Film review: Prisoners (15)

FILM
Prisoners
(15) 153mins
★★★★✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Superior story-telling, smart direction and powerhouse performances ensure Prisoners sidesteps the usual child-kidnapping cliches.

TV preview: Father Figure (BBC)

If you put the expression “Mrs Brown’s Boys” into Babelfish.com and bat it back and forth around the continents, it comes back as “male infant covered in sticky chocolate”.

Which must have given comedian Jason Byrne an idea. Just the one, mind, but, if he played his cards right, told it with an Irish accent (mainly because he’s Irish) and threw in a toilet gag he could spin the skit into a six-part sitcom.

Stage review: The Secret Agent, Young Vic

STAGE
The Secret Agent
Maria at Young Vic
★★✩✩✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Theatre O take the prescient themes of Joseph Conrad's classic and present them with intriguing, if disjointed, visual flair.

Film review: Rush (15)

FILM
Rush
(15) 122mins
★★★★★

IN A NUTSHELL
The combination of palm-sweating race sequences and moving human drama ensures this story of the 1976 F1 Championship takes the chequered flag.

Film review: Ain't Them Bodies Saints (15)

FILM
Ain't Them Bodies Saints
(15) 97mins
★★★★✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Sundance alumni David Lowery has created a doom-laden Bonnie and Clyde mood-piece with some fine central performances.