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Hell or High Water

Director – David Mackenzie – 2016 – US – Cert. 15 – 102m

*****

Two brothers embark on a series of bank robberies even as two Texas Rangers follow their trail – out in the UK on 4K UHD

Entering the Texas Midlands bank early in the morning, a woman employee (Dale Dickey from the G, 2023; Iron Man 3, Shane Black, 2013) finds herself at gunpoint from two masked men in the middle of a robbery of a Texas Midlands bank. Sadly, only Mr. Clauson (William Sterchi) has the keys to the safe – and he won’t be in ‘til 8.30. At which point, one of the pair pistol whips him after his friendly, “good mornin’”. The gung-ho car driver is the elder brother Tanner (Ben Foster from Christy, David Michod, 2025; The Messenger, Oren Moverman, 2009); his quieter younger brother Toby (Chris Pine from Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins, 2017; Star Trek, J.J. Abrams, 2009) tells him to slow down.

Another Texas Midlands interior: an old man (Buck Taylor from Yellowstone, TV series, 2018-24; Gettysburg, Ronald F. Maxwell, 1993) is talking with the teller (Kristin K. Berg) about the box of old coins he found when the pair burst in and take the money from the till.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Eileen

Director – William Oldroyd – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 97 m

***** Most of the film

* The last five minutes

NSFW

In the 1960s, the life of a young woman working in a Boston boys’ correctional facility is turned on its head by the arrival of a radical, young woman prison psychologist from New York – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 1st.

I don’t usually start with the ending of the film – and I’m not about to deliver a spoiler – but the ending of Oldroyd’s otherwise enthralling drama (if that’s the right term – I’m not sure it is) takes everything that has gone before which appeared to be building up to something and unceremoniously dumps it, as if there were another twenty minutes that had been written but not shot and an unsatisfactory ending had been tacked on.

There’s always that feeling with a truly extraordinary movie when you watch it for the first time that you don’t want the filmmakers to screw up and let go of whatever it is that’s working. Well, this one is extraordinary right up to the last five minutes, when it completely loses it. Prior to that, it starts out as one thing, turns into something else then swerves and moves about all over the place, taking the viewer with it on a strange, unpredictable journey.… Read the rest