A Street Cat Named Bob (12A)
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode
3/5
EVEN non-cat lovers won’t fail to be captivated by stray ginger cat Bob who turns the life of a busker and recovering drug addict around in this uplifting true-life drama.
It’s based on the international best selling book by James Bowen in which he outlines how Bob transformed his world.
He followed Bowen everywhere he went, sitting on his shoulders in London as he busked in Covent Garden and sold The Big Issue in Islington, garnering Bowen lots of attention from members of the public and subsequently from a local paper.
This eventually led to Bowen writing a book about their incredible story.
Bob plays himself opposite Luke Treadaway as Bowen, who holds his own with the cute green-eyed feline who, unsurprisingly, steals the film.
Interestingly, it also gives a fascinating insight into the workings of The Big Issue and its sellers which may change your view of them.
A remarkable, heart-warming story.
Maria Duarte

Nocturnal Animals (15)
Directed by Tom Ford
5/5
IT’S been seven years since fashion designer-turned-film-maker Tom Ford made his memorable directorial debut with A Single Man and it’s been well worth waiting for this extraordinary blend of nerve-snapping suspense thriller and searing emotional conflict.
Both as director and writer — he’s adapted Austin Wright’s 1993 book Tony and Susan — Ford grabs you right from the start with amazing footage of stark naked and grossly overweight strippers dancing.
The sequence is not gratuitous because the corpulent performers flamboyantly decorate a cruelly credible hyper-trendy Los Angeles art exhibition being curated by insomniac Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) whose subsequent emotional turbulence is potentiated when she starts to read a novel by her ex-husband, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.
Ford brilliantly cuts between increasingly potent scenes which reveal Morrow’s escalating angst, along with a searing dramatisation of her ex’s nerve-shredding Texas-set rape-and-vengeance thriller.
It showcases one of Gyllenhaall’s finest characterisations as well as potent support from Isla Fisher playing his fictional wife and Michael Shannon as a memorable lawman.
Ford’s superb storytelling — he never takes the easy creative way out — makes his film well worth seeing more than once.
Alan Frank

The Accountant (15)
Directed by Gavin O’Connor
3/5
MATHEMATICS savant-turned-freelance accountant Christian Wolff — “I have a highly functioning form of autism” — profitably fiddles figures for dangerous international crime cartels.
But Wolff (Ben Affleck) briefly turns honest when he accepts a robotics company as a legitimate client and starts bonding with clerk Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick).
But when US Treasury agents close in on him, he sees red and proves to be an ace shot. The blood flows as the body count grows exponentially.
Undemanding action lovers are well served with frequent shootouts, slugfests and assorted mayhem. But the too-frequent backstories and flashbacks in Bill Dubuque’s screenplay ultimately dilute the overall dramatic impact, despite director Gavin O’Connor’s best efforts.
Affleck’s stolid characterisation sometimes suggests constipation as much as autism, leaving Kendrick, Lithgow — as the robotics company head honcho — and JK Simmons as the Treasury agent to steal the acting laurels.
Alan Frank

Richard Linklater: Dream
Is Destiny (15)
Directed by Louis Black and
Karen Bernstein
5/5
TEXAN-BORN film-maker Richard Linklater is a genuine auteur and Louis Black and Karen Bernstein prove the point with their compelling documentary.
It charts his fascinating trajectory from offshore oil worker to an exceptional film career, from Slacker — “That was a film that probably shouldn’t have been seen” — to his masterpiece Boyhood which, uniquely shot over a 12-year period and nominated for three Oscars, won a well-merited Bafta award for direction last year.
His comments — “I was always working on something even if it didn’t lead to anything,” “You don’t pick writing, it picks you” and “I live in a delusional world” — vividly illuminate his creative process, with footage of his film-making technique and tributes from the likes of Jack Black, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Matthew McConaughey and Patricia Arquette.
An unmissable documentary.
Alan Frank

The Darkest Universe (15)
Directed by Tom Kingsley
and Will Sharpe
3/5
LOVE, grief and alienation are central to this surreal British mystery-comedy which poses more questions than providing answers.
On a verge of a breakdown, banker Zac (Will Sharpe, who co-directs) is avidly searching for his younger sister Alice (Tiani Ghosh) who went missing with her new boyfriend Toby (Joe Thomas) after setting off on a canal boat trip together.
Have they just done a runner like the police think? If not, where are they and where is their boat?
Sharpe and Tom Kingsley deliver an ambitious feature which takes you on an intriguing ride. Through numerous flashbacks, we learn of Zac’s strained relationship with his eccentric sibling and the pressures it puts on his relationship with his girlfriend Eva (Sophia Di Martino).
But despite the endless questions it poses, you are none the wiser by the end.
Maria Duarte

Girls Lost/Pojkarna (15)
Directed by Alexandra-Therese Keining
3/5
THE THREE 14-year-old Swedish schoolgirl protagonists of writer-director Alexandra-Therese Keining’s offbeat drama suffer the kind of emotional and physical hell usually associated on film with US high-school melodramas.
Bullied by fellow pupils, subjected to virulent verbal abuse, their lives are living hell until, bizarrely, they discover a plant that, when eaten, temporarily transforms them into boys. But they learn the hard way that a sex change is no panacea.
“Girls Lost is about the importance and essence of gender… fairly tale and imagination are mixed in a realistic depiction of what it is like to grow up today, seen from a girl’s perspective,” Keining has said of her film.
And her storytelling engages thanks to surprisingly nuanced performances by Tuva Jagell, who unexpectedly comes to terms with her transgender transformation, and Louise Nyvall and Wilma Holmen as her friends in this one-off blend of fairytale fantasy and a depiction of the harsh realities of growing up.
Alan Frank