Steve (Tim Mielants, 2025)

Cillian Murphy plays Steve, the headteacher of an independent school for teenage boys with severe anger management problems, amongst numerous other issues. He himself is an alcoholic with an addiction to other substances on top of that, brought on years earlier by his part in the accidental death of a child, and only made worse but the insurmountable daily challenges of trying to teach the feral boys while keeping them from attacking each other constantly. The staff, led by Tracey Ullman as his deputy and Emily Watson as the school's therapist, are outgunned too, compromised by having to fill the roles of parents, educators and police, and everything comes to a head over the course of one day when a TV news crew comes to film at the school and the teachers also find out that the school is going to be closed down.

It's more akin to 1979's borstal-set Scum than to 1987's ITV documentary about Summerhill School, but the focus is really on both the boys, doomed to be lost causes once released back into society, and the toll that trying to help them takes on the staff. It would be hopelessly depressing if not for the bond between Steve and Jay Lycurgo's character Shy, the single one of the boys sensitive and thoughtful enough to suggest that he carries the seeds of redemption.

7/10

Fackham Hall (Jim O'Hanlon, 2025)

The puerile pun of the title and the knowledge that Jimmy Carr was one of the co-writers certainly prepare you for what's to come in this parody of Downton Abbey and Gosford Park, but not quite for the sheer pace and volume of the barrage of silliness therein. The closest parallel in that sense would be one of the Naked Gun films, which it outdoes with ease.

So, there's an aristocratic family about to lose their ancestral home unless they get one of the daughters married off quickly so that the male ine is continued. There's non-stop slapstick mixed with digs at the inbred nature of the aristocracy and the ridiculous Upstairs, Downstairs social hierarchy in place, and then an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery plot and a romance crossing the class divide get squeezed in too. If you blink, you've missed something, and so it almost comes a relief that the job is considered done after an hour and a half, which is short in comparison to most productions these days, but then it's not really competing with actual cinematic works. It is hysterically funny, though.

7/10

An American Pickle (Brandon Trost, 2020)

Since the ubiquitous Seth Rogen is of Ukrainian/Russian Jewish extraction, I suppose that gives him carte blanche to play a stereotype peasant from an imaginary impoverished Eastern European country, who emigrates to the USA to end up falling into a vat of gherkins where he survives perfectly preserved for the next 100 years. Then, once he's found and meets his sole living descendant (also played by Rogen), the usual lowbrow comedy of a man outside his time and culture ensues, which does pull off the occasional successful gag aimed at the easy targets of hipsters, the social media and the right-wing establishment. But beyond that it's basically Borat with the barbs removed, so hence not pointful and not as funny either. In essence, it's an affable extended one-off TV episode and not a film as such.

4/10

Rakkaani merikapteeni (Klaus Härö, 2022)

Rather clumsily titled My Sailor, My Love in English, being entirely set in North Ireland with Irish and British actors, this is a family drama with James Cosmo as a retired sea captain, a grumpy widower living alone surrounded by food scraps in a dark, remote house. His daughter persists in trying to get him into a retirement home, and then settles for hiring a part-time housekeeper without telling him first. This has the unexpected consequence that he warms to the new presence in his home and they develop a loving relationship, something that his daughter rails against as it means that he both drifts even further from her and also out of her control of his life.

Now the father turns jovial and the daughter, now having issues with her husband too, is beyond despair, until the father's health becomes a concern and changes the balance again.

This is a very sensitively composed piece, with subtly realised depictions of relationships withing families and fine acting, but it does have one flaw, which is a structural one: it leaves it until the very last segment to properly explain what kind of a man the sea captain really was when his wife died and what the daughter had to go through to leave her so damaged, and feeding this background in more slowly from earlier on would have meant less of a jolt just for the sake of it, and more fully rounded character growth. Still, a small criticism of a film that's a rare anmal in a world where most films just seek to capitalise on cheap twists and histrionics.

7/10

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

Mr. Blobby in the White House has led furious right-minded souls in Hollywood to produce yet another full-frontal attack on him and the parlous state of the USA. He isn't referred to directly in Anderson's updated adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, but it's as clear as day that he and his army of fascist goons are the villains, represented here by a cabal of wealthy and powerful white supremacists calling themselves The Christmas Adventurers Club, and Sean Penn playing a racist military officer charged with hunting down and exterminating not just left-wing terrorists, but immigrants in general.

The underground resistance may employ excessive violence in its actions, but we see most of it through the filter of Leonardo DiCaprio's character, a dope and alcohol-frazzled wreck of a man who used to make pyrotechnic diversions for the revolutionaries and now just lives in hiding with his teenage daughter. Of course the quiet life can't last, as the MAGA-analogues step up their actions to wipe out anyone who doesn't pass their 'true American' criteria, and that means native Americans fail their tests too. The satire therein may be crude, but it is vicariously gratifying.

So, they come after DiCaprio and his daughter, and he stumbles and bumbles on in a blind panic to get her back after she flees from Penn's brutal villain. It does go on for far too long to make its point, but at least the one thing you expect American filmmakers to be good at, i.e. relentless car chases, are handled more interestingly than usual, and there is a political and emotional point to the whole enterprise in the current sick climate.

7/10

Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, 2025)

It's quite apparent that Bong Joon Ho lost his sense of direction in the six years fater the excellent Parasite, and now is just content to entertain. Mickey 17 is a sci-fi stab at doing so, with Robert Pattinson an 'expendable' charged with all the most dangerous jobs in the attempt of a politician to colonise an alien planet. He gets all the worst missions because he can be recreated every time he dies, with his memories backed up, and duly proceeds to die 16 times before the cycle is broken.

The Film can't quite settle in one mode, and that's a virtue in the sense that it doesn't become fully predictable, but going from slapstick black comedy to sci-fi thriller, political satire and back again within minutes, but this is also due to directorial aimlessness. Mark Ruffalo, as the relentlessly self-aggrandising dictatorial leader of the mission, is also a particularly thinly-veiled parody of the current U.S. President, and I'm no longer sure if every work of fiction needs its own Trump as the villain you can't wait to see die.

5/10

The Mandalorian and Grogu (Jon Favreau, 2026)

The TV series was rather good and popular, so let's make more money by dragging the punters to the cinemas. Don't worry about having a plot, just chuck lots of FX at them and they'll still lap it up.

Now the duo are rescuing a Hutt from enforced cage-fighting servitude. Somehow this is stretched out to more than two hours. It makes The Rise of  Skywalker look meaningful and novel, and that would have been inconceivable after all the tired recycling of stock ingredients committed by the 2019 film.

4/10