Spencer (PG13)

117 minutes, opens on Feb 10

3 stars

Films and television shows about the British royal family tend to be studies of an institution in crisis.

In Netflix's The Crown (2016 to present) and in the biopic The Queen (2006), viewers saw snobs hissed at by the masses - oh, the audacity - who wanted the royals to behave in a more relatable way, like some cheap celebrity.

In both those shows, the agent of change is Princess Diana. Her entry into the family caused public opinion of the Windsors to soar to new highs and, following her estrangement from husband Prince Charles, crash to the lowest lows.

This drama goes where more socially driven depictions have rarely gone - into the mind of Diana, exploring her thoughts as a woman who has received two blows.

First betrayed by her husband, she sees his powerful family close ranks, shutting her out.

It is 1991 and Diana, now living apart from Charles, visits the Queen's Sandringham estate to spend Christmas with the royals, as is the tradition.

For her, the visit is an ordeal, but a duty she cannot avoid because it gives her time with sons William and Harry. Over the next few days, the experience exacts a mental toll.

Writer Steven Knight (war drama Allied, 2016; thriller Eastern Promises, 2007), drawing from interviews in which Diana revealed how close she had come to a breakdown, paints her as a mentally abused woman forced to go back to a place that triggers her fight-or-flight response.

Her interactions with royal employees, including Equerry Major Alistar Gregory (Timothy Spall) and Maggie (Sally Hawkins), a dresser, offer relief from the emotional coldness, though she is plagued by the fear that they are mouthing a script. Are they actors in a royal conspiracy? Do any of her terrors have a basis in reality?

Chilean director Pablo Larrain (the biopic of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, Jackie, 2016) adopts Diana's reality as the story's frame of reference, giving it an unsettling sense of ambiguity.

Knight's screenplay lifts from the genre of psychological horror.

Diana is the classic gaslighted heroine, a lamb surrounded by wolves. It is a pity that Larrain's tendency to understate works against the story's more lurid moments.

Larrain makes American actress Kristen Stewart play Diana as a woman of contradictory impulses - she is fragile one moment, defiant the next. It is a mix of tones the actress pulls off with confidence even as she nails the late princess' mannerisms and speech patterns.

Death On The Nile (PG13)

127 minutes, opens Feb 10

3 stars

Following the events of the last Hercule Poirot mystery, Murder On The Orient Express (2017), the famed Belgian private detective Poirot (British actor and director Kenneth Branagh) is in Egypt as a guest of heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot).

On board the paddleboat S.S. Karnak, someone is murdered. The killer is among Ridgeway's friends, relatives and employees. Like the previous film, this sequel is adapted from a novel by mystery writer Agatha Christie.

Like the Karnak, this movie is a vehicle that gets to its destination in style, at the cost of speed.

There is a longish establishing segment that introduces the dozen or so characters and gives each one a motive. Branagh, as director, luxuriates in the sequence, which drips with 1930s cool. The scene has hot jazz and blues, sharp clothes and athletic dancing.

The spectacle is interesting, but fails to dazzle. Branagh is no Guillermo del Toro, whose psychological thriller Nightmare Alley (2021) offers a masterclass in story-driven atmosphere.

The screenplay for Nile also gives Poirot more depth, showing that his gifts for observation and deduction have cost him dearly.

None of that, however, adds anything to the central story of the hunt of the killer. The nuts and bolts of the investigation are shown in a rushed, sometimes haphazard way, perhaps done to cover up the more credulity-straining moments.

Moonfall (PG13)

130 minutes, now showing

2 stars

Poor Roland Emmerich.

His reputation as a maker of entertaining disaster epics took a dive after 2016's Independence Day: Resurgence.

When fans talk about his good movies, they mean the ones he made more than a decade ago, such as the Rambo-in-the-18th-century war flick The Patriot (2000) or the climate-attacks drama The Day After Tomorrow (2004).

His latest attempt at an Earth-goes-boom flick will only serve to sink his reputation further. Emmerich copies - actually, parodies - the story in Independence Day (1996), the alien-invasion movie that spawned the 2016 sequel.

Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) and Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) are astronauts at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) whose mission goes awry because of unexplained circumstances.

The failure forces Harper to leave the service in disgrace, while Fowler climbs the ranks at Nasa.

Several years later, conspiracy theorist Houseman (British actor John Bradley) finds proof of something he has suspected for a while, a finding that has grave implications for all life on the planet.

The list of recycled ideas is long, but it starts with characters who are retreads of the all-American heroes seen in past films and continues with the notion that the only things required to save the day are a few mums and dads with some smarts, but more importantly, the right values. The action is big and loud, but the effects are nothing that have not been seen before.

Marry Me (NC16)

112 minutes, opens Feb 10

not reviewed

Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson star in this romantic comedy about pop star Kat Valdez (Lopez) who, in a moment of pain-inspired irrationality, picks a man from the crowd at her concert to marry. The man is Charlie Gilbert (Wilson), a high-school teacher.