Parky At the Pictures (13/6/2025)

(Reviews of Sister Midnight; Protein; and Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story)

SISTER MIDNIGHT.

London-based film-maker Karan Kandhari makes his feature debut with Sister Midnight, a Hindi black comedy set in Mumbai that is stuffed with soundtrack surprises and audacious shifts of tone, genre, and style. There's even room for a little quirky stop-motion animation.

Still wearing her wedding veil, Uma (Radhika Apte) views the passing scene from a train bound for Mumbai, while her arranged spouse, Gopal (Ashok Pathak), slumps beside her. On reaching his terraced shack in a bustling part of the city, Gopal leaves Uma flummoxed by fleeing to avoid consummating the union and heads off to work on his bicycle the next morning without a single word.

Unsure what to do with herself, Uma sits on the doorstep and watches the world go by, in the process attracting the scorn of a respectable neighbour and her daughter. When Gopal returns home drunk, Uma takes money from his pocket and goes out to buy some food, which she crunches ostentatiously, as her husband lollops on the bed. She demands more money the next day in order to buy groceries. But she has no idea how to cook them and has to ask next-door neighbour Sheetal (Chhaya Kadam) for a cleaver to chop them. Even though she manages this, Uma can't figure out what to do with a bag of flour and Gopal is forced to give her a crash course in household budgeting before Sheetal shows her how to cook a simple meal.

Bored with being stuck at home all day, Uma demands a Sunday outing. However, Gopal gets the bus times wrong and they have to return almost as soon as they arrive. Fed up, Uma asks a neighbour to smash the green wedding bracelets covering half her arms and, having visited the station to discover the impossibility of taking a train home, she gets a job mopping floors at a shipping firm.

As she hadn't sought Gopal's permission, he wants to be cross with her, but can't summon the courage. He does, however, drag her off to the doctor when she complains of being unwell. Informed that she merely has a cold, Uma becomes concerned after a mosquito bite and consults a different doctor about an ear infection. Sitting on the sea wall to ponder her condition, she is distracted by a woman crying on one side of her and a weeping man on the other. She tries to cheer herself up by stealing some plants to brighten up the room.

Having befriended the group of hijras who had been taunting her on the street, Uma also makes the acquaintance of office lift operator Sher Singh (Subhash Chandra), who shows her how cool it is on the roof and she dozes off for the night. When she spends the night on a flight of steps, however, Gopal ticks her off. But Uma is starting to behave eccentrically and, after a late-night encounter with a goat, she starts capturing birds of different sizes and draining them of blood before wrapping them in white cloth and storing them carefully in an empty drawer. Not that they stay here, however, as the delusional Uma begins seeing resurrected birds hopping across the hovel floor.

Eventually, Gopal notices the aroma, but she reassures him there is nothing to worry about. Indeed, they have been getting along better, taking the odd cigarette walk and even experimenting with brief hugs and kisses. But Uma is less than pleased when Gopal is pressured into accepting a work colleague's invitation to spend a day on the beach. Consequently, in order to get away, she offers to take their dog for a walk and promptly gives it to a small boy and urges Gopal to beat a hasty retreat. Returning home, the thrill of doing something illicit and the fact that Gopal went above and beyond to get Uma some blue candy floss leads to them sleeping together.

Unfortunately, this means curtains for Gopal and Uma decorates his corpse with fairy lights and hopes no one notices that he's not around. She fobs off his boss with an excuse and murders her nosy neighbour when she barges in and sees his grotesque shrine. Needing to dispose of the corpse, Uma chops it up and carries the bundle to some wasteland, where it is set upon by the ravenous goats (which are stop-animated) that have been thronging around Uma's abode.

Dumping Gopal in a shopping trolley, Uma wheels him out of town so she can incinerate the body. A hermit daubs some of the ashes on to her face, as she shovels them into a biscuit tin. Having wandered off after watching a monochrome chambara film, Uma finds herself at a Buddhist convent, where she is nursed by the nuns. She has her nose fixed and calls Sheetal to collect her. Unable to return home because a band of men are torching the shacks, Uma accepts a lift from Sheetal. When the torch-bearing thugs bang on the car, Uma gets out and protests that it's hard to be a human and they let her leave in peace.

It's not always clear what's going on in Karan Kandhari's decidedly odd, but laudably distinctive first feature. For the first two thirds, it feels like a mash-up between Roy Andersson and Wes Anderson, with the occasional hint of Kaurismäki and Jarmusch tossed in for good measure. But, just as the off-beat rhythms of the splendid performances, the witty abruptness of cinematographer Sverre Sørdal's whip pans, and the jerky precision of Napoleon Stratogiannakis's editing threaten to become repetitive, the action veers off into generic quirkiness before meandering towards a rather underwhelming denouement.

While this isn't ideal, it doesn't detract from the audacious idiosyncrasy of what has gone before. From the opening bar, the soundtrack proves a major asset in keeping the audience disconcerted, as blues classics by Howlin' Wolf and Blind Willie Johnson jostle with early rock tracks by Buddy Holly and Marty Robbins, pop gems by The Band and T. Rex, and heavier cuts from The Stooges and Motörhead, as well as the stylings of legendary Cambodian chanteur, Sinn Sisamouth. But Paul Banks's score and Gunnar Óskarsson's sound mix also merit mention, along with Shruti Gupte's evocative production design.

By shooting on 35mm stock, Sørdal is able capture the texture of the lighting and shading, as well as the vibrancy of the colours. However, there are times when Kandhari over-indulges in audiovisual coolness, particularly during the final third. But the decision to use stop-motion for the re-animated birds and the hungry goats proves inspired, especially as the shots of Uma pulling the latter along on leads recalls Miss Lovelace and her pesky Pekingese dogs in Trumpton (1967).

These scenes confirm Radhika Apte's aptitude for physical comedy, which extends to her hilarious culinary incompetence and her awkward attempts at intimacy. But she also has a way with the curse-strewn dialogue and the range of expression she pulls as Uma tries to fathom what is happening to her. Radhika Apte and Chhaya Kadam provide fine support, but Apte is superb, as she retains sympathy for the reluctant bride even as she becomes a deranged widow.

PROTEIN.

Alongside a number of music videos, Tony Burke has directed a clutch of shorts that includes The Fox (2011), Large Double Room in Zone 2 (2013), Him (2015), and Bottle Boy (2018). He has now expanded a 2014 outing to feature length. But, while it's taken Protein three years to secure a theatrical release, there's enough here to affirm that this verbally dextrous and visually acute debut has been worth the wait.

Returning to Wales after a brutal tour in Afghanistan, Sion (Craig Russell) finds a squat and accepts a job cleaning toilets at the gym managed by Katrina (Kezia Burrows). She is harassed by Dwayne Roberts (Kai Owen), a bouncer at the Sin City nightclub owned by Joe Llewelyn (Richard Mylan), whose drug deals with the Albanian Black Stars gang stick in Dwayne's craw, as he fancies taking over the turf. However, he makes the mistake of threatening Katrina in front of Sion, who is already miffed with him for mocking him when he let a barbell slip during a weights session.

Dwayne is backed-up by his gang, which is comprised of Kevin (Steve Meo), Big Tim (Richard Elis), Gary (Gareth John Bale), and Nick (Ross O'Hennessey). They pick on Kevin for boasting about his paintballing prowess while waiting for a trade and then slag him when his Yarris stalls while making their getaway. While he goes home and gets high on the cocaine stashed in a protein shake container, Dwayne gets his head smashed in with a hammer by Sion, who lugs his corpse to the bathtub for dismembering with a hacksaw. The parts are dumped in bin bags, but choice cuts are sealed for freezing and Sion feasts on raw flesh before turning in.

Meanwhile, Detective Sarah Patch (Andrea Hall) has been seconded from the Met to the local police station on the hunt for a serial killer. She is teamed with John Stanton (Charles Dale), an old-style copper who calls her `luv' and dismisses her criminology credentials when she questions his theory that Dwayne was found in the woods in his burnt-out motor because one of the local gangs was sending a warning to anyone jeopardising their business. Patch isn't impressed by his line of inquiry when quizzing Katrina or Llewelyn, who also owns the gym and has history with Stanton through his father.

While Patch wonders when Stanton ceased caring about his job, Kevin panics about being in possession of a dead man's stash, while Sion bulks up using shakes and fry-ups made with Dwayne's innards. While out on a run in the hills, he tears a shirt to make a support for Patch's knee when she twists it while out jogging.

Stanton is impressed by Patch when she takes the lead in questioning Kevin, who lives with his demandingly obese mother. Tutting at his denial of any knowledge of Dwayne's dealings, Patch tells him that she's heard that he is next for the chop and she frightens him by showing him a photo of his pal's charred remains. But, Kevin gives nothing away, beside the fact that Dwayne and Llewelyn couldn't stand each other. He's spared by the arrival of his mother's meal delivery, but he's still jittery when he meets with Nik, Tim, and Gary and is freaked when they announce that they have hired a hitman (Dhean Morris) to rub out one of the Albanians in a reprisal killing.

Meanwhile, Katrina gets a crush on Sion and invites him to meet her son and get his laundry done. She's frustrated by his failure to respond to her flirting, but she realises he's suffering from post-combat stress and tells him that he can confide in her if he needs to. Sion does have flashbacks to a hectoring officer, but he remains silent and she contents herself with relating how her own fairytale came to pass.

Across town, Stanton and Patch have their own heart-to-heart after they bump into each other at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. She reveals that she's just joined and has separated from her girlfriend, while he explains how Llewelyn's father used to let troublesome kids into his pub to keep them out of mischief. He turned a blind eye to it, but his son wanted bigger profits when he took over and he started peddling drugs to kids at his nightclubs and Stanton can't forgive himself for the fact that his teenage daughter died at one of the parties. Patch sees another side of the bluff copper, when he claims he doesn't know how to keep his promise to his child to make Llewelyn pay for what he did to her.

The Albanians are so livid when one of their leaders is dismembered that they burn a rival against a tree and a turf war ensues. It's then that Sion's meat supply runs out and he kills Gary because he was rude to him at the gym. He sobs because he has also had to dispatch his girlfriend after she turns up unannounced, but he gets out in time before Kevin calls on Gary and sees his severed head through the bathroom window. Heading home in terror, Kevin gets wasted, while Nik strangles Tim for wanting to bail out of the mess and flee to Spain, where they can be lovers without having to check over their shoulders. As for Sion, he retreats to his squat and digs out a piece of his forearm to satiate his need for human flesh.

When Sion doesn't return her morning greeting, Katrina pays him off. Nik calls Kevin to remind him to keep cool, but he is bouncing off the walls and shoots his mother when she nags him once too often. He zooms off in his Yarris, only to be ambushed and killed by the cops. Passing the scene, Nik heads home with a bottle. But Sion is waiting for him and he forces him to kneel after turning down an offer to take the money and run. The pizza hitman sees Sion leave and tries to creep up on him at the squat, but is overpowered and locked in the chest freezer.

Stanton and Patch find the body with a SWAT team, with the latter keeping quiet about finding Sion's torn shirt (which he had used for her bandage) because the gun used to kill Nik was registered to Llewelyn and this will enable Stanton to keep his vow to his daughter. Sion head off along a country road, having posted the money through Katrina's letterbox.

Neatly tying the loose ends at the end of a messy slaughterfest, this is a highly enjoyable comic thriller that manages to keep its balls in the air, despite the fact that three of the characters as Sean Dyche lookalikes. The best performances come from Andrea Hall and Charles Dale in the most deftly written storyline, which sees Patch and Stanton look past the clichés to see real people worn down by the pressures of their job. The same is true of Sion, but Burke and co-scenarist Mike Oughton don't examine his PTSD in sufficient depth for him stand out from the many other recent movie veterans for whom violence has become a way of life. Even his cannibalism is left in the flashback murk, while the script skirts the difficulty that anyone would face going unnoticed in a small town while carrying bin bags full of heavy body parts. But Craig Russell ably conveys Sion's insecurity, with the scene in which the excellent Kezia Burrows tries to seduce him being poignantly played.

But Burke also does a nice line in laddish patter, with the banter in the Yarris during the drug deal being sharply written and played with deadpan precision, particularly by Steve Meo, who is hilarious as the doltish Kevin, whose exchanges with his splenetic off-screen mother have a Wolowitzian ring. The slickness of the plotting also impresses, with the cocaine becoming a MacGuffin that Hitchcock would be proud of, as the rival gang bump each other off in a murderous comedy of errors. The executions are knowingly edited by James McLean, while Andy Toovey's imagery gives the bloody proceedings a social-realist edge.

Welsh horror has a proud history, with Hollywood classics like James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932), George Waggner's The Wolf Man (1941) and Roy William Neill's sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), having Welsh settings. The landscape was more authentic in Daniel Birt's Three Weird Sisters (1948), Harry Bromley Davenport's Whispers of Fear (1976), Will Aaron's From the Old Earth (1981), Michael Mann's The Keep (1983), and Julian Richards's Darklands (1996). But too few of these are available on disc and it's only since the release of John Fawcett's The Dark (2005) that Arswyd Cymrei has come into its own and Protein is a worthy addition to a roster that includes Lee Haven Jones's The Feast (2021) and Aled Owen's The Mill Killers (2024).

BIG STAR: THE NICK SKELTON STORY.

During the golden age of showjumping, the likes of Harvey Smith, Ann Moore, and David Broome were household names. The demise of Grandstand and Sportsnight (it was never really a World of Sport pursuit) meant that armchair fans had to content themselves with highlights from The Horse of the Year Show. There were always the Olympics, of course, and that's where the nation became familiar with the subject of Sarah George's documentary, Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story.

The son of a Warwickshire chemist, Nick Skelton started riding on a pony named Oxo. Father David recalls the bond between them, as Skelton admits that he wanted nothing to do with school after he started competing in gymkhanas and county shows, where he first came across John and Michael Whitaker, as well as Harvey Smith's son, Robert.

On leaving school, he worked for taskmaster trainer Ted Edgar and his showjumper wife, Liz. The work was hard and badly paid, but Skelton was where he wanted to be and he steadily began to build a reputation. He cemented this at Olympia in 1978, when the 20 year-old and Lastic jumped a fraction over 7ft 7in to set a height record that still stands. Having married Sarah Edwards, however, and become the father of Daniel and Harry, Skelton needed to plan for the future and he quit the Edgar yard in 1985 in order to retain more of the prize money he kept winning for other people.

Mark Beever became Skelton's groom and remained a key figure at the yard through thick and thin. An early high was the 1986 world championship ride on the borrowed Jappeloup, which Skelton followed with an unprecedented hat-trick of Hickstead derbies with Apollo and three consecutive European wins with the Whitakers for Team GB. But there was pressure on the yard when Skelton bought Grand Slam from an owner who had decided to remove his horses from the stable and the need to compete to make-up the cash flow shortfall took its toll on his marriage.

Skelton makes it sound a sad, but civilised parting. In fact, Sarah discovered his affair with the wife of a Swiss rider. But there is no room for gossip or dirt in this highly sanitised profile. Indeed, Skelton is such a taciturn interviewee that he doesn't see why he need to spin an anecdote when the statement of simple fact will do. The talking heads are also the souls of discretion. So, sons Dan and Harry avoid discussing their home lives and speak fondly instead of weekends riding Oxo and becoming besotted with Dollar Girl, who ploughed into a fence during Skelton's second Olympics in Barcelona in 1992 before carrying him to another world title three years later.

Undaunted when she was sold without his knowledge and sent to Mexico for breeding, Skelton continued to develop horses, as showjumpers have to be nine years old before they can compete in the major competitions. In 2000, however, Skelton broke his neck in two places during a sickening fall at Parkgate on the Wirral. Forced to wear a brace for several months, he was told to quit by every doctor he consulted. A German offered hope that his injury would heal and, the moment it was confirmed, Skelton was back aboard Arko III, who nearly took him to glory in Athens in 2004.

However, owners Gary and Beverley Widdowson had discovered Big Star with the help of Skelton's new partner, American rider, Laura Kraut. He entrusted this promising five year-old to Amanda Derbyshire to ride in development events with a view to Skelton taking him to the 2012 Games in London. The hunch paid off, as he went clear in a jump-off against the Dutch to lead Britain to its first team gold since Helsinki in 1952 and he recalls being interviewed by Clare Balding in a pub near the venue shortly after the medal ceremony. Much to his annoyance, though, the double eluded him, as he dislodged a pole at the last fence.

The Widdowsons were inundated with offers for Big Star to go to stud, but they turned them all down because Skelton was hell-bent on going for individual gold at Rio. While riding in 2013, however, he realised that his horse was suffering from a swollen tendon that should have ended his career. But, after 16 months of devoted care from Mark Beever, Big Star and Skelton took the individual gold in Rio after going clear in a six-horse jump-off after having an indifferent week in the team event.

At 58, Skelton decided to retire and spare Big Star any further injury scares. He bowed out at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, where Queen Elizabeth II made a point of meeting the pair with a supply of carrots. Removing his Team GB tunic to put on a casual jacket, Skelton removed Big Star's bridle and led him out of the ring to tearful applause.

No mention is made of the fact that Big Star was put out to stud and is still standing. Instead, we see Skelton approving of the horse-racing efforts of trainer Dan and jockey Harry from their Warwickshire base. We also learn that Skelton coached a US team that included Kraut and Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa's daughter, Jessica, to a silver at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

This last detail explains the presence of Mr & Mrs Boss in a line-up of talking-heads that also includes showjumpers David Broome, Niki Caine, Helena Stormanns, Rodrigo Pessoa, Geoff Billington, Ian Millar, Kent Farrington, and Brian Moggre, as well as Team GB manager Di Lampard and commentators Nick Brooks-Ward and Steven Wilde. None offers anything close to a keen insight, but they chatter obligingly about what a good egg Skelton is and how a competitive fire kept him at the top of the sport for almost four decades.

Director Sarah George produces nothing out of the ordinary in terms of presentation. But the archive clips are capably edited and well chosen, particularly one of Frank Bough asking Liz Edgar how difficult it must be living with her famously irascible spouse. A few more flashes of similar humour would not have gone amiss, for, while this is a largely engaging tribute, it often feels like it has been vetted to eradicate any faults and ensure a clear round.