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How to Make a Killing

Director – John Patton Ford – 2026 – UK, France – Cert. 15 – 105m

****

A disinherited son culls the seven family members standing between him and the fortune of his super-rich family one by one – US reimagining of Kind Hearts and Coronets is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 13th

Sentenced to death for murder, Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) asks for a priest to visit his cell on death row so he can recount the long story behind his incarceration. The priest arrives, and Becket starts to tell his tale…

Mary Redfellow (Nell Williams) has a child, Becket (Grady Wilson), with a man her wealthy family, the Redfellows, consider beneath her station. As a result, they cut her off. She nevertheless teaches the child to be mindful of gaining his true inheritance. She has him learn archery and piano. At a piano recital as a child, he meets Julia (Maggie Toomey), a monied girl his own age, and the two immediately hit it off.

As an adult, the family’s rejection of Becket and his mother is made crystal clear to him when his mother dies and he attempts to get family funding for her funeral, the refusal coming in the terse form of a three-line letter delivered by chauffeur-driven car to the family estate gates where Becket is waiting.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Critic

Director – Anand Tucker – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 101m

The first four fifths of The Critic *****

The final fifth of The Critic *

In the 1930s, a London theatre critic, a flamboyant homosexual known for destroying careers with his acerbic prose, finds his job under threat from his newspaper’s new proprietor – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

This originally played in the Toronto Film Festival in a 95m version, only to be acquired for UK release on the proviso that an ‘unsatisfactory’ ending be changed by way of reshoots involving the director, the screenwriter (Patrick Marber), and key cast members. So this current cinema release is the version with the ending changed, and this writer found that new ending less than satisfactory. Which is a pity, because up to about the last twenty minutes, the film impresses.

Now, one could construct a review narrative which says that the original ending must have worked better, and the film has been ruined by its UK distributor. It’s possible that that is indeed the case. However, not having seen that first cut, it is equally possible that the original ending had severe problems which this new version has attempted to fix, even if that doesn’t seem to have entirely worked, and that this new version is an improvement.… Read the rest