The Dead Don’t Hurt ★★★★☆
Directed by Viggo Mortensen. Starring Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod, Garret Dillahunt, Colin Morgan, Ray McKinnon, Luke Reilly, Atlas Green, Danny Huston. 15A cert, gen release, 130 min
Fine western about a couple (Mortensen and Krieps) separated by the civil war. Krieps has her best showcase since Phantom Thread, wherein the smallest raised eyebrow speaks volumes. “I will miss you,” he tells her. “I hope so,” she replies, dryly. Mortensen’s script tussles between feminist revision and old-school male showdowns, imagining Krieps’s character as a Joan of Arc-inspired frontierswoman still subject to the degradations of the era. Mortensen, who has previously channelled and reworked western tropes in The Road and Jauja, assembles a crack team of character actors around her. Full review TB
Hit Man ★★★★☆
Directed by Richard Linklater. Starring Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta. Netflix, 115 min
Witty comedy-thriller from one of American’s most versatile directors. Powell plays Gary Johnson, a philosophy professor at a New Orleans university who moonlights as the tech operative with his local police department . One fateful afternoon, Gary is required to stand in for the “hired gun”, posing as a hit man for hire to lure would-be clients of paid assassins. Based on the 2001 Texas Monthly magazine profile of the real Johnson, this sexy, old-fashioned caper makes merry with unreliable narration, slapstick, and the stress of remembering: which lie did I tell? Full review TB
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Adil & Bilall. Starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seehorn, Joe Pantoliano. 16 cert, gen release, 115 min
The fourth film in the sequence — again sending detectives Smith and Lawrence about Miami — is a let-down after the surprisingly lucid Bad Boys Forever. The film plays as a muddle of set pieces that fail to form any kind of coherent line. The duo meander along in reasonably effective fashion. Lawrence is permitted to puff and wheeze like a man of his age. Smith, in contrast, hasn’t trimmed the performance much — still metaphorically freewheeling his bike with one finger hooked around the back of a streetcar. He’d want to watch it. Bruises don’t heel as they once did. Full review DC
Rosalie ★★★☆☆
Directed by Stéphanie di Giusto. Starring Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Benoit Magimel, Benjamin Biolay, Guillaume Gouix. 15A cert, limited release, 115 min
Touching, beautifully shot period piece — roughly based on the life of one Clémentine Delait — concerning a woman who, after marrying an innkeeper, exploits her healthy beard to draw in fascinated customers. Much soapy action keeps the action bubbling towards a final reckoning between husband and wife. Here the film, well-reviewed at Cannes last year, is at its strongest. Tereszkiewicz and Magimel give us a pair without the language to negotiate emotional crises that contemporaneous society would prefer to keep repressed. The final catharsis is moving and plausible. Rural life is represented with some elegance. Full review DC
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