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Christy Martin had to fight more than her opponents to reach the pinnacle of her sport – boxing.   A gay basketballer, the daughter of a miner, she was plucked from winning $300 in a Toughwoman bout she contested purely for the money to go on to fight for Don King.   In short, she put women’s boxing on the map in the USA.  This is her warts and all story.   The film starts in West Virginia, which is where she was born Christine Renea Salters into a family with traditional val

A beautiful, sensitive portrait of love and loss in the early 20 th century, The History of Sound features bravura showings from its two leads.   Lionel (played as an adult by Paul Mascal) has what his father says is a gift from God, namely he can see music – the shape, colour and taste of it.   It never occurred to Lionel that music was only about the sound.   Growing up on a small farm in Kentucky, he won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory in Boston.   That is w

Set against the dreadful pall of The Great Wa r* , the Choral Society, in the fictional town of Ramsden, in Yorkshire, presses on.   The Society is funded by its chairman and local mill owner Alderman Bernard Duxbury (Roger Allam), who employs a large swathe of the town’s population.   It is 1916 and time to audition for the next production. The Society is keen to recruit local young males to help swell their ranks.   Given the times, this is a community all too familiar wit

This gritty British drama, which marks a strong feature debut for writer and director Harris Dickinson, follows a young, homeless addict whose life continues to spiral.   Mike (Frank Dillane) lives a hard, meaningless existence on the streets of London.   He wanders about aimlessly in search of money and can’t get his act together, sleeping wherever he can.  That could be crumpled on a busy street corner or on cardboard boxes atop a building.   He is betrayed by another homel

Fraught familial relationships rise to the surface as a father steps back into the life of his two adult daughters.   Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard) was a renowned filmmaker who hasn’t made a feature in 15 years. A cinematic retrospective showcases just how insightful he is.   Notwithstanding his professional success, he walked away from his family, divorcing his wife and leaving his children metaphorically hanging.   All these years later, that devastation is still apparent

Song Sung Blue is a warts and all American biographical musical drama based around a couple of divorced tribute artists.   When Mike Sardinia (Hugh Jackson) meets Claire Stengl (Kate Hudson) in 1987, she is singing Patsy Cline numbers.   She gives him the idea of performing as Neil Diamond. Although there is a decade age difference between them, the pair is instantly drawn to one another.   He wants them to play together, so coins the name Lightning and Thunder, with Claire a

Extreme. Far-fetched. Silly. Hell, yeah. After all, you are talking about a Jack Black movie. But Anaconda is also funny and surprisingly involving.   It draws inspiration from the 1997 film of the same name involving a quest to capture the world’s largest and deadliest snake.   Among the stars of that one were Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voigt and Eric Stoltz.   In Anaconda 2025, Doug McCallister (Jack Black), who dreamt of a movie making career and loves horror films, is

There is acting and then there is ACTING.   Phillip Vandarploeug (Brendan Fraser) is an American actor who has lived in Japan for the past seven years.   Thus far, his big claim to fame is playing a superhero in a toothpaste commercial.   In other words, he is still looking for a meaty role and his funds are drying up. And then he gets an unexpected break through a decidedly different talent agency.   Rental Family, owned and operated by Shinji (Takehiro Hira), provides actor

1          The Brutalist – The trials, tribulations and brutality of a lauded Hungarian architect who emigrates to the USA after surviving the Holocaust. Starring: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce 2          Emilia Perez – A striking musical drama about a brutal Mexican cartel leader who has a sex change operation. Starring: Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofia Gascon   3          One Battle After Another – With political intrigue and emotional resonance, it looks at the ri

The effects are spectacular, but I fail to see why this film needed to be three hours 17 minutes in length.   The attempt by Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his Na’vi warrior wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) to keep their family safe continues as their real and “adopted” children spread their wings.   They are still living with the Metkayina Clan in the picturesque reefs of Pandora.  At the end of the previous film, Avatar: The Way of Water, the Sullys’ eldest son Neteyam (Jamie F

A twisted, narcissistic tale, The Housemaid is a tense psychological thriller, one of the better examples of the genre in a domestic setting.   Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) is down, but not yet out.   She has just been released from jail and is living rough in a very old car that has seen far better days.   Having constructed an attractive back story, she is mighty surprised when she is offered a job as a housemaid at a beautiful home by Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried).

An assured, world-renowned classical conductor learns the bitter truth in the most unfortunate of circumstances and it changes his life.   The latter is also true for a cook at a school cafeteria, who plays the trombone in a community brass band and struggles with self-doubt.   Circumstances conspire to bring the two together.   Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) is at the peak of his powers when he learns that he has leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transplant, otherwise he will d

You’re an intense, high achiever with a bright future, but a checkered back story.   With your big break comes the fallout of a bad decision.   That, in short, is the contention behind James L. Brooks’ (As Good As It Gets) dramatic comedy Ella McCay.  It is 2008, in the middle of a recession.   Thirty-four-year-old Ella McCay (Emma Mackey) is the third youngest woman to hold the position of Lieutenant Governor of an unnamed state.   When her boss, the governor (Albert Brooks)

Imagine a Santa that shoots, knifes, takes an axe to and decapitates his victims and you have the starting point for Silent Night, Deadly Night.   Young Billy Chapman (Logan Sawyer) was only eight when he witnessed the not so jolly fat man butcher his parents.   Then we cut (notice the pun) to an adult Billy (Rohan Campbell) orchestrating a murder spree of his own, just before Christmas.  He has caught a bus to a small US town and is in a diner when he spots an attractive wom

Question: If you reached the end of your life and during your earthly days you had had two husbands, both of whom you loved, who would you want to stay with for eternity?   That is the idea being explored in the romantic fantasy comedy Eternity. Joan (played as a younger woman by Elizabeth Olsen) was married to Larry (a role filled by Miles Teller as a younger man) for nearly 65 years.   Then Larry passed away unexpectedly and soon after Joan followed.   But Joan had been mar

A former pugilistic, cum man of the cloth, witnesses some unholy goings on when sent to be 2IC at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude.   That’s a fictional parish in the fictional town of Chimney Rock, New York.   It is Father Jud Duplenticy’s (Josh O’Connor) last chance, after having to front a tribunal of religious leaders for using his fists on a deacon. When he arrives, he is hardly embraced by Monsignor Jeffersen Wicks (Josh Brolin) or the parishioners, who are fiercely loya

The musical fantasy that is Wicked Part II is dramatic, dark and satisfying.   Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) is intent on demonising the evergreen Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and scaring the good people of Oz. The scheming Madame labels Elphaba The Wicked Witch of the West, leaving the good people of Oz petrified at the very thought of her.   The happens after Elphaba uncovered the truth about The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) in Part I of Wicked, namely that he is nothing more than a

Warning: this review contains distressing content   Holocaust deniers should be made to sit with an audience of Jewish survivors to witness the horrors in the film Nuremberg.   Specifically, I speak of deeply traumatising, black and white footage of corpses piled high, like animal carcases, being shunted by a bulldozer.   Its unmistakable impact is that of a sledgehammer.  That is but one of the unfathomable revulsions in an excellent film about the landmark, world-focused tr

How do you handle it when the odds are stacked against you, the elements are playing havoc and you have a gun to your head?   That is the contention explored in the remote northern Minnesota wilderness in the peak of winter.   In this case, there are four main players – five, if you count flashbacks. Barb (Emma Thompson) is a recent widow.   She was happily married for many years and during the ordeal that plays out, she reflects fondly on her courtship and union.   Barb sets

Rose Byrne gives the performance of her life as the psychologically tormented mother of a daughter with a mysterious illness. Byrne plays Linda, a therapist whose offspring (Delaney Quinn) fears many things and refuses to eat, so the girl has a feeding tube attached to her stomach.   With her husband, navy man Charles (Christian Slater), away on business, Linda is struggling. The roof of their apartment has just caved in, flooding the place, so she and her daughter have moved