Category: Movies

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Strongroom

Director – Vernon Sewell – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 80m

*****

Three men have planned the perfect bank robbery… but then, everything goes wrong – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 30th, BFI Blu-ray Monday, February 23rd, and BFI Player Monday, March 23rd

Strongroom doesn’t hang around. It opens with a strongroom door which must be locked at close of business by two separate keys, one looked after by the bank manager Mr. Spencer (Colin Gordon from Oh Brother!, TV series, 1968; The Pink Panther, Blake Edwards, 1963; Heavens Above!, The Boulting Brothers, 1963; The Man in the White Suit, Alexander Mackendrick, 1951) and the other by his secretary Miss Taylor (Ann Lynn from Just Good Friends, TV series, 1984-86; A Shot in the Dark, Blake Edwards, 1964). This Saturday, she’s agreed to work late as no-one will be in until the Tuesday after Easter.

What neither of them know is that sitting outside the bank in their small van, waiting for the bank employees to leave as per their usual schedule, is a gang of three criminals Griff (Derren Nesbitt from Tucked, Jamie Patterson, 2018; Where Eagles Dare, Brian G.… Read the rest

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Primate

Director – Johannes Roberts – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 89m

****1/2

A girl and her friends discover her family’s pet chimp has turned violent and trapped them in the house – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 30th

Coming in commendably under 90 minutes, this is a hugely effective thriller about people trapped in a confined space with a monster. Which makes it all the more curious that it missteps for its first couple of scenes, making you wonder if you’re going to regret seeing the film. First up is a scene in which a vet ventures into a house’s exterior enclosure and is attacked by Ben, the distressed chimpanzee, who lives there. The problem is not the scene itself, which is both genuinely scary and sets the scene for what is to follow – indeed, it establishes that there is a chimpanzee in the house about to turn bad – but the fact that it’s almost impossible to relate the scene to the remaining narrative, apart from the fact that it takes place 36 hours earlier. Who was the vet? At what point in the unfolding flashback does this attack take place? The ensuing mayhem won’t leave you any time to ponder such questions, so it arguably doesn’t matter, but for me, because I couldn’t make any sense of it in the scheme of the wider film, it proved annoying.… Read the rest

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H is for Hawk

Director – Philippa Lowthorpe – 2025 – US, UK – Cert.12a – 115m

*****

An academic grieving her recently deceased photojournalist father buys and trains a goshawk then turns in on herself – adaptation of bestselling memoir is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 23rd

Helen (Claire Foy) phones her dad to tell him she’s just seen a pair of goshawks. Her dad (Brendan Gleeson), with whom she would often venture out into the English countryside, is a top photojournalist who has made a career out of waiting with his camera – for hours sometimes – to catch just the right moment to tell a story. Technically, he is retired, but still carries on working. And then a few days after Helen sees the goshawks, her mum (Lindsay Duncan) phones. Dad died, suddenly, unexpectedly. He’s gone. Except that, in the manner of the bereaved, he’s still there. Everywhere Helen goes, she remembers flashes of him from the past, things they did together. They were very close.

She works as an academic, teaching science at Cambridge, and not unusually is disenchanted with her students, wishing they’d show a bit more interest. She has been invited to apply for a position in Berlin, and as her best friend Christina (Denise Gough) says, if she applies she’ll probably get it, so they go out to celebrate.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies Music

The History of Sound

Director – Oliver Hermanus – 2025 – UK, US – Cert. 15 – 128m

****

A Kentucky man falls for a music professor in Boston and accompanies him on a field trip recording folk songs – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 23rd

In 1917, having grown up on a farmstead in rural Kentucky and his remarkable singing voice being noticed by a local schoolteacher, Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal from Hamnet, Chloé Zhao, 2025; Gladiator II, Ridley Scott, 2024; All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh, 2023) gets a student scholarship to Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. One Saturday evening in a Boston pub with friends, he makes the acquaintance of David White (Josh O’Connor from  La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher, 2023; Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson, 2021; The Crown, TV series, 2019-20; God’s Own Country, Francis Lee, 2017) who is playing folk songs on the piano and, it turns out, is a tenured academic with an obsessive hobby: travelling around the country collecting, recording and cataloguing folk songs. David has what Lionel describes as the sound equivalent of a photographic memory: he can remember word for word and note for note, any song sung in his presence.… Read the rest

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October Sky

Director – Joe Johnston – 1999 – US – Cert. PG – 97m

****1/2

Coming-of-age drama based on the teenage years of Homer Hickam who went on to become a NASA rocket scientist – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 26th 1999

1957 was the year Sputnik became the Earth’s first man‑made satellite. This first of two December releases set in small town America against the backdrop of that event (the second is next week’s The Iron Giant, Brad Bird, 1999) is a coming-of-age drama based on the real life teenage years of Homer Hickam who went on to become a NASA rocket scientist. Homer (Jake Gyllenhaal) is initially inspired by the sight of the Sputnik flying over his hometown through 1957’s October skies, a tiny moving dot amidst the stars.

Hickham starts experimenting with home-made rockets – blowing up his mother’s picket fence, sending potentially lethal projectiles hurtling through the air towards the local pithead and, ultimately, becoming something of a local celebrity. Aided by his two best mates and the school nerd, a stereotype likely to infuriate anyone who wears spectacles, he receives support from admiring teacher Miss Riley (Laura Dern) but not his own mine superintendent father John (Chris Cooper) who regards him as an idealistic fool wasting his time.… Read the rest

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BULK

All pic credits: d.p. Nick Gillespie

Director – Ben Wheatley – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

*****

An abducted journalist finds himself involved in multi-dimensional travel – quasi-experimental and completely bonkers sci-fi drama embarks on a tour of UK cinemas, from the smallest to the largest, on Thursday, January 15th

We are watching black and white footage. (The film occasionally uses colour, for instance footage of Sam Riley – from Islands, Jan-Ole Gerster, 2025; Firebrand, Karim Ainouz, 2023; Control, Anton Corbijn, 2007 – in a grey-blue suit reminiscing about what happened to his character). “25 kilometres from the epicentre,” says a voice, instantly recognisable as Bill Nighy (from Living, Oliver Hermanus, 2022; Minamata, Andrew Levitas, 2020; I Capture the Castle, Tim Fywell, 2003), who performs similar duties throughout, including reading the film’s title when it appears moments and several shots later on the screen.

Some of those shots are worth talking about in detail, because they help convey everything that’s great about this lovingly hand-to-mouth-crafted movie. They include library footage – a jet trail across what could be detail of a planet, troops watching an A-bomb explosion from the trenches.

As Nighy speaks, two tiny static figures stand in a landscape (which looks like a model although it could be a still photographic element behind which is composited live action footage of clouds moving across in a sky.… Read the rest

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Lollipop

Director – Daisy-May Hudson – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

After four months in prison, a young woman must deal with the UK’s social services to regain custody of her kids – on BBC iPlayer from Friday, January 16th

East Londoner Molly (Posy Sterling) leaves prison following a four-month sentence to discover that her two kids Ava, 11 (Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads) and Leo, 5 (Luke Howitt) have been taken into care because her alcoholic mum Sylvie (TeriAnne Cousins from Silver Haze, Sasha Polak, 2023) couldn’t cope with them. This means the kids have been taken into care by social services, and in order to get them back, Molly has to have a roof over her head. Alas, while she was detained, the council have taken her home off her.

She finds herself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea – she can’t get her kids back until she has a suitable home, and she can’t get a suitable home because, until she gets her kids back, she will only be offered accommodation suitable for a single homeless woman. For the time being, she lives out of a tent.

The impulsive Molly worsens her own situation when, during a supervised visit, she abducts her kids and flees with them on the train to the wilds of the countryside.… Read the rest

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The Ice Tower
(La Tour de Glace)

Director – Lucile Hadzihalilovic – 2025 – France, Germany, Italy – Cert. 15 – 117m

*****

Midwinter. A homeless girl stumbles onto a film set where a notoriously difficult actress is shooting an adaptation of The Snow Queen – screens exclusively on BFI Player from Monday, January 12th

Opening with microscopic images of of snowflakes and more abstract visuals of refracted light, this swiftly delivers a female voiceover (by Aurélia Petit from Saint Omer, Alice Diop, 2022; By the Grace of God, François Ozon, 2018; Happy End, Michael Haneke, 2017; Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas, 2016; The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry, 2006) in French with English subtitles for those of us in the UK, in which the word ‘neige’ (snow) is seemingly, endlessly repeated. Then images of a girl wandering snow covered mountainsides gives way to night time small town streets before Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini) is told off for arriving late at the supper table. “I was afraid you’d gone”, says one of the younger girls (Cassandre Louis Urbain).

At night, Jeanne surreptitiously reads a postcard from a friend picturing Alpenaille skating rink addressed to her at the Bon Secours (Good Rescue) Foster Home.… Read the rest

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The Running Man
(2025)

Director – Edgar Wright – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 133m

***1/2

In an America controlled by a TV network producing violent game shows, a poor man signs on for its biggest show The Running Man whose contestants never come back – Stephen King adaptation available to buy on digital Tuesday, January 13th & to rent on Tuesday, January 27th; on 4K UHD Steelbook, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD Monday, March 2nd, 2026

His baby daughter is sick, and medical treatment is expensive. His wife is working as many shifts as she can at a hostess club (we never see it – it’s described in dialogue) in an attempt to bring in some money. But it’s not enough. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) needs to find more money to pay the bills and keep his family alive. While he is good at what he does, he has a tendency to speak up when things aren’t as they should be, and this gets him into trouble. As in, he has been blacklisted by previous employers of whom he’s fallen foul. So, he turns to the Free-Vee TV network that controls and runs everything, providing a subsidised TV to every home and non-stop, reality TV and game show programming.… Read the rest

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Oh, Canada

Director – Paul Schrader – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

From the novel by Russell Banks

***

A documentary filmmaker dying of cancer consents to a filmed interview about his life and work to air his dirty laundry – on UK and Ireland digital platforms on Monday, January 12th

“Remind me why I agreed to do this,” says the ageing Leonard Fife, aka Leo (Richard Gere, from Schrader’s earlier American Gigolo, 1980) setting up for a filmed interview, about his life and work as a documentary filmmaker, at which he has insisted his wife Emma (Uma Thurman), a former student of his, be present. His interviewer Malcolm (Michael Imperioli from Song Sung Blue, Craig Brewer, 2025; The White Lotus, TV series, Mike White, 2021; The Sopranos, TV series, 1999–2007) is another former student, as is Malcolm’s producer Diana (Victoria Hill from First Reformed, 2017; Master Gardener, 2022, both Paul Schrader), another former student conquest of Leo’s; Malcolm’s production assistant is 24-year old Sloan (Penelope Mitchell from Sting, Kiah Roache-Turner, 2024; Hellboy, Neil Marshall, 2019; The Vampire Diaries, TV series, 2014-15; Hemlock Grove, TV series, 2013).

What lies behind Leonard’s acceptance of the gig swiftly becomes clear when he hijacks the first question, framing it with a date in 1968 of great significance in his personal life.… Read the rest