SECOND SCREEN
In his prime, Scot Sean Connery was an enthusiastic golfer, so he should be delighted with Tommy’s
Honour (PG) HHHH, a stirring tale of both Scotland and golf made by his actor-turned-director son Jason.
War And Peace star Jack Lowden is terrifically good as Tommy Morris – the talented and ambitious son of Old Tom Morris (Peter Mullan), the esteemed greenkeeper at St Andrews, founder of the Open and three-times winner of the tournament himself.
Just because his father is happy to doff his cap to the gentlemen of the R&A golf club doesn’t mean young Tommy is also going to. Especially when he knows he’s a better golfer than all of them. Ah, I sense trouble ahead. And trophies. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the gambling, which, back in the 1860s and 1870s, was absolutely rife. What ensues, at least initially, smacks of period television but the underlying story is such a good one (young Tommy would win his first Open when he was just 17) that it soon gains real momentum. And it’s hard not to warm to a film that includes such stupendous facial hair, convincing golf swings and that rarely-heard rebuke ‘fornicatrix!’. It Comes At Night (15A) HHH is a postapocalyptic chiller in the style of The
Road or 28 Days Later, set in a world where a plague has driven survivors into isolated houses in the countryside, where they take every possible precaution to avoid contact with potential carriers. So when a stranger breaks into the house being shared by Paul (Joel Edgerton) and his wife and teenage son, we know trouble probably lies ahead. This is the sort of stylish, lowbudget offering that can kick-start a filmmaking career but while its cast ratchet up the tension, some obvious plot holes and writer-director Trey Edward Shults’s overuse of nightmares may frustrate commercial audiences.
Remember the oft-heard complaint
that there aren’t enough good film roles for older women? Well, you won’t hear it this weekend, with The Last Word (15A) HHH starring 83-yearold Shirley MacLaine and The Midwife (12A) HHHH starring Catherine Deneuve, just 73, arriving in cinemas, where Hampstead, with Diane Keaton, 71, is already playing.
MacLaine, who rather splendidly looks every minute her age, plays Harriet Lauler, a cantankerous and long-retired advertising executive who, in a moment of blinding insight, realises how badly her future obituary is going to read. She’s straight down to her local paper to demand that Anne (Amanda Seyfried), the paper’s obituary writer, puts that right. There’s so little for Anne to go on but slowly she begins to warm to her task, taking the older woman in hand but failing to realise that Harriet – apparently possessed of hitherto hidden depths – is doing exactly the same to her. This has some sweet and funny moments but at times feels contrived, clunky and way too long.
Something similar happens in Paris when Beatrice (Deneuve), a woman who has lived for pleasure, re-enters the life of Claire (Catherine Frot), a long-single mother who has devoted her life to her duties as a midwife. But what brings the two women together after 30 years? With Martin Provost’s film deepening pleasingly as it goes on, and both women giving excellent performances, you’ll enjoy trying to work it all out.
Song To Song (15A) represents a minor return to form for the increasingly self-indulgent filmmaker Terrence Malick.
Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara and Michael Fassbender are enmeshed in an adulterous love triangle. Is time moving forward or back here? It’s hard to tell but, despite some nice moments, it’s definitely going on too long.