ALSO SHOWING
Hampstead (12A)
A misjudged attempt to use the housing crisis in London as the backdrop for a gentle Notting Hillstyle romance, this casts Diane Keaton as Emily, a recently widowed American struggling to hold on to her flat and friends now that her husband is dead and her debts are piling up. Though her hatefully primand-proper neighbours (led by Lesley Manville) keep trying to set her up with financially solvent suitors, she falls instead for Brendan Gleeson’s Donald, a wild Irishman living off the land in a shack in a secluded corner of Hampstead Heath. Keaton and Gleeson admittedly have a bit of spark between them and there are some interesting ideas about what it means to live an authentic life (Gleeson’s character is loosely based on Harry Hallows, a hermit who lived on the Heath for 25 years and managed to claim squatters’ rights when faced with eviction). But as Emily and Donald (who, inevitably, is referred to as “Donald Tramp” at one point) take on property developers, anything potentially good is drowned out by director Joel Hopkins’s determination to bathe everything in excruciatingly twee, sub-richard Curtis fakery.
The Book of Henry (12A)
It’s difficult to know where to start with The Book of Henry ,afilmso satisfied with its own toxic levels of quirkiness that all involved seem oblivious to how deranged it actually is. Revolving around a child genius (Jaeden Lieberher) who devises an elaborate plan to kill his next door neighbour, this description barely scratches the surface of a plot that includes child abuse, terminal illness, comedy alcoholism, a cutesy school talent show, improbably elaborate tree-house construction and a single mother (Naomi Watts) being trained in the art of assassination by her dead son. Directed by
Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow, the film mashes all these disparate plot elements together into a sugary concoction that’s about as appetizing as the peanut butter and breakfast cereal sandwiches Naomi Watt’s character makes for her kids to illustrate what a kooky but caring mother she is. It’s horribly reminiscent of the film versions of
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
and Me, Earl and the Dying Girl – movies that dubiously exploit tragedy in wacky, precocious ways for cheap emotional pay-offs and phony uplift. Awful in every way.
Souvenir (12A)
In this gentle romantic drama, Isabelle Huppert plays a factory worker with a dark past: she once represented France in the Eurovision Song Contest, losing out to Abba. It’s a fact Huppert’s Laura wants to keep hidden. But as Jean (Kévin Azaïs), a young co-worker and amateur boxer, takes a shine to her, she starts entertaining the idea of a comeback, with Jean becoming her manager and lover. It’s not the most promising of set-ups, but Huppert has a lightness of touch that makes it all rather sweet and the film takes a unassuming approach to the central romance, pleasingly refusing to make a big deal of the age difference.
Wonder Woman (PG)
Still going strong at the box-office, Patty Jenkins’ origins story for
Wonder Woman quickly ditches any connection to Batman and the other characters in the DC extended universe and instead winds the clock back to the First World War where Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) arrives in war-torn Europe, unfazed by the concept of “No Man’s Land”. Gadot is a wonder in the role and the film feels fresh in its determination to tell a good story rather than simply build a franchise. ■