Stuntman ★★★★☆
Directed by Albert Leung, Herbert Leung. Starring Terrance Lau, Stephen Tung, Cecilia Choi, Philip Ng. 15A cert, limited release, 114 min
Fine Hong Kong actioner concerning a veteran fight director dragged back into the industry decades after a tragedy. The Leungs’ first feature favours old-school choreography: performers slam against walls, fall down escalators and jump into stacks of cardboard boxes. The nostalgia is punctured, however, with an acknowledgment that the old ways were reckless endangerment. That elegiac reflection extends to Hong Kong itself. Tung, an occasional actor and winner of seven Hong Kong Golden Horse awards for his choreography, brings poignancy and authenticity to the thrills and spills. Full review TB
King Frankie ★★★☆☆
Directed by Dermot Malone. Starring Peter Coonan, Owen Roe, Olivia Caffrey, Ruairi O’Connor, Rob Malone. 15A cert, limited release, 95 min
King Frankie tells two parallel stories set some 10 years apart. At the film’s present, Frankie Burke (Coonan), a taxi driver, attends traditional commemorations for his father’s death. A decade earlier, King Frankie, as he could then be styled, embraces the bubbling, noisy future at an unnecessarily elaborate birthday party for his young daughter. It’s been a long time since Irish storytellers first engaged with the vulgar hubris that accompanied the Celtic Tiger. Malone’s intriguing diptych could be seen as a reminder that the perilous delusions hung around for decades. Well-acted. Sturdily made. Full review DC
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Timestalker ★★★☆☆
Directed by Alice Lowe. Starring Alice Lowe, Jacob Anderson, Nick Frost, Aneurin Barnard, Tanya Reynolds, Mike Wozniak, Kate Dickie, Dan Skinner. 15A cert, limited release, 89 min
Sci-fi comedy concerning a woman who travels through time falling in with the same oft-reincarnated man. In Prevenge, Lowe’s first feature, a pregnant woman becomes a serial killer at the behest of her telepathic foetus. The gore that followed was rooted in a deeper truth about pregnancy and mental health. Timestalker, similarly, has notes on erotomania. The nature of the crush varies. Barnard, dressed in flaming red Marc Boylan attire, suggests that Lowe is a deluded fangirl. Unrequited love is seldom so much fun. Lowe’s 18th-century pink “pouf” could put Marie Antoinette to shame. Full review TB
’Salem’s Lot ★★☆☆☆
Directed by Gary Dauberman. Starring Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Alfre Woodard, John Benjamin Hickey, Bill Camp, Jordan Preston Carter, Nicholas Crovetti. 15A cert, gen release, 113 min
Leaden revisit of Stephen King’s classic novel about a vampire turning up in a sleepy part of New England. Dauberman’s version allows itself little time to explore relationships. Characters rapidly identify themselves and then run headlong into the developing panic. The accumulation of everyday America that was so important in early King is abandoned as the picture gives into comic-book vampire hunting of the broadest stripe. We are now farther from the novel than the novel was from FW Murnau’s Nosferatu. The book may not show its age, but this adaptation feels more ancient than the oceans. Full review DC
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