The Bad Boys are back for more
BAD BOYS FOR LIFE (15) HHH Arriving 17 years after the bloated and gratuitously violent second instalment, the supposedly final mission of Miami detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) barks to the same tune, albeit without Michael Bay at the helm.
The directorial reins are firmly held by Moroccanborn duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who share Bay’s penchant for blowing up anything that moves, punctuated by salty wisecracks.
A heady scent of nostalgia permeates as Smith and Lawrence work tirelessly to rekindle their sparky rat-a-tat banter but when the laughs come, they are sporadic.
BOMBSHELL (15) HHHH Power taints and corrupts in director Jay Roach’s provocative drama inspired by the real-life sexual harassment scandal which engulfed Fox News and precipitated the downfall of chief executive Roger Ailes.
It’s incendiary entertainment punctuated by a few knockout scenes including a sickening audition in Ailes’s office, which involves one naive employee (Margot Robbie) tearfully hitching up her skirt to show her legs until her underwear is exposed because the CEO claims TV news is “a visual medium”.
Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron add fire to the film’s gym-toned belly, the latter fully deserving her Oscar nomination.
WAVES (15) HHHH After opening with the soothing image of a girl riding her bicycle, Waves exposes the fractures in a South Florida family with urgency and startling precision.
If it’s possible for a film to swagger, then Waves does just that in a bruising, nihilistic opening hour that can barely contain the youthful energy of the cast with nervous handheld camerawork that spins a dizzying 360 degrees in confined spaces.
All of that pent-up energy explodes at an alcohol-soaked house party, delivering a tear-stained crescendo.
JUST MERCY (15) HHH Based on lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s memoir, writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton’s courtroom drama adds a thick layer of Hollywood sheen to the true story of an Alabama pulpwood worker who attempted to overturn his murder conviction from death row.
Just Mercy is a deeply conventional courtroom drama, galvanised by strong performances from Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx as the impassioned legal counsel and prisoner resigned to his grim fate,.
The emotional beats of Cretton’s script are predictable but there is satisfaction when they land, accompanied by heavenly harmonies from a gospel choir.
WEATHERING WITH YOU
(12A) HHHH Centuries of Japanese tradition are drenched by visually arresting meteorological fantasy in writer-director Makoto Shinkai’s eagerly awaited follow-up to the 2016 anime Your Name.
Lightning almost strikes twice as Shinkai raises a conductor rod into the swirling storm of climate change to pluck our heartstrings with nascent love on the streets of Tokyo during a freak rainstorm.
In a cute touch, the film has fleeting cameos for
Taki (voiced by Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Mitusha (Mone Kamishiraishi), whose body-swapping exploits in Your Name shattered box office records for a Japanese picture.