Film reviews: Ridley Scott’s latest, a curious romcom and Australian horror

THE DOG STARS (15, 118 mins) ***

When legendary film director Ridley Scott was born in November 1937, his life expectancy would have been around 60 years.

Clearly blessed with longevity genes, The Dog Stars is his fifth movie now released in his prolific ninth decade - adding to previous classics including Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma & Louise and Gladiator.

Based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, it’s about post-apocalyptic life carrying on in pockets after a devastating pandemic.

Especially if you see it on a premium screen like Odeon Dolby or IMAX at Cineworld, The Dog Stars opens brilliantly with rangy Elvis star Jacob Elordi playing a resourceful pilot called Hig. He lives in a rickety hangar and takes to the Colorado skies in a battered light plane with his Belgian Malinois hound called Jasper alongside.

Man and beast enjoy the stunning (Italian, actually) landscapes below whilst hoping to find human values elsewhere in 2035.

Living nearby and defending their remote patch is a still gun-toting former Marine called Bangley (Josh Brolin).

Other characters include Jack (Guy Pearce), a former Navy SEAL who is the father of Hig’s love interest Cima (Margaret Qualley).

Taglined ‘The end of the world was just the beginning’ and duty-bound to introduce tattooed, marauding ‘reapers’, The Dog Stars is like a rural version of 28 Days Later (2002) crossed with Sean Penn’s superior isolation drama, Into The Wild (2007).

Despite the gifted Scott retaining his extraordinary eye for killer camera angles and a stellar cast all trying their best, the story itself never manages to focus - not least because Jack is a bearded dead ringer for Bangley, Jasper is no Lassie and a very gruesome ‘head for heights’ scene feels entirely gratuitous.

Allison Janney makes a bizarre, extended cameo appearance as a former stewardess in a horrifically contrived airport scene.

Unlike his late, younger brother Tony Scott (Crimson Tide / True Romance), who made entertainment his top priority, Ridley frequently tries to add meaningful depth to his passion projects.

The scale and visuals of The Dog Stars are often breathtaking. And adding in low-key reminders of the ordinary things in life, even after an apocalypse, is laudable - especially in the week of a devastating mountain tsunami in Nepal.

But audiences will be left befuddled as to why a film with an underused clever dog on terra firma and equally brilliant stars shining brightly in the sky hasn’t got more interesting human grey matter in between, given the money spent on making everything look so darn good.

ONE NIGHT ONLY (15, 102 mins) **

Back in 2013, all crime was legal for a 12-hour period in the Ethan Hawke thriller, The Purge.

Here the concept is switched to a romcom - meaning that pre-marital sex is only permitted on one near-future night of the year when universal wrist tattoos change colour for, you’ve guessed it, 12 hours.

Presumably the rest of the time, vigorous couples simply have to purge the urge.

Directed by Will Gluck (Anyone But You, 2023), Callum Turner is pizza chef Owen, tempted on freedom night by the semi-naked charms of Allie (Monica Barbaro).

Sadly, we hear too much of the wannabe singer’s warbling to care about whether or not Owen’s crusts are any good, never mind a reasonable boundary for some hot and spicy ingredients.

Overly contrived without reason, the film has moments which threaten passion cake for dessert, but too often the momentum is lost and, time and again, it feels like we are back with the starters searching more for the raison d’être than the maître d’ for more drinks.

Promising much, but delivering little, One Night Only is a curiously inert reminder that even Hollywood great Tom Hanks was neither good at kissing nor ever likely to explore relationships to the tune of How Deep Is Your Love.

For a film with food you can literally smell at its heart, try gangster thriller Dinner Rush (2000) and compare the two for taste.

LEVITICUS (15, 88 mins) **

Adrian Chiarella’s directorial debut, Leviticus is for anyone who wants to see an Australian horror film with gay, coming-of-age sensibilities and made by the producers of Talk To Me.

Stacy Clausen (Ryan) and Joe Bird (Naim) play two teenagers tormented by a violent entity which can possess either of them.

As a kind of ‘hostile hormones’ film centred on who you can trust in key relationships, it makes a change from the identikit horrors being made in the US by Blumhouse Productions.

But the title Leviticus is obtuse at best and the plot is overly repetitive at the expense of true feelings being more generously developed. Still, you can clearly see how it might well inspire others keen to explore similar territory.

• Leviticus opens on Wednesday, September 2. The Dog Stars and One Night Only are in cinemas now.

Reviewing films in Birmingham since 1989, Graham Young is a former UK Regional Film Journalist of the Year and three-time runner-up.