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Son of the Soil review – bone-crunching Lagos revenge thriller with bruising swagger

Razaaq Adoti writes and stars in this scrappy gangland action romp, mixing Nollywood energy with bloody set pieces and a dash of 80s-style grit

You have to respect an action film that has its protagonist stagger out of the intensive-care ward into an open-air street market in a backless hospital gown, his tackle whacking conspicuously against the fabric. Star Razaaq Adoti can’t blame his agent, as it was the actor himself who scripted this Nigeria-set revenge thriller, in which his former special forces soldier makes a Jack Carter-like return to wreak havoc on the mean streets of Lagos.

Zion (Adoti) has made the US his home after being dishonourably discharged and doing a stretch in the slammer. But he makes a beeline for Lagos when he receives an SOS message from his sister Ronke (Sharon Rotimi), a hotel chambermaid who stumbles on respectable medical professional cum evil drug kingpin Dr Baptiste (Philip Asaya) as he murders a sex worker. Zion is too late: Ronke is a goner, framed as another victim of the fentanyl cocktail Matrix that’s doing the rounds, courtesy of the bad doctor. Time for Zion to dust off his particular set of skills.

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© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

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‘Ingrained in my psyche’: why Gremlins 2: The New Batch is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their favourite comfort rewatches is a look back at Joe Dante’s raucously rule-defying sequel

“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.” Some sage advice from the Brain Gremlin – a genetically modified, talking, glasses-wearing member of the slimy Gremlin horde that overruns Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. At face value, it’s nothing more than an investment tip from one monster to another. However, in a weird way, it’s also pretty solid life advice. Seriously, hear me out.

When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is take things too seriously. The Brain Gremlin knows this. In fact, most of the toothy monsters that populate Dante’s wild 1990 film (arguably his best) have the same sly, self-aware sense of humour when it comes to the blurry line separating everyday life and unadulterated chaos. It’s one element of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that keeps me coming back – and the older I get, it’s the theme that resonates the most.

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© Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy

© Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy

© Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy

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I Only Rest in the Storm review – beguiling postcolonial blues in Guinea-Bissau

A disaffected Portuguese NGO worker dallies with a drag queen as he wrestles with white man’s privilege in Pedro Pinho’s intelligent drama

‘What disgusts me the most are good men,” says a Bissau-Guinean sex worker to Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem), a Portuguese environmental engineer working for an NGO on a road construction project in the country. He’s struggling to perform, as if his private life is letting slip some fundamental doubt about his role in Africa.

There’s a good dose of self-flagellation about western paternalism and hypocrisy in Pedro Pinho’s fifth feature, but it’s smart enough to know that this hand-wringing, extended over three hours, is yet another form of white man’s privilege. First seen driving through a sand blizzard like one of Antonioni’s existential wanderers, Sérgio seems to want to avoid thinking about the power dynamics at play around him. Being “here now”, in the moment, is his superpower – as he tells Gui (Jonathan Guilherme), the lofty Brazilian drag queen he dallies with. Gui’s gender-fluid posse, who hang out at the bar run by market hustler Diara (Cleo Diára), is a racial and sexual utopia ready to accept anyone, including this white expat. But, as Gui intuits, Sérgio’s bisexuality mirrors something noncommittal, even opportunistic, about him. He both lives in the expat enclave and the streets, without belonging to either.

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© Photograph: Capital Pictures/Alamy

© Photograph: Capital Pictures/Alamy

© Photograph: Capital Pictures/Alamy

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Why won’t Marvel let Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine retire in peace?

The actor himself has promised to accept all future cameos as the beloved claw-gremlin, but this will only wear out his superpowers

There was once a time when Hugh Jackman Wolverine cameos made a sort of sense. Bursting out of a cell in full Weapon X gear, massacring half a bunker, then vanishing, in 2016’s otherwise pretty forgettable X-Men: Apocalypse. Telling potential recruitment team Magneto and Professor X to, er, go fuck themselves while propping up a bar in 2011’s X-Men: First Class. Even popping up via archived footage from X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2018’s Deadpool 2. These were cameos we could accept: quick, self-contained sideshows that understood the sacred rule that such things ought to be fun and brief. They also arrived at a time when Jackman didn’t yet carry the weight of 25 years of audience investment.

Last week, in an appearance on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show, Jackman revealed that he has banned himself from saying no to future appearances as the surly mutant. “I am never saying ‘never’ ever again,” he said. “But I did mean it when I said ‘never’, until the day when I changed my mind. But I really did for quite a few years, I meant it.” There are suggestions that he could make a brief appearance in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday, in order to capitalise on the success of Marvel’s recent $1bn megahit Deadpool & Wolverine, even though he wasn’t mentioned in an interminable name-on-chair live stream from earlier this year, in which most of the main cast members were revealed.

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© Photograph: Jay Maidment/AP

© Photograph: Jay Maidment/AP

© Photograph: Jay Maidment/AP

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Mimi Mollica’s Moon City: buy a fine art print

For a limited time only, buy a numbered and signed edition print from renowned photographer Mimi Mollica, whose latest work, Moon City, captures the tension between the ancient pull of the moon and the restless ambition of London’s financial skyline. This limited edition sale ends on 8 December

Mimi Mollica is an award-winning documentary photographer whose work explores identity, environment, migration and social change. He is the founder of Offspring Photo Meet and the Sicily Photo Masterclass, and the author of Terra Nostra, East London Up Close, and his latest book, Moon City.

In Moon City (co-published with Dewi Lewis Publishing), Mollica spent more than five years photographing the lunar surface and the city’s glass and steel towers, overlaying images of people walking the streets, captured through telescope and mobile phone.

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© Composite: Mimi Mollica

© Composite: Mimi Mollica

© Composite: Mimi Mollica

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