Nickel Boys (12A)
Directed by RaMell Ross
★★★★

CO-WRITER/DIRECTOR RaMell Ross’s debut feature takes a bold and radical look at racism and racial abuse and corruption in the United States in the 1960s against the backdrop of the civil rights movement. 

Ross’s impressive drama is based on the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, which was inspired by the now closed down Florida reform school The Dozier School For Boys, which was notorious for its abusive treatment of its students. 

What makes it unique is that you actually walk in the shoes of the protagonist Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) as you see through his eyes from the time he is a baby watching his mother play with him until he is sent to the Nickel Academy (which operates racial segregation) for a crime he did not commit, which ends his college life. 

It chronicles this African-American boy’s powerful friendship with Turner (Brandon Wilson), a fellow Nickel Boy. As soon as he meets him you begin to see through Turner’s eyes instead and then it switches from one youngster to another which proves very distracting as you try to keep up. The problem with the first-person camera is that it keeps you detached from what you are observing which at times is pretty harrowing.  

You also see flashes of Curtis’s adult life in 1970s New York but the film’s ending poses more questions than it answers. 

That said, it is a visually audacious drama driven by cracking performances from its two leads.

In cinemas now.
 
 

Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger 
Directed by Chris Foggin
★★★

AFTER taking on the big banks in the first film Bank of Dave, Burnley businessman and self-made millionaire Dave Fishwick sets his sights on bringing down the payday loan companies in this uplifting action sequel based on a true-ish story. 

This takes place two years after the original and sees director Chris Foggin (Fisherman’s Friends) reunite with screenwriter Piers Ashworth. Dave (Rory Kinnear) teams up with US investigative journalist Jessica (Chrissy Metz) and Oliver (Amit Shah), a local Citizen’s Advice counsellor, to fight this more dangerous adversary. 

While a lot of the action across the pond is probably pure fiction — such as with Def Leppard saving Dave’s life — there is some truth to Dave’s campaign. He stepped in when he learnt that a lot of poor and vulnerable victims were being charged extortionate levels of interest for their loans.

Following his documentary series in 2014, Dave Fishwick helped shut down Wonga and change the law which resulted in 50 of the biggest payday lenders going bust or shutting up shop voluntarily. It is another inspirational story. 

On Netflix January 10. 

Babygirl (18)
Directed by Halina Reijn
★★★

NICOLE KIDMAN and Harris Dickinson absolutely smoulder as sub and dom in this provocative erotic thriller about gender and sexual politics. 

Kidman plays a high-powered CEO who puts her career and family life on the line when she embarks on a torrid affair with a company intern (Dickinson) in writer/director Halina Reijn’s sizzling and at times disturbing sexual drama. 

The film opens with Kidman having sex with her husband (Antonio Banderas in a stunning turn) and once it is over she walks off and watches porn to finish herself off. He isn’t open to her sexual fantasies and is horrified to later learn she has never been able to orgasm with him. 

With Samuel (Dickinson) it is a different case. It is a dangerous game they are playing and she isn’t prepared to lose it all. 

Kidman is raw and bares all in a searing performance alongside Dickinson who is equally impressive.

This is about giving up power and control in the bedroom, and women asking what they want sexually without shame or judgement. 

In cinemas January 10. 

Maria (12A)
Directed by Pablo Larrain
★★★

AFTER the aberration that was Spencer, Chilean film-maker Pablo Larrain returns with a fascinating and compelling portrait of the tragic life of one of the world’s greatest opera singers Maria Callas played by a magnificent and transformative Angelina Jolie. 

Larrain reunites with Spencer writer Stephen Knight for this biopic which centres on the last days before Callas’s death in 1977 Paris. It explores her life away from the limelight and the toll of her addiction to meds such as Mandrax as she suffers hallucinations, lending the film a certain poetic licence.

She discusses her childhood and career, her fame and her relationship with the business magnate and love of her life Aristotle Onassis with a journalist named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee). 

Jolie spent seven months training to sing opera and her voice is mixed in with that of the real Callas as she delivers a virtuoso and career best performance in this moving and heartbreaking film. 

Maria is Larrain’s third female biopic and is a reminder of what an extraordinary singing talent she was. She was one of a kind. 

In cinemas January 10.