Parky At the Pictures (22/5/2026)

(Reviews of Hen; Eagles of the Republic; The Christophers; The Balloonists; and Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass)

HEN.

Following in the hoofprints of Jerzy Skolimowski's EO (2022), György Pálfi's Hen presents the world from an animal's perspective. British audiences haven't seen much of the Hungarian director after he started out so impressively with Hukkle (2002) and Taxidermia (2006). In the intervening 20 years, Pálfi has produced five features: I Am Not Your Friend (2009); Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen (2012); Free Fall (2014); His Master's Voice (2018); and Perpetuity (2021). The chances of UK audiences getting to see any of these films is slight, but this Greece-set galline picaresque is sure to boost Pálfi's profile.

Having emerging in close-up from a hen's cloaca, an egg is borne along on a conveyor belt to be sucked up by a vacuum lifter and placed on a shelving trolley in order to be stored in an incubator. A black Leghorn chick pushes her way out of the shell, only to be plucked up and deposited in a tray full of chirping yellow birds, who are sexed with dispassion by human hands before the rejects are sent tumbling down shutes and through various mechanisms to a handbell rendition of the adagio from Aram Khachaturian's ballet, Spartacus.

Finding herself in a cavernous shed with thousands of other birds, our growing Leghorn pushes her way through the crowd. However, she's soon confined in a battery rack, from which she is selected for a consignment being loaded into a large lorry. The driver knows his boss will reject a black hen, so he yanks her out and plonks her in his cab, so that his wife can make soup. Watching the passing scene with beady curiosity as the truck speeds along, the hen spots some pigeons rummaging through the bins at a petrol station and hops out of the open window to do some pecking.

As night falls, the hen hunkers down. But she also remains alert and gives a prowling fox the slip by sneaking into the garage shop. The cashier tries to chase her away with a mop, only to let the fox slink through the door and pursue its quarry along the aisles. Scuttling back on to the forecourt, the hen takes her chance in crossing a busy road and makes it to the other side in time to turn and see the fox being crushed by a car.

Passing through woodland by moonlight, the Leghorn finds her way to a small town. She skips between stalls at a busy market, where nobody seems concerned by a bird being the loose. Indeed, she's barely noticed when she becomes caught up in a demonstration and stands quizzically between the protesters and a line of riot police beating their truncheons on their perspex shields.

Back on a quiet country road, the hen pauses beside a lorry being repaired by its female driver. Hopping aboard to discover a cargo of grain, she settles down for a ride. Having been tipped out at a silo facility, the hen pops out of a dust cloud to resume her journey. On some open ground, she devours a worm. But she's spooked by the sight of a hawk swooping down to grab a field mouse and goes clucking off into the undergrowth, where she is snatched up by a dog named Titan, who carries her in its mouth to the seafood restaurant where it lives. The owner (Yannis Kokiasmenos) puts the bird in a cardboard box and cuts some air holes with a knife. He leave it on a table by the door and the hen peers through the holes to see a consignment of drinks being delivered (as a reward). Next day, she pokes her head through the holes in an effort to escape and annoys a delivery driver, who swipes the box on to the floor. Landing upside down, the hen pushes her legs through the flaps and scuttles off with the box over her head until she comes a cropper. Undaunted, she struts off to explore and finds herself upstairs in the house watching a TV documentary about dinosaurs before she's chased out by the mother of an amused young girl.

Swept up by the owner, the hen is placed in a chicken coop, where she is viewed with suspicion by the other birds. They try to intimidate her, but she hops on to a log, where she is spied by a rooster, who wqos her proprietorially to the tune of the Grigoris Mpithikotsis love song, `Episimi Agapimeni'. A post-coital drone shot pulls away from the restaurant to reveal its location near the sea. Hunkering down in a nesting box, the hen delivers her first egg and is most put out when the owner swats her aside next morning to take it. As The Swingle Singers embark upon Maurice Ravel's `Bolero', a montage follows showing the hen being bullied by the other hens, serviced by the rooster, and deprived of her egg in an endless cycle that is punctuated by vans pulling up to make deliveries at a restaurant that never seems to have any customers. Spotting the rooster outside the coop, the hen watches him carefully, as he climbs up to the top of the cage and squeezes through a hole. Following suit, she wanders into a goat pen and sees a mother with her kids before following the owner back to the house to watch him make an omelette with two of the eggs he has just taken from the coop. As he cooks, he grumbles about not wanting to go to jail at his age.

Still roaming free, the hen watches as a teenage girl (Maria Diakopanayotou) embraces her boyfriend (Argyris Pandazaras) when he rides up on his motorbike. Venturing into the house again, the Leghorn watches a cartoon of a chick hatching from an egg and decides to bunk down under the little girl's bed. This cause a commotion in the night when the mother hears her clucking and she is tossed back into the coop, where she is immediately mounted by the irate rooster. Refusing to stay put now that she knows how to escape, the hen does another flit and the owner is cross when he finds that she has laid an egg in Titan's kennel during the night. Once again, springing out of the coop, the hen clambers into a tree from some decking and drops down on the roof of a refrigerated van. Edging her way inside, she rides on the revolving roof vent, as the van drives along the coast road.

It reaches a quiet bay and signals to a boat carrying migrants. They are bundled inside and the hen gets so agitated that she lays an egg. Lying down on the metal plate, she has no idea that by stopping it from spinning she is depriving the passengers crammed in the back of the van of cooling air. It's only when the vehicle returns to the restaurant that the drivers discover what has happened and the hen is lucky to escape with scorched feathers when the smugglers torch the van to get rid of the evidence. When the owner shovels the ashes into a wheelbarrow the following morning, he scoops up the hen, as he thinks she's dead. However, she stirs as he is filling in the grave and he clutches her to his side, as he gives his victims a simple apology.

Impressed by the hen's doughtiness, the owner puts cream on her burns and settles her in a lined tin dish to heal, while he makes a start on revovating the place. He tells the smuggler that he won't do people again and he has a row with his girlfriend. In fury, he rides in circles around the yard and skids into the rooster, which ends up in the pot. More migrants come, however, and they are bundled into an outhouse, where the hen is roosting on a beam. When a young boy complains of being hungry, his father tries to take the eggs the hen has laid and the ensuing commotion causes the boyfriend to burst in and order everyone to shut up. The hen flaps free and the boy drinks from one of the eggs, but the owner is getting tired of being used and he smokes in deep thought while petting the hen.

The next day, the owner returns in his red van with a new rooster. Instantly smitten, the hen rushes up to the gate of the coop and makes sure she gets noticed. While she follows the route through the goat pen to get back inside the coop, the police arrive and arrest the boyfriend and a bearded smuggler. They release the migrants from the shed and load them into a van, just as the hen starts flirting with the rooster and he treads her. Watching with quiet satisfaction from his chair, the owner ignores the girl when she berates him for betraying her beau.

Time passes and the restaurant is busy. Guests throw scraps for the hen to peck, as it mills between the tables. Much to the girl's concern, a fleet of cars draws up and her boyfriend is among the gunmen who order the customers to leave. The smuggling boss (Antonis Kafetzopoulos) orders some food and tells henchman (Antonis Tsiotsiopoulos) to silence Titan. Tossing a kebab on to the floor, the boss notes how chickens are prepared to eat each other, as he implies that it's a ruthless world. Urging the girl to pack for herself and her daughter, the boyfriend shots the owner a meaningul look and she looks concerned, as they are led away. But the owner is left to lock-up after everyone has gone and he is looking out to sea when he is shot in the head from behind.

The hen approaches the body and starts pecking an upturned palm. But there's no response. She returns to the restaurant and wanders through the empty house, which she now shares with a cat and her kittens. However, two of the hen's eggs hatch and, as the film ends, she has taken her chicks under her wing, as she means to protect them and spare them from what she has endured.

Continuing a trend started by Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar (1966) of using an animal's vantage point to critique human behaviour, Hen has much in common with such recent documentaries as Viktor Kossakovsky's Gunda (2020) and Andrea Arnold's Cow (2021). But, following the opening sequence in a hatching plant, with its distressing shots of tiny chicks being shunted and cascaded with callous indifference, Pálfi and screenwriter wife Zsófia Ruttkay seem less interested in animal welfare than in the fact that audiences are more affected by the mistreatment of chickens than they are with the cruelties and indignities meted out to their fellow humans. Yet the pair examine such issues with a darkly comic tone that often makes this painstakingly clever film challenging viewing.

Eight black Leghorns trained by Árpád Halász share the title role, each of whom had a particular skill that Pálfi was only able to capture in half-hour shooting sessions. Feri, Anett, and Nóra are poultry in motion, with unstinting support from Eti, Szandi, Enci, Eszter, and Enikő, who would walk away with the Poule d'or, should such a thing exist. But their `performances' owe much to the low-level camerawork of Giorgos Karvelas, whose footage enables editor Réka Lemhényi to shape shots in a Kuleshovian manner to suggest the hen's thought processes, personality, expressions, psychological reactions, and lack of sentimentality. It's intricate and exacting work, but the timing of the edits is impeccable, particularly when creating reaction shots and the rhythm of the witty montage sequences.

Szabolcs Szõke's music is equally nimble, as it both mimics the hen's strutting gait and reflects the action's tonal shifts. The actors seem quite prepared to be upstaged, although everyone seems to relish being flamboyantly temperamental, although Yannis Kokiasmenos has a few quieter moments with the hen after she survives the fire and he doesn't need to keep guiding her back into the coop with the toe of his wellington boot. Such naturalism allows Pálfi to demonstrate his commitment to a conceit that occasionally requires a suspension of disbelief and the odd reminder to the audience that they are not watching a Disney True-Life Adventure. But, in positing that the hen is more bothered about the plight of her eggs than that of a truckload of migrants, he retains the balance between levity and gravity with aplomb, while also highlighting that we currently inhabit a world of commodifying greed, selfish gratification, senseless violence, and exploitative inhumanity. What must the animals think of us?

EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC.

Swedish-Egyptian director Tarik Saleh completes the `Cairo trilogy' started with The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) and Cairo Conspiracy (2022) with Eagles of the Republic, a post-Mubarak satire about `the Pharoah of the Screen' that rather felicitously hits UK cinemas on the same weekend that `the Egyptian King' makes his exit from Merseyside.

The star of such unmissable titles as The First Egyptian in Space, George Fahmy (Fares Fares) is a film actor in a longstanding screen partnership with Rula Haddad (Cherien Dabis). While shooting their next cheesy melodrama, George meets son Ramy (Suhaib Nashwan) for a birthday drink and meets his girlfriend, Mai (Mariam Elsayed), who gives him Zadie Smith's White Teeth and a recommendation to see Claire Denis's Beau Travail (1999). George had given Ramy an expensive watch he claims had once been owned by Saddam Hussein, but he is distracted by another customer watching him and asks the waiter to have him ejected from the bar.

While on a date with much younger actress, Donya Roschdy (Lyna Khoudri), George is approached by Suzanne (Zineb Triki) and asked about joining an artistic group supporting President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He disingenuously extols the regime's virtues and wonders why it needs to rely on propaganda. Despite being informed that Suzanne is married to someone important, George flirts with her, only to frustrate Donya by being unable to rise to the occasion back home.

A distressed Rula informs George that she has been ordered to give a television interview denouncing him for his views on Islam and the republic. Despite being a lapsed Coptic Christian, he is relaxed about his situation and tells her to do what she needs to do to save her career. However, having been ordered to change the ending to his new film by a hijab-wearing trio of moral guardians, George is replaced by wannabe rival, Yasser Islam (Sherwan Haji), and has his trailer removed from the studio lot. Complaining to his gay agent, Fawzy (Ahmed Khairy), he learns that he can redeem himself by playing the president in a film being sponsored by the army. Scoffing that he is over six foot when El-Sisi is just over five foot, George refuses and says he will never compromise his principles by appearing in a propaganda project for this iniquitous regime.

Uncomfortable at seeing Rula defending him on TV and in Donya's bad books for patronising her while running lines, George goes for a smoke on a private road overlooking Cairo. Returning to the checkpost, he is threatened by a man warning him that there are a lot of hit-and-run accidents near Ramy's university and George rushes to check he's okay, annoying estranged wife, Marianne (Donia Massoud), by sleeping on the sofa.

Realising he has no option, George agrees to make the film about El-Sisi's role in the removal of President Mohamed Morsi. During his unveiling by the Unlimited Media Group, he meets Dr Mansour (Amr Waked), a representative of the president's office whom he recognises as the snooper at the bar. They mutually hope that they can produce great work, but director Tarek Abdalla (Tamer Singer) tells George that he can do nothing with the dreadful screenplay, in revealing that he has also been blackmailed into participating.

Arriving at the studio, George is miffed at being made to park his car and ride on a buggy to the soundstage. He's also told to lose the balding wig, double chin, and pot belly that he thinks make him look more like El-Sisi because the producers want his iconic look in the role. His first take in uniform goes down well, but Mansour criticises him for over-acting in a scene with President Morsi (Jasser Al Anwar) and George (realising that his home has been bugged when Mansour repeats some advice he had given to Donya) takes out his frustration on the other actor by accusing him of being insuffiently presidential. However, he is also stressed because he had been recognised in a pharmacy while buying Viagra and had taken a tablet to seduce Donya only to arrive home to find her mourning the death of the father she had detested (and whom she had sought to irritate by dating his favourite film star).

Studying El-Sisi on TV to pick up his mannerisms, George finds himself invited to a ceremony to announce the design of a new administrative capital. Having prevented agents from arresting a neighbour whose son has been detained, George is also invited to dinner by Minister of Defence Abu Talaat (Tamim Heikal) and is surprised to discover that his wife is the Sorbonne-educated Suzanne. They bicker at the table when she mocks a claim by one of the guests that William Shakespeare was actually Sheikh Zoubir from Baghdad. She states that all Arab men have been castrated by their desperation to claim the superiority of their culture. Being careful not to cause offence, George is advised to relax by the Minister of the Interior (Husam Chadat) over cigars. He claims he is surrounded by the `eagles of the republic' and offers to get his neighbour's son released in an act of good faith. In return, however, has to give the opening address at the Egyptian Military Academy on Armed Forces Day.

Back on the set, George explodes at one of the actors for being too respectful to El-Asis when he holds an inferior rank. Mansour chides him for not sticking to the script, which has his approval on behalf of the president. But George tells him that he will act with integrity and imagination to connect with his audience and he doesn't care about the consequences of doing otherwise

Exhausted after a day of minefields, George gets dragged out to a charity do by Donya. He is berated by the Coptic bishop (Hassan El Sayed) for not living with his wife and Donya is unamused to be introduced as his son's friend. When he teases censor Ataf (Hiba Osman) for taking advantage of the free bar, she lectures him for drinking alcohol while playing a devout Muslim. Relieved to see Suzanne, he flirts with her and she responds because being a minister's wife bores her. But Rula is having a hard time and she comes to the house under cover of darkness to ask George to get her taken off the blacklist and he gives her some money because he feels sorry for an old friend.

When the ministers come to the set, George asks them to help Rula and Suzanne's husband says he'll take care of it personally. When George bumps into her at a premiere, they are photographed together on the red carpet. He had left Donya at home to take Ramy, but he was held back by security and missed the pictures. Suzanne messages George to meet her at a hotel under a reservation for Shakespeare and they sleep together. Donya finds out and dumps him, while Ramy accuses him of being a sell out and refuses to accept that he's only kow-towing for his benefit.

Wishing he could flit to his flat in Dubai, George asks Suzanne to come with him. But she refuses to run away with a man who would abandon his son. On returning to the set, he is surprised to find the minister asking him to intercede with Rula, as he has clearly forced herself on him and she has disappeared. Mansour intercepts George on his way back to the set and tells him to coax Rula into meeting the minister again, while wearing a wire. He also lets him know that he knows about his affair with Suzanne and tells him to sign a contract for the film that includes a suicide note - just in case it's needed.

Mansour listens in when Rula meets the minister and hears a confrontation turn into a scuffle. George is told to salute at the end of his speech on 6 October, but is unaware that this is a signal for rogue soldiers to open fire on El-Sisi. He survives the assassination attempt, but George is bundled aboard a helicopter with the ringleaders and has to watch as they are tossed out after Mansour has interrogated them. On landing at a secure base, they learn that military has suppressed the attempted coup and prevented the media from reporting it. Mansour tells George that the dinner he had attended had been a planning session and that the Minister of Defence was involved. He also orders George to meet Suzanne and find out what she knew about the conspiracy.

When they rendezvous in their hotel room, George tells Suzanne to flee and insists they never see each other again. As he leaves, he bumps into the Minister of Defence in the lobby and he tells him to testify to the inquiry that he had nothing to do with the plot and blame another officer instead. He also tells him that Rula perished in a fall from a balcony and is about to leave when he recognises Suzanne walking past in a veil and sunglasses. Making no reference to her seeing George, he orders her home and reminds the actor to remember what's good for him.

Calling on Marianne, George learns that Ramy has been abducted. He's taken to a car driven by Mansour, who asks about the conspirators. George clears Suzanne, but identifies her husband as a ringleader and Mansour congratulates him on playing his part to perfection and offers his condolences for Fawzy's death under torture. Driving to a remote location, Mansour reunites Ramy and his father before supervising Abu Talaat's execution by firing squad. Having attended the premiere of Will of the People - the film that has caused him so much trouble - George ends as he began - betting on the English commentary of a horse race.

Having previously exposed Egypt's corrupt security system on the eve of the Arab Spring and the connection between the religious establishment and the military in the first two parts, Tarik Saleh concludes his trilogy by going for the entertainment industry that has done the bidding of the El-Sisi regime with dismaying readiness. Opening with a bitter insight into the state of Egyptian cinema and the control that the despotic regime has over content and patronage, Saleh and co-scenarist Magdi Abdelhadi land `the Pharoah of the Screen' in several compromising positions which all promise ramifications. But, Dr Mansour appears behind the scenes, the action becomes increasingly complicated, as too many sketchily drawn characters become embroiled in conspiracies, assignations, confrontations, and betrayals that respectively sap the energy of their competing plot strands. In order to accommodate all the loose ends, the pace necessarily slackens, even though a number of incidents take place off screen, and many will become so weary of George and his vanities and venalities that they won't care much one way or another about what his future might hold.

That's not say that the Lebanese-Swedish Fares Fares (in his fourth collaboration with Saleh) doesn't deliver a fine performance, as the hubristic matinee idol out of his depth. Amd Waked is also disconcertingly menacing as the regime fixer who is prepared to allow George his champagne socialist views and chic Coptic otherness in order to coerce him into serving the conservative Sunni elite ruling a supposedly secular state. But the female characters aren't particularly well drawn, while the `eagles' themselves feel more than a little caricaturish, as they often do when Hollywood tries to skewer a regime it considers beyond the pale.

Editor Theis Schmidt deftly slots the Cairo footage shot surreptitiously by a second unit into the images photographed by Pierre Aïm on Turkish soundstages to create the sense of unease that permeates a city under the constant surveillance of the security services. But those unfamiliar with the current state of Egyptian politics and how cinema fits into the picture with varying degrees of compliance, corruption, and sufferance will probably want more than a montage of past stars to suggest that it was ever thus, dating back to the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

THE CHRISTOPHERS.

Few film-makers have been as prolific in their retirement as Steven Soderbergh. Since ending a four-year hiatus that was prompted by a frustration with the existing studio way of making movies, he has directed Logan Lucky (2017), Unsane (2018), The Laundromat (2019), Let Them All Talk (2020), No Sudden Move (2021), Kimi (2022), Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023), Presence (2024), and Black Bag (2025). While this is an impressive list, none of this nonet can be ranked amongst his best work. But he ups the ante with The Christophers, an Ed Solomon-scripted treatise on age, forgery, greed, and legacy that is Soderbergh's second successive outing filmed exclusively in London.

Art restorer Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) has been forced to take a job running a fast-food kiosk near the Tower of London to make ends meet. However, art school classmate Sallie Sklar (Jessica Gunning) calls to offer some work and Lori learns from Sallie and her brother, Barnaby (James Corden), that their painter father, Julian (Ian McKellen), failed to complete a third series of pictures of his 1990s lover. As his reputation has since slipped and his health is now fragile, they offer Lori a sizeable sum to apply to become his new assistant and finish the eight `Christopher' canvases so that they can sell them as the real deal after the death of their father, who ignored them as children and ostracised them after Sallie attempted a clumsy makeover job on one of the paintings.

Tempted by both the chance to forge Julian's style with his own brushes, and make a percentage of the sale price, Lori agrees to the scheme. However, she also wants revenge for a past encounter that changed the course of her artistic career and is relieved that Julian doesn't recognise her when she finds him making online Cameo recordings for those prepared to pay for the privilege. Refusing to have anything to do with fans or budding artists, he warms to Lori after she assembles his new humidifier and agrees to let her into his storeroom in order to catalogue his archive so that HMRC can assess its value.

While Lori watches Julian trampling the dreams of amateur daubers on the Art Fight programme, he looks her up online and finds some of her work. Having gained access to the third-floor room in his cavernous townhouse, Lori takes pictures of the Christophers and copies them after Julian declares that he wants to shred them. He changes his mind, however, and decides to burn them in the fire pit in his garden. Feigning disinterest, Lori takes the wrapped canvases outside, as they discuss betrayal and the fact that each had once been in a thruple. Once the packages have been placed on the dish, Julian insists on going back inside for a chat. He reads from an online article in which Lori had criticised him and forces her to come clean about her mission.

Snorting with derision when she says that she was to `forge through' the pictures to completion, Julian sends her to fetch a canvas to show how she would copy him. However, he is mesmerised by her insights when she critiques the second series and he is debating whether to retain her when Barnaby and Sallie turn up to check on Lori's progress. Delighting in tormenting them, Julian announces that the third series has been shredded and Lori goes along with him. When he orders her to set light to the eight canvases in the garden, however, she refuses and tells him to do it himself, if he really wants to.

Nettled by her online piece in which she states that he his `outrage against cancel culture came after he had been canceled himself', Julian asks Lori why she got involved with the plan and she describes seeing two of his childhood drawings in an exhibition she had visited to get out of the rain. They had spoken to her and she was disappointed to see how rude he was to people on Art Fight because he had lost sight of the inspiration that had so touched her. He insists that he was doing them a favour by disillusioning themselves about their talent, but she doesn't believe his diminished status gave him that right.

Walking away, Lori gets a visit from the siblings, who inform her that they have already sold the paintings to a tech millionaire who plans to donate them in lieu of paying tax. She demands an increase in her cut and returns to tell Julian that she knows he's dying and that he can get his own back on his grasping kids by having her paint the Christophers in such a way that they will be worthless and Barnaby and Sally will have to repay the advance they have almost spent. Musing about how he had started the Christophers so that he would linger in the mind of a lover whose life he suspects he has ruined, Julian is sufficiently amused to offer to be Lori's assistant and he eagerly slaps glitter and feathers on two of the paintings before stopping. As they look at his handiwork, he recalls seeing one of her online offerings before and claims she was wise to quit when she did.

Lori walks out and calls Sallie to make a new deal for the third series pictures. When she goes to her shared studio, however, she finds Julian examining the work she has kept to herself and he apologises for being so rude to her 19 year-old self on Art Fight. He says he wants to paint new work for an exhibition and asks her to be his assistant. They hug and agree to start work on Monday. But, as he leaves, he denigrates a painting by one of her space-mates and heads for the door with a spring in his step.

When Esme (Tilly Botsford) comes to give Julian a massage, she finds him dead at his easel. In the pub, Lori relives the moment he had humiliated her on television. But she finishes the Christophers and seeks out Julian's love, Owen Appleton (Ferdy Roberts), who is now a picture framer. She also forges a note of authentication gifting the paintings to Owen, so that Barnaby and Sallie get nothing and, when they accuse her of stitching them up, she asks why she would defraud herself out of her fee.

Months later, Owen introduces the paintings at a retrospective exhibition, to which Lori has contributed a video installation of Julian quips. Barnaby and Sallie have mixed feelings about their father being famous again, but Lori refuses to tell them the truth about the Christophers. Esme hands Lori a paper bag, which contains the last sketch that Julian was working on and Lori realises that it's a companion piece to the sketch he had done as a six year-old that had so inspired her as a girl.

There may not be much to the storyline of this witty comedy of cultural manners, while the denouement is unpersuasively rushed, the characters are nevertheless superbly drawn and impeccably played by a fine British cast. James Corden and Jessica Gunning don't have much to do as the avaricious offspring, but they set the tone deadpan duplicity in seeking to pass themselves off as art lovers striving to enhance their father's reputation. Giving even less away, Michaela Coel takes their cue in serving the greater good while settling a few scores. But Lori's cool detachment makes her the perfect foil for Julian, the jaundiced maverick who feels uncomfortably irrelevant in the modern world, but can't bring himself to reflect upon the past. He is played to rascally perfection by the 86 year-old Ian McKellen, who slips between scathing critiques, self-pitying wallows, and hints at hurt vulnerability with an effortless ease that is encapsulated in his first scene, in which Julian chatters cunningly to suss out his visitor without letting her get a word in edgeways.

For the most part, Soderbergh keeps the handheld camera on his actors and lets their rhythms dictate the pace of the editing (tasks he undertakes under the usual pseudonyms of Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Barnard). Behind the twin front doors that supply a nice early gag, Antonia Lowe's production design is also spot on, as she creates the world of clutter, abandoned creativity, and suppressed memories and emotions in which the hypocritical, misogynist, and deeply unhappy Julian has hidden himself away since the `sidewalk salon' in which he had propped his paintings on the railings of his large London home and invited people to pay whatever they want for work in which he has lost faith after having fallen out of fashion with the corrupt, clique-driven, and crassly commercialised art market. Sparingly used, David Holmes's music underlines the tonal shifts, as Lori's opinion changes of the inspiration who had become her nemesis.

As the son of nonagenarian painter Maxine Solomon, Ed Solomon supplemented his insider knowledge by consulting Sgt Pepper cover co-designer Jann Howarth about the 1960s art world and it would seem the Christophers owe something to David Hockney's sketches of muse Peter Schlesinger. Julian Sklar entitled one piece of juvenilia, `Anyone Can Do This and Call It Art. But Solomon resists easy satire to consider the relationship between a painter and a picture and when it ceases to be a private vision and becomes public property. Solomon and Soderbergh - who collaborated on No Sudden Move, as well as the TV series Mosaic (2017) and Full Circle (2023) - eschew easy answers amidst all the blackmailing, double-crossing, and power-shifting. But they provide plenty to think about after the audience has been royally entertained.

THE BALLOONISTS.

After his grandfather had become the first person to enter the stratosphere in a hot-air balloon and his father had been the first to descend to the floor of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, it was unlikely that Bertrand Piccard was going to be satisfied with a desk job. The 1931 voyage made by Auguste Piccard (and forgotten physicist Paul Kipfer) inspired Hergé to create Professor Calculus for the Tintin books and prompted Gene Roddenberry to name his Starfleet hero, Jean-Luc Picard, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Neither Jacques Piccard nor travelling companion Don Walsh were similarly immortalised. But they persuaded a single-minded Swiss schoolboy to follow in their footsteps, as John Dower records in his exciting documentary, The Balloonists.

Bertrand Piccard has an impressive collection of aviation memorabilia. It amazes him that only 66 years separates the inaugural flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon. While growing up in Florida, he had witnessed the launches of Apollo 7-12 and had vowed to become an explorer. But it was onlywhen he saw a hot-air balloon during an Alpine holiday that he realised how he would make his name. It soon dawned that circumnavigating the globe and covering 26,000km and all 360 meridians without touching down was a monumental task and the failure of Breitling Orbiter in January 1997 made him feel foolish, even though competitors like Richard Branson were experiencing their own setbacks.

Partly designed by Andy Elson, Breitling Orbiter 2 never made it off the flatbed carrying it to the launch site, as it was badly damaged when cables snapped. Elson felt sorry for Piccard because he had a duty to be famous after Auguste and Jacques and we see splendid archive material of their achievements, along with a toddling Betrand being led away in tears after having revelled in interrupting his father's TV interview. When the voyage finally began, Elson had to climb out of the gondola to refit the porthole because it wouldn't close properly. The footage of this act of reckless courage sends shivers and Piccard welcomed Elson back inside as a hero. But they had lost so much time and fuel that the round-the-world flight was abandoned and, when he landed in Myanmar, Piccard told project manager Brian Jones that there would be no such mistakes next time.

This meant redesigning the balloon in six months and ditching Elson for Concorde flight engineer, Tony Brown. He didn't get on with Piccard, however, and Jones was drafted in, even though he felt himself to be more of an engineer than a pilot and was reluctant to spend time away from his wife, Joanna. An ex-stewardess with her own balloonist's licence, she recognised that this was the chance of a lifetime and gave her blessing, although Jones was hesitant to engage in a series of heart-to-hearts with Piccard (who worked as a psychiatrist) to ensure their differences in background, beliefs, and personality would not become an issue during their three-week odyssey.

With Elson already making good time on his own flight, Piccard was ready to abandon his bid when bad weather descended upon his Swiss base at Château-d'Oex. However, Belgian meteorologist Luc Trullemans spotted a window on 1 March 1999 (which happened to be Piccard's 41st birthday) and Jones breaks down in remembering the emotion of parting from Joanna, as he was embarking upon a dangerous mission that offered no guarantees that he would survive. As she joined the crew at the Geneva control centre, Trullemans reprimanded Piccard for climbing too fast to gain speed, as he was heading into a storm that he would avoid at a lower altitude. Aware of Elson's advantage, Piccard was prepared to take risks, but he had to be reminded that this would be his last chance, as there wasn't funding for a fourth expedition.

Eager to stay in his bubble, Piccard restricted his communication with wife Michèle and their three daughters. Jones recalls feeling pleased to be doing something that put a lid on the schoolboy bullying he had endured and they both enjoyed the sights and sensations of flying over the Sahara Desert, when each dawn at the end of a night of total darkness made them feel as though they were witnessing the Creation - a fitting sensation for Piccard given that his grandfather had been one of the first to humans to witness the curvature of the Earth. As they rode the Jet Stream that would take them to China, they passed over Yemen, which had a policy of shooting down anything in its air space. So, Trullemans plotted a way through the winds to skirt the northern part of the country and return them to their plotted course. Not long after this ingenious detour, Piccard heard at Elson had ditched in the Sea of Japan and that he and Jones were now alone in the race. But they had to follow strict instructions from base about altitude, speed, and direction to get them over the Himalayas and through China without mishap. Similarly, Trullemans ordered them to fly 3000km south to avoid bad weather over the Pacific and Piccard speaks to camera inside the gondola about the `desert of water' that they could never survive if something happened. However, he and Jones now felt more like brothers than comrades and they kept their spirits up during the dips in morale and progress.

Trullemans reveals that his love of the weather came from the fact his father was a pigeon fancier and Piccard states to the gondola camera that they are entirely in his hands, as he can read situations better than any computer. But he couldn't avoid a massive storm bank and Piccard and Jones had to keep above the clouds to try and avoid it. As the temperature drops inside the cabin, they have to use a credit card to scrape ice off the windows and there is panic when communication cuts off while Jones is filing a report on their slow progress. This satellite silence lasted for two days, with mission control being unable to feed information and the co-pilots not knowing what to do for the best.

They forged through, however, only for a problem with the oxygen supply to render the exhauste Piccard confused and unwell. Joanna remembers the sense of powerlessness, as they couldn't push a button to improve matters. But Jones took charge and put on a gas mask to change all the air filters to ensure that carbon dioxide was expelled and they could breathe easily again. Spirits were further raised on Day 15, when they saw a pink cloud signalling they were reconnecting with the jet stream and Trullemans shrugs modestly, as he recalls the feeling of satisfaction at having navigated the balloon through such treacherous conditions.

Reaching Mexico, they realise they only have three of their 16 fuel canisters left. With base suggesting making a safety landing, Piccard and Jones decided to follow Trullemans's advice and ditch stuff over the side and climb as high as they can to increase their speed. They are amazed by feeling no difference in the glide sensation after hitting 120 knots and zipping across the Atlantic in a day. Jones jokes that he has no idea who is flying the balloon, but he is grateful to them. They hug on passing the finishing line over the desert, but are thwarted by winds in their plans to land by the Pyramids. Instead, they came down in the desert and Jones apologises for the bumpy landing because he had never brought a 180ft balloon to Earth before.

As we see footage of the pair photographing themselves beside the gondala, Piccard compares his footprint in the sand with Armstrong's on the Moon. Champagne flows in Geneva and Jacques expresses his relief that his son has fulfilled his goal, but claims he can't be proud because it was not his achievement. However, he would later tell Bertrand that he is now as proud to be the father of his son as he was to have been the son of his father. While waiting seven hours for a helicopter to pick them up, Jones points at the ice on the last tank to show how little fuel (one per cent) was left and they laugh with evident relief at their perfect timing.

Landing to huge crowds at Geneva airport, Jones and Piccard emerged from the Swiss Air plane together and were swamped by loved ones on the tarmac. The 79 year-old Jones resumed his quiet life with Joanna and occasionally recalls the feat that should have earned him more than an OBE years ago. At 68, Piccard is pleased to have lived his boyhood dream, but concludes by reminding us that there's a lot more to being an explorer than the actual journey.

Just as Breitling Orbiter 3's triumph was a two-man job, John Dower's film relies heavily on the editoriail judgement of David Charap, a he pieces together delightful talking-head interviews with the extraordinary archive material film aboard the balloon and at mission control. The outcome of the flight is obvious, but the pair nevertheless manage to generate a good deal of anxiety and suspense, as mid-air problems are encountered and overcome with a reassuring mix of Swiss precision and British stoicism.

Andy Elson's acceptance of being replaced and surpassed is equally admirable, although it should be noted that while Joanna Jones is happy to reminisce about the stress she underwent, there's no sign of either Michèle Piccard or daughters Estelle, Oriane, and Solange. Don Cameron, the designer of the R-650 Rozière balloon, and meteorologist Pierre Eckart might also consider themselves unlucky not to receive a mention, but this is all about the courage of and contrasts between the co-pilots and the crafstmanship of the film-makers. You think they might have mentioned Piccard's childhood fear of heights, though, and the fact that he conquered them by hang-gliding. And what about his Solar Impulse project with compatriot André Borschberg? Maybe that's for another film.

TOM AND JERRY: FORBIDDEN COMPASS.

Tom and Jerry are Hollywood icons. Since first appearing in Joseph Hanna and William Barbera's Puss Gets the Boot (1940), they have hurtled through 166 theatrical shorts, with Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones adding to the 114 directed by the duelling duo's creators. In the process, the grey cat and brown mouse amassed 13 Oscar nominations, with seven being converted. Only Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies strand won more. But MGM producer Fred Quimby would be spinning in his grave if he could see Zhang Gang's Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass, which is the third cinema feature after the equally unprepossessing Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992) and Tom & Jerry (2021). At least the other two aped the traditional graphic style, but this Chinese-American co-production employs soulless CGI 3-D techniques to produce a cacophonously confusing fantasy adventure that reduces the fabled pair to being bit-part players in their own movie.

Having crossed New York to visit an exhibition of ancient Chinese artefacts, Jerry Mouse has to get past Tom's cap-wearing security guard to gain admission. In pursuing the interloper, Tom reaches for a fire extinguisher. But, in the ensuing kerfuffle, the pair manage to activate the centrepiece of the show and the Astro Compass sends them careering through time and space to crash land the extinguisher in Golden City.

Their rapid descent attracts the attention of the Phoenix Master (Matthew Yang King), who has been banished from Heaven by the Celestial Master (Robin Atkins Downs) for losing the Astro Compass three centuries earlier. He now has until midnight to recover the device and rallies giant chicken L'il Feeny (Roger Craig Smith), Xander the unicorn (A.J. Beckles), Sonny the dragon prince (Travis Willingham), and Tien-Tien the fire demon (Vincent Tong) to help him search. He's not the only one looking, however, as the partly mechanical Mega-Rat (A.J. Beckles) also needs the compass to seize power with his scurrying minions and he's not best pleased when Tom and Jerry cause his dragon spaceship to crash.

Considered the answer to a prayer, Tom is hailed as a god by the Phoenix Master, who spots the Astro Compass on a string around his neck. In order to lull Tom into a false sense of security, he introduces him to Jade (Janice Kawaye), a student of Peking Opera, who also gets to show off her martial arts skills when Mega-Rat makes an audacious bid to steal the compass. Suitably impressed, Tom falls madly in love. But he also remembers he's hungry and allows himself to be transported to a banqueting hall, where the Phoenix Master turns rapper while plotting to steal the compass by drugging Tom's peach drink.

Fed up with being ignored, Jerry skulks out of the city and meets Mega-Rat, who sympathises with his plight. He takes the mouse to his lair and shows him the treasures he has collected, as he explains how he came to lose his tail. Mega-Rat bursts into song to declare his intention to go down in history and Jerry is easily won over to his plan to take Tom down a peg or two. However, he prevents his old sparring partner from being killed after Mega-Rat dupes Tom into allowing a large float cast in his image inside the city gates during the annual festival.

Convinced that Mega-Rat has snatched the compass, the Phoenix Master tells his gargoyle acolytes to watch over the temple while he and Feeny seek out the villain's lair. Jade is disappointed in Tom for letting his vanity get the better of him. So, he dons his museum cap to show he's up for the fight and Jade and the gang accompany him into the wilderness. Having released the Phoenix Master and Feeny from a huge spring trap, Tom heads towards the Ao Jiao Palace, where Mega-Rat intends to punish Jerry for letting Tom escape. Managing to survive a tunnel filled with noxious gas, the friends find Jerry running in a wheel to activate the compass so that Mega-Rat can exploit its power.

While Tom tries to rescue Jerry, Mega-Rat traps the others in cages dangling from chains. However, Feeny lays some happiness-inducing eggs that incapacitate Mega-Rat and his crew, rendering them powerless to stop Jerry from stealing back the Astro Compass and Tom from letting off a stash of fireworks. Freed from their cages, everyone floats to safety to the tune of `The Blue Danube'. But Jade finds a scroll outlining the Phoenix Master's banishment and they feel betrayed that he is going to abandon them to return to Heaven.

Despite rising through the clouds, the Phoenix Master is denied a return to deity status because the Celestial Master doesn't think he has achieved enlightenment. Furious at being denied his birth right, the Phoenix Master dashes the compasss on the rocks on being dumped back on Earth and he hurls it into the raging sea, where it's retrieved by Mega-Rat. He bulks up to ginormous size and threatens to crush the temple. The Phoenix Master, who had been ready to leave Golden City, remembers that he was a warrior god and confronts Mega-Rat by having everyone reflect light into his eyes. Jerry gets the compass back and the Celestial Master shows his approval by allowing the Phoenix Master to stay on Earth with his neighbours and friends. He even shows kindness to Mega-Rat, who returns to being the eager inventor he was before he turned to the dark side. All that remains is to return Tom and Jerry to their rightful time and place so that their enmity can resume and this calculating charade can finally end.

What were Warner Bros thinking when they agreed to this collaboration, which sells the soul of two beloved cartoon characters in order to make a few yuan? This simply isn't a Tom and Jerry story and their presence adds nothing to it. The action is stuffed with video-game flourishes to make it seem exciting and spectacular, when it's neither. On its own terms, the plotline is serviceable enough, but it pales beside the likes of Jiaozi's Ne Zha 2 (2025) or even Salvador Simó and Li Jianping's Dragonkeeper (2024).

Tom and Jerry remain wordless, but they emit a series of squeaks and eeks that are respectively voiced by Eric Bauza and Ben Diskin without making the pair any more essential to the narrative. Let's hope this is a one-off that can quickly be forgotten. But the series of 15 direct-to-video outings had Tom and Jerry meeting everyone from Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood to Willy Wonka and the Wizard of Oz and one dreads to think where else they may end up, as the studio dreams up more money-making ventures to tarnish their legacy.