The Herald - The Herald Magazine
PICK OF THIS WEEK’S FILMS
WESTERN STARS (PG)
Bruce Springsteen recently turned 70 but he’s refusing - politely - to slow down as he canters through a creatively rich period of a musical career stretching back to the mid1960s. The 13 tracks of his 19th studio album, Western Stars, provide a contemplative, flowing narrative for this concert film co-directed by Springsteen and long-time friend Thom Zimny, which was shot in the heat of summer in a 19th century barn on the musician’s 378-acre horse farm in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Each song is introduced by a tone poem penned by Springsteen, which burrows into the deeper meaning of the lyrics and their emotional resonance. Acoustics in the barn are breathtaking as nine cameras capture unguarded moments between musicians, unspoken understanding registered with a nod or shared glance as a chorus soars to the wooden rafters.
THE ADDAMS FAMILY (PG)
Creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky.
The theme tune to Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan’s computer-animated comedy based on Charles Addams’s newspaper cartoon strips and the 1960s TV series promises plenty of tricks and treats in time for Halloween. Unfortunately, Matt Lieberman’s script is musty and soulless, like the majority of the doom-laden characters, exhumed from the same plot of earth as the Hotel Transylvania franchise, which has already notched up three instalments with a fourth in production. The Addams Family repeatedly fails to sink its fangs into the deliciously dark and disturbing tone of the source material, softening sharp edges to ensure young children aren’t cowering with fear in the dark. Vocal performances from Charlize Theron and Oscar Isaac as morbid sweethearts Morticia and Gomez are lifeless and a supporting cast of gifted comic actors are woefully short-changed by a script that peddles sentimentality instead of spite.
MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL (PG)
Love conquers fear and intolerance twice upon a time in director Joachim Ronning’s fantastical sequel based on characters from Disney’s 1959 animation Sleeping Beauty and Charles Perrault’s fairy tale La Belle Au Bois Dormant. Stuffed to the seams with digitally rendered creatures, Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil is slow-cooked to the same family-friendly recipe as the first film and underscores the empowerment of female characters in breathlessly staged action sequences. Women resolutely hold sway in a script co-written by Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, which spares no expense with lavish spectacle but is thrifty with character development and plot twists. Angelina Jolie snags a few deliciously droll one-liners as the winged warrior reborn by motherly love, like when Maleficent is greeted by a baying mob of weaponised townsfolk and cackles: “Pitchforks? Humans are hilarious!” Special effects, the scourge of modern blockbusters, overload the final 30 minutes and dilute the impact of pivotal scenes of self-sacrifice and devotion.
ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (15)
Ruben Fleischer’s belated sequel is a ramshackle road trip which strikes the same irreverent tone as its gore-laden predecessor, including a delirious flashback during the end credits of a viral outbreak rudely interrupting Bill Murray (playing himself) as he promotes Garfield 3: Flabby Tabby. New additions to the cast are largely forgettable except for Zoey Deutch as a ditzy, hair-twiddling blonde, who has been hiding in a giant ice cream freezer for the past decade. “You know why she survived?” quips Woody Harrelson’s father figure. “Because zombies eat brains and she’s got none.” Zombieland: Double Tap produces a steady trickle of giggles and the film’s exhilarating centrepiece, seemingly shot in a single take on a handheld camera, momentarily quickens the pulse. However, it’s hard to creatively justify the sequel when character development is minimal, plotting is flimsy and some of the biggest laughs are mined from set-ups in the first film, including the list of rules that Jesse Eisenberg’s nerd follows to avoid a bite from the infected.
A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON (U)
Bristol-based Aardman Animation looks to the stars and the twinkling constellation of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial for a second breathlessly paced stop-motion adventure in the company of mischievous sheep Shaun and his flock. Co-directed by Will Becher and Richard Phelan, A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon takes one giant leap for lambkind by introducing a rainbow-coloured alien to the tranquil surroundings of Mossingham. Gentle family-friendly humour arises from the clashing cultures of the eponymous ruminant and a stranded otherworldly visitor, who mimics the bleats, whoops and oinks of the wild.
The sequel is lighter on visual gags - a local supermarket stocks jars of Roswell’s jam and signage for H.G. Wheels Autos is a cute nod to The War Of The Worlds - but action setpieces are orchestrated with brio. Prepare for a charming close encounter of the furred, fleeced and feathered kind.
OFFICIAL SECRETS (15)
A British spy risks her freedom “to stop a war and save lives” in the slow-burning thriller Official Secrets. Based on the true story of whistleblower Katharine Gun, who leaked top-secret information to the press in 2003 as Tony Blair prepared to take Britain to war in Iraq, director Gavin Hood’s picture bristles with indignation at a political establishment willing to manufacture a narrative to justify military intervention. Keira Knightley delivers a compelling lead performance as Gun and the script arms her with polished dialogue to refute allegations that she has betrayed her homeland.
THE DAY SHALL COME (15)
The war against terror is conducted by career-driven buffoons in director Chris Morris’ barbed satire. Supposedly “based on a hundred true stories”, The Day Shall Come shares strands of creative DNA with Morris’ directorial debut, Four Lions and transplants the hunt for radicals and terrorists to the sun-baked beaches of Miami. The script, co-written by Jesse Armstrong, amuses and unsettles, opening with a hilarious setpiece involving one potential target who fails to detonate a fake bomb because he secretly suffers from pentaphobia and the device’s activation code is riddled with the number five. Dialogue bares its teeth but words seldom cut to the bone or draw blood. Those Four Lions from 2010 have been declawed.
ABOMINABLE (U)
A grief-stricken teenager repairs fragments of her broken heart by reuniting a mystical mountain creature with its parents in writer-director Jill Culton’s sweet but familiar computer-animated yarn. Abominable glides in the slipstream of DreamWorks Animations’ Oscar-nominated How to Train Your Dragon series, interchanging a fire-breathing behemoth with a musical snowbound Yeti. Visuals are colourful and richly detailed, down to the realistic movement of the central character’s voluminous white fur as he gambols through dense, swirling clouds of flower petals. There is a cuteness to the creature design – the Yeti is blessed with an inquisitive, child-like nature and large, saucer-shaped blue eyes – to minimise the chance of little ones recoiling in fear when he unleashes a full-blooded roar. Culton’s script takes a simple, uncluttered approach to storytelling that should retain the interest of young audiences but risks losing teenagers and parents to an occasional stifled yawn.
GEMINI MAN (12A)
In an age of garish excess when cinema audiences demand more entertainment for their money, two Will Smiths in Ang Lee’s turbocharged action thriller must surely be better than one? Alas, one iteration is a 23-year-old clone of the Fresh Prince, brought awkwardly to life using state-of-the-art digital trickery, motion capture performance and the leading man’s voice. The result is a curiously plastic and inexpressive doppelganger, who is ordered to put a bullet through the head of his older self in bone-crunching fight sequences but must also bear most of the film’s emotional weight. We feel every second of the 117-minute running time, which sags noticeably in the middle act before a thunderous final showdown that reduces one sleepy corner of the state of Georgia to smouldering rubble. Our hopes for a revival of Smith’s career lie motionless in the debris.
JOKER (15)
The Joker’s wild and plagued with a neurological condition which compels him to burst into fits of maniacal giggling in director Todd Phillips’ profoundly disturbing character study. Co-written by Scott Silver, this relentlessly grim portrait of mental illness and societal neglect burrows deep beneath the translucent, bone-stretched skin of Batman’s adversary, several years before the Caped Crusader dons a cowl. While Christopher Nolan’s brooding Dark Knight trilogy underpinned muscular thrills with sustained menace, Phillips’ deep dive into the DC Comics universe shrugs off the action-oriented demands of a conventional blockbuster to focus intently on the psychological destruction of its chief antagonist. “Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?” Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) asks an impassive social worker at the beginning of the film. In Phoenix’s ferocious and uncompromising performance, we’re dragged kicking and screaming to the edge of insanity, through a fug of delusions and horrifying self-realisation that gives birth to an anarchistic revolutionary with nothing to lose.