Hard Truths ★★★★★
Directed by Mike Leigh. Starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone. 12A cert, limited release, 97 min
The latest from Leigh, English master of ordinary sadness, casts Jean-Baptiste as Pansy, a perennially angry Londoner surrounded by differently concerned family. Her husband looks to have given up. Her son seems permanently cowed. But her sister (the wonderful Austin) is determined to get through. Jean-Baptiste’s great achievement is to generate sympathy for a woman who allows those around her not a moment of consideration. Her mood is a concern for family, but a genuine tragedy for the woman herself. “Why can’t you enjoy life?” her sister asks. “I don’t know” is all Pansy can manage. Desperately moving. Full review DC
Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story ★★★★☆
Directed by Sinead O’Shea. Featuring Edna O’Brien, Carlo Gébler, Gabriel Byrne, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Anne Enright. 12A cert, gen release, 100 min
Fine documentary on Edna O’Brien that makes good use of a late interview and – read by Jessie Buckley – the author’s copious diaries. If someone dramatised the grimmer yarns at the centre of O’Shea’s film – and maybe someone should – there would, no doubt, be letters to the paper complaining about woke Ireland’s demonisation of a sweeter time. It really was this grim. The film is good on the work but lighter on the life. The misogyny at home is scarcely creditable. But O’Brien exerts the sweetest revenge by living well in literary London. Full review DC
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Companion ★★★★☆
Directed by Drew Hancock. Starring Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, Rupert Friend. 15A cert, gen release, 97 min
Hot on the heels of her tremendous turn in Heretic, Thatcher proves she’s the scream queen to beat with this comic spin on The Stepford Wives. The heart of the movie, for all its hi-jinx, is the doting, docile heroine’s slow realisation that the man she was programmed to love is a domestic abuser and all-around dirtbag. In common with Ex Machina, the entitled bloke, not the accommodating machine, is the villain. That reckoning is entertainingly punctuated by horror pyrotechnics and quick reprogrammings. We salute the costume and continuity departments (Betty Austin) on Iris’s consistently bloody frills. Full review TB
The Colours Within ★★★★☆
Directed by Naoko Yamada. Voices of Akari Takaishi, Sayu Suzukawa, Taisei Kido. G cert, gen release, 101 min
Catholic student Totsuko is socially awkward, solitary and a synesthete. She keeps her ability to see people as colours secret and is especially dismayed when a special-hued classmate called Kimi drops out of convent school. A white cat and a misunderstanding bring Totsuko, Kimi and Rui – a boy who plays the theremin – together to form a band and start writing heartfelt tunes. The director of A Silent Voice, one of the highest grossing animes ever, returns with a lovely, moving film that revels in swirling pastels and low-angle shots, reflecting both the heroine’s gifts and her floor-staring shyness. Full review TB
