Mum’s List (12A)
Directed by Niall Johnson
3/5
“THIS is a true story,” we’re told at the beginning of writer-director-producer Niall Johnson’s relentless yet affecting tear-jerker, based on St John Greene’s bestselling novel Mum’s List: A Mother’s Life Lessons to the Husband and Sons She Left Behind.
Despite the increasingly irksome piano-dominant music score Johnson needlessly overuses to underline his patently sad story, he creates some unforgettably moving drama thanks in large measure to Rafe Spall and Emilia Fox’s fine acting as husband and wife Singe and Kate.
Realising she is not going to survive cancer, Kate creates a wish list of things she wants her husband to do with their two young sons after her death. An emotive drama ensues as he attempts to comply with her requests.
There are times when Johnson’s decision to flash backwards and forwards in time, with Singe initially introduced as already a widower, tends to vitiate the story’s undeniable emotional power and sadness.
That said, Spall and Fox’s extraordinarily affecting performances hold you to the end.
Alan Frank

Allied (15)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
4/5
IN 1942, Canadian secret agent Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) parachutes into the desert in French Morocco, where he is picked up by a waiting truck and delivered to Casablanca.
There, now shaved and dapper, the Allied spy joins French resistance worker Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) and, posing as husband and wife, they assassinate the German ambassador.
Mission accomplished, they return to blitz-ravaged London, marry and have a child in this story purportedly based on real events. But their seemingly idyllic lives disintegrate when Vatan is told that his wife is suspected of being a German spy.
Enjoyable melodrama then runs rampant, and surprisingly effective it is too, in this deliberately old-fashioned “woman’s picture” which, shamelessly harking back to 1940s and ’50s genre films, is driven as much by sheer star power as by story.
And, although Pitt and Cotillard’s characters are more cinema-credible than true-to-life, their star-driven performances keep you watching.
In the best cinema tradition, too, you learn something new. Here — according to Marianne — the local Casablancan custom has it that after having sex, the man then sleeps on the roof.
And director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Steven Knight deserve awards for bravery in pulling off their perilous return to the hallowed environs of Casablanca immortalised on film by Bogart and Bergman in 1942.
Alan Frank

Almost Christmas (12A)
Directed by David E Talbert
3/5
WITH Christmas films already infesting daytime TV, why be surprised at the arrival of seasonal comedy in November? As celebrated satirist Tom Lehrer sings: “Christmas time is here, by golly/Disapproval would be folly.”
So sit back and savour writer-director David E Talbert’s merry collection of corny gags, pratfalls, fallings-out, reconciliations and ultimate good cheer when widowed paterfamilias Walter (Danny Glover) reunites his family for the holidays.
Inevitably, his comment: “Family is never a bother” fails to convince. Feuding daughters make life hell, inedible food is served up after he loses his late wife’s recipes and a relative blows the head off a huge sleigh-riding Santa before falling from the roof.
With a cast working hard to make every joke pay off — Mo’Nique steals the show as Aunt May in a performance larger than the afterlife — this is a film that should at least help prepare you for the inevitable next month.
Alan Frank

Bad Santa 2 (15)
Directed by Mark Waters
1/5
TWELVE years on and the original Bad Santa is still one of the best anti-Christmas films you’ll see. Irreverent, offensive, politically incorrect and yet gobsmackingly funny, it has a stand-out performance by Billy Bob Thornton.
But the sequel is just plain bad. It’s packed with relentless gross-out jokes which will make you gag rather than laugh and lacks the wit, style and ingenious skill of the original.
Thornton returns as the drunken, horny and foul-mouthed Willie Soke who teams up again with his angry and doublecrossing sidekick Marcus (Tony Cox) to rob a Chicago charity on Christmas Eve, with the heist masterminded by Willie’s estranged mother Sunny, played brilliantly by Kathy Bates.
Brett Kelly is also back as the grown-up Thurman Merman who is still stalking Willie.
While in the first film the 10-year-old stalker was weird but endearing, here he is just creepy.
From the moment Thornton punches Bates in the face, it is all downhill.
My advice? Save your money and watch the original again.
Maria Duarte