Film

Six of the best films to see in cinemas this weekend

New this weekend: Do the Right Thing and Oldboy rereleased, plus Photograph and The Angry Birds Movie 2

Hot town, summer in the city: Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing (1989)

Donald Clarke
Tara Brady
Fri Aug 2 2019 - 05:30

DO THE RIGHT THING ★★★★★
Directed by Spike Lee. Starring Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, Rosie Perez, John Savage, Samuel L Jackson, Martin Lawrence
Lee's era-defining film gets a 30th anniversary rerelease. Hanging round a Bed-Stuy neighbourhood on the hottest day of the year, the picture takes us through the simmering discontents that lead eventually to something like a riot. Come for the politics, stay for the irresistible energy. Ernest Dickerson's glaring cinematography. Public Enemy's rising shriek. The beautifully detailed street life. It somehow failed to get nominated for best picture in the year that Driving Miss Daisy won. 18 cert, lim release, 120 min DC Full review

OLDBOY ★★★★★
Directed by Park Chan-Wook. Starring Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung

Choi Min-sik in Oldboy (2003)

The scenario remains as striking as it was on release in 2003. In a construction that Samuel Beckett would have savoured (if not enjoyed, exactly) Choi Min-sik plays a middle-aged man who, imprisoned mysteriously for 15 years, sets out for revenge when he is equally mysteriously released. Runner-up at Cannes in 2004, Park's extraordinary South Korean thriller stands as one of the most influential films of the decade. It rips. It rumbles. It chills. 18 cert, lim release, 120 min DC Full review

PHOTOGRAPH ★★★★☆
Directed by Ritesh Batra. Starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra, Farrukh Jaffar, Akash Sinha, Shreedhar Dubey, Sanjay Kumar Sonu

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Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sanya Malhotra in Photograph

Following on from two successful Anglophone pictures (The Sense of an Ending and Our Souls at Night) director Batra returns to India for this enchanting, low-key romance that replicates the wistful longing of Brief Encounter. Rafi (Siddiqu) hails from a far-flung northern village but is eking out a living photographing sightseers at the Gateway of India. One morning, he captures the image of soulful-looking Miloni (Malhotra), a twentysomething student. They are very different people. She's privileged, light-skinned, Gujarati-speaking and Hindu; he's poor, dark-skinned, Urdu-speaking and Muslim. Batra finds a quietude and intimacy against Mumbai's teeming streets. The chemistry between the leads makes the film as plausible as it is magic. 15A cert, lim release, 109 min TB Full review

THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 2 ★★★☆☆
Directed by Thurop Van Orman. Voices of Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom, Nicki Minaj, Awkwafina, Sterling K. Brown, Eugenio Derbez, Danny McBride, Peter Dinklage

The Angry Birds Movie 2

Red (Sudeikis), the franchise's heavily eyebrowed avian hero, is suspicious when his former porcine adversaries the Bad Piggies request a truce, but the showering of icy boulders suggests that pig and bird-kind have a common foe. Enter Zeta (Jones), the megalomaniac purple queen of hitherto undiscovered Eagle Island. Zeta is apparently determined to take over both Pig and Bird Islands, and has a particular beef with the Lebowski-alike Mighty Eagle (Dinklage). Nobody expected The Angry Birds Movie (2016) to become the third highest-grossing film of all time based on a video game. The second film is not as entertaining, but it has some great voice talent, it breezes brightly along, and it has a nice anti-Thatcher message: "There is no such thing as the individual; there is only society." We're paraphrasing. G cert, gen release, 97 min TB Full review

THE CHAMBERMAID/LA CAMARISTA ★★★★★
Directed by Lila Avilés. Starring Gabriela Cartol, Teresa Sánchez

Gabriela Cartol in The Chambermaid

Avilés' remarkable, rigorously researched debut concerns itself with the day to day rigours of working in a luxury Mexico City hotel. One of the film's lesser pleasures is the detail it offers on how Eve's job is done. The film is, however, most remarkable for its gentle teasing out of workplace relationships. This is not the worst job in the world, but its pressures clearly wear away at the soul. A gripping and oddly beautiful gem. Club, IFI, Dublin, 102 min DC Full review/trailer

MARIANNE & LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE ★★★★☆
Directed by Nick Broomfield. Featuring Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Ron Cornelius, Helle Goldman

Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen in Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love

In 1960, struggling Leonard Cohen relocated to the Greek island of Hydra, a haven for artists, the plant-waterers and cat-minders of artists, and free love. There he met Marianne Ihlen, the ex-wife of novelist Axel Jensen and the mother of a young son. She became Cohen's lover, the maker of his sandwiches, and the stunning blonde who sat at his feet while he dropped acid and banged out an incomprehensible novel. Who would ever be a muse? That's the question underpinning Broomfield's romantic, angry, funny, sorrowful new film, which contextualises Cohen's carelessness and Ihlen's passivity within contemporaneous social and cultural climate. 15A cert, QFT, Belfast; IFI/Light House, Dublin, 102 min TB Full review

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