Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  I wasn’t really aware of the actor Adeel Akhtar until I saw him in British writer-director Clio Barnard’s Bradford-set film, Ali & Ava , in which his charismatic title character describes himself as ‘everyone’s favourite landlord’. Ali takes one of his tenant’s children, six-year-old Sofia (Ariana Bodorova) to school, where he meets Ava (Claire Rushbrook), a teaching assistant and grandmother to five children. Collecting Sofia from school, Ali boldly commits to giving Ava a ride home to the somewhat racist neighbourhood of Holme Wood. When his car is stuck at traffic lights, some local kids – young children, primary school age - throw stones. Ali gets out of the car and engages them, playing music loudly and inviting them to dance on his car boot, while Ava watches, expecting the worse. Finally, he drives them all home, piled as they are in the back seat. It is a credit to Akhtar and Barnard that the scene is utterly convincing. Ali comes across as simultaneously brave, optim...

  Stop me if you have heard this one before. In rural contemporary England, a young woman returns to the family farm after the death of a close family member. The farm is in difficult straits. The woman tries her best to fix things but also come to terms with demons from her past. That for the most part is the plot of writer-director Hope Dickson Leach’s accomplished feature debut, The Levelling . It is also a description of Clio Barnard’s third film as writer-director, Dark River , adapted from Rose Tremain’s novel, Trespass . British films have a habit of recycling Hollywood movie titles: Dog Soldiers , directed by Neil Marshall, about a group of soldiers on a military exercise who take on werewolves, is also the name of a 1978 Vietnam War movie directed by Karel Reisz. I can understand why Barnard did not take the name of a 1992 Walter Hill movie starring Ice Cube (and not a good one at that) nor for that matter a 2011 damp squib of a home invasion thriller starring Nicolas Cage...