I went into Cat Person (15) thinking of Paul Schrader’s 1982 movie Cat People – for no other reason than the title. It has little in common with Schrader’s nightmarish curio besides that but you keep expecting it to turn into a horror film. Susanna Fogel directs with a clever use of anti-climaxes, red herrings,…

I don’t have a Smartphone. I only have a stupid one. It’s a Nokia.

Somebody should put up a statue of Ken Loach. For decades he’s been making great movies about little guys taking on the big institutions. In The Old Oak (15A) the enemy isn’t a conglomerate but a man’s own contemporaries. Refugees TJ Ballantine (Dave Turner) is the proprietor of the eponymous pub, a run-down establishment he’s…

Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are close friends in South Korea during their youth in Celine Song’s heartbreaking film Past Lives (PG). Their paths divide when, at the age of twelve, Nora’s parents move to New York. Twelve years later, Hae locates Nora, managing to connect with her through Skype. He learns…

Sound of Freedom (15A) Tim Ballard is a former CEO of the Nazarene Fund. This was set up to help persecuted religious and ethnic minorities. He’s also the founder of an organisation called Operations. Underground Railroad which specialises in rescuing child victims of sex traffickers. Jim Caviezel, who took the role of Jesus in Mel…

Robert De Niro is 80 this week. The most acclaimed actor of his generation has been appearing in films with religious subtexts almost since he started out, most notably in the films he made with his Catholic friend from Little Italy, Martin Scorsese. Scorsese was a former altar boy who once studied to be a…

Elvis Presley, as I mentioned in my review of Baz Luhrmann’s movie Elvis last year, feared he would be forgotten after he came out of the army in 1960. The rock ‘n’ roll boom of the 50s had passed its peak by then. He thought he would be irrelevant to the new generation about to…