The Screen Critic with Jim Schembri
In the stirring biopic Christy, Sydney Sweeney puts in her best performance so far as pioneering female boxer Christy Martin, a brave woman whose hard-won triumphs in the ring ran parallel to the violence and abuse she endured from her husband and coach James (Ben Foster).
Having trained hard for the film Sweeney, bearing a heavy Southern twang, certainly looks the part as she battles her way through professional challenges and harrowing private torments, her character’s naivety gradually giving way to the strength she needs to escape the manipulative brute she married.
It’s a gruelling story, yet a compelling one that carries a timely message about domestic violence and the sense of entitlement underlying it.
And now, a telling side note about Sweeney, the film and the sexist double standards of today’s media.
As everyone on Earth knows, Sydney Sweeney was pilloried recently over some jeans ads that had a cheeky tagline about how she “has great jeans”. This implied, apparently, that she was a poster girl for eugenics and white supremacy.
Yet the only thing anyone wanted to talk about upon the release of Christy (which Sweeney also produced) was how it had under-performed at the US box office. The fact that she’d made a powerful film about domestic violence and women’s rights wasn’t deemed worthy of mention.
Folks, you couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s crazy.
Lovers of zombie films will rejoice at the arrival of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the gory, scream-filled second part of last year’s 28 Years Later, which was the long-awaited follow-on from 2007’s 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 2002’s 28 Days Later, the hit film that kicked off one on the most inventive takes on the zombie genre ever. (Whew. That was one sentence.)
Roaming the post-apocalyptic English landscape, a violent gang of survivors lead by a sadistic Satanist (Jack O’Connell) happen upon the eccentric Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) who builds sculptures from the bones of the dead. (Seems everyone needs a hobby, even in a zombie hellscape.)
While the film delivers all the gratuitous gore and zombie-related shenanigans fans will expect, there’s a bit more levity this time around, including some cracker jokes and the music of Duran Duran.
As far as villains go, O’Connell makes for a super-nasty bad guy who claims kinship with Satan himself. The real draw, though, is Ralph Fiennes as the emaciated, iodine-smeared doctor trying to make sense of a world that has lost its mind.
And those who can’t get enough of Ralph Fiennes should check him out in The Choral where he plays a choir leader trying to stage a morale-boosting performance in a pretty English village during World War One.
The film does struggle to keep focus on the appalling battlefield casualties and the young men about to go to the front, yet Fiennes does well, proving once again what a master of versatility he is.
A quartet of estranged siblings are brought together by the parlous condition of their dying mother in Goodbye June, a moving and bitter-sweet family drama marking Kate Winslet’s very fine directorial debut.
She plays a busy, phone-addicted mother who gets on with her sweet-natured brother (Johnny Flynn) and new-age sister (Toni Collette) but is still at war with her perpetually angry younger sister (Andrea Riseborough).
Lying in her hospital bed stricken with cancer, their mother (beautifully played by Helen Mirren) is aware of the enduring grudge match, is sick of it and so cooks up a ruse to force them to reconcile.
Set mostly in the hospital, Winslet proves to be a strong actor’s director, weaving in a host of themes about family bonds and the often silly things that put them under strain.
Featuring a lovely supporting turn from veteran Timothy Spall as the father, the piece – written by Joe Anders, son to Winslet and Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes – is a very satisfying sit that might prompt a tear or two.
Check it out on Netflix.
For more visit jimschembri.com with updates on X at @jimschembri