’Unlocked’

With a great cast and the final film of multi-award winning director Michael Apted, Unlocked sadly promised more than it delivered in its solid, routine espionage story.

Guilt at failing to prevent a terrorist bombing in Paris several years earlier, specialist CIA interrogator Alice Racine (Noomi Rapace) finds a degree of solace as a caseworker based in East London. Providing information to MI5 unit leader Emily Knowles (Toni Collette) has seen a strong rapport develop between the two women. But the threat of biological attack sees Racine lured back into the field, made the more urgent by the attempt on her life and the killing of friend and former boss, Eric Lasch (Michael Douglas).

Plenty of twists and turns as double crossing seems to be the order of the day. Racine stays ahead of the game – just – but it takes all her wits to do so as she’s not too sure who to trust. It’s engaging enough in its thrills but the lack of tension ultimately leaves a ‘so-what’ aftertaste – and the knowledge that the set up for the sequel just ain’t gonna happen.

Rating: 52%

Director: Michael Apted (Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

Writer: Peter O’Brien

Main cast: Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Prometheus), Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings, Troy), Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense, Nightmare Alley)

’The Pod Generation’

Slight but intelligent, a not-so-distant future sees AI embraced and where the New York-based Pegasuz corporation offers pregnancy through artificial wombs or pods.

A rising tech company executive, Rachel (Emilia Clarke) is keen to start a family with husband Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor). But botanist Alvy prefers the natual way rather than through the technology of The Womb Center. With promotion at work and a coveted spot at the Center becoming available, Rachel needs to persuade her reluctant husband. Shared pregnancy duties and no physical discomfort or loss of income has broad appeal to both – but things are not quite so clear cut as the immensely likeable couple eventually sign up for.

With more than a nod towards Black Mirror, The Pod Generation as written and directed by Sophie Barthes is a perceptive zeitgeist feature. With restrained and convincing production design (Clem Price Thomas), this technological future is only too believable. The bigger issues and ideas are not always fully explored but Barthes’ film is a thoughtful, wry reflection on parenthood and responsibility within pregnancy.

Rating: 59%

Director: Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls, Madame Bovary)

Writer: Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls, Madame Bovary)

Main cast: Emilia Clarke (Me Before You, TV’s Game of Thrones), Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind), Rosalie Craig (London Road, TV’s Anatomy of a Scandal)

‘The Last King of Scotland’

Towering central performance by Forest Whitaker captures the unhinged charm and tyrannical threat of Idi Amin, corrupt president of Uganda throughout the 1970s.

A recent medical graduate, the last thing Nic Garrigan (James McAvoy) wants to do is follow in his father’s footsteps with a safe practice in rural Scotland. Volunteering to work in a missionary clinic in Uganda, an unexpected encounter with Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) on the presidential campaign results in a very different direction for the idealist. On Amin’s election victory, Garrigan is summoned to be the president’s personal physician. Bestowed with gifts and favours, he refuses to accept the accusations of violence and corruption levelled at Amin, until his links with the president’s youngest wife Kay (Kerry Washington) puts him in personal danger.

Volatile and at times unquestionably thrilling, The Last King of Scotland is an episodic sweep of recent Ugandan history as Garrigan learns to tread on egg shells around his benefactor. Capturing the exuberance of a country renewed by Amin’s election through by fear at the film’s end, it never quite reaches the same plateau as the fearless Whitaker.

Winner of Oscar for best actor in 2007

Rating: 62%

Director: Kevin Macdonald (The Mauritanian, One Day in September)

Writer: Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), Jeremy Brock (Here I Live Now, Mrs Brown)

Main cast: Forest Whitaker (The Butler, Respect), James McAvoy (Split, Atonement), Kerry Washington (Django Unchained, TV’s Little Fires Everywhere)

’Deception’ (Tromperie)

An elegant, fractured, dialogue-based chamber piece, a perfect example of the craft of filmmaking through intimacy of performance, camera work, lighting and editing as a successful writer looks to the relationships in his life. Yet, ultimately, the result is somewhat inert and tedious.

An adaptation of the experimental novel by Philip Roth, Philip (Denis Podalydès) converses over several years with various women in his life – with the unnamed L’amante anglaise (Léa Seydoux) dominant. A luminous contrivance of sex, love and (dis)loyalty in a Notting Hill studio, Hampstead home or New York hospital, Deception is a literary and cinematic bon mot as Philip intellectualises his infidelities, his writings, his Judaism.

Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, Deception is deceptively seductive centred around a mesmerising performance by Seydoux, muse, lover and intellectual match to the writer. Less convincing is a Philip with charm but lacking the rigour and magnetism of the philanderer he is meant to be.

Rating: 59%

Director: Arnaud Desplechin (My Golden Days, The Sentinel)

Writer: Arnaud Desplechin (My Golden Days, Esther Kahn), Julie Peyr (Brother and Sister, Who You Think I Am) – adapted from the Philip Roth novel

Main cast: Denis Podalydès (Caché, An Officer and a Spy), Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die, Blue is the Warmest Colour), Emmanuelle Devos (Coco Before Chanel, Kings & Queens)

’All of Us Strangers’

Haunting and lyrical, a moment of deeply personal, heartfelt beauty as, deeply lonely, Adam finds ways to explore his long-repressed, pre-teenage grief of losing his parents in a car accident.

One of very few tenants in a new apartment building, writer Adam (Andrew Scott) feels isolated from the world around him. He revisits the suburban London family home of his childhood, finding solace as an adult through conversations, singularly or together, with his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy). Meeting new tenant Harry (Paul Mescal) helps Adam’s journey as the two become lovers, sharing each other’s sense of disconnect.

Poignant and bittersweet in its claustrophobic unfolding by writer/director Andrew Haigh, All Of Us Strangers is a true testament to the power of love.

Rating: 87%

Director: Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete, 45 Years)

Writer: Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete, 45 Years) – adapted from the novel by Taichi Yamada

Main cast: Andrew Scott (Spectre, Pride), Paul Mescal (Aftersun, Foe), Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool), Claire Foy (First Man, Women Talking)

‘The Equalizer 3’

Violent and bloody, The Equalizer 3 continues to see ex-DIA special ops Robert McCall right wrongs, following the money trail of one of his Boston taxi passengers being defrauded of his life savings.

A vineyard in Sicily is littered with dead bodies, millions of Euros and vast quantities of Fenethylline, McCall (Denzel Washington) leaving his calling card from the off. But shot in the process, he escapes to the Italian mainland where he’s helped, no questions asked, by local doctor Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone) in the coastal village of Altamonte. Slowly recuperating, McCall puts an anonymous call into CIA agent Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning), tipping her off about Sicily. But the idyll of the Amalfi coast is soon tested as the Naples-based Vincent Quaranta (Andrea Scarduzio), head of the local Camorra, looks to commercial development along the coast, forcing locals out of town. But McCall is not the man to sit idly by as gangs of henchmen terrorise the town.

Moral justice is dished out by the bucketload as McCall looks to support the town he’s been made to feel so welcome. As with previous storylines, it’s bloody and it’s violent – but, the final film in the trilogy, it’s also full of style, energy and, in the relationships within the town, a warm humanity.

Rating: 68%

Director: Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer, Emancipation)

Writer: Richard Wenk (The Equalizer, The Mechanic)

Main cast: Denzel Washington (The Equalizer, Fences), Dakota Fanning (Ocean’s Eight, American Pastoral), Gaia Scodellaro (State of Consciousness, Promises)

The Equalizer

The Equalizer 2

’Transit’

As a modern-day Paris is invaded by foreign troops, German refugee Georg desperately searches for a way to flee south to the port of Marseille.

With Paris occupied and ‘undesirables’ rounded up, as a member of the resitance Georg (Franz Rogowski) must head south, helping an injured colleague reach his wife and child in Marseille. By chance able to assume the identity of a deceased writer and with it a visa for Mexico, Georg finds himself on arrival at the port city conflicted. Crammed with people desperate to leave, Marseille is increasingly on the edge – with the invading troops closing in as they too head south. Whilst waiting for the departure date, so Georg comes into contact with the writer’s enigmatic wife, Marie (Paula Beer).

There’s a haunting timelessness to Christian Petzold’s beguiling labyrinth of a movie – the evocation of a World War II narrative transposed to the not-too-distant future that is as much a commentary about the now as it is about the past. Engrossing.

Rating: 81%

Director: Christian Petzold (Yella, Phoenix)

Writer: Christian Petzold (Yella, Phoenix) – based on th enovel by Anna Seghers

Main cast: Franz Rogowski (Victoria, A Hidden Life), Paula Beer (Undine, Frantz), Godehard Giese (A Cure For Wellness, TV’s Babylon Berlin)

‘Hitchcock’

Enjoyable if, considering the cast, underwhelming as the marriage between Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter/editor Alma Reville is explored whilst struggling to get the financial backing for the making of Psycho.

Loved by critics but not always the box-office, Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) struggles to secure funding for his next film, the adaptation of a lurid, best selling horror novel. Not only the studio but also the censors have considerable concern. Self-financing and casting the unknown Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) as lead adds extra strain – especially when Alma (Helen Mirren) tires of her husband’s manipulation of his actresses and decides to collaborate with Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston) on a project of her own.

It’s a good old-fashioned storytelling but, in spite of the strong presence of an empathic Helen Mirren, Sacha Gervasi’s film never quite achieves its full potential. Hitchcock took a huge gamble with Psycho, the full tension of which never fully comes across in this safe, under-developed story.

Nominated for 2013 Oscar for best make-up and hair

Rating: 60%

Director: Sacha Gervasi (Anvil, November Criminals)

Writer: John J. McLaughlin (Black Swan, Parker) – based on the book by Stephen Rebello

Main cast: Anthony Hopkins (The Father, The Two Popes), Helen Mirren (The Queen, Gosford Park), Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation, Marriage Story)

’The Lost Leonardo’

From a seemingly inconsequential auction house in New Orleans and a painting of Salvator Mundi attributed to the School of Leonardo developed into global controversy in the art world and enormous sums of money changing hands.

Betrayal, treachery, power, greed feature as two New York art dealers purchased the work in 2005, sight unseen, for $1,200 in the expectation it was underpriced. In its restoration over several years by the world renowned Dianne Modestini, she discovered enough to believe it to be by da Vinci himself. Experts were brought in, the National Gallery in London exhibited it their blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci exhibition – but some refused to autheticate it. But even with so much doubt, what was dubbed the Male Mona Lisa eventually sold via Sotheby’s to industrialist turned art dealer Yves Boulier who quickly sold it on to Russian billionaire and collector Dmitry Rybolovlev. The deal saw Boulier make almost $40 million. But he was to pay the price. And the work once more turned up at Sotheby’s.

No spoilers but the work sold for an astronomical sum – and promptly disappeared into the collection of its buyer. Mystery and intrigue continues to surround the painting – Modestini still stands by her initial evaluation but many other individuals and institutions are less sure, not helped by the lack of access to the work and amount of restoration undertaken. It’s an enthralling documentary of art as a commodity and the brokering of power and expertise.

Rating: 70%

Director: Andreas Koefoed (Ballroom Dancer, At Home in the World)

‘Black Swan’

A powerful central performance by Natalie Portman as the stress of being selected to dance the lead in Swan Lake sees an already unstable young ballerina pushed to breaking point.

Living at home with an ambitious mother (Barbara Hershey), Nina (Portman) is pushing for a break in the highly competitive New York Ballet. Technically perfect and an easy choice for the White Swan, artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) demands more grit and passion from Nina for the dual role of the Black Swan. Pushed to the edge, terrified of being replaced by newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis), Nina loses her grip on the world around her.

A riveting, full-on melodrama, lurid in its ambition, intense in its presentation as Nina ultimately battles with herself in director Darren Aronofsky’s powerful and obsessive psychosexual thriller.

Nominated for 5 Oscars in 2011 including best film, director, cinematography – won 1 (best actress)

Rating: 80%

Director: Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, The Whale)

Writer: Mark Heyman (The Wrestler, The Skeleton Twins), Andres Heinz, John J. McLaughlin (Hitchcock, Parker)

Main cast: Natalie Portman (Thor, Jackie), Mila Kunis (Bad Moms, Luckiest Girl Alive), Vincent Cassel (La haine, Gauguin)