Film reviews: Movie highlights

Released: June 15 (UK & Ireland)

Modern horror films seldom prioritise nerve-shredding suspense - the kind of creeping dread that sends beads of sweat trickling down your spine and haunts your waking dreams.

Instead, we're spoon-fed a familiar diet of senseless slaughter and jump scares like a malevolent force emerging at speed from darkness to a blast of staccato strings on the soundtrack.

The last film to achieve that high-wire act of sustained, unbearable tension was Robert Eggers's supernatural thriller, The Witch.

Writer-director Ari Aster's twisted family portrait comes close to repeating the feat, only to descend into madness with a loopy final act that will sharply divide and perplex audiences who have been biting their nails down to the cuticle for the previous 90 minutes.

Hereditary performs a cinematic striptease, holding our gaze (even when we want to look away) by peeling away the layers of darkness and deceit that condemn one grief-stricken family to a grim fate.

It's a masterclass in terror titillation, choreographed to a discomfiting orchestral score by composer Colin Stetson and unsettling sound effects like a teenage girl repeatedly clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

Like all stripteases, Ari Aster's horror thriller ultimately has to bare all, and when the film performs its big reveal - with a flourish - we realise we have seen this story many times before.

Miniaturist artist Annie Graham (Toni Collette) is deeply affected by the death of her estranged mother, who cast a long shadow over the family and took Annie's daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) under her wing.

Following the secretive matriarch's funeral, Annie begins to sense a presence in the family home and her erratic behaviour causes grave concern for husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) and teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff).

In desperation, Annie turns to a grief support group where she meets a local woman called Joan (Ann Dowd), who has suffered her own recent loss.

Joan sweetly suggests Annie could conduct a seance to forge a connection to her mother's lingering spirit.

As the disturbances within the Graham family home increase in frequency, Annie makes a bold decision that has terrifying repercussions for her loved ones.

Hereditary slowly tightens a knot of discomfort, heightened by a bravura lead performance from Collette, who turns silent screams into an artform.

Aster demonstrates a flair for sadistic mind games with slow-burn shocks like when Peter stares absently into the glass pane of a classroom cupboard and realises his reflection has a rictus grin.

The resolution is an anti-climax after the film has spent more than an hour dragging the narrative's nails down a blackboard.

However, there is no denying that Aster engineers some creepy moments, one of which made me audibly gasp.

My gob was well and truly smacked.

:: SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 8/10

RELEASED

THE HAPPY PRINCE (15, 105 mins) Drama/Romance. Rupert Everett, Colin Morgan, Colin Firth, Emily Watson, Edwin Thomas, Tom Wilkinson. Director: Rupert Everett.

Released: June 15 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Taking its title from a short story for children by Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince is an elegiac account of the final years of the Irish playwright and poet following his incarceration for gross indecency.

The film is a passion project for director, writer and lead actor Rupert Everett, who slipped effortlessly into Wilde's skin in 2012 in a revival of David Hare's play The Judas Kiss at Hampstead Theatre in London, which transferred to the West End and New York.

Everett's deep emotional connection to his subject is evident in a compelling, nuanced performance that doesn't shy away from the self-destructive impulses that led Wilde to his grave during a tumultuous exile in France at the turn of the 20th century.

His fall from grace is agonisingly slow and painful, and the script takes its time to explore the various personal relationships that sustained Wilde in his twilight years and also tore him apart.

He neglects some of his closest allies, who stand by him despite his shameful conduct, and the playwright continues to fraternise with the manipulative object of his downfall, Lord Alfred Douglas aka Bosie.

We meet Wilde (Everett) after his release from Reading Gaol, on the brink of financial ruin.

His ex-wife Constance (Emily Watson) grants him a small allowance on the understanding that he will sever all ties to Bosie (Colin Morgan), but Wilde cannot resist his self-serving paramour and his income is thus withheld.

Good friends Reggie Turner (Colin Firth) and Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas) try in vain to keep their pal out of the gutter, staring up at twinkling stars, but passions outwit Wilde's common sense and he sinks into a mire of misery.

Racked with illness, the playwright seeks refuge with two resourceful street waifs - brothers, who exist on their wits and, in the case of the older boy, by selling his body.

In return, Wilde enchants and enthrals his young hosts with passages from The Happy Prince, transporting them far from the squalor and degradation with beautifully crafted words.

Yet death lurks in the corner of every dank room and as an inglorious end beckons, the few who truly love Wilde gather at his bedside as Father Dunne (Tom Wilkinson) delivers the last rites.

The Happy Prince wades artfully through the despair of Wilde's exile, interspersed with pungent flashbacks including his transfer to Reading Gaol by train when jeering passengers spat in his face.

Everett's anguished face haunts almost every frame, but there are strong supporting performances from Thomas and Morgan as competing forces for Wilde's affections.

The script is peppered with bon mots that hint at the dying genius of a man, whose great sin was to be afflicted by "the love that dare not speak its name".

It took almost 120 years for Wilde to be granted a posthumous pardon. Therein lies true shame.

:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 7/10

Also released...

SUPER TROOPERS 2 (15, 95 mins)

Released: June 15 (UK & Ireland)

In 2001, a comedy troupe called Broken Lizard channelled the spirit of the Police Academy series in the anarchic, bad taste comedy Super Troopers under the direction of founder member Jay Chandrasekhar.

This belated sequel reunites the dim-witted trooper team of Farva (Kevin Hefferman), Foster (Paul Soter), Mac (Steve Lemme), Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske) and Thorny (Chandrasekhar), who have gone their separate ways after an unfortunate incident involving a celebrity.

After several years out of uniform, Mac receives a telephone call from Captain John O'Hagen (Brian Cox), commander of the Vermont State Troopers, to reunite the quintet for an important meeting with the governor of Vermont (Lynda Carter).

She offers to reinstate the buddies if they will agree to assume the duties on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on a stretch of land that has recently been passed to America following a land survey.

Farva, Foster, Mac, Rabbit and Thorny simply need to maintain the peace and tend to the needs of the local population without disgracing themselves.

It's a tough ask.

OCEAN'S 8 (12A, 110 mins)

Released: June 18 (UK & Ireland)

Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway hope to steal the box office crown with this comical crime caper headlined by an all-female cast, which continues the misadventures of the larcenous Ocean family from Steven Soderbergh's trilogy headlining George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

Danny Ocean's light-fingered younger sister Debbie (Bullock) emerges from an eight-year stint behind bars with revenge on her mind.

She is determined to dish up a full platter of just desserts to her former lover Claude Becker (Richard Armitage), who embroiled her in a fraud scheme then betrayed Debbie by testifying against her to secure her conviction.

Debbie's cunning plan is to frame Becker for the theft of a necklace called the Toussaint, worth 50 million US dollars, which is due to be worn by actress Daphne Kluger (Hathaway) to the prestigious Met Gala.

To pull off this daring escapade, Debbie assembles a crack crew of women from the wrong side of the law including best friend Lou (Blanchett), Tammy (Sarah Paulson), jeweller Amita (Mindy Kaling), fashion designer Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter), professional thief Constance (Awkwafina) and technical wizard Nine Ball (Rihanna).

The con is on.

BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER LIVE: SIMON RATTLE'S FAREWELL CONCERT (Certificate TBC, 135 mins)

Released: June 20 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

On November 14, 1987, Liverpool-born conductor Simon Rattle made an auspicious debut with his baton at The Berliner Philharmonie, guiding the resident orchestra through Gustav Mahler's demanding and multi-faceted Sixth Symphony.

For his final concert as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon revisits this work, which is broadcast live from the German capital to selected cinemas around the UK and Ireland.

As well as the highly emotional sold-out performance, the cinema broadcast includes exclusive interviews and fascinating programme insights that will help audiences to better understand Mahler's composition and the people on stage bringing the music vividly to life.

GLYNDEBOURNE LIVE: MADAMA BUTTERFLY (Certificate TBC, 230 mins)

Released: June 21 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Annilese Miskimmon directs the inaugural festival staging of Puccini's passionate opera, which is broadcast live from Glyndebourne's resplendent opera house in East Sussex under the baton of conductor Omer Meir Wellber.

American tenor Joshua Guerrero and Moldovan soprano Olga Busuioc lead the talented cast as lovers Lieutenant Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San, with Goro and Sukuzi sung by Carlo Bosi and Elizabeth DeShong respectively.

Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton (Guerrero) of the American Army is preparing to marry the beautiful Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San (Busuioc), who is known affectionately as Madam Butterfly.

She is glad to renounce her faith and cast aside personal possessions, save for a sword given by her father, in order to marry the outsider.

However, when the local priest discovers Cio-Cio-San's sacrifice, he curses her and the nuptials.

COMING NEXT WEEK...

Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway become embroiled in a daring heist at the Met Gala in the criminal caper OCEAN'S 8.

FILM CHART

1. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

2. Solo: A Star Wars Story

3. Deadpool 2

4. Book Club

5. Avengers: Infinity War

6. Kaala

7. Sherlock Gnomes

8. Show Dogs

9. Veere Di Wedding

10. I Feel Pretty

(Chart courtesy of Cineworld)