The Herald - The Herald Magazine
PICK OF THIS WEEK’S FILMS
THE IRISHMAN (15)
Martin Scorsese’s exhaustive and exhausting return to the criminal underworld with GoodFellas leading men Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci transplants the toxic masculinity from New York to the mean streets of Philadelphia. Stephen Zaillian, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List, confidently plunders Charles Brandt’s true-crime book I Heard You Paint Houses to recount an epic tale of brotherhood, which culminates in the disappearance of labour union leader Jimmy Hoffa in July 1975. De Niro snags the melodic voiceover here, delivering expertly polished one-liners – “Usually three people can keep a secret only when two of them are dead” – with his trademark growl. Al Pacino scorches every frame as bullying Hoffa, who refuses to cede control of the Teamsters – “This is my union!” – and pays a sickeningly high price for his hubris. Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker overcharges our patience with a running time – three-and- a-half hours – that feels almost as bloated as some of the titular heavy’s lifeless victims.
THE GOOD LIAR (15)
Many film buffs are rather fond of director Bill Condon’s slippery thriller, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Nicholas Searle’s novel. “Fond” is such a quaint, terribly English word, and that simple expression of restrained and polite approval is weaponised to delicious effect by a silver-tongued octogenarian conman in The Good Liar. Everything is, as the scoundrel might say, “tickety-boo” in Hatcher’s script, which provides meaty roles for Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Helen Mirren as merciless hunter and unsuspecting prey. Blessed with these formidable acting talents, Condon frequently has little to do other than point a camera at his luminous leads and watch sparks fly as their verbal sparring lands the requisite blows. A couple of slickly executed set pieces, including a confrontation on a largely deserted London Underground platform at Charing Cross, ratchets up the stakes, building to an emotionally satisfying and brutal pay-off.
MIDWAY (12A)
German director Roland Emmerich has spared no visual effects expense in wreaking havoc on our tiny planet with muscular blockbusters including Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and White House Down. The testosterone continues to pump, with barely a twodimensional female protagonist in sight, in an all-guns-blazing dramatisation of six months of military brinkmanship between America and Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7 1941. Screenwriter Wes Tooke distils history into bombastic action sequences, bolted together with clumsy dialogue and perfunctory character development. The storytelling is fitful and jagged, suggesting editor Adam Wolfe cleaved this thunderous 138-minute tour from a longer and more coherent cut. Londonborn actor Ed Skrein reports for duty as reallife war hero Dick Best, sporting a broad American accent that roams the east coast as he inspires men under his command to embody the unshakeable resolve of those who fight under a fluttering Stars and Stripes.
DOCTOR SLEEP (15)
Writer-director Mike Flanagan takes on the daunting task of revisiting the psychologically damaged survivors of the Overlook Hotel in a suspenseful horror sequel, adapted from Stephen King’s 2013 novel. In a daring creative flourish which pays rich dividends, the filmmaker mimics Stanley Kubrick’s distinctive visual language to recreate key scenes from The Shining on meticulously rebuilt sets, embedding these flashbacks in a present-day story of sobriety and ghoulish fanaticism that conjures moments of gnawing, primal fear like its predecessor. Doctor Sleep tightens a knot of tension in our stomachs and sustains that discomfort for two-and-a-half hours. Ewan McGregor plumbs dark recesses to movingly expose fissures in his recovering alcoholic’s facade opposite Kyliegh Curran, who is mesmerising in her first film role. Rebecca Ferguson is chilling as protective cult leader Rose The Hat, who believes in the morality of her group’s murderous actions, setting up a barn-storming showdown in the familiar surroundings of the Colorado Rockies.
AFTER THE WEDDING (12)
Love and marriage go together like a startled horse and runaway carriage in writer-director Bart Freundlich’s English language remake of Danish director Susanne Bier’s Oscarnominated 2006 drama. Resetting the melodramatic action from Copenhagen to New York, After The Wedding is enslaved to an emotionally manipulative plot that feels just as contrived more than a decade later, despite a neat gender swap of the central roles. While the original film explored fractious family dynamics through the eyes of two men, Freundlich chooses to glimpse heartache through the eyes of Julianne Moore’s corporate trailblazer and Michelle
Williams’s do-gooder, whose fates collide at the titular nuptials. Williams delivers a masterclass in minimalist expression and Oscar winner Moore sizes every chance to wring tear-soaked pathos from her character’s anguished situation.
SORRY WE MISSED YOU (15)
As online retailers woo us for more of our hard-earned cash, a small army of men and women do our bidding on traffic-clogged streets, delivering parcels in convenient hourly time slots to meet performance targets. Director Ken Loach and long-time screenwriter Paul Laverty refuse to turn a blind eye to the harsh consequences of consumer power in a gritty slice-of-life drama, which confidently delivers inner turmoil and desperation to a married couple in Newcastle upon Tyne. In many ways, Sorry We Missed You is a companion piece to the awardwinning 2006 film I, Daniel Blake, exploring the intolerable pressure on hard-working families trapped in a vicious and unremitting cycle of long work hours for minimum pay. Misery has always enjoyed Loach’s company and there are some desperately bleak moments here. Yet Laverty finds glimmers of joy in the gloom, like a father and daughter bonding on a delivery route or a family curry night where the man of the house bullishly orders the hottest dish because “vindaloo separates the men from the boys!”.
TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (15)
Set 27 years after the cataclysmic events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the bombastic sixth chapter in the ageing franchise enjoys a welcome software upgrade in the shadow of the #MeToo movement. Scriptwriters David S Goyer, Justin Rhodes and Billy Ray hardwire a belated sequel to the second chapter with a trio of strong-willed and gutsy female characters, who are mistresses of their own rubble-strewn destiny. These flawed, selfsacrificing heroines are the heart and soul of director Tim Miller’s entertaining gallop down memory lane, which melds precious metals from previous instalments with a touching mother-daughter relationship against a backdrop of large-scale destruction and slambang digital effects. The long-awaited on-screen reunion of Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger is withheld until the muscular second hour, delivering a surprisingly touching pay-off amidst the usual blitzkrieg of earth-shaking pyrotechnics and hand-to-metal combat. Nuance has never been in the series’ armoury and with James Cameron reinstated as producer, Terminator: Dark Fate gleefully wages war on land, underwater and in the clouds including a dizzying set piece orchestrated inside the cargo bay of the US Air Force’s largest transport aircraft.
WESTERN STARS (PG)
Bruce Springsteen recently turned 70 but he’s refusing to slow down as he canters through a creatively rich period of a musical career stretching back to the mid-1960s. 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.
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. A supporting cast of gifted comic actors are woefully short-changed by a script that peddles sentimentality instead of spite.
OFFICIAL SECRETS (15)
A British spy risks her freedom “to stop a war and save lives” in this slow-burning thriller. Based on the true story of whistleblower Katharine Gun, who leaked top-secret information to the press in 2003 as Tony Blair prepared to go 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.