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film^ 12-18 Aug 2017^ guide^22

Five of the best

1

A Ghost Story (12A) (David

Lowery, 2017, US) 92 mins.

The difficult-to-define director

of Disney film Pete’s Dragon

returns with this cosmic and

sometimes comic exploration

of human transience. Rooney

Mara and Casey Affleck star,

but it’s the wordless bedsheet-

wearing spectre that everyone’s

talking about. Who’s really under

there? Affleck? A stunt double?

Or perhaps pop phoenix Kesha,

who cameos elsewhere.

2

Atomic Blonde (15) (David

Leitch, 2017, Ger/Swe/US),

115 mins.

Subject Atomic Blonde to a

feminist critique and it falls

down faster than one of its

attacking gangs of anonymous

henchmen, but Leitch’s action

thriller sure looks swish.

Charlize Theron stars as an

anachronistically styled MI6

agent in 1980s Berlin.

3

Le Doulos (12) (Jean-Pierre

Melville, 1962, Fra/Ita)

109 mins.

Jean-Paul Belmondo makes

snitching look sexy in a new

4K restoration of Melville’s

classic crime thriller. This

French film is the missing link

Out now

• Shin Godzilla
  (12A) (Hideaki Anno,
  Shinji Higuchi, 2016,
  Japan) 120 mins.
  With nuclear annihilation
  once again pending, it’s
  time to revive the classic
  monster movie.


• Annabelle: Creation
  (15) (David F Sandberg,
  2017, US) 109 mins.
  This superior prequel to
  2014’s Annabelle tells
  the origin story of that
  creepy, creepy doll.


• My Blind Date
  With Life (15) (Marc
  Rothemund, 2017, Ger)
  111 mins.
  A partially sighted man
  won’t give up on his
  dreams in the kind of
  sentimental comedy
  that gives Hollywood
  a bad name (only this
  is German).


• Overdrive (12A)
  (Antonio Negret, 2017,
  Fra/US) 93 mins.
  A France-set Fast and
  Furious wannabe,
  about two car-thieving
  brothers.


• Tom of Finland (18)
  (Dome Karukoski, 2017,
  Fin/Swe/Den/Ger/US)
  114 mins.
  A curiously chaste biopic
  of the erotic artist-
  turned-LGBT icon.


• Toilet: Ek Prem Katha
  (12A), (Shree Narayan
  Singh, 2017, Ind)
  155 mins.
  A newlywed couple
  are driven apart by their
  lack of loo access in this
  Hindi romcom.


• The Nut Job 2: Nutty
  By Nature (U) (Carl
  Brunker, 2017, Can/S Kor/
  US) 91 mins.
  Sub-par animation with
  the voices of Will Arnett
  and Katherine Heigl.

between 1931’s The Public

Enemy and Tarantino’s Reservoir

Dogs, though both have more

comprehensible plots. Still,

when a film is as chic as this, it

would be gauche to quibble.

4

Step (PG) (Amanda Lipitz,

2017, US) 84 mins.

Not another in the Step Up

franchise, but an uplifting

documentary about the lives

of a Baltimore dance team. It

has charm, training montages

and plenty of characters worth

rooting for. It’s only depressing

that the subtext of these docs –

in low-income black America,

be exceptional or be ignored –

remains mostly unchanged since

1994’s Hoop Dreams.

5

The Big Sick (15) (Michael

Showalter, 2017, US)

120 mins.

Boy meets girl, girls slips into a

coma , boy continues seeing her

anyway. Based on the real-life

courtship of star Kumail Nanjiani

and his wife, co-writer Emily V

Gordon, The Big Sick isn’t the

usual stuff of romance, but its

emotional honesty makes it the

year’s stand-out romcom.

Ellen E Jones

Sheet happens

Rooney Mara

and spectral

housemate in

A Ghost Story

BRET CURRY