Into The Woods (PG)
(Rob Marshall, 2014, US) Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Johnny Depp. 125 mins
Fairytale mash-ups – a bit 2014, maybe. But this is about as Grimm and subversive a Disney take as you’re likely to find, with some rousing musical set-pieces to make up for the brazen metafictional land-grab. The set-up sends Blunt and Corden on a forest treasure hunt to reverse Streep’s witchy curse, which means encounters with fairytale characters in their post-happy-ever-after days, and a carousel of Stephen Sondheim-backed star turns.
Foxcatcher (15)
(Bennett Miller, 2014, US) Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo. 134 mins
The American sports movie is turned on its head in this agreeably eccentric drama, with its strange characters, long silences and bizarre true-life story. Carell leads the oddness, playing an over-entitled but under-competent zillionaire who attempts to establish an elite wrestling facility by recruiting Channing’s dim Olympic champ. As the gap between ambition and achievement yawns open, the story takes on an uncertain tragicomic tone – resonantly bleak yet magnificently absurd.
National Gallery (12A)
(Frederick Wiseman, 2014, Fra/US/UK) 181 mins
Another instalment of the veteran documentarian’s rigorous un-guided tours – particularly interesting since it observes a British institution this time. We seem to see everything, from back-of-house dramas to restorers at work to people-watching and, of course, painting-watching – all without narration or interpretation. As with a work of art, you get out what you put in.
Taken 3 (12A)
(Olivier Megaton, 2014, Fra) Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Forest Whitaker. 109 mins
Everyone ought to know by now that if you mess with Neeson’s supposedly retired agent, he will find you. But still they try. This time they attempt to take his loved ones and his liberty, forcing him to go rogue, elude the FBI and the LAPD and open up one last can of whup-ass.
The Last Of The Unjust (NC)
(Claude Lanzmann, 2013, Fra/Aus) 220 mins
Almost as an appendix to his epic 1985 documentary Shoah, Lanzmann revisits the Theresienstadt concentration camp – the “model” Jewish ghetto (now in the Czech Republic) – and the Jewish “elder” Benjamin Murmelstein who oversaw it with the Nazis’ blessing. Was he a collaborator or a hero? No one is better qualified than Lanzmann to weigh up the moral complexities.
Erebus: Into The Unknown (12A)
(Charlotte Purdy, 2014, NZ) 69 mins
Documentary recalling – through personal reminiscence and dramatic reconstruction – a catastrophic 1979 air crash in Antarctica, the ordinary New Zealand police officers who went to recover more than 250 bodies, and the investigators given the task of trying to work out what went wrong.
Tevar (12A)
(Amit Sharma, 2015, Ind) Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Manoj Bajpayee. 157 mins
A kabbadi champion gets mixed up in local politics in this amped-up Bollywood action thriller.
Out from Friday
Exhibition On Screen: Girl With A Pearl Earring Vermeer’s masterpiece and more in a filmed tour of the Hague’s freshly restored Mauritshuis. Out from Tue
Testament Of Youth Alicia Vikander stars in the adaptation of Vera Brittain’s first-hand first world war memoir.
Whiplash A gifted student drummer versus a sadistic, perfectionist tutor makes for a memorable musical showdown.
Duck Soup The Marx brothers at their best, in a madcap 1933 satire on international diplomacy.
American Sniper Bradley Cooper leads Clint Eastwood’s study of the US military’s top sharpshooter.
Wild Reese Witherspoon (pictured) discovers herself while hiking solo along America’s west coast.
Paper Souls A funeral speechwriter is the unlikely hero of a fantasy-tinged French romcom.
Point And Shoot Documentary about an American man who took part in the Libyan conflict.
Coming soon
In two weeks... Advanced fembot-building in Ex Machina… New York, crime and corruption in A Most Violent Year…
In three weeks... Paul Thomas Anderson’s 70s crime caper Inherent Vice… Cuddly robot adventures in Big Hero 6…
In a month... David Oyelowo leads the civil rights march to Selma… The Wachowskis launch their interplanetary epic Jupiter Ascending…
