Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Train Dreams, Dragonfly, Predator: Badlands, The Choral and more

Train Dreams

(102 mins, 12A) Directed by Clint Bentley; starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, William H Macy

The sparse, stark poetry of Denis Johnson’s novella Train Dreams is etched into every frame of this superb adaptation by Clint Bentley. But while Johnson’s words are integral, woven into the film through a narration by Will Patton, this is not a slavishly page-bound interpretation of the book. The screenplay, by Bentley and his regular collaborator Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing), embraces the space around the taciturn central character, itinerant logger and railway labourer Robert Grainier (a quiet, careworn Joel Edgerton in one of his very finest performances).

Beginning with his arrival as an orphaned child alone on a train in Fry, Idaho in the early 1900s, Robert’s life is captured in the patchwork of fleeting encounters and fragmented memories that make up a man. A dying hobo in the woods (Clifton Collins Jr); a garrulous old-timer and dynamite specialist named Arn (William H Macy); Claire (Kerry Condon), a philosophical forestry services worker; and the kindly Native American storekeeper Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand): all lives that brushed only briefly against Robert’s own yet left a lasting impression on this sober man.

But the most significant is capable, sunny Gladys (lovely, understated work from Felicity Jones), who will become his wife and share with him his happiest years. Their time together, with a baby daughter in a cabin in a remote corner of the Pacific north-west, is all too brief: Robert retreats into himself and hermit-like isolation, but in time makes peace with his grief. With the help of cinematographer Adolpho Veloso’s elegant framing, we view a changing US through Robert’s curious eyes; Bryce Dessner’s flowing, eddying score adds an almost transcendent beauty.

Dragonfly

(98 mins, 15) Directed by Paul Andrew Williams; starring Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn, Jason Watkins

Living alone in a modest bungalow in a n unnamed northern town, widowed Elsie has seen her horizons contract since a fall knocked her confidence and mobility. Even the trip to the kitchen for a cuppa and a biscuit requires forward planning and steeled nerves. Then Elsie (a terrific, expressive performance from Brenda Blethyn) finds an unexpected lifeline in a friendship with her nextdoor neighbour Colleen (Andrea Riseborough, with barbed wire in her voice and a huge bull terrier named Sabre for company). On paper, they have little in common: Colleen has the scrappy fighter’s instincts of someone whose childhood was defined by rejection; Elsie is surrounded by mementos of a family who no longer have much need of her. But these two women find something real and solid in their growing connection. Of course, this lean, intimate drama is a Paul Andrew Williams film, and anyone who saw his brutal revenge picture, Bull, will have an inkling of how dark his movies can get. Even so, the blunt force of Dragonfly’s tonal swerve is enough to knock the air out of you.

Predator: Badlands

(107 mins, 12A) Directed by Dan Trachtenberg; starring Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi

Having breathed fresh life (plus plenty of death) into the Predator franchise with the Native American prequel Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg returns, bringing another novel perspective on the Predator as a species. Predator-in-training Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) might be a formidable killing machine, but he also has daddy issues and a nasty case of imposter syndrome.

To prove himself, Dek ventures to a distant planet entirely populated by potentially deadly life forms. He grudgingly forms a partnership with Elle Fanning, playing the top half of a damaged but annoyingly chipper android named Thia (she’s reunited with her missing legs in one the film’s most enjoyable fight sequences). It’s a CGI-heavy onslaught that lacks the human resonance of Prey. Still, you find yourself empathising with a murderous amber-eyed alien whose head is almost entirely made up of teeth, which is no small achievement.

Anemone

(126 mins, 15) Directed by Ronan Day-Lewis; starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton

The news that Daniel Day-Lewis has been lured out of semi-retirement should be cause for celebration. Unfortunately, Day-Lewis fans have little reason to unpack their bunting just yet. Anemone, which he co-wrote with the film’s first-time director, his son Ronan Day-Lewis, is an undisciplined, incoherent slog that is overloaded with empty symbolism and showy thesping. It manages to make one of the finest actors of his generation look like an undignified ham and to squander the talents of the always impressive Samantha Morton.

Day-Lewis Sr plays Ray, a former British army soldier who has spent the last 20 years living off grid in a glorified shed in the woods that looks as though it reeks of unwashed socks and bitterness. Prompted by a family crisis, his brother, Jem (Sean Bean), seeks him out; the two men spend several uncomfortable days and nights raking over the sedimentary layers of shared trauma, while storm clouds gather portentously and a shoegazey guitar drone mopes in the background.

The Choral

(113 mins, 12A) Directed by Nicholas Hytner; starring Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Mark Addy

The latest film collaboration between Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner (they previously worked together on The Lady in the Van and The Madness of King George, among others), the first world war-era whimsy The Choral is a tin-eared oddity. Part examination of collective wartime anxiety, part saucy seaside postcard innuendo, it’s populated by purse-lipped matrons and chippy northern stereotypes, lit in nostalgic sepia and tied together by a n amateur production of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.

Playing the new choirmaster, Ralph Fiennes oozes patrician distaste for the warbling of the Ramsden Choral Society, but he does at least deliver a layered performance: he’s a beacon of class in a picture that veers dangerously towards the am-dram end of the spectrum.

Photographs by Netflix/Focus Features/Disney/Nicola Dove/Lissa Haines-Beardow/TwoBungalowFilmsLtd