ALSO SHOWING
The Disaster Artist (15)
Hyped and heralded as the worst film ever made, there’s no getting round the fact that 2003 cult phenomenon
The Room is a terrible, terrible movie, one fascinating only because of the singular and bizarre vision of its creator, Tommy Wiseau. An accidental auteur of awfulness who has been likened to a modern-day Ed Wood, it has never been entirely clear how willingly Wiseau has embraced his film’s so-bad-its-good reputation. Wherever the truth lies he’s found a somewhat sympathetic champion in James Franco, whose new film as a director and star dramatises the making of Wiseau’s magnum opus, turning the story behind it into a funny but poignant tale of creativity and commitment in the absence of talent. Franco commits fully to the role, treating Wiseau as a sort of living art installation and turning the making of the film into a catalogue of hilarious mishaps, mistakes and misguided creative decisions. Even if you haven’t seen The Room ,the shared incredulity of the cast and crew (played by a roster of A-list comedy and acting talent, including Seth Rogen, Alison Brie and Jackie Weaver) is not exaggerated: the film they’re making really does beggar belief. If you have seen it, there’s additional joy to be had watching the meticulous behind-the-scenes recreations of its most memeworthy moments. And yet this isn’t just a series of potshots at a Wiseau. Though functioning as a useful demolition job on the artist-as-savant myth to which too many films and documentaries give credence, it’s also a reminder that even bad art can spring from and inspire compelling human stories.
Happy End (15)
Picking once again at the scab of bourgeois privilege, Michael Haneke’s latest ironically titled exercise in cinematic hostility is, in some respects, very much business as usual, zeroing in as it does on a wealthy dysfunctional family – presided over by Isabelle Huppert’s no-nonsense matriarch – who seem blithely indifferent to the suffering of anyone else, including one another. Nevertheless, there’s something divinely unsettling about Happy
End that makes is less prescriptive and tiresome than some of his more recent output. Like Benny’s Video and Hidden, it begins with a queasy moment of surveillance, with Haneke finding new ways to ratchet up fears about the use of social media. The way he gradually paints a portrait of a family one micro-aggression away from imploding all together also becomes a gripping and savage satirical comment on the futility of trying to maintain this broken social system.
Wonder (PG)
“When there’s a choice between being right and being kind, choose kind,” says a character in Wonder. No doubt the filmmakers will be hoping anyone who sees this hearttugger about a facially deformed kid will follow suit, embracing the many positive messages it espouses rather than focussing on the many broadly manipulative ways it tries to extract tears. Caked in prosthetics, Room’s Jacob Tremblay is fine, if a little cloying, as its ten-year-old hero, Auggie, but the film relies on Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson (cast as Auggie’s over-protective parents) doing their twinkly moviestar thing instead of exploring the family’s situation in any meaningful way.
The Man Who Invented Christmas
(PG)
As Ricky Gervais once put it: the only way to improve A Christmas Carol is with Muppets. In lieu of Kermit and co, The Man Who Invented Christmas makes a so-so fist of freshening up Charles Dickens’s much-adapted tale by dramatising its writing and turning it into a sort of spot-theinfluence parlour game. Dan Stevens is on lively form as Dickens, but while no turkey, the end result is mostly a lot of whimsical nonsense.