The Screen Critic: A compelling real-life drama, a hit retelling of the Jesus story, fun action wth Ben & Jon and a top Australian war story

The ordeal of Australian journalist Peter Greste is vividly and powerfully portrayed in The Correspondent, an excellent local drama about the heavy price some pay for merely reporting the truth.

In a career-topping performance Richard Roxburgh plays Greste, a TV journalist who in 2013 was arrested in Cairo on false charges laid by a corrupt government hostile to free speech and dissent.

Strongly directed by Kriv Stenders (Red Dog; Danger Close), the film focuses on the 400 gruelling days Greste spent in prison dealing with a twisted justice system and useless officials from the Australian Consulate.

It’s an excellent Australian film – an increasingly rare thing these days.

Those who enjoyed Ben Affleck’s deliberately robotic performance in The Accountant will enjoy it even more in the imaginatively titled The Accountant 2, mainly because he is joined by a scene-stealing Jon Bernthal as his highly likeable criminal brother, also a professional killer.

They’re trying to track down the members of a missing migrant family who ran afoul of the drug cartels and uncover a plot involving much shooting and human trafficking.

There’s much more humour this time around, and the blam-blam action is very well deployed.

A caution, though: the film does contain unfiltered depictions of line dancing set to catchy country music. There. Consider yourselves warned.

There have been plenty of war films of late, yet few have captured the brutal realities of modern combat as realistically as Warfare.

Set in the war-shattered central Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2006, the film embeds you with a platoon of US soldiers who get stuck in a house besieged by the enemy.

What begins as an uneventful occupation of a family home quickly escalates, with the depiction of close- quarters fighting geared for maximum impact.

A very fine war film, though definitely not for the squeamish.

Despite being a modest animated film about the Jesus story, The King of Kings has proved to be a huge box office hit in the US and, after a slow opening, has positively bloomed in cinemas here.

Aimed primarily at kids, the film shows the tale of Jesus as told by Charles Dickens to his young son, aided by an impressive voice cast that includes Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Kenneth Branagh, Forest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley. Lovely stuff.

Hungry for a good vampire movie? Then give Sinners a big, fat miss.

Set in the deeply racist American Deep South of 1932, Michael B Jordan plays twin brothers whose opening-night party for a new music hall is crashed by local vampires.

It takes ages for this bloated, boring mess to get started, and even when the munching starts it’s just one dull cliche after another. Yawnsies.

The fine five-part Australian mini-series The Narrow Road to the Deep North tells the three parallel stories of WW2 soldier Dorrigo Evans; his harrowing experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese; his illicit pre-deployment affair with his uncle’s young wife; and his ordeal as a surgeon under investigation for malpractice.

With excellent work from Jacob Elordi as the younger man and Ciarán Hinds as the elder, the three storylines bounce off each other seamlessly, highlighting the themes of betrayal, trust, love and endurance.

The internment scenes leave nothing to the imagination, depicting the suffering of prisoners in eye-watering detail, with no sensitivities spared when surgery is performed without an anaesthetic. It’s shocking, and it’s meant to be.

Although the period production is good, the series bears the sheen of video that detracts somewhat from the overall look of the piece.

Still, the series makes for potent drama, its five concise episodes clocking in at an easily-bingeable 220 minutes.

Check it out on Prime.

For more visit jimschembri.com with updates on X at @jimschembri