Pavements ★★★★☆
Directed by Alex Ross Perry. Featuring Pavement, Rebecca Clay Cole, Gary Young, Joe Keery, Nat Wolff, Fred Hechinger, Logan Miller, Griffin Newman, Tim Heidecker. No cert, limited release, 128 min
Hybris documentary on Pavement, famously eccentric 1990s indie band, from the director of Listen Up, Philip and Her Smell. The film improbably juggles four separate projects (a documentary, a musical, an art exhibit and a fake biopic) into one shaggy, self-aware, mostly made-up opus. It shouldn’t work, yet this overstuffed eclair stays sweet. Perry and editor Robert Greene (using split screens and collage techniques) build a dizzying kaleidoscope of timelines, earnestness and glee. What emerges is a film that’s as formally adventurous and oddly affecting as the soundtrack. Will appeal to the band’s growing Gen Z following. Full review TB
Armand ★★★★☆
Directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tondel. Starring Renate Reinsve, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Endre Hellestveit, Thea Lambrechts Vaulen, Oystein Roger, Vera Veljovic. No cert, limited release, 117 min
The feature debut from Halfdan Ullmann Tondel – grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann – finds an emergency parent-teacher meeting bubbling into an unnerving psychological crucible. Set within the bland, institutional corridors of a Norwegian primary school, the film chronicles a single afternoon that stretches into a surreal purgatory of suspicion, guilt and something like the compellingly demented choreography of Climax, Gaspar Noé’s dance horror. Pal Ulvik Rokseth’s cinematography adds claustrophobic weight to labyrinthine passages and isolated nooks. This singular film rightly won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature at Cannes film festival in 2024. Full review TB
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Superman ★★☆☆☆
Directed by James Gunn. Starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion. 12A cert, gen release, 120 min
Boring, cacophonous return to the Superman pool that, not bothering with any origin stories, throws us straight into broadly comic chaos as Hoult’s Lex Luthor seeks to take over the world again. Hilarious references to “punk rock” are misplaced in an enterprise that cost north of $200 million. The cartoonish closing battles make it clear that, not for the first time, Gunn is striving for high trash, but what he achieves here is low garbage. Utterly charmless. Devoid of humanity. As funny as toothache. Corenswet has so little worthwhile dialogue that his lead performance is hard to rate. Full review DC
Modigliani: Three Days on the Wing of Madness ★★★☆☆
Directed by Johnny Depp. Starring Riccardo Scamarcio, Antonia Desplat, Bruno Gouery, Ryan McParland, Al Pacino, Stephen Graham, Luisa Ranieri, Sally Phillips, Philippe Smolikowski, Hugo Nicolau. 15A cert, limited release, 108 min
Disappointing news for warring factions that hope Depp’s study of Amedeo Modigliani turns out to be either masterpiece or dud. Three Days is no great shakes, but it is rarely embarrassing, either. Adapted from a play by Dennis McIntyre, the film goes among Modigliani (Scamarcio, strong) and his pals in an idealised Paris at the height of the first World War. The more it goes on the clearer it becomes that, though Depp no doubt admires Modigliani’s work, his real passion here is for the eternally intoxicating fantasy of Parisian bohemia. Fair enough. The glamour remains. Full review DC
