Film

Six of the best films to see at the cinema this week

New this week: Oscar contender The Favourite from director Yorgos Lanthimos

Court intriguing: Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone in The Favourite, opening January 1st

Donald Clarke
Tara Brady
Fri Dec 28 2018 - 06:00

THE FAVOURITE ★★★★★
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, James Smith, Mark Gatiss. 15A cert, general release, 119 min. Opens January 1st
It is 1708 and, as the War of the Spanish Succession takes a breather, cynical Sarah Churchill (Weisz), Duchess of Marlborough, and sly Abigail Hill (Stone), later Baroness Masham, squabble for the attentions of dotty Queen Anne (Colman). Lanthimos transforms what could have been a straight-up period drama into a savage, weird, twisty comedy of appalling manners. The dialogue sparkles. The photography is weirdly brilliant. The performances are flawless. A near masterpiece. DC

BUMBLEBEE ★★★★☆
Directed by Travis Knight. Starring Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, John Ortiz, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon, Stephen Schneider, Angela Bassett. 12A cert, general release, 109 minh

Good grief. After a decade of ear-splitting rubbish, Michael Bay's Tranformers sequence has (without Bay at the helm) delivered a glorious entertainment. Travis Knight's shamelessly Spielbergian film casts Steinfeld as a rebellious teen in 1987 who encounters autobot Bumblebee in the form of a VW Beetle. She belatedly allows humanity into the series and – after the horrid objectification of female bodies in earlier episodes – hollows out some welcome feminist space. Fun for all. It's like Knight and Bay! Full review DC

THE LAST MOVIE ★★★★☆
Directed by Dennis Hopper. Starring Dennis Hopper, Stella Garcia, Don Gordon, Julie Adams, Sylvia Miles, Tomas Milian, Peter Fonda, Henry Jaglom, Samuel Fuller, Kris Kristofferson, Russ Tamblyn, Michelle Phillips, Dean Stockwell, Rod Cameron, John Phillip Law, James Mitchum. Club, IFI, Dublin, 108 min

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Hopper's follow-up to Easy Rider was a famous catastrophe. The director and star returned from Peru with a chaotic meta-western that pointed a smug (if unsteady) finger at western decadence. This 1971 release has rarely been revived, but it deserves attention for novelty value alone. Brassed up with very of-their-time solar flares, swelling with ambitions and possibilities, it reflects an openness to the wildest experiment in American cinema that slunk back underground shortly afterwards. DC

MUG ★★★★☆
Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska. Starring Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Robert Talarczyk, Malgorzata Gorol, Agniezska Podsiadlik, Roman Gancarczyk. 15A cert, limited release, 91 min

Jacek (the brilliant Kosciukiewicz) is already a heavy-metal outsider in small-town Poland when a horrible accident during the erection of the world's biggest Jesus statue leaves him requiring the country's first face transplant. His girlfriend (Gorol) dumps him and his own mother can't stand to look at him. Only his stern, loyal sister (Podsiadlik) continues to love him unconditionally. The unholy relations between Catholicism, ethno-nationalism, and rightist sentiment hang around the margins of Szumowska's clever, affecting film. TB

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE ★★★★☆
Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman. Voices of Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, Zoë Cravitz, Nicolas Cage, Liev Schreiber, Chris Pine. PG cert, general release, 117 min

One alternative version of Spider-Man encounters many others in a dazzling animation from the team behind The Lego Movie. The candy-charged flash manages to accommodate soul and sincerity. The film's embrace of diversity stretches beyond the social to the sub-atomic and the quantum mechanical (no, really). The structural innovation helps confirm – despite welcome advances in representation – how conservative most Marvel films are. Easily the best superhero movie of 2018. Full review DC

FREE SOLO ★★★★★
Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin. PG cert, limited release, 99 min

Some way into the year's most white knuckle film, rock climber Alex Honnold recalls that more than one ex-girlfriend has told him that he has a personality disorder. By then we're deep into his two-year preparations to climb the sheer wall of El Capitan, a kilometre-high sheer granite impossibility in Yosemite National Park. If he manages it, he'll be the first climber to scale the monolith free solo. That's as in without ropes and safety equipment, as in one finger and toe at a time up a landmark that looks like it belongs in a Roadrunner cartoon. Personality disorder? The man is bonkers. Terrifying but magical. Full review/trailer TB

Other ★★★★☆ and ★★★★★ movies out and about: Bohemian Rhapsody, The Camino Voyage, Creed II, Khrustalyov My Car, The Old Man & the Gun, Shoplifters, Sorry to Bother You, A Star Is Born, Three Identical Strangers, The Wild Pear Tree