Beautiful Boy (15A) ****
STEVE CARELL again proves he can be an effective dramatic actor as well as a funnyman in this moving story of a father trying to help his son through drug addiction.
Based on the true memoirs of San Francisco-based journalist David Sheff and his son, Nic, the film tells the story of Nic’s crystal meth addiction and how it impacts on him and his family.
Carell and Chalamet make a convincing pair, bringing the once-close father and son to life and heading up a strong cast - but the movie’s non-linear storytelling style can have a distancing effect.
The film is at its most powerful when told through the eyes of Carell’s David, a father used to protecting his son, a man who’s gradual realisation that he is unable to ‘fix’ his son’s chronic addiction is heartbreaking to watch.
Rather than focusing on the addiction itself, director Felix Van Groeningen and his team alter their approach, looking instead on the distancing effect it can have between the addict and their loved ones.
Mary Queen of Scots (15A) ***
Mary Queen of Scots is an engaging and good-looking costume drama, but one that struggles to really get to the heart of what motivated Mary and Elizabeth.
Successful theatre director and first-time filmmaker Josie Rourke presents the tragic Scottish monarch and her first cousin, Queen Elizabeth 1, as two sides of the same coin - serious women determined to hold power amid challenges from the men around them. Of course, both women also believed that a claim to the English throne was their God-given right. Elizabeth’s faith was devoutly Protestant, while Catholic Mary came back to Scotland from France following the death of her husband to find her faith an issue in her claim to the throne.
The movie does well in building up both women’s sense of paranoia, both in each other and in the scheming courtiers who surround them.
Both women, the film tells us, hold each other as a threat and in fear, but also view each other in fascination. They face political rivalry and all-round skullduggery in their respective courts, but when Elizabeth learns that Mary is determined to rule as more than a figurehead, it sparks off a series of events that will have dramatic consequences for both women and the course of history.
There are plenty of plot twists, scheming and palace intrigue, but the story develops in an uneven manner and the two leads featuring in separate story threads, though accurate, proves structurally problematic.
