Film: Pick of the best

Lawrence weathers these bone-crunching blows, then shatters her character’s soul to smithereens when she thinks no one is looking, in the service of a tightly woven narrative, threaded with betrayal and daring double-crosses. Unravelling the mysteries of director Francis Lawrence’s puzzle picture is a nail-biting treat.

Monster Family (PG)

HOLGER Tappe’s animated adventure takes a half decent idea and goes nowhere with it. Emily Watson gives voice to Emma, a bookshop owner, mother and wife who wishes she and her family were happier, but work is busy, the kids want to do their own thing, dad is overfond of the sofa, etc. As luck and a little magic would have it, Emma and co are given the chance to try life in other guises. A starry voice cast that also includes Celia Imrie, Jason Isaacs and Catherine Tate cannot make up for scrappy animation, dull dialogue, and a tiresomely meandering plot that seems to go all over the world without ever landing lucky.

GAME NIGHT (15)

Trivial pursuits escalate into life-or-death gambles in a rollicking comedy thriller co-directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, which is funnier and smarter than it initially lets on. Game Night deals us a winning hand full of likeable characters, uproarious

set-pieces and snappy dialogue laden with pop culture references. Screenwriter Mark Perez orchestrates a madcap murder mystery in sleepy American suburbia, where middle-class couples congregate to play competitive charades and Scrabble while swigging glasses of chardonnay and tucking into a cheese board.

Max (Jason Bateman) and his wife Annie (Rachel McAdams) organise one such gathering and are horrified when Max’s flashy, older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) is kidnapped for real during the soiree.

I, TONYA (15)

According to a title card at the beginning of Craig Gillespie’s blackly humorous biopic,

I, Tonya is based on “irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews” with US figure skating champion Tonya Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly. The film illuminates

a grubby episode in sporting history – the

1994 attack on skater Nancy Kerrigan – with considerable aplomb. Screenwriter Steven Rogers invites the deeply flawed protagonists

to talk directly to camera, offering contradictory and overlapping testimonies that make sense

of the chain of events that led to Harding’s

ban from competitive skating. Margot Robbie inhabits the title role with fearlessness and ferocity, tossing out expletives as if her life depended upon it as Harding suffers grievously at the hands of those closest to her. Sebastian Stan oozes slippery charm as the man who walks Tonya down the aisle and exerts his marital “right” to lay his hands on her in anger. Whether we believe Tonya or not, she

recounts a cracking yarn of triumph against

adversity.

FINDING YOUR FEET (12A)

WITH its familiar cast and bittersweet approach to getting older, Richard Loncraine’s London-set drama is chasing the Best Exotic Marigold pound as surely as autumn succeeds summer. Imelda Staunton leads the way as Sandra,

one-time Greenham Common protester with proud leftie sister Bif (Celia Imrie), but now a

betrayed and frightened wife trying to start again. Can she find friendship among Bif’s dancing, adventuring, good-time pals of a

certain age? The answer is thunderingly predictable and the tweeness takes some getting used to, but with a cast that also

includes Timothy Spall and David Hayman

you are in safe hands.

DARK RIVER (15)

FUNCTIONING as a sort of antidote to Finding Your Feet is this grim-up-north drama from Clio Barnard. Alice and Joe Bell (Ruth Wilson and Mark Stanley) were close growing up, but Alice fled the farm in Yorkshire as soon as she could, with flashbacks to her life with dad (played

by Sean Bean) making clear why. With her

father now dead, Alice goes home to take what she feels belongs to her, but brother Joe has other ideas. While Barnard has been

unlucky with timing in that her drama explores some of the same areas as the recently released The Levelling, the performances

from Wilson (Luther) and Stanley (Game of Thrones, Love, Lies and Hope) make it well worth a look.

LADY BIRD (15)

Indie actress Greta Gerwig’s magnificent directorial debut is a sublime coming-of-age comedy drama set in turn of the 21st century Sacramento. Although Lady Bird isn’t strictly autobiographical, Gerwig draws on fond memories of her Californian home town for

a beautifully observed valentine to

mother-daughter relationships and youthful exuberance, infused with unabashed warmth

for her well drawn characters. The writer-director has a sharp ear for the ebb and flow of pithy conversations and she has attracted a stellar cast led by Oscar nominees Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf as the spunky title character and her hard-working mother who generate friction every time they are in close proximity. Lady Bird is a near-perfect confluence of direction, writing and performance. Being incredibly picky, there are several instances when Ronan’s accent falters and her melodic Irish lilt comes through loud and clear, which momentarily breaks the gently intoxicating spell cast by Gerwig’s film.

THE SHAPE OF WATER (15)

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro recaptures the visual splendour and simmering menace of his Oscar-winning 2006 fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth with a swoon-inducing re-imagining of the Beauty And The Beast fairytale set in 1962 Baltimore. The Shape Of Water is a gorgeous, erotically-charged love story that empowers its richly drawn female characters to drive forward a tightly wound narrative and defeat prejudice in its myriad ugly forms. The script, co-written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, doesn’t sugarcoat the central romance between a mute cleaning lady (Sally Hawkins) and a carnivorous merman (Doug Jones). Carnal desires of the spirited heroine are laid delightfully bare and lustrous period detail evokes an era of suffocating Cold War paranoia with aplomb. Hawkins is luminous and heartbreaking, speaking volumes without saying a word – save for a musical fantasy sequence that choreographs a romantic pas de deux reminiscent of yesteryear’s La La Land.

Black Panther (12A)

Director Ryan Coogler made a name for himself with the laceratingly political Fruitvale Station and the crowd-pleaser that was Rocky Balboa’s return in Creed. Who better, then, to bring Marvel’s overlooked black superhero to

the big screen? Chadwick Boseman plays

T’Challa/Black Panther, king of Wakanda,

a developing African nation to outsiders but secretly a rich powerhouse where peace and technology reign supreme. With Wakanda having so much, should it help outsiders in need? The screenplay by Coogler and Joe Robert Cole contains all the usual elements, including a tush-achingly long wham-bam finale, but it is packed with originality, wit and a cast iron sense of confidence in the world it creates.

THE MERCY (12A)

The Mercy is a handsome but emotionally waterlogged dramatisation of the fateful journey of self-discovery of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth), who vanished in 1969 during a round-the-world yacht race.

Director James Marsh captained The Theory Of Everything to Bafta and Oscar glory but he struggles to keep this real-life tragedy afloat.

The ramshackle script bobs between present and past, inserting flashbacks to happier

times in Donald’s relationship with his wife (Rachel Weisz) as his sanity unravels in the claustrophobic confines of his boat. Being lost at sea with Firth would be a dream vacation for some people and the Oscar winner delivers a committed performance. However, I struggled to tether an emotional connection to his tormented sailor and my interest went overboard.

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (15)

Hell hath no fury like a grief-stricken mother scorned in London-born writer-director Martin McDonagh’s blackly comic thriller, which pits one vigilante parent against her local police force in a fictional midwestern town.

Impeccably scripted and blessed with a blistering lead performance from Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a near-perfect film in the right place at the right time. McDonagh’s explosive morality tale is fuelled by the righteous anger of a spirited woman, who believes her concerns are being ignored by men in power and will not rest until all lines of inquiry have been exhausted in the pursuit of justice. Her rebel yell sparks sickening violence that may divide audiences, including one scene in a dentist’s surgery that leaves jaws truly dropped, but brutality always serves the lean, muscular narrative. McDonagh directs with an assured hand.