely forgotten incident and a reflection on whether we’ve matured as a society since. It’s also a welcome return to form for Van Sant.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photography courtesy of STEFANIA ROSINI/ELEVATED FILMS
Dead Man’s Wire premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival
Released in cinemas at a later date

Screening Room

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE

September 2, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Kathryn Bigelow excels at building tension around real-life horror as seen in the bomb disposal squad in Iraq in The Hurt Locker or the countdown search for Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty. She raises the bar again with a film so terrifying that you won’t know whether to sob or scream watching it through your fingers. Rashomon-style in the retelling, A House of Dynamite follows different US government workers during twenty life-changing minutes when a nuclear missile is detected launching and heading for the US. Over three repeated chapters, Noah Oppenheim’s detailed script tracks the complex protocols triggered by such an event and the bravery required of personnel when the world looks very likely to end. Of course they’ve trained for this, but when it’s real, when 10 million people will die imminently, when DEFCON escalates from four to one within a quarter of an hour – what is the human response?

A House of Dynamite, Idris Elba, Jared Harris, Kathryn Bigelow, Rebecca Ferguson — Eros Hoagland/Netflix

If that sounds like a standard opener to an actioner, it’s not. There are no easy answers or Jack Ryan figures ready to save the day. Even the sensible president (Idris Elba) is so confounded by his choices when given what he describes as a ‘diner menu’ of devastating no-win retaliation options, fumbles. This is a film that opens with normal people having a normal morning before armageddon begins; in Fort Greenly, Alaska a military team assume that a heatscore on their satallite tracking system must be an anomaly, reporting it to a cool duty office in the White House Situation Room (Rebecca Ferguson) who opens up dialogue with the Secretary Of Defence (Jared Harris), military brass and security advisors. As things become more serious by the minute, the magnitude of being the first to understand the scale of the calamity hits home. And that’s when A House of Dynamite becomes an emotional gutpunch as calm calls to loved ones are made, only select personnel are taken to the bunker to be saved and the time on the clock ticks down.

With on-screen captions explaining the acronyms used in the theatre of war and a script that informs without dumbing down, it’s horrifically easy to keep track of the options (or lack of them) in the case of nuclear war. Without knowing what country has launched the attack there is only a choice of escalation or de-escalation, both irreparably changing the world and killing millions. As the situation is viewed from three different levels of leadership the question remains the same to the audience in each chapter: what would you do? And, perhap more scarily, what would current real-world global leaders do?

Sobering, taut and as precision-executed as the White House procedures, A House Of Dynamite is a classy, almost unbearable watch that will make you squeeze family members close after viewing, breathing a sign of relief that, for now, this scenario remains in the realms of make-believe.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of NETFLIX
A House of Dynamite premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and is out now

Screening Room

THE SMASHING MACHINE

September 2, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Have we ever seen Dwayne Johnson cry on-screen? Having made a career as a comedy and action ace, Johnson gets uncharacteristically vulnerable in his first dramatic indie role, the moments where he breaks and sobs as far away from his cultivated ‘Rock’ persona as the face prosthetics genius Kazu Hiro gives him to play real-life UFC champ, Mark Kerr. It’s a welcome gear change; beefed up and raw, without a raised eyebrow in sight, it could be the role that takes him all the way to Oscar night.

Benny Safdie, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Mark Kerr, Ryan Bader, The Smashing Machine — Cheryl Dunn/A24

Written and directed by Benny Safdie, the film follows free-style wrestler Kerr during three tumultuous years when his involvement in the sport was pioneering and shaping the UFC behemoth we know today, and when his personal life was a challenge. We meet him in 1997 as an undefeated fighter with an addiction to painkillers, and a relationship with his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt) as punishing as anything in the ring. From the off, Safdie and Johnson zone in on Kerr as a gentle giant; he’s a beast when the bell rings but also asks after injured opponents, talks sweetly to kids and grannies, asks for the window shade on flights to be opened so he can appreciate the sunset and likes to prune cacti. Rage is reserved for interactions with Dawn, who knows how to push his buttons to the point of ripping doors off hinges. Though the love between them is clear – beautifully played within the real-life friendship and familiarity of Blunt and Johnson – neither the drugs or the romance are productive. That’s evident to Kerr’s bestie, Mark Coleman (MMA fighter, Ryan Bader) who trains his friend and is another sweet man in a cage-fighter body. As Kerr negotiates his first loss, the rules and pay of the UFC, rehab and police run-ins, he learns how personal experience informs the sport and the teaching moment in not being invincible.

It’s the classic arc of a sports movie and one we’ve seen many times before – with Safdie even popping a Rocky beanie hat on Johnson and giving him steps to run up during a training montage – but the wins are not necessarily about reinventing the wheel. The pleasure here is in watching Johnson disappear inside another person, impressively unrecognisable in a wig and prosthetic nose/brows, his heart on his sweaty sleeve. Blunt is equally delightful as the perma-tanned Dawn, bringing a brightness to the brittle as a woman who wants neither the drug-dulled sweetheart who collapses nor the snippy, sober killjoy she gets after rehab. Safdie also chooses to bring the real-life Kerr into proceedings, giving him his due in a third reel segment that tracks him as he cheerfully does his grocery shop, a curiously moving moment. A standard biopic then, but one that awards bodies will likely reward. Voters love transformation from a performer and Johnson provides that not only in his physically immense muscle mass but also in his decisive reinvention as an actor. That the story mirrors elements of his own hard-scrabble background and fist-bought success can only add to the narrative.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of A24
The Smashing Machine premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and is in cinemas now

Screening Room

PREDATOR: BADLANDS

November 7, 2025

Screening Room

TRAIN DREAMS

November 6, 2025

Screening Room

HEDDA

October 24, 2025

Screening Room

I SWEAR

October 10, 2025

Screening Room

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

September 24, 2025

Screening Room

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY

September 19, 2025

Screening Room

DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAND FINALE

September 12, 2025

Screening Room

DEAD MAN’S WIRE

September 3, 2025

Screening Room

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE

September 2, 2025

Screening Room

THE SMASHING MACHINE

September 2, 2025

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