Father Mother Sister Brother ★★★☆☆
Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat. 12A cert, gen release, 111 min
So-so effort from Jarmusch – shock winner of the Golden Lion at Venice – comprising three stories about parents and their grown-up children. Waits and Driver know their way around the director’s deadpan and restraint. A final, tender segment concerns orphaned adult twins (Moore and Sabbat) reunited in Paris and sifting through the late parents’ effects. Sadly, the middle section, set in Dublin, is the project’s nadir. The city, alas, is as miscast as the formidable ensemble. The scenario – a very British afternoon tea between mum Rampling two daughters, Krieps and Blanchett, in Dublin 7 (?) – never develops beyond suggestion. Full review TB
Undertone ★★★☆☆
Directed by Ian Tuason. Starring Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet, Keana Lyn Bastidas, Jeff Yung. 15A cert, limited release, 95 min
Effective horror revolving around two hosts of a supernaturally themed podcast. Tuason builds his film around sudden noises and the uncertainty of the partially glimpsed or unseen. The real stars of this clever one-location set-up are the sound designer David Gertsman and the sound mixer Jon Lawless, a team who manage to wring a jump scare out of a dripping tap. Kiri gives a performance that foregrounds the strain over grief of a long-time carer. The coda veers into the conceptual chaos of weaker, later Paranormal Activity instalments, but it’s a promising start for the director’s proposed trilogy. Keep ’em coming. Full review TB
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You, Me & Tuscany ★☆☆☆☆
Directed by Kat Coiro. Starring Halle Bailey, Regé-Jean Page, Lorenzo de Moor, Isabella Ferrari, Aziza Scott, Nia Vardalos. 12A cert, gen release, 105 min
Bailey finds herself torn between de Moor’s slightly sleazy playboy and Page’s suave winemaker after fleeing New York for Tuscany. This project exists to establish the new Super Mario film as, by comparison, a ruggedly authentic depiction of the Italian character to compare with neorealistic classics such as Bicycle Thieves. As ever, the thumping stereotypes would matter less if there were some chemistry between the leads. Page has sufficient charisma to skirt through the absurdity unscathed. In contrast, Bailey seems dazzled and bemused, neither crafty enough nor ingenuous enough to make sense of the central deceit. Full review DC
The Stranger ★★★★☆
Directed by François Ozon. Starring Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Denis Lavant, Swann Arlaud, Christophe Malavoy, Nicolas Vaude. No cert, limited release, 123 min
Unprecedentedly successful adaptation of Albert Camus’s L’Étranger featuring Voisin as the existentially black protagonist detained after murdering a local in colonial Algiers. One might reasonably say the opening half is too beautiful. This is, after all, a tale of existential angst that ends in a bleak accommodation with annihilation. But Ozon appears to be selling that aspect of the film as an illusion. It is all surface glamour, but, as any perusal of the familiar story confirms – a mother’s death, a whipped dog, an eventual killing – universal horror is waiting to break through the social and psychological carapace. Full review DC
