PICKING UP THE PIECES: Kelly Macdonald and Irrfan Khan in Puzzle (Image: Linda Kallerus)
Puzzle ★★★★
(Cert 15, 103mins)
A RE film-makers running out of ideas for underdog sports movies? After maths quiz drama X+Y and chess flick Queen Of Katwe comes a film about a jigsaw puzzle contest.
Thankfully, this is nowhere near as desperate as it sounds. And for once, the film is barely interested in the outcome of the climactic competition.
By the time our heroine arrives at the National Jigsaw Championship in New York, we are concentrating on a very different puzzle. Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) is a housewife from Connecticut who we meet as she proudly carries a homemade cake into a birthday party.
It turns out to be her own since her mechanic husband Louie (David Denman) and their two grown sons (Bubba Weiler and Austin Abrams) seem incapable of nipping out for a Victoria sponge and packet of candles.
After being largely ignored at her own party, Agnes gets around to opening her gifts.
One is a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Most people would take days to complete it but Agnes knocks it off in an afternoon just before Louie gets home expecting his dinner.
“Puzzles are for children,” he tells her dismissively. So she doesn’t tell him she’s planning to go to a New York games store to buy another.
There an advert leads her to Robert (Irrfan Khan), a wealthy inventor seeking a “puzzle partner”. His original partner was his wife and she recently left him.
“I think I may be good at this,” Agnes tells him with a mixture of excitement and guilt.
After lying to her husband, she agrees to meet Robert twice a week to prepare for the big tournament.
Soon a touching friendship builds between repressed Catholic Agnes and free-spirited Robert. Before long Agnes is beginning to think outside the box.
To Louie’s shock she begins to assert herself at home. As Macdonald shows us Agnes’s blossoming, she also keeps us guessing.
Just how far will Agnes’s self-awakening take her? The contest may be a little short on drama but in the end all the pieces fit together with a very satisfying snap.
American Animals ★★★★
(Cert 15, 117mins)
“This is based on a true story,” reads the opening caption to British writer-director Bart Layton’s fascinating film about a 2004 robbery.
It recounts the theft of a collection of rare books, including a priceless copy of John James Audubon’s illustrated Birds Of America, from the library of Kentucky’s Transylvania University.
At first, Layton appears to bolster that bold opening claim about telling a true story by splicing interviews with the real robbers into his fast-paced dramatic reconstruction.
But after a while, you realise this only muddies the waters since the real thieves can’t agree on the course of events depicted in the glossy drama.
The complex relationship between truth and fiction lies at the very heart of this fascinating crime film.
Early on, we see talented artist Reinhard (Dunkirk actor Barry Keoghan) and Warren Lipka (X-Men star Evan Peters), a failing student on a sports scholarship, leave a branch of Blockbuster with a collection of Hollywood heist movies including Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven.
In their heads they are George Clooney and Brad Pitt and the film’s zippy music and slick editing seem to back them up.
As their plans become more complicated, Reinhard and Warren rope in two more students, maths whiz Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson) and wealthy fitness freak Chas Allen (Blake Jenner).
Their motives are murky and none of them are poor. But Reinhard longs for adventure and Warren is disillusioned with the conventional, middle-class life that awaits him.
The only part of the plan that doesn’t fit with their fantasy is Betty Jean Gooch (Ann Dowd), the tweedy librarian who guards the collection.
In Hollywood romps, thieves don’t have to zap innocent middle-aged ladies with Tasers. In this stylish and wildly original heist movie, violent fantasies have very real victims.
Hurricane ★★★
(Cert 15, 123mins)
WITH workers from eastern Europe now leaving Britain in droves, Hurricane is a timely reminder of wave of migrants.
It tells the story of 303 Squadron, one of 16 Polish squadrons that fought in the RAF during the Second World War.
The film begins with pilots from the Polish Air Force fl eeing occupied Europe to bolster our beleaguered air defences.
They are initially confi ned to base by a suspicious War Offi ce and not allowed to fi ght until we start to run out of native fighter pilots.
When they finally take to the skies, their skill and bravery make 303 the highest-scoring squadron in the Battle Of Britain. I
ndeed, there is a strong argument that without them the battle would have had a different outcome.
Hurricane is named after the British aircraft most widely used in the battle. Sadly, budget constraints mean that they are rendered in overly shiny CGI in the dogfi ght scenes.
Thankfully, the action on the ground is a lot more convincing. Welsh actor Iwan Rheon (the villainous Ramsay Bolton in Game Of Thrones) makes a persuasive lead as pilot Jan Zumbach despite having to perform half of his lines in subtitled Polish.
There is an authentic edge to early scenes where Jan meets his cocky comrades at RAF Northolt and they clash with the Canadian offi cer (Milo Gibson) who has been ordered to keep them out of the fi ght.
The men then incur the wrath of British pilots when they fraternise with the base’s womenfolk. There is a great performance from Stefanie Martini who plays a command bunker girl. “In peacetime, I’d have been called a tart,” she tells Jan. “Now I’m just a good sport.”
But the film ends on a very sour note. It is VE Day and the Poles haven’t been invited to the party for fear of upsetting Stalin.
Not that they are in the mood to celebrate.
The Soviets have replaced the Nazis as their oppressors and the British government has decided to quietly “repatriate” the Polish war heroes.
A fnal caption states that “an opinion poll showed that 56 per cent of the British public” thought they should be sent home. “Many of those who did return were persecuted, imprisoned or sentenced to death,” adds another caption.
They may have won the Battle Of Britain but the battle for their homeland had been lost.
FINAL SCORE ★★
(Cert 15, 104mins)
IF YOU set an action movie in a “European semi-final” featuring West Ham United, there is no point trying to deliver it with a straight face.
And it is the shortage of laughs that makes this Die Hard rip-off so disappointing.
The action begins with Dave Bautista’s haunted US war veteran Mike Knox arriving at West Ham’s old stadium with the teenage daughter (Lara Peake) of a fallen colleague.
But what is supposed to be a special treat turns into a nightmare when the girl goes missing and a gang of unconvincing Russian terrorists take over the stadium.
Arkady (Ray Stevenson) tells the police he will blow up the stands unless his exiled brother and Hammers fan Dimitri (Pierce Brosnan), who is in the crowd, hands himself over.
Bautista is a capable fighter but shaky cameras make a lot of the action hard to follow and the writers haven’t made the most of the film’s unusual setting.
THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST ★★★★
(Cert 15, 91mins)
THIS touching, gently amusing coming-of-age drama is set in 1993 but its subject matter is perhaps even more relevant now.
Desiree Akhavan’s film, the deserving winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, explores the religious right’s attempts to “convert” gay teenagers.
The so-called “conversion therapy” is still legal in 41 states of Trump’s America so this big-hearted film of acceptance and understanding is shot through with a sense of urgency.
We meet Cameron (an excellent Chloë Grace Moretz) as she is caught in flagrante on the back seat of a car with her secret girlfriend.
Her next stop is God’s Promise, a camp to free teenagers from a demonic curse known as SSA (Same Sex Attraction).
The cure, a mixture of magazine psychobabble and St Paul’s apocalyptic rantings, was devised by camp founder Dr Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle) and is mostly delivered by camp (in both senses) teacher Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr).
The brainwashing almost works. But Cameron’s humanity, her sense of humour and the friendship of two rebels (Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck) help Cameron fight back. Arkhavan has no interest in glibly ridiculing religion or creating one-dimensional villains.
The ending is tragic but the fi lm isn’t as tortured as you might expect, featuring breezy performances, sharp lines and even a spot of karaoke.
