THE BIG SCREEN
FENCES (12A)****
Strong-willed patriarch Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) presides over this tug-of-war for supremacy. He works as a rubbish collector alongside best friend Jim (Stephen Robertson). Troy toils to provide for his wife Rose (Viola Davis) and their son Cory (Jovan Adepo). The young man is a gifted athlete and is being scouted for college football. Troy refuses to sign his son’s permission slip because he believes the football leagues are rife with racial prejudice and he doesn’t want his flesh and blood to fail, as he did playing baseball many years before. Financial pressures tip Troy over the edge and his rage and frustration explode with devastating consequences.
THE LEGO BATMAN (U) MOVIE***
The beginning is a very good place to start because the opening five minutes of credits and droll voiceover are sheer perfection. Sly digs at previous incarnations of the Caped Crusader on the big and small screen up the comic ante, as the titular vigilante panders to his overinflated ego.The rest of McKay’s picture is a delight but doesn’t scale the same dizzy heights of razor-sharp hilarity. And Batman desperately needs a sidekick when The Joker unleashes every villain in the galaxy on Gotham including the Daleks, which Batman casually dismisses as “British robots”.
20TH CENTURY WOMEN (15)****
The epicentre of 20th Century Women is bohemian mom Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening), who gave birth to her teenage son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) when she was 40. She divorced her husband, who telephones on Jamie’s birthday and at Christmas, but otherwise, mother and son are an inseparable unit. They share a ramshackle home in Santa Barbara with New Wave photographer Abbie Porter (Greta Gerwig) and handyman William (Billy Crudup), who is slowly renovating the property. This madcap menagerie of misfits is completed by 17-year-old waif Julie (Elle Fanning), the object of Jamie’s hormone-driven affections, who refuses to entertain his clumsy fumbles.
LOVING (12A)****
CONSTRUCTION worker Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) falls giddily in love with family friend Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga). When she falls pregnant, the couple decide to marry. Forbidden from consummating their relationship in Virginia, Richard and Mildred drive to Washington DC and return home with a marriage licence, which they proudly display on the wall of their home. Sheriff Brooks (Marton Csokas) arrives soon after with his deputies and arrests the Lovings. They are eventually released, but the couple must publicly keep their distance. Loving sensitively recreates a battle for justice waged by two quietly spoken people, who changed the course of history.
T2 TRAINSPOTTING (18)****
CHOOSE to follow Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) as he returns home to beg forgiveness from Spud (Ewen Bremner). Choose revenge, the poison coursing through the veins of reluctant publican Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) when he discovers Renton is back. Choose seething rage, which drips from the tongue of psychotic jailbird Begbie (Robert Carlyle) as he finally glimpses life without bars. Choose Spud as the trembling, emotional core, willing him to succeed as he struggles to sever ties to heroin and discover self-worth. Choose the sinking realisation that the giddy high of the first time you watched Trainspotting isn’t going to be replicated.