There’s extreme intensity to The Menu even before Ralph Fiennes’ delectably unhinged Chef Slowik first twists his kitchen timer into motion. Said timer relentlessly ticks as things ramp up further still. On and on it goes. Just there. Right at the back of Todd Weaver’s intricately mixed soundscape. Around it, this a banquet of a film. One best enjoyed as blind as can be achieved. The more known the less flavoursome. Even within the confines of the film’s runtime, such is true. While a fiendishly appetising starter gives way to a reasonably unsavoury main, the desert threatens to leave diners wanting, the sweet taste of vengeance not quite scored.
Tom Hanks does some spectacular growling in A Man Called Otto. This being Marc ‘Quantum of Solace’ Foster’s soupy remake of the acclaimed Swedish dramedy A Man Called Ove, which was itself an adaptation of the book by Fredrik Backman. English translations of Scandi hits rarely justify their own existence and Otto, with a tone’s as chaotic as your local neighbourhood’s Facebook group and excess of saccharine, is no exception. And yet, it’s a beautifully cast affair. Oddly touching too. Not to forget the ample chuckles, some black as charcoal. Plus, there really is no getting past that spectacular growling.
Not seventy years have passed since the brutal lynching of Emmett Till. It was only last year that Joe Biden signed into law the legislation that named the means of his murder a hate crime. Till, from Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu, is, then, a timely dramatisation. A difficult to watch but wholly necessary film and one rendered all the more resonant by the powerhouse central performance of The Harder They Fall’s Danielle Deadwyler. As Mamie Till, mother of Emmett and later activist, Deadwyler proves extraordinarily adept in channelling the emotional reality of grief in its most harrowing form. The less shown, the more revealed.
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