True grit in reboot of 80s thriller
WIDOWS ★★★★ (Cert 15, 130mins)
AFTER the gloomy Shame and the gruelling 12 Years A Slave, British director Steve McQueen’s next film comes as a surprise. Readers of a certain age may remember being hooked by Lynda La Plante’s 1980s ITV drama Widows which featured four women planning an armed robbery after their criminal husbands were killed.
The London-born director and Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn tone down the glamour for this gritty adaptation set in modern-day Chicago.
We open with a surprisingly pacy shootout and car chase. Liam Neeson’s Harry is at the wheel of a battered van. After exchanging machine gun fire with a couple of goons through the back doors, Harry and his gang are chased to a warehouse by a fleet of police cars.
A stand-off ends with the cops showering their van with bullets and a massive explosion. This time, Neeson’s “very particular set of skills” have come up fatally short.
It’s a hugely entertaining opening and perhaps the last thing you’d expect from McQueen. Something approaching normal service resumes when we are introduced to Neeson’s grieving widow Veronica (Viola Davis).
Crime capers usually come with bouncy soundtracks that make an armed robbery seem like a jape. But here every twist and turn will be punctuated with a world-weary stare from the Oscar-winning actress.
It turns out that Neeson and his mob had just stolen $2million from local crime lord Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry). Since the money went up in smoke, Jamal reminds her of her debt by trying to throttle her Yorkshire terrier and gives her a month to pay him back. After that she’ll be visited by his psychotic right-hand man Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya).
So now we have our ticking clock and a reason for Veronica to stop scowling and do something interesting.
A way out falls into her lap when she opens Harry’s journal and discovers detailed plans to steal $3million from the home of Colin Farrell’s corrupt politician.
Veronica enlists the widows of Harry’s gang members: willowy Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) who just changed career from pampered housewife to high-class escort and Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), now a struggling single mother-of-two.
Later, they are joined by a fitness freak hairdresser played by Cynthia Erivo who puts in a muscular turn as their getaway driver.
The unlikely plot and the wonderfully gritty performances don’t always gel but the heist is exciting and packed with surprises. It is not McQueen’s most memorable film but it is definitely the most entertaining.
AFTER THE SCREAMING STOPS ★★★★ (Cert 15, 95mins)
THIS isn’t the first documentary to offer us an access-all-areas pass to a pop concert but it could be the most surprising. If you’ve seen the recent Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber documentaries, you’ll know these films are usually made under the gaze of publicists and edited to prop up the ego of the star. Here pop twins Matt and Luke Goss don’t seem in charge of a single shot. They rarely seem in control of themselves. The concert in question is the Bros reunion show at London’s O2 Arena in 2017. The introduction reminds us that the brothers were once hounded by armies of screaming girls as they played gigs across the world. But the pair spectacularly hit the buffers when drummer Luke, disgruntled with press
intrusion and singer Matt’s perceived hogging of the limelight, suddenly broke up the band in 1992.
The title comes from a question Terry Wogan asked them on his BBC chat show: What would they do “after the screaming stops”?
It turns out they would unravel spectacularly after seeing their fame and fortune disappear almost overnight. Luke went on to build a career as a film actor and Matt reinvented himself as a Las Vegas crooner but they reunite here with sizeable chips on their shoulders.
In an opening scene, we see them almost come to blows in the green room at ITV’s This Morning as a few of their many unresolved issues come to a head. These rows, which regularly explode in the rehearsal room, give this rollercoaster of a film an air of Spinal Tap.
There’s also a slight whiff of The Office as the brothers try to fail to present a polished front to the camera. Some of the scenes with philosophical Matt are pure David Brent. “The letters H-O-M-E are so important”, he says while showing us round his Vegas pad in his pyjamas. “Because to me those letters personify, erm, the word ‘home’.”
OVERLORD HHH (Cert 18, 110mins)
THE spectacular opening of this war horror film introduces us to a troop of US paratroopers who are preparing to be dropped into Nazi-occupied France.
As the plane is rocked by enemy fire, several different characters emerge. Tibbet (John Magaro) is the loudmouth with the broad New York accent. Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell) is a battle-scarred explosives expert.
Terrified rookie Private Boyce (Jovan Adepo) will be the film’s heart and its conscience. He wouldn’t hurt a mouse. Literally. Tibbet mocks him for humanely catching and freeing one that was fouling their barracks.
After their plane turns into a fireball, the men hurl themselves into the air before landing in a French forest. They find an ally in Resistance fighter Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) who agrees to hide them in her home.
Luckily, their attic hideout gives them a clear view of the watchtower they’ve been tasked with destroying. But it turns out that will be even more of an impossible mission. The tower is part of a Nazi complex where a doctor in the vein of Josef Mengele is turning locals into zombie super-soldiers.
From here, the tense war movie turns into an over-the-top gore-fest. The plot is nothing special but director Julius Avery knows when to drop in a jump scare and just how far to push a scene for gruesome laughs.
THE GRINCH HHH (Cert U, 90 mins)
THEODOR “Dr Seuss” Geisel has delighted generations with his quirky rhymes, offbeat allegories and gorgeous illustrations. But so far the feature film adaptation that came closest to capturing his anarchic spirit was Ron Howard’s 2000 live-action version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas! That will remain the case when this animated remake from Despicable Me creators Illumination is released today.
Howard’s film wasn’t perfect but he had a barnstorming Jim Carrey in the lead role. Here we have Benedict Cumberbatch voicing a more restrained version in the measured tones of his Marvel character Dr Strange.
Once again, the setting is Whoville, a Christmas-obsessed fantasy town watched over by a miserable green grump who lives in a mountain-top cave. A series of flashbacks tells us that the reason why the Grinch hates Christmas is because he was excluded from the festival when growing up as a lonely orphan.
The humour is unsophisticated and there is a lack of Seussian satire but the action scenes are exciting, the animation is beautiful and Kenan Thompson puts in a very hearty performance as Mr Bricklebaum.