Author: Jim McLennan

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

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★★★★
“Hammer time!”

2020’s first seal of approval goes to this uber-gritty Irish film, starring Sarah Bolger, whose most familiar to us from Into the Badlands. While her GWG creds there are overshadowed by the likes oE Emily Beecham, safe to say Bolger makes up for lost time here. She plays single mother Sarah Collins, who is struggling to come to terms with the recent, unsolved murder of her husband. Barely managing to make ends meet, her life is upended when entry-level criminal Tito (Simpson) breaks in, seeking sanctuary. He has stolen some drugs belonging to top boss Leo (Hogg), and offers Sarah a cut of the proceeds if she’ll act as his safe-house. Very reluctantly, she agrees. Needless to say, it doesn’t go as they plan.

And that’s putting it very mildly. I won’t spoiler it, but there’s a reason she ends up visiting a hardware store, and weighing up whether an axe or a hack-saw is better suited for her “project” [the correct answer, it appears, is both…]. Yet, the character arc from mild-mannered mother who basically won’t say “Boo!” to a goose, into someone capable of going about with a bowling-bag of highly unpleasant content, is remarkably plausible. Because it’s almost all driven by fierce maternal love for her two children, one of whom has been traumatized into muteness by witnessing his father’s murder. Sarah will do anything to protect and provide for them, and as motivation for taking up a criminal lifestyle, it’s a far sight better than we got in the similarly themed Widows or The Kitchen.

It also does not soft-pedal its violence. The extended sequence where Sarah goes over the edge and becomes a killer for the first time, at one point almost teeters into farce with her first choice of weapon. But the further it goes on – to the point of death and beyond, the grimmer it gets. I was reminded of the line spoken by Macbeth: “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” This is made clear from the opening scene, which sees a gore-drenched heroine taking to the shower, setting the scene for its subsequent savage tone. We only find out the source of the blood later, and it won’t be the last time it gets spilled.

It’s a spectacular performance from Bolger, portraying a woman who is ground down to almost nothing, before finding fate presenting her with an opportunity – albeit one which comes with a frightening cost in terms of her humanity. Yet her portrayal manages to take the audience along with the character on that journey. The rest of the cast pales in comparison, though it probably doesn’t help that non-British audiences may need subtitles for some of the dialogue; even I was going “What?” at some points, particularly for Tito’s lines. Still, neither that nor some suspiciously convenient skill with a firearm (likely a necessary contrivance) are sufficient to derail a thoroughly successful slab of Irish noir.

Dir: Abner Pastoll
Star: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson, Jane Brennan

Mind and Machine

  By

★½
“Circuit bored.”

Intelligence without morality to govern it, is psychopathy. So what happens when you create an intelligent machine, but deliberately avoid installing any kind of moral compass? It’s an interesting idea for a film. Not that you’d know it from this unconvincing effort, which sucks the potential out of it. In this near-future – it’s set in 2024, close enough to now, no actual work is required on the part of the makers – androids have become part of everyday society in many roles. Crime boss Isaac Lynch (Restegar) orders technician Leo Cameron (West) to make one without a conscience, so that it can be used as an assassin, saving those pesky hitman fees. Only Leo crafts the robot, Maya (Guerra), in the image of his late wife. On the plus side: he gets to see his wife again. On the other hand: she’s an amoral killer. Didn’t think that through too well, did he?

And that’s the problem here: not much of this makes sense. Not Leo’s actions. Not the way nobody else came up with the idea first; most obviously, the military would be all over this in reality. Not how Isaac’s entire criminal organization consists of about three people, yet is still capable of pushing technological innovation into uncharted territory (and he also kills a customer, rather than letting him pay their debt). Not even the way Maya – and this is so obvious, it’s not a spoiler – eventually rebels against Isaac’s orders. It seems like writer/director Humphrey decided where he wanted the film to end up, but couldn’t be bothered to figure out how it could logically reach that point.

I’ll give Guerra credit for her portrayal of Maya, which is credibly lacking in emotion. Though again. there’s no consistency there, nor any explanation for her decision to revolt, after being made to torture an undercover agent. Why is killing unproblematic for this machine, yet torture represents a breaking point? And the lead actress’s reluctance to disrobe does lead to one of the most embarrassingly unconvincing body doubles I’ve ever seen: Guerra’s hair is black and straight, while that of the woman standing in for her, is brown and wavy. If you can’t do it well, Humphrey should have written it out of his script, since it’s not as if it was necessary to the plot.

Maybe he needed it for running-time purposes. Because this barely qualifies as a feature, lasting a mere 70 minutes, and that includes a slow, slow end credit crawl. It certainly feels considerably longer, and my interest steadily waned, as it failed to provide any interesting answers, or ask any interesting questions. A slowly-developing self awareness and independence, and more focus on Maya, rather than (the thoroughly uninteresting) Leo and Isaac, might have been the way to go. But then, that was Ex Machina, wasn’t it? This is a poor imitation thereof, and one which sporadic bursts of low-rent violence can do nothing to rescue.

Dir: Brock Humphrey
Star: Ariana Guerra, Oryan West, Sal Rastegar, Bobby Hernandez

Prime Suspect: Tennison

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★★★½
“Before she was famous…”

Origin stories are all the rage, it appears. Though it’s probably just coincidence we watched this prequel to Prime Suspect the same week that Joker came out. It’s not quite as successful in terms of reinventing an iconic character, or shedding light on how they became who they are. This is largely because lead actress Martini is not Helen Mirren. Though it would unfair to hold that against her – because, let’s face it, who is? While I found it interesting to see some of the early influences which turned Jane Tennison into who she is, what she became is more notable than how she got there. It’s probably more enjoyable if you can separate them, and just enjoy this on its own terms, as a period police procedural.

It’s 1973, and we join the 22-year-old WPC 517, Jane Tennison (Martini), as she tries to find a footing in her first posting, to Hackney Police Station in East London. There, she has to cope with a time where women police officers were largely sidelined to making tea and taking messages. However, one of the detectives there, D.C.I. Len Bradfield (Reid) takes her under his wing, as the investigation begins into the murder of a prostitute, found strangled with her own bra. Meanwhile, long-term criminal Clifford Bentley – against whom Bradfield has a grudge – has barely got out of jail, before he and his family are planning a new robbery. But Jane is about to discover that things are not always as cut and dried as she’d like, and that the law and justice can be different, too.

It’s when the heroine is forced to confront these dilemmas that the show is at its most interesting. For example, when Tennison witnesses a colleague roughing up a suspect in the murder, actions which could allow them to go free. Should she speak up or keep silent? There are no easy answers, and depicting the dramatic tension is where Martini is at her most effective, along with trying to deal with her “helicopter mother”, who doesn’t appreciate her little girl is all grown up. [As an aside, there’s no denying the actress does bear more than a slight resemblance to a young Helen Mirren. Compare the pic on the right to this one of Mirren, from 1972, a year before this takes place]

Of course, if you’ve seen the episodes with Tennison all grown up, you’ll not be surprised by much here. There’s no way, for example, that Jane and Len are ever going to end up happily ever after. That said, the double-whammy in which this is accomplished was undeniably effective. It goes some way to explaining her aloofness in middle-age, as the scars of her early experiences. Being able to hang more personality trains on FutureJane, in a similar way, would have helped link this to what was to come. Instead, it’s just a little too disconnected, though on its own merits, we still were solidly entertained.

Dir: David Caffrey
Star: Stefanie Martini, Sam Reid, Blake Harrison, Alun Armstrong
a.k.a. Prime Suspect 1973

Prospect

  By

★★½
“Get the little things right, but…”

Coming in on a wave of hype, e.g. “The Best Indie Science Fiction Movie Since Moon“, I guess I should have listened – because I didn’t think Moon was all that great either. Here, there’s a great job done of creating a universe, and even the two lead characters are interesting enough. It’s just an abject failure to fill the world with a decent story. Still: that world… It’s a grubbily lived-in and analog future version of space, controlled with retro-styled switches, and where the beauty of the cosmos is largely glimpsed through undersized, dirty spaceship windows.

Resident in it are teenage girl Cee (Thatcher) and her father (Duplass), barely scratching a living by mining resources out of alien creatures on the surface of a planet with a toxic atmosphere. Fortune beckons, however, because he has got word of a mother-lode which will set them up for life. Unhappily, their attempt to reach it is derailed by an encounter with Ezra (Pascal) and his partner, two other prospectors of dubious morality. One thing leads to another, and Cee suddenly finds that her survival is dependent on forging an extremely uneasy alliance with Ezra.

There’s definitely the feeling that this is intended to be a space Western, with a lot of the characters seeming like they come off the range, wearing space-helmets instead of Stetsons. The weapons wielded, though hi-tech rail-guns, operate more like a Winchester Model 1873, and there’s additionally a sense of lawlessness, with the planet being a wild frontier. If you want justice – as Cee certainly does – she will have to administer it herself, because no-one else is going to do so. True Grit feels like an influence there. On occasion, the scope suddenly broadens out too, with a wide, magnificent landscape – only one with an F-sized planet hanging low in the sky.

This is all quite lovely. The problem is a incredibly underwhelming script, not helped by dialogue which often seems to border on gibberish. For example, “We have three cycles for the job before we have to catch the slingback.” What happens if you don’t catch the slingback? Is that a very bad thing? And is three cycles a lot? Hours? Days? Weeks? We never know, because Cee’s watch tells the time in some bizarre foreign language. The same obtuseness goes for much of the plot: too often, we’re never clear who’s doing what and to whom, or for what purpose. Perhaps the original short film fared better on this front?

Certainly, it feels as if Cee gives up her quest for revenge here rather too easily. Though she still has a somewhat interesting character arc. Forced to come out from under the protection of her father, and fending for herself, especially given the hostile environment, is no piece of cake. Focusing on that aspect, rather than the vaguely-defined efforts to reach the buried treasure and/or get safely off the planet’s surface, might have proved more effective.

Dir: Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell
Star: Sophie Thatcher, Pedro Pascal, Jay Duplass

The Chinese Woman: The Barbados Conspiracy, by Brian N. Cox

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Though just called “Brian Cox” on the book, it’s probably wise to begin by distinguishing the author here from his more famous namesakes, both the actor and the “rock-star physicist.” That said, this is a brisk if not particularly memorable spy novel. The main outstanding feature is that the heroine is neither American nor British, but Chinese. Rather odd to be reading this very positive portrayal of Communist state security personnel, during the protests in Hong Kong.

She goes by a couple of different names in the book. As a 12-year-old kid, she’s Zhen Xiaomei, and watches her mother and family get brutally slain by gangsters Wu Xing and Meng Hong, due to an unpaid debt. [If you’ve seen Kill Bill Volume 1, you’ll be aware of how this is going to work out for them…] A quarter century later, she works as an agent for the Ministry of State Security, Second Bureau, when she is given a mission to travel to the United States and bring back a fugitive to stand trial in China. Initially, Xiaomei is reluctant – but her tune changes, when she discovers the fugitive is Wu Xing.

Under the guise of PhD student Li Mei, she begins trying to track Wu down in Seattle, by befriending his girlfriend Han Xia. She also encounters FBI agent Sean McNamara, and begins a relationship with him – initially as a source of information, but it’s never that simple, is it? Complicating matters further is the titular plot, in which a rogue faction of hawks in the Taiwanese and American military, are plotting to launch a nuclear missile at Taiwan, and blame it on China. A jaunt to the Caribbean? Don’t mind if Li Mei does. Though it’s kinda awkward when she bumps into Sean there.

These plots never quite mesh, and it would probably have served each of them better, if they had been handled in their own volume.  There’s also a thread about a serial killer, which doesn’t appear to serve much purpose, and the split of the story between Xiaomei and Sean sometimes makes it feel like the author was uncertain who was really his central character. Cox also tends to go overboard on the descriptive aspects of his characters, beyond what is necessary, and certainly what is interesting. A couple of well-written facets are more effective than a head-to-toe description: we don’t need to identify them in a police line-up.

The main positive is the heroine, who is a strong and effective agent, smart and thoroughly competent in her actions. Her background makes her considerably more interesting than McNamara, and I was left wanting to know more about her further adventures. While not a great work of literature, it is an entertaining one, and I ripped through it quickly. The second volume is free, through a link in #1, in exchange for your email address. At that price, I’m almost tempted to sign up.

Author: Brian N. Cox
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in The Chinese Woman series.

Ninja She-Devil

  By

★½
“Have semen, will travel.”

Ninjas were famed for their mystical powers, but Tsubame (Asami), the heroine here, has… well, let’s just say, a rather different talent. And I quote her brother, Hayabusa: “The ability to store a man’s seed inside your womb for seven days after intercourse.” This raises a number of questions, not least: how did this get discovered, considering Tsubame is a virgin at this point? Anyway, this skill is needed because of… Ah, to heck with it. Hayabusa explains it as well as I could:

As you know, Lord Kuniyoshi doesn’t have a wife. Because of that, Koicha, the concubine of Lord Kunisada, his father, is apparently plotting to have him assassinated to elevate her own son Kunitsuna to become the next in line. Kaede, Lord Kuniyoshi’s wife, has already been cursed by some sort of spell caster and can’t resist earthly temptations any longer. Though Lord Kuniyoshi planned to have his concubine, Yamabuki, bear his child so he could become the rightful heir, summoning Yamabuki would be too dangerous. That’s when Lord Kuniyoshi remembered your secret ability.

Yep, Tsubame has to become a sort of human turkey-baster, storing Kuniyoshi’s semen and making the perilous journey to deliver it to Yamabuki (Hanazawa). Even before she has left, Tsubame has to fend off attacks from those with an interest in preventing delivery of the sticky package. On the way, she meets Kagero, another former kunoichi (lady ninja), who used to be in love with Hayabusa. Meanwhile, the heroine’s boyfriend, Taichi, is captured and used as leverage against Tsubame. But, to be perfectly clear here, this is almost entirely about the sex. Lots of sex. It’s not sub-titled “Legend of the Voluptuous Kunoichi” for nothing, and that’s more accurate than the title by which it was released here.

It’s probably significant that this is the first time I can remember, where I have written a good three-quarters of the review before the film even ends. For as I type these words, it is still playing in another window, cutting between two separate, simultaneous sex scenes, neither of which are particularly interesting. Like all the other such sequences, they’re basically a good amount of wriggling, accompanied by some high-pitched squeaking from reasonably photogenic actresses. If you’re looking for… Oh, I dunno, ninja-ing, or even she-devilling, you’re going to need to look elsewhere. While there are a couple of fight sequences, these are so perfunctory and limited in their staging, you wonder why they bothered at all.

Before watching this, I had to check very carefully to be sure I hadn’t reviewed this before, given the plethora of films with similar titles. I still suspect I may have, and simply blanked it from my memory. And there go the end credits, slightly less than seventy minutes after we began. At least I didn’t have to waste much time on this. Oh, hey, the actress also sings the end theme. Yuma Asami is clearly a woman of many talents – not just wriggling and squeaking. And look, the behind the scenes footage shows them presenting the naked actress with a bunch of flowers. That’s nice.

Dir: Yoshikazu Katô
Star: Yuma Asami, Yûya Matsuura, Lemon Hanazawa, Toji Yanagi
a.k.a. Kunoichi

Giantess Attack!

  By

★★★
“Large and in charge.”

Diedre (Tacosa) and Frida (Riley) are the fractious stars of low-rent superhero show, Battle Babe and Combat Queen. When the series is canceled, they go on a bit of a binge, ended only by the appearance of two tiny aliens from Metaluna (Nguyen), who give the pair of very drunk Earth women devices that will turn them into Team Giantess Attack. These are intended to be used to rid the planet of evil. Needless to say, things don’t quite work out that way. The military, under Gen. Smedley Pittsburgh (Rowen), want to get their hands on this alien technology. But D+F won’t give it up and, instead, use it to go on the rampage and take revenge on those who previously wronged them.

When a film goes out of its way to be deliberately crap, this largely makes it flame-proof, since a legitimate defense against any highlighting of its shortcomings becomes. “Well, it’s supposed to be bad.” There’s no doubt this is a parody of.. well, everything from Japanese sentai shows through B movies such as Attack of the 50-Ft Woman and on to TV series like The Bionic Man. As such, there are chunks which work remarkably well: Nguyen’s dual performance as both Metalunans (a name itself taken from This Island Earth) is delightful, especially if you’re familiar with the Mothra movies which inspired the twins. It just needed a little song-and-dance number to make it perfect.

However, there’s a weird inconsistency of tone, and as the above should suggest, a lot of potential left on the table. At times it seems almost like this is aimed at kids, Then you get a lengthy sequence about Team Giantess Attack sticking the General into various orifices, which seems to have strayed in from some creepy fetish movie (I’m not Googling it, but… Rule 34). There’s also a funny spoof commercial for cereal… and just the one. That they failed to go full Amazon Women on the Moon there, peppering the film with fake adverts, trailers, etc. seems like a lost opportunity. The whole thing runs only 61 minutes, so it’s hardly as if they were strapped for time. And there’s still padding: we’re 22 minutes in before the Metalunans show up.

Yet all told, it remains a good-humoured and generally entertaining piece of work. The effects are all over the place, throwing stock footage, model work and green screens together in a thoroughly low-budget mess – which is, of course, the point, just as much as the women’s clothes conveniently expanding to keep them covered. If you don’t smile at the thought of two bikini-clad behemoths wrecking Hollywood landmarks like the Capitol Records building, then it’s probably safe to say this isn’t the movie for you. However, I have seen more than my fair share of the content which this is lampooning. So I must admit, I probably have more anticipation than I expected, for the impending sequel, Giantess Attack vs Mecha-Fembot, whose trailer is below.

Dir: Jeff Leroy
Star: Tasha Tacosa, Rachel Riley, Jed Rowen, Christine Nguyen

A Lonely Woman

  By

★★
“An overcooked spaghetti Western”

It’s one of those weird coincidences. I watched two action heroine flicks last weekend and both, while American, starred actresses who were born in Greece. Really, what are the odds? Sleeping Dogs Lie was the other: this is slightly superior, largely through being less wordy, and more genuinely vengeful. Coming home one night, Annie (Skafida) is stunned to find both of her parents dead in their house, the victims of an apparent robbery. But her concern is raised when their will is read, and Annie discovers that she has been disinherited, the victim of a mysterious late change. Annie was a foster kid, and never felt quite like “one of the family,” so is immediately suspicious of her siblings, especially the one who appears to have benefited from the update. The further she digs, the murkier the waters become, as she seeks bloody vengeance on those responsible – directly or indirectly – for the murder of her adopted parents.

Skafida is probably the best thing about this, simply for her presence, which is the cinematic equivalent of a heap of burning tyres – and not just for the amount of smoke she produces. [Seriously, I can’t remember the last film with so many cigarettes in it] I actually mean that comparison in a positive way, since she brings a smouldering, yet toxic intensity to proceedings – though, as in Sleeping Dogs Lie, it often feels like the heroine is acting in a second language. Still, the intensity keeps the viewer on edge, with the sense she’s a wild-card, who might explode into action at any moment, especially in her alter ego of “Jezebel”.

The problems are… Well, sad to say, just about everything else. Start with a story which appears to bounce around in time and space without any logic. For instance, early on, there’s a shootout between Jezebel and a group of disgruntled poker players, from whom she won her motorbike. The poker game itself shows up an hour or so later. There’s no explanation for this approach, and it serves no purpose either. Similarly, there are cases where the lack of background on a movie character can work in their favour, giving them an air of mystery. Here, it seems more like laziness.  

The music sounds as if the makers got a discount on three tunes from the stock soundtrack emporium, and decided to make the most of their bargain basement purchase, by using them in every single scene, regardless of fit. Ennio Morricone, it most definitely is not. And Cavazos certainly doesn’t match up to Sergio Leone in terms of cinematography. Even in the climactic duel, clearly intended to echo a “high noon” gunfight, the scene is edited in a hyper way which would seem better suited to an entry in the Crank franchise. While the aim of a modern take on the spaghetti Western is laudable, this is largely a failure. The end product is closer in appeal to a plate of last week’s soggy pasta than the works of Leone.

Dir: Juven Cavazos
Star: Youlika Skafida, Beau Yotty, Joe Grisaffi, Michael Tula

Sleeping Dogs Lie

  By

★★
“Dogged by issues.”

Account Armando (Cabellero) has made a series of questionable decisions, the two largest of which are: a) skimming from his organized crime connected client, Mr. Nakamura, and b) cheating on his wife Eleni (Giannatou) with his secretary, Luna (Zanella). These both come to a head when Eleni walks in on the pair of them, and the three of them take a long drive to a remote house in the desert, with Armando in the trunk of the car. There, Eleni prepares to extract the access information to the account where he has stashed the ill-gotten gains – an account Luna is rather unhappy to discover was created in her name. However, Armando knows this information is the only thing standing between him and a hole in the desert, so won’t give it up easily. And what, exactly, are Luna’s allegiances? Is she on his side or that or Eleni?

After a satisfactorily intriguing start, this falls apart after Armando breaks free of his bonds, and vanishes into the blackness surrounding the cabin. Far too much of the film thereafter consists of running around in the near darkness, and you’re left peering into the gloom, trying to figure out who is doing what, and to whom. [Low-budget film-makers need to realize that their product is far more likely to be seen on the small screen than a big one, and light/shoot on that basis] Though the problems start earlier, with a script that seems a draft or two short of polished. For instance, Eleni talks at length to Armando about how the foot is the most sensitive part of the body, then drives a nail right through… his hand?

It doesn’t help that the lead actress appears to be operating largely in her second language. What we get here is an object demonstration of the difference between speaking English, which she does perfectly well, and acting in English. It’s the latter which is an issue, and one made all the apparent by a scene or two where she gets to revert to her native Greek. The difference, in a positive direction, is palpable. Maybe it should just have been made entirely in Greek and Spanish?

But the weakness here is mostly the storyline, which relies too much on contrived incompetence necessary to the plot. By which I mean, if the trio had a lick of sense, events would have unfolded in three radically different directions. Eleni, in particular, stops being the intelligent and resourceful woman she initially appears, the one which I was looking forward to seeing, taking her revenge on an idiotic and unfaithful husband. Instead, by the time this ends, with one final twist beyond what is either necessary or plausible, you’ll be hard pushed to muster any reaction beyond a sigh, or possibly a small, marginally derisive snort.

Dir: Konstantinos Kovas
Star: Markella Giannatou, Miguel Angel Caballero, Joanna Zanella

The Aeronauts

  By

★★★
“Full of hot air.”

I was genuinely stoked when I got to the end of this one, which details the derring-do of 19th-century pioneers James Glaisher (Redmayne) and Amelia Wren (Jones). The former is a scientist in the fledgling field of meteorology, who wants to obtain data from the upper atmosphere. The latter is a balloon pilot, carrying on despite the death of her husband on a previous flight. Together, they team up, to fly higher than any person had ever gone before. Indeed, further than even they wanted to go, as a frozen valve prevents them from descending when they need to do so. With Glaisher out of commission through oxygen deprivation, it’s up to Wren to climb, by herself, up the outside of the balloon, in order to reach the top and clear the valve.

The in-flight entertainment is excellent, right from the take-off, in front of a sizable crowd of onlookers, to whom Wren is delighted to play. But as they rise up, you do get a real sense of the appeal of flight, in a way which feels almost like a Hayao Miyazaki film. That matters, having gone into this wondering why someone would willingly dangle from a wicker basket, below what is effectively a large bomb (here, lifted by inflammable coal gas). But the beauty of the air is well-captured, as well as its immense scale, with any number of shots depicting the giant balloon reduced to little more than a speck, beside the massive clouds. And Wren’s solo ascent is the stuff of heroic legend.

But that’s also the problem. For she never existed. Oh, Glaisher did. And so did his flight, in 1862. It set an altitude record for any craft of 36,000 feet, which would endure for more than sixty years. And after Glaisher lost consciousness, his companion did end up needing to pull the release valve by mouth, having lost all feeling in his limbs. Yeah: his. Because it was professional balloonist Henry Coxwell who was the hero in fact. Now, I get that cinema will play fast and loose with facts. But swapping out a real person for a fictional one of the opposite gender? Really? There weren’t any actual aeronautical heroines about whom a film could be made? Oh, hang on: there were. Most obviously, Sophie Blanchard, a Frenchwoman on whom the character of Wren was partially-based, and who was Napoleon’s head of aeronautics. A future feature on her may beckon.

The more grounded stuff in the film also doesn’t work as well. There’s a narrative conceit which holds back information about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Wren’s death. And background stuff on Glaisher’s struggles to raise funds for his expedition into the sky, as well as his relationship with his father (Courtenay), don’t add much to proceedings. I’d have been happier with a real-time recounting, purely focused on the flight up and down. The contrast between the staid Glaisher and show-womanship of Wren, offers enough fuel to keep things going, until the latter’s perilous ascent is needed. Just don’t ask why neither of them thought to pack a pair of gloves.

Dir: Tom Harper
Star: Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, Himesh Patel, Tom Courtenay