There will be Blood for Beckinsale
Two weeks on from Manchester By The Sea, and just when we thought it was safe to go back to the water, along comes Away (15A) an English drama so down in the dumps it makes Hamlet look like Mr Happy.
Fleeing her pimp Dex (Matt Ryan), Ria (Juno Temple) jumps on a train where she tries to pal up with boozy sad-sack Joseph (Timothy Spall). They’re an odd couple – odder, perhaps, than was intended.
We’re supposed to be watching how people with nothing in common can come to rely on one another. But things aren’t helped by the flashback-strewn plot. An hour in, for instance, we learn that Ria and Joseph had met before they ever got on that train – but far from making things clear, this only confuses the messy storyline.
Hacksaw Ridge (15) is the central location of Mel Gibson’s anti-war picture. Andrew Garfield plays Desmond Doss, a reallife conscientious objector who was nonetheless determined to serve in World War II. And, boy, did he serve. Stirring stuff, though Gibson’s emphasis on the horrors of war doesn’t make for easy viewing.
Memo to the writers of the fifth instalment in the Underworld series,
Blood Wars (15) when your story is flagging and the actress playing your lead vampire is getting a bit long in the tooth, it’s probably not a good idea to have her talk about how she has ‘lived beyond my time’. Lest that sounds ungallant, I will add that Kate Beckinsale, pictured, still looks stunning in her PVC catsuit. Jackie (15A) , a biopic of JFK’s wife has Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in Pablo Larrain’s focus-free movie. Told in a Citizen Kane-type, time-shuttling style with unnecessarily complicated cuts back and forth in time, the picture isn’t even vaguely story-shaped. Even half a century on from JFK’s assassination, Jackie feels like an intrusion on grief.