Love, Simon (12A)
Directed by Greg Berlanti
★★★★

It has been long in coming but finally Hollywood's first teenage gay rom com which is sweet, funny, totally disarming and an entertaining joy.

Based on Becky Albertalli’s young adult novel it centres on 17-year-old Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) who hasn't told his liberal parents (Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel) or his friends his greatest secret that he is gay. In the meanwhile he falls for an anonymous classmate online.

When he is threatened and blackmailed with being outed by the obnoxious school idiot (Logan Miller) it forces him to come to terms with his real identity.
With its John Hughes undertones director Greg Berlanti delivers a rich and smart coming of age tale that most teenagers, regardless of their sexuality, will be able to relate to.

As it explores teen love, treachery and betrayal and teenagers accepting who they are as they navigate the minefield that is high school with the added pressures of social media and cyber bullying.
The charismatic Robinson (Jurassic World) carries the whole film beautifully with his nuanced performance which captures Simon's vulnerability, awkwardness and self doubt.

The film's mantra is “everyone deserves a great love story” and you can't help rooting for Simon to get his very own.
The question is why it has taken Hollywood so long.

A Quiet Place (15)
Directed by John Krasinski
★★★★★

Never has the sight of a pregnant woman instilled so much fear and sheer panic as in this dark and brutal horror film about a family whose survival is dependent on them not making a sound.

The reason’s human-eating alien creatures who have invaded the planet that will “hunt you as soon as they hear you”

Actor John Krasinski's impressive directorial debut film is a master-class in suspense and bone-chilling frights, where less is more and without anyone uttering barely a word throughout. Most of the conversations are conducted in sign language which are subtitled — must be a first for a Hollywood horror — while sound plays a prominent yet sinister role.

It opens with a killer scene that sets the hair-raising tone for the rest of this terrifying horror set in a post-apocalyptic world. I saw members of the audience cowering in their seats on total edge and holding their breath desperate not to make a sound.
 

Krasinski, who also co-wrote the screenplay, stars alongside his real-life wife Emily Blunt as her on-screen husband.

Blunt is extraordinary as a mother of three who desperately keeps her family safe as the impending birth of her baby looms ever closer. Every gamut of emotion and thought is reflected on her face which must be one of the most expressive in cinema today.

For someone who says he hates horror films Krasinski seems a natural and I can't wait to see what genre he tackles next.
MD

I Kill Giants (12A)
Directed by Anders Walter
★★★★

With a powerhouse performance by its young leading lady Madison Wolfe, this is a haunting and thought-provoking drama about a teen who is on a mission to protect her home town from an invasion of monstrous giants.

Is the eccentric bunny-ears-wearing (in honour of her spirit guide) Barbara really a giant killer or is her fantastical quest just a means to escape her troubled school and home life?

Based on Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura's acclaimed graphic novel, this is a captivating and gripping surreal tale about a young girl who is forced to face her fears and demons with the help of her new-found friend Sophia (Sydney Wade) and school therapist (Zoe Saldana).

Reminiscent of A Monster Calls there is clearly more to this slow-burning drama than meets the eye as it walks a fine line between reality and fantasy.
MD

Wonderstruck (12A)
Directed by Todd Haynes
★★★

Todd Haynes delivered his last movie — the influential lesbian romance Carol — in 2015.

And now he returns to New York again for this imaginative but eventually rather disappointing adaptation of Brian Selznick’s popular 2011 novel.  

Here, Selznick, whose The Invention of Hugo Cabret was filmed as Hugo by Martin Scorsese, adapted his own novel for Haynes who delivers a fascinating, technically magnificent story that, while technically impressive on all counts, never quite decides whether it’s a children’s picture or an impressive display of Haynes’s undoubted cinematic dexterity.
 

Wonderstuck interweaves the stories of two children searching for the truth of their lives, switching back and forth between their individual narratives.

Haynes creates a powerful nightmare sequence of wolves pursuing young Ben (Oakes Fegley) who, in 1977, traumatised by his mother’s death in a car crash, suffering hearing loss and living with his uncle’s family, runs away from Minnesota to New York to follow clues that may lead to his finding his father.

And, ingeniously, they meet, bond and finally find what they are seeking in Manhattan’s exotic Museum of Natural History.

Haynes knits in a parallel story in which deaf youngster Rose (Millicent Simmonds) who, obsessed with her silent film star mother Liliian Mayhew (Julianne Moore), travels from Hoboken, New Jersey, to New York in 1927 so that she can see her mother performing on the Broadway stage.

While Haynes’s technical skills are well supported — Carter Burwell’s score, Sandy Powell’s evocative costumes, atmospheric cinematography and Mark Friedberg’s vivid production design are particularly effective — and both youngsters give convincing and appropriately moving portrayals, I found it difficult to decide in the final analysis if Wonderstruck is rather more an undoubtedly fascinating exercise in auteuristic filmmaking at its most personal rather than an entirely acceptable children’s film.

Alan Frank

Thoroughbreds (15)
Directed by Cory Finley
★★★★★

Corey Finley initially wrote this outstanding skin-stretching suspenser for the stage.

Fortuitously, however, he reworked it as a film and, making an exceptional movie directorial debut, delivers a not-to-be-missed chiller that never relaxes its grip after introducing teenager Amanda (Olivia Cooke) as a horse killer.

Amanda then reunites with teenage former friend Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) in her posh Connecticut home where, after slowly bonding again, the girls plan to kill Lily’s stepfather drug-dealer Tim (Anton Yelchin).

Finley never shows his hand before playing his unforgettable thrill-and-chill cards and his three leads never put a frame wrong while scraping your nerves raw and keeping you wondering what happens next.

The performances are picture perfect. So too are Lyle Vincent’s wide-screen cinematography and Erik Friedlander‘s distinctive drums and cello score.

You miss these unmissable 82 minutes at your peril.
AF

Ghost Stories (15)
★★★

Blending Hammer-horror style shocks and multiple tales of dread Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, writer-directors Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman deliver a low-budget, reasonably high chill factor scare show.

The film, adapted from their Olivier-nominated stage success, starts with sceptic professor Nyman (reprising his stage role) exposing a fake medium during his phoney TV show.

But his scepticism faces mounting pressure when, receiving details of three unsettling, apparently inexplicable cases of paranormal shock, he sets out to investigate and expose them.

Did ghosts terrorise night watchman Matthews (Paul Whitehouse) as he patrolled an asylum?

Did troubled teenager Simon (Alex Lawther) fall apart after a late-night encounter of the supernatural kind on a desolate country road?

And do the spectres of his dead wife and child derange banker Martin Freeman, whose performance steals the show.

While it sometimes rather resembles episodes of a TV series than a movie, it still chills.
AF

Death Wish (15)
Director:  Eli Roth
★★★★★

In 1974, Death Wish hit cinemagoers’ sensibilities with the impact of a .45 and brought Charles Bronson stardom.

Now director Eli Roth and screenwriter Joe Carnahan revive Bruce Willis’s action-man career with a slam-bang, adrenaline-drenched update and the visceral impact of a .45.

Location switches from New York to crime-ridden Chicago where surgeon Paul Kersey Willis — convincing as medic and murderer — turns relentless vigilante after home invaders kill his wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and leave his teenage daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) in a coma.

While cops assure him: “We’re going to get this guy,” Willis doesn’t wait and, wearing a hoodie and a grim expression, turns lethal avenger who — guardian angel or grim reaper — seeks bloody vengeance.

Cinematic intellectuals beware! Willis and al concerned simply deliver a powerhouse action thriller expertly designed to give paying action-enjoying moviegoers their money’s worth — and more!
AF