Supergirl [2026 film] (4 Stars)

Over the last few weeks I've seen various trailers for "Supergirl" in the cinema. I rarely watch trailers at home. I've seen videos on YouTube predicting it would be a massive flop. Again, I didn't watch the videos, but the titles and info screens told me all I needed to know. But I didn't let myself be put off. I went to the cinema today, and I enjoyed the film. The only major thing I disliked is that it's set on alien planets. I would have preferred to see Supergirl on Earth.

What I enjoyed most was seeing Supergirl's power. She's more than a match for any opponent or groups of opponents who face her. I couldn't help thinking that her fight scenes are what MCU's Drax should have fought like. The whole outer space alien planet setting reminded me of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, which isn't something bad in itself.

On the way home I watched "Supergirl" reviews on YouTube and replies to the reviews. It seems like most of the critics liked the film less than I did, but I understood their arguments. The replies were less balanced. They claimed that critics don't like "Supergirl" because it's a film about a powerful woman. That's not something I read in any of the critical reviews. They also claimed that the opponents of the film are MAGA supporters. That's an even stranger argument, which isn't backed up by anything I've read online. People are trying to politicise fair criticism. That's wrong.

I'll probably read more criticism of the film. but it won't change my mind. I like it.

Red Sparrow (4 Stars)

"Red Sparrow" is a spy thriller that was made in 2018. It stars Jennifer Lawrence with dyed brown hair and a fake Russian accent.

Don't worry, she reverts to her natural hair colour later in the film.

She plays Dominika Egorova, a ballerina at the Bolshoi Ballet. She breaks her leg in an accident on stage. She can soon walk again, but her career as a dancer is over. Her uncle, the deputy director of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, hires her to join the Sparrows, an elite group of agents who are trained to sexually seduce foreigners. Despite her initial reluctance to use her body as a weapon, she excels in her training. After a few months she's sent to Budapest to seduce Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a CIA agent who's receiving information from a high-ranking Russian informer. Her mission is to find out the name of the informer.

She underestimates Nate. Soon after meeting her he recognises that she's a Sparrow acting undercover in Budapest, but she continues with her game. When he challenges her, she claims that she wants to defect to the West. Is that true, or just a ploy to get him to trust her? The cat and mouse game continues for the rest of the film, and the viewer is left unsure of what she really wants. The film is probably the most effective the first time you watch it, when you don't know the answer, but it's still good enough for repeated watching.

The film has gained notoriety for its sexual training scenes. The Sparrows are expected to strip naked in front of the class to demonstrate their seduction skills. The ice cold Matron, played to perfection by Charlotte Rampling, drills this lesson into the trainees:

"Every human being is a puzzle of need. Learn how to be the missing piece, and they will give you everything".

Wise words. Find out what a man wants and give it to him. Dominika is told what sort of pornography Nate watches on the Internet before she starts her assignment. This, combined with her personal assessment of him, tells her what strategy to use.

It's all for Mother Russia. Vladimir Putin would be proud.

Success Rate:  + 0.2

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A Hidden Life (4 Stars)

This is the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who lived from 1907 to 1943. When the film was being planned, the director Terrence Malick intended to make it in German. At the last minute it was decided to make it in English, even though most of the actors were German. I personally think this was the wrong decision. Today I watched the original English language version, but I feel tempted to watch the dubbed German version next week.

Franz lived in Radegund, a small village high in the mountains, close to the German border. Life was hard, and it seems that the farming community was working mostly to sustain itself, rather than to sell its products in other areas. He was married with three daughters. His wife's sister lived with them and also worked on the farm.

When the war broke out in 1939 he was given basic military training, and then sent home. He didn't expect to have to fight. In World War Two farmers were exempted from conscription. However, many of the men in the village volunteered to join the army. Not Franz. He was having doubts about the war. There were newspaper reports about the glorious victories with photos of bodies lying in the street. He was disgusted. He made no secret of his feelings about the war and about Hitler himself. He refused to use the Hitler greeting, and in one early scene he's greeted with "Heil Hitler" and replies "Pfui Hitler". My German readers will probably chuckle at that.

Increasingly, Franz was considered a traitor by his fellow villagers. His wife also became an outcast. Even his sister-in-law turned against him.

Franz was eventually called up to fight in 1943, when the war was going badly. He reported to duty, but he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler. He was arrested, tortured, tried and executed.

This is a very religious film. Franz Jägerstätter's sincere belief as a Roman Catholic is in the foreground throughout the film. The local priest shared Franz's views on Hitler and the war, but he didn't have the same convictions. After Franz was found guilty of treason he was told he would be spared if he signed an oath of allegiance. The priest told Franz, "God sees your heart, so sign the document and think the opposite". That wasn't good enough for Franz. It was important to him that everybody knew that he felt.

The film lasts almost three hours. It wasn't necessary to make the film so long, since very little happens, but it makes the film better. The film is intense and melodramatic. It's overwhelming with its religious imagery, not to mention the stunning Austrian scenery. We're immersed into Franz Jägerstätter's thoughts, including his religiousness.

I am no supporter of the Catholic Church, but I have never made fun of a Catholic or tried to talk him out of his faith. Any religious belief is good, as long as it doesn't lead to hatred for others. In fact, I feel envious of those who are naive enough to have a simple belief like Franz Jägerstätter. He helped out in his village church, sweeping the floor, never for a moment doubting that he was doing right.

Was it the religion that made him a good person, or his good nature that made him religious? That's impossible to answer. I distinguish between religion and religiousness. Religion is what's written in the holy book, and religiousness is the way a person puts it into practise. Religion is the theory, religiousness is the practise. A person's religiousness can be better or worse than his religion. A good person will pick out the best parts in a holy book, the parts that tell him to love others. A bad person will quote the bad parts of a holy book, using them as an excuse to hate others.

One thing I like about "A Hidden Life" is that it's unique in being a film about disliking Hitler that has nothing to do with the Jews. That wasn't an issue for Franz. There were no Jews in Radegund, and he probably didn't know about the way Jews were suffering. He had enough other reasons to object to Hitler.

Red Sparrow (4 Stars)

This is another example of a film that I saw in the cinema that wasn't what I expected. Maybe it was the trailer that led me astray, maybe it was the lead actress's background. I expected "Red Sparrow" to be an action thriller like "Atomic Blonde", but it was closer to "A Most Wanted Man".

Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is a successful Russian ballerina. After an accident on stage she's unable to continue with her career, and she's worried that she will no longer be able to support her sick mother. Her uncle Ivan  Egorov (Matthias Schoenaerts) suggests that she join the Russian secret service. She is trained as a "Sparrow", an organisation of young, sexy agents who are trained to seduce enemy agents. Despite being rebellious during her training, she's sent on a mission to seduce an American CIA agent, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), in Budapest. Russia knows that Nash is receiving information from a mole in the Russian government, and they want her to find out the name of the mole.

The mission doesn't run as smoothly as planned. The CIA knows that Dominika is a Russian agent and attempts to recruit her. She's torn between the two sides, since she doesn't fully trust either spy agency. All she's interested in is looking after herself and her mother.

There are only a few action sequences in the film. It's fascinating to see the way spy business is carried out as a matter of routine.

The Drop (4½ Stars)

You don't have to be alone forever.

If you have a dog you're never alone. This is especially true if you have a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, probably the most affectionate breed of dog. If you show a dog only the slightest affection he'll love you unconditionally for the rest of his life. Dogs don't judge. You may be a terrible person, but your dog will love you. He'll always be there to lay his head on your leg or lick your hand. Your husband or wife might leave you, but your dog will always love you faithfully. Even if you're gone for years, when you return your dog will run to greet you as if not a day has past.

P. S. In England Staffordshire Bull Terriers and Pitbulls are two distinct breeds. In America they're not differentiated, and they're both called Pitbulls.

Disorder (3 Stars)

This is an exciting thriller about an ex-soldier who takes a job as a security guard, protecting the wife and child of a Lebanese arms dealer. But can someone please explain to me what happened at the end?

The Danish Girl (3 Stars)

Usually when I review a film based on a true story I only write briefly about the film, concentrating on the facts behind it. I've decided not to do it in this case, because the film differs so greatly from what really happened in aspects vital to the story. If I wrote about the real Einar Wegener aka Lili Elbe it would be a totally different person to the one portrayed in the film. The film isn't to blame for the alteration of the facts. It's based on a best-selling novel by David Ebershoff, written in 2000, which fictionalises the events and their background. It's best that I avoid complications by treating the film as a work of fiction and only write about what it tells us.

Einar Wegener and his wife Gerda were both painters living in Denmark in 1920's. He was a successful landscape artist, considered by many to be Denmark's greatest living artist. She painted portraits of women and was less successful. When a model failed to turn up to be painted, Gerda asked Einar to dress up in women's clothing to take her place. Einar enjoyed the experience, and Gerda encouraged him to go out with her as a woman for a game. This game got out of control when Einar, calling himself Lili, began to flirt with a man at a dinner party.

Things became increasingly complicated. When dressed as a woman, Lili spoke of Einar in the third person, as if it were someone else. Similarly, when dressed as a man he spoke of Lili as a different person that he wanted to let out to play. This coincided with Gerda finally becoming successful, because her paintings of Lili were her best work ever.

After a few years Einar felt that it was time to abandon his male character and fully become Lili. To do this he went to Dresden for surgery to have his male organs removed and replaced by female organs. He chose the family name Elbe, the name of the river that flows through Dresden. The operation made him visually a woman, but it wasn't enough for him. He wanted to be able to have a baby, so he returned for a second operation that he didn't survive.

The acting of the two main characters is nothing short of phenomenal, worthy of Oscar nominations. It's almost that time again, isn't it? Eddie Redmayne ably manages to portray both a man and a woman, as well as the indecisiveness of someone living a double life. Alicia Vikander perfectly portrays the dilemma of a woman slowly losing the man she loves as he disappears into an abyss.

As I see it, the film was made with an agenda. It's intended to show the acceptability of people choosing their own gender, whether merely by dressing up as the opposite gender or undergoing gender alteration surgery. If I remember the correct words, Einar says of his operation, "God made me a woman. The doctor is curing me of the sickness that makes me look like a man". That's a highly political statement. It denies that a person undergoing a sex change operation is changing himself, it says that the person is being cured of something that was wrong in the first place.

Einar Wegener

Gerda Wegener

If you're wondering why I've rated this film so low, it's because it tramples on the truth in order to deliver its political message. I'll briefly describe the main deviations from the real characters.

Einar Wegener was not born a man. He was a hermaphrodite born with the traits of both genders. One of the complications in his second operation was that when the surgeon wanted to insert female reproductive organs, ovaries were found already present in his body.

Gerda Wegener was a lesbian and preferred her husband to dress as a woman.

Einar and Gerda lived in Paris much earlier than the film suggests, before the first World War. While in Paris, a city where nobody knew them, they lived as lesbian lovers.

Far from the Madding Crowd (4 Stars)

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

Their sober wishes never learned to stray;

Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

The film poster that I've included above annoys me. I don't suffer from OCD, as far as I know, but posters like this are just wrong. Four people. Four names. Couldn't the names have been rearranged so that the names match the person below them? Not one of the names is in the right place. It couldn't be that difficult to put the names in the right order, could it?

The film is based on the novel of the same name written by Thomas Hardy in 1874. The book has been filmed four names, in 1915, 1967, 1998 and 2015 (this film). I saw the 1967 version on television years ago, but I couldn't remember it clearly enough to know the story.

Bathsheba Everdene is a young woman who inherits a farm from her uncle. She has to fight against the prejudices of the male-dominated farming community, but she proves herself tough enough to be taken seriously. After turning down two proposals of marriage from good men, the first a shepherd and the second a neighbouring farmer, she falls in love with a soldier who builds up gambling debts after their marriage. Why do women have to fall for the wrong men? I suppose it makes a good story.

I've never enjoyed the classic 18th and 19th Century dramatic love stories. I read a few when I was in school, but the content and the style alienated me. They always seemed to be about women torn between different men. Maybe this came from the repressive society of the time? What I mean is, in the 19th Century it was an awful scandal for women to have affairs, while men could get away with it. In this system of inequality women dreamt of extramarital excitement, so novels gave them something to dream about. That's my theory, anyway.

For me the film's outstanding actor is Matthias Schoenaerts, who plays the shepherd. It's difficult to describe what is so impressive about his performance. He plays a mostly quiet character, but whatever he does is so convincing. I predict a big future for him.

Suite Francaise (3¾ Stars)

The film takes place in a village called Bussy, 20 miles from Paris, in 1940. I didn't realise until the end of the film that it's a true story. It was written shortly after the events by a French Jewess who lived in the village after fleeing from Paris, but it wasn't published until 60 years later when her daughter finally discovered what was contained in her mother's notebook.

The main character is Lucille Angellier (Michelle Williams), who lives in a large mansion in Bussy with her mother-in-law, a wealthy land-owner referred to only as Madame Angellier. Her husband has left to fight against the Germans, but when Germany conquers Paris in June 1940 she begins to despair that he's still alive. At first the war seems far away, but Bussy is overrun by a stream of refugees from Paris, and shortly afterwards a German regiment is posted in the village. Each household has to put up a German soldier, and as the owner of the largest house Madame Angellier is assigned the highest ranking German office, Lieutenant Bruno von Falk (Matthias Schoenaerts).

The Germans are the enemies, and Lucille expects to have an inhuman monster living in her house. She's surprised when she meets a highly sensitive man who spends the evenings sitting at her piano composing a piece of music that he calls the "Suite Francaise". A romance develops between the two.

The film is a very honest portrayal of the situation during the German occupation of France. It's usual for the opposing sides in a war to demonise one another, but the fact is that the soldiers who fight for a country are just normal men who have more in common with the enemy soldiers than they do with their warmongering leaders. This is especially the case if the soldiers have been conscripted. While I lived in Germany I had a friend whose father had been part of the occupying army in France. His father was a religious man, and while in France he had visited French churches, sitting side by side with the enemy. War is something that divides people who would otherwise have been friends.

I enjoy films based on true stories, even if they lack the tidy resolution of purely fictional films. Real life never ties up loose ends, and there's rarely a happy ending. My only real criticism of the film is that the romance isn't as tender as the picture above suggests. When Lucille and Bruno are together they seem to be driven by lust rather than love. That clashes with the love of classical music that first draws them together. This must have been an interpretation of the film's screenwriters, because I doubt that the authoress knew the couple well enough to know that when in private they were tearing one another's clothes off to have a hasty fumble.

My praise goes out to Sam Riley, who is barely recognizable as the French farmer Benoit. His wife Alexandra Maria Lara plays a small role as a Jewish refugee, probably the authoress herself. Tom Schilling ably portrays the swaggering German lieutenant Kurt Bonnet. He's fast developing into one of Germany's top actors. Heino Ferch, probably my favourite German actor, plays a small role as the commander of the troops stationed in Bussy. Matthias Schoenaerts is a Belgian actor who is currently making a breakthrough into the American market, and he certainly has the talent to go all the way to the top. But all the other actors are eclipsed by Michelle Williams. After all these years I still associate her with the TV series "Dawson's Creek", which was her first big role at the age of 18. I never realised that she would develop into such a competent actress. She has a cool composure that makes her able to express emotions with the slightest change of facial expressions.

The Drop (4¾ Stars)

This is something that's never happened to me before. I went to see "The Drop" at Cineworld with my friends from the Birmingham Film Club. It was time for the ads and trailers to start, but the screen was blank. After five minutes our intrepid leader, Mike McAuley, went out to ask the staff what was happening. He came back and told us that the cinema had forgotten to start the film. I suppose that in a multiplex cinema with 12 screens it's easy to forget one of the screens. A few minutes later a lovely young lady came in to apologise and promised that the film would be shown without any ads or trailers, so that the film wouldn't finish later than planned. After all, it was a late showing, and some of us needed to catch the last bus. All's well that ends well. Finally the film began, on time, if we assume that the ads and trailers would have lasted 20 minutes.

"The Drop" was the last film that James Gandolfini made before his death. It also stars Tom Hardy, Naomi Rapace and a pitbull called Rocco. Well, actually three pitbulls called Rocco. The puppy was supposed to be a few weeks old, but he grew too fast, so he had to be replaced twice during the filming.

The main character is Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy), the barman in a bar in Brooklyn. This is one of several bars used as a drop bar, a place where illegal money is stored overnight. The bar's previous owner was Bob's cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), but although the bar still carries his name he's only an employee, since it is now owned by Chechen gangsters. Unknown to Bob, Marv has hired gangsters to rob the bar so that he can get revenge on the Chechens, who he considers to have unfairly robbed him of his property.

Bob is a quiet man, lost in his own world. He only begins to open up when he finds a small pitbull abandoned in a trash can. Bob begins to feel attached to the pitbull, and a romance also develops with Nadia (Naomi Rapace), the woman in whose trash can he finds the pitbull puppy. Unfortunately the pitbull's previous owner was a gangster who was Nadia's ex-boyfriend and now works for Marv. It's a small world.

Of all the films I've seen starring James Gandolfini, this is the one in which he gets closest to his Tony Soprano personality, even though Marv is an ex-mobster who no longer commands the respect of his peers. Tom Hardy, however, is the film's biggest star. He is by far my favourite actor. Without giving away any spoilers, I'd like to say that he's totally credible in all the changes in Bob's character during the film.