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  LOCKERBIE: A SEARCH FOR TRUTH Dramas about real events - particularly those involving potential miscarriages of justice - are risky ventures. Taking complex cases and turning them into movies or TV miniseries often forces directors and screenwriters to make narrative compromises. That makes their work vulnerable to accusations of bending the truth and occasionally of disrespecting the victims. It was, therefore, inevitable that directors Otto Bathurst and Jim Loach and screenwriter David Harrower's five part drama about the killing of 270 people in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 was going to be closely scrutinised. I seet has also come as no surprise that a miniseries exploring the possible innocence of the only person convicted of the bombing, the Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has faced harsh criticism. Bathurst, Loach and Harrower's miniseries has been lambasted by  victims' families for its harrowing depiction of the b...

BACK IN ACTION (Seth Gordon) There's been a lot of trumpeting about Seth Gordon's action comedy marking the return of Cameron Diaz to our screens. But that immediately begs the question: why has the San Diego-born star chosen this as her first acting vehicle in 10 years? It's a pertinent question because you'd imagine it would have taken a script that was really special to coax Diaz back into work after what she says were 10 of the best years of her life .  If it were a beezer of a script, that would be easy to swallow but Gordon and Brendan O'Brien's screenplay is a script is so lacking in imagination and originality, you really have to wonder why the 52 year old even bothered getting out of bed for it. Diaz plays Emily, a former CIA operative who along with her husband, Jamie Foxx's Matt has assumed a new identity as suburban parents in Atlanta after surviving an attempt to wipe them out on their final spy mission in Poland. Raising a moody teenage daughte...

  A REAL PAIN (Jesse Eisenberg) It's that time of year when Oscar contenders are vying for every cinemagoer's attention. Having picked up a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe for his performance as a cousin wrestling with grief while visiting Poland, ' Succession ' star Kieran Culkin looks like a decent bet to repeat the feat on Oscar night. Culkin plays Benji who joins writer director Jesse Eisenberg's David on an emotional journey back to the homeland of their late grandmother who managed to survive Poland during the Nazi occupation. The pilgrimage sees the cousins join a tour group led by Will Sharpe's English guide James who is packed full of facts about every Jewish community that existed in each town and city they visited prior to the Nazis and is eager to impart them until Benji reminds him of the need to also enable people to absorb the solemnity of the sites. In addition to visiting Warsaw, Lublin and Kraanystaw, the cousins and their fellow travellers ...

WE LIVE IN TIME (John Crowley) According to a story in the Daily Mail in 2011 (okay, I know..), two scientists identified movie clips that they claimed were the ultimate tearjerking moments. One was Ricky Schroeder's TJ blubbing over the beaten body of his dad, Jon Voight's Billy in Franco Zeffirelli's boxing drama 'The Champ'. The other was the infamous scene where we watch an increasingly distressed Bambi wander alone in the snow looking for his mothe r after she has been shot in David D Hand's animated classic. Erich Segal's 1970 box office smash 'Love Story' is another film that has a reputation for leaving viewers in floods of tears. It's impossible not to think of that movie while watching John Crowley's new release 'We Live In Time' and not just because the lead female character, Florence Pugh's Almut has cancer. Just like Segal's movie, there's an ice skating scene in it which the Irish director clearly has no qu...