By Angelique Halliburton.

The Limehouse Golem – A Victorian-era whodunnit with a never-saw-it-coming twist

As if the dreary London town of Limehouse hasn’t suffered enough, there’s now a serial killer on the loose. So vicious are the attacks that the residents relish in the idea that their community is being terrorised by a supernatural monster, The Limehouse Golem. Detective John Kildare, played by the stylish Bill Nighy, has been set up to fail in his quest to find the real murderer.

Kildare’s work may already be done when the controlling, unfaithful husband of stage actress Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke) is found dead and she is charged with poisoning him. Kildare embarks on a process of elimination to prove deceased John Cree’s guilt as the serial killer – who perhaps chose suicide to avail himself of being caught – and thus save Elizabeth from the gallows.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that The Limehouse Golem, directed by Juan Carlos is a Dickens adaptation. All the elements are there: the dark, cobbled London mews, unlucky ladies of the night, the poor little, but extremely cute street urchins and the inevitable death and despair. But no, this film is the rework of a 1994 novel by biographer and poet, Peter Ackroyd. The screenplay credit goes to Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, The Woman in Black, X-Men). Each character is perfectly cast -but Nighy and Cooke’s standout performances steal the show.

Press screening attendees had the pleasure of being welcomed to the Picturehouse Central in London by none other than Nighy himself. He delighted in the fact that he’d always wanted to play a detective. I wonder whether Juan Carlos saw Nighy’s turn as a chief inspector in the comedy flick Hot Fuzz. Touchingly, The Limehouse Golem is dedicated to the late Alan Rickman, who was set to play Nighy’s character but had to pull out due to illness.

A classic murder mystery with a brilliantly unpredictable ending, The Limehouse Golem is a tale within a tale and is narrated in parts by the theatrical drag artist Dan Leno (Douglas Booth). The lighting, Victorian costumes, the blood and gore, intertwined with typical British humour makes this film a pleasure to watch, even though thrillers aren’t my ‘thing’. I did slightly better than my plus-one, who watched most of the film behind closed fingers!

The Limehouse Golem is due for UK release on 1 September 2017.

By Marti Dols Roca.

La Soledad is Venezuelan director Jorge Thielen Armand feature film debut. Having screened at Venice International Film Festival, Miami Film Festival (Audience Award) and Atlanta Film Festival (Special Jury Prize); as well as winning the Best Opera Prima and Best Sound Design at Festival del Cine Venezolano, this little movie following the lives of a very humble family trying to keep their house amidst the tragic situation of the country, sets the way for a quite promising film career.

La Soledad is the name of the old mansion Jose and his family live in. His grandma Rosita used to be the maid of the long gone wealthy family that once inhabited the house and knows all the legends regarding the place; as the morocota gold coins hidden treasure somewhere in the nowadays derelict garden. But Jose has no time for legends for he has a little daughter to take care of, a problematic brother bringing his shady friends around and a wife who is getting tired of her job and is considering moving out to Colombia. To top it off, the actual owners of the house want to demolish it to sell the land.

Jose keeps neglecting his daughter’s insistence about a beach trip they were supposed to have while facing endless queues in the town hall to ask for social benefits and empty supermarkets that serve as a subtle and never politically driven view of current Venezuela.

On that matter, there are brief and well placed lines of dialogue that give a darker insight such as one of the friends of Jose’s brother proposal to join him in his express kidnappings as-it’s the only thing that gives money nowadays. In addition, there are other not so elegantly showed but equally striking sequences that underline that point as the overcrowded hospital the main character takes his grandma to, unsuccessfully, get the medicines she needs.

That last scene of the movie shows Jose taking his wife and daughter to the beach and enjoying an isolate moment of peace while floating face up in the sea as the camera zooms out to, finally, fade to black.

La Soledad fits in the social realism genre frame but it is also half documentary as many of the actors play themselves in the film. It is sober, striking and beautiful. The movie delivers the message intended through its tone and lack of action and even though it gets a bit slow from time to time or some would argue the resolution is anything but resolute, the film stays faithful to its nature and portrays magnificently the poverty-stricken situation of Venezuela nowadays.

By Marti Dols Roca.

Detroit is undoubtedly one of the most expected releases of the year. Not only because of the prolific and talented hand of its director: Katrhyn Bigelow (Academy Award winner for The Hurt Locker) but also because, by luck or misfortune, it coincides with a very specific moment of social and racial turmoil in the western world and especially the U.S: from Trump’s election to the Black Lives Matter movement or the recent events at Charlottesville, Virginia).

Detroit is set under the frame of the city’s riots in 1967 and it focuses on The Algiers Motel Incident: when three young black men were killed during an interrogation by DPD officers claiming that there was a sniper amidst the hotel guests. After a people’s trial (on which the movie doesn’t really focus) following the initial absolution of the three policemen involved, those were taken off the streets and the force with no further consequences (aside from a ridiculous fine to one of the affected families).

The film’s opening is superb- animating a Jacob Lawrence’s painting series on the Great Migration- and it sets the tone and the mood to come. Shortly after, the event that lit the spark of the riots is broadly portrayed and the characters that will carry the story introduced. From that moment on, the story follows the Algiers Motel Incident from its very beginning to its tragic ending and it resolves with a quick and not particularly thorough sequence of the trials mentioned, to end up with captions over black screen explaining the outcome of the lives of the real people involved.

The movie succeeds in delivering a point; even though it trembles in several moments to eventually deliver the intended message. That risk is caused by the somehow sloppy ending which, never seems to arrive. But little by little the audience surely feels the rage, fear and impotence of witnessing the outrageous performance of the Detroit police force. The feeling of utter injustice and lack of belief in the judicial system travels from the screen to the spectators’ guts unavoidably.

The main problem, in the humble opinion of the writer of this article, is precisely the destination of this message: the guts. To be completely honest, it feels like the director is looking for a visceral reaction from the audience, which she gets, rather than trying to dissection the roots of the problem. That is unarguably disappointing considering what she is capable of- especially in The Hurt Locker and the emotional depth of its characters’ arcs.

The three cops guilty of the massacre are shown as bad apples and not as part of a broader system of policing. Which unfortunately enough resonates with the current situation mentioned at the beginning of this text: the bad apple explanations it’s a major risk, to put it gently, considering how many times in how many different parts of the country (or the world) the exact same thing has happened. I.e. people being killed by the infrastructure supposed to protect them for racial, class and economic circumstances that have created a climate of tension, fear and mutual distrust. Detroit is clearly a work of fiction and it should be seen as such (partly); but accepting that, let’s at least point out how misleading is the title (as it could be called Algiers and it would be way more fair to the actual events taking place in the movie) and its introduction.

The way the writer of this article sees it: it feels more like real and freaking scary Funny Games during the Detroit riots than an actual (fictionalised) depiction of the 1967 riots in “The Motor Town”.

Logan Lucky ticks all the requirements for a heist/caper movie on paper but just didn’t work on screen.

Unlucky for Steven Soderbergh he just couldn’t recreate the magic of Ocean’s 11 which may be down to poor casting in part. Whatever avant garde thing he was trying to do just didn’t work. Daniel Craig was pretty decent though.

Logan Lucky centres on Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), a former high school quarterback who failed to make it big working dead beat jobs in Boone County. Along with his brother Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) they decide to steal the takings from the biggest NASCAR race weekend in North Carolina but in order to do it they need Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) only problem is he’s in jail. So now the brothers have set themselves the impossible task of breaking him out of jail and pulling of this heist. Will they succeed and also break the Logan curse?

This is a solid heist movie but it isn’t as funny as it thinks it is. This is mostly down to Channing Tatum being the weakest link. Adam Driver is memorable as is the child actress who plays Channing’s daughter in the film and Daniel Craig is quite simply at his comic best. It also seems full of caricatures and feels so Southern it hurts y’all. There was a little nod to Little Miss Sunshine and Farrah Mackenzie (Sadie Logan) who sings John Denver’s country roads take me home is a touching moment in a frankly average film. I don’t quite understand why Soderbergh would attempt to recreate the Ocean’s films. Clearly, Mr Soderbergh has never heard the old adage “never look back, never go back”!

Wait for this on DVD or if you have one of those monthly cinema cards then why not although it will feel like a long two hours. This is just not as great as it could have been and it is so deeply frustrating given what a trailblazer Steven Soderbergh has been over the past 20 years.

Logan Lucky opens in cinemas across the UK tomorrow, 25 August.