Is there any actor as consistently impressive as Cillian Murphy right now?
Fresh from bagging a Best Actor Oscar for Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' two years ago, he delivered one of his best performances last year in Tim Mielants' brilliantly understated Magdalene Laundries drama 'Small Things Like These'.
However when you look at Danny Boyle's '28 Days Later' and 'Sunshine,' John Carney's 'On The Edge,' John Crowley's 'Intermission,' Neil Jordan's 'Breakfast On Pluto,' Ken Loach's 'The Wind That Shakes The Barley,' Nolan's 'Batman Begins,' 'Inception' and 'Dunkirk,' Rufus Norris' 'Broken,' John Krasinski's 'A Quiet Place, Part II' and, of course, 'Peaky Blinders,' you begin to realise the Corkman has been conjuring up authentic performances from the moment he started to grace our cinema and TV screens.
Murphy has deliberately ploughed his own furrow as a screen actor, avoiding the obvious career paths of his Hollywood contemporaries.
That determination to shape his career has paid dividends and his latest collaboration with Mielants only underscores that point.
In 'Steve,' Murphy delivers one of the best pieces of screen acting that any of us will see this year.
His eponymous hero is a head teacher struggling to keep an English reform school afloat.
Like 'Small Things Like These,' it's another heartbreaking performance from Murphy as a good man trying to do the right thing in difficult circumstances.
And just like last year's film, not only does he bring his "A Game" to the project, everyone else does.
Adapted for the screen by Max Porter from his 2023 novella 'Shy,' the film unfolds over the course of a testing day in the residential school.
Steve and his colleagues work in a tinderbox, where students like Joshua J Parker's Riley frequently explode and assault pupils like Luke Ayers' Jamie as soon as they get under their skin.
Simbi Ajikawo's inexperienced new teacher Shola has to deal with unwelcome sexual advances from another student, Tut Nyuot's Tarone.
And if that wasn't enough, Jay Lycurgo's sensitive Shy is like a stick of dynamite whose fuse is burning out, on the verge of exploding after being told by his mother in a phone call that his family are turning their backs on him.
All of these teenagers would normally be written off as feral and beyond reach.
They would be expected to face a life in and out of prison.
However Steve, Shola, Tracey Ullman's Amanda, Youssef Kerkour's Owen and Douggie McMeekin's Andy are devoted to them - each one desperately trying to inspire the young men through education and steer their lives in the right direction.
All of them can see the good behind the boys' bravado.
You can see they are rooting for each one to succeed - even when they stumble.
Amid all the madness of trying to keep the peace in the school, an exhausted Steve has to contend with a television crew who are there to film a short news item.
Like the pupils, the reporters flagrantly flout his rules including one forbidding then from filming in the boys' living quarters.
Priyanga Burford's on camera interviews with Steve, Amanda, Shy, Jamie, Riley, Tarone and Ahmed Ismail's student Nabz pepper Mirlants' movie, giving an insight into their fragile psyches of the characters as events unfold.
As the pressure mounts on Steve and his colleagues with visits by education authority chiefs and Roger Allam's pompous local MP Sir Hugh Montague Powell, we start to see the psychological toll just holding everything together is taking on Murphy's character.
Mielants delivers a dazzling film - intelligently told, energetically acted and impressively shot.
Like all great cinema, the film plunges its audience into an unfamiliar world and engages our empathy as it portrays characters in various states of mental fragility.
The film is, in fact, one of the best cinematic depictions of males in crisis that we have seen in recent years.
Murphy is superb as always - never striking a false note as it becomes apparent his character is harbouring a tragic history that haunts him.
Ullman is a revelation, producing a rich supporting performance as a deputy head teacher who is protective not just of her students but also Steve.
Lycurgo's performance feels like a breakthrough that could herald many great screen performances to come.
Emily Watson is reliably good as a psychiatrist who tries to make sense of all the rage she witnesses, while Allam amuses in one of the lighter moments of the film.
Ajikawo, who some people will know offscreen as the award winning rapper and Gorillaz collaborator Little Simz, is impressive as a young member of staff with imposter syndrome while Burford plays the part of the intrusive journalist Kamila to perfection.
The rawness of Parker, Ayers, Ismail and Nyuot's performances recall another British reform school movie classic, Alan Clarke's 'Scum' with Ray Winstone.
However Mielants' film doesn't replicate Clarke's movie.
Instead it takes the social realism and sprinkles it with breathtaking moments of visual and sonic magic, thanks to Robrecht Heyvaert's energetic cinematography, Danielle Palmer's pulsating editing and Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow's intelligent soundtrack.
'Steve' is a mesmerising foray into a world we are aware of but often don't see - a world of troubled youths teetering on the brink.
The film doesn't pander to any preconceived notions.
Instead it bucks expectations - heading off in directions you don't quite expect.
'Steve' may be about to land on Netflix this week but do yourself a favour, see it in a cinema because that's where it truly lives and breathes.
You'll be grateful you did.
('Steve' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on September 19, 2025 before being made available for streaming on Netflix on October 3, 2025)
For a man who famously declared he was giving up making films, Steven Soderbergh has directed an awful lot since then.
Since originally announcing his retirement from filmmaking in 2011, the Palme d'Or and Oscar winning director has made 14 movies and has another on the way, 'The Christophers' with Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel and James Corden.
Most of them have been indie films, ingeniously shot on iPhones and often released on streaming services.
But what has really been striking is the consistently high quality of the films and their variety of genres and styles.
Some of Soderbergh's movies have ranged from the high camp of 'Behind The Candelabra' to the comedy heist antics of 'Logan Lucky' to the dark psychological drama of 'Unsane' to the nostalgic film noir of 'No Sudden Move'.
With 'Black Bag,' Soderbergh has moved into the spy genre, with a film that lands firmly in the territory of a John Le Carre thriller.
Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender play Kathryn and George Woodhouse, a British espionage couple who find themselves in an elaborate effort by intelligence chiefs to unmask a traitor.
At the start of the movie, George, a counter intelligence officer with the National Cyber Security Centre is summoned to a London nightclub where he is told that five people are suspected of leaking a top secret software program known as Severus.
One of the suspects is his wife.
Ordered by his boss, Gustaf Skarsgard's Philip Meacham to identify the traitor within a week, George invites four of them to dinner in his house and observes their body language and Kathryn's.
During the course of the movie, we are told George cannot stand liars and in his youth brutally exposed his father's adultery.
The other suspects are Tom Burke's disgruntled cyber security centre officer Freddie Smalls, his girlfriend Marisa Abela's satellite imagery analyst Clarissa Dubose, Naomie Harris' psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan and her boyfriend Rege Jean-Page's cocky counter intelligence officer and Army Colonel James Stokes.
Lacing their dinner with drugs, George watches as their tongues start to loosen and details of their sexual betrayal start to emerge.
Kathryn falls under suspicion when George discovers she is traveling to Zurich and James informs him she appears to have obtained £7 million in misdirected funds.
But with Meacham also passing away suddenly with a heart attack, is she being set up?
And if so, by who?
Soderbergh and the accomplished screenwriter David Koepp deliver a twisty spy thriller that falls somewhere in between Le Carre and 'Knives Out,' as each suspect's motives for betraying their country are fully scrutinised.
Like all great spy mysteries, the plot unfolds like a striptease slowly shedding layer after layer until the big reveal at the end.
The dialogue is superb with Fassbender in his Harry Palmer glasses, Blanchett, Paige, Abela, Harris and Burke savouring every word.
In a delicious piece of casting, former 007 Pierce Brosnan turns up as the head of the NCSC, Arthur Stieglitz and delivers his best performance in years.
Skarsgard, Kae Alexander as his partner Anna Ko and Ambika Mod as a junior intelligence officer Angela Childs also come along for the ride and have a lot of fun.
Stylishly shot at Pinewood Studios by Peter Andrews and astutely edited by Mary Ann Barnard, there's a typically slick score by Belfast DJ David Holmes who makes a cameo in the nightclub at the start of the film.
Ultimately, though, the film is another testament to Soderbergh's brilliance and versatility as a filmmaker.
If this is what retirement looks like, long may Soderbergh's retirement continue because few of his contemporaries have been as prolific, productive, versatile or strong.
('Black Bag' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on March 14, 2025 and was made available on streaming services on April 14, 2025)
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