LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER (Netflix). Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read? Who can forget the 1960 trial for obscenity laughed out of court and the censorship lifted. Impotent Chatterley (Matthew Duckett), wounded in World War I, begs his wife (Emma Corrin) to have an affair and get pregnant and give him an heir. But he didn’t mean with his gamekeeper (Jack O’Connell). D H Lawrence’s novel, sympathetically directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, is sensitively acted. There’s plenty of sex and some comic nude frolicking in the rain.
THE FORGIVEN (Mediumrare Entertainment). Wealthy tourists in Morocco, a thoroughly unlikeable lot, solely there for debauchery, have a racial contempt for the local community. A married couple driving in a car at night and drunk, accidently kill a young boy and want to hush it up. This dark fable, sharply written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, alternates between the boy’s funeral rites and the tourist orgy. Ralph Fiennes is wonderfully obnoxious. Matt Smith is expertly cast as a louche gay.
THE GOOD NURSE (Netflix). A gripping thriller based on fact. To avoid the electric chair American nurse Charles Cullen admitted to killing 29 patients. The real number was likely to be as many as 400. He never explained why he did it. The terrible thing is the private hospitals, that employed him, had their suspicions but did nothing about it, except to sack him, fearing the financial cost of culpability. Eddie Redmayne is the serial killer. Jessica Chastain is the nurse who befriends and helps to get him arrested.
PINOCCHIO (Netflix). There is Walt Disney for children. And there’s Guillermo Del Toro’s stop motion animation, dark, disturbing, scary, political, which is set in 1930s fascist Italy and primarily about death, and is definitely not for young children. The wooden puppet is based on Gris Grimley’s illustrations for Carlo Collido’s novel. The film will be high on any award list for Best Animation.
CORSAGE (Netflix). This fictional period drama records a year (1877) in the public and private life of the lonely and deeply unhappy Empress Elizabeth of Austria who struggles and initially rebels against the social restrictions, which royal privilege brings. Her husband, family and court are shocked. 40 years of age, once adored for her beauty, now deemed old, the laces on her corset are tied tighter and tighter. Vicky Krieps stars. Marie Kreutzer directs.
IN FROM THE INSIDE (Verve). A gay rugby club is seen in action on a muddy field in slow motion. Off-field, the guys are hard drinking and lustful. Love is a contact sport too and there is a lot of contact between Alexander Lincoln and Alexander King in bed and in a toilet cubicle. Matt Carter writes produces, directs, photographs, edits and writes the music which gets absurdly over-emotional. The film is overlong and needs editing.
SEE HOW THEY RUN (Apple). This spoof Agatha Christie murder story set in 1953 when The Mousetrap began its 70-year run and which still shows no signs of ending. The script is tepid. Sam Rockwell as the downbeat inspector is very downbeat. Adrian Brody as the baddie is way over the top. Saoirse Ronan is particularly irritating as an irritating constable.
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