I Swear (2025)

What's this? It's me starting off 2026 with one of my absolute favourite films from 2025, and I cannot overstate how highly I recommend this to all.

I Swear is a biographical drama that tells the story of John Davidson, a man diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome at a young age. Getting that diagnosis doesn't help much though, especially when so many people were quite ignorant of Tourette's syndrome back when John was trying to just have a normal life. Helped by a friend's mother who ends up essentially adopting John as another son, and a boss/colleague who sees the good-hearted and hard-working young man behind the tics and swearing, John is eventually motivated to share his story with more and more people, aiming to remove the stigma of his condition and educate the masses.

There are a few other features from writer-director Kirk Jones that I would recommend, he generally tends to offer feelgood fare, but I Swear is the best thing that he's done so far, helped by the material and some superb casting. Most viewers will undoubtedly find themselves going through a wide range of emotions (it will certainly make some people laugh and cry in equal measure), but the other main strength of the film is how it encourages empathy and will have people considering the full repercussions of living with a condition that makes every day a battle against the involuntary actions of your own mind and body.

To ensure that I give him due credit, Scott Ellis Watson deserves a good amount of praise for his heart-breaking and brilliant portrayal of Davidson in his childhood years. It would be the performance to talk about, if not for the fact that Robert Aramayo then takes on lead duties with what I consider a flawless performance. Aramayo shows all of the emotions that run through his head, whether his body and mind are in sync, or whether they are at odds with one another, as is more often the case. Aramayo is also easy to like, and does well with the wry humour that is allowed throughout to keep the whole thing entertaining and enjoyable, in between the more difficult scenes. Maxine Peake is also great, playing the surrogate-mum Dottie Achenbach, and Peter Mullan is a treat as the man who gives John his first proper job, as well as the idea to inform others about his condition. Shirley Henderson takes on a tougher role, playing John's actual mother, Heather, a woman at a loss with what she sees as a problem in her son that he won't try hard enough to fix, and it's another performance in line with pretty much every great turn she's given over the past few decades. Others are onscreen, and nobody puts a foot wrong, but those four performances deliver the full heart of the film.

I went into I Swear hoping to like it, but that's nothing new for me. I was wary, however, because of times when the marketing seemed to be making promises that the film itself wouldn't be able to keep. Everyone who saw it was raving about it, and it was being touted as a new beloved jewel in the crown of British cinema. It turns out that all of the praise was absolutely justified. Navigating some treacherous territory, it hops around tonally with a confidence and purpose that helps any individual moments to feel jarring alongside anything else here. It also helps that viewers are reassured by an opening scene set in the modern day that they know will come along eventually, no matter what hardships Davidson endures on his way to a moment of joy (and maybe just one moment of peace).

10/10

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Mubi Monday: Young Adam (2003)

One of a number of movies that fans of Ewan McGregor can add to their super-secret special files (aka Ewan gets nekkid), Young Adam is a character study wrapped in an erotic thriller that is then wrapped in a grimy exploration of work life drudgery. It's also an impressive sophomore feature from writer-director David Mackenzie (adapting the source novel by Alexander Trocchi into screenplay form).

Everything starts with a body in the water. It's the body of a dead woman found by Joe (McGregor) and Les (Peter Mullan). Joe works on a barge for Les and his wife, Ella (Tilda Swinton). He also spends some time getting lusty with Ella whenever Les is out of the picture. As the film jumps back and forth in time, we get to see a previous relationship that Joe had with a young woman named Cathie (Emily Mortimer). It's obvious that Joe has long been a selfish and fairly carefree young man, but unfolding events may force him to reckon with the consequences of his actions. 

Although set in the past, and it's a time when the death sentence was still doled out here in the UK, many moments in Young Adam feel as if they could be just as easily transposed to the here and now. Working on a barge, and living with the boss/family, is just the same as the many jobs here in the UK that offer different kinds of accommodation, from a bedroom to a caravan, from a truck cab to a hotel room. And people confined to a certain type of fairly bleak existence, one without any obvious rays of sunshine in the skies ahead, tend to lean on one another more for support and move quicker to grab chances at fleeting moments of happy distraction. Mackenzie knows exactly what he is doing, balancing things nicely between the mix of characters, the morality being explored, and the twists that take place without seeming placed there as attempts to wrong-foot viewers. He also knows just how easy it is to keep this riveting with so many talented cast members involved.

McGregor is pretty much perfect in the lead role, adding just enough charm and obvious appeal to take the edge off the sharp flaws of his character. Swinton does as well as expected with her Scottish accent, considering her lineage and love of the country, and she emanates an earthy sexuality that makes it believable whenever McGregor wants to get down and dirty with her, Mullan is on top form, and Mortimer conveys a heart-breaking mix of love, sadness, hope, and hopelessness. Therese Bradley and Pauline Turner are two more potential conquests for our lead, and Ewan Stewart and Stuart McQuarrie do excellent work with their small roles.

I first saw this close to when it was first released, over two decades ago now, and I was quite underwhelmed by it. Others seemed to heap a fair bit of praise upon it, but it just felt to me like too much time spent wallowing in misery. I'm glad I revisited it though. While it will never be a favourite of mine, the cast and quality of the film-making assure that you won't regret giving it 98 minutes of your time. The music by David Byrne is also a plus for people familiar with that particular artist, the dirt and darkness is all shown clearly enough by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, and there's no obvious weakness in the talent pool of artists and technicians all working to get Mackenzie's vision onscreen.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Baghead (2023)

I'm not accusing anybody here of plagiarism, we all know that creative film people can have similar ideas that end up suffering when released too close to some other, superior, outing, but if I told you that Baghead is a horror movie based around the idea of people being able to talk to the dead for a very limited amount of time, as long as they follow certain rules, then you may well think of another film that was released in the past couple of years. And if you haven't seen Talk To Me yet, I recommend that ahead of this one. I recommend many films ahead of this one, but Talk To Me is the one it most closely resembles, superficially.

Based on the short film of the same name, written by Lorcan Reilly, this is the tale of Iris (Freya Allan), a young woman who ends up taking over a pub from her estranged, and no-longer-on-the-mortal-coil, father (Owen, played by Peter Mullan). She isn't supposed to be the new owner though. It contains something dark and dangerous underground, an entity that can apparently channel the spirits of the dead, becoming them for a limited time. Iris and her friend, Katie (Ruby Barker), are wary, of course, but also think there's a way to make some money when someone (Neil, played by Jeremy Irvine) offers to pay them for a chance to speak to a deceased loved one. I am sure everything will work out well, as long as people abide by the specific rules that they're told about and don't have any dark secrets to be revealed.

Directed by Alberto Corredor, his feature debut after helming the short back in 2017, this is a competent and serviceable film. It's also tiresomely dull, especially when things play out in the finale in a way that feels completely unoriginal and unsurprising. Lorcan Reilly has continued to work on short movies, which leaves the full screenplay for this in the hands of another first-timer, Christina Pamies, and Bryce McGuire (who gave us the inexorably dull Night Swim in the same year, oh dear). Pamies and McGuire are not good enough to turn the central idea into something worthwhile, which leaves the cast adrift in a cold sea of mediocrity.

Allan is a good lead, although she already has a knack for picking projects that don't make good use of her talent. She gamely struggles through this, despite the writers giving viewers very little actual character development aside from how she has been defined by the fates of her parents. Barker is also better than the material allows, and both actresses deserve much more than the slop they're served here. Mullan, only in a few scenes, is always a welcome presence, and Ned Dennehy is a good fit for the solicitor who helps the pub transition from one owner to the next. Jeremy Irvine, on the other hand, isn't very good. He struggles to play his character as required, and his discomfort as he wrestles to do good work, contributes to the weakness of a finale that everyone involved probably thought was a fantastic, clever, and satisfying ending. 

I feel a bit unkind here, but maybe that is the way it has to be. While not terrible in any way, this is dull. And, as many people have said many times over, being dull is one of the worst things for a movie to be. Give me something to love, give me something to hate, but don't give me something to shrug off and forget about within a minute of the end credits rolling. That inability to make any strong impression makes the good work done by some of those involved simply redundant. Am I going to praise the score by Suvi-Eeva Äikäs, the cinematography by Cale Finot, or the production design and makeup? No . . . because they've faded away from my mind quicker than the serious and unbreakable rules faded from the minds of the main characters in this tale.

3/10

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Mubi Monday: Sunset Song (2015)

England has a fine literary heritage, from Shakespeare to the Brontë sisters, from Dickens to Jane Austen, and on and on the list goes, including the likes of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Agatha Christie, John Le Carré, Clive Barker, etc, etc. Scotland has a similarly rich variety, both historically and right here and now, from Sir Walter Scott to Robert Burns, from Rankin to Rowling, Iain Banks (with or without the middle initial), Christopher Brookmyre, and many more. Unfortunately, one celebrated writer of Scottish fiction is/was Lewis Grassic Gibbon, writer of A Scots Quair, a trilogy of takes set in the North East of Scotland. Sunset Song is the first part of that trilogy, and it’s about as bleak and dull as just about anything I have ever encountered in my life. While forced to read it in high school, I once threw the book across an empty classroom in disdain, looking on in horror as it lifted upwards and knocked a glass lightshade loose, the whole thing coming down and smashing to pieces on the floor. I somehow managed to clean it up and hide the evidence, and I am only sharing this confession here as it is arguably the most interesting thing I can say about the story.

I am sure you can imagine how much I was looking forward to the film, directed and adapted into screenplay form by Terence Davies (someone who has directed other films I have very much enjoyed).

Agyness Deyn plays Chris Guthrie, a young woman loving a hard life on a Scottish farm in the early 1900s. She has a stern father (Peter Mullan) for a while, but things really seem to look up for her when she starts to receive the attention of Ewan Tavendale (played by Kevin Guthrie). But the fact that this is Sunset Song means that happiness cannot last for long. The only things that last are aching joints and muscles from hard work on the land. Och aye, ye can be sure o’ that.

It’s all nicely put together, from the script to the horribly overcast visual palette, and the cast do excellent work, particularly Deyn in the central role, giving a performance that marks her out as a formidable talent. Unfortunately, Sunset Song cannot overcome the biggest problem it has, which is the fact that it is Sunset Song. Viewed by many as an essential Scottish text, the story is so mired in an essence of noble misery, while also taking the time to wear down the strong female lead into a passive victim, that it is something I would much rather see consigned to the dustbin of history. Maybe some of the Scottish vocabulary has a pleasing ring to it, there is that, and there would seem to be a number of uncomfortable truths at the heart of things, but the messages delivered throughout never sat right with me, mainly because it all seems to be inextricably interwoven with some horribly inappropriate sense of duty and pride.

Art isn’t always just a window that we look into. It is often a mirror, and the reflection can show your baggage, it can show you a snarl while so many others are smiling. My review of Sunset Song isn’t JUST about the movie, but very few movie reviews are just about the movie. It just so happens that this work has much more attached to it, for me, and I am now at an age when I can better define the problems I have always had with the material. They are problems that the film also has, because Davies adapted the source material so well. Maybe there isn’t a way to make it into anything more palatable for me, or maybe I will return to the source material and find myself able to see a bit more in it than I ever did before. I highly doubt it, but maybe.

4/10

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Shudder Saturday: Repression (2020)

Although I was aware of the fact that their screentime would probably be limited, the presence of Peter Mullan and Bill Paterson in this cast was enough to put Repression (which is also known by the title Marionette) on my radar.

It is the tale of a woman (Thekla Reuten) who ends up working with a young boy (Elijah Wolf) who seems to have strange and dangerous powers. But does he make things happen, or does he just have the ability to foresee things? And can he help our leading lady to fix a recent tragedy in her life? Or . . . did he cause it?

This is nicely put together, an enjoyable slow burn that has enough darkness in it to make it a solid horror/thriller viewing choice, and starts to really impress when you get to the meat of the central idea being poked at and explored. Riffing on that famous tale from The Twilight Zone, “It’s A Good Life”, this gradually makes the central theme bigger and bigger on the way to an ending you suspect won’t be a happy one. 

Director Elbert van Strien (who also gave us the excellent Two Eyes Staring) sometimes struggles to capture just the right visuals that would be most impactful, but his work on the script, co-written with  Ben Hopkins, is where the film is strengthened.

What could have been a child-centric reworking of The Medusa Touch instead turns into a film that muses on ideas we could consider with every major horror movie character. Can someone foretell things that will happen, or does that information being put out there mean that someone else turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy? How can you prove that you have free will if your actions are guided by the thought of just reacting to what you think others have predicted you to do? And if we consider the tale of Schrödinger’s cat then surely that means that everything out of our line of sight is permanently both dead and alive until they come back to us.

Interesting and heady ideas, I hope you agree, and the cast do a bloody good job of having conversations about them, in between moments of tension and dread. Reuten is a decent lead, playing her pained character well enough, and believably becoming more and more desperate as the situation around her looks set to drag her down via some spiritual kind of riptide. Wolf is also good, admirably allowed to play his part without too many sympathetic moments. Mullan and Paterson have a few scenes each, doing their usual great work, and there are very good performances from Rebecca Front, Emun Elliott, and Dawn Steele. Sam Hazeldine is also given a vital role here, but he doesn’t get to make as good an impression as anyone else, partly to do with the script and partly to do with his lacklustre turn.

It’s a shame that the very end of Repression goes for something we have seen, in one way or another, many times before, undercutting what came beforehand. It’s perfectly fine, but nowhere near as good as the rest of the movie. Although unspectacular, this is well-made, well-acted, well-written (maybe more in terms of the ideas than the dialogue spoken), and well worth your time.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Session 9 (2001)

I'm not going to draw this out, Session 9 remains one of my favourite horror movies released in the past two decades, and one of my favourite horror movies of all time. Making the most of one main location, the Danvers State Mental Hospital, it is an impressive psychological horror that just keeps diving darker and darker, all the way to one of the most disturbing endings of all time.

Gordon Fleming (Peter Mullan) is the boss of a crew who have been hired to remove asbestos from an abandoned hospital. He needed the gig badly, and so made sure to match any other one while promising to get the job finished in a week. This puts extra pressure on him and his crew, but there's a massive bonus in it for them if all goes well. Phil (David Caruso) is his second-in-command, basically, there's Mike (Stephen Gevedon) and Hank (Josh Lucas), the latter individual now in a relationship with Phil's ex, and Jeff (Brendan Sexton III), Gordon's nephew. Tensions build as the work is carried out, and you get to hear spooky tapes being played by Mike, who spends some of his break times listening to the psychiatric sessions he discovered in one of the many abandoned rooms. Gordon also has domestic problems on his mind, but maybe all will be well if they can get the job done in one week.

The more I think about it, the less I can think to criticise about Session 9. Director Brad Anderson (and I'd argue that this film, despite not making a massive impact when first released, helped him step up a level, in terms of exposure, after it was embraced by genre fans) puts everything together with an expert touch, working from a great script co-written by himself and Gevedon. It may be making use of a location, but a) it doesn't feel like that is all it has going for it, and b) it's a damn fine location for a horror movie.

Mullan is as great as he always is in the lead role, and he can convey a real mix of emotions underlining all of the building horror as everything becomes clearer during the final moments. Caruso has rarely been better, doing a great job as a blue-collar worker trying to earn a good payday while helping a friend through a tough time. Lucas puts in another turn that allows him to be a bit of a douchebag, and Brendan Sexton III walks a fine line between annoying youngster and vulnerable kid, particularly as his severe nyctophobia plays into the plot. I'm not too familiar with Gevedon, but he does just fine, although his strength seems to lie in the writing side of things.

Despite the moments that feel like standard horror tropes (when people start to go missing, when everyone splits up to search for someone, etc), this is, like the central location itself, an atmospheric and dark building that creaks and groans while sitting on some very solid foundations. All of the exposition, and it is a film that threads a LOT of exposition throughout, feels natural as it is conveyed between different characters, the geography of the site is clear enough to follow everything, and the character development is never warped for the sake of the scares.

Do yourself a favour and watch this one ASAP. You won't regret it. If you do, well, I can't help it if you have bad taste.

10/10

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Trainspotting (1996)

I don't think it's overstating the fact to say that Trainspotting was one of the defining films of the 1990s. Slowly but surely, almost everyone involved with the film developed a pretty successful film career (with Ewan McGregor, arguably, going on to be the most successful). Danny Boyle confidently delivered on that film-savvy potential that he'd shown with Shallow Grave. The soundtrack was one of the best of the decade, and the marketing and poster design is still being utilised to this day (even if it is usually used to push lesser Irvine Welsh adaptations, see Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy - or don't, actually).

Trainspotting is a landmark film, and it holds up, easily, as one of the best British movies in modern cinema. I'd happily put it on a list of the best British movies ever. It wouldn't take the number one spot, but it would easily crack the top ten.

The central storyline, although the film is more a series of interweaving strands moving back and forth between the main characters, follows Renton (Ewan McGregor), a heroin addict who starts the movie by vowing to clean up his act. This isn't the first time that he's tried to go clean, and it may not be successful, but he's going to try really hard this time. Unfortunately, normal life is just boring. Especially when his friends include Spud (Ewen Bremner), who's sweet but a bit useless, Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), who comes off heroin at the same time just to show him how easy he can manage it, and the slightly psychotic Begbie (Robert Carlyle), who happily looks down his nose at the addicts while downing copious amounts of alcohol and smoking like a chimney. There's also Tommy (Kevin McKidd), but Tommy doesn't really have many vices or problems, which sometimes makes him the most annoying of them all. Of course, everyone may be a bit different by the end of the movie, affected in various ways by Renton and the decisions that he makes to get his life back on track. Or, at least, back on a track deemed suitable by society.

Having STILL not read the source material, which is a situation I really must rectify (as I am a big fan of almost everything I've read by Welsh), I can't really comment on what was kept and what was lost on the way to the big screen. What I can say is that the screenplay by John Hodge is just top notch. The characters are all fully fleshed out, the humour running throughout often helps to sugar-coat a bitter pill, and the fact that viewers stay on Renton's side, despite what a selfish asshole he is, shows just what a fantastic piece of work it is.

Of course, a lot of Renton's likeability comes from the winning performance from McGregor, who puts in a performance that remains one of his very best. Boyle is a director who often seems to get the best out of his cast, and this has rarely been more obvious than it is here, with everyone else onscreen stepping up to easily hold their own alongside McGregor. Miller, McKidd, Bremner and, especially, Carlyle all create characters that you won't quickly forget. Then there's Peter Mullan as Mother Superior (because of the length of his habit) and Kelly Macdonald, who enjoys such a fantastic cinematic debut that the rest of her career seems disappointing in comparison, despite the fact that she's been working solidly for the past 15+ years.

But let me save the last bit of praise for Boyle, once more. A man who impressed me with his debut feature, blew me away with this film, and has continued to delight and entertain me ever since. He brings everything together so perfectly, and with such apparent ease, that it's often easy to forget how dark a lot of the movie is. It's about a heroin addict, it features horrific violence, a number of moments focusing on fecal matter, there are at least two disturbing death scenes, and one sublimely-filmed OD sequence.

And then Born Slippy starts to play, the end credits roll, and you want to watch it all over again.

10/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trainspotting-Ultimate-Collectors-Edition-Blu-ray/dp/B0014MY1GM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1390495368&sr=8-3&keywords=trainspotting

War Horse (2011)

This Steven Spielberg movie, based on a popular play written by Nick Stafford which was based on the children's book by Michael Morpurgo, is an easy target for critics to take aim and fire at. There's no denying that it has many moments that exemplify the very worst of Spielberg's predilections and there will be many people for whom this is just absolute anathema. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed it.

Peter Mullan plays Ted Narracott, a farmer who doesn't really have much luck in life. Mind you, he doesn't always help himself, like when he decides to outbid his landlord (David Thewlis) for a horse that everyone knows will be of no use to him for ploughing purposes. He gets the horse, but is also indebted to his landlord. It looks grim, grim indeed, but his son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), has faith in the horse and sets out to prove everyone wrong by leading it around the field and getting it to pull the plough. Sadly, despite the horse showing great tenacity, there's not enough done to keep the farm safe and so Ted sells the horse to an army Captain (Tom Hiddleston). Albert is determined that they'll be reunited one day and he signs up for the army as soon as he's old enough, but there's no guarantee that he'll ever actually see his horse again or, indeed, survive the perils of war.

Yes, it's overloaded with sentiment in places (thanks to Spielberg and the music of John Williams) and yes, there are too many shots with rays of sunlight just providing an aura for the lead characters, thanks to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, but this is still an enjoyable family adventure that will take you through a range of emotions before the end credits roll.

The best thing about it is the quality of the cast. As well as those already mentioned (Mullan, Thewlis, Irvine, Hiddleston), viewers gets to see the following actors in a variety of small and large roles: Emily Watson, Niels Arestrup, Benedict Cumberbatch, Geoff Bell, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell and Liam Cunningham. Even the lesser-known (and unknown) cast members do a great job, with Celine Buckens making a good impression as young Emilie, a girl who also makes a connection with the titular horse.

There are one or two moments of darker content in the movie, but they're handled with kid gloves and moved aside in plenty of time for the next uplifting sequence. People will accuse the movie of being far too sugary and heavy-handed for its own good and it is, but it's also just a nice, old-fashioned adventure story with plenty of great moments throughout.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Horse-Blu-ray-Region-Free/dp/B00742SSEW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356070669&sr=8-1