Tag: UK

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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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Features Live Action Movies

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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Features Live Action Movies

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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Features Live Action Movies

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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Features Live Action Movies

Hamnet

Director – Chloé Zhao – 2025 – UK, US – Cert. 12a – 125m

*****

An imagining of the story of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, whose name gave rise to the play Hamlet – Maggie O’Farrell’s adaptation of her own novel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 9th

According to the opening title card, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were regarded as interchangeable in Elizabethan England. This is curious, since the piece’s female lead (Jessie Buckley from Women Talking, Sarah Polley, 2022; Men, Alex Garland, 2022; Misbehaviour, Philippa Lowthorpe, 2020) appears to be variously addressed as Alice, Agnes or Anyes while the male lead (Paul Mescal from Gladiator II, Ridley Scott, 2024; All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh, 2023; Aftersun, Charlotte Wells, 2022) is not referred to by name as William Shakespeare until well towards the end. Since this is being promoted as the story of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, whose name gave rise to the play Hamlet – as you can see from the trailer below – audiences will enter the film knowing who the Paul Mescal character is as soon as he appears unnamed.

The outdoors, looking up through the trees of a forest.… Read the rest

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Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music Shorts Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more,
excluding re-releases)
2025

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2025, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course.

All numbered films received either a theatrical, online or home media release in the UK between 01/01/25 and 31/12/25.

This version excludes re-releases (Battleship Potemkin, The Piano Teacher or Hard Boiled, among others) would top everything here). In addition to re-releases, this version also excludes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2025. For that even longer list, click here.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2025

Please click on titles to see reviews.

The numbering will mostly be added later when I’ve watched more of the outstanding 2024 titles, and they have stopped moving around. So, currently, positions in this list should be taken with a pinch of salt.

*****

1=. Flow (2024, Belgium, France, Latvia)

1=. The Glassworker (2024, Pakistan, Spain)

1=. One Battle After Another (2025, US)

1=. Riefenstahl (2024, Germany)

1=. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024, Iran, Germany, France)

6=. Mars Express (2023, France)

6=. On Swift Horses (2024, US)

6=. … Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music Shorts Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more)
2025

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2025, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course.

All numbered films received either a theatrical, online or home media release in the UK between 01/01/25 and 31/12/25.

This version includes re-releases, but those aren’t numbered. It’s hard to imagine movies improving on Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Haneke’s The Piano Teacher or Woo’s Hard Boiled.

In addition to re-releases, this version also includes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any wider UK release in 2025.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2025

Please click on titles to see reviews.

The numbering will mostly be added later when I’ve watched more of the outstanding 2024 titles, and they have stopped moving around. So, currently, positions in this list should be taken with a pinch of salt.

*****

Babe (1995, Australia – reissue)

Battleship Potemkin / Music by Pet Shop Boys (1925, USSR – reissue, new score)

Brief Encounter (1945, UK – reissue; also in Film Tottenham’s BFI / Love & Obsession programme)

A Clockwork Orange (1971, US, UK – in Film Tottenham’s Cinema for All / 100 Years of Community Cinema programme)

The Devil’s Backbone (2001, Mexico, Spain – reissue)

Dogtooth (2009, Greece – reissue)

1=. … Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Hamnet

Directed by Chloé Zhao
Certificate 12A
125 minutes
Released 9 January

Shakespeare’s romantic relationship, family life and the tragedy of bereavement resulted in his writing one of his bestknown plays, Hamlet. In Elizabethan England, we are told at the start of Hamnet, the two names were interchangeable. Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, this film is well-served by the landscape-friendly sensibilities of the director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland). [Read the rest at Reform magazine…]

[Read my longer review on this site…]

Hamnet is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, January 9th.

Trailer:

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

The Session Man

Director – Michael Treen – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

***

A look at legendary pianist Nicky Hopkins who played with numerous bands and on numerous records – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 21st

Nicky Hopkins may not exactly be a household name, but anyone who paid attention to credits on rock music albums from the early 1960s through to the early 1990s is likely to have heard of him. Trained as a classical pianist at the Royal Academy of Music, he simultaneously discovered rock and roll and began playing in bands at the start of the sixties as a 16-year-old. The right place at the right time. Up and coming British bands of the early 1960s like The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and The Who – essentially bands consisting of guitars and drums – got him playing piano on their albums to fill out the sound. He was playing with Jeff Beck around the time of the Truth album, which took him to the US, where he became based for the rest of his life, occasionally returning to the UK to work on specific albums.

Narrated by Bob Harris, formerly of BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test, this music documentary follows the obvious format of, film a lot of interviews with people who know the subject and intersperse footage of the musician concerned playing live or in recording sessions to break the interviews up a bit.… Read the rest