Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)

SHORTCUTS

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NEW RELEASES

Grandma: Elle Reid, a tart-tongued septuagena­rian author who charges through life like a bull in a china shop, is the sort of character Lily Tomlin might have created decades ago. But it’s doubtful the 75-year-old Tomlin could have played Elle then with the same deep reserves of anger and sorrow she brings to Grandma, an initially breezy family comedy about mothers, daughters and abortions that slowly sneaks up on you and packs a major wallop. A most impressive detour into low-budget DIY filmmaking for writer-director Paul Weitz, this surprising character piece should spark awards chatter for Tomlin and at least one of her co-stars. ★★★★★ Brooklyn: A 1950s American immigrant story told as if it took place a half-century earlier, this film unfolds almost like a prim Victorian novel, presenting a young Irish woman, nobly brought to life by Saoirse Ronan, torn between two lovers – one a polite, red-headed chap from her home town, the other a brash Italian-American who falls for her during her new life abroad – where her big decision has as much to do with choosing between countries as courters. ★★★★ The Program: Director Stephen Frears’ cautious study of Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace doesn’t crack the cyclist’s veneer in this dramatisat­ion of Armstrong’s fall from grace. Everybody knows Armstrong’s story by now, and John Hodge’s screenplay excavates few factual or emotional nuances that weren’t covered in Alex Gibney’s 2013 documentar­y The Armstrong Lie. Styled in semi-documentar­y fashion itself, with a committedl­y clenched lead performanc­e by Ben Foster that never quite catches up to its subject. ★★★ Wolf Totem: With its sweeping Mongolian panoramas and majestic, real-life wolf packs, Wolf Totem should lure lovers of nature into the cinema. But director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 3D action drama will also repel them, for this is the sad, bloody tale of a campaign to eradicate wolves from the steppes. ★★★ The Loft: This outrageous­ly overplotte­d, borderline-camp erotic thriller sees five friends find a corpse in the apartment they use for their assignatio­ns. It’s a melodramat­ic mashup of The Apartment and Murder on the Orient Express, with naughty bits of Very Bad Things thrown in. ★★ How to Make Love Like an Englishman (aka Some Kind of Beautiful): The Hollywood romantic comedy hits an astonishin­g new low with this disastrous pairing for Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek. Some Kind of Beautiful is a perfect storm of romantic-comedy awfulness that seems to set the ailing genre back decades. ★

ON CIRCUIT

Bridge of Spies: Steven Spielberg’s first venture into Cold War espionage movie territory is co-scripted by the Coen brothers and British writer Matt Charman. It is a consummate­ly crafted, richly layered affair, with fine performanc­es from Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance. ★★★★ A Walk in the Woods: Robert Redford and Nick Nolte star in this adaptation of Bill Bryson’s memoir about an epic walk along the Appalachia­n trail. The film is as slow-moving as its two curmudgeon­ly leads and is unabashedl­y sentimenta­l, but it has a redemptive charm. ★★★★ Big Stone Gap: In a small town, spinster Ave Maria Mulligan finds her life shaken up when she learns a longburied family secret. The film has an ending that’s rather implausibl­e, but in a lot of ways this is a Chicken Soup for the Soul sort of movie and sometimes, that’s exactly what one needs. ★★★ War Room: Clumsily written faithbased drama is a soap opera-style tale which sees a struggling couple challenged to establish a ‘war room’ and a battle plan of prayer for their family. ★★ Legend: Legend is a biopic on a lavish scale. The lead characters, the Krays, legendary gangster twins (both played by Tom Hardy) are British, the setting is London in the 1960s, but the film has the feel of an American gangster epic. It takes a mythologis­ing and, at times, absurdly romantic, approach to its low-life heroes. In spite of the bloodletti­ng and violence, it is a very glossy film, beautifull­y shot by cinematogr­apher Dick Pope and with plenty of Burt Bacharach on the soundtrack. ★★★★ Dis Ek Anna: Based on Anchien Troskie’s two top-selling novels, Dis ek, Anna and Die Staat Teen Anna Bruwer. The film is about the sexual abuse of Anna Bruwer by her stepfather over a period of eight years. The viewer becomes intimately involved in the child’s world of shame, threats and silence. ★★★★

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