Film reviews: Rock gods, strange romance and a chilling TV thriller

PRIMETIME (15, 109 mins) ****

Set in 2006 during the early years of the digital revolution, Robert Pattinson’s thought-provoking and very creepy new movie is like a well-disguised Dracula movie – in a suit.

Never quite sure what he will do next from scene to scene, Pattinson is his usual excellent self as TV host Chris Hansen, who hopes that exposing paedophiles live on his To Catch a Predator show will serve his own personal agenda.

Looking out for No 1, of course, Pattinson’s character resembles a darkened brew of ITV stars – think of a Richard Madeley-meets-Jeremy Kyle version of the late, fearless foot-in-the-door investigator Roger Cook. Then give him his own modus operandi and light up his teeth when necessary, too.

Whether shining an unforgivingly bright, vigilante light on alleged perpetrators does more harm than good is one area for a post-screening debate after the denouement here.

As is imagining the likely impact on people researching the badness in others or inadvertently having their own skeletons-in-cupboards exposed.

Rated a 15 certificate for ‘child sexual abuse references, sex references, violence, nudity and language’, Primetime is based on a real TV show and is an often uncomfortable watch – can tricking people really be good training for wannabe actors, for example?

Suddenly even more relevant to the current news agenda, it promises much and delivers some excellent moments – without becoming the true, mainstream thriller you might be expecting.

Se7en (1995) and Collateral (2004) were more exciting films set in the dark, but the way young director Lance Oppenheim cleverly mixes visual styles to illustrate various perspectives is admirable.

Primetime also offers more to think about, given how computer software has moved on in the past 20 years. With today’s addition of AI, it’s a reminder that technology is arguably still far from maxing out the law of horribly unintended consequences – with or without TV exposure and/or vigilantes.

OZZY & BLACK SABBATH: BACK TO THE BEGINNING (15, 146 mins) ****

From one Prince of Darkness to another. On July 5, 2025, Villa Park staged Back to the Beginning, an Earth-moving charity concert tribute to the pioneers of heavy metal that was attended by musicians and fans from all over the world. Such is the power of X Factor judge turned event organiser Sharon Osbourne to create business.

Just 17 days later, Ozzy – whom I first saw live in the early weeks of his first post-Sabbath solo tour in autumn 1980 – had passed away. And Broad Street would soon be packed with fans paying their respects to his hearse and tearful family, all briefly seen here.

Watched with hindsight, Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back to the Beginning is something of a misnomer – Aston’s finest were not like Gerry and the Pacemakers or Freddie and the Dreamers, etc. Nor is it possible to ever imagine seeing ‘John Lennon and the Beatles’ or ‘Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones’ on billboards.

At the real beginning, Black Sabbath were originally Earth and then Black Sabbath, a molten alchemy of jazz, blues and, increasingly, what is now known as heavy metal.

Ozzy became a living god via a stellar solo career and a reality TV show with swearing, but seeing returning drummer Bill Ward frequently obscured by the ailing frontman’s outsized chair in much of this film’s climactic footage shows an alarming lack of respect for band equality.

Peppered with foul language, Ozzy & Black Sabbath is more of an Ozzy tribute show than a band collective. For much of the film we are left on the cusp of truly understanding Sabbath’s many intertwined bass, drum and guitar secrets. But every time the director cuts to other scenes, the ‘Black magic’ process of making a musical masterpiece is neutered by flowchart thinking.

As a reminder of Sabbath’s pioneering potency, the key songs the original line-up play together in this film were from their first two, seminal albums released in 1970.

Whilst much of the earlier all-star footage is better shot than the recent Oasis film – whose charisma and slimline back catalogue is no match for Ozzy’s prolific career in and out of Sabbath – the fans’ emotions feel distant by comparison to those left so mysteriously excited by the warring Gallagher brothers’ reunion.

After ‘six years of being laid up – you’ve got no idea what that’s like’, Ozzy, bless him, clearly gives his final performance everything during his last dance in an Aston saloon.

The stricken but defiant star insists he would live his life the same all over again, and letting him defy medical advice is clearly wife Sharon’s parting gift to satisfy her man’s desire to be ‘happy’ one more time.

The final, throwback scene of the younger frontman on stage teaching his very young son Jack how to say goodnight to a deserted venue is very, very sweet, but it’s certainly not what the pre-Sharon Sabbath stars were about at the beginning.

The one-last-time collective return of Iommi’s extraordinary guitar sound, Geezer Butler’s violent bass playing and Ward’s thunderous drums tell you all you need to know about the band’s early days, long before unmentioned, unhealthy lifestyles took their inevitable toll and Ozzy was sacked in 1979, en route to becoming the world’s most famous Brummie. Thanks, partly, to a bat as well as Iommi, Butler and Ward.

Ozzy & Black Sabbath is on at the MAC and the Custard Factory’s Mockingbird Cinema until Sunday, November 1. If you are a fan, don’t miss it.

WICKER (15, 105 mins) ****

The best actress Oscar winner for The Favourite (2018), Olivia Colman is already a certified national treasure. Soon, the mother of three will surely have the most talked-about sex scene since Meg Ryan’s restaurant antics in When Harry Met Sally (1989).

A comedy drama and romantic fantasy drama rolled into one, Wicker itself is something of a cinema curio, a Wes Anderson-style cross between Colman’s own Wicket Little Letters (2023) and Florence Pugh’s Midsommar (2019).

Colman plays Fisherwoman, whose smell has left her unable to catch her own lover. But when a local tradition indicates she should be the next to marry, she asks the local Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård).

With other characters including Tailor’s Wife, Butcher, Doctor, Baker and Innkeeper, the entire concept is not just a reminder of the value of the individual skills but the source of a very different-looking and often subversive exploration of all the usual human frailties, from jealousy to fidelity and lechery.

Wicker is directed by Alex Huston Fischer and partner Eleanor Wilson from Ursula Wills-Jones’ short story The Wicker Husband.

The film is quite unlike anything you have ever seen before and will not be to all tastes, perhaps depending on your acceptance of excessive ribald language and the boxy screen ratio. But Colman is on-screen mustard once again, the costumes are works of art and Wicker Husband is something else entirely.

EVEREST: THE OTHER SIDE (12A, 115 mins) ****

A National Geographic film showing at Cineworld Broad Street in IMAX, this is the incredible story of one couple’s dream to ski down the (Chinese) north face of the world’s highest mountain – a side only five people had even climbed up before.

It’s a bit talky in the middle but, even after having once skied off Europe’s highest mountain, Mt Blanc, I was soon beyond the edge of my seat thanks to the couple’s emotional back stories, the nerve-jangling cinematography, the trust you need in those planks attached to your boots and what you hope will be the emotional pay-off of the year.

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