The Joy of Six – review

A half-dozen shorts care of distributor Soda's New British Cinema programme, all diverting, two outstanding. The narrative-short food groups are amply covered: twist-in-the-tale jobs (Douglas Hart's Long Distance Information has splenetic Peter Mullan forming a surprising telephonic bond one Christmas), pun-films (Dan Sully's short, sweet urban legend The Ellington Kid; Romola Garai's straining Scrubber, about a woman juggling dogging with OCD), zeitgeisty star vehicles (Chris Foggin's agreeably cosy Friend Request Pending, with Judi Dench as a lovelorn silver surfer). The picks are William Jewell's teasing, stylish feature-in-waiting Man in Fear, which conjures a fatalistic universe around paranoiac Luke Treadaway and no-nonsense copper Tim Healy; and Matthew Holness's A Gun for George, a tremendously assured, funny-sad portrait of a pulp writer in decline, which envelops great lines in retro detail worthy of Holness's beloved Garth Marenghi. A most encouraging selection.