Florence pugh

Fools will love it: We Live in Time reviewed

We Live in Time is a rom-com (of sorts), starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. They have terrific chemistry and elevate the material by around 1,000 per cent (a conservative estimate), but it’s still deeply annoying. It’s a weepie – a cancer story as well as a love story; at some screenings tissues were handed out beforehand. But though I am a crier by nature, my tears were not jerked. I checked – and double-checked: eyes dry as anything. I couldn’t get beyond the phoniness. You might do better. Pugh (Almut) is an ambitious, high-end chef about to open an ‘Anglo-Bavarian restaurant’ serving ‘Douglas fir parfait’. (Each to their own.)

Lame and formulaic: Black Widow reviewed

Black Widow is the latest Marvel film and although I’d sworn off these films a while ago, due to sheer boredom, I was tempted back by the fact that this one stars a lady (Scarlett Johansson) and another lady (Florence Pugh) and even a third lady (Rachel Weisz) and is directed by a lady (Cate Shortland). Could be wonderful, I thought, except it isn’t. More women is its only decent idea. Otherwise, it’s business as usual. Otherwise, it’s all formulaic bish-bosh, smash-crash action scenes broken up by lame jokes and lame philosophising along the lines of: ‘Your pain only makes you stronger.’ Not if you’re dying in hospital and they’ve