Between a rock and a hard place

Saturday, Channel 4, 9pm

DEXTER Fletcher, who as a child actor starred as Baby Face in Bugsy Malone, has carved out a niche for himself as a director by turning musicals and musical icons into big screen entertainments.

He shot Sunshine On Leith in Edinburgh in 2013, and followed that with 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and then this 2019 film about the life of Elton John. It was co-produced by David Furnish, Elton

John’s husband, and by Rocket Pictures, the company the singer founded in 1996 and which was responsible for Gnomeo & Juliet. Unauthorised, Rocketman is not.

That said, it’s commendably unvarnished (until it turns icky at the very end anyway) and watchable throughout.

Thank playwright Lee Hall for that: the writer of Billy Elliot has crafted a screenplay which is both pleasingly fantastical and typically stagey.

It opens with John (Taron Egerton) striding down a corridor in full stage regalia (a devil costume complete with horns) and then barrelling into what turns out to be a rehab session, one of those where everyone sits in a circle and says things like: ‘My name’s Elton Hercules John. I’m an alcoholic and a cocaine addict and a sex addict and a bulimic.” Which is exactly how he begins.

What follows is a run-through of his life, from when he was plain old Reg Dwight growing up in the London suburb of Pinner, to his first fateful meeting with lyric writer Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and Paisley-born John Reid (Richard Madden), who became his lover and manager.

Stephen Graham has a scene-stealing turn as music publisher Dick James, founder of Northern Songs, and Bryce Dallas Howard, Gemma Jones and Steven McIntosh also star as John’s mother, grandmother and father respectively.

The song-and-dance sequences are suitably glitzy, though if anything there are too few of them.

Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting and The Bitch Is Back are the big set-pieces, followed by Tiny Dancer (at a glamorous party after a first triumphant gig at LA’s famous Troubadour venue) and Your Song.

Most of the rest of the greatest hits are given an airing, though don’t hold your breath if you’re expecting Candle In The Wind – there’s a few bars played on the piano, but that’s it.

LIMBO

MUBI, Now streaming

Edinburgh-born director Ben Sharrock made a splash in 2015 with his debut feature Pikadero, shot and set in Spain’s Basque region, where he was then living.

It won the prestigious Michael Powell Award at that year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival and saw Sharrock hailed as a new voice in – wait for it – Spanish cinema.

But for his second film, Sharrock has returned to Scotland for a tale about four refugees sent to an un-named island in the Western Isles as they wait to hear if their asylum applications will be granted. Central to the story is Omar (Amir El-Masry), a Syrian musician whose brother is at

home fighting (on which side we are never told) while his parents try to make ends meet on the streets of Istanbul.

From a desolate phone box he calls them, fielding plaintive requests from his mother to ring his brother and from his father to send money.

Omar carries his oud everywhere with him but won’t play it because he says it doesn’t sound right.

His companions are Freddie Mercury-loving Afghan Farhad (Vikash Bhai), Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) and Wasef (Ola Orebiyi), who dreams of playing for Chelsea.

Abedi and Wasef are pretending to be brothers, though one is from Ghana, the other Nigerian.

Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen plays Helga, some kind of integration and welfare officer, who gives lessons about how to dance with girls without causing offence, or how to cultivate a good telephone manner when applying for jobs. Reactions range from boredom to bemusement.

Sanjeev Kholi is on great form as Vikram, a local shopkeeper who makes desultory remarks over a tannoy to his mostly empty premises.

Sharrock has an eye for the comic and the absurd – fans of Bill Forsyth will love Limbo – but he’s well enough schooled in both arthouse cinema and current affairs (he has lived in Damascus) to also bring inspired image-making and thematic heft to the party.

Not for nothing was Limbo nominated for a BAFTA and picked to play at last year’s Cannes Film Festival: it’s a serious film, with much to say. The new voice in Spanish cinema has found his Scottish accent.

Sanjeev

Kholi is on great form as Vikram, a local shopkeeper who makes desultory remarks over a tannoy to his mostly empty premises

Clockwise from above: Amir El-Masry (left) as Omar in Limbo; Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman