SECOND SCREEN
and hugely successful financial guru who, having been sent to prison for insider trading, then has to rebuild her life with the help of her former PA (Kristen Bell) and the relentless belief that they can both make a fortune selling brownies door-to-door. Oh, and there’s a vertically challenged business rival (Peter Dinklage), who may or may not have the hots for her, involved somewhere too.
It’s heavily reliant on physical comedy for its laughs but there are one or two nice lines and McCarthy does bring her customary edgy rudeness to the proceedings. One for established fans only, I think.
Following the announcement in 2013 that Studio Ghibli cofounder and creative driving force Hayao Miyazaki was to retire, the working assumption has been that When Marnie Was There (PG) ★★★ will be the last feature from the Japanese animation house. And for a delicious half an hour or so, it looks as if Ghibli – maker of Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle – would be bowing out on a five-star high, as the wistfully drawn story of Anna, a lonely 12-year-old raised in Sapporo by a woman who isn’t her birth mother, is slowly and rather beautifully established.
Anna feels a perpetual outsider, and when her asthma gets bad she is sent to a seaside fishing village for the summer. It is here she discovers the Marsh House, a dilapidated ruin by day but which by night – or simply when no one else is looking – seems to come magically alive. And at the Marsh House, she meets her new friend Marnie.
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi and adapted from Joan G Robinson’s book, the film remains hauntingly beautiful to look at, but we’re on pretty familiar ground by now. Is Marnie a figment of Anna’s imagination, a ghost or something else? Finding out is a slow, repetitive and slightly more predictable experience than I hoped.
Michael Moore, the maverick documentary-maker, returns to pretty well-trodden territory with Where To Invade Next (15A) ★★★, which sees him travelling around (mainly) Europe in search of social welfare ideas that he can take home to an America that he feels has been bankrupted by unsuccessful wars.
Unsurprisingly, he warms to things such as eight weeks’ paid holiday in Italy, gourmet school lunches in France and free university education in Slovenia.
It’s entertaining but selective to the point of being actively misleading. And what is interesting – and possibly a little depressing – is how easily you can now substitute the word ‘Britain’ for ‘America’.
‘It is hauntingly beautiful to look at, but we’re on pretty familiar ground’