Mercury Rising (1998)

Thankfully swapping out the title of the book it is adapted from ("Simple Simon"), this uninspired action thriller has Bruce Willis starring as a cop protecting nine-year-old Simon from assassins after Simon cracks a top-secret government "super code", and about the only convincing thing in the whole movie is not its action - a yawn-inducing string of shootouts across busy public spaces like hospitals - nor its depiction of autism, Rain Man-style brilliant savantism used purely only as a MacGuffin that could just as easily have been studiousness or, let's face it, an RSA key on a dog's collar, and not its cryptography (government supercodes published in wordfind magazines as a strength test) but its depiction of gendered home roles: Bruce Willis bumps into a woman in a cafe - a woman he doesn't know - and within minutes, in heated bathroom arguments, he guilts her into passing up career opportunities to be Simon's stay-at-home carer.

★★☆☆☆

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Look At Me (Regarde-moi) (2018)

If you find it hard to watch the yelling and screaming, you have to spare a thought for actual parents of profoundly autistic children who live a life like that of Tunisian immigrant Lotfi and live it truly, without Lotfi's unlikely nightclub nights-out and long phone calls and shopping trips that so often in this drama leave you wondering where Lotfi's severly autistic son Youssef ends up, but get past the unlikelihood of such scenes and this is a beautifully acted, touching drama, showing a guilt-ridden absent father finally stepping up and taking responsibility and starting to make (the right? the wrong?) parenting decisions.

★★★★☆

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