20,000 SPECIES OF BEES 12A

★★★★☆ OUT 27 OCTOBER

CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA

This gentle identity-crisis drama was recognised at last year’s Berlin Film Festival for its lead performance by Sofía Otero (the youngest-ever Silver Bear winner), who plays an eight-year-old trans girl. Marking a mature feature debut from Spanish writer/director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, it follows Otero’s Aitor – aname she rejects – as she wrestles with the expectations of gender binaries while on holiday with her mum (Patricia López Arnaiz). Offering a thoughtful child’s-eye view of self-discovery, Solaguren’s film is slow-paced but executed with great sensitivity.

20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL 18

★★★★☆OUT NOW CINEMAS

Shot, directed and narrated by Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov, this is a powerful account of life in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the weeks following the 2022 Russian invasion. The filmmaker and two colleagues – the last remaining international journalists – dauntlessly filmed the destruction inflicted on Mariupol’s civilian population. As you might imagine, it’s tough viewing, but also a vital reminder of why war correspondents must bear witness to such atrocities - not least when Russian officials dismiss Chernov’s distressing images as staged ‘information terrorism’.

EXPEND4BLES 15

Christmas turkey…

★☆☆☆☆OUT NOW CINEMAS

It’s good to be back,’ growls Dolph Lundgren’s Gunner. Not on this evidence, it isn’t. Cheap-looking and poorly scripted, this atrocious Sly Stallone-led actioner opens in ‘Gaddafi’s old chemical plant’ in Libya, where a private army steals some nuclear detonators to kickstart what Andy Garcia’s suit later suggests will be ‘a World War Three shitshow’ (and that’s one of the better lines). After Stallone’s Barney Ross and his fellow aging Expendables fail to catch the nuke-snatchers, losing one of their members in the process, the fightback gets personal.

The second half is very much the Jason Statham show, following his grouchy Lee Christmas as he sneaks aboard an enemy vessel to rescue his buddies (including newbies Megan Fox and Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson). There’s a moderately exciting bike chase through the ship, but mostly director Scott Waugh (2014 crime flick Need for Speed) brazenly borrows from Under Siege and Die Hard.

At least Ong-Bak’s Tony Jaa and The Raid’s Iko Uwais inject charisma, though neither gets much chance to flaunt their martial-arts prowess amid all the sub-par stunts and visual effects. The plot, meanwhile, hinges on a telegraphed ‘twist’ that’ll leave you groaning. Sly and Statham are always watchable, not least when the latter takes a job as security for an odious social-media influencer. But they can’t save this mission from going painfully pear-shaped.

THE VERDICT A grimly predictable fourth outing for Sly and co. What was once a fun OAP action series is now DOA.

WHERE THE WIND BLOWS 15

★★★☆☆ OUT NOW CINEMAS

Hong Kong’s 2022 Oscar submission pits two titans of Asian cinema against one another, as Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok lock horns in Philip Yung’s lavish but ill-disciplined crime drama. Cast as two corrupt officers rising through the ranks of Hong Kong’s police force, the charismatic central pair manage to carry the film over its bumps, of which there are plenty. Still, if Yung regularly seems to lose interest in all the bribery and double-dealing – flitting between black-andwhite flashbacks, soft-focus romantic interludes and even tap-dancing sequences – his film rarely bores.

DALILAND 15

★★☆☆☆ OUT 13 OCT CINEMAS

13 NOV DVD, DIGITAL

Cult director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho) paints a portrait of Salvador Dalí’s chaotic old age that’s oddly conventional, for all the wild 70s New York orgies and rampant art fraud. Ben Kingsley and Fassbinder veteran Barbara Sukowa are deliciously spiky as the moustachioed maestro and his bullying wife-muse Gala, aided by Ezra Miller’s brilliantly outsized cameo as the young Dalí. But filtering the story through the (fictional) disillusionment of Christopher Briney’s Dalíworshipping young gallery assistant sucks all the freaky fun out of it.