Just An Illusion (12A)
Directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano
★★★★☆

THIS heartwarming, nostalgia-tinged coming of age story blends picaresque misadventure, sly wit and the comedy of cringe. 

It’s the mid-1980s, in a Parisian suburb. Vincent, about to turn 13, hangs out with his mates, prepares for his bar mitzvah, tries to avoid his parents’ relentless bickering and feels pangs of attraction for a girl who can’t remember his name.

His domineering older brother, Arnaud, with whom he shares a cramped bedroom, makes a living trading bootleg concert tapes.

Simon Boublil’s controlled depiction of Vincent’s adolescent yearning and confusion avoids goofiness and sentimentality. His reflections on his identity – Jewish, African and French – are coolly but powerfully delivered. 

The plot is packed with incident. There’s the mysterious disappearance of a rented soft porn video, a calamitous flirtation with shoplifting, and the submission of a school assignment that creates a minor scandal.

Louis Garrel and Camille Cottin turn in bravura comic performances as Victor’s parents, Yves and Sandrine. Yves – charming, capricious and petulant – conceals his recent redundancy and borrows money from Arnaud; Sandrine works as a secretary but takes an IT course and applies for managerial jobs. Her energy is captured in a joyfully uninhibited dance round the family flat to the Pointer Sisters’ I’m So Excited. It’s an impressive bit of physical comedy.

There’s one clunky scene – a business meeting conducted entirely in corporate cliches – but the rest of the writing is sharp and original. 

Funny and life affirming, Just An Illusion makes telling observations about social justice, racism and employment.
AH
In cinemas September 11

Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Directed by Grant Gee
★★★★★

BILL EVANS, legendary jazz pianist, is brought to claustrophobic life in Grant Gee’s absorbing, dreamlike, jarring whisper of a movie.

We spent most of our time in 1961’s stark monochrome, as Evans — played with masterful constraint by Anders Danielsen Lie — recovers from the death of his bassist Scott LaFaro, and drifts through grief in passive non-committal agreement. Without music, he is barely there.

Bill Pullman brings memorable, brash self-delusion as Evans’s retired father, himself a Willy Loman-style meditation on the American Dream. Evans is a junkie, and his partner, Ellaine Schultz (Valene Kane), is treated abominably but is as trapped as everyone else.

With garish flash-forwards to key, colourful 1970s catastrophes, and understated, moving contributions from Laurie Metcalf as Evans’s mother and Barry Ward as his envious fellow musician brother, this film is as beautiful and fragile as the music Evans fears he has lost forever, and is shot so evocatively it belongs in more exalted company than your standard biopic. 
JW
In cinemas September 11

Blue Film (18)
Directed by Elliot Tuttle
★★★☆☆ 

WHAT makes a perversion, and who gets to decide? Elliot Tuttle’s claustrophobic Blue Film asks the question without providing comfortable answers.

For $50,000, Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore), a young camboy who makes a living turning humiliation into an online commodity, agrees to meet a stranger in a rented LA house. But the transaction soon becomes something far murkier. Behind the balaclava is Hank Grant (Reed Birney), a figure from Aaron’s childhood whose criminal past and professed desire for him transform a paid encounter into a disturbing reckoning with memory, shame and abuse.

Shot with chilly precision by cinematographer Ryan Jackson-Healy, almost entirely inside a rented LA house, the film turns money, sex and trauma into instruments of power. But power keeps changing hands: Aaron sells access to himself while controlling the transaction; Hank has money, but also carries the shame of his crime.

Neither man is offered as a moral guide, and wisely so. A tender late scene, in which Aaron showers while singing a childhood song, briefly punctures the film’s suffocating atmosphere.

Blue Film is provocative rather than entirely persuasive, but its discomfort has purpose. Perversion merely names deviation from a norm; ethics begins elsewhere; with consent, agency, exploitation and harm. 
LB
In select cinemas September 11

Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger (15)
Directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern
★★★☆☆

IF you are expecting a warts and all revelatory documentary about Oasis, the band’s implosion, the reason behind Liam and Noel Gallagher’s 15-year-long feud and why they finally reconciled for their triumphant reunion tour Oasis Live ’25 then you are in for a major disappointment. 

You will know as much about the brothers after seeing this film as you did before you saw it, which is a major shame. 

Shot for IMAX, and directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger features unprecedented access and never-before-seen footage of one of the most anticipated comeback tours of our time. It spans 12 concerts over three continents. 

You are on the edge of your seat throughout waiting for another serious fallout between the Gallagher brothers to erupt at any time. The filming of the rehearsals was particularly tense as Noel and the rest of the band waited for Liam to rock up for the first time in 15 years, nervous about how he was going to react. He turns up sings his song and then walks out without a word to anyone. How very rock and roll.  

The documentary also pays tribute to the fans and their undying loyalty to Oasis as they share the impact the music has had on their lives. There are some powerful scenes including watching 90,000 people in packed out stadiums showing their love and forgiveness to a band who treated them abysmally. Even Liam admits on camera that he would not have forgiven them for doing what they did almost two decades earlier. Noel is moved and overwhelmed by the fans’ response but neither of them apologise for their actions or behaviour. They give nothing away in what must be their first interview together. 

There is no mention of the ticket sales debacle apart from one throwaway line by Liam as he addresses the audience at one of the gigs. 

It is heartwarming to see the brothers back together and having a blast thanks to this tour that grossed a reported almost £398 million worldwide. 

For those of you who could not get tickets to see Oasis just go watch this. It’ll be cheaper. 
MD
In cinemas now

Runner (15)
Directed by Scott Waugh
★★★☆☆

NOT to be confused with The Runner starring Gal Gadot, this is a non-stop action-packed thriller set in Brisbane about a former soldier who becomes the target of the cartel as he attempts to deliver a time sensitive package. 

Alan Ritchson (Reacher) plays Hank Malone, a troubled recovering alcoholic, who is hired to take Ben Bishop (Owen Wilson) and his precious cargo to a local hospital to save the life of a young girl in a race against time scenario. What ensues is a relentless and brutal manhunt in which they are pursued by ruthless criminals who want their consignment which is worth millions on the black market. 

Ritchson and Wilson make a phenomenal comic double act. Their on-screen chemistry is insane and they are hilarious to watch. Ritchson portrays the deadly silent type opposite Wilson’s chatty Kathy, who won’t shut up, proving herself to be Hank’s nightmare. 

While ridiculous, this is surprisingly entertaining. 
MD
In cinemas September 11