Film reviews: Glenrothan | The Wizard of the Kremlin | Outcome | Colours of Time

Glenrothan (12A) ★★

The Wizard of the Kremlin (15) ★★

Outcome (15) ★★★

Colours of Time (15) ★★★

Hot on the heels of James McAvoy’s dynamic directorial debut California Schemin’, fellow Scottish actor Brian Cox scratches his filmmaking itch with an altogether more traditional homage to his homeland. Draped in tartan, folk music and endless drone shots of its Highlands locales, Glenrothan tells a fairly humdrum story of estranged brothers confronting their past 40 years after youngest sibling Donal (Alan Cumming) left his older brother Sandy (Cox) to run the whisky distillery their tyrannical father loved more than his family. The film pieces together the particulars of the split via perfunctory flashbacks that help explain why Donal — who ended up in Chicago running a blues bar — literally vomits upon returning home with his American daughter (Alexandra Shipp) and granddaughter to visit Sandy, whom we’re informed early on is dealing with some health issues.

Sadly, while the chance to watch a heavyweight like Cox spark off a live-wire like Cumming promises to be a treat, the Succession star — working from a script by David Ashton — saddles himself with the duller role, playing Sandy as a cosy, avuncular figure whose sense of familial duty may be noble but isn’t all that interesting on screen.

Cumming’s whole character, meanwhile, is thoroughly baffling. The script presents him as an expert on Chicago blues, but when we see him in the opening scenes performing in the club he owns, it’s clear nobody involved has any idea what Chicago blues actually sound like, least of all Donal, who treats his (mostly Black) audience to a kind of Off-Broadway cabaret show. There are more cringey musical numbers when Donal starts revisiting his old haunts back in Scotland, but there are also just weird tonal jumps into goofy comedy as he interacts with the locals and tries to resolve a past romantic entanglement with Shirley Henderson, thanklessly cast here as Sandy’s perpetually angry master distiller.

Though hardly intended as demanding viewing, it’s still a bit of a mess, with Cox piling on several unnecessary endings, even after fading the action, Brigadoon-style, into the mists of time.

Starring Jude Law as Vladimir Putin, The Wizard of the Kremlin tells the story Putin’s ruthless rise to power in post-Soviet Russia through the lens of Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a fictional TV producer whose understanding of the entertainment industry makes him perfectly placed to stage-manage the coming crack-down on political dissent in a country with a long history of revolution.

It’s an intriguing approach and director Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper) has done these kinds of sweeping political dramas before (see the excellent Carlos). But despite fast-moving sequences depicting both the grab-all chaos of the 1990s and Putin’s subsequent wresting of power from the oligarchs who expected him to be their puppet, the film struggles to maintain momentum. Instead it pummels us with Dano’s monotonous voice-over and too many dull scenes of shadowy figures walking us through the flashpoint moments of recent Russian political history. That said, Law’s pretty good as Putin, but Dano’s turn as a kind of modern-day Rasputin never quite lands.

READ MORE: California Schemin’ review: James McAvoy’s' cautionary tale, done with real panache'

Like a feature-length episode of The Studio, Hollywood satire Outcome casts Keanu Reeves as a beloved Keanu Reeves-style movie star called Reef Hawk whose comeback following a five-year hiatus recovering from a secret heroin addiction is derailed by a blackmail plot against him. Reef doesn’t know the specifics of the extortion threat, only that there’s some kind of video evidence, so his crisis management lawyer (played by co-writer and director Jonah Hill) convinces him to go on a pre-emptive apology tour making amends with anyone from his past he might have slighted.

Although the rapid-fire script is almost too inside Hollywood to be consistently funny, there are some sharp lines, Reeves is a hoot sending himself up, but also oddly moving when the film takes a more melancholic turn, and there’s a poignant cameo too from Martin Scorsese, cast here as as a fading, Broadway Danny Rose-style talent agent.

French rom-com specialist and regular Call My Agent! director Cedric Klapisch returns with Colours of Time, a fanciful tale of parallel lives across history revolving around a young woman (Suzanne Lindon) searching for her mother in Belle Époque Paris while a quartet or her modern-day descendants piece together her storied life from the detritus of an abandoned farmhouse they never knew existed.

Conceptually reminiscent of Midnight in Paris, the film contrives ways for the contemporary characters to experience the past as it really was via dreams or more hallucinogenic means, and there’s fun to be had seeing them witness Lindon’s character interacting with luminaries of the Parisian art scene whose work now defines the era. The end result is a light-hearted comedic exploration of the how the past is never as quaint or romantic or as fixed as we might think, so don’t get stuck in it. Ceclie de France co-stars.

Glenrothan, The Wizard of the Kremlin and Colours of Time are in cinemas from 17 April; Outcome is available on AppleTV+ now.

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