Film

Bill

20/09/15

The Horrible Histories TV team, take a fairly convincing step up onto the big screen with this radical retelling of the life of William Shakespeare. When we first meet Bill (Matthew Baynton) he’s playing lute with Stratford On Avon’s hottest band, Mortal Coil. However, his propensity for indulging in tortured solos, soon prompts them to tell him to ‘shuffle off.’ (This will give you some idea of the standard of jokes on offer). However, Bill feels he’s destined for the big time and writes his first play, a knockabout comedy, but when his long-suffering wife Anne (Martha Howe Douglas) is unsupportive, he sets off for ‘that’ London to seek his fortune. He soon falls in with down-on-his-luck playwright, Christopher Marlowe (Jim Howick) and together they write a new play – but little do they know that the dastardly King Philip of Spain (Ben Willbond) is cooking up a fiendish plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, (a gurning Helen McCrory) for which he needs one vital ingredient: a decent play.

Fans of the TV series should enjoy this as the format hasn’t changed a great deal, with the familiar players taking on multiple roles. There’s plenty of slapstick for the younger viewers, some more intellectual asides to keep the parents happy and if the whole enterprise has the hit-and-miss feel of the average Monty Python film, it doesn’t really matter as the end result is rarely ever less than entertaining.

It’s also very refreshing to encounter a family film that, for once, doesn’t come absolutely coated in saccharine. The crowd this afternoon was proof enough that it’s reaching its target audience. We were probably the only grown ups there who didn’t have a chortling child in tow. (I think we got away with it.)

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

45 Years

12/09/15

45 Years is a compelling film, laying bare the emotional complexities that lie beneath the surface of any relationship. Here, Geoff and Kate’s plans to celebrate their forty-fifth wedding anniversary are suddenly derailed by the arrival of a letter, informing Geoff that the body of his former girlfriend has been found in Switzerland. Perfectly preserved in the glacier that killed her, Katya is transformed into an idealised Sleeping Beauty of a woman: an embodiment of youth and the heady rush of first love. As Geoff retreats into the memories of what he has lost, Kate is left bereft, struggling to cope with what she knows is an irrational jealousy – because what’s the point in being jealous of a ghost?

It’s subtly done. Tom Courtenay portrays Geoff as vulnerable and conflicted. His love for Katya is as well-preserved as her body, but he loves Kate too, and doesn’t want to hurt her with this visit from the past. “It feels like it happened to another person,” he tells her, and it’s clearly true. But Kate, played with wonderful nuance by Charlotte Rampling, is thrown by the revelation that Geoff would have married Katya – if she hadn’t died – and this threatens to undermine their whole relationship. “Was she blonde?” she asks, hopefully. “No,” Geoff tells her, “She was dark.” “Like me.” The fear of being second best, of being the consolation prize, erodes Kate’s confidence in everything that they have built.

And it’s heartbreaking. Two people, who have enjoyed and endured so much together, who have shared their lives for almost half a century, whose caring is so ingrained it’s become routine, can still be unsettled and rendered insecure. It’s heartbreaking – and it’s beautiful. The whole film feels somehow very real.

The Norfolk Broads make a convincing backdrop, and the cluttered house is a nice reminder of the baggage the pair have accumulated throughout the time they’ve shared. The photographs Geoff has hidden in the attic have always been there for the finding, but it’s only now that they have come to light.

And it’s an absolute delight to see a film about old people that isn’t about impending death or comic ineptitude. This is a love story – with sex and tears and tenderness. And it’s just as affecting as any young romance.

It’s well worth watching, if you get the chance.

4.6 stars

Susan Singfield

Legend

11/09/15

Brian Helgeland’s take on the Kray twins is a curate’s egg of a film; good in parts, but not good enough overall to deserve the welter of four star reviews it has received. Mind you, the Guardian’s two star appraisal was probably a bit harsh, though the publicity generated by the film’s publicists, who cunningly made it look like a four star on the poster surely deserves some kind of special award for chutzpah (see image). Unlike the previous attempt at filming this story (famously starring Gary and Martin Kemp) this version begins with the twins at the height of their powers in London’s East End and is narrated by Frances (Emily Browning) the troubled teenager who ends up as Reggie Kray’s long-suffering wife. Right from the beginning, this is a problem because Frances is actually a rather dull character and we really don’t learn enough about her to fully empathise with her plight, even when her misery turns to tragedy.

On the plus side, we get two Tom Hardys for the price of one. He is, of course, an extraordinary actor and he manages to portray the two very different brothers with swaggering conviction – but it has to be said that his characterisation of Ronnie Kray is largely comedic (brilliantly so in a scene where he attempts to dance to Strangers In The Night) but I felt distinctly uneasy to hear an audience laughing out loud at the utterances of an unabashed psychopath. Call me old fashioned, but that just felt wrong.

There’s a reasonable attempt here to recreate the 60s backdrop, replete with a vintage soundtrack, but the script fails to fully explore some important characters in the story. Christopher Eccleston as Nipper Read, the copper pledged with the difficult task of bringing the Krays to justice is (if you’ll forgive the pun) criminally underused and so is Tara Fitzgerald as Frances’s mother, a woman who famously wore black to her daughter’s wedding.

There are some extremely violent set pieces – a gang fight in a pub, where hammers are put to inappropriate use, and the famous murders of George Cornell and Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, but they are filmed with a kind of cartoonish zeal that somehow undermines their severity and inevitably, glamourises the ‘pay up or get duffed up’ world in which the Krays operated. Again, I felt conflicted by this. Surely villains should be scorned, not paraded as role models?

All-in-all then, this feels like a missed opportunity. After viewing the trailer, I’d expected to love this film, but I came away feeling that it should have (and easily could have) been so much better than it actually was.

3.2 stars

Philip Caveney

The Savoy Cinema – Reloaded

11/09/15

Heaton Moor, Manchester

For many people (me included) it sounds like the proverbial dream job. But for Louis Mundin and his fiancée, Sophie Smith, it’s soon going to be a reality. This likeable young couple will be managing Heaton Moor’s iconic Savoy Cinema when it reopens, fully refurbished, in late October.

The Savoy has been a fixture on ‘the Moor’ since 1923. Its first feature was silent movie, The Virgin Queen, which was accompanied by music from a string quartet. Over the years, the Savoy has endured, surviving a barbaric 70s refit, sporadic attempts to turn it into a ‘fun-pub’ and the dark mutterings of those who predicted that the advent of digital cinema would finally sound its death knell. But, as it turned out, the doom mongers were wrong. The Savoy is currently in the midst of an extensive refurbishment.

When I arrive on a sunny Friday afternoon, the place is a hive of industry and it’s apparent at a glance that this must be a labour of love, although – at the moment -it’s more like hard labour as the Mundin family work around the clock to ensure they meet their launch deadline of October 23rd. Sophie is painting wood stain onto sheets of plywood, while Louis is in conference with a team of builders. Louis’s mum Amanda is there too, overseeing the workforce and, somewhere amidst the thumping of lump hammers and the screeching of electric saws, I catch a fleeting glimpse of Tony, Amanda’s husband. It’s clear that the Mundins are an industrious crew, who rarely stop for a break, but I eventually manage to coax Louis and Sophie to a (relatively) quiet spot where we can chat.

I begin by asking if this is the realisation of a long-held ambition.

Louis: Well, yes. We first got into cinema about eight years ago, when Mum took over the Ritz Cinema in Belper. We worked there part time, helping out behind the bar and so forth. Me and Sophie both love film so when this opportunity came up, we grabbed it with both hands.

I remark that they seem to possess an enviable skill set between them.

Sophie: Well, we recently did up our home, so we used that very much as a training exercise!

The Savoy offers reasonably priced membership deals and the Mundins were initially expecting to sell 500 of them at most. So they must have been absolutely blown away with the response they’ve had.

Louis: It’s amazing. We’ve been absolutely inundated with support from day one. At last count we had 3,400 members, which is completely unheard of.

Indeed, the response was so enthusiastic that initial plans to restore just a proportion of the Savoy’s seating had to be hastily rejigged and now all 180 seats will be brought back into play – and not just any old seats! The standard kind will be augmented by luxury Pullman style seating and, for the more romantically inclined, there’ll even be double sofas so customers can snuggle up while they view.

Sophie: They are incredibly comfortable seats!

But, I ask, with so many members, what happens if everybody turns up on the same night?

Louis: That would actually be a good problem to have!

Sophie: As with our other cinemas (the family also run the Regal in Melton Mowbray), booking will be a key element. Members will receive film listings a few days prior to general release so they’ll have the opportunity to book seats for the films they really want to see.

Louis: And a week before we officially open we’ll be starting our free members’ previews, a whole week’s worth of them, as a thank you to everyone who has put their faith in us. Depending on take up, we’ll probably also offer free Sunday shows that week, so nobody is disappointed.

I ask what their biggest challenge has been and both of them say that restoring the frontage has been a real struggle. The original plan had always been to expose the elegant Doric columns that supported the portico, but once revealed, it soon became apparent that whoever boxed them in back in the 1970s had not treated them with the necessary degree of respect. In short, they’d knocked the living daylights out of them.

Louis: We worked with the conservation officers on that. It was in everyone’s interests to preserve them, but unfortunately they’d been too badly damaged and were no longer safe. In the end, we had to accept that they’d have to come down, but we’re going to replace them with cast stone pillars, that will recreate the original look. They’ll be as close to identical as we can possibly get.

Of course, it’s not just about restoring the original style. The Savoy will boast state-of-the-art digital projection, surround sound, and there’ll even be live link- ups to ballet and opera events. There’ll be intelligent programming, a mixture of art house and commercial films, silver screen shows for pensioners and weekend matinees for the kids.

I can’t resist asking Louis and Sophie to name their favourite films.

Louis: I’d have to go for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’m a massive Peter Jackson fan.

Sophie: I like a good psychological thriller, so I’d definitely go for Shutter Island. It’s got Leonardo Di Caprio and it’s got one of those endings that you can’t stop talking about afterwards.

Plans are already afoot for Halloween. Members have been asked to choose from a shortlist of five movies for the big night. (At the moment, Ghostbusters is the frontrunner, closely followed by The Shining, though my personal choice from the list would have to be Rosemary’s Baby.)

I finish up by asking about the couple’s mission statement. What do they hope to achieve by bringing this beautiful old cinema back to its former glory?

Louis: We want it to be an asset to the community. We would like to give something back to the people who have given us so much faith and trust. We want the Savoy to be one of the best cinemas in the country and there’s absolutely no reason why it can’t be exactly that.

Sophie: The Savoy is going to have the best projection, the best sound, there will be no compromise on quality and people will even be able to enjoy a glass of wine while they watch.

Sounds like heaven, I tell them. Lead me to it!

Read more about the cinema’s progress at

http://www.savoycinemaheaton.com/blog.htm

Ricki and the Flash

06/09/15

Let me start with a question. Is there any role on this planet that Meryl Streep can’t actually play? I only ask this because we’ve segued straight from a trailer for Suffragette, where she portrays Emmeline Pankhurst, to this little gem, where she plays Ricki Rendazzo, an ageing rocker, struggling to keep her dreams of stardom alive as she fronts a small time band (the eponymous Flash) by night and works by day at the checkout of an LA supermarket.

And you know what? Streep absolutely nails it.

The film starts as it means to go on, with Ricki’s band blasting out a credible version of Tom Petty’s American Girl and for once, in a movie, this sounds like genuine musicians playing genuine music – as well it should, because Streep recorded her own vocals for this and she’s fronting a real band, featuring Rick Springfield as the new man in her life, Greg.

When Ricki takes a call from her ex-husband, Pete (Kevin Kline), informing her that their daughter, Julie (Streep’s real life daughter, Mamie Gummer), has just been dumped by her husband and is feeling pretty low, Ricki heads back to Indianapolis, to try and mediate with Julie and to reconnect with her two sons, who have pretty much cut Ricki out of their lives since she broke up with their father. She also has to deal with Pete’s new wife, Maureen (Audra McDonald), a woman who seems to have been invented simply to illustrate the true meaning of perfection. Can Ricki have any hope of patching up all those wounds from the past? Or has she simply been away for far too long?

This is a gorgeous film, perfectly pitched to avoid stereotyping and mawkishness. It’s cleverly scripted by Diablo Cody – the scene where Ricki sits down for dinner with her estranged family (including her son’s fiancee) is a comic masterclass – and there’s a resolution here that, in the wrong hands, could have come across as hopelessly sentimental but, guided by seasoned professional Jonathan Demme, is an absolute triumph. Cody has some history here. Her mother in law apparently fronted a rock band for years and that experience has clearly paid dividends. That odd title isn’t doing the film any favours at all, but you really should check this out. It’s a heartwarming tale about love, relationships and the redemptive power of rock n’ roll, well worth the price of admission.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

American Ultra

05/09/15

Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is a small-town guy, stuck in a dead end job at the local convenience store. He spends his spare time smoking dope and doodling ideas for a comic book featuring a space travelling super monkey called Apollo Ape. Luckily, he’s in a long term relationship with Phoebe (Kristen Stewart), who seems to be his perfect soulmate and who tolerates the fact that Mike has crippling anxiety attacks whenever he tries to travel. Most recently, a long-desired vacation to Hawaii is nixed, when he finds himself running to the john to vomit. As is so often the case in movies like this, all is not what it seems and circumstances conspire to reveal that Mike is in fact, a brainwashed undercover CIA operative, who has been waiting for a certain sequence of words to reactivate him.

Eisenberg is, as ever, a likeable screen presence and Kristen Stewart was always a better actress than the execrable Twilight series allowed her to demonstrate. The first third of this movie is great fun, as Mike realises that he has the potential to be a highly skilled assassin – but once those talents are acquired, the film loses some of its appeal as it becomes a series of ever more complicated Heath Robinsonesque murders. All manner of gadgets are utilised in Mike’s struggle for survival – mallets, screwdrivers, frying pans and claw hammers – you get the impression that here’s yet another film that must have been sponsored by B & Q. The action is unflinchingly bloody, but shot with enough cartoonish relish to just about excuse its most brutal excesses. Topher Grace and Connie Britton as two warring CIA honchos add depth to Max Landis’s script and there’s an appealing cameo from Bill Pullman as their ruthless boss, but the conviction remains that this could have been better if it had managed to maintain the more appealing elements on show in the first half hour.

American Ultra is eminently watchable, but could easily have been something more than that.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

02/09/15

We were far too late getting on to this – largely because an entire month of reviewing at the Edinburgh Fringe left us with too little time to actually make it to the cinema: a sorry state of affairs. Rogue Nation is the latest improbably titled instalment in Tom Cruise’s evergreen TV spy spinoff and as the series goes, it’s one of the better efforts – an adrenalin fuelled romp with an outrageously daft plot and a whole heap of inexplicable gadgetry to help the IMF team achieve their goals.

The film starts as it means to go on with the throttle wide open. Ethan Hunt attempts to board a plane… after it’s taken off. (Don’t try this at home. That’s my old stamping ground of RAF Wittering hundreds of feet below, by the way and yes, that is Cruise clinging on to the side of the plane. Nobody can say he doesn’t earn his millions.)

Hunt is on the trail of a mysterious organisation called The Syndicate, who have dedicated themselves to the eradication of the IMF and who are headed up by evil villain, Solomon Lane (a deeply creepy Sean Harris.) As Hunt hurtles around the world, evading assassins and leaping athletically from very high buildings, back at base, Brandt (Jeremy Renner) is engaged in a more pedestrian battle as grumpy CIA man, Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) attempts to get the Impossible Missions team shut down. It seems he finds them a bout too reckless for his liking. Soon Hunt is pretty much out there on his own, aided only by his hapless bessie mate, Benjie (Simon Pegg, who must be relieved to add a much-needed hit to his CV) and by the mysterious Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who keeps popping up just in time to save Hunt’s life.

It’s fairly pointless to go into the plot. Most of it is unfathomable and all of it is unlikely, but it’s presented with enough tongue-in-cheek brio to suspend your disbelief. There’s an ingenious set piece at the Vienna opera house, while an underwater sequence where Hunt has to hold his breath for three minutes wracks up the tension to an almost unbearable degree. On the downside, there’s a motorbike/car chase that seems a tad perfunctory this time around, but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, this is a superior slice of entertainment, which should keep you riveted till the final credits. And of course it still features Lalo Schifrin’s sinewy, unforgettable theme tune, which is a thriller all by itself.

What else can I say? Mission accomplished.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Southpaw

06/08/15

Jake Gyllenhaal is always an interesting actor and, in Southpaw, he’s pulled off yet another transformation, piling on the muscle and jettisoning his good looks to play light heavyweight boxer Billy Hope; indeed, it’s hard to believe this is the same actor who gave us the creepy, emaciated ambulance-chaser he portrayed so brilliantly in Nightcrawler. We first meet Billy as he grimly holds on to his title belt in a bruising, bloody confrontation with a much younger fighter. The boxing sequences don’t really compare with the mesmerising, almost dreamlike sequences in Scorcese’s Raging Bull, but they’re nonetheless realistic enough to make the more sensitive viewers wince. But fate is waiting in the wings for Billy. When his wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams) is accidentally shot dead in a fracas at a charity event, Billy finds himself on a slippery slope downhill as, in quick succession, he loses his licence to fight, his home is repossessed and his daughter, Leila (a winning performance from Oona Lawrence) is taken by child protective services. This is all harrowing stuff and director Antoine Fuqua mines it expertly for maximum distress; at several points I find myself tearing up. Can Billy ever find redemption and rebuild his career? Hey, is the Pope a Catholic?

It has to be said that from this bleak first third, the film enters a very familiar trajectory as Billy teams up with washed-up-boxer- turned-trainer, Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker), who quietly guides his protégée back to the top of his game. (Anyone who’s seen Rocky, will know the form. In that film, Burgess Meredith did pretty much the same with Rocky Balboa.) Whitaker manages the role with his customary skill and there’s a surprisingly decent turn from 50 Cents as a mercenary boxing promoter (who ironically declared his own ‘strategic’ bankruptcy recently – is this where he got the idea?).

Maybe Billy’s fall from grace is a little over the top – could anybody as successful as Hope fall quite so fast and quite so hard? And maybe his path back to championship fitness in just six weeks is a little too easy, encapsulated as it is in a perfunctory training montage. But nevertheless, the final confrontation is compelling enough to keep you on the edge of your seat till the final count.

All in all, this is decent entertainment with a distinctly gloomy edge.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

The Legend Of Barney Thomson

29/07/15

Robert Carlyle has been suspiciously quiet of late, but The Legend of Barney Thomson, based on a series of novels by Douglas Lindsay, puts him on both sides of the camera, as he directs and stars in this gruesome farce concerning the misadventures of a Glaswegian barber. Barney (Carlyle) has been working at Hendersons for most of his adult life but because he lacks ‘the chat,’ he’s beginning to prove unpopular with the regular customers and is on the verge of being given the push. This is a disaster for him as Barney is a tragic character. He has no real friends and his diffident personality (a far cry from Begbie in Trainspotting) means that everyone takes advantage of him. This includes his pushy mother, Cemolina, (a scene-stealing turn from Emma Thompson as a chain-smoking, foul mouthed harridan with a gambling addiction.) Meanwhile, Glasgow is being rocked by a series of murders, made even more shocking by the fact that the killer has a predilection for mailing body parts from the victims (all male) to the next of kin. Events become more complicated when Barney unexpectedly finds himself in the frame as a potential murder suspect and soon falls under the watchful gaze of the vicious DI Holdall (Ray Winstone).

Once you get past the outrageous nature of the plot and the fact that everything is played with the volume turned up to eleven, there’s much to enjoy here as the hapless Barney stumbles from one potential disaster to another. Carlyle uses some infamous Glasgow locations as his backdrops and even though the results are unlikely to endear themselves to the Scottish tourist board, they give the film a definitive look and style that speaks volumes. There are also some superb cameos here – Tom Courtney as the priggish Chief Superintendent McManaman is an absolute hoot, while Ashley Jenson makes a meal of her role as an uptight Detective Inspector locked in a bitter feud with Holdall.

While the film is far from perfect, it’s nonetheless entertaining and occasionally had the sparse audience at the showing we attended laughing out loud. But a quick glance around the less-than-packed auditorium speaks volumes for its chances of success. A pity, because this is a bold film, that takes no prisoners. And that’s a rare thing in these troubled times.

3.7 stars

Philip Caveney

Inside Out

28/07/15

Viewers of a certain vintage may retain fond memories of The Numskulls – a weekly story in The Beano which featured the inside of a young boy’s head and the cartoon creatures that operated his moods, emotions and functions. The similarities are probably coincidental, but with Inside Out, it’s as though the team at Pixar took that same basic premise and elevated it to levels of sophistication that The Beano could only dream of.

Most of the action takes place inside the emotional world of a young girl called Riley, who has recently been uprooted from her home in Minnesota to live in an unfamiliar new house in San Francisco. The dominant force in her world up to this point has been Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) but as Riley’s comfortable existence is rocked by unforeseen problems, the other resident emotions – Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear start to exert their influences too. Writer/directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen have created a complex internal world where everything depends on the different emotions working together as a team. Joy is convinced that in order for Riley to be truly happy, her influence must dominate proceedings. When Sadness (Phyllis Smith) attempts to be involved, the equilibrium is upset and Riley’s world appears to be in danger of coming apart at the scenes. Joy and Sadness now have to team up in order to put her back on an even keel.

Pixar have always been brilliant at creating films that are as appealing to adults as they are to children and after a recent run of disappointments (Cars 2 anyone?) it’s great to see them back at the top of their game. Indeed, Inside Out is so sophisticated you can’t help suspecting that the adults get by far the better deal here; where else would you find a kid’s animation that gleefully references Roman Polanski’s Chinatown? Don’t get me wrong, the film is surely big enough and shiny enough to keep the younger members of the audience happy, but they’ll be missing so many sly in-jokes and observations that can really only be fully appreciated once maturity has kicked in.

Suffice to say that this is delightfully inventive stuff that never loses pace or its unerring sense of direction, and there’s a conclusion here that will wring real tears from all but the stone-hearted. When Pixar was purchased by the Disney organisation, there was much dark speculation that it would find itself neutered by the House of Mouse, so it’s heartening to report that Inside Out steers well clear of the usual ‘quest for happiness’ ending and opts instead for something a tad more realistic. Don’t miss this one – and whatever you do, don’t feel that you need to have a child in tow in order to enjoy it. This film would give Sigmund Freud a run for his money.

Don’t be in too much of a hurry to vacate your seats either. In the usual Pixar tradition, there’s an end credit reel that provides some of the film’s funniest moments.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Bouquets & Brickbats

Theatre – Film – Comedy – Food

Film

Bill

45 Years

Legend

The Savoy Cinema – Reloaded

Ricki and the Flash

American Ultra

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Southpaw

The Legend Of Barney Thomson

Inside Out