ALSO SHOWING
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES (15) ★★★★★
DIRECTOR Sam Taylor-Johnson distances herself from the controversy that engulfed James Frey’s 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces by taking her own artistic liberties to visualise the book’s first-person stream of consciousness.
James (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, above) agrees to check into a six-week rehabilitation programme at the behest of his brother Bob (Charlie Hunnam). He must bare his soul in group therapy sessions and avoid contact with female patients or risk expulsion.
Lingering glances across the cafeteria from Lilly (Odessa Young) test James’s resolve as he clashes with clarinetplaying roommate Miles Davis (Charles Parnell) and rejects the touchy-feely approach of staff psychologist Joanne (Juliette Lewis).
MRS LOWRY & SON (PG) ★★★★★
DOUR study of Stretford-born painter
LS Lowry and the toxic relationship with his ageing, malcontent mother, which almost stifled his artistic ambitions.
Every evening, Laurence Lowry (Timothy Spall, pictured) returns home to a terraced house in Pendlebury, Lancashire and his domineering mother Elizabeth (Vanessa Redgrave).
Throughout the day, while her son toils as a rent collector, Elizabeth marinates in bitterness and resentment, horrified that the debts of her late husband (Michael Keogh) have condemned her to a two-up two-down.
Time and again, Elizabeth attempts to dissuade her son from picking up a paintbrush to focus on more important matters. Like her.
THE INFORMER (15) ★★★★★
THE long arm of the law chokeholds an honourable man to the brink of unconscious submission in this absorbing crime thriller, adapted from the novel Three Seconds, by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom.
Ex-con Pete Koslow (Kinnaman, above) works as a snitch for FBI agent Erica Wilcox (Rosamund Pike), who is keen to impress her boss (Clive Owen) by taking down Polish drug lord Rysard Klimek. Koslow has successfully infiltrated Klimek’s inner circle and is poised to supply evidence linking the kingpin to a 6kg shipment of fentanyl, but the deal goes sour.
Kinnaman embraces the physicality of his role, exuding desperation in a series of confrontations that show how far this jailbird is willing to go to protect family on the outside.