ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
The Highwaymen 15 ★★★★★
Half a century ago, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty gave us the definitive version of the story of Bonnie & Clyde. Now it’s the turn of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson to tell the corresponding story of Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, the former Texas Rangers who tracked down the Lone Star-born gangsters and brought their infamous crime spree to a bulletriddled end.
Produced by Netflix and directed by John Lee Hancock, the film’s main strength is the laid-back chemistry between the two leads as the ageing gumshoes who are out of condition and can’t shoot straight.
But despite a cinema release, it is slightly lacking in cinematic scale.
The Vanishing 15 ★★★★★
In recent years we’ve grown accustomed to Gerard Butler in mega-budget thrillers. So it’s good to see him returning to his Scottish roots with this tense, menacing but modestly scaled drama based on what is known as the Flannan Isles mystery, which in 1900 saw three lighthouse keepers disappear.
With Butler and Peter Mullan taking the two leading roles, and newcomer Connor Swindells playing the younger third man, the acting is as good as the claustrophobic atmosphere is tense. But the story that Joe Bone and Celyn Jones have dreamt up to explain the men’s disappearance feels derivative, and the level of violence favoured by director Kristoffer Nyholm is unpleasant.
Out Of Blue 15 ★★★★★
Remember Destroyer, with Nicole Kidman as a troubled LAPD detective on the trail of a murderer with possible links to her past? Well, Carol Morley’s new film is a lot like that only, for 80 stylish minutes or more, much, much better, with Patricia Clarkson, below, on low-key but impressive form as the maverick New Orleans homicide detective and Morley layering on the mood, music and off-kilter style.
And then suddenly, the story of who killed astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer) goes narratively haywire, turning a strikingly unusual film into something overworked and very odd indeed.
At Eternity’s Gate 12A ★★★★★
Apart from producing dozens of artistic masterpieces, Vincent van Gogh is best known for going mad and cutting off his ear. Julian Schnabel’s biopic, with its wobbly camerawork, discordant soundtrack and 63-year-old Willem Dafoe playing the 37year-old artist, helps us realise just how Van Gogh felt.