ALSO SHOWING
Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story (15)
It makes sense that the titular performer behind cult entertainer Frank Sidebottom – a mainstay of the late 1980s/early 1990s alternative comedy scene – would choose a giant papier-mâché head for his alter ego: Sievey’s anarchic brain was fizzing with so many ideas that his own head clearly had no hope of containing them. Unlike the Michael Fassbender-starring Frank, which used Sidebottom as a jumping offpoint for a funny, poignant, fictional exploration of the connection between artistic genius and mental illness, the new film isn’t all that interested in rehashing that debate. Instead it constructs a fascinating portrait of someone who couldn’t have lived an ordinary life if he’d tried.
At Eternity’s Gate (12A)
Perhaps because this Julian Schnabel-directed biopic of Vincent Van Gogh has been made by an acclaimed artist in his own right, it doesn’t make the mistake of the recent animated biopic Loving Vincent, which painstakingly replicated the style of Van Gogh’s work to little dramatic purpose. Instead Schanbel takes more of a post-impressionistic approach, casting Willem Dafoe and refusing to constrain his performance with the sort of rigorous fidelity to period details biopics sometimes spend too long obsessing over. Dafoe’s Vincent speaks American-accented French and English with countless linguistic anachronisms, but during moments of artistic reverie, we get blearily jaundiced point-of-view shots that give us an inkling of how he saw colour and detail and how that shaped what ended up on the canvas.
Dumbo (PG)
The first of this year’s live-action Disney remakes benefits from director Tim Burton’s willingness to expand the outsider themes inherent in this tale of a big-eared baby elephant who discovers he can fly. Burton regular Michael Keaton takes on chief villain duties as a fake-hair-sporting populist determined to exploit the cute little pachyderm as the star attraction of his new amusement park. Colin Farrell, meanwhile, stars as a First World War-injured circus performer whose children become obsessed with reuniting Dumbo with his targeted-for-extermination mother. All of which sounds pretty bleak, but Burton is a dab hand at couching his phantasmagorical predilections in imaginative family entertainment.
Us (15)
Jordan Peele’s follow-up to his box-office conquering, Oscarwinning debut Get Out is another high-concept horror film, this time revolving Lupito Nyong’o and Winston Duke’s middle class family as they find themselves being terrorised by their doppelgängers. The film starts off creepily enough with an immaculately shot 1986-set prologue that plants any number of promising narrative seeds. Frustratingly, though, these don’t always take root as the film jumps between smart political satire, goofy genre parody and wigged-out apocalyptic horror. Which isn’t to say there’s not evidence of brilliance here, but the way he teases out his big ideas can feel garbled, requiring big expositional info dumps that ultimately reveal a concept riddled with plot holes. In dual roles, however, Nyong’o does some remarkable work – and Elisabeth Moss has a juicy supporting turn as her soused neighbour.
The Vanishing (15)
Featuring the surprising but welcome sight of Gerard Butler being good in a half-decent film, this casts him as one of three Scottish lighthouse keepers faced with a moral dilemma when a body and a case full of gold wash up on their remote outpost. Peter Mullan and newcomer Connor Swindells co-star. ■