Friday new releases: 14 June 2024

The Promised Land and The Watchers are in cinemas, Blood for Dust is on both physical media and digital, and Am I OK? is streaming on Neon

As we approach the first anniversary of the reboot of Funerals & Snakes, I stopped for a moment recently to take stock.

Looking back at all the new reviews (and their associated star ratings on Letterboxd) I wonder whether I am being too soft.

I’m loving being back in cinemas on a regular basis, I’m really enjoying the reboot of my critical eye, and I feel like I have a mature respect for the creative process which is serving to delay my pan reflex.

Back in the day, I would have no problem rudely dismissing films that I believed weren’t worth your time. Looking back on some of those critiques, I still love the writing but I wonder why I was so grumpy about everything so much of the time.

Today, we feature four new releases and – while they all have some problems – I am glad to have seen them all. Am I losing my edge or discovering some kind of empathy I didn’t have access to before?

A perfect example of why I am enjoying being back in the cinema every week is The Promised Land. While I was on hiatus, I would have let this one slide on by, waited for it to appear on a streamer and probably ignored it then, too.

That would have been a mistake as it is a film that belongs on a big screen and deserves every filmgoer’s attention.

The time is the mid-18th Century. The Danish king has a dream to open up the vast and beautiful – but agriculturally unpromising – Jutland heath to settlers who can farm it. His Copenhagen courtiers are doing everything in their power to do no such thing.

A returning military veteran, Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen), has a plan and heads out to tame the gorse-laden, rocky landscape but finds that the people are much harder to deal with than the terrain. The local magistrate and bigwig, Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), is a brute and a bully and realises that settlers with the blessing of the King can only reduce his influence and bring attention to his ruinous regime.

He sets about to destroy whatever gains Kahlen can make, along with – in passing – anything he might feel some affection for.

Everything about this film passes muster, not least Mikkelsen’s performance which is grounded in gravitas but betrays deep-seated emotion with the tiniest of expressions.

The women are superb – and the film foregrounds their stories superbly. Amanda Collin is Kahlen’s housekeeper, temporarily escaped from the wrath of Schinkel, Kristine Kujath Thorp (from The Burning Sea) is Schinkel’s unwilling Norwegian fiancée, and little Melina Hagberg plays the dark-skinned child that even the brigands in the forest don’t want.

A great story – loosely based on truth – and exceptionally well told, The Promised Land surely won’t disappoint anyone who takes their chances with a ticket.

The original Danish title for The Promised Land is Bastarden which, incidentally, is the sound I make most often while I am playing Fifa on the Xbox.

Ishana Shyamalan is the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan and the twisty-turniness of The Watchers shows that apple has not fallen too far from the tree.

Mina (Dakota Fanning) works in a Galway pet shop and is asked to transport a rare golden parrot to Dublin for a customer. On the way, through a mysterious old forest, her car breaks down and she – and the parrot – find themselves stranded in a concrete bunker called “the Coop” which is beset by dangerous creatures as soon as the sun goes down.

Firstly, do they not have motorways between major Irish cities these days? And, secondly, where would screenwriters be without caged birds for their metaphors.