ALSO SHOWING
The Florida Project Cert: Club; Selected cinemas
Besides being shot entirely on iPhone, Sean Baker’s street-level transgender drama Tangerine (2015) caught the eye for its verve and fizz. This follow-up is a more composed and regal project that confirms Baker as one of the more interesting indie filmmakers operating in the US at the moment.
The action takes place at a motel resort located on the fringes of Florida society, populated by down-and-outs, vagrants and unsuspecting tourists. Within view is Disney World, a superb metaphorical device in Baker’s script (cowritten with long-time foil Chris Bergoch) to provide a sense of untouchable childhood wonderment and a world beyond the protagonist’s reality.
That protagonist is something very special indeed. Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) is a boisterous six-year-old living with her young single mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite). It’s summertime, so life consists of causing headaches for resort manager Bobby (Willem Defoe) or accompanying Halley on tourist shake-down excursions. Her mother’s increasingly chaotic lifestyle is meandering towards a crunch, you feel.
Clean, unforced sentiment shimmers off the screen alongside some of the most vital cinematography and direction you’ll see all year. Baker gets down low and angles his camera upwards to evoke a primarycoloured view of the world that tears the gloom of adulthood apart. Prince and Vinaite are excellent, with Defoe a sturdy screen foil for the pair. HILARY A WHITE
No Stone Unturned Cert: 15A; Now showing
The Loughinisland massacre of June 1994 was a particularly grisly episode of the Troubles. Three UVF gunmen burst into a rural pub where punters were enjoying watching the Republic of Ireland in World Cup action. They killed six innocent people and wounded another five.
Nobody was ever brought to justice for the attack which came four years before the Good Friday Agreement’s new era of tentative reconciliation. Very recently, however, two things have been turning points in this cold case. The first was an Ombudsman report last year and the second was this documentary by lauded filmmaker Alex Gibney. Both reveal sickening cover-ups and conspiracy within officialdom.
Few documentarians understand the rhythms and narrative potency of the cinematic medium quite like Gibney. Ever since his 2005 breakthrough Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, he’s been drawn to rife injustices and picked up every award — including an Oscar in 2008 — along the way. No Stone Unturned sees him return to this island after 2012’s harrowing clerical abuse lidblower Mea Maxima Culpa.
After a useful primer on the conflict, we sit down with paramilitaries, officials, former RUC officers and bereaved family members. Doggedly, he pieces the strands together with journalistic rigour and the clarity that outsiders can bring. Alleged killers are named in the process, one of many staggering moments in this film. HILARY A WHITE
Only The Brave Cert: 12A; Now showing
The Yarnell Hill fire of 2013 was the greatest loss of fire-fighter life in the US since 9/11. Intense winds and parched conditions resulted in an inferno that swept through the Arizona landscape, claiming the lives of 19 firefighters of a subdivision called the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
Their story is told here in Joseph Kosinski’s nifty looking but pedestrian drama that puts almost too much emphasis on trope characterisation.
Josh Brolin is the old-dog superintendent with whom the buck stops. Under him is his macho crew of fire-fighters — Taylor Kitsch, James Badge Dale et al — all of whom carry on in that bizarre North American register somewhere between a stag party and a company of squaddies. Into the mix comes Miles Teller’s reformed addict who is looking to do right by his new son and turn a new leaf. Cue shouty boot-camp training scenes and dude-bro shenanigans between some effective bushfire set-pieces. The tragedy of the tale is presented in genuinely affecting terms.
Jennifer Connelly and Jeff Bridges provide stately support. HILARY A WHITE