Asteroid City ★★★☆☆
Directed by Wes Anderson. Starring Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Jeff Goldblum. 12A cert, gen release, 105 min
The latest from Anderson is a hugely overstuffed ensemble-piece based around a gathering of young astronomers in the US desert during the 1950s. Johansson plays an actor with some biographical details in common with Marilyn Monroe. Schwartzman is a damaged war photographer. The circling hordes tease several dozen further variations on related themes. It hardly needs to be said the design is exquisite and the camera moves punctuate with precision. But, though considerably less hectic than Anderson’s The French Dispatch, Asteroid City has even more difficulty settling upon what story it wants to tell. Ultimately exhausting. Full review DC
No Hard Feelings ★☆☆☆☆
Directed by Gene Stupnitsky. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Natalie Morales, Matthew Broderick. 16 cert, gen release, 103 min
Lawrence plays Maddie, a cash-strapped chancer who answers a Craigslist ad from a couple looking for someone to date their painfully awkward 19-year-old son Percy (Feldman). When she goes full Mrs Robinson at the animal shelter where the lad volunteers, her painful attempts to seduce him end with him pepper-spraying her. It’s the first of several cringe-comedy sequences so devoid of merriment, this viewer longed for a sudden mace attack to get out of watching the rest of the film. With all solidarity to the cadres on the picket line in the Hollywood writers’ strike, the crummiest beta AI could produce a funnier movie than this. Full review TB
The Last Rider ★★★★☆
Directed by Alex Holmes. Featuring Greg LeMond, Kathy LeMond, Perico Delgado, Laurent Fignon, Cyrille Guimard. Limited release, 98 min
Greg LeMond and his wife, Kathy, are the primary contributors in this engaging account of the cyclist’s second Tour de France win. The filmmakers stick to the facts, cutting between talking heads and archival footage. In common with LeMond’s career, The Last Rider proves a charm offensive. Irish viewers may wish for a little more of the great Sean Kelly - who finished ninth that year - but even if the film falls shy of the maillot jaune; it’s a plucky competitor and a welcome antidote to the scandals that have rocked the sport. Full review TB
The Super 8 Years/Les Années Super-8 ★★★★☆
Directed by Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot. Limited release, 60 min
Lauded for fiction derived from lived experience, Annie Ernaux, most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, digs through home-movie footage from the 1970s that sheds light on years raising children and finding herself as an artist. The “filmmaking” itself (would they have used that word?) comes to reflect alterations in domestic relations. The camera begins by moving busily among children and pets. Later, as marital relations worsen, it sits back from the family. The Super 8 Years comes together as an effective gloss on a life that has already been carefully examined. DC
