NEW RELEASES
Logan (15)
Following Deadpool into 15-certificate territory, the third and final chapter in Wolverine’s standalone story wears its template on its sleeve in both referring to and showing clips from
Classic Alan Ladd Western Shane, the story of a loner drawn into a fight not of his making but which becomes inescapably personal. Not to mention Terminator 2.
Set in 2029, many years after the events in X-Men:Apocalypse, Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) are the last of the X-Men (it’s never stated what happened to the others, but an enigmatic reference to an incident at the school in Westchester suggests a cataclysmic tragedy) and something or other has blocked the birth of any new mutants. Going under an alias, the conflicted Logan is now old, grizzled, limping, his eyesight failing, his healing powers on the blink and the adamantium in his body poisoning him. Deadening his physical and emotional pain with drink, he’s working as a limo driver in Texas, shacking up at an abandoned industrial site near the Mexican border where, along with albino mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant), a former mutant-tracker, he’s looking after the nonagenarian Professor X, who, hidden in a rusting toppled water tower and suffering from Alzheimer’s, needs constant medication to prevent his powerful mental powers running out of control and causing seizures for anyone in the vicinity.
In one of his lucid periods, Xavier insists that he’s senses a new mutant, something Logan dismisses. Until, that it is, he encounters Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez), a Mexican nurse offering a considerable wad of cash to drive her and her Hispanic daughter Laura ((Dafne Keen) to Canada. However, arriving at the motel to collect them, he finds the woman dead and, on returning to his hideout discovers the girl had stowed away in the car. Although, she says nothing, it seems she is the mutant Xavier sensed. As to her powers, they’re bloodily revealed with the arrival of Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), the cyborg head of the paramilitary Reavers, who approached Logan earlier and is looking for her. Much to Logan’s shock, she too sprouts deadly adamantium claws and has the same fast healing abilities. It transpires that she was genetically bred, along with other young mutants, by Dr. Rice (Richard E. Grant), who runs shady bioengineering program Transigen, using Logan’s DNA. As Xavier points out, basically, she’s his daughter.
From here, the film basically becomes a chase road movie as the three (Caliban having fallen foul of Pierce) set out to find Eden, the supposed mutant safe haven in the Dakota hills, despite Logan insisting it doesn’t exist, merely something dreamed up in one of the X-Men comics for which he has no time, with Pierce, Rice and the latter’s genetically created secret weapon, in pursuit.
Given Jackman’s stated this is his last outing as the character and the fact the posters proclaim ‘his time has come’, the way things end won’t come as any real surprise. The fact that it is profoundly moving may well.
Directed by James Mangold (who made The Wolverine and several of whose earlier films, like Copland, had Western influences), from the opening scene as Logan slices his way through a bunch of would be carjackers, the film is incredibly and spectacularly violent, both Logan and the feral Laura’s claws ripping off limbs and slashing through skulls in graphic detail. Yet this is balanced with moments of humour and the tender ruminations on family (if Laura’s Logan’s genetic daughter, Xavier is his surrogate father), loneliness and redemption. Also, while in production well before the Trump election, the fact that the border’s divided by a wall of sorts has a striking timely resonance, all the more so with Mexico being the destination to seek refuge from a liberty-encroaching USA.
Giving a superbly nuanced performance, ranging from extreme rage to heavy weariness the mesmerising Jackman, who often resembles Mel Gibson, just as the film has echoes of the recent Mad Max, is terrific, as indeed is Stewart who lends the film his own imposing gravitas, while, in her debut role, an impressive eleven-year-old Keen, although wordless until the final stretch, has striking presence and a penetrating stare, something that bodes well should the Wolverine saga spin off to a second generation. In recent years, superheroes have become darker and more grown up, ending with an inspired final image this rivals Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Night as the best of them. . (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Electric; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Fist Fight (15)
Back in 1987, Phil Joanou directed Three O’Clock High, a high school parody of High Noon wherein a nerd finds himself challenged to an after-class playground fight by the school bully. Thirty years later, Richie Keen revisits the plot, except this time the nerd and the bully are teachers. The former is Andy Campbell, an English teacher at Roosevelt High. It’s the last day of school and the leavers are running wild, pulling all manner of extreme pranks. Meanwhile, the staff are all attending meetings with the Principal (Dean Norris) to find out of they’re going to be laid off as part of the cuts. With a young daughter and another kid on the way, Campbell can’t afford to lose his job, and, as a result, is something of an eager to please bundle of nerves.
Taking on the bully role, Ice Cube is Mr. Strickland, the volatile history teacher who’s stressed out about the school’s lack of discipline and antiquated facilities and intimidates the pupils and staff alike. Things explode when he summons Campbell to try and work out why the VHS he’s trying to play the class keeps shutting down. Campbell susses that one of the kids is using a mobile phone to turn off the machine, proving the final straw as Strickland takes a fire axe to the student’s desk.
Summoned before the Principal, the pair are told that, since no one’s owning up to whjat happened, one of them will be fired. At which point, Campbell fingers Strickland and, in turn, Strickland challenges him to a parking lot fight after school.
Given Strickland’s nature and any number of rumours about his past, there’s little doubt that Andy’s in for a beating, so the rest of the plot sees him trying to get the fight called off through inept efforts which variously entail bribing the student to lie to the Principal and planting drugs on Strickland in an attempt to get him arrested. Meanwhile, he also has to somehow get to the interview about his job and across to his daughter’s talent show before the showdown.
Populated by an assortment of oddball teachers who include the football coach (Tracy Morgan) who’s oblivious to the crude image being lawnmowered on to his pitch, the meth junkie guidance counselor (Jillian Bell) who has the hots for one of the students, and the drama teacher (Christina Hendricks) who, mistakenly thinking Campbell’s a pervert, encourages Strickand to knife him.
While predictably crude and vulgar with a stream of dick jokes, although it takes some time to build up its energy, it’s often very funny, even inclining towards the hilarious in the final stretch as Andy both gets increasingly desperate and overcomes his wussiness to get as mad as hell, face down his fears and stand up for himself. It also makes some pointed observations about the nature of the American education system and the view that teachers are expendable (no less pertinent here), while it’s hard not to admire its comedic nerve in having Campbell’s 10-year-old (Alexa Nisenson) deliver a particularly explicit Big Sean rap at her own school bully. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Trespass Against Us (15)
Populated by unpleasant characters doing antisocial things, despite two charismatic performances, this is a very hard film to like. Directed by Adam Smith, making his feature debut after assorted BBC programmes like Doctor Who, it stars Michal Fassbender as Chad, the son of Colby Cutler, the patriarchal head of a group of travellers living on a backwoods makeshift site in Gloucestershire, from where he masterminds various robberies. Other than resenting having to pull the latest on a Sunday, while vaguely discontented with his lot, Chad has no problem with the criminal lifestyle, but, illiterate himself, he does want his two kids to get a proper education, an issue at which he’s at odds with his father who reckons the Earth’s flat and has no truck with evolutionary theory, or indeed anyone’s efforts to better themselves. Meanwhile, Chad’s missus, Kelly (Lyndsey Marshal), is building up a stash of money with plans to escape the life and get a proper home.
When the Sunday robbery at a stately home belonging to a political bigwig goes belly up, it attracts the focused attention of the local cops who’ve been trying to pin something on the Cutlers for ages. But, even with a SWAT-like dawn raid, gathering the evidence is hard.
As such, there’s not a great deal of plot and what there is fairly clichéd and repetitive, many scenes consisting of frantic car chases between Chad and the police (largely represented by Rory Kinnear) that end up with him running off and hiding in the woods (or, indeed, under a cow)while a helicopter circles overhead. Fassbender is solid enough while, clad in his black track suit, spouting nonsense and generally excluding menace, Gleeson is superbly unlikeable, but, while the Cutlers are apparently styled on a real life outlaw family in the Cotswolds, they never feel more than characters on the page. It builds to a somewhat dramatic finale, but it still feels all a bit of an anticlimax, and overly sentimental to boot, never really having got to grips with what it wants to actually be about. (Cineworld 5 Ways, Showcase Walsall)
Vicerory’s House (12A)
Anxious to divest itself a troublesome part of the Empire it could no longer effectively or economically rule, in 1947 the British government stitched up the Indian people by partitioning the country into India and Pakistan. The film, a strong comeback by director Gurinda Chadha and her writer-husband Paul Mayeda Berges after the misfiring It’s A Wonderful Afterlife and his directorial debut Mistress of Spices, indicates that it also stitched up Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville), who was charged with finding a solution and overseeing the handover, unaware that a deal had already been done with Nehru by Churchill for the creation of Pakistan.
Arriving with his wife, Lady Edwina (a perfectly accented Gillian Anderson), Lord Louis Mountbatten is to be the last Viceroy of India, his job to smooth the path to independence and self-governance, not an easy task given the country’s in turmoil with increasing conflict between Hindus. Sikhs and Muslims, the latter wanting their own nation. As such the film follows two parallel stories. The first focuses on the Mountbattens, she the voice of reason keen to see the people’s lot improved, he looking to maintain diplomacy while dealing with his own officials, notably Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay (Michael Gambon), who aren’t necessarily telling him everything, and the prime movers for independence, Nehru (Tanveer Ghani), Jinnah (Denzil Smith) and Ghandi (a brief but striking turn by Neeraj Kabi), as well as Cyril Radcliffe (Simon Callow), the man brought in for the nigh impossible task of drawing up the actual Partition boundaries that would divide not only the country, but families and communities.
In much the same manner as the recent United Kingdom, set in the same year, all of this affords an insight into the duplicitous nature of English politics and the motives behind the way the Partition was eventually set, while, set against this, is the fictional account of two civilians, Jeet (Manish Dayal) and Aalia (Huma Querishi), he part of the Viceroy’s retinue, she part of his wife’s. They are in love, but he’s Hindu and she’s Muslim and has already been promised in marriage by her father (the late Om Puri), a former political prisoner who went blind, but was looked after in jail by Jeet.
Their story is a rather schematic and clichéd contrivance designed to serve the narratyive microcosm and, for all its romantic tribulations and some anguished moments, is less compelling than the account of the problems facing Mountbatten in trying to prevent the whole place descending into ever more ferocious bloodshed than it’s experiencing already.
Nonetheless, impressively mounted with some striking images and good use of original Movietone news footage, it holds the attention and casts light on a now rather overlooked period of British history, the end credits revelation of Chadha’s personal family investment in the telling bringing powerful resonance. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Electric; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
NOW PLAYING
A Cure for Wellness (18)
Licking his wounds after the critical and box office mauling of The Lone Ranger, director Gore Verbinski returns with a visually stylish but narratively bloated Gothic body horror thriller, which, tipping its hat to vintage Hammer, clocks in at a ludicrously overextended 146 minutes. Much could have been cut without any loss, notably the prologue in which a financial services salesman working late has a heart attack. It’s a effective, but serves no actual plot purpose, an accusation that can be levelled at several scenes throughout the film.
In a set up that makes no actual sense, ambitious exec Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to Switzerland and bring back the CEO from the wellness centre for the rich and powerful where’s he taken off for treatment. Apparently there’s a merger going through and they need him sign off some paperwork and, it’s hinted, serve as the fall guy for some dodgy book-keeping.
Arriving at the centre, located atop the Alps, he learns that the place was rebuilt following a fire when the villagers, outraged that the baron was, to sustain a pure bloodline, marrying his sister, stormed in and burned it and her in the process. As the long-winded plot unfolds, clues dribbled out by a crossword puzzle-obsessive patient (Celia Imrie) reveal there was more to it than just incest.
Lockhart is also given the runaround by the clinic’s owner, Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs) in trying to get to see his boss, Harold Pembroke (Harry Groener), who first says he has no interest in returning, but then agrees to leave that night. However, on his way back to the village to make arrangements, Lockhart’s car is struck by a stag and he wakes up to find himself back in the clinic, a broken leg in plaster and Volmer saying he needs to get some rest and drink plenty of water. Pembroke, meanwhile has apparently been so stressed out at the thought of leaving, he’s having to have more treatment.
Further discoveries about the clinic’s past reveal the baron was conducting experiments on the local peasants, while Lockhart also meets pale and enigmatic young patient Hannah (Mia Goth), who Volmer says is like a daughter to him. She tells him she’s a special case and that he’ll never leave, no one ever does.
The longer it goes on the murkier – and more repetitive – it gets as Lockhart keeps wandering where he shouldn’t. seeing things he wasn’t supposed to and trying to get away, revealing more about the ‘cure’ the patients, mostly elderly, are receiving and forever shifting the goalposts about what happened that night many years ago (the time scale makes no sense) and the real purpose behind the experiments, both then and now. Finally careering off into an overly protracted finale that’s more plain silly than actually creepy, it’s hard to take any of its seriously, given that Isaac is clearly up to no good from the start and his insistence on everyone drinking the water patently a red alert.
Throw in long slippery eels (not to mention red herrings), bodies floating in underground chambers, an eviscerated deer, Lockhart’s trip to the clinic dentist that makes Dustin Hoffman’s ordeal in Marathon Man look like a simple scale and polish, and flashbacks to Lockhart’s mother and a childhood trauma involving his father that serve only to further muddy the coherence and widen the plot holes, and even the most patient audiences are likely to have given up caring long before the (anti) climax.
It’s not quite as staggering awful as Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, and, indeed, there are many visually inspired moments, but ultimately it’s all atmosphere and style in the service of shallow substance. (Empire Great Park; Vue Star City)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (12A)
J.K. Rowling makes a dazzling screenwriting debut as, with David Yates directing, she returns to the wizarding world for the first of five films based around the Hogwarts textbook of the title written by magizoologist and former student Newt Scamander (a superb Eddie Redmayne).
Expelled from Hogwarts over an incident regarding one such beast, at that time regarded as dangerous and feared by the wizarding community, the freckle-faced, tweed-jacketed and slightly clumsy Newt arrives in Prohibition-era New York carrying a suitcase containing a whole menagerie of creatures that he is trying to keep safe. Unfortunately, a faulty lock sees one of them, a Niffler (a sort of cross between a mole and a duck billed platypus with a penchant for collecting shiny objects) escapes and Newt’s search to recover it leads him to cross paths with Jacob Kowalski (a charming Dan Fogler), a portly No-Maj (as Muggles are called in America) factory worker with dreams of opening a bakery, with whom he accidentally switched cases. Soon there’s even more beasts on the loose and Newt is arrested by Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), a former aura with the Macusa (the US equivalent of the Ministry of Magic) trying to get back in its good books after an incident saw her demoted to clerical work.
With a dark wizard by the name of Grindelward waging a magical war on humans, things are edgy in America where the Macusa, headed by female president Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo), have outlawed all beasts and are doing everything to prevent their wizarding kind becoming known. Meanwhile, the puritanical Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton), with her legion of adopted children, among them Credence (Ezra Miller) and his ‘sisters’ Modesty (Faith-Wood Blagrove) and Chastity (Jenn Murray), is crusading to expose the witches she claims to be threatening the American way of life, calling for a Second Salem.
Unbeknownst to her, Credence is having secret meetings with Percival Grace (Colin Farrell), a power-hungry senior aura looking to get his hands on the unidentified child host of the Obscurial (a swirling elemental force of dark magic) that is causing swathes of destruction throughout the city.
Now, joined by Joe, who he was unable to obliviate, Tina and her mind-reading sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), who takes a fancy to their Mo-Maj accomplice, Newt has to both recapture all the escaped creatures (one of whom just happens to be invisible) and prevent Grace from carrying out his hidden agenda.
The film keeps Newt’s backstory limited to just a few hints, allowing for more to develop over the course of the series, and keeps the focus very much on the central narrative, although it does find time for some stupendous diversions, such as the bank chase, a journey inside the suitcase to where the creatures are kept – one of whom, a sort of giant rhino, develops an unfortunate desire to mate with Joe – a magical dinner at Tina’s place and a visit to a wizarding speakeasy to get some vital info from low life goblin Gnarlack (Ron Perlman).
Barebone’s witch-hunt clearly serves as a political allegory for the fear and bigotry abroad in Trump’s America, providing for some very dark moments that include the murder of the Senator son of newspaper magnate Henry Shaw (Jon Voight) and the beatings of Credence by his ‘mother’. But, there’s much fun too and the breathtaking visuals mean there’s so much going on in the background you’ll need – and want – to see this over and over.
The closing reveal sets things up for the ongoing Potter/Voldermort styled battle between Scamander and Grindleward (a late Johnny Depp cameo), but, like the Potter movies, this is also a fully self-contained, toweringly spectacular adventure, and, dare I say it, even better than its Hogwarts predecessors. (Vue Star City)
Fences (15)
Making its stage debut in 1983, August Wilson’s play won both a Tony and Pulitzer in 1987, but, despite attempts to bring it to the screen, Wilson refused permission unless it had a black director. It took 33 years, but, finally, Denzel Washington has taken on the mantle, both behind the camera and starring as Troy Maxson, a refuse truck collector in 50s Pittsburgh, embittered at how segregation cut short his career as a baseball player and the racist attitudes that have him at the rear of the truck rather than driving it. Washington played the same role on Broadway in 2010 and he’s brought several of the same cast with him, Mykelti Williamson as his brain-damaged war veteran brother, Gabriel, Russell Hornsby as his eldest son (by a previous marriage), aspirant and permanently broke jazz musician Lyons, and, most notably, Oscar winner Viola Davis as Rose, his loyal, supportive wife of 18 years, a role she also played in the 1987 revival.
However, Troy’s bitterness and self-pity has been eating away at both the marriage and their younger son, Cory (Jovan Adepo) who sees his tough love father’s refusal to support his aspiration to play college football as jealousy over chances he never had.
Largely set in Troy’s house or the backyard where he holds court, swigging gin as he jokes around, tells fanciful stories and bemoans life to best friend Bono (Stephen Henderson), it gradually builds to a reveal the devastating secret Troy’s been hiding from his wife, offering Davis the monologue that undoubtedly earned her Oscar nomination.
However, as good as both she and Washington’s complex, sympathy-shifting portrayal are, the film never escapes its theatrical origins, whether in the carefully appointed set, heavy-handed symbolism and metaphors or the cadence of the dialogue, reinforcing its comparisons to a black answer to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Also, after the slow burn build to the heartbreaking climax, the aftermath coda feels somewhat limp, never delivering the emotional epiphany it seeks. (Cineworld Solihull; Empire Great Park; Everyman; MAC; Odeon Broadway Plaza; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Fifty Shades Darker (18)
Hardware stores saw a boost in trade with the first adaptation of E.L. James’ S&M trilogy, but, while sales in pleasure balls may be boosted, part two puts more emphasis on the relationship between Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and the ludicrously wealthy Christian Grey (Jamie Doran) than the kinky sex, though that’s not to say there aren’t some steamy – and indeed sexy – sequences and a visit to the Red Room. Picking up from the end of the first film, she’s now assistant to Jack Hyde, her red alert named senior editor at the publishing company, but miserable after breaking up with Grey. But then, suddenly, he’s back in her life, swearing he’s changed, that he wants her back, can’t live without her and even opening up about himself. He wants to renegotiate terms, so, she decides to give him another chance, provided they take it slow, with no rules and no secrets, and walk before they run. However, it’s not long before she decides she likes running and what loosely passes for a plot gets underway with Grey’s sexual mentor (Kim Basinger) warning Anastasia off, Hyde making a pass and the mentally disturbed Leila (Bella Heathcote), one of his earlier submissives, stalking her.
Since, written by Niall Leonard, this could easily fit into a half hour TV episode with room to spare, director James Foley fleshes out the running time with a swathe of increasingly opulent wealth-dripping scenes, including a masked ball, a lavish birthday bash, a yacht and any number of hugely expensive offices and houses. The longer it goes on the soapier it gets, becoming a sort of X-rated Dynasty complete with a helicopter crash and, not one, but two marriage proposal scenes, although the second is, admittedly, rather more extravagant than the first.
There’s a few more insights into why Grey is the way he is; his junkie birth mom died when he was four and, presumably, one of her lovers got off on stubbing cigarettes out on the boy’s chest, scarring him both physically and mentally, though it’s hard to resist the giggles when he has Anastasia a draw a lipstick boundary around his pecs to mark a no go area. He also apparently has a thing for Vin Diesel movie The Chronicles of Riddick. Unfortunately, insight into Anastasia doesn’t get much deeper than how nothing measured up to those Austen and Bronte romantic novels. The core cast are back too, among them thankless roles for photographer friend Jose (Victor Rasuk), flatmate Kate (Eloise Mumford), and Christian’s sister Mia (Rita Ora), though Marcia Gay Harden gets somewhat more to do as protective adoptive mom Grace.
For long stretches it goes flaccid and meanders along as if looking for some sense of direction, and then rushes headlong to the finale, the last shot reappearance of one of the characters setting up what promises to be more of a thriller styled conclusion, possibly finally giving Christian’s fleet of bodyguards something to actually do. Still, there’s more intentional humour this time around, making it rather more fun that the self-seriousness of the first film and even something resembling, if not heat, then at least a mild glow between Doran and Johnson. It’s not darker by any means, but, to borrow one of the lines, it’s not blandly vanilla either. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Electric; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
The Great Wall (12A)
Zhang Yimou’s first major international release since 2007, this is his most lavish and ambitious to date and, with Matt Damon in the lead, likely to reach beyond the usual Chinese martial arts fans. The Great Wall took some 1700 years to build and stretches for 5500 miles, inevitably giving rise to any number of legends about its purpose. Here, manned by a permanent army called the Nameless Order and divided into specialist units, it’s designed to keep out a legion of monsters known as the Tao Tie, reputedly freed when a meteor crashed into a mountain two thousand years ago and which, led by their queen, who’s fed by the bodies of their victims, attack northern China once every sixty years.
Mercenaries in search of the fabled black powder, William Garin (Damon) and Pero Tovar (Pedro Pascal) are captured by the Nameless Order, their leader, General Shao (Zhang Hanyu) impressed by the fact that Garin has killed one of the creatures. While suspicious about their motives, they’re befriended by Lin Mae (Jing Tian), the English-speaking commander of the Crane Corps, female warriors who leap into battle tethered to ropes, Garin impressing them with his archery skills. When the Tao Tie attack, the pair prove invaluable, Garin saving the life of a boyish young soldier (Lu Han). Seeing how Lin and the others are prepared to give their lives, not for money, but to protect mankind, Garin comes to reassess his own priorities. Meanwhile, however, Tovar is conspiring with Ballard (Willem Dafoe), a fellow European prisoner, to escape with a cache of gunpowder, fully expecting Garin to join them.
There’s not much more to the plot than that, Damon spelling out the message about finding something worth fighting and dying for, he and Lin developing a grudging mutual respect and friendship, and helping, with the aid of his magnet, to capture a Tao Tia in an attempt to destroy the queen.
Comparisons to Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are fairly inevitable, especially in the battles against the seemingly endless monstrous hordes who prove rather more cunning than their opponents thought, leading to an epic battle, including giant hot air paper lanterns, in the capital once they breach the Wall. It’s also fair to say that character development and back stories aren’t major aspects of the film’s agenda, but if you want epic, acrobatic and bloody blockbuster action, elegant and agile camerawork, frenetic editing and bold use of colour and lighting, then this is suitably awesome in its scope and execution. (Cineworld 5 Ways; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Hacksaw Ridge (15)
It would seem that Mel Gibson’s rehabilitation in Hollywood has taken a giant leap forward, the film landing both Best Picture and Best Director nominations. And deservedly so because, quite simply, this is the first great war movie of the 21st century. Earning himself an Academy Best Actor nod to go with his BAFTA nomination, Andrew Garfield gives an outstanding performance as Desmond Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist from smalltown Virginia who, having taught himself medicine, believing it his duty to enlist in WWII, signed up with the intention of serving as a medic. He found himself assigned to an infantry company, but his beliefs and faith would not allow him to touch a gun (another, more personal reason, is revealed towards the end), leading him to be ostracised by the other men.
Although faced with court-martial, he was finally allowed to serve without carrying a weapon, going on to take part in the fighting at Okinawa where, in the bloody battle for the titular escarpment, after the survivors has retreated, he remained and single-handedly saved 75 of his fellow soldiers, becoming the only conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor in WWII.
The first half of the film lays out Doss’s childhood and background, the son of housewife Bertha (Rachel Griffiths) and carpenter and WWI veteran father Tom (Hugo Weaving) who, traumatised at seeing his friends killed, has become an abusive alcoholic. Dropping out of school to support the family, it follows his goofily smiling courtship of Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), a nurse at the local hospital, and, to his father’s anger, his decision to follow his brother Harold (never mentioned again after he joins up) and enlist.
The second half divides itself between basic training, with Vince Vaughn providing a nice line in drill sergeant humour, and the problems his beliefs create for him with his fellow infantrymen and superior officers who try and force him to quit, before the scene shifts to the battle for Okinawa. From the moment the first soldier climbs on to the top of the ridge, the film becomes the visceral vision of hell glimpsed in the opening teaser, quite literally splattered with blood and guts as Americans and Japanese alike are ripped apart or incinerated while, repeating the mantra of “God, please help me get one more”, Doss tries to save the same men who had treated him like a leper.
As with Saving Private Ryan, it involves you with the other men too, in particular tough guy Smitty (Luke Bracey) who regards Doss as a coward, and, naturally, as they see him in action under fire, contempt turns to respect, powerfully summed up in a scene between Doss and his commanding officer (Sam Worthington). But this is no easy ride for either him or the audience, Gibson expertly choreographing the action as themes of courage, duty and faith make this a war film with a potent moral and ethical struggle core. (Odeon Broadway Plaza; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Hidden Figures (PG)
There’s a reasonable chance that you might know that, in 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. It is, however, extremely unlikely you’ll have ever heard of Katherine Johnson. And yet, without her input, the Mercury program might have taken a lot longer to achieve its goal or, had the launch gone ahead on schedule, Glenn could have died on re-entry. It was Johnson who did the calculations necessary to ensure the safe point of re-entry, but only now is her contribution, and that of many other African-American women who worked for the NASA space program, being recognised.
Directed by Theodore Melfi, this aptly titled true story puts the spotlight on Johnson (Taraji P Henson) and her co-workers, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) and their vital roles in the program. A child maths prodigy, Johnson became one of the three black students to integrate into West Virginia’s graduate schools. In 1952, she got a job at Langley, working as one of the ‘computers’ in the segregated West Area Computing division (not machines, but an all black female unit of mathematicians) overseen by Vaughan and was eventually assigned to work on the equations necessary to compute the Mercury program flights, despite being given documents of redacted figures on account of not having security clearance. The same unit also included Jackson, a former maths teacher who became both the first black student to take an after-work course at the segregated Hampton High School, and, in 1958, NASA’s first black female engineer.
The film plays a little loose with the chronology of events (in the film, Vaughan – who teaches herself how to work the new IBM computer that baffles her male colleagues – is seen battling with the racist white department head – Kirsten Dunst – to secure the position of supervisor) while both the program manager, Al Harrison (an excellent Kevin Costner), and chauvinistic chief engineer Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons), who refuses to share either credit or coffee pot with Johnson, are composite figures, but the essentials are all true.
As well as charting the women’s fight to be taken seriously and achieve recognition and equality alongside their male and white counterparts, the film also finds space for a tender love story between the widowed Johnson and National Guard colonel Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali).
Adopting a sophisticated approach to detailing the racism of the era and in the workplace without shouting from a soapbox, it quietly observes the conditions under which the ‘computers’ worked, as for example Johnson having to walk across the site to use the blacks only toilets in the West Compound, something that gives rise to a potent scene as Harrison literally tackles prejudice with a sledgehammer.
The dialogue and performances, especially those of the three female leads, are top notch, while Melfi deftly balances scenes like Johnson scrawling out calculations on the blackboard with archive footage from the era and recreations of meetings with the NASA team and its astronauts, delivering a film that is as entertaining as it’s inspiring, uplifting and illuminating. (Cineworld 5 Ways, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Vue Star City)
Jackie (15)
Chilean director Pablo Larraín makes his English-language debut with Noah Oppenheim’s screenplay about Jackie Kennedy (Oscar nominee Natalie Portman) in the hours and days following the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Based on an interview she gave to Life magazine reporter Theodore H White (Billy Crudup), unnamed here, the week after the shooting, with speculative conjecture thrown in, it covers the aftermath of the shooting, the return of Kennedy’s body to the White House, vexed arrangements for the funeral, Jackie’s accompanying of the coffin to Arlington cemetery, the breaking of the news to her two children, Caroline and Jack, and the understandably emotionally difficult preparations to move out of the White House to make way for incoming president Lyndon Johnson. Stitched into this is a recreation of the 1962 TV documentary tour she gave inside the White House to give the public an insight and explain why she was restoring artefacts from past presidencies.
Cutting back and forth to the interview, which Kennedy controls, instructing the reporter what he can and cannot publish, it paints a picture of a traumatised woman trying to hold it together, looking to make her husband’s death meaningful, preserving his legacy and her own dignity, but very clearly on the edge of a breakdown. There’s a telling scene with a candid priest (John Hurt) where she talks about her husband flaws and her own wanting to die and, in response to the inevitable question as to what the bullet sounded like when it hit her husband’s skull, a very graphic description, although Larrain wisely keeps the equally vivid visual recreation until the final moments.
With frequent intense close ups, the film captures the raw intensity and claustrophobic suffocation of having to deal with the unimaginable, allowing Portman to convey her inner turmoil and distress through subtle facial expressions alone. Perfectly capturing Kennedy’s voice and mannerisms, as well as her inner steel in dealing with her grief and handling the new administration’s attempts to stage manage the funeral, Portman’s complex and layered portrayal, at times vulnerable at others spiky, is outstanding, indicating just how the First Lady could fire up those around her with her own contagious and determined resolve and passion, giving the film both fire and intimacy.
She’s ably supported by strong performances from Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy, Greta Gerwig as PA and close friend Nancy Tuckerman and Max Casella as Jack Valenti, Kennedy’s media liaison who became Johnson’s special assistant and, understandably, had no wish for his new boss to be exposed to another potential shooter during a funeral procession. There’s also a fine cameo by Richard E Grant as Bill Walton, the Kennedys’ gay friend who served as Jackie’s interior decorator adviser. Though not called on to do much in terms of the narrative, Caspar Phillipson does a reasonable job of looking like JFK.
The film does, of course, also address the assassination as the moment when America lost its innocence, a theme effectively underscored in the final moments as Jackie recalls her husband’s favourite Broadway musical, and the film closes with Richard Burton singing “don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.” Outstanding. (Odeon Birmingham; Tue/Wed:Electric)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (15)
Keanu Reeves may not be the world’s greatest actor but he has a huge fan base. With John Wick having proven something of a surprise box office hit in 2014, a sequel was inevitable and this gets underway with what is, essentially, a coda to the original, tying up loose ends as taciturn assassin Wick (Reeves), nicknamed The Boogeyman, takes on the Russian crime organisation led by Abram (Peter Stormare) to recover his stolen classic Mustang. Having killed pretty much everyone else, and wrecked the car in the process, he and Abram, himself in awe of Wick’s skills (especially the legend of his killing three men with a pencil), agree a truce and Wicks goes home to memories of his dead wife, buries his weapons and looks forward to retirement from the life of a professional hitman.
That doesn’t last long, however, as Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), an Italian criminal playboy to whom Wick owes a debt of honour, turns up to cash in his marker. Wick demurs, thereby prompting D’Antonio to blow up his house. Checking into the Continental, a luxury hotel for assassins run by Winston (Ian McShane), where rules demand no ‘business’ is enacted on its grounds, he’s reminded that he’s bound to honour the marker, D’Antonio’s request turning out to be the murder of his sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini), so he can take her seat at the High Table council of the world’s top criminals. Off to Italy and job grudgingly done, Gianna herself going a long way to relieving him of the burden, rather than being free to resume his life, Wick now finds himself the target of the city’s apparently countless undercover assassins when D’Antonio, cynically seeking to avenge his sister, puts out a $7m contract.
Having parked his new dog at the hotel, the rest of the film pretty much just involves Wick battling Gianna’s former bodyguard (Common), D’Antonio’s henchmen, led by mute Ares (Ruby Rose) and assorted assassins looking to cash in, delivering both kinetic, balletic action sequences and an incredibly high bodycount, Wick always ensuring to pop one final bullet into every body, just to be sure.
Chad Stahelski returns to the directing seat and delivers the bloody mayhem with stylish panache and visual flair, including a terrific climax in a hall of mirrors. Amid all the action and firefights, there’s a nice sense of humour at work too, underlining that things shouldn’t be taken too seriously, whether in the strict protocol governing assassin rules, the extensive network that takes in specialist tailors and Orthodox Jewish bankers, or a marvellous scene with Peter Serafinowicz as the Continental’s sommelier, advising Wick on choice of weapons as if they were fine wines. There’s also an appearance by Laurence Fishburne as inner-city assassin the Bowery King, while, dressed in his trademark cool three-piece black suit, Reeves makes hugely effective use of his expressionless style. It ends with Wick declared excommunicado for breaking hotel rules, setting up Chapter 3 in which the contract is extended worldwide. Can’t wait. (Cineworld 5 Ways, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
La La Land (12A)
Picking up six Oscars, including Best Director and Actress, but, memorably, not Film, its title a reference to its Hollywood setting, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to Whiplash is a love letter to the golden age of musicals that manages to be timeless while simultaneously striking contemporary notes, combining the polish of 50s song and dance movies with the energetic flash of things like Fame.
It opens in spectacular style with a one-take sequence staged on and around cars queuing on an LA freeway flyover wherein the film’s central couple, Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress working in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros studio lot, and Seb (Ryan Gosling), a jazz pianist purist with dreams of opening his own club, have a fleeting heated interchange.
Beginning in Winter, the film first follows Mia as, after another unsuccessful audition, she’s persuaded to join her flatmates for a night out and winds up drawn into a jclub by the sound of a jazz piano. Here she sees Seb, just as he’s being fired by the manager (JK Simmons) for slipping in one of his free-jazz improvisations, but he brusquely brushes past her as she tries to introduce herself. The film starts again, this time following Seb who lives in a run-down apartment, telling his exasperated sister that he’s just waiting for life to get tired of beating up on him, at which point he’ll make his move.
Moving on a season, fate contrives to have Mia and Seb meet again at a party where he’s slumming it with an 80s syth rock covers band and their connection begins to take root. They dance together on the hills overlooking LA and again at the Griffith Observatory in a magic realism waltz through the stars. Moving in together, she continues with her auditions and Seb lands a keyboard gig with an old friend (John Legend) who now has his own jazz-rock outfit called The Messengers.
They become a huge success and, forever away on tour, Seb encourages Mia to write and star in her own one-woman play. It is from here that things, because they go right for their conflicting ambitions, start to go wrong for them as a couple as the film focuses on the sacrifices that need to be made to achieve your dreams.
Neither of them professional singers or dancers, Stone and Gosling are terrific, their chemistry, in both the musical and dramatic sequences, lighting up the screen. Sprinkling the film with nods to Hollywood history and icons like Bergman and Monroe while also injecting some barbed commentary on the contemporary industry, it may have a certain cynicism, but it never loses sight of the heart that drives the narrative.
The film ends with a postscript, set five years on, catching up with the pair’s lives and fortunes with a scene that echoes their first actual meeting and offers both the real life ending and the fantasy happy ever after one of Hollywood musicals. It’s an exhilarating, heartburstingly romantic sweep you off your feet affair that will put a spring in your step and seems destined to become every bit a classic as the films to which it pays homage. (Cineworld 5 Ways, Solihull; Empire Great Park; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City; Sat/Sun, Tue:Electric)
The Lego Batman Movie (U)
The follow-up to 2014’s The Lego Movie is an irreverent send-up of Batman and the world of DC superheroes in general, but balances the comedy with a strong no man is an island message about not shutting yourself off from friends and family. Or, indeed, your enemies as, hurt that the humourless, narcissistic Batman (Will Arnett) won’t recognise they have a mutual hate relationship and refuses to accept he’s his greatest foe, the secretly sensitive Joker (Zach Galifianakis) hatches a plot to get sent to the Phantom Zone so he can free all the bad guys there to help him destroy Gotham. And, as if that wasn’t enough, Batman has to contend with eager new sidekick, Robin (Michael Cera), alias Dick Grayson, the orphan he accidentally adopted while dazzled as the Major (Mariah Carey) introduced the new Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), who wants him and the law to work together, and the attempts by tough-love butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) to get him to face his greatest fear – family.
Opening with a Batman voiceover saying how every important movie starts with a black screen, the film is playfully self-referencing (there’s even a clip from the Adam West TV series) and plunges right into the action as Batman takes on and defeats a whole army of super-villains, is hailed as Gotham’s saviour once again and then goes home to the emptiness of Wayne Manor. Still scarred by his parents’ murder, Wayne has shut himself off from any emotional feelings or relationships, that way he can’t get hurt. He even watches the Tom Cruise romance Jerry Maguire as if it’s a comedy.
While the Dark Knight probed Batman’s dark side, it never went as deep into what makes him tick as this one does. And yet, for all its serious psychoanalytical observations, it remains a huge explosion of fun, which, let’s face it, is what the audience have gone for.
Goaded by The Joker, Batman plans to steal the weapon needed to banish him to the Phantom Zone (leading to an amusing scene as he visits Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to find the Man of Steel (Channing Tatum) hanging out with the other Justice League superheroes at a party to which he’s not been invited). Ignoring Commissioner Gordon’s warnings, Batman falls victim to Joker’s manipulations, leading to the escape from the Zone of the worst of the worst villains, among them Sauron, the Gremlins, Voldemort (Eddy Izzard), Godzilla, King Kong, Oz’s flying monkeys and even the Daleks.
To defeat them, he has to realise that it’s okay to accept help, just as it’s okay to accept family (and finally let Dick call him dad) as he joins forces with not only Alfred (wearing a retro Batman costume), Barbara and Robin (the origin of the costume another cute joke), but also pretty much every DC super hero and villain you can think of, including Harlequin, Bane, Green Lantern (Jonah Hill) and, er, The Condiment King. Although there are moments of quite melancholy, for the most part this is a dizzying hyperkinetic whirlwind of nonstop entertainment. Top that Ben Affleck! (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Lion (PG)
One night in 1986, Saroo (Sunny Pawar), a five-year-old Indian boy from an impoverished village near Khandwa, where his illiterate mother (Priyanka Bose) works as a manual labourer, accompanies his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) to a railway station. While Guddu goes to look for work, Saroo is left to sleep on a bench. Awaking, with Guddu not returned, he tries to look for him, climbs aboard a decommissioned train and falls asleep. When he wakes, he’s miles away and, unable to disembark, remains on the deserted train until it stops in Calcutta, 930 miles from his home, two days later. Wandering the streets, he’s eventually taken to an orphanage for street kids and, when attempts to find his village and family prove fruitless, it’s arranged for him to be adopted by a kindly Australian couple, John and Sue Brierley (David Wenham, Nicole Kidman), who live in Tasmania.
Some 20 years later, now with another adoptive brother, the troubled Mantosh, studying for hotel management and memories of his previous life having faded along with his ability to speak Hindi, a plate of jalebis prompts sensory memories of his childhood and, plagued by thoughts of his lost brother, mother and sister Shekila, Saroo (BAFTA winner Dev Patel) begins an intensive Google Earth search to track down his birthplace, Ganestelay, of which no one had ever heard, a quest that drives him to the edge of breakdown.
Making a few inevitable dramatic changes (fictional American girlfriend, Lucy, played by Rooney Mara, is based on his actual then girlfriend Lisa), director Garth Davis works directly from Brierley’s acclaimed memoir, A Long Way Home, to provide a first person perspective, though, thankfully, without any annoying voice over exposition.
A career best performance by Patel is well matched by an understated, but powerful Oscar- nominated turn from a deglamourised Kidman with Pawal especially endearing and vulnerable as young Saroo. However, while it never goes for manipulative sentimentality as it addresses themes of isolation, identity, family and brotherhood, the second half of Saroo’s story is never quite as engaging as the first with its images of life for India’s homeless and lost children. That said, as it reaches the eventual reunion, audiences will be reaching for their tissues. And the title? Like Saroo’s village, that’s a lexical misunderstanding you’ll have to wait until the final scenes to uncover. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC; Empire Great Park; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Loving (12A)
In 1958, aptly named white construction worker Richard Loving married his pregnant black girlfriend Mildred in Washington DC. Unfortunately, they lived in Caroline County, Virginia, a state where interracial marriages were still illegal. One night, shortly after the marriage, the local sheriff broke into the house and arrested them. Richard made bail but Mildred was kept in a cell for a further five days. When taken to court they were advised by their lawyer to plead guilty, receiving a one year suspended prison sentence on the condition they left the state and did not return together for 25 years. They moved from the lush countryside where Richard was building their new home to room in a cramped house in a rundown Washington neighbourhood where they would have two further children.
Despite the fact that, five years later, their case was, on the instigation of Robert Kennedy, to whom Mildred wrote, taken up by the Civil Rights Movement and led to a Supreme Court ruling declaring marriage a human right and overturning state laws against miscegenation their story has been largely forgotten.
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, whose past work has included Mud and Midnight Special, that story is now the subject of this low key, slowly unfolding historical drama that’s anchored by breakout central performances by Joel Egerton and Ruth Negga.
There’s no courtroom dramatics (the eventual verdict is conveyed by a phone message to Mildred), indeed, save for that initial arrest and a tense nighttime scene involving headlights in Richard’s rearview mirror as he and Mildred return to Virginia for the birth, there’s no dramatics at all.
Faced with the judge at the Virginia court house, the couple, quiet and cowed, whisper their guilty pleas and there’s no strident protests about the iniquities of the situation. The most Richard does it mutter “It’s not right” when he’s arrested, unable to comprehend why two people in love cannot demonstrate that affection in public. They risk re-arrest to return to his midwife mother for the birth, and the law does come calling, but it was never an act of defiance. In Washington, they accept their lot, only an accident to one of the sons causing Mildred contact the Attorney General to try and move back to the quiet safety of the countryside. They are never part of the Civil Rights Movement, but, while the taciturn Richard is reluctant to get involved and draw attention to them, when their lawyer, Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), talks of it going to the Supreme Court, Mildred can see the bigger picture and, when the media take an interest, is the more vocal of the two.
It’s a conventional narrative taken at an unhurried pace in which, essentially, nothing happens for long stretches. But its impact lies in the way it underplays, most effectively as Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks (Marin Csokas) coldly and contemptously explains why their union is against God’s designs. Likewise, a brick left on the back seat of Richard’s car is a far more effective than having one thrown through his window. It takes patience, but there is a quiet power here. (MAC)
Manchester By the Sea (12A)
Oscar Best Actor winner, Casey Affleck gives a low key career best performance as Lee Chandler, a taciturn, socially withdrawn and short-fused Boston janitor, who, called back to his Massachusetts hometown on the death of his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), learns that, the boy’s alcoholic mother (Gretchen Mole) long having abandoned the family, he’s been named as guardian for his 16-year-old nephew, Patrick (Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges), something for which he feels singularly ill-equipped. Not least on account of the heartrending tragedy that led to his divorce from wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and forced him to leave several years earlier and which has tormented him ever since.
Returning to the scene, where people still give him looks, brings the pain to the surface once more as he tries to deal with both his and Patrick’s emotions and find a way to offload the responsibility to someone else, possibly Joe’s friend George (CJ Wilson). Yet, when his now dry and remarried former sister-in-law makes unexpected contact, he’s wary of her re-entering Patrick’s life.
Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, who won Best Screenplay, opening in winter and set over the changing seasons as flashbacks gradually fill in the backstory, it’s a sprawling, slow burn, subdued and carefully measured character-driven work, punctuated by occasional explosive outbursts, and, as such, requires focus and patience for its power and the overwhelming sense of grief with which it is suffused to be fully felt.
Not that it’s unrelentingly downcast. With the lippy Patrick juggling two girlfriends, as well as an awkward dinner table moment involving Mol and Matthew Broderick, there’s an element of humour. But this too is coloured by the way Patrick deals with his father’s death by trying to hang on to the life he has as well as wanting to renovate the creaky and near clapped-out trawler in which the two of them (and, in earlier days, Lee) went fishing.
Working from Lonergan’s insightful BAFTA-winning screenplay which less concerns redemption than the struggle to cope, Affleck is outstanding as a man living – or just existing – with unimaginable grief and guilt, his brooding demeanour, implacable expression and distant gaze stare a mask to his inner anger and self-loathing, but it’s arguably Williams (earning supporting actress nominations) who makes the biggest emotional impact with a brief but devastating scene towards the end that underscores the film’s comparisons to Ordinary People. One it well deserves. (Mon: Electric)
Moonlight (15)
Winner, after that infamous gaff, of the Best Film Oscar, written and directed by Barry Jenkins, this is an arty but emotional look at life for gay black men in America, one that, other than one brief moment, discreetly shot from behind, deliberately avoids any sexual elements.
Divided into three chapters, it opens with Little, detailing the life of the titular black schoolboy Chiron (Alex Hibbert), growing up in 80s inner city Miami, struggling with his confused sexuality, school bullying and a junkie nurse mother, Paula (ferociously played by Oscar nominee Naomie Harris), and taken under the wing of Juan (Oscar winner Mahershala Ali), a drug dealer who becomes his surrogate father and who, in one painfully poignant moment, is asked to explain what a faggot is. At school, Chiron strikes up a tentative friendship with classmate Kevin (Jaden Piner), developing feelings that play out across the following two chapters.
Juan having passed away, part two, Chiron, finds the boy now a teenager (Ashton Sanders), still harassed by school bullies (here Terrel, played by Patrick Decile), still befriended by Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), who calls him Black, and still calling on Juan’s girlfriend Teresea (Janelle Monae) when things get bad at home. He’s learned to hide his sexuality and developed a tough attitude, but is still haunted by his uncertain identity, something that reinforces his position as an outcast. As the chapter moves to its conclusion, it shifts from the tender beach scene of the first sexual contact to Chiron exploding in anger at Terrel, who goaded Kevin into beating him up as part of a ‘game’, and being taken away by the cops.
The final chapter, Black, fast forwards ten years, a bulked up Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) now living in Atlanta and has followed Juan into pushing drugs. One night, he gets an out of the blue call from Kevin (Andre Holland), apologising for what happened and inviting him to visit. Briefly stopping over to see his mother, now a burned out woman in a rest home, wracked with guilt over the way she treated her son, he drives to Miami for a reunion, not quite knowing what he expects to happen, especially on finding Kevin a married father, full of regret that life didn’t turn out as he anticipated.
The classroom incident aside, there’s no major dramas, but rather a small scale, slow burn examination of identity, both as black and gay, of the effects of poverty and of masculinity and how it can become toxic in the face of destructive external influences and cultural pressures. Making effective use of soundtrack and imagery, Jenkins avoids both cliché and sentimentality, but never softens the blows in showing how the stigma of being gay in a macho black culture can lead to both devastating alienation and self-destructive violence. (Cineworld 5 Ways; Electric; Empire Great Park; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Patriots Day (15)
Mark Whalberg reteams up with Lone Survivor/Deepwater Horizon director, Peter Berg, for a third true life drama, here about the events of April 15, 2013 when, towards the end of the annual Boston Marathon, two bombs exploded in the crowds, killing three and wounding many others, leading to a four day citywide manhunt for those responsible. However, there’s nothing crassly jingoistic flag-waving here, simply a procedural thriller designed to honour those involved in the tragedy and seeking to protect their city.
Whalberg, as fictionalised cop Tommy Saunders, is at the centre of the narrative, providing the audience’s eyes as things unfold. On duty just a few yards from the finishing line when the explosion occurs, he’s shocked, but swiftly swings into action until the FBI, led by Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), take over. But, although we get scenes of him with wife (Michelle Monaghan), he’s only one of those in the spotlight as the film intercuts between different stories.
There’s the station Sergeant (JK Simmons) who’ll be at the heart of the eventual shoot-out, a newly married couple who’ll both lose their legs, MIT campus cop Sean Collier (Jake Picking) who was killed when he refused to let the terrorists take his gun, and Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), the young Chinese immigrant who was taken hostage when they hijacked his car, but risked his life to escape and call 911. All of whom get enough backstory to make them feel real rather than simply plot devices.
As the authorities desperately try and track down the bombers, DesLauriers is at loggerheads with the Police Commissioner (John Goodman) and governor (Michael Beach) about not releasing details of the suspects prematurely, Berg, using handheld cameras, grippingly captures the urgency of the situation.
It’s to the film’s credit too that the bombers, Chechen-born brothers Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze) and Jahar Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff), aren’t cardboard cut out bad guys either, as the screenplay addresses their relationship and motivations, perhaps the most memorable moment from this perspective being the scene between Tamerlan’s imperturbable white American Muslim convert wife Kathleen Russell (Melissa Benoist) and her equally implacable female interrogator (Khandi Alexander).
As it heads towards the foregone conclusion, the action cranks up as the net closes in, leading to the fire-fight between the brothers and the cops and the eventual apprehension of the second suspect in backyard boat. But, as well as celebrating the everyday heroism, it also poses the question as to what’s justified in the fight against terrorism when Tommy is taken aback to learn orders have been given not to read the suspects their rights if captured.
Tommy’s monologue about good and evil, love and hate, is a misstep in an otherwise level-headed avoidance of simplifications, but, as its ends by merging docudrama with documentary footage of Red Socks’ Boston Strong celebration and the actual cops and victims involved, it serves reminder that sometimes, like in Hacksaw Ridge, Hollywood heroism is actually the stuff of real life. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Prevenge (15)
Having written and starred in Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, Alice Lowe adds director to the hyphenates, penning another serial killer warped black comedy, this time involving a seven-month pregnant woman rather than sociopathic caravaners. A wry twist on antenatal depression, it has Lowe (who was herself pregnant during filming) as Ruth, a single mother-to-be following the death of her partner in (as hinted at in brief flashbacks) a climbing Touching The Void-like tragedy. We first meet her in a pet shop run by a leering creep (Dan Renton Skinner) whose sales patter is loaded with sexual innuendo. As he bends down to show her one of the spiders, she cuts his throat. “One down”, she remarks. And so, adopting a variety of different names, she moves around Cardiff adding others to the tally, among them DJ Dan (Tom Davis), a repulsive misogynistic pub DJ who pukes into his afro-wig in the back of the taxi and then slobbers all over her. But, it’s not just sexist men she kills. There’s also the kindly guy whose flat share ad she answers, and his flatmate, and also a cold career woman spinster (Kate Dickie) who has no empathy for pregnant job applicants; but, disappointingly, not the very annoyingly upbeat midwife (Jo Hartley).
All of this is because Ruth’s under the delusion that her unborn baby is telling her to kill, though clearly it’s her own grief, anger and a twisted pre-emptive revenge, fuelled by (most of) her victims’ attitudes to women, pregnancy and children, that leads her to the murders and an eventual Halloween party confrontation with a guy (Kayvan Novak) who runs a climbing school.
A grim, grisly and bleakly black satire as well as an observation on how pregnancy can make you feel you no longer have control over your own body, as with Lowe’s deliberately flat monotone performance, it makes a virtue of the mundanity of the settings, its mood of disorientation underpinned by its nervy electronic score. And, although the fact that the victims don’t all conform to the same type muddles the argument about attitudes to pregnancy and the moral debate between conscience and foetus feels overdone, this is an impressive – and impressively transgressive – debut. (Wed: Electric)
Rings (15)
Just like the recent Blair Witch reboot, this latest attempt to resurrect the 1998 Japanese horror is as redundant as it is dull, passing itself off as a sequel while essentially simply recycling the original. The premise, if you missed the genuinely terrifying original or the mediocre American ring cycle remakes, is that you watch a certain videotape and then, seven days later you die, unless you copy it and show it to someone else. The most spine-chilling moment in the original film is when Samara, the ghost girl in the well, black hair draped across her face, appears on a flickering TV screen and then crawls out of it into the room. However, that’s now been done so often it warrants only a passing shiver. Director F. Javier Gutiérrez tries to re-inject some of the terror in the opening sequence, which takes place on a plane, as Samara appears on all the passengers TV screens leading to, well, you know what. After this handy reminder, the film switches to the narrative protagonists, Julia (Matilda Lutz), who stays behind to look after her sick mom when boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe) leaves for college, keeping in touch with him via nightly Skype calls. Until, that is, he disappears, promoting her to head out to try and find him. Enter surly Professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) whose research team (and yes, Holt was one of them) is investigating the source of the alleged death tape, rather recklessly by taking it in turns to watch it, and Samara’s background. But, basically, isn’t that what Naomi Watts tried to do in the previous sequels?
Sure there’s tension, it looks good and the cast provide solid enough performances, but it doesn’t go anywhere the ideas hasn’t been before while the whole idea of videotapes now seems like something off the ark, although, to be fair, that is subsequently for to the file sharing generation. So, creepy small town, creepy house, creepy old lady and creepy blind man (Vincent D’Donofrio) all get wheeled out, but all to yawn effect. Bored of the Rings, indeed. (Vue Star City)
Sing (U)
Essentially an animal version of The X-Factor, Brit director Garth Jennings charts the well worn plot (last served in The Muppet Movie) of putting on a show to save the theatre. Here, the strapped impresario is a koala named Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) who’s inherited his love of theatre, and the theatre itself, from his father,. However, times have changed and his productions have all been flops. He’s broke, the place has seen better days and his llama bank manager is looking to repossess the building.
So, he tells his wooly childhood chum Eddie (John C, Reilly) he’s going to mount a singing contest to pull in the crowds, pooling the last of his cash to offer a $1000 prize. Unfortunately, a slight mishap on the part of his doddery chameleon assistant Miss Crawly sees the posters printed up as $100,000 and spread all over town, inevitably attracting a whole host of hopeful contestants.
The auditions include a snail singing Ride like The Wind and three butt shaking bunnies, but the final selection comes down to Johnny (Taron Egerton), the soulful-voiced gorilla son of a local criminal, Ash (Scarlett Johannson), the talented half of a porcupine punk duo, Mike (Seth MacFarlane), an arrogant egotistical sax-playing mouse with a thing for Sinatra swing, the pairing of Teutonic hog Gunter (Nick Kroll) with Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), the beleaguered mother of 25 piglets and Meena (Tori Kelly), an elephant with serious stage fright issues.
Things play out pretty much as you’d expect with the backstage and homelife stories, things all falling apart (quite literally when Buster introduces a squid light show complete with a water tank to impress Eddie’s retired diva granny, Nana, into bankrolling him), the revelation that the prize money’s non-existent and, of course, everyone coming together to put on the show anyway.
It’s not hugely original, but it is colourful and energetic, packed with a bundle of familiar pop hits, plenty of laughs, some emotional touches and two knockout scenes, one involving Rosalita dancing in a supermarket’s aisles to The Gipsy Kings’ Bamboleo and Meena’s showstopping rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah while, as the young Nana, Jennifer Hudson also gets to deliver a stunning operatic version of Lennon and McCartney’s Carry That Weight. It’s never climbs Zootopia or Secret Life of Pets heights, but it’s infinitely more fun than anything Simon Cowell’s put his name to in recent years. (Cineworld NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Split (15)
Having made a tentative return to form with The Visit, writer-director M Night Shyamalan finally gets his mojo back with this Dissociative Identity Disorder abduction thriller that also affords star James McAvoy one of the best performances of his career.
Wasting no time, the film opens with outsider teen Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) and classmates Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and c Marcia (Jessica Sula) being chloroformed and abducted by a stranger who gets into the car.
They awake in a bunker-like room and a panicked Claire suggests that, whoever their kidnapper is, they attack him when he comes in. Casey, who was never part of the original plan, is calmer and more reasoned, observing they should find out what’s happening first. Their kidnapper reveals himself as Dennis (McAvoy), a stern, shaved head OCD control freak in black who informs them they are to be ‘sacred food’ for who or whatever is coming.
Shortly afterwards, they see a woman through the crack in the door and call out. She enters, but, to their shock, turns out to be Denis, or rather the matriarchal British Patricia, just one of apparently 23 different personalities the inhabit the body of Kevin, one of whom, flamboyant fashion designer Barry, we see visiting Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), the psychiatrist treating his/their case. Citing cases of one personality not having the disability of another, she believes her study could lead to a breakthrough in understanding the potential of the human brain.
Meanwhile, back in the cell, the girls encounter another of Kevin’s personalities, Hedwig, a lisping nine-year-old who is not as easily manipulated as Casey believes him to be.
Escape attempts eventually lead to the three girls being locked in separate rooms, as Dennis announces that the time is coming when the Beast, a hitherto unseen 24th personality, will come to claim then, turning things into a race against the clock.
Punctuated with flashbacks to the young Casey’s abused childhood and scenes with Fletcher dispensing exposition as she tries to work out why Barry is sending constant emails asking for urgent help and who is the actual personality turning up for sessions purporting to be him.
Building a genuinely gripping sense of claustrophobic tension, anticipation and dread as its cat and mouse game heads towards the final confrontation, sometimes changing clothes, sometimes with just a facial expression, McAvoy brilliantly switches between personalities, often in the same line, making effective use of pauses (and delivering a truly creepy dance routine to Kanye West), while Taylor-Joy subtly manages to hint at her own dark torments and the way she has learned to act and think in order to survive.
As ever, Shyamalan makes his usual cameo and, of course, delivers his trademark twists, one of which delivers an audacious self-referencing moment that hints at a very intriguing prospect for the sequel. (Odeon Broadway Plaza; Vue Star City)
T2 Trainspotting (18)
For many Trainspotting was the defining film about 90s Britain. Now, 21 years later, the original team, minus Kevin McKidd (but to whom homage is paid) return for the sequel, adapted from Irvine Welsh’s Porno. Returning from Amsterdam, where he’s been living for the 20 years since running off with the money he and his mates stole, Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) first hooks up with Spud (Ewan Bremner), who’s back on heroin after his life and marriage fell apart, just in time to save him from suicide. Next on the reunion list is Simon, Sick Boy, who’s running a sex tape blackmail scam with his Bulgarian girlfriend Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova). He’s rather less pleased to see Mark, but decides to pretend to be friends so he can stitch him up like he did to them. This entails enlisiting him to raise the money to transform the run down pub he’s inherited into a brothel, with Veronika as the madam. Meanwhile, Begbie (Robert Carlyle), as much as a hard man psycho has ever, engineers an escape from prison and sets about resuming his life of crime, roping son Frank in as reluctant accomplice. Although Simon keeps Mark’s return from him, the pair eventually bump into one another (in a very funny scene involving adjacent toilet cubicles), fuelling Begbie’s determination to get kill him.
With none of the four’s lives having amounted to anything in the past two decades, basing the narrative on the mantra ‘first comes opportunity, then comes betrayal’, that’s pretty much it for the plot. Mark and Sick Boy enlist Spud’s help in redesigning and refurbishing the pub while he himself comes off the scank and, encouraged by Veronika (with whom, naturally, Mark has sex) starts writing down stories about their past misadventures (essentially an excuse to revisit the original, both verbally and in flashbacks).
A run in with the law facilitates a contrived cameo from Kelly Macdonald as Diane Coulston, now a lawyer, as well as fleeting moments from James Cosmo as Mark’s dad and Shirley Henderson as Gail, now Spud’s estranged wife, but otherwise, as before it’s the dynamic between the four central characters that drives things along.
At one point Sick Boy accuses Mark of wallowing in nostalgia rather than moving on, and, to an extent, the same could be leveled at the film which looks to recreate the feel of the original with its hyperkinetic camerawork, trippy sequences and constant throbbing soundtrack. Some things work, others don’t. The plot isn’t especially inspired, so the film relies on the characters and the themes of friendship, self-interest and betrayal, but, while more melancholic this time around, it doesn’t have anything new to add to the original, history repeating itself in the final turn of events.
There’s a very funny vein of often dark humour and, rather like playing out the greatest hits, an updated revisiting of Renton’s Choose Life monologue where the film identifies mobile phones and social networking as the new heroin. As indeed is nostalgia, effectively using it to illustrate the danger of how, in trying to relive the past, we end up running to stand still. Which, to some extent, rather sums up the film itself. (Empire Great Park; Vue Star City)
xXx – The Return of Xander Cage (12A)
Last seen in 2005, extreme sports action hero and agent for the xXx-program, Xander Cage is resurrected for a franchise-reviving bout of all action popcorn nonsense that remembers to never take itself too seriously.
When a satellite plummets from orbit and crashes into New York, killing xXx-program founder Gibbons (Samuel L Jackson) just as he’s recruiting a new agent and then a multi-cultural team invade a top secret briefing entailing assorted top government suits, take out all the security and steal the gizmo responsible, the so called Pandora’s Box, then new NSA head honcho Jane Marke (Toni Collette) seeks out the long presumed dead Cage (Vin Diesel), who’s actually living it up in the Dominican Republic, putting his skills to effective use to ensure the locals can watch the big match on cable TV.
Persuaded to return to action and having identified where the crew responsible for the attack are hanging out, as well as reclaiming his trademark fur coat, Cage insists on recruiting his own team of thrill-seekers, comprising punky green-haired crackshot Adele (Ruby Rose), crazy adrenaline junkie stuntman Tennyson (Rory McCann) and Nick, a DJ known as the Hood. To which end, they duly set off to the Philippines where the other team of mercenaries, leader Xiang (Donnie Yen), fellow martial arts expert Talon (Tony Jaa), strongman Hawk (Michael Bisping) and the sexy but lethal Serena (Deepika Padukone) are hanging out, to recover the device. To complicate matters, Serena thinks it should be destroyed while Xiang wants to hang on to it, all of which is just an excuse for the three of them to play a game of pass the grenade and for Xiang and Diesel to have a surfing motorbikes on water skies scene across the ocean.
At which point, it all starts to get a bit confusing to keep track of the good guys and bad guys, as well as even noisier and more action packed, a bit like Mission Impossible’s snotty OCD little brother.
Suffice to say, everyone ends up working together to track down the real bad guy and the other bigger and better Pandora’s Box, a nuts and bolts plot that serves to allow any number of fast cut fire, fist and feet fights, more eye-popping stunts, deliberately cheesy dialogue, and copious amounts of scenery chewing, much courtesy of the straight-faced Collette, as well as a delightful comic turn from Nina Dobrev as Marke’s bumbling geeky tech-op assistant.
Directed by D.J. Caruso, predictable and illogical in equal measure, its knowingly self-aware and comes with the obligatory surprise revelations, a grin-inducing cameo and, of course, the epilogue set-up for another sequel. Bring it on. (Odeon Broadway Plaza)
CINEMAS
Cineworld 5 Ways – 181 Broad St, 0871 200 2000
Cineworld NEC – NEC 0871 200 2000
Cineworld Solihull – Mill Ln, Solihull 0871 200 2000
The Electric Cinema – 47–49 Station Street, 0121 643 7879
Empire – Great Park, Rubery, 0871 471 4714
Empire Sutton Coldfield – Maney Corner, Sutton Coldfield
0871 471 4714
The Everyman – The Mailbox 0871 906 9060
MAC – Cannon Hill Park 0121 446 3232
Mockingbird, Custard Factory 0121 224 7456.
Odeon Birmingham -Birmingham, 0871 224 4007
Odeon Broadway Plaza – Ladywood Middleway, 0333 006 7777
Odeon West Bromwich – Cronehills Linkway, West Bromwich 0333 006 7777
Reel – Hagley Rd, Quinton Halesowen 0121 421 5316
Showcase Walsall – Bentley Mill Way, Walsall 0871 220 1000
Vue Star City – Watson Road, 08712 240 240
