Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves ★★★★☆
Directed by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley. Starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head, Jason Wong. 12A cert, gen release, 134 min
Against the odds, Goldstein and Daley, TV veterans who moved hilariously into movies with Game Night, have made something irresistible (if a little overlong) from their adaptation of the 50-year-old role playing game. What really makes the film fizz is the screwball chemistry between the leads. Rodriguez is charming, riotous and a bit frightening as a tougher foil to Pine’s brave, but slippery Smart Alec. Page is cunningly cast as a paladin whose integrity and fortitude hardens into borderline pomposity. And Grant is now such a natural as the oily villain he can manage such a performance without rising from his daybed. Highly recommended. Full review DC
Please Baby Please ★★★★☆
Directed by Amanda Kramer, Starring Andrea Riseborough, Harry Melling, Karl Glusman, Demi Moore, Cole Escola. Mubi, 95 min
It’s here. It’s queer. It’s musical. Kind of? Whatever about that Oscar scandal, why wasn’t Riseborough nominated for her snarling turn in Amanda Kramer’s unclassifiable, leather-clad, neon-bathed shakedown of gender, greasers, and groaning? Demi Moore in leopard-skin print, rasping “These are the slums, and I’m a slum starlet” seems to have wandered in from John Waters’s Pink Flamingos. Gorgeous gang leader Teddy (Karl Glusman) is The Wild One by way of Tom of Finland. The self-consciously shallow staging is pitched somewhere between Ed Wood and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. One of a kind. Full review TB
The Night of the 12th/La Nuit du 12 ★★★★☆
Directed by Dominik Moll. Starring Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners, Anouk Grinberg, Pauline Serieys, Mouna Soualem, Lula Cotton Frapier. 15A cert, gen release, 114 min
Clara (Frapier), a popular teenager, is walking home on the outskirts of Grenoble when an unseen assailant douses her with petrol and sets her alight. A young, ambitious cop (Bouillon) and his older, wearier partner (Lanners), take up the case and soon find a string of possible culprits and former lovers. Various exchanges raise pertinent points: Why, if most violent crimes are committed by men against women, are most of the investigators male? Why does every question about Clara’s relationships feel loaded and accusatory? An intelligent crime drama that confirms there are no easy fixes. Full review TB
Tetris ★★★☆☆
Directed by Jon S Baird. Starring Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Sofia Lebedeva, Anthony Boyle, Ben Miles, Ken Yamamura, Igor Grabuzov, Roger Allam, Toby Jones. Apple TV+, 118 min
Baird’s diverting movie — an unlikely comic mash-up of The Social Network and Gorky Park — deals with the efforts of Henk Rogers (Egerton, charming), a Dutch-American entrepreneur, to secure the rights to the eponymous video game in the face of KGB resistance, tangled bureaucracy and, most intriguingly, the schemes of a panicked Robert Maxwell. Allam has a lot of fun as that notorious media mogul. The chases round an imploding Moscow are a hoot. The script does get a bit tangled in the contractual weeds, but Tetris remains an agreeable, oddball entertainment. Full review DC
