SECOND SCREEN
Claire Foy swaps the twin-sets, pearls and occasional tiara that made her so good as the Queen in The
Crown for… er, the functional black underwear, mop-crop hair and motorcycle leathers of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl In The Spider’s Web (15A) ★★★.
And a perfectly decent job she does, too, in the first film to feature Salander since all three of the Millennium novels written by the late Stieg Larsson were successfully turned into films and both Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara retired from the demanding role.
With the Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez at the helm, the tone is distinctly more in keeping with these Time’s Up times. But Foy’s interesting-to-watch efforts are hampered by a missilebased plot that smacks too much of Mission: Impossible, the tension-draining ease by which her super-hacker character can do virtually anything, and by the fact that Salander’s thunder has been stolen by the deadly Villanelle in TV’s Killing Eve.
Think Salem and most people think of witches, which presumably is why writer-director Sam Levinson based Assassination
Nation (18) ★★★★ there, as a thoroughly 21st-century witch-hunt gets under way. Someone is hacking into computers and releasing the social-media postings and internet-browsing history of a succession of individuals, beginning with the mayor, then the high-school head, then the police chief… But who is the elusive hacker?
It’s a clever idea but its stylish and wickedly enjoyable execution is even better, with the drama playing out through the initially complacent eyes of four 18-year-old friends — three girls and their trans-bestie, Bex. A notably full-on film that is as potentially offensive as it is alarming.
Until I saw Back To Berlin (12A) ★★★★ I’d never heard of the Maccabiah Games, which sprang from a 19th-century movement to promote Jewish athleticism and which, in the Thirties, saw motorcycle riders setting out from Palestine to encourage Jews from all over the world to participate. But Hitler’s Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin were just around the corner. Now, 80 years later, Catherine Lurie’s cameras follow 11 motorcyclists — two Holocaust survivors among them — as they set off to ride across Europe to Berlin, where the latest Maccabiah Games are being held. Powerful, horrific and cautionary.
Nativity Rocks! (G) ★★ is the fourth instalment in Debbie Isitt’s interminable Christmas franchise. Craig Revel Horwood plays an impresario who wants to make it all about Herod, which is tasteless but funny.