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Pedro Almodóvar bravely tackles the euthanasia issue, modernly called VAD or Voluntary Assisted Dying, in his recent film The Room Next Door. Accustomed to working with brilliant actors, he is particularly well served on this outing. Tilda Swinton is strange and bewitching as a war correspondent fading and dying of cancer, Julianne Moore is nuanced and real as her old friend (now an author) called upon to spend last days together in a country rental as the cancer victim psyches herself up to take a black-market death pill. If the friend sees the red door to the room next door is shut, that signals death has occurred. The film lingers on moments together, on the author with her boyfriend, on revelations about the correspondent’s estrangement from her daughter. Almodóvar explores the fraught nature of the death, the need for the other to be detached from it or be quizzed by the police (as she eventually is). The Room Next Door does not plumb any new emotional depths nor are the existential issues of life and death explored fully but the controversial topic of VAD receives a layered treatment. A film to brew over.

Some science fiction books/films hinge upon their world-building and many fall short. Silo was the brainchild of indie author Hugh Howey and his book trilogy launched with 2012’s Wool and later became known as Silo. The screen treatment of Silo is a lush multi-part TV series that is utterly unafraid of unwinding Howey’s fascinating plot slowly and atmospherically, like a pocket watch. The first season (see my review) crowned my 2023 viewing and was a blinder, at once capturing (somehow, how is it possible?) the claustrophobic dystopian world of ten thousand folks living in a multi-level underground bunker and commencing the heroic tale of Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson has carved out an unforgettable performance here) digging at the truth of the silo and then being sent out to die in a radiation-blighted world as punishment. In Season 2 (ten episodes), Juliette (spoiler alert) stumbles into another, very different silo and tries to make progress amidst chaos, while back in her silo a rebellion slowly brews. A large tapestry of memorable characters incubates with every carefully choreographed episode, the gloomily tinged cinematography is sublime, and the plot mysteries seem to expand with every revelation. Season 1 of Silo was exemplary, Season 2 is just as thrilling.

The first season of Bad Sisters was superb (see my review), a blithe mix of comedy and thrills and family dynamics, but the essence of its plot (four Irish sisters tackling the fifth sister’s hell-spawned husband) seemed to foreclose an encore. No one told talented actor/writer Sharon Horgan who has guided Season 2. This time around the formerly abused sister again falls foul of love and a church elder (played wonderfully by Fiona Shaw). Horgan and her three sparring sibling-role-actors, Sarah Greene, Eve Hewson, and Eva Birthistle, are again flawless. A bit player in the opening season, the investigating policeman, is now elevated with a fine performance by Barry Ward, and Thaddea Graham does a fine job as his clumsy recruit assistant. The plot of Season 2 feels a little less organic but what keeps lifting this television is a cracking script, complete with seemingly endlessly inventive dialogue. Every episode is a treat to watch, in that time-honored category of “entertainment,” and, while Bad Sisters undoubtedly will not return in a third incarnation, its second outing was most welcome.

Recent Netflix release Blitz is the only film by acclaimed filmmaker Steve McQueen that I have watched but I knew when I sat down in the cinema that I could expect visually striking cinematography. I was not disappointed; the opening scene, showing various angles on a Third Reich bombing raid on London, takes one’s breath away. Indeed the Blitz of 1940 itself remains a potent character of sorts throughout the film. The plot premise is straightforward: a biracial nine-year-old boy is sent north for safety but rebels and runs away, on a quest to somehow reunite with his single mum back in London. Saiorse Ronan does a fine job as the plucky mother (singling her out in the cinematography with bright red clothes works really well) but the movie’s standout performance is Elliott Heffernan as the unstoppable kid. His passage through the underworlds of London (literally, when sheltering in the underground during a raid, and figuratively when snared by a Dickensian evildoer) is wonderfully paced and filmed. In the end, Blitz can seem unambitious but McQueen is clearly a master auteur, for the two screen hours whizz by and wonderful scene follows wonderful scene. Recommended.

Chinese filmmaker Guan Hu mixes up genres and styles with his gentle indie film, Black Dog. The storyline revolves around a jailed murderer released into a dog-catching patrol in the Gobi Desert, who eventually catches the “black dog” and discovers that the two outsiders bond as friends. Part revenge western, part sentimental drama, part social commentary, Black Dog tosses in myriad subplots and rushes through the main story, but this is less a Hollywood “classic journey” than a journey in a stunningly filmed Wild West of blighted towns, hooting trains, bureaucratic loudspeaker announcements, and roaring motorbikes, with backdrop the alien blue peaks of western China. Atmospheric, indie instrumental and vocal music provides the perfect accompaniment. Taiwanese acting/singing star Eddie Peng is perfect in the role, opting for near total silence and brooding, forbearing suffering; a final scene with him on a roaring bike is guaranteed to raise a tear (or some form of emotion). This is not for everyone, its arthouse singularities guaranteeing mainstream market failure, but for anyone seeking revelatory cinema, Black Dog is already a 2025 highlight.

Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 debut, The Day of the Jackal, reinvented the thriller, and the 1973 movie adaptation was a revelation for this reader. Now, half a century on, we have a 10-episode remake that updates the plot but lovingly retains the aura of the ruthless assassin being desperately hunted. The Day of the Jackal ends up as a meld of the James Bond action movies set in exotic places and a character study of the Jackal, brilliantly portrayed by Eddi Redmayne, and sometimes that melange slows the pace down too much. The series is best with its intricate portrayals of the incredible assassinations concocted and executed by a ruthless, invincible Redmayne. The background plot of the Jackal’s true love, his family hidden in Greece, works surprisingly well and, of course, sets up Season 2. All in all, The Day of the Jackal is a high-octane, intelligently executed rush of adrenaline.