The Whale

Director Darren Aronofsky's heartfelt, often wildly funny adaptation of Samuel D Hunter's semi-autobiographical off-Broadway play is a moving tale of last-chance redemption. Brendan Fraser gives a heroic, award-worthy performance as Charlie, a morbidly obese gay recluse who desperately tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink from Stranger Things). Other characters impact on Charlie's hermit-like existence - his deceased boyfriend's sister (a wonderful Hong Chau), his ex-wife (a fierce Samantha Morton) as well as a confused missionary and the pizza-delivery man - but it's the vicious, bitchy and unhappy Ellie he's desperate to engage with. Aronofsky deliberately reins in his often flamboyant style, underlining the theatrical origins of the intense chamber piece by using the claustrophobic Academy ratio. The result is an penetrating examination of self-destruction and a powerful lesson in how we are incapable of not caring.