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Edmund Lee

Click on film titles to read SCMP.com reviews


1. Wind River
After impressing with his scripts for Sicario and Hell or High Water , Taylor Sheridan makes his directing debut with this superb thriller set on a Native American reservation. While the film’s association with The Weinstein Company has all but ensured an Oscars shutout, no crime noir fans should miss it. (Opens on October 19)



2. Only the Brave
The heroic tale of the “Granite Mountain Hotshots” firefighting team, who battled against one of the US’s deadliest wildfires in Arizona in 2013, is told with disaster-movie visuals and great emotional poignancy in this true-life drama by Joseph Kosinski, best known for his sci-fi spectacles Tron Legacy and Oblivion. (Opens on October 19)


3. Suburra
Politics and organised crime become intricately intertwined when a member of parliament is implicated in a prostitute’s murder in this Italian neo-noir gem, adapted from a novel by Giancarlo De Cataldo and Carlo Bonini. For those who want more, a prequel television series has also recently started streaming on Netflix. (Now showing)


4. Safe
An allegory of the US’s self-help culture and the 1980s Aids crisis, Todd Haynes’ 1995 horror fable, starring Julianne Moore as a housewife suffering from a mysterious malady, is now widely regarded as a modern masterpiece. (October 20 and 21, as part of the All Those Magnificent Obsessions Allow: The Cinema of Todd Haynes programme)



5. Victoria & Abdul
There is no getting around it: Stephen Frears’ royal drama about Queen Victoria and a young Indian clerk she befriended takes a far too casual look at British colonialism. Still, it’s an undeniable delight to watch Judi Dench’s magisterial turn as the queen, imbued as it is with both tenderness and mischief. (Opens on October 19)
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Film reviews

Top five films to watch in Hong Kong this week (October 19-25), from Wind River to Only the Brave

A superb thriller on a reservation, heroic firefighters, Italian politics and organised crime, a modern-day horror story, and Queen Victoria’s friendship with her Indian footman top this week’s picks

Judie Dench and Ali Fazal in Victoria & Abdul.

Why Wind River director Taylor Sheridan – writer of Sicario and Hell or High Water – penned Native American murder mystery

Sheridan invited tribal leaders to the set, cast as many Native Americans as he could and even got most of the film’s financing from the Tunica-Biloxi tribe to tell the story of a 18-year-old girl murdered on a reservation

Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in Hell or High Water.

J697PW Cannes, France. 20th May, 2017. Director Director Taylor Sheridan at the Wind River film photo call at the 70th Cannes Film Festival Saturday 20th May 2017, Cannes, France. Credit: Doreen Kennedy/Alamy Live News [FEATURES] Photo : Alamy

Jeremy Renner in Wind River.

Emily Blunt in Sicario.

Elizabeth Olsen in Wind River.

Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham in Wind River.

From left: Graham Greene, Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner in Wind River.

Culture

Film & TV

A superb thriller on a reservation, heroic firefighters, Italian politics and organised crime, a modern-day horror story, and Queen Victoria’s friendship with her Indian footman top this week’s picks
