Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)

When its master dies, leaving it to run free, a Japanese Akita called Hachi takes up residence at a train station, where everyone assumes it is showing extreme loyalty to its deceased master, but it's easy to cynically flip this otherwise pleasant story - based on the 1920s real-life dog, Hachiko - into a tale of animal neglect, seeing the dog's choice to squat at the station as the result of its having been turfed out by uncaring family, made to sit through rain, hail, or shine in the only place anybody will feed and pet him...sorry.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Manhunter (1986)

Those of you waiting for Season 3 of Mindhunter to come out in 2078 may like to fill some of the time with this adaptation of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, the first of the author's serial killer thrillers featuring Hannibal Lecktor/Lecter, the incarcerated psychotic psychiatrist who helps the FBI with serial killer investigations, because it is superior to the Red Dragon of 2002 and like Mindhunter features a retro time-specific look and feel and soundtrack, and the investigator, Will Graham played by William Petersen is essentially a prototype of Mindhunter's Agent Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff).

★★★☆☆

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The Ice Storm (1997)

Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, based on a book by Rick Moody, does for the 70s what The Big Chill and Grand Canyon did for the 80s and 90s - present middleclass America in a moment, here an era of nuclear families contending with post-Vietnam War sexual liberation - and while the movie might have benefitted from a few more laughs as 70s upheaval is paraded in the form of packaging peanuts, Jesus Christ Superstar, est training and key parties, the sombre drama is redeemed by affecting endscenes suggesting the inexorable thaw and moving forwards of Time...and along the way compelling evidence is provided that Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood are not, in fact, the same person.

★★★☆☆

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Room (2015)

** SPOILER ALERT **

'Room' opens with "Ma" and a boy living in a confined space they call 'Room' and from there the pleasures of this movie in order are wondering at the nature of their strange circumstances, experiencing the really truly heart-stopping suspense of the film's revelatory escape scene, then being surprised by the film's unexpected, protracted and extremely emotional second half, but these parts are greater than the whole - the movie finishes and you realise what 'Room' in fact is: a narrative-free voyeuristic "these are the sorts of things that happen when" checklist.

★★★☆☆

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