Director: David Mackenzie
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington
Certificate: 12A
Run Time: 112 mins

Relay is the new film by David Mackenzie, best known for directing Hell or High Water, a Neo-Western crime drama that landed the film a Best Picture Oscar nomination – it’s a masterpiece. Mackenzie’s been rather quiet of late – he hasn’t directed a film since Outlaw King in 2018. But fear not because not only has Mackenzie made Relay, he’s made another film called Fuze which premiered at TIFF at September this year, so it’ll no doubt be getting a wide release soon.

Back to Relay though and Mackenzie’s latest is a thriller starring Riz Ahmed as Ash, a fixer who mediates between whistleblowers and the companies they expose via a relay service for the deaf to conceal his identity. Lily James plays Sarah Grant, who is seeking help after working at a company who are covering up the side effects of their genetically modified wheat. She’d originally planned to expose them with a damning report but now just wants to be free of the company’s intimidation. After speaking to a lawyer, Ash’s services come recommended to Ash. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game of espionage between Ash, Sarah and a professional counterintelligence team led by Dawson (Sam Worthington).

Relay is a brainy thriller and its first two acts are fantastic. Justin Piasecki’s script (which was on the Black List of unproduced screenplays in 2019) is taut and there’s some great set pieces, especially inside an airport and an opera. The communication between the parties via the relay service is a wholly original idea to breathe new life into this genre, and Mackenzie deftly ratchets up the tension. It’s crisply shot by Giles Nuttgens and there’s an interesting guitar-heavy score by Tony Doogan. While still entertaining, it’s a shame the third act heads more into action film territory with an overcooked twist that I predicted pretty early in.

Riz Ahmed is an excellent lead, an actor who’s proven time and time again that he can convey a huge amount of personality through his physical presence alone – just look at Sound of Metal, for instance. While Lily James is reliably good in everything she’s in, it’s nice to see Sam Worthington in a film that makes the most of his potential – for the occasional brilliant performance in films such as Everest or Hacksaw Ridge, you’ve got something naff like Avatar: The Way of Water.

Relay is an entertaining and lean thriller, and yet another memorable film from David Mackenzie. It’s just a shame the film has a change of direction in the third act that doesn’t quite match the top-tier work of its first two thirds. Still there’s plenty of promise here, combined with some excellent performances and Relay is definitely worth checking out.

Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young
Certificate: 12A
Run Time: 119 mins

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is a biographical musical drama about Bruce Springsteen’s personal and professional struggles during the conception of his 1982 album Nebraska. The film’s directed by Scott Cooper, a filmmaker whose work I greatly admire. Cooper’s first and arguably most critically acclaimed film is Crazy Heart, another musical drama, so it’s interesting to see him return back to the genre that he found the most success in. While I really liked Crazy Heart, it was his next run of films I particularly resonated with – Out of the Furnace (his best and most criminally underrated), Black Mass and Hostiles. His more recent films – Antlers and The Pale Blue Eye – were both good, but not on a par with his earlier work. Is Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Cooper back on top form?

Not quite. This is an engaging and ambitious biopic with an uncommonly moody tone, but it’s a little muddled in its execution. It’s commendable that Cooper has decided to make a film about the darkest part of Springsteen’s career, about someone who faces their inner demons rather than being a traditional, happy-go-lucky rock biopic. I also liked how the film analyses the creation of art and how an artist has to fight for their vision. It’s also impeccably shot by Cooper’s usual cinematographer, Masanobu Takayanagi – a shot of a car travelling through a desert landscape towards the film’s end is particularly stunning, as are the black-and-white flashbacks of Springsteen’s childhood, giving the film a nightmarish quality. But Springsteen’s breakdown in the third act feels a little unearned and rushed – although Cooper’s script is decent, he writes the character thinly in this respect.

Jeremy Allen White makes for a fantastic Springsteen, deftly capturing the mannerisms. When we first meet him on stage performing ‘Born to Run’, there isn’t a jukebox quality about White at all like there can be with some biopics – his performance feels very real. Jeremy Strong is also great as Jon Landau, Springsteen’s manager and it’s interesting to see him in a different role, where his intensity is because he supports the singer through thick and thin rather than having an ulterior motive. Odessa Young is another highlight as Faye Romano, Springsteen’s love interest and there’s a fun performance from Paul Walter Hauser as Springsteen’s recording engineer.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is an ambitious biopic in that Cooper has made a gloomy film that’s more interested in the minutiae and how an artist brings their work to life while battling their inner demons. But it lacks the lightning in a bottle energy that other music biopics such as A Complete Unknown earlier this year, or even Cooper’s own Crazy Heart. While this is yet another film where Cooper isn’t at the top of his game, I admire the director’s ambition even if it’s rather uneven.

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 139 mins

After The Hunt is the new Luca Guadagnino film, who has been rather prolific with Bones And All, Challengers and Queer all releasing over the last three years. His latest is a psychological thriller starring Julia Roberts as Alma, a Yale University professor who lives with her psychiatrist husband, Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg). The film opens as they’re hosting a dinner party and in attendance are Alma’s colleague, Hank (Andrew Garfield) and Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), her top PhD student. Soon after, Alma finds herself trickily caught in between a sexual abuse accusation involving the two.

After The Hunt is another stylish work from Luca Guadagnino, but there’s no denying its script and story are very flawed. Debut screenwriter Nora Garrett’s script is very wordy and expository, with characters speaking unnaturally – it’s a rewrite short of success. There are also some contrivances to the story, but I was able to overlook these because the film is always entertaining. Your patience may vary though because of the film’s unsubtle provocative themes and I totally see why it’s getting mixed reviews.

Julia Roberts makes for an engaging lead as the college professor, fighting to stay on top of her worsening health problems, her university tenure and the awkward question of who to side with within the accusation. Ayo Edebiri is more than a match for Roberts as the PhD student who’s come from a family of riches. I’m not sure whether I’d say they’re good, but Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg both certainly make an impression as Hank and Frederik. A scene with Garfield chowing down on an Indian meal is particularly memorable as he gives his account to Alma, while Stuhlbarg’s performance as the husband is uncharacteristically overripe.

The film’s very handsomely shot by Malik Hassan Sayeed, his first cinematographer credit since 1998 and there’s a fittingly prickly score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Although overripe, their score does quite a lot of the heavy lifting in ensuring there’s tension – but I’d say the film loses some of its steam as it heads into its final act and an overly indulgent coda.

While After The Hunt isn’t Luca Guadagnino’s best work, there’s no denying it’s a film that only he could have made with its provocative messages and sexually-charged execution. The script is this film’s biggest issue and I think it’d be just as effective if it were 20 minutes shorter, too, but still there’s plenty to like and I was never bored.

Director: Scott Derrickson
Starring: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Demián Bichir, Ethan Hawke
Certificate: 18
Run Time: 114 mins

Black Phone 2 is a sequel to the 2021 Ethan Hawke-starring original – my best film of 2022, but one that wasn’t screaming for a sequel with its coherent and well-contained story. Horror maestro Scott Derrickson returns to direct – the first time he’s done so, after he’d left Sinister 2 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for others to take the helm – and writer C. Robert Cargill is back too.

Despite Ethan Hawke’s serial killer villain meeting a very definitive end at the end of The Black Phone, this sequel picks up four years after the original. Finney Blake (Mason Thames) is struggling to adjust to normal life, turning to fighting and abuse to repress his trauma. His younger sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) begins having dreams where she sees murders that happened at Alpine Lake Camp 25 years prior and receives a call from her mother in one of them. She convinces Finney and her friend Ernesto to travel to the camp to investigate, and as you might expect, all hell breaks loose once they arrive.

Black Phone 2 is a mixed bag – Derrickson is to be commended for making a sequel that doesn’t simply retread the original’s beats, but it lacks the simplicity that made the first a horror classic. The second half fares much better than the first and it’s stylishly directed by Derrickson. The decision to shoot Gwen’s dream sequences in 16mm home-video is an excellent choice, the grainy aesthetics adding an unsettling quality, which Derrickon is no stranger to given he used a similar technique in Sinister. Cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg beautifully captures the menacing mountains and foreboding frozen lake too, and there’s a chilling synth-based score by Atticus Derrickson, the director’s son.

While the script isn’t terrible, I don’t think Derrickson and Cargill quite cracked how to tell the film’s story in as simple a way as the original. The first half is surprisingly incoherent at times and there’s some contrivances you have to get around too. While Derrickson crafts an unsettling atmosphere, I struggled to fully immerse myself in the film because the story just doesn’t flow very well. Things improve in the second half once the film reveals its hand of where it’s going, and it then rattles along at a good pace towards the finale. But I can’t say I was ever frightened and I didn’t

Mason Thames gives yet another compelling performance, but this is really Madeline McGraw’s film because her character is central to proceedings. While she was the undoubtedly highlight of the first film, her performance doesn’t quite capture lightning in a bottle in the same way because there’s less at stake this time round. Ethan Hawke is reliably excellent, but he also gets less to work with this time round. Series newcomers Demián Bichir and Arianna Rivas are both excellent though, Bichir as the supervisor of the Alpine Lake camp in a role with many similarities to his performance in The Hateful Eight, and Rivas plays his daughter, Mustang.

While Black Phone 2 deserves praise for not being a straightforward rehash and there’s no denying it’s well-directed by Scott Derrickson, it’s a shame this film doesn’t have the same calibre of storytelling. The Black Phone was such a success because of how confidently it told a simple story, and this sequel trips over itself a bit, especially in the first half. But enough’s enough now – Black Phone 2 isn’t a failure to the point it stains my opinion of the original, but it’s certainly a step down.

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, Lakeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Peter Dinklage
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 126 mins

Roofman is the new film by Derek Cianfrance, best known for directing Blue Valentine and the excellent The Place Beyond The Pines. His first film since the decidedly average The Light Between Oceans all the way back in 2016, Roofman is a crime comedy about real-life robber Jeffrey Manchester, who hid in a Toys “R” Us after escaping prison. He survived on kids’ snacks and baby food, exercising during the night when the store was closed by riding a bike through the aisles – yes, really! Channing Tatum plays the divorced US Army Veteran turned outrageous robber and the film marks a change of pace for Cianfrance, given his previous films have been very serious.

Roofman is a real romp of a time that deftly balances the sheer absurdity of Manchester’s antics with a minor-key sadness and excellent character development. Channing Tatum brings plenty of charisma as the intelligent robber who has a knack for noticing the smallest details and I found myself really rooting for him with his warm personality. His burgeoning relationship with Kirsten Dunst’s (also excellent) Toys “R” Us employee, Leigh, is particularly well-developed, with well-earned cringeworthy moments as he starts to integrate himself into her dysfunctional household and get himself deeper and deeper into a doomed situation. Peter Dinklage is another highlight as Mitch, the Toys “R” Us shop manager and a stickler for the rules.

The film’s missing some of the grit that Cianfrance is best known fork, the director opting for a fuzzily warm tone instead but I wouldn’t say it’s schmaltzy. While that’s fitting for the film, if I hadn’t have known who was in the director’s chair, I wouldn’t have guessed it was Cianfrance if I was watching this blind. Still, Roofman is an easy film to like with its stranger than fiction story and a selection of compelling performances.

Director: Kirk Jones
Starring: Robert Aramayo, Maxine Peake, Shirley Henderson, Peter Mullan, Scott Ellis Watson
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 120 mins

I Swear is a biographical drama that’s based on the true story of John Davidson, who was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome when the disorder wasn’t widely recognised. Davidson lives in Galashiels in Scotland in a working class family and the film follows his unconventional childhood at school through to how he navigates adult life. It’s directed by Kirk Jones, best known for making Waking Ned and Nanny McPhee.

Like Jones’s previous films, I Swear has the same feel-good and infectiously upbeat spirit about it – it may tread familiar biopic territory but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t riveted from start to finish. Jones’s script is full of energy and there’s plenty of laughs to be had – but they are crucially always with the characters rather than at them. The director also doesn’t neglect to include some wince-inducing moments of some of the difficult situations Davidson faces to keep his story grounded – this film really gets you in the feels with its three-dimensional characters.

Robert Aramayo is sensational as the Tourette’s sufferer, who is otherwise a down-to-earth young man who just wants to fit in – this is a far cry from his Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power days. Maxine Peake is also brilliant as Dottie, the mother of one of John’s friends and a former mental health nurse, who takes him under her wing. Shirley Henderson’s reliably excellent as Davidson’s mother, who is clearly stressed out by John’s situation and Peter Mullan shines as Tommy, a caretaker who gives John a job at a local community centre.

Although some may say the film sticks to a somewhat conventional biopic formula, I loved I Swear. It gets the tone just right – compassionate, but never pandering – and the performances are across the board. This is a film that reminds you that people can be good and I guarantee you’ll be leaving the cinema with a smile plastered on your face.

Director: Benny Safdie
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandr Usyk
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 123 mins

The Smashing Machine is a biographical sports drama directed by Benny Safdie, his first time behind the camera without his brother Josh – the duo received acclaim for their collaborations with films such as Heaven Knows What, Good Time and Uncut Gems. Dwayne Johnson stars as former amateur wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr, with the film taking place between 1997 and 2000. At the start, he’s yet to lose a match and is being coached by fellow MMA fighter and best friend Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader) while stumbling in and out of drug use before competing against the fearsome Igor Vovchanchyn (Oleksandry Usyk). He also has a complicated relationship with his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt).

The Smashing Machine is a fascinating sports biopic with some terrific performances, and hats off to Safdie for deviating from the conventional biopic formula. The film has a cinéma vérité quality to it (not dissimilar from Darren Aronofsky‘s The Wrestler or Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher) and Safdie isn’t afraid to really dive deep into the complicated psyche of the heavyweight star – I was gripped throughout. The fight sequences are authentically brutal and there’s an interesting jazz-infused score by Nala Sinephro.

This is easily the best performance of Dwayne Johnson’s career. He excels as Kerr, and I found it fascinating how he’s often incredibly sweet and polite from the outside, but you know there’s a screw loose that could snap at any moment. He gets Kerr’s mannerisms spot on and I really felt for the character as the odds begin to stack against him, Johnson playing him with a tinge of sadness and regret.But it’s not just Johnson’s film. Emily Blunt is excellent too as his high-maintenance girlfriend who also has her demons, but Ryan Bader stands out as Coleman, who has to balance his own career while trying to keep Kerr under check too.

I suspect The Smashing Machine will largely be shrugged as a film and will be remembered more for Dwayne Johnson’s performance. But that’s a real shame because there’s a lot more going for it and Safdie really succeeds with diving into the inner psyche of the troubled fighter. Some have labelled the story as unremarkable, but that’s exactly the point – this is a film that’s about a fall from greatness and how a complicated individual such as Kerr navigates relationships and mental obstacles. This film really succeeds by looking past the sport’s shimmery gleam and how to accept and make the most of a mundane routine.

Director: Tim Mielants
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Tracey Ullman, Jay Lycurgo, Simbi Ajikawo, Emily Watson
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 108 mins

Steve is a drama that centres around a headteacher of a boarding school for troubled boys called Stanton Wood in 1995. The school is effectively a last chance saloon for the sweary and rowdy boys, instead of prison. The film’s directed by Tim Mielants, who reunites with Cillian Murphy after last year’s Small Things Like These, which I found very overrated. It’s an adaptation of a 2003 novella called Shy by Max Porter (who writes the script here), which was told from the perspective of one of the 16-year-old students, Shy (played here by Jay Lycurgo). For Steve, that shifts to Cillian Murphy’s headteacher. The film opens as we see the very run-down Steve heading to school, where a local news crew are there for the day to film a piece, framing the question whether the teachers are doing good work, or if these boys are a lost cause and the taxpayer shouldn’t be wasting their money on keeping the school going.

Steve is a poignant and engaging film with a standout Cillian Murphy performance, as the weary headteacher battling his own demons. There’s a complexity to how Mileants gets us to side with the teenagers and overstretched staff, and it’s fascinating to see how the film crew take advantage of the situation. This is enunciated by Robrecht Heyvaert’s kinetic cinematography, who disorientingly lenses the school. It’s easy to see straightaway the inevitable conclusion the film barrels towards, but the staff are desperate to make the best of it – if they can’t set these teenagers on the correct course, no-one can.

Outside of the terrific Cillian Murphy performance, Tracey Ullman, Simbi Ajikawo and Emily Watson are all excellent as other teachers – Ullman in particular in an uncharacteristically serious role as the school’s deputy head. There’s some impressionable performances among the teenagers too, with Jay Lycurgo standing out as Shy, with the character describing himself as “angry and bored” when asked to define himself by the news crew in three words. But it’s a shame the character doesn’t have a little more meat to the bone – yes, Mielants clearly portrays him as a complex but lost cause, an individual who recognises what he’s done wrong, but the film could have dug deeper.

Steve is very close to being an excellent film – this is a mature and moving piece with some top-notch performances. It’s great to see Cillian Murphy opting for the smaller types of roles he found his original success from off the back of his Best Actor Oscar win for Oppenheimer. I just wish Steve had a little more ferocity up its sleeve for it to really shine.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 162 mins

One Battle After Another is the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, a filmmaker who I have a hit-and-miss relationship with. There Will Be Blood is an undisputed masterpiece, I love both Punch Drunk Love and Phantom Thread, but Magnolia, The Master and Licorice Pizza all left me cold. Anderson’s latest is another adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel (Inherent Vice was his first), although the director has taken some liberties with the source material by incorporating some of his own stories into the narrative.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, who we meet as a member of a revolutionary far-left group known as the French 75 with his partner Perdifia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). The group has a successful run, but it’s undone by Perfidia’s relationship with the fiersome Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). The film then jumps 16 years later where Pat (now living in hiding as Bob Ferguson) has become a paranoid drug addict who lives with his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) off the grid in the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross. But Lockjaw is still on their tail.

One Battle After Another is a Paul Thomas Anderson triumph – it’s a giddily exciting action epic with plenty of thrilling surprises up its sleeve. It’s fiersomely original, Anderson constantly subverts expectations in a refreshing way with some outrageous set-pieces too. There’s two heart-racing car chases, with the one in the final act particularly memorable for how simple it is – cinematographer Michael Bauman (who also lensed Licorice Pizza) intercuts between three drivers and a stunning desert vista. A 20-minute extended sequence mid-way through the film where DiCaprio’s character needs to evade the authorities is another wildly entertaining highlight. But under the surface of this riveting story, Anderson has plenty to ruminate on the current state of American affairs but in a playful way with plenty of intelligent humour.

Leonardo DiCaprio is fantastic in the lead, dabbling his hand at comedy once again after his last turn in the underrated Don’t Look Up. Once a sharp and intelligent explosives expert, Anderson gets a lot of mileage out of the character who fries his brain with drugs after 16 years and DiCaprio nails it. Is this one of his best roles? It’s hard to say because the actor is so good in almost everything he’s in.

If there’s an actor who’s a dead-lock for an acting Oscar nomination, it’s going to be Sean Penn, who quite possibly puts in career-best work as the bigoted Colonel Lockjaw. He is utterly ridiculous as the racist military officer, a parody of male machismo with a particularly memorable walk, with Penn deftly balancing physical comedy with a tragicomic storyline for the character. He’s magnificent and would be deserving of a Best Supporting Actor win.

Benicio Del Toro is another standout as a chilled-as-a-cucumber karate teacher, who happens to also be a community leader and he gets many memorable lines – “I’ve had a few small beers” will undoubtedly be a line the actor is going to be remembered for after this film. Finally, Chase Infiniti as Perfidia’s daughter is a terrific find and she’ll find instant stardom after this film.

The film is beautifully shot on VistaVision by Michael Bauman (the second film this year after The Brutalist) – there are so many memorable shots here, and he too would be deserving of awards attention. Jonny Greenwood turns in a sensational score, which is very unconventional but fitting and memorable. The score felt rather alien the first time I watched One Battle After Another, but on a second viewing, it just fits in so seamlessly and it’s straight up there as one of his best works.

One Battle After Another is a near-masterpiece from Paul Thomas Anderson and it’s certainly his best film since There Will Be Blood. This is a bold, infectiously entertaining epic thriller with a litany of top-quality performances and inventive set-pieces. I’m positive it’s going to be a film that appears on decade-end lists and will be talked about for years to come, and it’ll be hard to resist switching off if it comes on television with its outstanding pacing.

Is One Battle After Another perfect? Not quite. After two viewings, I don’t think the opening 30 minutes quite matches the energy of the rest of the film (but there’s still so many positives, especially a grisly car chase). When the film jumps to 16 years later, the rest of the 162-minute film is just perfectly paced. This is a film where you’ll pick up on subtle character cues or themes every time you rewatch it – it is bursting in spirit and substance. One Battle After Another is worth racing to the cinema for as soon as you can and goes straight up there as one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tu Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davies, Joshua Odjick, Judy Greer, Mark Hamill
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 108 mins

The Long Walk is an adaptation of the 1979 Stephen King novel (under his pseudonym Richard Bachman) and is set in a future United States under a totalitarian military regime where fifty men compete in an annually televised competition, meant to inspire viewers. There’s a man representing each state and they must walk at a speed of at least three miles per hour – if they fall below and receive three warnings, they’re shot on the spot, with the winner being the final survivor.

Francis Lawrence directs – and you couldn’t ask for a more fitting name at the helm, given he’s directed all of The Hunger Games films (bar the first), where people must also fight to the death. Cooper Hoffman plays Raymond ‘Ray’ Garraty, and the film opens as we see his mother Ginnie (Judy Greer) begging him to back out, but he’s insistent on participating (for reasons we find out later on) and he starts to get to know the other players, forming a close bond Peter ‘Pete’ McVries (David Jonsson).

The Long Walk is an excellent adaptation and Lawrence deftly sustains a chilling and grim tone, but balanced with a humanity in the well-developed characters. The film really makes the most of its simple premise and there’s a sustained sense of dread throughout – if a character wants to tie a shoelace or stop to relieve themselves, they’re naturally going to be doing that at less than three miles an hour. Naturally, the characters move through emotional states as the walk progresses and it’s exciting to see what were adversaries become friends, and vice versa. The film does a great job in forcing you to think that any relationships formed are doomed, given the inevitable’s going to happen. It’s also testament to how strong a story this is when most of the film is just a tracking shot of some characters walking along a road – Lawrence doesn’t use many flashbacks.

Cooper Hoffman makes for an excellent lead, especially once he reveals his motivations and David Jonsson gives a soulful performance as Pete, a character with plenty of meat on the bone too. Charlie Plummer is another standout, who typically plays meek and quiet characters in films such as All The Money In The World and Lean On Pete, but here he plays against type. An almost unrecognisable Mark Hamill is deliciously evil here as The Major, who’s clearly relishing the role as a horrible villain that symbolises everything that’s wrong with society.

Unlike The Hunger Games films where the commentary behind the games is just as compelling as the contest, Lawrence trims the fat from The Long Walk and makes it lean and mean instead. The film doesn’t waste any time in getting started and never wanders into eye-rolling schmaltz, which is an easy trap for a film like this to run into. What’s more, there’s an excellent score by Jeremiah Fraites, who crafts several memorable themes and the film’s well shot by Lawrence’s regular cinematographer Jo Willems, who conveys the expanse and monotonous of the never-ending roads the characters must travel on.

The Long Walk is an excellent Stephen King adaptation in a strong year of them, considering we’ve also had The Monkey, The Life of Chuck and Edgar Wright’s The Running Man remake will be releasing shortly. Lawrence directs this with real flair and the sombre tone and well-rounded characters meant I was fully invested throughout. The Long Walk might be too grim for some, but that’s to its benefit – it makes for powerful viewing.