Drama – The Magnificent 60s

In the Shadows (2026) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Sometimes you just get bushwhacked at the cinema. Turn up for one of these Secret Screenings at your local multiplex and you’ve no idea what’s going to be shown. I’d never even heard of this picture, much less seen a trailer (and it’s due for release on Oct 30) and never heard of the main character, a female Muslim refugee in Britain who turns into a world champion boxer and represents her country of origin, Somalia, at the Olympics.

In truth, the tale would have been much better told as a documentary because a) it is at least 20 minutes too long b) often relapses into airy fairy artistic shots and c) ain’t half as dramatic as the material could be. There’s a Chariots of Fire moment when our boxer beats the odds with a clever use, but otherwise it doesn’t seem to get beneath the skin of the main characters.

Ramla Ali (Jasmine Jobson) takes up boxing to lose weight. Her parents are kept in the dark because they’ll most likely object and are intent on marrying her off to a nice Muslim boy. She’s taken on at a gym by coach Clinton (Gershwyn Eustache Jr) and also meets Richard (Finn Cole) who takes a shine to her, though romance is off the table given he is white and non-Muslim. Interestingly, she’s not as dedicated to the sport as Clinton would like, in part because she’s ducking and diving to avoid her parents and strict older brother, but also in part because…we don’t know why. Eventually, however, she starts to get bouts and wins enough to come to the attention of the Team GB Olympics Boxing team. But she doesn’t make the grade there because…we don’t know why.

Anyways, Richard decides to convert to Islam and marries her, much to the fury of her family. And then in a Chariots of Fire moment she decides to set up a one-person boxing team for Somalia to compete in the Olympics which is where the film ends, family and community finally coming round. She doesn’t win an Olympic medal it has to be said so it’s not as triumphant as it might be. In fact, it’s not triumphant at all, how her career pans out ends up in the credits.

There are two main problems. Firstly, it’s too long and therefore too slow with too much time spent on artistic compositions that don’t have any impact on the narrative. But, more importantly, because Ramla comes across as a Jekyll and Hyde character. In the big wide world she can more than handle herself, ready with a barbed quip to deter anyone taking her for granted. But in her home she’s a mouse, never challenging parents or strict brother, just sneaking out in the early mornings and evenings to go training. Eventually, she’s rumbled because one of her fights is shown on television, to family outrage.

Films about female boxers have generally tanked at the box office and this looks as if it’s scarcely going to get a release in this country. Nobody wanted to see Sydney Sweeney as Christy (2025) or Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight (2001) although Clint Eastwood made a bundle on Hilary Swank as the Million Dollar Baby (2004), which also scooped Oscars for Eastwood and Swank. So it’s a tough call to find a story that resonates enough to become a fulfilling drama.

And Ramla Ali wasn’t in fact the world’s first female Muslim boxing champ – that honor went to Australian Bianca Bam Bam Emir, born in Lebanon.

It’s definitely attempting to win the inspirational gold and in pure biopic terms that’s fine but as a proper drama comes up short.

Jasmine Jobson (Bird, 2024) is okay but her part is underwritten as is that of Finn Cole (Last Breath, 2025). Gershwyn Eustache Jr (The Man in My Basement, 2025) has the meatiest part.

Director Anthony Wonke is best known for documentaries so can be forgiven for padding this out with artistic flourishes. Written by Ursula Rani Sarma (A Beautiful Imperfection, 2024).

You’ll probably be able to catch this on streaming sometime soon.

Whalefall (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Sea beast smorgasbord – whale, squid, orcas. Even the tinier specimens like a jellyfish and a sea urchin have their own vicious defences. A whale of a ride though without an anatomy book to hand I’d be hard put to tell you what’s going on. A big-budget B-picture, heavy on the thrills and edge-of-the-seat tension but suffers from the need to put on airs and graces and lecture us on ecology and the final piece of mumbo-jumbo lacks the satisfying clarity of, say, Ryan Gosling’s scientific explanations in Project Hail Mary (2026).

After a terrific hour of immersion in the belly of the whale, which involves tangling with the aforementioned squid and sea urchin and being sucked into the hard-core digestive part of the mammal, the ending suddenly switches to the maudlin, with our hero being given advice by his dead father and somehow, apparently, communing with the whale. And it’s okay, also apparently, to blow a whale to smithereens because in ecological terms a dead whale provides a mountain of nutrients for other sea creatures and whatever grows on the seabed in what is known as a “whalefall.”

But until then it’s pure pedal-to-the-metal. For reasons that don’t make much sense college student Jay (Austin Abrams) decides to go hunting for his father’s remains, even though they had a very difficult relationship, a year after Mitt (Josh Brolin) committed suicide by dropping into the sea with the metal equivalent of a block of cement attached. Kitted out in scuba gear, Jay no sooner has reached the trench where he reckons his dad fell than he gets snagged by a squid whose tentacles are sticking out of the mouth of a sperm whale and he’s dragged inside.

Turns out, if I’m reading this right, a whale has two stomach sections, the first where his prey just sit like in a waiting room, and the second where the prey is consumed into the digestion system. So landing initially in the first section, the squid decides he might as well enjoy a bit of lunch before he meets his maker. Jay is almost crushed to death and the squid it transpires also has a very small mouth with very sharp teeth.

He only escapes because the squid is the first to be swallowed into the digestive system. But Jay is next and the most of his time battling for a way out of the maze of the whale’s stomach. There’s virtually no dialog, obviously, and mostly all Jay can do is scream and gasp for breath and watch as his oxygen supply runs down. He nearly escapes through the whale’s mouth as it surfaces for air and to provide tourists with the opportunity for selfies but soon slithers back down.

The whale, it turns out, is not entirely immune. While its size might deter smaller mammals it has little defense against a shoal of ravenous orcas which take chunks out its tail and body. There’s some hocus pocus that I couldn’t get a handle on that permitted Jay to make his escape, some kind of chemical lesson that created an explosion.

I could have done without the father-son relationship because it became too much a part of the later narrative. It didn’t matter how Jay ended up in the whale’s stomach, to be honest, and, as I said, we didn’t need pontificating about ocean ecology.

But the central section, the trap, is terrific. Unusually, Austin Adams, as he proved in Resident Evil (2026), can carry a film where he’s the entire narrative conduit and there’s not much interaction between characters, much of the picture relying on his reactions to a given situation. Josh Brolin (Weapons, 2025) seems to have inherited all those grizzled old guy roles that used to fall to the likes of Nick Nolte. I haven’t seen Elizabeth Shue (she was Oscar-nominated for Leaving Las Vegas, 1995) in a long time. This is her first movie in three years and the last one I remembered her in was the Death Wish (2018) remake.

Directed by Brian Duffield (Cocaine Bear, 2023) who wrote the screenplay with Daniel Kraus, author of the source novel.

I tell you I was on the edge of my seat all the time Jay was in the belly of the beast, but, unfortunately the tension dissipated once he started imagining his dead father giving him instruction.

Deep Water (2026) ****- Seen on Amazon Prime

In my mind there is a special category for the well-made B-picture that cuts itself no slack, doesn’t indulge in airs and graces, and doesn’t spend valuable screen time pontificating on the world’s woes or weighing the picture down with romance or some mawkish drama. Little time is wasted here, either, on providing characters with any depth, in fact we don’t even find out what’s bugging First Officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) till literally the final scene of the movie. And as you know I’m pretty keen on sharks or any other ferocious beast from the deep sea, so my tendency is always to err on the side of praise.

But for a B-picture this goes three ways. First we’re in disaster movie territory with an incredible airplane crash, then we’re in survival mode as the disparate group of passengers are adrift in the ocean, buoyed up by what remains of the sinking plane, and finally you realize this has all just been bait-and-switch because actually what we’re headed for is a shark movie.

This is not just in very safe hands, director Renny Harlin having been here before (terrors of the deep wise) in Deep Blue Sea (1999) and he’s no stranger to racking the tension up to 11 what with Die Hard 2 (1990) and Cliffhanger (1993) in his locker. And it’s a pretty confident director who uses elegiac music to undercut the scenes of horror on a plane falling out of the sky, with passengers battered by all sorts of missiles, not to mention a plane on fire, and huge holes being torn through the fuselage and people being sucked out.

It’s not a hijack thank goodness and the plane doesn’t land in a country riven with civil war or endangered by terrorists. Instead, calamity is caused by a faulty mobile phone that sets fire to a piece of luggage in the cargo hold which subsequently engulfs the plane. Karaoke king Rich (Ben Kingsley) is the captain, but he doesn’t last long, trapped in the cockpit after the crash and waiting with stiff upper lip for death.

There’s nothing original about the passengers and there’s no actor in a breakout role here. There’s a small child (Molly Belle Wright) who’s obnoxious to her brother, their parents caught in the middle of a conjugal exercise in the toilet when the plane goes down, a couple of odious characters – one a bully, the other just the kind of rude entitled guy (Angus Sampson) always stirring up trouble – and a younger couple struggling to commit. And then it’s just perm a dozen hazardous situations from the aftermath of the crash, whether it’s the bits of the plane that are still afloat beginning to be swallowed up by the sea, or those trapped in the part that’s stuck upside down on the seabed, or those being picked off by a posse of sharks, plus the usual tension between the survivors.

There’s a nod to The Italian Job (1969) when to keep the plane wreck on an even keel some passengers have to go into watery back. And while you can’t get away from Jaws (1975) or the wild Under Paris (2024), the sharks here don’t need much of an ominous introduction, either via musical motif or scientific mumjo-jumbo explaining their unlikely presence (hardly required since they’re just where you’d expect to find them). No sooner has the first fin appeared than they’re lopping off body parts. They’re more athletic than I’ve seen from the breed, liable to heave themselves out of the water onto a life raft and even capable of downing a helicopter.

And our Ben isn’t the commanding hero one usually requires in a movie like this. He’s clearly as traumatized as the rest of them, and getting a sock in the mouth (literally) from passengers slagging him off for crash-landing in the first place. It does play kinda safe where the death toll is concerned. The two kids ain’t going to be anybody’s lunch any time soon and the commitment-phobic couple are too sweet to knock off. But after that any one is game for death.

Some excellent twists including a rescue boat that can’t come close enough to rescue the survivors because the water is too shallow around a dangerous reef.

The scenes on board the aircraft as it starts to come apart, engines falling off, the shell of the plane sprung loose, and passengers killed by falling luggage or anything else loose in the air, are just horrific.

This was actually a movie that flopped so badly on U.S. release that it didn’t make it to our shores and while it’s a good fit for Amazon as a streamer, it’s had more thought put into the production than is normal for the streamers.

Hugely enjoyable.

Tunes of Glory (1960) ****

Fans of Succession will appreciate this power struggle in a Scottish army regiment set in 1948. In a reverse of The Godfather (1972) where the Corleones complain about needing a “wartime consigliore,” here the powers-that-be have decided this unnamed distinctly Highlander company requires a commanding officer with skills more appropriate to peace time.

Major Jock Sinclair (Alec Guinness) has been in charge of the battalion since the North Africa campaign in World War Two when the original commander was killed. But he has never been promoted to full Lt. Col. Naturally, having been in charge for six years, he feels the job should be his. At a time when the currency of command was wartime experience he’s less than pleased when he loses out to Col. Barrow (John Mills) who spent most of the war as a Japanese POW.

It doesn’t help that they are complete opposites. Sinclair is a tough, hard-drinking, attention-seeking Scotsman who enlisted as an ordinary soldier and rose through the ranks winning two medals for courage during the conflict. Barrow is Oxford-educated English upper-class, a lecturer at Sandhurst Military Academy, and recalls his war experience with terror rather than the braggadocio of Sinclair. Worse, he doesn’t drink.

It doesn’t take long for the pair to clash. Sinclair, who has ruled as much by preying on weakness as force of personality, is quick to start to look for flaws in his opponent’s make-up. Barrow feels discipline has been slipping and enforces tougher measures. That might make him unpopular but an army is built on discipline so soldiers can hardly complain.

But Barrow slips up by misreading the men. He chooses the worst of all issues to make a stand. For the first post-war official barracks party, Barrow insists the soldiers embark on traditional Highland dancing in regulation fashion rather than in their normal exuberant, not to say rowdy, manner. The soldiers are infuriated when Barrow insists they take lessons.

He has just lit the fuse. Naturally, nothing goes according to plan. Barrow is humiliated, Sinclair triumphant. But victory does not turn out the way Sinclair expected.

Somewhat cynical rebranding of the film in Italy as “Whisky and Glory,” possibly trying to cash in on the success of “Whisky Galore” and also misleading in suggesting actual conflict with the fighting in the background.

The main thrust of the narrative, as you might expect, is the stand-off between Sinclair and Barrow and the tensions felt all round, as would be the case in any business (Succession, now, of course the classic example) when a new boss takes control. While everyone might expect, and perhaps fear, change, in the military (as in the navy) there is always the danger, should the new broom try to sweep too clean, of mutiny.

This might not amount to a raising of arms. But there are other effective methods of mounting opposition – laxity, questioning or outright refusal to obey orders – or giving the new chief the cold shoulder. Here, in the background, are other simmering tensions. Not everyone is comfortable with Sinclair’s very laddish approach to command, the back-stabbing and double-dealing Major Charles Scott (Dennis Price) ready to pounce at any opportunity.

Sinclair is also having to deal with his daughter Morag (Susannah York) asserting her independence, having the temerity not just to take a boyfriend, Corporal Fraser (John Fraser), but one from the ranks rather than the officer class. And he feels the harsh tongue of his own paramour Mary (Kay Walsh).

Emotional isolation is rarely commented upon in matters of the armed forces and yet it is so much a driving force. If not adequately compensated by camaraderie, a man at the top can be very lonely indeed, and prone to the most vicious self-torment.

Director Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969) superbly invokes an army atmosphere away from the more usual battleground backdrop. The picture is anchored by brilliant performances all round and a roll-call of strong supporting characters. An unflinching look at power, especially leadership and the personal toll it takes. And it was astonishing that the movie could hit the target so well without relying on the usual round of sex, violence or that old stand-by the comic subordinate. It also probes the issues of what happens – in any industry – when the wrong person is put in charge. No less an authority than Alfred Hitchcock called it “one of the best films ever made.”

The sparring between Oscar-winning Alec Guinness (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) and John Mills (The Family Way, 1966), who won the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival for this role, is of the highest quality. Dennis Price (The Comedy Man, 1964) is the pick of the support while Susannah York (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) makes an auspicious debut.

Few films could boast a better supporting cast: former British leading lady Kay Walsh (A Study in Terror, 1965), Gordon Jackson (The Ipcress File, 1965), Duncan Macrae (Best of Enemies, 1961), John Fraser (Tamahine, 1963), Gerard Harper (Adam Adamant Lives!, 1966-1967, TV series) and Peter McEnery (The Moon-Spinners, 1964).

James Kennaway (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) wrote the screenplay based on his own novel.

Hellfighters (1969) ****

I’m sticking my neck out on this one – under-rated would be an understatement – and primarily because it’s the Duke’s most intriguing film of the decade and possibly ever. For a start we have John Wayne The Quitter (the hell you say!). Then he ducks out of the picture for a full quarter of an hour (he does what?). Fast forward a couple of years and this would have led the disaster cycle pack – a little tinkering with the structure and you would have all four principals fighting fires in South America in the middle of a revolution (beat that, The Towering Inferno.) But most enthralling of all this is a family drama masquerading as an action picture.

And it led me to thinking if True Grit (1969) had not landed on Wayne’s doorstep whether he would have continued down the dramatic rather than the action road for the tail end of his career. He had just collected his first million-dollar fee so in box office terms he was untouchable. And just for the record, the action scenes, especially given the absence of CGI, are terrific. Sure, the oil’s a little bit too thin to pass for real oil, but it does gets sloshed over all concerned, including the Duke, by the bucketload.

And it might be a shade on the episodic side, Chance Buckman (John Wayne) and compadres racing from one hellish event to another, but it’s wrapped around a tight dramatic core, Chance vs independent daughter Tish (Katharine Ross), Chance vs one-time sidekick and now Tish’s husband Greg (Jim Hutton), Chance vs. Tish’s mother Madelyn (Vera Miles) and Chance vs. all the dimwits on the board of the company he quit his own operation to join.

Chance is based on the real-life Red Adair, an oilman who had invented the extremely scientific but extremely dangerous method of putting out oil-well fires. When a gazillion gallons of oil spurting unchecked out of the ground catch fire you’ve got a helluva problem on your hands. A gazillion gallons of water ain’t going to cut it. The only solution is to cut off the oxygen supply long enough to cap the well. Red Adair’s technique: blast the oxygen out of the way. He’d attach drums filled with massive amounts of nitro-glycerine, roll them into the blaze on the end of cranes, hide behind nothing more resilient than hazard suits and shields made of corrugated iron, and detonate them. The resulting explosion did the trick.

The picture opens with this stunt, although after being accidentally injured, Chance is hospitalized, bringing estranged daughter and ex-wife into the dramatic frame. After a pretty frosty meet-cute, Tish and Greg hit it off and get married, forcing Tish to confront the fear that drove Chance and Madelyn apart, that, like the wife of a Formula One driver, she never knows if her husband will come back. This bothers the feisty Tish a lot less than the weary Madelyn. And she even ignores all protocol and rushes to her husband’s side, regardless of the danger.

Meanwhile, Chance decides not only has he had enough of dicing with danger but he can leave his company in the safe hands of Greg. His life now on a more mundane keel, Madelyn is attracted back. But of course it wouldn’t do for Chance to live out retirement with nothing more testy than board meetings so he comes back into the fray during a rebellion in Venezula and both women have to confront their true feelings.

The action, considering the lack of CGI, or the kind of budget available to The Towering Inferno, is first-class. This is the ideal movie reversal. Instead of running away from a fire, these characters race towards it. There are some hair-raising moments. At one blowout, gas is leaking from the ground, poisoning everyone in sight, Greg is trapped underwater. And should complacency sneak in, fire, being on the unpredictable side, is prone to sudden explosion.

John Wayne (The Undefeated, 1969) has always excelled at restrained emotion and here he gets both barrels. Having got rid of the over-protective wife he’s now saddled with a daughter he’s desperate to protect from the hell he put his wife through. He’s faultless here, given considerably more acting scope than normal and not, as in McLintock (1963), just able to tan a woman’s backside, presenting a more contemporary male, perhaps as puzzled by female behavior as any of his cowboys, but taking a more modern approach to resolving his feelings.

Katharine Ross (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969) has her best role, not a mere appendage as in her other films of this period, but driving forward the action through her independence. Jim Hutton (Walk, Don’t Run, 1966) is growing on me. I’ve reversed my view of him as a lightweight. Vera Miles (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962) does a pretty good job of playing older – she was not yet 40 – and essays a complicated character, more rounded than was often the case with the female lead in Wayne pictures. Veterans Jay C. Flippen (Firecreek, 1968) and Bruce Cabot (The Undefeated) head the support.

The perennially underrated Andrew V McLaglen (The Undefeated) does a pretty good job with the action, as you might expect, but is also savvy enough to let the dramatic scenes flow. Clair Huffaker (Rio Conchos, 1964) penned the screenplay.

Guilty pleasure personified, you might say, but I’d retort that this is a damn fine picture erroneously ignored – rating only two paragraphs in Scott Eyman’s 650-page biography of John Wayne for example – possibly because it appeared in between the critically-reviled The Green Berets (1968) and the critically-acclaimed True Grit.

Captain Newman M.D. (1963) ****

Somewhat lost in the rush to acclaim star Gregory Peck for his Oscar-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), this bold attempt to tackle mental illness among the armed forces deserves reassessment.

Set towards the end of World War Two, psychiatrist Captain Newman (Gregory Peck) heads up a unit addressing the previously ignored mental health issues of U.S. airmen. One of the first to identify post- traumatic stress disorder, Newman employs a whole raft of unusual techniques such as allowing his clients to tend sheep. And he’s not above using romantic sleight-of-hand to woo Lt. Corum (Angie Dickinson), a nurse in a non-psychiatric department, to join his team. Orderly Corporal Leibowitz (Tony Curtis), more of a con artist than a medical professional, is the other key member of the team.

As you might expect, Newman has to battle superiors to allow him to even attempt to cure any of the men under his care since in standard armed forces opinion they are really just cowards trying to duck out of their duty. Given there’s no prescribed treatment for his clientele, Newman basically improvises on a case-by-case basis to get to the heart of what caused mental collapse.

While the movie motors along nicely on the interplay between these three characters – the potential for real romance between Newman and Corum and Newman’s acceptance of Leibowitz’s alternative, more down-to-earth and decidedly un-medical approach – it focuses on three critical cases. Col Bliss (Eddie Albert) suffers from split personality, Capt Winston (Robert Duvall) is catatonic and Corporal Tompkins (Bobby Darin) too bubbly by far.

In dealing with each, Newman adopts a different persona, occasionally entering into the make-believe world of his clients to expose how much of a fiction they are. Stern with some, he is gentle with others and when he appears to go over the score explains he is not shouting at a person but at his symptoms.

And while at time it feels like a mental equivalent of episodes of a hospital soap, the underlying drive, the knowledge that men are hiding from the horrors of war or endure guilt over action they may have taken or are unable to face the consequence of orders they carried out takes this into a different level. Almost all suffer from the standard conviction that they must be cowards. Newman’s task is to make all face up to their fears.

*Presumably to overcome fears of audience resistance to the downbeat subject matter, the U.S. poster plain misled the public – “love, laughter and tears” were not much in evidence.*

And it’s Corum’s self-appointed job to get under Newman’s skin and in so doing get to the heart of the terrible irony of his role. If he fails and men are discharged without being cured they will be returned to their units while mentally unstable and make decisions that could endanger thousands of men. If he succeeds, he sends men back to face potential death.

Luckily, it’s far from dour. Instead of taking the audience down a medical jargon rabbit-hole, the movie sensibly concentrates of character and humanity. It is filled with brilliant dialogue and whenever Newman appears overwhelmed up pops Leibowitz like the self-appointed class clown to bring events to a cheerier conclusion. Up till the end – a Xmas show by inmates and the arrival of a bunch of Italian POWs – the movie steers well clear of sentimentality and delivers a lucid exploration of the effects of war on the human psyche.

Gregory Peck (Mirage, 1965) is outstanding, not just from the way he adapts his character to suit the situation, but because quite a lot of his role is just to react to what is being said. Most stars would run a mile from being on the receiving end of chunks of dialog and insist on altering the script to make them appear more dynamic. Unlike Atticus Finch who is convinced he can find a solution, Newman knows his detection skills are very basic.

Tony Curtis (The Boston Strangler, 1968) might appear as if inhabiting a custom-made role suited to his natural effervescence and charm, but this is a deeper character than initially seems the case and rather than ride along and enjoy himself he has spells of challenging Newman’s authority. It’s a more subdued role for Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962), too, but she also brings a level of seriousness to the part and is integral to the picture’s success.

Bobby Darin (Pressure Point, 1962) was Oscar-nominated but I found his acting over-the-top. Eddie Albert (Green Acres television series 1965-1971) and Robert Duvall (To Kill a Mockingbird), in particular, were more assured. Look out for James Gregory (The Secret War of Harry Frigg, 1968) and former child star Jane Withers.

David Miller (Hammerhead, 1968) strikes the correct tone, leavening the seriousness with humor, but not avoiding the deeper issues. In their final screenplay assignment Henry and Phoebe Ephron (Carousel, 1956), parents of Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, 1989), teamed with Richard L. Breen (A Man Could Get Killed, 1966) for an intelligent screenplay based on the bestseller by Leo Rosten.

Below (2026) ***** Seen on Netflix

One of the most brilliant, almost surreal, openings in recent years, and probably the best to come from a streamer. A wooden house is being towed across the water by a very small boat. The image is just stunning. But it doesn’t last long because the house doesn’t last long. Something in the water triggers its collapse with a father inside. On the boat his small son Calvin has to frantically saw through the towing rope otherwise the entire family is going to be dragged under. So he’s left with the guilt of dooming his father.

But that was 40 years ago and now the widowed Calvin (Josh Hartnett) is struggling to survive in a small fishing village which no longer has any fish to catch. Fisherman make a living hauling up ice. Quite why the undersea monster has waited four decades to put in another appearance is anyone’s guess and it’s a big niggardly with its presence, an eye glimpsed through dark waters, bits of bone washing up on the shores, a long arm like a whiplash dragging people to their doom, long arms clutching the bottom of, of all things, a big iceberg that’s washed up close to the village. Mostly, what you see is the aftermath or are told of havoc wreaked. .

But what makes this so enjoyable is that it avoids the quick-fire jump-scares of most of the genre and with six episodes to spare takes it time telling its story. You’re not going to encounter scream queens either or anyone screaming for that matter because this is the kind of hardy environment where men and women learn not to scream from an early age and hold tight onto their emotions.

So much of this is told with incredible restraint. Calvin has to turn his house into an airbnb to make ends meet and the only way you know the domestic pressure this creates is when you see family members sleeping on the floor to make way for visiting guests. And more to the point, nobody complains. This isn’t, as with other pictures, an opportunity to vent, show emotion and find a cheap way to cover the injustices of the past.

Calvin would like to be able to buy a proper fishing boat and looks to his grown-up kids to share the load and when they knock him back, all you need is the look in his eyes, and not even a close-up of the same, to fill in all the grief of the years.

There’s a marvellous scene when the youngest child Wade (Charlie Heaton), a nervous wreck since the premature death of his mother, watches with envy his father enjoying a hearty drink with his eldest son Jay (Rohan Campbell). And that’s the same again, a brief snapshot, no outpouring of emotion.

Nor is there incipient romance once Calvin has to call in scientist Dr Fonda Howander (Mackenzie Davis) to investigate a diseased load of ice. The ice is infectious, just breathing in the age-old ammonia-smelling stuff is enough to trigger tremendous thirst and hallucination. Again, it’s the visuals, not the verbals, that make this work. When Wade is suddenly compelled to swallow an entire gallon of water, nobody turns a hair or makes a connection.

Like Jaws, the community relies on the water and the traditionally quaint village to attract tourists so no one’s going to be broadcasting that there’s something in the water and the ice – two different threats as we shall soon see. But again the watchword is restraint. The audience knows that infected ice will result in madness but the inhabitants and visitors knocking back the melted ice in their drinks haven’t a clue.

So the build-up is incredibly well judged. Wade turns a bit crazy but he’s crazy already so nobody’s much bothered. The sub plots are interesting. Noah (Kaleb Horn), boyfriend of Calvin’s daughter Mary (Ruby Stokes), is mostly the awkward suitor trying to fit in with the man’s man dad. He does fit in, but you’ve have to be quick to spot him playing guitar with the saloon band. He’s planning to propose but has lost the ring.

The thief, I’d wager, is Jay who has the kind of money troubles you get beaten up for. But he’s also swiped right and landed the village’s sexiest woman Jan (Natasha Henstridge) who doesn’t take getting beaten up as a good enough excuse to stand her up.

It does take a wrong turn when Calvin, surviving a shipwreck, ends up on a remote uninhabited island only to discover it is inhabited but by the psychotic. The real purpose of this is to find a narrative trick to expose the big bad bosses, the ruling Crocker family, of whom Jan proves one, and with her own set of dastardly skills, who are trying to get everyone out of the village so they can extract its mineral wealth.

But that heavy-handed approach, involving bringing in the Army, backfires, as it allows Calvin and his family to regroup and bond again and sort everything out.

This is exemplary, from the undemonstrative direction to the controlled playing, and from the authentic atmosphere to the slow build-up of tension. And especially to not getting carried away with the monster and ruining the whole shebang. The various back stories and sub-plots, which appear initially too woke, finally gell and that adds an authenticity that’s rare in the genre, and sits well with other contemporary issues as well as homing in on what home is and the need to belong.

The backstory and subplots all add rather than detract. There is a relgious supernatural element, people who treat the monster as a god, a young woman attracted to Wade because of the tentacle marks on his back. The hysteria of the local epidemic recalls the pandeomium of the pandemic. And the solution is ecological. It’s not blowing up or bombing the monster. It’s helping it to get clear by towing the iceberg back to sea. (You wonder why Digger never thought of simply stopping its iceberg in its tracks and taking it back where it belonged.) And there’s a wonderful coda explaining that in the natural cycle of the pregnant squid she sacrifices herself for her children.

I’ve just watched Josh Hartnett in the excellent Verdict, but this is a more subdued, and winning, performance. Mackenzie Davis (Speak No Evil, 2024) is good as the nerdy awkward scientist. Charlie Heaton from Stranger Things (2016-2025) and Ruby Stokes (Jay Kelly, 2025) are also good. I’ve not seen Natasha Henstridge (Species, 1995) for quite a time so welcome back.

Kudos to series creator Jesse McKeown, a television writer and to the directors for following his unshowy vision.

It had me at Below and I binge-watched over two nights.

Great fun, but thoughtful, a difficult combination to achive.

Top of the class.

The Naked Kiss (1964) ****

Certainly doesn’t start off as your standard entry to the criminal-trying-to-go-straight mini-genre when a bald woman beats up and robs her pimp. Kelly (Constance Towers), who knows “your body is your only passport,” nonetheless sets out to create a new life for herself as a salesperson (hawking overpriced champagne) in a small town where prostitution is outlawed.

She could easily settle for being the mistress of corrupt cop Griff (Anthony Eisley), but he’s something of a pimp, sending girls-off-the-bus across the river to the joint run by Candy (Virginia Grey). Instead, she takes up nursing, in an institute for crippled children, providing tough love to the kids. In due course, she hooks up the town’s handsome philanthropic millionaire Grant (Michael Dante), a relationship which Griff threatens to wreck.

However, she fesses up to Grant, now her fiancé in double-quick time, about her past and, remarkably, he forgives her. And you think, my goodness, she’s going to get away with it, new life, new career, a job she loves in which she is adored by the kids. You could be tootling along Sentimental Boulevard: Kelly forms the kids into a choir, she coaxes slightly mad landlady Josephine (Berry Bronson) back to reality, determines to make her own wedding dress rather than be beholden to the millionaire, and takes under her wing nurses Buff (Marie Devereux) and Dusty (Karen Conrad) who have fallen victim to life’s traps.

You could be in Movie of the Week territory, another hooker with a heart of gold, except while she’s been turning her life around, there’s the inherent tension that she must fail. But this being a Sam Fuller (Shock Corridor, 1963) picture, Kelly is one tough cookie, outsmarting for a start Griff, who sees her as another in his assembly line of sex workers, and beating up Candy for daring to seduce Buff away from nursing by the promise of big money. Kelly ain’t sentimental. She views herself as a “broken down piece of machinery” with a future beckoning of “nothing but the buck, the bed and the bottle.” This is partly a shrew observation of herself but also of the production line nature or prostitution.

So there’s a catch. And it’s just plain awful. Grant is a paedophile. He has chosen Kelly because, as a sex worker, she is a deviant who will “understand my sickness.” And she’s sickened that despite her best efforts, that’s how she’s viewed, as a woman who would condone such behavior, and that he somehow believes she is complicit, in encouraging young girls from the hospital to visit him. So she kills him.

And then reality strikes with a vengeance. She finds herself embroiled in the worst kind of small town corruption. Griff, who’s gunning for her anyway, refuses to believe her accusation against Grant, his best pal. Candy, who’s also gunning for her, says Kelly planned to blackmail Grant. There’s money missing, so she’s branded a thief as well. And nobody can find the little girl Grant had lined up.

An absolutely terrific film, constantly switching gear, twist after twist, but incredibly humane. There’s probably never been a better portrayal of the working girl, here all shown as vulnerable rather than predatory, as victims caught in a man-made web, and although dealt with in subtle fashion many clearly suffering from mental illness.

Kelly is cultured, reads Byron and Goethe, embraces the classical music education a relationship with Grant promises, but is unusually self-analytical. When she looks in a mirror she’s not seeking physical flaws but shortcomings of character. She understands all too well how men play women. Her tragedy is that when she sets aside her inbuilt cynicism, the man she trusts turns out to be as untrustworthy as they come.

Constance Towers (Shock Corridor) carries the picture, revealing several shades of personality, from hard-bitten woman to tender nurse, from avenger to pragmatic problem-solver. Michael Dante (Harlow, 1965) pulls off the difficult role of being persuasively a good guy gone bad. Veteran Virginia Grey (Jungle Jim, 1948) is all veneer.

But it is Sam Fuller’s movie. He was a triple hyphenate, writer-producer-director, so his vision was never in doubt. The dialog is terrific – the explanation of the title alone is extremely creepy – often cutting to the bone, but the best sequences lack words at all, the black-and-white photography bringing an air of film noir, and for all the striking toughness of the heroine, several moving scenes.

It’s not shocking in Fuller’s normal manner. As I can testify, it suggests to the viewer it’s going one way, and the core terrible act creeps up upon the audience. But it is brilliantly directed, even with a B-picture cast. Pulp reinvented as art. You could possibly argue in its vision and subject matter this was the birthplace of the indie.

Unabomber (2026) **** – Seen on Netflix

I’ve got mixed feelings about this one because it’s effectively two films in one, the sections separated by 38 years. The first part, set in 1958, explores the early life at Harvard of the Unabomber, the second part, set in 1996, the investigation leading to his arrest. The first part is superb, with Russell Crowe, devoid of his usual bombast, in superb form and telling as cruel a tale as you’ll ever come across.

The second part is the kind of True Crime drama which has become a Netflix trademark. And interesting though it is, it’s pretty much standard for the genre, but gets itself into trouble by establishing Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley) as the FBI investigator who effectively tracks down the criminal, battling the department and male misogyny to do so. And although this is too reminiscent of Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs (1991), the big problem is that Joanne Miller didn’t exist, she’s a figment of someone’s imagination, and the gender switch comes off first of all as an insult to the guy who actually did the solving and a crude attempt to inject unnecessary feminism into the tale.

And once you learn that, you start to question the truth of the first section. Which I very much hope has not been fictionalized because it’s just terrific.

Theodore (Ted) Kacynski, son of a butcher, is a pretty smart guy to get into Harvard in the first place, but he’s your standard misfit nerd, doesn’t feel he fits into society, reacts badly to women coming on to him, falls out with his dominant father and meek mother. He’s meant to be studying maths but has taken a class in philosophy taught by eminent professor Henry Murray (Russell Crowe) who uses, unusually, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to introduce students to his subject, and takes a fancy to young Ted, on account purportedly of his brainpower (I should point now there are no sexual undertones) and invites him to take part in an unique experiment, ostensibly to discover how well people can perform in a debate. Murray is a kind, warm, character who empathizes with Ted’s travails at home, explaining that he, too, was victimized as a child, called defective by his father because he didn’t fit in. Murray also has an alluring sidekick, Christiana (Annabelle Wallis), who is both a high-up assistant for the experiments and his girlfriend.

But the debate is a two-person affair in a private room, a lab of some kind because Ted is harnessed up to all sorts of electronic equipment to measure how he responds during the exercise. It’s not the usual kind of debate, his opponent, known only as Mr C, is cruel, vindictive, arrogant, and whose main weapon is not argument but character assassination. It’s not a debate but a tongue-lashing. But Ted constantly comes back for more. But no matter how much he stands up to his opponent, the stakes are always tilted against him.

Eventually, we discover that Professor Murray is working for the Government, conducting a brain-washing experiment. He’s already headed up an investigation into the U.S. soldiers brainwashed by the Chinese in Korea and now the men in black want to understand how to use brainwashing themselves. Murray is under some pressure to deliver results and it turns out that Ted, initially viewed as an ideal candidate for brainwashing, becomes an impediment. So Murray decides to “break him” himself. Except our supposedly submissive student turns the tables and we get a glimpse of his devious criminal mind.

I know nothing about the Unabomber but I suspect the producers know too much and probably feared the tale of how Ted terrorized America for 15 years using bombs through the post is already too well known to make an intriguing thriller, especially as the older Ted is only seen as a heavily bearded fellow living in a cabin in the woods.

For people like me, ignorant of the facts of the case, which is ancient history by now, and this serial killer downgraded in the public eye by far worse serial killers, I was pretty taken by the investigation which centered on one agent, Miller, standing up to the rest of the department as she follows a different clue, using linguistics to catch the killer. Effectively, the person who uncovered the link between Ted and the Unabomber was Ted’s younger brother’s wife who noted the connection between the written language Ted used in general correspondence to the killer’s manifesto published in the newspapers.

Anyway, even with my reservations about the clumsy gender switch, I found this totally engrossing. Russell Crowe (Nuremberg, 2025) is very much back on mild-mannered form. Shailene Woodley (Ferrari, 2023) is at last given a leading role to do her talents justice, Jacob Tremblay (The Life of Chuck, 2024) sizzles as the troubled student and Annabelle Wallis (Mutiny, 2026) shows how easy it is to switch from the horror movies with which she made her name.

Directed by Dane Janus Metz (All the Old Knives, 2022) from a screenplay by debutant Sam Chelson and Nelson Greaves (Unfriended, 2014).

All told, compelling stuff.

Heart of the Beast (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

To be honest, I hadn’t been too keen on this one. I’ve moaned before about having to spend an interminable amount of time focusing on just one actor on the screen and much as I admire Brad Pitt – and F1: The Movie (2025) has become an all-time fave – I didn’t want to be guy that watched him not pulling it off. Plus, haven’t we been here before with Channing Taum and Dog (2022) and Leonardo DiCaprio out in the wilderness in The Revenant (2015). Plus plus, had Pitt never heard of old Hollywood adage of note working with animals and children.

And that adage proved correct because Odin the dog playing Odin the dog is immense. Not much to boast about in the cute department, but boy, isn’t he useful to have around in a tussle with wolves and any dog who can stare down an angry bear would go up a notch in anyone’s estimation. Plus, he has soulful eyes and it takes a good deal of strength for director David Ayer to resist the temptation just to quietly ease Pitt out of the picture altogether so charismatic is the canine.

But then Pitt hasn’t got where he is without having charisma of his own and I have to confess that he belongs to a very small group of actors – Matt Damon, DiCaprio, Timothy Chalamet, De Niro – who you can’t keep your eyes off when onscreen. That quiet intensity that draws you in then says, aw shucks, I’m just a laid-back dude, just stick with me and I’ll see you through.

This ain’t the kind the kind of territory it says on the tin, nothing like the freezing wilderness facing DiCaprio, but if you’ve got a heart condition, a broken arm and ultimately a ton of other crippling wounds, even walking from a remote point through Alaska 60 miles from anywhere (and that anywhere is just an invisible dot on the map, not a town or hamlet or anything, just a flatter, easier, terrain) on a peaceful summer’s day would be a stretch.

There’s no suggestion that ex-soldier James Belmont (Brad Pitt) is looking for a peaceful spot to die, but, for a survival expert he’s pretty damn dumb when it comes to medical supplies for dealing with a dodgy heart, a mouthful of aspirin ain’t going to do the trick. But otherwise, in survival terms, he’s on the ball, and part of the movie’s appeal is watching a survival expert at work, you could be sitting there taking notes he’s so good.

And you would be doing just that if there wasn’t a massive emotional tug that grips you from the start, the relationship between dog and man is just terrific, a buddy movie if you accept one is a canine. There’s nothing particularly novel about the action sequences – plane crash, walking over a ravine using a dodgy log, riding the rapids on your back, battling wolves and bears – but each is meticulously worked out and compellingg, especially the wolf attack.

The scene that sticks most in my mind, however, is the one the director makes not attempt to highlight. Belmont is sitting on an escarpment while his blood pools in holes in the rock.

Both dog and man suffer from PTSD and maybe being away from everyone is a way of dealing with it, and Belmont makes sure he’s packed enough beer to while away the evenings. The dog can give him lessons in survival, can pluck a salmon out of the river with his bear teeth, ignores Belmont’s command to avert his eyes from the bear, just flat-out stares the monster down.

Nobody’s going to be pushing Pitt for an Oscar, not while there are a bucket of more showy performances out there this year, but he should be a good outside bet, especially as he delivers on the most important front, keeping the audience hooked. This has started well enough at the box office but I’ve got a sneaky feeling it’s going to be a word-of-mouth hit driven by people like me who had their minimal expectations overturned.

That old crusty fella you saw in the trailer turns out to be J.K. Simmons (The Accountant 2, 2025), but he’s hardly in it. David Ayer (The Beekeeper, 2024) knows how to mine a great actor. Debut screenplay from music video director Cameron Alexander.

Riveting.