The Eagle Huntress
U, 87 mins
★★★★
Children keen on the How to Train Your Dragon series might like this documentary about the real-life business of training a golden eagle. Its heroine, Aisholpan, is a cheerful 13-year-old girl whose success with her bird is a challenge to the patriarchal fogeys among her people, Kazakh nomads in Mongolia. The director, Otto Bell, tells the story in a simple, upbeat way, focusing on exultant drama and even — it seems — using a few staged shots to smooth the flow. High-minded adults might not like the sound of that, but for its terrific wildlife action and sweet human scenes, the film is overwhelmingly worth seeing.
Uncle Howard
15, 97 mins
★★★★
Howard Brookner was a film-maker who came up in the same generation of New York-based directors as Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee, and died of Aids in 1989, aged 34. This documentary by his nephew Aaron Brookner gives some of its time to the younger man’s feelings as he explores his relative’s film archives. Mainly, though, it’s a straightforward biography of Howard. It’s not groundbreaking in its style, but it does its job as a poignant elegy and is notable, too, for its footage of a lost Manhattan arts scene.
Ballerina / Reset
U, 89 mins / PG, 110 mins
★★★ /★★★
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Any child who can be tempted by a U-certificate cartoon about a ballet dancer will probably enjoy what’s delivered in that form in the clearly titled Ballerina. It may lack Disney’s big-budget dazzle, but it whizzes nicely around its setting: 1870s Paris. Telling of a country girl who longs to dance at the Paris Opéra, it has a redhead heroine and a strict, dandyish ballet director, so it’s kind of The Red Shoes in a children’s size. Coincidentally, there is a more realistic and up-to-date picture of France’s pre-eminent ballet company in the documentary Reset (released on Boxing Day). Showing Benjamin Millepied (Natalie Portman’s husband) at work as the Paris Opéra’s dance director, it doesn’t directly explain why he quit earlier this year, but its plain account of backstage stresses may hold a few hints.
The Son of Joseph
12A, 113 mins
★★★
Far from a traditional nativity tale, this French art-house film by Eugène Green concerns a teenager (Victor Ezenfis) who is, in a sense, fatherless until he forms a bond with Joseph (Fabrizio Rongione). This is a spiritual drama presented via tableau shots and deliberately still performances. The whimsical jokes are maddening, but its self-belief gives it power.
Through the Wall
U, 111 mins
★★★
We’re accustomed to romcoms with heroines who are eccentric, demanding or even plain idiotic in their preconceptions about love, but it’s unusual to see a comedy in which a woman’s romantic idealism is bound up with religion. That’s the vaguely refreshing concept in this film by Rama Burshtein, which tells of a Haredi Israeli (Noa Kooler) who lacks a fiancé, but makes plans for an imminent wedding in the hope that God will send her a man in time. There is still a lot of romcom clutter — awkward dates, fussing relatives — and the heroine’s zeal can be irritating, but the film’s serious-minded tenderness is disarming.