The Cine Files: from the rampant Irish rap Kneecap to the best cinema films of August

August and the height of summer are usually when bad blockbusters fill the theaters. Not this year. The first five films on this list are all genuinely brilliant, starting with this total blast…

Movie of the month: Kneecap

John, Paul, George and Ringo in A Hard Day’s Night. Prince in Purple Rain. Eminem in 8 miles. And now, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ Ó Dochartaigh in Kneecap.

Saying these names will give you pause, appropriately enough, since a big part of West Belfast rap group Kneecap’s raison d’être is the revival of the Irish language. Their other motivators are pointing a provocative republican finger at the British and giving their fans a wild and reckless experience, which is amply evident in Rich Peppiatt’s fictionalized account of the trio’s formation and rise.

You know you’re in unruly territory as soon as the credits appear in hand-scrawled capital letters, “EVERY FUCKING STORY ABOUT BELFAST BEGINS LIKE THIS!”, followed by archive footage of cars being blown to bits. But then a crushing bassline kicks in and we’re in rave-ageddon as Ó hAnnaidh and Ó Cairealláin (stage names Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap) deal out A-listers in droves.

After Mo is arrested and refuses to speak English, Irish language school music teacher JJ (Ó Dochartaigh) comes in to perform. JJ loves the lyrics he sees in Mo’s notebook and proposes the idea of a group (Kneecap being a reference to traditional paramilitary punishment).

After a suitably hilarious and insanely druggy first rehearsal (half-naked men in clouds of powder) in JJ’s garage studio, their rapid rise is just a matter of not getting beaten to death by the Radical Republicans Against Drugs men and avoiding a brutally dogged detective (Josie Walker). Oh, and staying on the right side of Móglaí’s father Arló (Michael Fassbender), a mercurial Republican terrorist who’s been missing, presumed dead, for a decade.

Kneecap

Curzon

The drug-taking scenes are laced with sharp, pointed references (former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams himself stars in a ketamine-induced hallucination), while the humour is risqué, to say the least. When Mo is in bed with his girlfriend, some viewers may bristle when she declares: “I want to suck you like a Brighton hotel.”

But more than an unhinged tale of a turbulent band, this is a paean to the Irish language (a plot device within the film), which was officially recognised under the Language and Identity Act in 2022. And while decidedly less well-known than the Beatles, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ Ó Dochartaigh can certainly do a much better job.

The movies you should see this month

Many viewers will find it hard to climb over the barrier of “magical realism” (a combination of words that some find repellent) and enjoy this sweet, twisted and occasionally wonderfully witty tragicomedy. Their loss, like the magic in Daina O Pusić’s debut, comes in the enchanting and captivating imagination of the Grim Reaper as a giant parrot.

Heartbreakingly, the large bird has come to take the last breath of terminally ill 15-year-old Londoner Tuesday (Lola Petticrew). To soothe the soul, dying has rarely been so absurdly funny, as seen at the beginning, when Tuesday has to calm Death from a panic attack, which leads to her winning a stay of execution in the company of her feathered deliverer.

The pair form a wonderfully bizarre bond that ranges from the desperately touching to the ridiculously silly (Pusić has a real talent for left-field humor). But then there’s Tuesday’s mother. When your teenage daughter is about to be taken away and you’re played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus displaying all the eccentric unpredictability of her classic Seinfeld and Veep characters… well, Death may have met its match. It’s not for everyone, but it will leave some with devastated smiles on their faces.

“The jaws of darkness devour him. So fast that bright things become hazy,” laments Colman Domingo, delivering a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A fitting opening, for although on stage, Domingo is in the notorious American prison Sing Sing. Yet 105 minutes later, that bleak emptiness is replaced by light, redemption and a noticeable early whiff of Oscar.

Greg Kwedar’s film focuses on a real-life program at the institution, which sees inmates produce and perform in theatrical productions. Ingeniously, and tellingly, almost all of the actors here, apart from Colman, are former Sing Sing inmates playing themselves. We follow a show from start to finish, as the men create and rehearse their chosen play, a comic oddity involving cowboys, ancient Egyptians, time travel and Freddy Krueger.

While it’s genuinely uplifting to watch these men expose their vulnerabilities through performance, the deeper narrative heart here is the relationship between Domingo’s wrongfully convicted Divine G and the superb Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a hardened convict who finds acting a way to step outside his comfort zone. If you like heart-on-your-sleeve movies, prepare to be moved.

While not entirely jaw-dropping in its emotional depth, Hu Guan’s shaggy dog tale is a breathtaking, widescreen feast for the eyes. Under a zinc-encrusted sky, an apocalyptic pack of dogs races across the northern Chinese desert, diving into the path of a bus and sending it tumbling into the dust.

It’s a good visual mood-setter. From the wreckage, newly released convict Lang (Eddie Peng) emerges to walk the rest of the way back home. There, his dying alcoholic father is now living in the semi-abandoned zoo. Indeed, as the Beijing Olympics approach, the entire city is falling apart, its citizens constantly exhorted over loudspeakers to “build a harmonious society” as they await the bulldozers of progress.

Only stray dogs are thriving; hordes of them everywhere, including one that is supposedly rabid and that Lang tries to capture for a considerable reward.

Meanwhile, snake farmer Butcher Hu isn’t about to let his nephew’s death (for which he blames Lang) go unavenged. A traveling circus also steps in, just in case. This milieu forces Lang into a series of picaresque incidents that he confronts while barely saying a word, which is good because each scene is a pure joy to watch. There’s food for thought here (renewal versus decay; redemption), but at its core, this is all about a man, a dog, and a desire to break free.

Here’s a suggestion for anyone who was impressed by last year’s How to Have Sex but has a strong aversion to foreign films: get over that subtitle barrier, because Mika Gustafson’s Swedish debut about a troubled childhood is just as good, if not better.

Sixteen-year-old Laura (Bianca Delbravo) and her much younger sisters, Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and Steffi (Safira Mossberg), have been left to fend for themselves by their absent mother for months. They seem to be living the wild dream, hanging out with the wildest local girls, breaking into empty houses for pool parties. But there’s also the anguish of abandonment, conveyed superbly by all three young actresses, often simply through a natural, heartbreaking look.

Interwoven throughout are the peculiar relationships with adults into which the girls are prematurely thrown. Laura forms a risky “wo-mance” with a woman she wants to replace her mother in social services, but who becomes obsessed with Laura’s talents for burglary. Meanwhile, Mira appoints herself as “manager” for a down-on-her-luck karaoke wannabe (producing a scene of pure magical pathos). Awkward and full of the unruly body movement of youth, this is a joyfully melancholy delight.

Movies you might want to see this month

Sean Wang’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama is a tale of universal angst (we’re all afraid of almost kissed a girl) crafted with the precise specificity of the era (the pubescent class of 2008 will recognize Wang’s references with deep nostalgia).

Thirteen-year-old Taiwanese-American Chris (Izaac Wang) is truly lost. His stay-at-home mom (Joan Chen), herself relentlessly, hilariously nagged by an overbearing mother-in-law, is constantly on his back. Meanwhile, his older sister is about to spread her wings for college, inducing separation anxiety and jealousy—no, the answer is not to pee in your shampoo bottle, Chris.

Told through MySpace and early Facebook (if you were there, you know), precursors to today’s social media anxiety, Chris’s response is to experiment with his teenage identity. Cue awkward efforts to fit in with the older skaters, a wonderfully sweet attempt to learn how to kiss via YouTube tutorials using a pair of potato chips as target lips, and what moment we’ve all had when we could have walked in on that gorgeous girl (if only we weren’t so painfully shy). Beautifully observed, tenderly acted, though a little disappointing, this is a minor joy.

Moin Hussain serves up a distinctly funny dose of the weird with his Midlands-set debut. And where better to amplify a story of disconnection and isolation than that paragon of non-places, the motorway gas station. Adam (Faraz Ayub) is young, friendless, his father disappeared years ago, and his mother and her boyfriend are making him homeless. A job flipping burgers on the graveyard shift at the Sky Peals traffic stop ensures there’s no escape from his permanently melancholy sense of alienation.

Of course, it won’t help if your dad dies and starts appearing “not quite dead” on your work’s CCTV. This is a strange, visually striking and deadpan portrait of modern loneliness. A little dry, perhaps, but not without its lip-curling moments, like when Adam introduces himself to his inner circle at a self-help group: “I think my dad might have been an alien.” Fingers crossed for more weird stuff from Hussain.

It may sound like a Studio Ghibli offering, but any British parent or child should know Kensuke’s Kingdom (August 2) is based on Michael Morpurgo’s novel about a young boy shipwrecked on a remote island. Cillian Murphy, Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe provide stellar voice power for this animated film.

Based on the video game, crazy and brilliant action Borderlands (August 9) stars, of all people, Cate Blanchett along with a blockbuster cast. It looks tremendously silly and a double shot of fun.

This time there’s no Ridley Scott behind the camera, which could be a good thing, Fede Alvarez Alien: Romulus (August 16) with Cailee Spaeny is set to be THE BIG hit of the summer. So head to an Imax soon.

In Blink twice (August 23), When tech billionaire Channing Tatum invites waitress Naomi Ackie to a private island with his friends, what disturbing weirdness could possibly ensue? Notable as Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut.

Hunter Schafer in the bill will help fill movie theaters. Sending her to a strange resort in the German Alps with her father in Cuckoo (August 23) for bloody outbreaks should ensure emotions.

So if you need to cool off from the August heat, diving into a movie theater this month can be quite rewarding.

Movie of the month: Kneecap

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