Film Review of the Week

Romance

Ali & Ava (15)

Review: Spectres of the past haunt a blossoming new relationship in writer-director Clio Barnard’s tender and warmly observed romance filmed on location in Bradford. Infused with the indefatigable spirit and earthy humour of local communities, Ali & Ava charts an unlikely meeting of love-starved minds who have very different cultural, romantic and musical outlooks (he dances on his car’s roof rack to the pulsing beat of electro while she’s a fan of country and folk).

Barnard’s script slowly dismantles the central characters’ heavily fortified emotional defences, providing Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook with richly drawn, nuanced roles with plentiful peaks and troughs until a largely conventional final act that seeks to salve wounds that Ali and Ava are clearly sporting from the mist-shrouded opening frames. Their on-screen chemistry goes from pleasant simmer to furious boil without feeling forced.

Shaun Thomas, memorable as ill-fated jailbird Gerry Roberts on Emmerdale, is compelling as Ava’s overly protective son, crippled by grief a year after his father’s death and aggressively resisting the notion of a new man in the family home. Naturalistic supporting performances, particularly from younger cast, recall Barnard’s exquisite 2013 film The Selfish Giant and reinforce her ability to weave heartfelt drama into the believably frayed fabric of everyday life.

Former DJ Ali (Akhtar) lives with soon-to-be-ex-wife Runa (Ellora Torchia) in a home they hoped would be filled with the laughter of children. The couple haven’t worked out how to break the news of their separation to Ali’s mother, who lives on the same street. “It’s like flatmates,” Ali jokes feebly to Runa, who knows the current living arrangement is neither healthy nor sustainable.

Ali rents properties, including one that is home to a Slovakian family and he kindly collects their six-year-old daughter Sofia (Ariana Bodorova) from school in his car. During one rain-lashed pick-up, he meets Sofia’s classroom assistant Ava (Rushbrook), a widowed “mother of four and grandmother five times over” with a grown-up son Callum (Thomas), who lives at home with a baby daughter and is angrily processing the death of his father, Paul.

Ali offers to drive Ava home to her estate where kids notoriously throw stones at passing vehicles, and a connection is unexpectedly formed between lost souls. As Ali learns about the late husband’s extremist beliefs, he asks Ava: “If Paul were here, would he kick me head in?” Her nervous silence speaks volumes.

Ali & Ava is a heart-warming tonic that preaches familiar life lessons (acceptance, understanding, faith) without belabouring the personal growth necessary for the central duo to drag themselves out of their respective ruts. Akhtar’s impeccable comic timing endears us instantly to his garrulous and hyperactive people-pleaser, who admits he always goes from nought to 70 without pausing for breath. Thankfully, Barnard’s delightful film applies gentle pressure to the brakes, when required.

Action

The Batman (15)

Review: Ten years after the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning Dark Knight trilogy, writer-director Matt Reeves and co-writer Peter Craig revive the tormented DC Comics character with aplomb. They engineer a dark, brooding serial killer thriller that sows the seeds of a new trilogy, including a tantalising first glimpse of Dublin-born actor Barry Keoghan as one of the cowled crusader’s eye-catching adversaries.

Every generation has its big screen incarnation of Bruce Wayne. In 1966, Adam West donned gloriously camp attire in a Kapow!-tastic extension of a popular TV series. In the late 1980s, Tim Burton introduced Michael Keaton as Batman and the rictus grin of Jack Nicholson’s Joker in a marvellously menacing take on comic book mythology that earned the first newly-minted 12 certificate from British censors.

Director Joel Schumacher tarnished the legacy with the garish double whammy of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin before Nolan resuscitated the franchise with the bombastic Batman Begins. Reeves confidently takes up the mantle, delving into the tortured psyche of a self-destructive and almost uncontrollably violent Bruce Wayne, who exorcises personal demons with brute force on rain-lashed streets of Gotham.

Robert Pattinson strips away charm from his reclusive billionaire, exposing deep fissures in a nihilistic soul, suffocated by a squalid metropolis that is, by his grim assessment, “eating itself”. The three-hour running time is excessive but permits other characters to breathe rancid air, including Zoe Kravitz’s spirited embodiment of Catwoman – “Got a thing about strays,” she purrs alluringly – and Paul Dano’s wickedly unhinged Riddler, who goads police with ciphers like the Zodiac Killer.

Bruce Wayne (Pattinson) is determined to honour the legacy of his murdered father, at the expense of his personal wellbeing and sanity. He prowls city streets as masked vigilante Batman in open defiance of the rule of law upheld by police lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) and fellow officers, often returning to his hi-tech lair bloodied and bruised. “If I can’t have an effect, I don’t care what happens to me,” Bruce growls at butler Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis).

The prodigal son hopes to undermine the criminal empire of unctuous kingpin Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and his associates, including nightclub owner Oswald Cobblepot (Colin Farrell). A serial killer dubbed Riddler (Dano) targets high-profile city residents, beginning with a forceful intervention in the fiercely contested mayoral race between incumbent Don Mitchell Jr (Rupert Penry-Jones) and idealistic ingenue Bella Real (Jayme Lawson). Bruce is drawn into a deadly game of brinkmanship with Riddler, aided by enigmatic burglar Selena Kyle aka Catwoman (Kravitz), who slinks seductively in the grey area between law and disorder.

The Batman opens with a soaring refrain of Ave Maria as a nocturnal predator stalks unsuspecting prey, establishing a tone of grim foreboding that pervades every frame, including murky cinematography that blurs edges of the screen, focusing our attention of the eye of a storm. Action sequences are slickly choreographed to discordant ebbs and flows of composer Michael Giacchino’s score, including scenes shot in Glasgow.

Pattinson and Kravitz spark palpable sexual chemistry despite the relentless downpours, while Farrell is virtually unrecognisable beneath cutting-edge prosthetics as a criminal underling with grand ambitions. He’s perfectly poised for bigger and battier things in an intended second chapter that promises much and hopefully lops 30 minutes off the running time.