The Herald - The Herald Magazine
A charming British comedy and Thor grabs his hammer
Damon Smith reviews the latest new releases to watch in the cinema
BRIAN AND CHARLES (PG, 90 MINS)
ECCENTRICITY is tightly woven into the fabric of the British. Expanded from a 12-minute short film released in 2017, director Jim Archer’s odd couple comedy travels into the Welsh countryside to meet a generously bearded outcast, who constructs a companion from fly-tipped scrap and gives new meaning to the art of ‘making friends’.
This ramshackle mechanical sidekick is blessed with childlike curiosity reminiscent of Johnny Five in Short Circuit.
A TV documentary about Honolulu inspires the robot to make a hula skirt from shredded paper and when the automaton earns praise from his master through good behaviour, he jigs excitedly back and forth.
Co-written by actors David Earl and Chris Hayward, Brian And Charles kindles dramatic tension by hard-wiring the robot with a desire to fly the nest and explore new horizons. Predictably, the inventor wants to protect his charmingly naive creation from the cruelty and intolerance that run rife in “a big perilous world” beyond the wire fences that border their remote farm.
Someone or something has to give.Thankfully, the quality of Earl and Hayward’s writing doesn’t give an inch. Archer employs a fly-on-the-wall mockumentary format to intrude on his delightfully mismatched characters as they go about their day-to-day lives.
The conceit doesn’t always work – some characters acknowledge the camera’s presence, others are completely oblivious.
Brian And Charles is a sweet, sincere and life-affirming ode to the square pegs, who don’t care about fitting neatly into round holes.
Earl and Hayward are an adorable double act and when the possibility of separation looms large, the lump in our throats is sizeable.
THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER (12A, 118 MINS)
FIVE years ago, the strapping Norse god of thunder, portrayed by Chris Hemsworth with laid-back Antipodean charm, got his mojo back in Thor: Ragnarok.
The deliriously entertaining romp directed by Oscar winner Taika
Waititi was perfect light relief before the devastating losses of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, which concluded phase three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by temporarily severing Thor’s ties to New Asgard to allow the heartbroken hunk to explore new worlds with the sharpshooting Guardians Of The Galaxy.
Thor: Love And Thunder welcomes back Waititi to the director’s chair to serve up a similarly heady cocktail of actionpacked spectacle and raucous humour including cheeky cameos for Matt Damon, Sam Neill and Melissa McCarthy to poke fun at the rampant commercialisation of the Marvel brand.
A script co-written by Waititi and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson careens wildly between light and dark, addressing grief, terminal illness and self-sacrifice in one gut-wrenching breath before Hemsworth casually loses all of his clothes and female co-stars faint on-screen at his artfully concealed magnificence.
Tonal shifts can be jarring and Christian Bale’s all-guns-blazing performance as a vengeful villain is on a different plane to everyone else in the gung-ho odyssey.
As messy as this fourth solo outing gets, replete with screaming goats and an army of pint-sized helpers pithily referred to as Team Kids In A Cage, Waititi retains focus on the emotional bonds between characters destined to ascend to the hallowed pantheon of Valhalla.
Separated from magical hammer Mjolnir, which was shattered in Thor: Ragnarok, the strapping
Norse god of thunder (Hemsworth) has a new weapon – a mighty axe called Stormbreaker – as he answers cries for help alongside Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax (Dave Bautista), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Mantis
(Pom Klementieff), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel).
Thor: Love And Thunder feels disjointed compared to its predecessor and there are noticeably fewer laughs but the pleasures comfortably outweigh the pain.
Hemsworth flexes dramatic muscles in key scenes with Portman and there is effervescent comic relief, predominantly in voiceover.
Action sequences are briskly choreographed with a heavy reliance on digital effects. Thor Will Return teases the end credits. Oh gods.
PERSUASION (PG, 108 MINS)
DAKOTA Johnson portrays Jane Austen’s unconventional heroine Anne Elliot in director Carrie Cracknell’s swooning period drama, adapted for the screen by Alice Victoria Winslow and Ron Bass.
Anne falls deliriously in love with dashing naval officer Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis) but her class-conscious father Sir Walter Elliot (Richard E Grant) and older sister Elizabeth (Yolanda Kettle) do not judge the match to be suitable given Frederick’s lowly social status.
They persuade Anne to break off the engagement and the young woman’s surrogate mother, Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird), adds her voice of disapproval to the chorus.
Several years pass and the Elliot family falls on hard times and relocates from Kellynch Hall to more modest lodgings in Bath.
Frederick, now a highly decorated naval captain, returns to Anne’s life and she faces a difficult choice between a second chance at love or new horizons with wealthy widower and distant relative William Elliot (Henry Golding).