The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford (15)
Directed by Sean Robert Dunn
★★★☆☆

 

SET in rural Scotland, writer-director Sean Robert Dunn’s impressive debut feature is a surreal yet strangely moving exploration of grief and identity, and a man struggling to find a place in the modern world. 

It follows widower Kenneth McKay (Peter Mullan) who works in his town’s local visitor centre which is dedicated to his ancestor Sir Douglas Weatherford whom he is fixated with. When the area is chosen as the shooting location for a successful fantasy TV series (think Game of Thrones meets Lord of the Rings), it completely upends town life. It drives Kenneth mental as Sir Douglas’s historical feats and accomplishments are threatened by this pop culture frenzy. He soon becomes obsessed with the show’s star (Jakob Oftebro). 

The film is driven by a nuanced and powerhouse performance by Mullan, (who ironically starred as a dwarf king in the series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) as a lonely eccentric man who is still grieving the loss of his wife a year on. His daughter (Gayle Rankin) doesn’t understand him, or how to deal with him. 

It is tender, heartbreaking yet darkly comic. 
MD
In cinemas June 12

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway (12A)
Directed by Takahiro Hasui

★☆☆☆☆

THE 29th cinema instalment in the popular Detective Conan franchise is probably not the best entry point for newcomers to the series. Especially those unfamiliar with the world of Japanese manga, which continues to conform to its own separate aesthetic standards. Gravity-defying hair, massively oversized eyes, and slow-motion action scenes, set to dated ’90s videogame boss-fight music, are all part and parcel of this outing, together with another staple of the genre — ingeniously bad writing.

To be fair, if you’ve missed the previous 28 films, there’s a short info dump during the opening credits, reminding us that our eponymous child-size hero, Conan, is, in fact, a high school detective who was shrunk when he was poisoned (for some unknown reason) at a theme park. Not that this helps to explain the extraordinarily convoluted and character-bloated plot, interspersed with psychedelic pop-quiz cutaways and mawkish flashbacks. The main narrative thread, involving an AI-enabled motorcycle causing fatal accidents on highways, is just too fast, too spurious.

Throughout, exposition is slopped out like gruel from a ladle and watered down with dialogue so awful it’s sometimes quite impressive. In one scene, a police inspector, noting skid marks at the site of a motorcycle crash comments, with absolute seriousness, that the rider “didn’t try to stop.” I guess with limited deductive powers like that, it’s as well Detective Conan’s on the case.

Nevertheless, for me, the real mystery’s how anyone can follow such ham-fisted storytelling and go away entertained.   
SA
In cinemas June 12

Time and Water (PG)
Directed by Sara Dosa
★★★★☆

“HOW do you say goodbye to what you never thought you could lose?” asks poet and author Andri Snær Magnason, reflecting on the death of Iceland’s glaciers. 

Magnason’s writing is at the heart of this elegiac documentary. He is also its narrator. 

An elegant patchwork of nonfiction narratives, Sara Dosa’s film contemplates ecological destruction, grief, history, folklore and time. 

It’s stylistically diverse too, combining animation, news reports, home movies, family photographs and glorious new footage of Iceland’s waterfalls, mountains and glaciers.

Time and Water is light on environmental science and polemic. Instead, it focuses on the influence of landscape on both people and culture. This is highlighted in Magnason’s speculation about a future haunted by melted glaciers, and in his grandparents’ memories of climbing the Vatnajokull icecap. 

The storytelling is entertaining and allusive but closes with an unambiguous statement on anthropogenic climate breakdown: “We know what needs to be done.” 
AH
In cinemas June 12

Strictly Ballroom (12A)
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
★★★☆☆

WITH its palette of bright primary colours, bouffant hair and sweetly slow-moving romance, watching the 4k re-release of this granny of glitz is like having your face pressed into a 30 year-old trifle.

And yet, the revisit also offers a strange immersion in better times. Back then, the shallow white supremacist world of Aussie authority was fit for mockery, and it was an easy step into the warmth and artistry of an immigrant community. Interestingly, the lead, Paul Mercurio, has grown up to be a Labour politician.

If the plot looks predictable that’s because so many have since followed its stereotype: narcissistic white rebel finds love in the ghetto, and his defiance gets everyone dancing. Except that none of the followers (think La La Land) have dared to be as overtly theatrical as their ancestor, nor as influential.

Will bring a tear to the eye of many an old queen.
AR
In cinemas June 12