ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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The Batman
MARIA DUARTE is impressed by the latest incarnations of Gotham City’s shadowy superhero and his band of nemeses, in their murkiest outing to date
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
The Batman (15)
Directed by Matt Reeves
“I’M vengeance,” warns Batman to a gang of Joker lookalikes after beating up one of them to within an inch of his life, as he sets the tone for the darkest and most troubled incarnation of the caped crusader to date — if that’s possible.
Co-writer-director Matt Reeves’s reimagining is a deliciously sinister neonoir detective murder mystery in which Batman (Robert Pattinson) teams up with Lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), in his pre-Commissioner days, in the hunt for sadistic serial killer the Riddler (a disturbing and spine-chilling Paul Dano), who is murdering key political figures in Gotham.
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