list.co.uk/fi lm Reviews | FILM
ROMANTIC DRAMA THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS (12A) 133min ●●●●● THRILLER THE ACCOUNTANT (15) 128min ●●●●●
DRAMA INDIGNATION (15) 111min ●●●●●
Twelve years after his feature debut Brother Tied, writer-director Derek Cianfrance re-emerged with 2010’s sublime anti-romance Blue Valentine, following it with the visceral The Place Beyond the Pines. While those films established him as a filmmaker of raw talent, his fourth is a more disappointingly conventional affair. An adaptation of ML Stedman’s novel, it tells of
a lighthouse keeper and his wife living on a remote Antipodean island after World War I. When a baby and a dead man wash ashore in a rowboat, they decide to raise the infant as their own. It’s heavy stuff but Cianfrance seems to have
buckled under the weight of the material. While both Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are solid as the island-dwellers – his Tom a former soldier clearly suffering from PTSD, her Isabel a life-affirming free spirit who opens his heart – and Rachel Weisz is excellent as a bereaved mother adrift in her grief, the film is plodding and overbearingly emotionally manipulative. The relentless melodrama drowns out the intrigue of the ethical dilemma and, despite the talent involved, The Light Between Oceans is mawkish when it should be moving. (Nikki Baughan) ■ General release from Tue 1 Nov.
The Accountant may sound like a John Grisham potboiler but the reality is a muddled hybrid of pulpy vigilante thriller, half-hearted romance and comic book violence. There are clever touches and effective moments but Gavin O’Connor’s film never gels into a coherent or believable whole. Ben Affleck is Christian Wolff, a high-functioning
autistic accountant who works for some of the most dangerous organisations on the planet. He is a combination of Rain Man and James Bond with the social graces of Schwarzenegger’s cyborg in The Terminator. Hired to audit the figures for a robotics company, he uncovers corporate skulduggery and makes a rare connection with fellow numbers geek Dana (Anna Kendrick), while Agent Ray King (JK Simmons) is on Christian’s trail, trying to figure out whether he is a hero or a villain.
The Accountant is top heavy with plot, backstory and flashbacks. At times it feels like an endless daisy chain of exposition, and a whopping coincidence strains credibility to breaking point. The end result has the loose ends of a superhero origins film, with the promise of more to come. It’s a very strange film that just doesn’t add up. (Allan Hunter) ■ General release from Fri 4 Nov.
Transferring the work of Philip Roth to the big screen has proved tricky, with adaptations struggling to capture his mordant intelligence. Debut director James Schamus is famous for writing and producing much of Ang Lee’s canon, and his take on Indignation is an effective portrayal of idealism in conflict with authority.
Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman) enrolls in a liberal Ohio college in 1951. There he meets Olivia (Sarah Gadon), a woman whose advances both attract and guilt-trip him. Pressure reaches Marcus through his mother and the attentions of Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts) who questions his religious beliefs and motivations for skipping class.
Indignation is fierce in its sense of a young man seeking to understand the world. Lerman, recognisable from the Percy Jackson films, graduates to genuine dramatic heights, supported by Letts, who wrings intensity out of his long confrontation with Marcus. This is a deliberately low-key drama, and the refinement of Schamus’s storytelling is up to the task of evoking the novel’s honest, yet complex notions, making this the best Roth adaptation in decades. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 18 Nov.
THRILLER NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (15) 117min ●●●●●
Probing, sinister and seductive, Nocturnal Animals is the second feature from fashion designer Tom Ford and this sleek beast marks a bold step forward in his evolution as a filmmaker. Amy Adams plays Susan, a wildly successful gallery owner living a superficially perfect LA life but suffering from a bad case of ennui. Susan is delivered a shot of adrenalin when she’s sent the manuscript of a book by her ex Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man she hasn’t seen for two decades. As she devours it, we watch the narrative unfold alongside Susan’s own story. The novel in question is the titular Nocturnal Animals, a
terrifying thriller which finds an everyman called Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal) plunged into a nightmare when his wife and daughter are kidnapped. In its violence and real-life parallels, the book appears to be a cruel rebuke, and yet it awakens Susan from her slumber and she begins to contemplate where the relationship went wrong. Based on the novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright, the
screenplay has been crafted by Ford himself. It’s ravishingly shot and superbly performed, and if the satire of lives-less-ordinary feels familiar then the intertwining of this and a Last House on the Left style revenge plot betrays ambition. Moreover, it’s executed with real panache as the stories switch and bleed masterfully, with the sterility of Susan’s urban environs and the heart-racing horror of Tony’s desert-set tale a satisfying contrast.
Nocturnal Animals is tense, intriguing and just the right amount of strange. It’s a movie that explores the invigorating, engrossing impact of fiction – a beguiling creation that shows, appropriately enough, the way a great story can get right under the skin. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 4 Nov.
3 Nov 2016–31 Jan 2017 THE LIST 89