POOR THINGS (Apple TV) should have won the Best Film Award at the Oscars. This extravagant, bizarre, outrageous science-fiction comedy shocker, directed by Yorgos Lanthimes, is quite extraordinary. A Victorian surgeon (Willem Dafoe) reanimates a woman (Emma Stone) who has committed suicide. She develops a voracious appetite for sex and embarks on a voyage of sexual pleasures. Robbie Ryan’s brilliant photography, both black and white and in colour, has a terrific visual impact. The artwork by Shona Heath and James Price is dazzling and the fisheye lens creates some really beautiful indoor and outdoor images. Stone’s dexterous performance is also physically amazing and won her an Oscar. Dafoe, Rami Youssef and Mark Ruffalo are impressive, too.
ANATOMY OF A FALL (Lionsgate). Justine Triet directs this clever and arresting psychological courtroom drama. Did a successful writer kill her husband, who was an unsuccessful writer, or did he commit suicide? Sandra Huller gives a gripping and deliberately ambiguous performance. You are never ever quite certain what is true. It is very easy to make the wrong presumptions.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Apple TV) is skilfully directed by Martin Scorsese. Oil is discovered in Osage County, a native American reservation in 1920. White men grab the land by marriage and/or murder. There is a terrific performance by Robert De Niro as a treacherous cattle rancher who pretends he is the natives’ friend. Leonardo DiCaprio is miscast as his not very bright but decent nephew who marries a native (Lilly Gladstone).
CLOSE (BBC iPlayer) is a subtle, tender, touching coming of age drama set in rural Belgium. A deep friendship between two 13-year-old boys ends abruptly when one of them rejects the other. The grief is very real. There are remarkable performances by Eden Dambrine and Gustav de Waele, who had never acted before. So much is unspoken. Director Lukas Dhont relies on their expressive faces rather than dialogue.
ARMY OF SHADOWS (StudioCanal) is Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 devastatingly grim and horrific portrait of the French resistance killing each other in Vichy France in World War II. The camerawork is dusky and the cast, headed by Lino Venture and Simone Signoret, underplay. So real is it, it often feels like a documentary.
SALTBURN (Amazon Prime). Ambitious working-class scholarship student (Barry Keoghan) up at Oxford is befriended by an aristocrat (Jacob Elordi) and invited to his stately home where he meets his eccentric family. Emerald Fennell writes and directs this superior, well-acted black comedy psychological thriller. There are erotic bath and grave scenes to outrage some audiences and a joyous triumphant solo dance in the nude to amuse others.
THE BELLS GO DOWN (StudioCanal) is wartime propaganda: a tribute to the fire brigade during the Blitz in London. Comedian Tommy Trinder’s loud and breezy personality can be a bit of a mouthful at times. The disc includes the much-admired documentary, Fires Were Started, which used real firemen not actors.
RADICAL (VIX). Eugenie Derbez gives a charismatic performance as the teacher who helps underprivileged students in a neglected Mexican school to reach their potential. Given the violent, corrupt, drug world the children live in, some may find this worthy film, written and directed by Christopher Zalla, just a bit too idealistic to be realistic.
FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (BBC iPlayer). Is it really 30 years since Hugh Grant made his big breakthrough in movies? Scripted by Richard Curtis and directed by Mike Newell, it is still as witty and as enjoyable as ever. Grant has bags of charm and a nice line in self-deprecation. Annie MacDowell is delightful. The crucial dialogue in the final wedding scene is played out in sign language and sub-titles, an original conceit, which works so well because a genuine deaf actor, David Bamber, was cast.
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