Deborah Ross

Jafar Panahi’s No Bears is, first and foremost, a wonderful film. More than this, you don’t need to know but I’ll tell you anyway. Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker, was banned from making films by the Iran government in 2010 yet has persisted clandestinely. One of his films (This Is Not a Film) was smuggled to the Cannes festival on a USB stick buried inside a cake. No Bears was wrapped in May this year; Panahi was arrested in July, and now he’s serving a six-year prison sentence for ‘propaganda against the system’. To make a film, any film, against such odds, is astonishing, but one as truly wonderful as this? Mind-blowing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Living is a remake of one of the great existential masterpieces of the 20th century, Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), which didn’t need remaking, many will grumble, but once you’ve seen this you’ll be glad that it was. It is as profoundly and deeply felt as the original and as heartbreakingly tender. It asks the same question – what makes a life meaningful? – but this time with Englishness, bowler hats, the sweet trolley at Fortnum’s and Bill Nighy. Really, what more could you want? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2L8CP31-14 The film is directed by Oliver Hermanus with a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, who first mooted the idea.

The latest film from Ruben Ostlund received an eight-minute standing ovation after its screening in Cannes and also won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and this has left me entirely baffled: what, the film I’ve just seen? The one where every scene is far too long? The one billed as a ‘satirical black comedy’ even though the targets are easy and it doesn’t say anything and I didn’t laugh once? That film? I should add, it’s not for the emetophobic. One of the scenes that goes on far too long involved so much vomiting that I could only watch the bottom 5 per cent of the screen. Ostlund needs someone like my mother in his life to tell him it’s not clever, it’s not funny, pack it in.

My Policeman is a forbidden love drama starring both Harry Styles – whose bid for movie stardom continues apace – and his naked bottom. The bottom is good. Ten out of ten for the bottom, particularly during a scene in Venice when the light from the window casts it in a golden, buttery glow. But otherwise, this is an average, meek and soporific endeavour which hits quite a few bum notes of the kind that aren’t ideal. It is based on the novel by Bethan Roberts, which in turn was inspired by the romantic life of E.M. Forster, who had a long-term relationship with a married policeman who suffers a stroke and is nursed by his wife, May. (Big shout out for May, I think.

The life of Emily Brontë is an enduring object of fascination. So small, the life, so sparse, so limited. Yet it delivered those magnificent poems and Wuthering Heights. How could this be? Genius, I suppose, paired with a vivid interior life. But as neither of those are cinematic, Emily imagines what could have led her to write as she did. It’s a ‘speculative biopic’, and modern, but there’s no Billie Eilish on the soundtrack or breaking of the fourth wall or jokey intertitles or any of those larks, which is a mighty relief. Instead, it’s daring, and ravishing. If you’d asked me if Emily might have ever tried opium, or had a passionate affair with a sexy curate, I’d have laughed in your face. But here I absolutely bought it.

The Lost King is a comedy-drama based on the 2012 discovery of the remains of King Richard III beneath a Leicester car park. It’s a terrific story, an unforgettable story, but a fairly forgettable film. It’s directed by Stephen Frears, stars Sally Hawkins (as Philippa Langley, the amateur enthusiast who was proved right despite being sneered at by archaeology experts), and yet it’s somehow underpowered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgv6KHeAFeY There’s King Richard, in his cloak and crown, sitting at her kitchen table with his really bad hair True, it offers one of my favourite lines of the year – ‘Boys… Mum’s found Richard III!’ – yet it never quite springs into life.

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a comedy-drama based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a cheerful, kind-hearted Battersea charlady who falls in love with a couture dress from Dior, decides she must have one of her own, and off she goes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO9JcPbbmAA If you are in the mood for something pleasantly untaxing you will be pleasantly untaxed This is a familiar type of British film. It’s similar in spirit to, say, Florence Foster Jenkins or Paddington or The Duke or that golf one with Mark Rylance. It isn’t but could have been directed by Stephen Frears. It stars Lesley Manville but it could have starred Julie Walters. We know the ingredients and how the recipe will turn out.

Catherine Called Birdy is written and directed by Lena Dunham and it’s a medieval comedy about a 14-year-old girl resisting her father’s attempts to marry her off while yearning to do all the things women aren’t allowed to do. (She would especially like to attend a hanging, for example. And also ‘laugh very loud’.) It most put me in mind of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as it has that spirit, but it does not share that timeless brilliance. It’s fun, and endearing, and the patriarchy gets a good kicking which, as you know, is my favourite thing. But it feels like one joke or sketch that’s been dragged out for nearly two hours. It’s fine, yet forgettably so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Moonage Daydream is a music documentary like no other, which is fitting as the subject is David Bowie. If it’s David Bowie, make it special or just don’t bother. And this is special. It’s an immersive, trippy, hurtling, throbbing two hours and 15 minutes. If Disneyland did a Bowie ride, this would be it. Yet it isn’t shallow. There are some real insights. Bowie was cool and sexy and beautiful, but also somehow aloof and otherworldly, an enigma, never everyday. I can imagine Paul McCartney at home and I can imagine Mick Jagger at home. But I have never been able to imagine David Bowie at home, turning to Iman and saying: ‘What shall we do for dinner? Fish again?

You always have to brace yourself for the latest David Cronenberg film, but with Crimes of the Future it’s not the scalpels slicing into flesh or the mutant dancer with sewn-up eyes (and mouth) or even the filicide (oh, boy) you have to brace yourself for. In this instance, the most shocking thing is that it’s so muddled and dreary. It’s a gore-fest, true enough, but it’s a gore-fest that is mostly a snooze-fest. That’s what you need to brace yourself for.

The Forgiven is based on the novel by Lawrence Osborne and stars Ralph Fiennes (terrific) and Jessica Chastain (ditto) as a wealthy British-American couple driving to a weekend-long party in a luxurious Moroccan desert villa when they hit and kill a young local boy on the road. Oops. What the film adds up to, I cannot say, as it isn’t clear. Who is forgiven? Is anybody? It’s ethically ambiguous and you have to do your own moralising, which is always a drag. (Note to filmmakers: I’m old, I’m tired, please spoon-feed me.) But it’s a compelling, tense journey even if it’s a pitiless one. Human nature doesn’t come out of this at all well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Beast is, the blurb tells us, a ‘pulse-pounding thriller about a father and his daughters who find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the savannah has but one apex predator’. Whether this was ever intended to be a serious film, I cannot say, but it’s fun in its schlocky, gory, silly way, doesn’t outstay its welcome (it’s barely 90 minutes) and will satisfy anyone who has ever yearned to see Idris Elba wrestle a lion and then punch it full in the face. Not my dream especially, but each to their own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

My Old School is a documentary exploring a true story that would have to be true as it’s too preposterous – it is absolutely nuts – for any screenwriter to have made it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDazGVIs9C0 You know something is up but not what and if you’re coming to it fresh your jaw will hit the floor It’s the story of Brandon Lee, who was 16 when he enrolled as a new student to a secondary school in the Glasgow area in 1993. Or is it: was this new boy a 16-year-old called Brandon Lee? And now I’m in a pickle. If I say more it’s a spoiler. The film plays its cards close to its chest until the 45-minute mark. You know something is up but not what and if you’re coming to it fresh your jaw will hit the floor.

Eiffel is a romantic drama purporting to show how a passionate but forbidden love inspired Gustave Eiffel to design and build the Eiffel Tower. The producers say that, by merging fact and fiction – the romance is a fiction, more or less – they hope to create ‘the French Titanic’, which is aiming rather high, if not way, way too high. The love affair is tiresomely humdrum – if you’re going to make it up, please make it up better – plus the stakes are too low, particularly as the Eiffel Tower never hits an iceberg, does not sink, and nobody dies. Although you might, a bit, from boredom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Where the Crawdads Sing is based on the bestselling book (by Delia Owens) that I picked up from one of those three-for-two tables at Waterstones and always thought I’d read but for some reason never did. I can’t now say the film’s not as good as the book and send everyone involved to prison, which is a pity, as that was most satisfying. (See last week’s review of Persuasion.) Still, it’s always interesting to find out what they’ve done with a book you haven’t read and, based on this, it was a lucky escape. The film is so cliché-ridden there’s a point where an entire courtroom gasps and I laughed. Not proud, but it was beyond my control. Could I send everyone involved to prison anyway? For cocking up a book I haven’t read?

You may already have read early reviews of Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion saying it’s ‘the worst adaptation ever’ as well as ‘mortifying’ and ‘a travesty’, but I know you won’t believe it unless you hear it from me, so here you are: it is truly horrible. I would also add that everyone involved should probably be sent to prison. Not for life, but until we could be confident they’d learned the error of their ways and there was minimal risk of reoffending. A probation officer would possibly be required to keep a close eye, just to make sure. Better safe than sorry. There are ways to adapt Austen for a contemporary audience, but those ways are not this way, and I say this not as a purist.

Brian and Charles is a sweetly funny mockumentary about a lonely Welsh inventor who is not that good at inventing. That said, I reckon his ‘pine cone bag’ would sell pretty well if Vivienne Westwood got behind it. (His ‘trawler fishing net shoes’ would, admittedly, be a tougher proposition.) Then, more by accident than design, he manages to invent a robot, and a friendship develops between the two. This film won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and while it doesn’t invent much itself – it is essentially Wallace & Gromit in spirit – it is still loveable beyond all measure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

The Princess, a new documentary film, is the first re-framing of the Princess Diana story since it was last re-framed, about ten minutes ago, and before it will be re-framed again, probably by Tuesday. We’ve had The Crown recently, and Spencer, and our favourite, Diana: The Musical (‘It’s the Thrilla in Manila but with Diana and Camilla’), and there are several upcoming books, one of which, R is for Revenge Dress, ‘explores the celebrated life of Princess Diana through the alphabet’. To those who say the poor woman should be left to rest in peace, I would say: F is for Fat Chance. But is this the definitive documentary we’ve all been waiting for? Possibly not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Elvis is Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of Elvis Presley and it’s cradle to grave but told at such a gallop you’ll be willing it to stay put even if it’s just for two minutes. You may even be begging: Baz, come on, just hold still. But no, we’re off again. I’ve had fever dreams that have been less delirious. But on the plus side, even if it’s never deep or enlightening, it has a fizzing energy, and because it doesn’t dwell on anything, we don’t dwell on fat, sad Elvis at the end. Which is a relief. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp2BNHwbwvI Because it doesn’t dwell on anything, we don’t dwell on fat, sad Elvis at the end. Which is a relief The film opens as it means to go on. That is, flashily.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande stars Emma Thompson as a retired, widowed religious education teacher in her sixties who books sessions with a sex worker (Daryl McCormack) because, for the first time in her life, she would like to experience good sex. Her husband was a roll on, roll off sort of fella, she’s never slept with anyone else and her body, she says, ‘feels like a carcass I’ve been dragging round all these years’. You have to admire her courage. I don’t think I’d even have the courage to book a hotel room for two hours in the afternoon. I’d probably pay for the night so that no one would know. Or would a week be safer? Written by author and comedian Katy Brand, and directed by Sophie Hyde, this is a riveting film and an important one.