SECONDSCREEN
We’re in Warsaw in 1939 but everyone – including The Zookeeper’s Wife (12A) Antonina Zabinski (Jessica Chastain) – speaks heavily accented English when, in reality, they’d have spoken a mix of Polish and German. However, slowly, inexorably, the power of this extraordinary true story wins you over.
The Warsaw Zoo flourishes under Jan (Johan Heldenbergh) and wife Antonina but when their country is invaded by Nazis, the couple is forced to report to the Reich’s chief zoologist Lutz Heck. The Zabinskis covertly begin working with the Resistance and help save the lives of hundreds from what has become the Warsaw Ghetto.
The unbelievably silly Unforgettable (15A) stars Rosario Dawson as Julia Banks, who gives up her successful career as an online publisher to start a new life in small-town southern California with David (Geoff Stults), the inevitably be-stubbled former-banker-turned-craft-brewer.
But then his jealous ex-wife (Katherine Heigl) turns up and turns Julia’s new life into a living nightmare.
Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply (12A) is the story of Howard Hughes’s decline into mental illness and self-imposed isolation. Written and directed by Beatty, this film is almost as eccentric as its subject and features the strangest love triangle, involving an aspiring actress (Lily Collins), an ambitious chauffeur (Alden Ehrenreich) and Hughes himself (Beatty).
Still, Collins is pretty as can be and you might enjoy spotting Beatty’s starry friends – and indeed wife Annette Bening – in the sort of cameos they wouldn’t usually bother with. Ultimately, however, it’s just too odd – and indeed long – for its own good.