One Last Deal ★★★☆☆
Directed by Brendan Muldowney. Starring Danny Dyer, Elliot Rogers, Carlos Bardem. 16 cert, gen release, 89 min
Virtual one-man show with Dyer, alone in his office, as a soccer agent trying to make the best of a client in a heap of trouble. He yells down the phone at potential clients. He yells down the phone at estranged family members. He yells down the phone at top-level coaches. It’s a tad monotonous, but our star – helped out by some energetic voice work down the old blower – has just about enough saucy graft to keep the project aloft. Bit of fist-pumping. A lot of swearing. “I don’t just do this job! I am this f**king job!” And so on. Full review DC
Resurrection ★★★★★
Directed by Bi Gan. Starring Jackson Yee, Shu Qi, Mark Chao, Li Gengxi, Huang Jue, Chen Yongzhong. 15A cert, limited release, 156 min
In a near future, the world’s population has stopped dreaming – by way of extending lifespan, it seems – and, as a consequence, films have taken on symbolic and nostalgic value. Bi Gan’s film charts a pursuit told in five episodes, each in the style of a different cinematic era. Resurrection is a panegyric in the shape of an anthological eulogy. We move from magic lantern through espionage noir to the hand-held trickery of a huge single take. The film will not be for everyone, but nobody could sensibly claim Resurrection offers a commonplace experience. Full review DC
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Scarlet ★★★☆☆
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Voices of Erin Yvette, Chris Hackney, David Kaye, Jamieson K Price, Fred Tatasciore. 16 cert, limited release, 111 min
Few film-makers move so fluidly between the intimate and the cosmic as Hosoda. That makes his latest film, Scarlet – an audacious anime riff on Hamlet that never quite comes together – all the more frustrating. Hosoda’s visual imagination remains formidable. It’s impossible not to swoon at his reach. The storytelling proves less assured. Hamlet’s durable outline is as discernible here as his presence in Hamnet, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal’s slant-titled origins story, yet the overburdened plot is constantly and needlessly rearranged into odd, cluttered hunks of soliloquy. Certainly an experience, but ultimately a little hollow. Full review TB
A Pale View of Hills ★★★☆☆
Directed by Kei Ishikawa. Starring Suzu Hirose, Fumi Nikaido, Yoh Yoshida. 12A cert, limited release, 123 min
Ishikawa’s polished film, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel, from 1982, simultaneously demonstrates the plusses and pitfalls of tackling that novelist’s work. It’s a work of visual elegance and melancholic intent, yet it often feels as elusive as the memories it seeks to dramatise. The story moves between postwar Nagasaki in 1952 and England in 1982, following Etsuko – played with quiet fortitude by Hirose as the young wife and Yoshida as the older widow – as she navigates displacement, loss and lingering trauma. No wonder it has taken so long for someone to bring the novel to the big screen. Full review TB
