| The Long Game |
MONOLITH 15
Atale to make you brick it…
★★★★★ OUT NOW DIGITAL
Ahit on the festival circuit, Matt Vesely’s absorbing debut will likely appeal to anyone who enjoyed such low-budget, high-concept sci-fi thrillers as Cube, The Man from Earth and Coherence.
Shot almost entirely inside a remote modernist house, it’s dominated by close-ups of an unnamed protagonist, the film’s only on-screen character, played by Evil Dead Rise’s Lily Sullivan. A disgraced journalist who failed to corroborate a big story, she’s now reduced to hosting a clickbait podcast called Beyond Believable – which aptly describes the tale she’s now chasing, about a handful of people receiving black bricks that induce unnerving visions. Then a package arrives on her own doorstep…
A film about the power of storytelling, this hi-tech equivalent of a creepy campfire tale spreads its dread without recourse to volatile camera moves, hostile cutting or blaring sound design. Instead, the strange tale simply unfolds steadily, with our hero starting to twitch and tweak as her guilt, deceit and privilege seep to the surface. Is the black brick an alien artefact? A blank object upon which to project fears? Or is the horror in the telling? Like Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool, Vesely’s film posits the idea of a virus spread through talking.
One thing’s for sure: despite a slight third-act stumble, this whispered tale will enter your ear and crawl deep into your brain.
THE VERDICT There’s a hint of Michael Haneke’s Hidden to this riveting mystery. Give it a click.
ARGYLLE 12A
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS
Wobbling unevenly between self-awareness and selfsatisfaction, Matthew Vaughn’s espionage satire is never as fast or funny as it thinks it is. It centres on Elly (the likeable Bryce Dallas Howard), writer of a novel series about super-spy Argylle. The action cuts between the fictional Argylle (Henry Cavill) and Elly’s creative pains, then blurs the line until she’s swept away on a real mission by spy Aidan (Sam Rockwell). Some predictable mid-film twists add self-conscious fun, but this overwrought romp fires off half-baked ideas without the focus needed to make them stick.
ORION AND THE DARK PG
★★★★★ OUT NOW NETFLIX
You wouldn’t call Emma Yarlett’s cosy kids’ book and arthouse fave Charlie Kaufman natural bedfellows. But DreamWorks’ charming animation finds the sweet spot, as Kaufman’s script nimbly spins anxiety-ridden Orion’s (Jacob Tremblay) bedtime fears into a wild, globetrotting ride with Paul Walter Hauser’s wisecracking Dark. Despite its CGI good looks, the film has an indie, handmade feel. Small kids might struggle with the sudden changes of storyteller, but the smart explorations of fear and feelings are clear-cut, wrapped snugly in a rollicking adventure.
THE BRICKLAYER 15
★★★★★ OUT NOW SKY CINEMA, NOW
Renny Harlin’s (Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight) latest casts Aaron Eckhart as the titular action man, an ex-black ops agent turned merry builder who’s forced out of retirement by friend-turned-foe Clifton Collins Jr. Along for the ride is newbie agent Nina Dobrev, who has little to do but serve as a woman in peril. The action sequences are choppy and confusing, the script is laboured and the acting verges on caricature. Still, Eckhart is a top-class gravelly hero, bruised and battered but fighting to the end, while Tim Blake Nelson adds class as his CIA boss.
BALTIMORE 15
★★★★★ OUT 22 MARCH CINEMAS
Husband-and-wife filmmakers Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor (aka Desperate Optimists) bring their customary blend of austerity and eeriness to this portrait of Rose Dugdale, a real-life English heiress and IRA member who took part in a failed bombing attempt using a helicopter and a historic art heist, both in 1974. Flicking between her colourful past and the theft itself, the directorial duo presents a compelling if fractured look at a toff turned radical who was in it for the kicks as well as politics. Imogen Poots, rarely off-screen, compels as the self-deluding, Patty Hearstlike protagonist.