Lee Cronin’s The Mummy ★★★★☆
Directed by Lee Cronin. Starring Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Verónica Falcón. 18 cert, gen release, 134 min
The possessive credit, no less. Cronin, the Irish director of The Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise, has tackled the perennially tricky issue of making the shambling Mummy interesting by turning his film into a possessed-child horror decorated with faux Middle Eastern exoticism. Don’t worry. There is a mummy. There are bandages. There is a sarcophagus. But the horror derives mostly from young Grace, as daughter to Reynor and Costa, crawling up the walls and vomiting bile. A blast if you like your horror propulsive, transgressive and (in a good way) nauseating. Full review DC
Kiss of the Spider Woman ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Bill Condon. Starring Diego Luna, Tonatiuh, Jennifer Lopez, Bruno Bichir, Josefina Scaglione, Aline Mayagoitia.15A cert, gen release, 128 min
During the Argentinean dictatorship, Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a window-dresser who identifies as female, is imprisoned for “public indecency”, with a dour political prisoner named Valentin (Luna) as his unhappy cellmate. The former entertains the latter by recounting an ancient movie that stars a glamorous star (Lopez) as socialite and titular semi-arachnid. Condon’s unthreatening take on Kander and Ebb’s wan musical version of an influential Manuel Puig novel (and Oscar-winning film) profits from Lopez’s pipes, but that is not enough to paper over deficiencies in the source show. This from the men who brought us Cabaret and Chicago? Full review DC
The Wizard of the Kremlin ★★★☆☆
Directed by Olivier Assayas. Starring Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, Will Keen, Jeffrey Wright, Jude Law. 15A cert, general release, 137 min
Assayas, adapting Giuliano da Empoli’s novel, tackles the rise of Vladimir Putin (Law) through the person of a fictionalised éminence grise (Dano). For all the clumsy voiceover, Dano remains a twinkling enigma, even if the script, written by the director and Emmanuel Carrère, reduces him to more of a witness than a participant. This is principally a showcase for Law’s increasingly impressive late-career metamorphosis. He brings a strikingly controlled energy to his portrayal of Putin as an indifferent, weaponised civil servant. A dense account of power and media manipulation, even if it too often mistakes exposition for drama. Full review TB
The Blue Trail ★★★★☆
Directed by Gabriel Mascaro. Starring Denise Weinberg, Rodrigo Santoro, Miriam Socorrás. 15A cert, gen release, 96 min
This trippy lo-fi sci-fi, a sensation in its native Brazil, imagines a near-future in which ageing is quietly criminalised. Reach 77 and you’re honoured with golden laurels, then stripped of your autonomy and sent to colonies from which no one returns. Blending dystopian sci-fi with real-world concerns about elder care, Mascaro’s film stealthily world-builds, introducing government permits for travel and “wrinkle wagons” rounding up the elderly. Original. Humane. Full review TB