Reel Encounters

Niceness trumps depth in innocuous “Belfast”

What’s an Irish movie without a rendition of “Danny Boy”? Kenneth Branagh’s very-Irish “Belfast” confronts this question about midway into the film with an offkey rendition that’s oddly one of the scenes I found myself most drawn to.

Shadows thrill in “The Batman”

The opening scene of Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” the third live-action version of the caped-crusader in the last 16 years, delays our introduction to the eponymous vigilante.

Deferred crises in “Spider-Man: No Way Home”

Credit to Jon Watts, director of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers: in this third iteration of the MCU’s version of our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, they have finally managed to liberate Tom Holland’s Peter Parker from Tony Stark and the previous films’ strange class politics.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy in “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” (2021)

A spark-less account of Louis Wain’s life

We first meet Will Sharpe’s version of Louis Wain, painter and eccentric in the early 20th century, as an old man (a well-aged Benedict Cumberbatch) gazing into space as images of a somewhat younger Wain walks solemnly through the street in funereal attire with a group of women.

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