Four new films to see this week: Rental Family, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, The Voice of Hind Rajab, Megadeth: Behind the Mask
Rental Family ★★★☆☆Directed by Hikari. Starring Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto. 12A cert, gen release, 110 minTouching, sentimental comedy about an American actor in Tokyo who allows himself to be hired out as stand-in for friends and family members of those who feel a void in their lives. This is the sort of thing that generates aloof articles in British broadsheets about what’s wrong with Japanese society. But Hikari, hitherto most celebrated for directing the TV series Tokyo Vice and Beef, is not in the business of ridiculing anyone. Rental Family is a remarkably humane piece of work that finds justifications for every character’s oddest decision. Fraser is quietly touching. Full review DC28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ★★★☆☆Directed by Nia DaCosta. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry, Emma Laird, Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Maura Bird. 16 cert, gen release, 109 minFourth part in the 28 Days Later fast-zombie sequence. Young Spike (Williams) is now among the Jimmys, a tribe formed in misguided homage to Jimmy Savile, as they attempt to contact the man they think to be Satan (Fiennes). The new film, evocatively shot by Sean Bobbitt, feels like a trivial, if entertaining, diversion on the way to a more substantial closing fall. It is (no mean feat) the most gruesome yet in the sequence. Most 28 Days Later enthusiasts will have already guessed who will be accompanying us through that conclusion. Full review DCREAD MORERyan Tubridy: ‘I’m a different person now to who I was a couple of years ago. I’ve evolved’‘There was blood everywhere’: Senator Pauline Tully on being brutally attacked by her husband in 2014Brianna Parkins: I hate the Dublin Bushman and his scaring of young women for moneyThe Voice of Hind Rajab ★★★★☆Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania. Starring Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury. 15A cert , gen release, 89 minThis tense film reconstructs the events of January 29th, 2024, when employees at the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Ramallah received a series of emergency calls from Hind Rajab, a Palestinian child trapped in a car under fire in Gaza. The director takes audio recordings of Hind’s calls and works them in with reconstructions of the emergency workers’ response. The script comes a little unstuck when outlining the procedural processes that delayed aid. But this remains a clear-headed chronicle of a terrible tragedy and of Palestinian suffering. Already a phenomenon on the festival circuit. Full review TBMegadeth: Behind the Mask ★★★★☆Directed by Casey Tebo. Featuring Megadeth, Dave Mustaine. 15A cert, gen release, 110 minCompelling documentary on – with Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax – one of the big four in thrash metal. Ahead of the release of Megadeth’s final album and farewell tour, Mustaine, founder of the band, is in a contemplative, if occasionally irascible, mood in this “listening party” directed by Casey Tebo. “I’m not the kind of guy who can’t forgive,” he explains. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off.” Fans will hang on his wide-ranging anecdotes about songwriting, the loss of his teeth after cancer therapy and being the sole musician to thank Jesus at the Grammys. Full review TB
