Film

The Odyssey

18/07/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

‘See it on the biggest screen possible.’

Advice we’ve often given and something we had every intention of following ourselves in the case of Sir Christopher Nolan’s latest release. But, for the first time ever, finding an empty seat in an IMAX screening in Edinburgh proves impossible – unless we’re prepared to sit in the very front row. (Done that once, never again.) This development is simultaneously annoying and wonderfully heartening. Perhaps that much-rumoured resurgence in cinema attendance, fuelled by the likes of Obsession and Backrooms, is actually gathering momentum. Or is it just Nolan’s astute handling of the movie’s advertising, coupled with the Oscar success of Oppenheimer that has led to this stampede for tickets?

Whatever the reason, we decide to book in for a standard screening. We’ll revisit in IMAX sometime in the near future. Providing it’s any good, of course. Despite widespread critical acclaim, the online vitriol poured on the film by people who haven’t actually seen it yet means that this one has much to prove. And happily, it passes every test with flying colours.

We all know The Odyssey, of course. Homer’s epic poem is still the bane of many young students’ lives as they are obliged to read their way through its meandering stanzas, which focus on the twenty year ordeal of its central character, Odysseus (played here rather wonderfully by Matt Damon). Our hero, forced for the first decade to play a key role in the siege of Troy, then has to spend the next ten trying to find his way back to Ithaca, where his faithful wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and his loyal son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), still await his return.

But to get to them, Odysseus and his crew must take on all manner of obstacles: the giant cyclops, Polythemus (Bill Irwin); the powerful witch, Circe (Samantha Morton); the Lotus-dispensing Calypso (Charlize Theron); and, most egregious of all, the Ocean – which, because Odysseus has annoyed Poseidon, is determined to send them all to a watery grave.

With a running time just short of three hours, this could be a ponderous affair but Nolan (who also adapted the screenplay from the original poem) employs an ingenious non-sequential approach, cutting effortlessly back and forth across the passing years to ensure that no particular sequence overstays its welcome. What’s more, even though most of the situations are familiar from earlier versions of the story (the 1954 Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas springs to mind, as do several of the films featuring the work of stop-motion genius Ray Harryhausen), Nolan always manages to put a different spin on proceedings.

Of course, a tale as packed as this one is sure to have its more memorable sections. The scene where Odysseus and his men are locked in a cave with the aforementioned Polythemus is a particular standout, as is Circe’s transformation of Odysseus’s crew into swine. She uses a hands-on approach like a potter moulding clay, the sequence employing old-school practical effects that recall the work of the legendary Rick Baker.

And if you’re a fan of an enormous climactic dust-up, well, I don’t think you’ll be left feeling short-changed.

The cast is stellar with many big names popping up in minor roles. Robert Pattinson proves once again that he is a terrific actor as the oily, scheming Antinous and all hail to John Leguizamo as the ever-faithful Eumaeous. Much has been made of the casting of Elliot Page as Sinon and Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, with incensed commentators complaining about ‘authenticity’ as though this is a historical piece rather than a slice of weird fantasy, but both actors give strong performances that more than justify their casting. Oh, and by the way, those American accents serve as a commentary on the current world order, which – when you think about it – makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps the most original addition here is the clarification of just how much two decades of havoc have taken their toll on the central character. In the film’s final section, as Odysseus recalls the cruelty and bloodshed visited upon the people of Troy, this feels increasingly like the recollections of a man suffering from PTSD, finally emerging from a lotus-induced fog and forced to confront the pain his decisions have inflicted on those who followed him.

Make no mistake, this is a superb film: assured, inventive and directed by a man at the very top of his game. I haven’t always loved Nolan’s films but this may just be his masterpiece. Buckle in and get those IMAX seats booked… if you can find them.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

The Last Viking

15/07/26

Filmhouse, Edinburgh

The Last Viking begins with the opening pages of a dark storybook for younger readers – though shortly thereafter it becomes the kind of thing that really wouldn’t be deemed suitable for anyone under the age of 15. It’s essentially a (very) black comedy that occasionally makes me feel guilty for laughing at the frenetic action that ensues the moment we’re out of the pages of that book – largely because the ‘comic’ elements stem from the erratic behaviour of people with various kinds of mental illness.

Anker (Nikolas Lie Kaas) is one of the few ‘sane’ characters in the story, though when we join the action, he has done something very bad. He’s been involved in a violent bank heist where somebody was killed and he’s currently toting a bag containing a lot of stolen money. As the police begin to home in on him, he heads to the flat where his sister Freja (Bodil Jørgensen) and his younger brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen) both live. Anker instructs Manfred to take the bag and bury it in the woods near their old family home – but back in his youth, Manfred suffered abuse from his disciplinarian father and as a result has become fixated on Vikings and Nordic runes, so it isn’t always clear if he’s actually got the message.

Shortly thereafter, the police arrive and Anker goes to prison for fifteen years. On release, he heads back to the flat, eager to get his hands on that stolen money, but in Anker’s long absence, Manfred has taken several turns for the worse and is now suffering from dissociative identity disorder. He thinks he’s John Lennon and any mention of his real name causes him to throw himself out of a moving vehicle or through the nearest open window. What’s more, when Ankers asks him about the buried money he seems to have no recollection of it.

At the hospital where Manfred is recovering from his latest tumble, Ankers encounters psychiatrist Lothar (Lars Brygmann) who mentions that there are other patients who believe themselves to be members of the Beatles. Why not put them together with Manfred, he suggests, to see if working as a member of a group might help him recover his memory? (I know. As unlikely premises go, this one is up there. But stick around, there’s more.)

Ankers and Manfred head for the family home, which is now an Air B&B owned by failed author, Werner (Søren Malliing) and failed model, Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl of Nordic crime milestone, The Killing). The two brothers check in and Ankor starts searching the woods… but shortly thereafter Lothar shows up. He has taken it upon himself to enlist the services of a guy who thinks he’s Ringo and a man who is both Paul and George (and occasionally Bjorn from Abba). As if this isn’t complicated enough, they are soon joined by Flemming (Nicholas Bro), a member of Ankor’s former gang, who has somehow managed to avoid jail and over the intervening years has spent his share of the stolen money. He now wants what’s left and is prepared to go to any lengths of cruelty to get his hands on that bag of cash…

Okay, so for the first half hour or so, I’m entertained enough to laugh out loud at some of the furious antics depicted here, though I can’t help feeling that Ankor isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, because it takes three suicide attempts before it dawns on him that maybe he should stop calling his brother Manfred and try ‘John’ instead. Mind you, most of what happens here beggars credulity and it doesn’t help that the arrival of Flemming adds a whole new layer of gratuitous violence to the mix. It’s around this point that I really don’t feel like laughing any more – and the treatment meted out to Gråbøl is little short of heinous. Am I supposed to laugh about what happens to her? I sincerely hope not. There are also several plot holes which I won’t go into.

On the plus side, Mikkelsen does a heroic job of capturing Manfred/John’s conflicted nature, though even his considerable acting chops can’t convince me that this was ever a good idea. Writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen – a former member of Dogme 95 – at least makes it all sort of hang together and a later scene, with the band bashing out a spirited rendition of a Beatles classic does briefly help to lift the mood – but for me, this is a case of too little, too late.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

The Invite

06/07/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Married couple Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) are locked in a beautifully-gilded cage of an apartment, inherited from his parents. They’re both desperately miserable, but they don’t know how to break free, trapped by social convention and their own inertia. The couple who’ve moved in upstairs, Pina (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), are their polar opposites: lively, curious, fresh and uninhibited. So when Angela invites their new neighbours down for drinks, the scene is set for a perfect storm.

Directed by Wilde, with a snappy screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, The Invite is a tragicomedy of manners, at times laugh-out-loud funny but also moving and profound. Joe and Angela’s unhappiness is so horribly ordinary; exhausted by disappointment, they blame each other for their broken dreams, unable to break free from the prison they’ve created. Pina is a sex therapist and that’s the function her character performs: Pina and Hawk’s vibrant, overtly sexual relationship shining an unforgiving light on Joe and Angela’s marriage, prompting the joyless couple to examine their feelings and acknowledge that they cannot carry on. The laughs come in the form of toe-curling awkwardness and physical ineptitude, the clash between fantasy and reality. But we’re never allowed to forget that these are real people, their humiliations causing real pain.

A remake of the Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film, The People Upstairs, this is something of a triumph, Wilde perfectly encapsulating the claustrophobic atmosphere of a failing marriage. Although Joe and Angela’s apartment is twice the size of Hawk and Pina’s, their world is so much smaller, the four walls constraining them. We can feel this in the direction, the actors seemingly too big for the space, unable to move without knocking things over and breaking them.

The four actors work well together. None of the characters is especially likeable, but they’re all sympathetically drawn and we want a happy ending for them. Rogen is effortlessly funny, eliciting most of the laughs with his gloomy defeatism and misplaced anger, while Norton somehow manages to imbue the world’s smuggest, most annoying man with enough humanity to save him. Cruz is so charming that Pina’s sharpness becomes an attribute, while Wilde’s quiet desperation is genuinely painful.

This is Wilde’s third feature as a director. I loved her 2019 debut, Booksmart, and also found a lot to admire in 2022’s Don’t Worry, Darling, although the latter was perhaps a little muddled. The Invite is her most sophisticated to date, and I’m already keen to see where she goes next.

4.7 stars

Susan Singfield

NT Live: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

25/06/26

Dominion Cinema, Edinburgh

The latest offering from NT Live has arrived in cinemas and there’s only one venue in Edinburgh swish enough to do it justice. We book a reclining sofa at The Dominion and settle down, prepared to be blown away – and we most certainly are. This stunning adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s 1985 play (based upon the 1782 novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos) incorporates Hampton’s wonderfully witty and unflinchingly brutal dialogue punctuated by stirring dance sequences where everyone – including the leads – hoofs up a storm. Marianne Elliott directs the huge cast with consummate skill, while choreographer Tom Jackson Greaves has the lavishly costumed performers prowling, spinning and leaping around Rosanna Vize’s extraordinary set, where scores of mirrored doorways reflect the action like a kaleidoscope of intrigue.

The Marquise de Merteuil  (Lesley Manville) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Aidan Turner) are old acquaintances. Once lovers, they are now notorious philanderers, who spend their time seducing, exploiting and humiliating virtually everyone they encounter, taking delight in the chaos they create. It’s clear that Valmont still carries a torch for Merteuil so, when she makes a wager with him, he quickly accepts the challenge. She will spend one more night with him, but only if he can manage to seduce two women: the virtuous wife, Madame de Tourval (Monica Barbaro), and Cécile de Volanges (Hannah van der Westhuysen), an innocent young girl, currently infatuated with her music tutor.

Valmont sets to work, mercilessly exploiting both women without a thought for the destruction he is wreaking – and little realising that Merteuil has elaborate plans of her own…

All the leads play their roles with absolute conviction, Turner relishing his characterisation of a brutish, swaggering hedonist without a single qualm about the cruelty he inflicts on his targets. Manville matches his arrogance with a sly, smiling assurance that tells us she has his measure and knows exactly how to handle him. (It’s fascinating to note that back in 1985, Manville played Cécile de Volanges on Broadway.)

Barbaro, meanwhile, is utterly compelling as a God-fearing woman, struggling to resist her inner demons and utterly destroyed when they finally overcome her. Van der Westhuysen also excels as an ingénue, blissfully unaware that she is destined to inherit all the guiles of those who have used her so cruelly.

But the ensemble are much more than bit-players: every performer on the stage gives the show their all. If the first half is sensational, the second – as all the carefully-layered plot threads come hurtling to their inescapable conclusion – is utterly thrilling.

A seat for this show in London’s West End, would cost you hundreds of pounds, but here’s your opportunity to make your own dangerous liaison closer to home at a more affordable price.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day

22/06/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Despite the prominence of the famous name in the title, Justine Waddell’s movie adaptation of Night & Day bears only a passing resemblance to Virginia Woolf’s 1919 novel, stripping away a lot of the author’s thorny political nuance in favour of a lighter, more straightforward feminism.

Kit Hilbery (Haley Bennett) rails against the confines of her class and gender. Her parents (Jennifer Saunders and Timothy Spall) want her to marry her childhood friend, the affable William Rodney (Jack Whitehall), but Kit – an aspiring astronomer – has other plans. She wants to go to Cambridge. Okay, so women aren’t actually allowed to study at the men’s college she’s applied to, nor permitted to join the Royal Astronomical Society, but Kit’s nothing if not determined. Someone has to be the first, right?

Kit isn’t alone in her fight against the old order. Her gay cousin, Cy (Misia Butler), has his own battles to face, and her new pal, Mary Datchet (Lily Allen), is an active member of the Suffragette Society, working full-time to change the world.

And, of course, there’s always a bit of romance to complicate things. Kit doesn’t fancy her fiancé, William, but there’s more than a spark between her and Ralph Denham (Elyas M’Barek), the lower-class radical hired to edit her mother’s sprawling book. But why shouldn’t Kit strive for emotional fulfilment as well as intellectual? After all, she’s used to reaching for the stars…

Directed by Tina Ghavari, the setting is vividly realised, and Bennett gives a spirited performance in the central role, imbuing Kit with an earnest vulnerability that ensures we’re on her side. Whitehall also acquits himself well (I guess ‘congenial toff’ isn’t much of a stretch for him), but it’s Butler’s brittle façade that gives the film its emotional depth.

I’m less keen on the (presumably deliberate) anachronism in Datchet’s presentation: Allen’s costume and hair are in line with current fashion, in contrast to the Edwardian garb worn by the other characters. What’s more, we never get to know anything about her or her politics, beyond the fact that she thinks women should have the vote and prints pamphlets saying so. Still, Datchet is positively well-developed compared to Kit’s Aunt Celia (Elizabeth Edmonds) and Cousin Joan (Sally Phillips), two fine actors whose talent is entirely wasted in these pointless roles.

Despite it’s style and elegance, Night & Day is something of a mixed bag: not funny enough for a comedy, not political enough for a polemic and not romantic enough for a love story. It’s an entertaining watch that doesn’t quite cohere.

3.4 stars

Susan Singfield

Effi o Blaenau

21/06/26

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh

Back in April 2020, we saw a production on Digital Theatre, a monologue written by Gary Owen and starring Sophie Melville. The piece rejoiced under the unusual title Iphigenia in Splott, and was loosely based around the Greek myth of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, sacrificed to ensure the success of the men who governed her. Set in Splott in South Wales, it was a unflinching reinterpretation of the original tale and one that we both enjoyed.

So when the release of Effi o Blenau is announced, we quickly make the connection. Owen has teamed up with Branwen Kennard to adapt the piece for the big screen and the setting has shifted North to Blaenau Ffestiniog. The central role of Effi is played by Leisa Gwenllian and, while it still follows the same central premise, the story (now in Welsh language) has been opened up to include other characters, some of whom were mentioned in the original piece.

Effi is a young woman living a debauched existence in a town stricken by unemployment. She regularly seeks solace at the bottom of a vodka bottle, partying with her best friend, Gemma (Nel Rhys Lewis), and with her ‘sort-of’ boyfriend, Kev (Owen Alun), who can always be relied upon to get his mitts on some drugs. But on a night out in Llandudno, Effi encounters Lee (Tom Rhys Harries), an ex-soldier and she falls in love at first sight. She accompanies him back to his friend’s flat, where she discovers that Lee has lost a limb on active service. A night of passion ensues and she tells herself that this is the real thing.

She settles down to wait for him to get in touch with her…

This is a perfect example of how a simple theatrical piece can be turned into a winning slice of cinema. Though it’s a bleak and hard-hitting story, an excoriating condemnation of contemporary politics, this is thrilling stuff. Gwenllian’s performance in the lead role is fabulous, as her character begins the long and punishing slide into desperation. I also love Alun’s depiction of Kev, a man constantly trying to do the right thing by the woman he loves, even though she simply doesn’t love him back. The drab, run down locations are evocatively captured by cinematographer Eira Wyn Jones, and there’s a long, harrowing sequence in an ambulance hurtling through a snow storm in the dead of night that really cranks up the suspense. There’s also a touch of redemption, when Effi is given support by a very forgiving neighbour.

Clearly, a Welsh language polemic isn’t going to compete with the likes of Toy Story 5 or The World Cup for the public’s attention, but for those who like gritty, hard-hitting drama, this is well worth consideration.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Disclosure Day

12/06/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

In 1974, I went to the cinema to watch Sugarland Express, the debut movie from new kid on the block, Steven Spielberg. In the review I subsequently wrote, I probably said something to the effect that here was a young man with a bright future ahead of him. I could have had no inkling back then that, in just one year’s time, a film called Jaws would be a complete game-changer and that it would herald the arrival of a cinematic behemoth. Spielberg is now in his eightieth year and, over the decades, has accrued one of the most impressive backlists of all time. Okay, there are a few duds in there (The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I’m looking at you) but, happily, the misfires have been few and far between. Having said that, I am quite unprepared for just how good Disclosure Day is.

First things first. It’s pointless to give too much information about the actual plot because, on paper, it does sound faintly preposterous. But part of the film’s strength is the way it flings viewers headlong into what seems like an unfathomable mystery and keeps us guessing as to where the story is headed, a position it maintains until the final furlong. And then, in that last stretch, it somehow manages to create a sense of pure wonder, recalling earlier hits like Close Encounters and ET.

The story begins in 2026, and the world stands poised on the brink of what looks suspiciously like World War 3. (Too close to home?) We are in the audience at a wrestling match, where we witness Dr Daniel Kellner (Josh O’ Connor) being arrested for theft – though at this stage, we have no idea what he’s supposed to have stolen. He is confronted by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the head of a powerful and secretive government organisation called Wardex, and we learn that Scanlon is Daniel’s former employer. Daniel manages to escape and goes on the run with his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), but even she doesn’t know what he’s accused of.

The action cuts to Kansas, where TV weather girl Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) unexpectedly starts speaking in tongues on live TV – and shortly thereafter, discovers that she has inherited incredible skills. It’s clear that she and Daniel are linked somehow – but it’s quite some time before I begin to suspect that the two of them will be the ones to make the titular disclosure that will resolve decades of lies and subterfuge…

Disclosure Day is a powerful and compelling drama that has about it something of those paranoid 70s Cold War thrillers, where two opposing forces struggle for supremacy. Leading the fight for disclosure is Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), another former Wardex employee, who seems prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the truth is handed to the public. Scanlon and his team are the ones who want to keep everybody in the dark, convinced that ordinary people will be unable to accept the truth without losing their collective minds. While all the actors here do exemplary work, Blunt is required to handle most of the heavy lifting, going through a whole range of personas as the various twists and turns of David Keopp’s script – co-written with Spielberg – demands ever more of her. I’ve long been convinced she’s a terrific actor and here she finally gets the chance to really prove it.

And it’s not all talk: there are hair-raising action set pieces (a car/train interface is a particular high point); a scary sequence from Margaret’s childhood that has an eerie prescience; and recreations of key events in UFO folklore (and yes, I’m aware the American government prefers the term UAP – Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon). Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography looks absolutely exquisite and veteran composer John Williams actually came out of retirement to provide another of his stirring scores. What’s not to like?

Whether this will bring in the punters is yet to be determined. I hope so. It’s proper grown-up filmmaking of the kind we don’t often see these days but it doesn’t help that it arrives in UK cinemas just as World Cup fever erupts. But those who have given up on Spielberg after recent more modest efforts are sure to find much to enjoy here.

And as ever, this is a big concept that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen available.

4.7 stars

Philip Caveney

Savage House

06/06/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

It’s 1817 and England is beset by both a Jacobite uprising and a massive pox outbreak – and the Savages are in dire straits. Oh sure, they live in a great big mansion, replete with massive oil paintings and fancy gardens, but Sir Chauncy Savage (Richard E Grant) is an utter rake and has somehow managed to gamble away all of the land that surrounds the house. Now his creditors are closing in on him. 

All that’s left of real value are Lady Savage (Claire Foy)’s family jewels. Luckily, despite the couple’s differences – and the fact that they choose to seek sexual gratification with their servants, Dorothy (Bel Powley) and Reginald (Jack Farthing) – the Savages clearly love each other. Meanwhile, their daughter, Fanny (Kila Lord Cassiday), concentrates on tending to the family of mice living in her doll’s house and preparing for an upcoming total eclipse of the sun, which many believe will signal unprecedented changes.

Sir Chauncy, we are told by The Narrator (Robert Bathurst), is something of an imposter, the son of a humble swineherd, while Lady S is from proper aristocracy. (The idea that working-class people aren’t allowed to aspire to nice things is an unpleasant subtext that writer/director Peter Glanz seems to ram home at every opportunity, mostly via the image of a huge pig wandering around the rooms of the Savage’s house.)

Things are beginning to look desperate. Then out of the blue, word arrives that the celebrated Duke and Duchess of Devonshire have requested permission to dine and sleep at Savage House in ten days time. Chauncy spots an all-important opportunity to improve his social standing and persuades his wife that they must not miss out. The aforementioned jewels are sold and Dorothy and Reginald are put to work sprucing the place up – though we soon discover that they have devious plans of their own…

Savage House is something of a mixed bag. Both Grant and Foy are wonderful in their roles, with Grant in particular revelling in the unhinged nature of Chauncy, who invites disaster at every turn. A scene where he performs a drunken dance despite suffering agonising gout is a high point – as is a duelling sequence where Adriano Goldman’s cinematography briefly evokes the grandeur of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. There’s also a wonderful orchestral score of classical compositions, though this too reminds me of an earlier (and better) film – Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract. 

The film also seems obsessed with focusing on the most unpleasant aspects of life in the 1800s. It never misses the opportunity to focus on piles of steaming excrement, streams of rancid pus, wriggling leeches and acts of lewd sex. A scene where a gangrenous limb is sawn off is shown in such unflinching detail that I almost feel the need to cover my eyes. Those who are squeamish about vermin may find themselves in similar straits at regular intervals. (Susan, I’m looking at you!)

As one disaster after another assails Chauncy’s boundless ambitions, and his unfettered hubris leads him inexorably to a tragic conclusion, I find myself hoping for a single ray of sunshine to pierce the unremitting gloom. But sadly, that isn’t allowed to happen – and the bleak ending feels disappointingly flat as a consequence. 

We leave the cinema discussing potential ways that such illumination might have been achieved, but the film is already in the cinemas where it is sure to divide audiences. Though it occasionally hits the heights, one thing’s for certain. Savage House isn’t short of ambition.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Backrooms

02/06/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Contemporary horror films by Gen Z filmmakers seem to be soaring to ever-new heights. Just last week, twenty-six-year-old Curry Barker’s Obsession proved a breakout hit on a budget that was just short of a million dollars, meaning that it was able to move into profit on its release day. More interestingly, the film bucked the usual trend by taking even more on its second week, buoyed by good word of mouth.

Now twenty-year-old Kane Parsons’ Backrooms (developed from one of the ‘creepy pasta’ shorts he’s been posting on YouTube since his teens) scores an even bigger opening. It does boast a budget of ten million (though this is peanuts compared to the excesses of most contemporary Hollywood blockbusters) but once again, premier production company A24 have spotted a filmmaker’s potential and granted them the opportunity to fulfil it. While Obsession has its roots in classic horror story, The Monkey’s Paw, Backrooms‘ closest cousin could arguably be Alice in Wonderland – if that book were transposed to the early 1990s and had moments of absolute terror.

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is the manager of Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, a down-at-heel furniture store, which despite Clark’s ramshackle attempts at a promotional video, appears to be struggling to entice any customers over the threshold. After a messy break up with his wife, Clark is actually sleeping in the store. He occasionally drives off for a session with his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), who is trying to explore Clark’s anger issues – but she has some psychological baggage of her own, which she’s been lugging around since childhood.

Meanwhile, Clark is having major problems with the store’s electricity supply and, when investigating some strange noises in the basement, he discovers a portal that takes him to the backrooms of the title, a series of interconnecting sickly-yellow enclosures seemingly designed by Escher and heaped here and there with piles of furniture that defy all logic.

When Clark subsequently tells Mary about his new discovery, she’s understandably worried about his state of mind…

Backrooms is an incredibly immersive and occasionally heart-stopping film, that somehow manages to conjure moments of absolute dread from the smallest things: a muffled noise; a briefly glimpsed figure; a narrow opening a character is required to squeeze through. It’s all I can do not to shout warnings to the luckless fools who wander in there, despite knowing only too well that if I found a wall I could walk through, I’d most surely want to do it, again and again.

Co-written by Parsons with Will Soodik, the film boasts an incisive script which is open to interpretation, but nonetheless utterly affecting. The Jungian ‘Dream House’ metaphor is made frighteningly real, as the terrors herein bubble up from the central characters’ own psyches – and are all the more disturbing because of that. As the film careers confidently onwards, it carries me helplessly along with it.

A final revelation confirms a devastating truth: that we are all prisoners of whatever bad things happened to us back down the line. Parsons would appear to have a promising (and lucrative) film career ahead of him and on the strength of Backrooms, I’ll be first in the queue to see whatever he comes up with next. There’s already talk of a ‘Backrooms 2‘ but I for one hope it’ll be something entirely different.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Tuner

30/05/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Tuner is hard to categorise. Part comedy, part love story, part thriller, it steps confidently from genre to genre but, perhaps more importantly, it works brilliantly in all of them.

Niki (Leo Woodall) is afflicted by the awful condition know as hyperacusis, which means that loud noises are like torture to him. This obliges him to go around New York City wearing ear protectors at all times. Once a promising musician, he still possesses the unerring ability to recognise any musical note and he now works alongside his employer and surrogate father, Harry (Dustin Hoffman), tuning pianos in a whole range of different settings.

When Harry accidentally locks something in his safe and forgets the combination, Niki realises that, if he removes his ear protectors, he can hear the tiniest sounds when he fiddles with the lock, a skill that, after a little practice, gives him the ability to crack safes. In a café, Niki and Harry bump into Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), an ambitious music student, currently at work on an important piano composition. Harry’s audacious attempt to pair the two of them up is initially unsuccessful, but it’s clear that something is going to happen between them.

And then chance places Niki into the orbit of Uri (Lior Raz) and his criminal gang.

Once aware of Niki’s newfound talent, Uri tells him that, if he ever needs to make some real money, he should give him a call. Niki has no intention of taking him up on the offer… until Harry suddenly falls ill and he and his wife, Marla (Tovah Feldshuh), lack the necessary funds to pay the hospital bill…

Question: how many crimes would be instantly erased in America if they had anything like a National Health Service?

Directed and co-written by Daniel Roher (with Robert Ramsey), Tuner carries me along with it, making me laugh out loud in its earlier sections before piling on the suspense as Niki becomes increasingly embroiled in criminal activity. It’s clear from early on that our protagonist is making some terrible decisions and yet his actions are always believable.

While Niki doesn’t have an awful lot to say for himself, Woodall manages to eloquently convey his inner turmoil as he heads deeper and deeper into the brown stuff and Tuner confirms the actor’s rising status as a leading man. Hoffman may not have an awful lot to do here, but has enough screentime to convey Harry’s utterly loveable character. Feldshuh and Liu are both excellent in their respective roles and even the villains of the piece, though suitably horrible when they want to be, are much more nuanced than we’ve come to expect of film baddies.

And then there’s the sound design, with original compositions by Will Bates, and a whole team of engineers recreating the accentuated sounds that Niki experiences when those ear protectors come off. When an alarm sounds, it’s utterly shocking. In the final stretches there’s an assured build up to a climactic musical scene, which I find genuinely thrilling and the film ends with what’s probably the funniest closing line I’ve heard in a very long time.

As I said earlier, this is hard to categorise, but this note-perfect piece is ridiculously easy to score.

5 stars

Philip Caveney