Here (12A)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
★★★ 

 
SET in the living room of a house with a camera pointing in the same direction throughout, Here captures different moments in time and life passing by. 
 
Based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, co-writer/director Robert Zemeckis (Forest Gump, Back to the Future) brings it visually to life as you see the different families who have lived in the house through the ages. It even shows you life there during prehistoric times.   
 
The film reunites Tom Hanks and Zemeckis for the fifth time, and it is the first time in 30 years that Hanks and Robin Wright have teamed up since Forest Gump. They play childhood sweethearts from teenaged to elderly, opposite Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly as Hanks’ parents. 
 
They have all been digitally de-aged and it is bizarre to watch Bettany telling off a 19-year-old Hanks who is in fact 15 years older than him. At one point you see a 20-something Bettany as former soldier Al moving into the house with his new bride Rose. 

But the problem is that you are only given a snapshot of what is happening in these people’s lives as the action moves back and forth over the decades and centuries. 
 
It reminded me of H G Wells’s The Time Machine. The constant change in images is very distracting and a visual overload on the senses. It is a bold attempt by Zemeckis to push the cinematic envelope, but you just feel like a voyeur. 

In cinemas January 17

Vermiglio (15)
Directed by Maura Delpero
★★★ 
 

SET in 1944 in a mountain village high up in the Italian Alps, the arrival of an army deserter upends the lives of the local schoolmaster and his large family in this bleak drama by writer-director Maura Delpero.
 
It was inspired by Delpero’s personal and family recollections of the house and community where her father grew up. 
 
The patriarch (Tommaso Ragno) here is a strict and old fashioned machista who leaves his wife (Roberta Rovelli) to take care of their eight children and their home while he does nothing to help her. In fact he secretly purchases a record for his own enjoyment instead of buying food. She loses it with him as she can barely feed their kids while he expects her to bear more youngsters. 
 
When Sicilian soldier Pietro (Giuseppe De Dominico) falls in love and marries their eldest daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) her future takes an unfortunate turn and this proves the most interesting part of this beautifully shot but exceedingly depressing drama. 

In cinemas January 17

William Tell (15)
Directed by Nick Hamm 
★★★ 

 
 
THE legend of William Tell is retold in this grand, historical, action epic from writer-director Nick Hamm and featuring a stellar international cast. 
 
It is based on the Schiller play and opens with Tell (Claes Bang) forced to shoot an apple from his son’s head in the local square. The film then flashes back to three days earlier in the run-up to this tension filled scene. 
 
Set in 1307, Tell, a crack cross bow warrior who took part in the Crusades, is now a pacifist who sees the Austrian Hapsburg family, headed by the King (Sir Ben Kingsley on villainous form with a gold eye patch), encroach on Swiss lands. Meeting the Swiss resistance, he is soon persuaded to join their fight to rid their country of the Austrian oppression and in particular the vile and cruel Austrian Viceroy Gessler (Connor Swindells).
 
Brutal, bloody and with stunning sweeping landscapes reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, this is a solid and thrilling drama.

In cinemas January 17

Wolf Man (15)
Directed by Leigh Whannell 
★★★

 
A MAN, desperate not to turn into his troubled father, finds he and his family are attacked by an unseen animal at a remote farmhouse in this horror with surprising bite. 
 
Blake (Christopher Abbott), a writer and stay-at-home dad, discovers he is undergoing some weird transformation as he, his high powered journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) are holed up at his late father’s home. 
 
Co-writer-director Leigh Whannell delivers an entertaining lupine nightmare with plenty of jump scares and devoid of the usual werewolf tropes. 
 
At its heart, this is about a family who are forced to reconnect in order to survive: a mother, who feels guilty for her lack of maternal feelings and not being able to bond with her child, who now has to protect her from her hero. 
 
If you are an arachnophobe this may not be for you. 

In cinemas January 17