Film reviews: The Wife, Black '47, Anchor and Hope and more…

Joan Castleman (Close) seems ecstatic when Joe (Jonathan Pryce), her husband of 30 years, gets a late-night phone call informing him he has just won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The pair bounce on their bed like children.

But when the esteemed novelist begins to sing, “I’ve won the Nobel!”, a flicker of resentment darts across Joan’s face.

Her expression begs a lot of questions. But Close keeps us guessing until the film’s shocking finale.

We see that expression again on the flight to the awards ceremony in Stockholm.

Joe rudely rebuffs a hack writer called Nathaniel (Christian Slater) who has been commissioned to write Joe’s unofficial biography.

Nathaniel is perhaps a little pushy but it seems to be his assertion that “the spouse never gets enough credit” that riles the literary icon.

Nor is Joe encouraging towards their aspiring writer son David (Max Irons).

Director Bjorn Runge takes his cue from Meg Wolitzer’s 2003 novel and interweaves a series of flashbacks.

In the first we see Joan (now played by Annie Starke) as a bright English student who is besotted with Joe (Harry Lloyd), her married university tutor.

After Joe leaves his wife the couple start a family and settle into the rhythm of married life.

The pattern of their relationship is set early on when Joe becomes a success with his first novel.

Joan seems content to step into the background, abandoning her own literary ambitions to prop up Joe’s fragile ego.

They lead a comfortable life and have two children.

But by the time he wins the Nobel, Joe has been cheating on Joan for decades and as the couple arrive in Stockholm she seems unable to play the supportive wife any longer.

It all comes to a head at the ceremony when her simmering resentment begins to boil over.

Close delivers a wonderfully understated performance that uses a very different set of acting muscles to the role that led to her first Best Actress nomination in 1989.

That year Glenn came close with Fatal Attraction but lost out to Moonstruck’s Cher.

She may experience déjà vu in February if Lady Gaga wins for A Star Is Born and she has to gallantly clap another singer to the stage.

You wouldn’t blame Close for boiling over like Joan. But she is such an accomplished actress that you won’t even see the lid rattle.

Black ’47 **** (Cert 15, 100mins)

Shooting a western against the backdrop of Ireland’s Great Famine is such a brilliant idea that it’s surprising no one thought of it earlier.

Director Lance Daly imagines Ireland in 1847 as a wet and windy wild west.

There are stunning widescreen vistas, blighted villages, hardboiled outlaws and villainous landowners.

Irish ranger Martin Feeney (James Frecheville), rides back into his village in the west of Ireland to find himself at the centre of a holocaust.

The potatoes have failed, the people are starving and the uncaring British are shipping all the grain back to their homeland.

The taciturn Feeney is a deserter, having seen too much of the British Empire while serving in Afghanistan.

He plans to gather his family together and flee to America.

But when he discovers that all his family are dead he vows to wreak his revenge.

As constables, judges and rent collectors colluded in the famine they are all legitimate targets for the hardened soldier. The bodies pile up.

Then the British force an old comrade to track him down before the bloodshed reaches the estate of Jim Broadbent’s oily landowner Lord Kilmichael.

The Pat Garrett to Frecheville’s Billy The Kid is Hannah (Hugo Weaving), a Cockney cop who knows precisely how tricky it will be to bring Feeney to justice.

The battle-scarred Hannah is a very reluctant bounty hunter so he is paired up with ambitious English officer Captain Pope (Freddie Fox) and the idealistic Private Hobson (Barry Keoghan).

A whiskey-soaked local (Stephen Rea) is recruited as a guide and translator and the posse is complete.

In the finale Daly makes great use of the low-tech weapons of the era. The guns take an age to load, adding extra suspense to a thrilling siege on a British fort.

Frecheville doesn’t have Clint Eastwood’s charisma but momentum is maintained by the film’s elegant cinematography, stirring soundtrack and thrilling shoot-outs.

Anchor and Hope ***** (Cert 15, 113mins)

They got caught up in a brutal civil war in Game Of Thrones but Oona Chaplin and Natalia Tena deal with a more personal conflict in this likeable rom-com.

Trouble flares when Eva (Chaplin), fresh from her cat’s funeral, suddenly decides she is ready to be a mother.

Her girlfriend Kat (Tena) is less keen. She doesn’t think there is room for a baby in their lives or on their cramped barge.

Then Kat’s Spanish best friend Roger (David Verdaguer) comes to visit. During a boozy welcome party he agrees to move in and act as a sperm donor. The next morning Kat wakes with a hangover to find her girlfriend and her best friend excitedly planning the new arrival.

The performances are excellent, the dialogue is witty and the canals of north London are beautifully shot. But although the expectant trio may not look like a conventional family, the predictable plot moves to a very familiar beat.

Redcon-1 ** (Cert 18, 118mins)

Zombie apocalypse meets war movie in this sporadically entertaining low-budget action film.

A virus has swept through London, turning the South-east into a quarantine zone.

As the undead become more organised and more intelligent, a troop of US forces (led by British actor Oris Erhuero) are sent in to rescue a trapped scientist (Robert Goodale) who may hold the key to a cure.

Some of the gory comedy succeeds but too often the action scenes get lost in a fog of flashbacks and slow-motion spatters. It seems director Chee Keong Cheung tried to rectify some poor decisions on set with even worse ones in the edit room.