Damon Smith's film reviews

Based on two emotionally raw memoirs - Beautiful Boy by David Sheff and Tweak by his son Nic - the handsomely crafted film is a sobering account of one family's battle of attrition with a demon that sinks its jaws into a prodigal child and refuses to let go.

There are no huge emotional crescendos in a chronologically fragmented narrative assembled by van Groeningen and co-writer Luke Davies.

Instead, we are silent and tearful witnesses to moments of compassion, aching regret and anguished surrender that leave us in no doubt of the devastation wrought by drugs on the user and everyone in his chaotic orbit.

Beautiful Boy is anchored by commanding performances from Steve Carell as the patriarch, who staunchly refuses to admit defeat even when it is causing pain to other members of his family, and Timothee Chalamet as the teenager with a trembling finger on the self-destruct button.

When we meet David Sheff (Carell), he is a senior writer for prestigious magazines including Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Wired, who famously conducted the last major interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980 for the cover of Playboy.

His first wife Vicki (Amy Ryan) lives in Los Angeles, amicably sharing custody of their son Nic (Chalamet), while David builds a new life in San Francisco with his partner Karen (Maura Tierney) and their children Jasper (Christian Convery) Daisy (Oakley Bull).

David suspects Nic is in the grip of addiction and he persuades his boy to attend Ohlhoff Recovery Centre.

"I'm doing it for you," snaps Nic.

Treatment appears to go well until the teenager goes AWOL during free time.

"Relapse is a part of recovery," explains the centre's director (Amy Aquino).

"That's like saying crashing is part of pilot training," responds David, who applies his journalistic mind to learning everything about drugs and their treatment.

Punctuated by flashbacks to Nic's youth to underscore the unbreakable bond between father and son, Beautiful Boy is anchored by powerhouse performances from the two leads.

Considering the depth of David's feelings for his child - "I love you more than everything," he whispers at an airport departure gate - it is curious that the film observes each small victory or setback with a cool detachment that mutes our emotional response.

That said, few images in van Groeningen's picture linger quite like the sight of Chalamet, Oscar nominated as Call Me By Your Name's lovesick adolescent, injecting methamphetamine on the filthy floor of a public restroom and collapsing among the detritus like a discarded rag doll as poison courses through his twitching limbs.

A high and a devastating low, perfectly framed.

RATING: 7/10

GLASS (15, 129 mins) Thriller/Horror/Action/Romance. James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Luke Kirby, Adam David Thompson. Director: M Night Shyamalan.

Writer-director M Night Shyamalan's mind-bending thriller orchestrates a head-on collision of intriguing characters from his earlier features, Unbreakable and Split.

As brittle and transparent as the title suggests, Glass unfolds in a menacing present day populated by super-powered heroes and villains who could be torn from the brightly inked pages of a comic book.

Shyamalan's confidently executed but emotionally starved conundrum pretends to defy well-worn conventions but ultimately abides by them within a narrative framework which includes an obligatory twist - the filmmaker's increasingly laboured trademark since his Oscar-nominated The Sixth Sense.

Cinema audiences with limited exposure to the Marvel or DC Comics universes will be able to second-guess the writer-director's sleights of hands and will be surprised and disappointed by how linear the central plot turns out to be.

Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson deliver muted performances in keeping with the film's largely predictable design, both fading into the background as James McAvoy reprises his show-stopping role as a killer with multiple personalities.

The Glasgow-born actor careens between this menagerie of colourful misfits at dizzying speed, altering accents, mannerisms and posture to convince us that he is an impish nine-year-old boy called Hedwig, a serene matriarch named Patricia or a hulking protector known as Barry.

Dr Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) is a psychiatrist who specialises in a specific delusion of grandeur: individuals who believe they are superheroes.

Working out of Raven Hill Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia, she oversees the treatment of three intriguing individuals: zoo employee Kevin Wendell Crumb (McAvoy) aka The Beast, security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) aka The Overseer, who can unmask sins through touch, and Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson) aka Mr Glass, whose brilliant mind is condemned to a painfully fragile body.

"I've been given three days to treat you by whatever means necessary," Ellie warns her subjects.

Aided by a team of nurses including Daryl (Adam David Thompson) and Pierce (Luke Kirby), Ellie challenges her patients' self-belief, asking them to entertain the possibility that science can explain the glittering facets of their twisted psyches.

"If superheroes exist, why are there only three of you?" she proposes.

As the treatment reaches a shocking resolution, Kevin's only surviving victim Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy), David's proud son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) and Elijah's understanding mother (Charlayne Woodard) await news outside the hospital's security gates.

Running a shade over two hours, Glass is fashioned around splashy set pieces including two brutal, bone-crunching showdowns between McAvoy and Willis, the latter clad in a poncho.

Paulson counters all the pent-up testosterone by shrouding her shrink in mystery, plus there is a superfluous and self-indulgent cameo from the filmmaker himself.

In terms of compelling narrative arcs and satisfying resolutions, this Glass is only half full.

RATING: 6/10

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (15, 124 mins) Drama/Romance. Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, Guy Pearce, David Tennant, Martin Compston, James McArdle. Director: Josie Rourke.

Trailing in the wake of Yorgos Lanthimos's riotous royal romp The Favourite, director Josie Rourke's lavish drama is a restrained affair which drips copious blood on screen but has little running through its veins.

Beau Willimon's screenplay spans 26 years between the return of Mary Stuart to the Scottish motherland and her execution at Fotheringhay Castle at the behest of Elizabeth I.

The complicity of the English queen is debated by historians but Rourke's film takes its lead from John Guy's book Queen Of Scots: The True Life Of Mary Stuart and lingers on the image of Elizabeth adding her signature to an execution warrant in the Privy Council Chamber.

A face-to-face encounter between the two women in a secluded barn festooned with lines of drying laundry is another stylish deviation from documented fact but provides this Mary Queen Of Scots with a few lip-smacking minutes for formidable lead actresses Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie to spark off each other.

"As long as you do not provoke my enemies, you have nothing to fear," snarls Elizabeth, as the secret rendezvous reaches an acrimonious conclusion.

In 1561, a Protestant queen, Elizabeth I (Robbie), rules England.

Her power is threatened by the return of 18-year-old Catholic cousin Mary Stuart (Ronan) from France.

Many English Catholics believe Mary is the legitimate heir to the English throne.

"You may tell Scotland that we wish to love the Stuarts as our kin but they should love us in return," declares Elizabeth to trusted adviser William Cecil (Guy Pearce).

He suggests the simplest way to control Mary would be through a marriage to the queen's "special friend" Robert Dudley (Joe Alwyn).

Instead, Mary chooses her first cousin, Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden), and they produce a son and heir, James.

"Do you love me?" asks Darnley.

"You have given me an heir to two thrones. That matters to me more than love," replies Mary.

While figures close to the Scottish queen plot against her, including Protestant cleric John Knox (David Tennant) and her half-brother, the Earl of Moray (James McArdle), men in Elizabeth's court attempt to manoeuvre their monarch on to the blood-stained path of civil war.

Mary Queen Of Scots glosses over Mary's years of incarceration in England before her beheading for dramatic expediency, concentrating on the period when the two women were pitted against one another despite their best effort to remain "sisters".

Ronan and Robbie command their scenes with tub-thumping support from a largely homegrown cast.

Willimon's script struggles to condense decades of history into an easily digestible two hours of courtly intrigue and ripping bodices.

The second half feels overly saturated and dramatic momentum is sluggish but production design and costumes are fit for a pair of duelling queens.

RATING: 6.5/10

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MONSTERS AND MEN (15, 95 mins)

The feature-length debut of acclaimed short films director Reinaldo Marcus Green is a timely drama about the police shooting of an African-American man, told from three contrasting and equally vital perspectives.

Green's script spends roughly one third of the running time on each of these characters.

They include local resident Manny Ortega (Anthony Ramos), who captures the incident on camera, undercover cop Dennis Williams (John David Washington), who contemplates testifying against the officer responsible, and gifted high school student Zyrick (Kelvin Harrison Jr), whose dreams of a college baseball scholarship may be waylaid by an urge to take to the streets and protest.

THE RAFT (12A, 98 mins)

In 1973, Spanish-Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genoves conceived the Acali Experiment.

He brought together 11 strangers from around the world and tasked them with crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a primitive raft in 100 days.

The purpose of the experiment was, supposedly, to observe how individuals from different ethnic, social and economic backgrounds interact when working towards a common goal.

Despite the best-laid plans of Genoves, his nautical trial didn't unfold as anticipated.

Documentary filmmaker Marcus Lindeen looks back to the ill-fated trial and brings together the surviving subjects on an exact replica of the raft to offer their memories of the journey.

These conflicting testimonies reveal the deep scars which the men and women bear more than 40 years later.

LONDON UNPLUGGED (Certificate and running time TBC)

Made in conjunction with community groups, London Unplugged is a tightly woven anthology of shorts by emerging filmmakers, predominantly featuring strong female characters, which are set against the backdrop of different boroughs of the capital.

The segments are directed by Rosanna Lowe, Kaki Wong, Qi Zhang, Gaelle Mourre, Andrew Cryan, George Taylor, Nick Cohen, Mitch Crawford, Layke Anderson, Natalie Casali and Ben Jacobson, and paint a vibrant portrait of a city where the fabulously wealthy and the desperately poor live in uncomfortable proximity.

BOLSHOI BALLET LIVE: LA BAYADERE (Certificate TBC, 195 mins)

Broadcast live from the stage of the historic Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, La Bayadere is a romantic ballet in three acts originally choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1877.

The Bolshoi Ballet's production is a new scenic version by Yuri Grigorovich, based on a libretto by Petipa and Sergei Khudekov, set to an original score by Ludwig Minkus.

Noble warrior Solor (Egor Gerashchenko) is the most revered fighter in India.

He wishes a private audience with the beautiful temple dancer Nikia (Yulia Stepanova) and dispatches his envoy, the head Fakir, Magdayeva (Evgeny Triposkiadis), to bid her join him later in the forest.

During public celebrations, the High Brahmin (Andrei Sitnikov) declares his love for Nikia but she rejects him on the grounds that he is a religious man.

He observes Magdayeva delivering the message and follows Nikia later that night, thus witnessing the secret rendezvous between the bayadere and Solor.

Consumed with fury, the High Brahmin calls upon the gods to help him strike down his love rival Solor.