Snow White ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Marc Webb. Starring Rachel Zegler, Andrew Burnap, Gal Gadot, Ansu Kabia, Andrew Barth Feldman, George Appleby. G cert, gen release, 109 min
Largely unsuccessful attempt to update the 1937 classic to pseudo-live action. The permanent magic-hour lighting is hard to look at. Worst of all, the decision to “cartoonise” the dwarves alongside human actors is hugely problematic; it jarringly takes the viewer out of the movie. Zegler, who sings her heart out as Snow White, is the best thing in a film that plays fast and loose with the original. Does anyone recall in that earlier film a monarchy arranged along the lines of Aaron Bastani’s notion of fully automated luxury communism? Full review TB
Flow ★★★★★
Directed by Gints Zilbalodis. G cert, gen release, 85 min
Surprise winner of best animated feature at the recent Oscars, this low-budget Latvian film eschews all dialogue for an impressionistic drift downriver towards an encounter with environmental oblivion. Our heroes are a cautious cat, a boisterous labrador and an unimpressed secretarybird. there is also a little of The Wind in the Willows and a lot of the brave cats and dogs from The Incredible Journey. Cineastes will get on board. Children will rewatch it until the pixels wear out. Extraordinarily charming, but also freighted with unease as to what we’re doing to the planet. Full review DC
Brief History of a Family ★★★★☆
Directed by Lin Jianjie. Starring Zu Feng, Guo Keyu, Sun Xilun, Lin Muran. Limited release, 100 min
A troubled young man becomes part of a wealthy household in an effective Chinese variation on the cuckoo in the nest genre. A great deal of the dynamics are particular to China. We are not qualified to speak on Lin’s treatment of the nation’s one-child policy, but the parents' enthusiasm for their new charge is certainly connected to that imposition. Western viewers will enjoy the icy perfection the director has created for his comfortable characters. The film does not quite pull off its enigmatic ending, but this remains an eerie debut that finds new angles to a familiar trope. Full review DC
The Alto Knights ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Barry Levinson. Starring Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci, Michael Rispoli 15A cert, gen release, 123 min
In a gimmicky, prosthetics-heavy flourish, De Niro essays dual – and duelling – roles as Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, two Italian-American associates battling for control of the Luciano crime syndicate in the 1950s. There’s so much mobsplaining in Levinson’s messy true-life Mafia movie that it often feels like the actor is aggressively reading a Wikipedia entry. Citation! Occasional fun interludes fail to push the film into more than a superfluous genre entry. The grand casting gambit of pitching De Niro vs De Niro proves an unnecessary distraction. Curiously bloodless in every respect. Full review TB
