MR. HOLMES ★★★★★ INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 ★★★★★

Mr. Holmes

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Out July 23 / rating TBC / 104 mins.

DireCTor Bill Condon CasT ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Colin Starkey, Hattie Morahan, roger allam

PloT SuSSex, 1947. Now aged, Sherlock holmeS (mckelleN) begiNS to recall the iNcideNt that drove him iNto retiremeNt.

these dAys, screen sherlocks

tend to come sprightly. So it’s a bit of a shock when Mr. Holmes opens to reveal a rheumy-eyed, liver-spotted Ian McKellen, aged into decrepitude via impressive make-up. Fiction’s greatest detective, you see, is now 93 and diminished in both body and spirit. While he has a magnifying glass, he wields it not to peek at clues, but to read his post. He hobbles around on a cane, which at no point does he use to disarm a thuggish ne’er-do-well. His mind palace is in dire need of a vacuum cleaner.

According to Holmes’ tale His Last Bow, the crime-fighter retired in 1903,

insidious: chapter 3

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Out July 16 / rating TBC / 97 mins. DireCTor Leigh Whannell CasT Dermot Mulroney, Stefanie Scott, Lin Shaye

Insidious: Chapter 3 is one of those rare prequels that works if watched before its predecessors. Set a few years before the travails of the Lambert family, this revolves around the Brenners, beset by visits from an unnerving Man Who Can’t Breathe. But centre stage is Lin Shaye’s Elise, the break-out star whose death in later Chapters has prompted this reverse step to get her on screen one more time. James Wan was otherwise engaged so series writer Leigh Whannell has stepped up to direct. While his “Further” is less out-there, his command of the material means you can barely see the join. ow

Holmes deduced that he’d put his glove in with his blacks. Or had he? He couldn’t remember.

“living the life of a hermit among [his] bees and [his] books in a small farm upon the South Downs”. (Novelist Neil Gaiman once joked that his archnemesis, Moriarty, ended up in Essex tending wasps.) That’s where Arthur Conan Doyle left off, and where Condon’s melancholy new movie — based on Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel A Slight Trick Of The Mind — picks up. Mr. Holmes makes for a neat companion piece to Condon’s James Whale biopic Gods And Monsters: another housebound period character piece about a waning icon, it also boasts a great performance from McKellen.

But, while it’s a stylish, moving and nuanced portrait of a man, it’s not necessarily a satisfying portrait of this man. It’s fully believable that Sherlock Holmes would have regrets in his dotage (he was always better at crime scenes than people anyway), and he interacts engagingly with widowed housekeeper Mrs Munro (Linney) and her precocious 14-year-old son Roger (Milo Parker). There are also witty touches, like the revelation that the detective, in fact, lived across the street from 221B Baker Street to keep himself detached from his fans. But it’s hard to connect this senile figure, grappling with his fading memory, with the thrusting Victorian hero of Conan Doyle. This story has wandered so far from its source material that some might emerge feeling that they’ve been tricked.

There’s only a glimpse of Watson, no pipe to be seen and not much in the way of criminal activity. There is, however, a decent mystery to unravel. Via flashbacks — and there are almost as many flashbacks in Mr. Holmes as there are bee metaphors — we see a younger Sherlock (still McKellen, but less-convincingly aged down) working on his final case and travelling through Japan in hot pursuit of a memory-restoring elixir. By the time the credits roll, we’ve learned why Holmes has sequestered himself away in a lonely cottage. NdS

Amy

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Out now / rating TBC / 128 mins.

DireCTor asif Kapadia CasT amy Winehouse

PloT with New iNterviewS aNd archive footage, aSif kapadia’S documeNtary examiNeS SiNger amy wiNehouSe’S fiNal yearS.

A soul musiciAn with A rock

lifestyle, Amy Winehouse sold as many newspapers as records during her brief, dazzling career. Preconceptions that built up around her had her as a Keef-style party animal, lurching from one PR disaster to another while those around her frantically strained to hold her career together. As with Senna, Asif Kapadia peels away all that with a forensic eye, revealing a far richer, more complicated character than the headlines ever implied.

Bolstered by remarkable home-video footage and two years of painstaking

SHERLOCK WHO?

Name these actors who have played the famous sleuth...

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VerDiCT High-quality fan fiction that riffs smartly on Holmes lore, albeit slight enough to slip from the memory itself.

niCHOLaS rOWE 3 rOBErt DOWnEy Jr., 2 B aSiL ratHBOnE, 1 • anSWErS:

research, his documentary is more than just a cautionary tale about a hard-living Icarus who flew too close to The Sun. From a breathy teenage rendition of Moon River caught on camcorder, we see her journey from Southgate to the Grammys, a stratospheric ascent in which she was an often unwilling passenger. “I don’t think I’ll be at all famous,” a young Winehouse is shown laughing. “I’d go mad.”

But famous she became, and the story that unfolds is dizzying, touching and often uncomfortable to witness. With flashbulbs exploding like shells in a war movie, Kapadia plunges us right into the heart of the storm, ensuring a sense of sticky complicity as the increasingly frail, often bewildered singer begins to crumble.

It’s little surprise that her dad, Mitch has since distanced himself from the film. His depiction as an unwittingly malign, often mulish influence in his daughter’s hour of need makes difficult viewing.

Kapadia’s light touch allows viewers to draw their own conclusions as the slow-motion tragedy unfolds. pdS

VerDiCT A vibrant, haunting documentary, and a poignant tribute to a free spirit.

A glowing Amy enjoying happier times with a childhood friend, before things fell apart.