Film

Four new films to see in cinemas this week

Ambulance, The Cellar, The Worst Person in the World, River

Ambulance

Donald Clarke
Tara Brady
Sun Mar 27 2022 - 06:00

AMBULANCE ★★★★☆
Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell, Moses Ingram. 15A cert, gen release, 136 min
Bay's latest noisy thriller, in which bank robbers Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen flee in an ambulance with hostage González, was rumoured to be at the more intimate end of his range. In the sense that Korea was the more intimate of General MacArthur's two wars, the helicopter-stuffed, deafeningly explosive, relentlessly violent campaign of copaganda delivers on that assurance. Ambulance offers the sort of hurtling, amoral "good fun" that Bay supporters have, when kicking back at supposedly snooty critics, always claimed was his speciality. We are here for the explosions. We are here also for excellent, blackly humorous suspense sequences. DC

THE CELLAR ★★★☆☆
Directed by Brendan Muldowney. Starring Elisha Cuthbert, Eoin Macken, Abby Fitz, Dylan Fitzmaurice-Brady. 15A cert, gen release, 94 min

Elisha Cuthbert in The Cellar

A young woman's daughter goes missing after they move into a spooky house. It has been 18 years since Muldowney's excellent short The Ten Steps won deserved prizes throughout the world. After acclaimed dramas such as Savage and Pilgrimage, the Irish filmmaker finally gets round to extending the film's chilling premise – which we, of course, shan't spoil – into an elegantly appointed feature. The Cellar does sag just a little in the middle, but it's spooky beginning and apocalyptic denouement set it aside from the horror pack. The cast are all sound. The ambience is effective. DC

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD/VERDENS VERSTE MENNESKE ★★★★☆
Directed by Joachim Trier. Starring Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum. 16 cert, gen release, 128 min

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Renate Reinsve in The Worst Person in the World

This highly entertaining if unexpectedly shallow Norwegian character study from the writers of Louder Than Bombs and Thelma concerns Julie (Reinsve), an indecisive 20-something, who, as the film opens, is a medical student. No wait. She's just changed her major. Hang on. Now, she's a photographer. Scratch that. She's somebody's girlfriend. Then somebody else's girlfriend. For all of Reinsve's energy, her character is too often defined by the men she bounces off, be they are lovers or her intriguingly horrid dad. It's endearingly wild all of the time, though that unpredictable, millennial-themed chaos doesn't always make for structural soundness. TB

RIVER ★★★☆☆
Directed by Jennifer Peedom, Joseph Nizeti. Narrated by Willem Dafoe. IFI, Dublin, 75 min

River

Five credited directors of photography swoop and swoon over crevices and ravines as the tributaries of the title alternately spring, spread, and surge into oceans. The effect is dizzying, woozy and sublime. A soundtrack from the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and additional music from William Barton, Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead – and Bach and Vivaldi for good measure – adds to the epic sweep of the photography and Simon Njoo's exquisite editing. It is very much an old-school Imax film, designed for enveloping, hypnotic sensation. TB