film reviews
The Eagle Huntress
David Kettle

Thirteen-year-old Aishopan desperately wants to be an eagle hunter. The problem is, she’s a girl. And in the traditional Mongolian nomadic community where she lives, rearing a golden eagle chick to hunt foxes for their fur is very much the preserve of men.

British director Otto Bell’s sumptuous film is certainly an inspirational story of struggle and triumph, and it’s set against an arrestingly unfamiliar context – the icy peaks and frozen rivers at the crossroads between Mongolia, Kazakhstan, China and Russia. It’s a warm-hearted offering, almost to a fault – indeed, its set-pieces and lavish camerawork make it feel more feature than documentary – that charts the young Aishopan’s quiet determination to pursue her passion. And by her looks of unmitigated delight as she begins to train her eagle, a passion it clearly is. To demonstrate the villains of his story, Bell contrasts her enthusiasm with a remarkable sequence of fur-hatted elders shaking their heads at the audacity of this girl daring to step into their male-only world.

The Eagle HuntressIt’s all beautifully delivered, family-friendly (except perhaps for the slaughtering of a sheep early on), and with a stirring message of equality and determination. And although The Eagle Huntress may not exactly challenge our preconceptions of exotic, yurt-inhabiting, horse-riding Mongolian nomads, it at least fills in some unexpected modern details – motorbikes, solar panels, and Aishopan’s rustic boarding school and the gaggle of excitable teenagers who share its dormitory.

Bell examines Aishopan’s warm, close relationship with her father Nurgaiv (pictured above) in tender detail. He’s an eagle hunter himself, with generations of tradition behind him, and entirely supportive of his daughter’s seemingly natural talent without being pushy. Their closeness emerges most touchingly – and dramatically – in the film’s pivotal eaglet-stealing scene, where Aishopan dangles precariously off a mountainside from a rope wrapped equally precariously around her father’s body, in order to snare what becomes her hunting bird.

Most memorable of all, though, is veteran nature photographer Simon Niblett’s astonishing cinematography of the Mongolian mountains and steppes (pictured below), often breathtaking in its endless vistas – and achieved with some stunning aerial shots from drones and cranes.

The Eagle HuntressBut for all its ravishing camerawork and its inspirational message, there are some deep ironies here. The biggest one is the seeming lack of serious opposition to Aishopan taking part in the film’s climactic hunting competition – aside from a few frowns and raised eyebrows from the other competitors, hunters and judges alike actually seem amused and then impressed by her abilities. Other than the elders’ gentle disapproval, Bell simply doesn’t delve deeply enough into the nomadic society’s gender issues to explore any beliefs behind resistance to Aishopan’s ambitions. In fact, it’s Aishopan’s mother – who seems to have quite a distant, almost subservient relationship to both her husband and daughter – who most clearly embodies women’s rather restricted status.

It was probably a bit of a mistake, too, to use the rather mannered, disconcertingly on-off commentary from British actor Daisy Ridley (of Star Wars: The Force Awakens fame – also credited as an executive producer), who contributes so sporadically that each time she cuts in, you’d forgotten that there was a narrator at all.

There’s the unavoidable feeling by the end that reality has failed to delivery on Bell’s girl-against-the-world storyline. And his film’s rather paradoxical views on tradition – crucial to his picturesque portrayal of the nomads’ broader lives, but something to be challenged and subverted in Aishopan’s eagle-hunting ambitions – make it all the more problematic.

Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Eagle Huntress

The Pass
Tom Birchenough

John Donnelly’s play The Pass scored a slate of five-star reviews when it ran at the Royal Court early last year – theartsdesk called it “scorching” – and plaudits for Russell Tovey’s central performance were practically stellar (“a star performance from onetime History Boys student that this actor's career to this point has in no way suggested,” we raved). For those who missed that sell-out, small-stage, seven-week run, Ben A Williams’ film adaptation delivers all the impact of that experience, in an independent British production that manages the transfer from stage to screen more than gamely. And Tovey remains quite remarkable.

Williams keeps the play's strict three-act structure intact, never tempted to open the story out with fill-in cinematic context: its action is claustrophobically limited to the the original's three hotel rooms, now visited at five-year intervals. Retaining the limited size of these spaces becomes a new asset as, particularly in the first episode, Tovey practically bounces off the edges of the screen, so vibrant is his performance, while close-ups bring us right into what's going on inside his head.

Their allegiances of friendship will be tested 

That opening brings home the nuance of Donnelly’s title, introducing the work’s twin themes, football and sexuality. Tovey’s Jason, peroxide-blonde in an engagingly naive way, and Arinze Kene’s Ade are both 19, professional footballers playing as substitutes but about to get their potential break in a Champion’s League match. They are sharing a hotel room (it’s Bucharest, but location isn’t important), relaxing, joshing one another around (main picture), almost jumping up and down on the beds like kids: they’re old, close pals, who have been leading the same intense sporting life of youth training for a decade. What lies beyond that world features little here: of their backgrounds we learn only that Jason’s father is a builder, more prosperous (so he’s a bit “different”, posh even, in these circumstances), while Nigerian Ade’s dad is a preacher, a factor that has Jason ribbing his friend, but affectionately – he’s a joker, albeit one who never finally reveals himself.

Their allegiances of friendship will be tested. Talking about tactics for the match the next day, the issue of one kind of pass comes up – whether either of the players will feed the other the ball at the right moment, or stick in there with a solo chance that just might bring fame. Then there’s the other pass: they’re both naked except for their Y-fronts, they're both buff, and the familiarity of physical banter easily shades into something else. We don’t see quite what, or how it ends, only a kind of nervous foreplay that sits uneasily somewhere between japery, provocation, and something more serious.

Just how serious becomes apparent as Jason’s fate unfolds. This premier football world is one in which being gay and becoming a star are anathema: we remember all too well the only first-class player who revealed his homosexuality, or very possibly, was forced to do so by the threat of tabloid exposure – Justin Fashanu, whose subsequent career, life and death surely remain a doleful object lesson to anyone potentially in the same position. The next time we see Jason, he’s made the big time, holding court now in a flashy penthouse suite to Lindsay (Lisa McGrillis, pictured with Tovey, above), a club dancer whom he’s picked up (though we learn he’s married by now, with children). He’s still as jocularly, wordily in control as ever, however much it looks suspiciously like a tabloid sting. But the permutations of deceit here are multi-layered: at least Jason is controlling them, as something he said in the opening scene gains a new, chilling significance.

At least Jason is still on a roll, master of his own universe. By the final time we encounter him, that’s going, the third luxury hotel room now more like an enclosure: there’s an exercise bike, but his routine is driven by booze and painkillers (it's only a matter of time before a knee goes: then it will all be over). He's divorced, and has imperiously summoned Ade. They haven't met since the opening scene: Ade never got his break, but he has come out – and he’s got a boyfriend – and is working as a plumber, a life very different from all the glory and rewards that have come to his erstwhile mate. It’s a very bruising encounter, not only for what their reunion brings, but for how Jason ropes in the hotel bellboy, who's in awe to this sporting hero, to involve him in a perverse, vindictive ritual of humiliation (Nico Mirallegro, pictured below, left, plays that supporting role, youthfully naïve, more The Village than Rillington Place). Jason’s game, still so manipulative and deceitful, would be brilliant – if it wasn’t tragic now. What is a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself? Tovey captures all that, and more.

Arinze Kene as Ade is the only one not from the original Royal Court production, but he more than keeps up with play. He’s got cheek bones that give his face a particular quality, and there’s a moment at the peak of that first scene when he catches something remarkable indeed – a single glance of pure, gut-wrenching sadness that comes almost out of nowhere, but somehow colours the film. The Pass is Ben Williams’ feature debut, and he gets the most out of such visual chances, allowing us to dwell on moments in a way that theatre can’t (and a certain theatrical staginess sometimes remains). It’s there in some of Tovey’s expressions, Chris O’Driscoll’s camera lingering on something for a moment in a way that makes it resonate.   

Full and final kudos must go to producer Duncan Kenworthy too, for pushing The Pass so adroitly down its independent British route rather than into the studio system (you never know how easily that can wreck a project until it’s already happened). Tovey’s five-star performance brings the film a deserved fourth one of its own, and it can only be hoped that one of its lasting achievements may be to influence broader public attitudes, even in just the smallest way, to its subject for the better.    

Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Pass

The Birth of a Nation
Adam Sweeting

DW Griffiths's 1915 silent epic, The Birth of a Nation, became notorious for its pejorative portrayal of black people and its heroic vision of the Ku Klux Klan. For his directorial debut, Nate Parker has appropriated Griffiths's title and whipped it into a molten onslaught against America's history of slavery and racial prejudice.

Arriving in an America outraged – yet again – by police violence and witnessing the rise of Black Lives Matter, Parker's The Birth of a Nation was uncannily timely, and it prompted a studio bidding war when it premiered at Sundance in January this year. It's a dramatisation of the real-life slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831, depicting Turner as a visionary preacher pre-ordained to lead his people from their bondage, though his bloody attempt to do so was doomed to failure.

Parker directed, stars and wrote the screenplay (the story is credited to Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin), and he has brought a charismatic energy to the project which often overrides the orthodox nature of the storytelling. As a boy, the young Turner is taught to read by plantation mistress Elizabeth Turner (Penelope Ann Miller), a kindly act somewhat undercut by Elizabeth's view of her slaves as a species positioned somewhere between infanthood and the animal kingdom. "These books are for white folks," she explains patiently. "They're full of things your kind wouldn't understand."

Nonetheless, the lad studies the Bible, finds he has a gift for sermonising, and begins preaching the Word to his fellow slaves. Times are hard in the South, and at the urging of the Reverend Zalthall (Mark Boone Junior), Nat's owner Sam Turner (Armie Hammer, pictured above with Parker) hires Nat out to local plantations, with the aim of placating rebellious urges among the slaves with soothing Scriptural messages.

Sam Turner seems relatively liberal, enjoying a friendly rapport with Nate (they were childhood friends) and rescuing him from the vengeful intentions of a spiteful fellow landowner. However, in Hammer's skilful portrayal, he's gradually revealed as a weak man with a drink problem who's never going to break ranks with his white compatriots and become a civil rights advocate for his negro chattels.

The narrative steadily gathers pace as it arcs towards its inevitable denouement. Nat's early optimism is soured by the appalling sights he sees on his travels (not least a scene where a slave has his teeth knocked out with a chisel before being force-fed). His preaching begins to sound more like a cleverly coded exhortation to fling off the chains of bondage and rise up, and his progress towards rebellion is guided by visionary images (corn spattered with blood, a dramatic total eclipse). A couple of incidents of rape, including an assault by slave-catchers on his wife Cherry (Aja Naomi King, pictured above, depicted as little more than a signifier of idealised love and fidelity), prompt Nat to recall that the Lord could be vengeful as well as merciful. When he's brutally flogged by Sam, for baptising a white man, the rebellious die is cast.

Parker has been accused of excessive self-regard for the Christ-like overtones in his portrayal of Turner, while any positive contribution towards bridging the racial divide has been scuppered by his depiction of the white characters almost exclusively as depraved, misshapen sadists. The Birth of a Nation's apparently glittering commercial prospects in the States were dented by a media storm over the fact that both Parker and Celestin had faced rape allegations in 1999. Nevetheless, if we can judge the art and not the artist, this is vivid and unsettling film-making.

@SweetingAdam

Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Birth of a Nation

Snowden
Adam Sweeting

As an old Sixties lefty brought up on paranoia-infused thrillers like The Parallax View or All the President's Men, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American conspiracies. However, in contrast to his earlier labyrinthine epics Nixon and JFK, this account of CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden keeps clutter to a minimum as Stone fashions a tense, fast-moving drama which will leave you pondering over what's really justifiable for the greater good.

It's no great surprise to find that Stone portrays Snowden as a noble crusader for free speech and democratic accountability against the might of America's intelligence agencies, and if you happen to work for the CIA you'll hate this movie, but Stone makes Snowden's journey towards his fateful decision to spill the top-secret beans plausible and persuasive. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Snowden (many of whose family were federal lawyers or in the US military) starts out as a sincere young patriot, training for Special Forces but rejected as not physically strong enough to make the cut (pictured below). A computer genius who's keen to serve his country, he joins the CIA instead and whizzes through the admission tests with astounding ease.

However, as he's given various postings around the world, he becomes disillusioned at how the CIA and National Security Agency are abusing their seemingly unlimited powers. He's shocked at the way Timothy Olyphant's Geneva-based CIA operative cynically compromises a contact and blackmails him into becoming an informant, then later is horrified by the way a programme he helped create, EpicShelter, is being used for marking targets for extermination in drone attacks.

The sheer extent of what the Americans were, or are, up to remains flabbergasting, with the NSA supposedly capable of tracking every mobile phone on the planet, though it's supposedly all justifiable in the name of national self-defence. They're trying to "find the terrorist in the internet haystack", as Snowden's CIA trainer Hank Forrester (Nicolas Cage) puts it.

"You didn't tell me we were running a dragnet on the whole world," Snowden protests to his boss Corbin O'Brian (Rhys Ifans), who likes to point out that "the front line is everywhere". For the the O'Brian role, Ifans (pictured below) has assumed a gravelly baritone loaded with menace, and seems to be channelling Jason Robards and Scott Glenn as he looms ominously from the screen in giant close-ups. 

Stone isn't known for his light romantic touch, but he handles Snowden's complicated relationship with girlfriend Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley) deftly, and the way that Agency suspicions about Snowden's attitude to his work start to cast paranoid shadows over the couple's private life effectively personalises the broader picture. Indeed, the degree of intrusion which intelligence operatives are subjected to by their employers is a fascinating aspect of the tale.

Scenes of Snowden hiding out in Hong Kong while Guardian journalists prepare to publish his reams of top-secret revelations tend towards melodrama (Tom Wilkinson seems to share only the most only tenuous of connections with defence correspondent Ewan MacAskill, while Joely Richardson makes an unfeasibly actressy hash of Janine Gibson, editor of Guardian USA). Melissa Leo's portrayal of Laura Poitras (who made the Snowden documentary Citizenfour to which Stone's movie is quite heavily indebted) is marred by the malevolent creepiness Leo brings to every role.

However, Gordon-Levitt is pitch perfect in the title role, gradually revealing the steely inner core behind his nerd-like exterior, and skilfully evoking Snowden's process of disillusionment as he sees more and more of the skull beneath the skin of his homeland. Overall, this is a much better film than Stone's recent history might have led you to anticipate.

@SweetingAdam

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Snowden

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson
Nick Hasted

The pilot and the sniper have a lot in common for Clint Eastwood. In his previous US blockbuster, American Sniper, Chris Kyle’s cool shooting under pressure helped extract his comrades from overwhelming assault in Iraq, as part of at least 160 kills confirmed by him there. On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger kept his head to land his failing airliner on the Hudson, saving all 155 on board.

The Unknown Girl
Saskia Baron

The Dardennes brothers' latest tale from the grim streets of the industrial suburb of Liège in Belgium is another quietly powerful masterpiece; it’s perhaps their best film since The Child. Re-edited since it debuted at Cannes to mixed reviews, it fuses elements from social realist cinema, morality play and a whodunit murder mystery. The result is a wholly gripping narrative told with understated eloquence.

The film opens with no introductions: a young woman, stethoscope in ears, is listening to a patient breathe. Beside her is a man wearing a white coat. There’s shouting from outside the room - in the waiting area a little black boy is having a seizure and his mother is distraught. The man in the white coat is paralysed at the sight and does nothing; the young woman (Adèle Haenel) snaps into action. Afterwards she berates the young man (Olivier Bonnaud) and their roles become apparent. She is Dr Jenny Davin, in sole charge of a small practice where most of the patients are on benefits, and he’s Julien a medical student. She tells him, "A good doctor has to control his emotions or you won’t make a proper diagnosis." When the doorbell rings, she tells him sternly not to answer, the evening surgery’s already run an hour later than it should do. Julien storms off, not to return.

The moral dilemmas exposed in the film are worthy of HitchcockThe next day the police turn up; a young African woman with no ID, has been found dead on the bank of the river nearby. Checking the surgery’s exterior CCTV, Dr Davin realises the dead girl was her late-night caller. Adèle Haenel has the most extraordinary facial control: she can subtly convey that lurching sensation when you’re first told bad news, the physical effects of that instant rush of adrenaline. Her eyes flicker, there’s a tiny movement of her mouth as if she’s suppressing the desire to vomit. It’s all done swiftly and subtly and it's mesmerising – for the rest of the film one watches her face, trying to work out what she’s thinking and feeling and how she can survive the world around her. Stricken with guilt about not letting the African girl inside, distressed that no one knows who the victim was and horrified that she’ll be buried in an unmarked, pauper’s grave, Dr Davin embarks on her own quest to find the girl’s murderer and her identity.

Her amateur detective work uncovers connections between her own local patients and the neighbourhood's population of menacing hustlers and petty criminals (pictured above: Dornael with Marc Zinga playing a pimp). The Unknown Girl is almost a Nordic noir in its feel: its ingredients include bleak city streets, illegal immigrants scraping along, cops who don’t want to share information and a neat twist at the end. There are red herrings in terms of suspects and coincidences, which occasionally strain credibility, but Dr Davin like Saga in The Bridge and Sarah Lund in The Killing, is an engimatic central character. She appears to also be an"‘unknown girl" without a back story, friends or family. She is stern and serious with only brief moments when a smile breaks through as a patient shares food with her or offers a coffee. We see her turn down a more prestigious job to carry on working with her impoverished patients and to trace the murdered girl. She takes to camping in the surgery, wearing the same plaid jacket, encountering personal danger on building sites.

The Dardennes brothers are minimalists using naturalistic lighting and no score - the only soundtrack is industrial noises or the swish of heavy traffic on the ring road outside the surgery. Philosophical questions about our responsibility towards others, particularly those living in poverty, run through the film and are left open-ended. The social realism will be familiar to Dardennes’ fans, but the addition of the detective element brings a new narrative energy to their work. The Unknown Girl confronts moral dilemmas worthy of Hitchcock, in particular difficult questions around the code of doctor-patient confidentiality. There’s a rare excursion to the countryside for a re-encounter with Julien, but otherwise this is a relentless and impressive slice of urban noir. 

@saskiabaron

Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Unknown Girl

Chi-Raq
Markie Robson-Scott

“This is an emergency. Homicides in Chicago, Illinois have surpassed the death toll of American special forces in Iraq.” This news bulletin forms the opening of Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, pronounced Shy-Rack, a stylised, bombastic take on the gang violence that’s decimating Chicago’s South Side (7,916 Americans have been killed there since 2001, as opposed to 6,888 in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Based on the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes in which women ended the Peloponnesian war by withholding sex, Lee’s advice is for the ladies of the ‘hood to do the same until their men have put down their guns. Or, as the sisters have it, “No peace, no pussy”.

Just like the original, Chi-Raq, co-written with Kevin Willmott, is mainly in verse – yes, verse, though there’s a hiphop/rap soundtrack as well, featuring R Kelly and Mali Music, among others. Samuel L Jackson is Dolmedes, a one-man Greek chorus (pictured below). “Welcome to Chi-Raq, land of pain, misery and strife,” he begins, swinging a cane and wearing the first of a selection of pimped-up suits, ties and hats. Lysistrata (the vibrant Teyonah Parris, recently in Dear White People and formerly Don Draper’s secretary in Mad Men) is the girlfriend of gangsta rapper Demetrius “Chi-raq” Dupree (Nick Cannon), head of the Spartan gang, locked in rivalry with the Trojans, led by Cyclops (Wesley Snipes with an eye-patch and a weird giggle).

She is OK with the gang-banging status quo – “Everyone here got a man bangin’ and slangin’ / fighting for the flag / and risking that long zip of the cadaver bag". Then an 11-year-old girl is killed (off-screen – we don't see much violence) in a drive-by shooting. (Last year – in real life – a nine-year-old boy was killed as part of gang retaliation.) The girl’s mother, in a moving performance by Jennifer Hudson, whose mother, brother and seven-year-old nephew were killed in 2008 in gang-related murders (real-life again), scrubs the blood, hyper-real, crimson and foamy, off the pavement. She appeals for witnesses but no one comes forward, even after the local church, led by Father Mike Corrigan (John Cusack, looking very white) offers a reward. Corrigan is based on celebrated Chicago activist Father Michael Pfleger, who was a consultant for the movie and whose foster son was killed by gunfire.

Lysistrata is horror-struck and moved to act, influenced by intellectual Miss Helen (the formidable Angela Bassett, who was also in Lee’s Malcolm X and is now in Stephen Poliakoff’s Close to the Enemy). In one of the more thought-provoking scenes, Miss Helen sees off a vile life-insurance salesman who’s pressurising her to take a policy out on her nephew. Lysistrata unifies the women of the two gangs – this is strictly musical-fantasy land, so nothing makes much sense – and gets them to agree to “deny all rights of access and entrance” because "saving lives is our job, it’s ‘bout breaking strife / givin’ da hood da true meaning of life”. Soon the no-peace-no-pussy cause goes global – Brazil, Lahore, Santo Domingo, Montreal and more are all in on it.

There’s plenty of raunchy dancing, singing, craziness and sex, with strip-joints unable to open because of the edict: “The situation’s out of control / Because I’m in front of an empty stripper pole,” proclaims Dave Chappelle in a cameo, not very funnily. It’s all frenzied, dazzling and finally empty, in spite of Corrigan’s impassioned words from the funeral pulpit about self-inflicted genocide and mass incarceration as a “legal form of lynching”, as well as a scene where real women holding up pictures of their dead children surround Chi-raq.

But Lee doesn’t tackle any of the complex reasons for gun violence – the fracturing of gangs, leaving them leaderless and anarchic; the hopelessness of young men without prospects; the dismantling of public housing. He thinks he can reach more people in a feature film (it’s the first production by Amazon Original Movies) than with a documentary. But why? Lee’s HBO doc about New Orleans after Katrina, When the Levees Broke, was a triumph and gave people a voice. Sadly, I can’t imagine that Chi-Raq is going to reach Lee’s intended demographic – the gang members – nor inspire them to lay down their guns.

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Chi-Raq

Paterson
Saskia Baron

Back in the 1980s Jim Jarmusch was a breath of fresh air. He made quiet, quirky films about young urban Americans that dispensed with the prevailing neon-bright high school romances, jocks and suburbia. He was about as far removed from the John Hughes/John Landis/Porky hit machines as you could get. Jarmusch was saturated in obscure B-movies, modern poetry and played in a band. His breakout feature, Stranger than Paradise, starred the then unknown John Lurie, who over the course of the film drifted from a cold New York to a frozen Cleveland and emerged blinking in the stale sunshine of Florida.

Jarmusch once worked as a teaching assistant to the great Nicholas Ray and shares his collaborative way of working with his performers. He cast musicians like Iggy Pop, Tom Waits and Joe Strummer and unfamiliar foreign actors like Roberto Benigni and Masatoshi Nagase. Fond of the static frame and low angles of Japanese directors like Ozu, Jarmusch’s films were a laconic, sideways contemplation of an America that had slipped out of view. They were sly, funny, lyrical and subtly perceptive portraits of romances between men and women and friendships between men who had got a little bit lost. He grasped the auteur mantle and kept creative control of his films, often shot in monochrome and kept his budgets low. Jarmusch was the quintessential indie director. 

Sadly it’s a return to format, not form

When he moved into colour with Mystery Train and Night on Earth, he brought something of William Eggleston’s unnerving vision to the screen. But then came too much critical acclaim; his films became airless and obviously headed for the art house and festival circuit. A tendency to collaborate with actors who brought their own baggage – Johnny Depp, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton – and engage in mutual self-indulgence, meant that I haven’t liked a Jarmusch film for a long time.

But there were high hopes of Paterson as it was widely heralded as Jarmusch getting back to his roots. Sadly it’s a return to format, not form. It does hark back to those early films in its emphasis on the poetry of the everyday, but in a stale, self-conscious way. Adam Driver steps in as a John Lurie look-alike, playing Paterson, a former marine turned bus driver who listens in to his passengers’ conversations. Paterson's a poet, and over the course of the week he handwrites his minimalist poems in a notebook between shifts of shuttling his bus around Paterson, a down-at-heel city in New Jersey. He shares the city's name, and sees beauty in its quiet ordinariness – much like William Carlos Williams did when he wrote his epic poem, also called Paterson.  

Unfortunately, the echoes, rhymes and coincidences that Jarmusch works into the film grow tiresome and ultimately lead nowhere. Paterson’s wife, played by the beautiful Iranian actress/musician Golshifteh Farahani (pictured above with Driver) dreams of having twin babies and her husband starts to see adult twins everywhere. As a movie, Paterson drifts along and never really gets going. There are neighbourly epiphanies and charmed encounters with black people in bars and launderettes. Paterson takes long walks with the couple's baleful English bulldog and finds domestic delight in his wife's monochrome cupcakes and hand painted shower curtain – it's meant to be enchanting but it's simply fey. 

What was charmingly loose-limbed in Jarmusch's earlier films now seems mannered and tired. The poems that scroll onto on the screen as Paterson's own work are by poet Ron Padgett and too opaque. In set dressing and dialogue Jarmusch namechecks two great city poets – Frank O’Hara and William Carlos Williams – and this backfires, making the on-screen poems' banality painfully obvious. In the final scene Masatoshi Nagase, who was so good in Sweet Bean, bumps into Paterson sitting on a bench overlooking the city's historic waterfall. Nagase is a middle-aged tourist who in another of the film's artful coincidences is a poetry fan on a pilgrimage to Paterson. Nagase was once the young punk in Mystery Train searching for Elvis's ghost in night-time Memphis; he's now a bespectacled, middle-aged man. Nagase's cameo appearance brought home the distance between Jarmusch young and old. In short, Paterson is a disappointment. 

@saskiabaron

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Paterson

Allied
Adam Sweeting

While it makes for a moderately amusing evening out, this World War Two espionage-romance caper doesn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny (I'm trying to work out where they managed to find the "Best Film of the Year!" quote used in the TV ad).

The Incident
Markie Robson-Scott

A pale young girl – we see her blurred reflection in a window – is hanging out at a pizza joint. She follows a customer, Joe, a handsome young architect, out to his car, where he’s waiting for his order, and flirts with him, smoking and dancing beside the open window, asking him if he’s married. She's a teenage wastrel in her tiny shorts, ballet slippers and shiny jacket. Next thing – there’s no explicit sex on view – he’s paying for her services and heading home. But she’s taken note of his number-plate and we know there’s trouble ahead.