Film

Four new films to see this weekend

Broken Law, Proxima and The Vigil in selected cinemas, Make Up on demand

Graham Earley and Tristan Heanue in Broken Law

Donald Clarke
Tara Brady
Fri Jul 31 2020 - 06:00

BROKEN LAW ★★★☆☆
Directed by Paddy Slattery. Starring Graham Earley, Gemma-Leah Devereux, John Connors, Tristan Heanue, Ally Ní Chiaráin. 16 cert, limited release
Enjoyable, well-acted drama concerning the conflict between two Dublin brothers, one a cop (Heanue) and one a robber (Earley). It all kicks off when the hoodlum gets out of prison and risks one more heist. The script hangs around at least one ludicrous coincidence and feels underdeveloped elsewhere. But Broken Law gets by on strongly rendered atmosphere and performances that mesh together with admirable smoothness. We long to learn what's going on at the edges of the frame. DC

PROXIMA ★★★★☆
Directed by Alice Winocour. Starring Eva Green, Zélie Boulant-Lemesle, Matt Dillon, Aleksey Fateev, Lars Eidinger, Sandra Hüller. 12A cert, limited release, 108 min

Eva Green in Proxima

Proxima is unlike any space movie we've seen before, although the film's detailed preparations for extraterrestrial travel share some DNA with The Right Stuff. Green puts in a career-best performance as an astronaut for the European Space Agency who gets an opportunity to spend a year on the International Space Station. The exceptional location work at makes for a wonderfully tactile learning experience. Winocour crafts a spectacle that doubles as a corrective to what is normally a very Nasa-centric genre. TB

THE VIGIL ★★★★☆
Directed by Keith Thomas. Starring Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Lynn Cohen. 16 Cert, limited release, 90 min

READ MORE

Dave Davis in The Vigil

Few of the ecstatic reviews for Blumhouse's The Vigil have failed to reach for such handy labels as "The Jewish Exorcist" or "The Hasidic Babadook". Fair enough. This excellent first feature from novelist-turned-writer-director Keith Thomas is a nifty, textured horror (mostly), thriftily set in one creepy house. A work of impeccable genre timing, from the careful use of flashbacks to Michael Yezerski's unsettling score, The Vigil makes equally canny use of its Hasidic environment and – move over, crucifix – tefillin. TB

MAKE UP ★★★★☆
Directed by Claire Oakely. Starring Molly Windsor, Stefanie Martini, Joseph Quinn, Theo Barklem-Biggs. Curzon Home Cinema, 86 min

Molly Windsor in Make Up

A women has uneasy experiences when visiting her boyfriend in a caravan park. There is something of Daphne du Maurier in Oakely's excellent feature debut. The film does concern a young woman processing mysterious, possibly ghostly occurrences in maritime sections of Cornwall, but let's not push it. Oakley's grim exercise in Caravan Gothic, though very much its own beast, has more to do with the worrying spaces navigated by contemporary directors such as Lynne Ramsay and Pawel Pawlikowski. Eerie, perverse, hugely promising. DC