New releases to watch at home
Days of the Bagnold Summer
Dir: Simon Bird (1hr 25mins) (12)
★★★★
It’s not a big or splashy film, but there is much to enjoy in The Inbetweeners star Simon Bird’s directorial debut, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. This “gentle, sweet-sour” comedy stars Earl Cave (son of Nick) as a teenager who is forced to spend the summer with his mum in suburbia after his dad bails on a promised trip to Florida. Divorcee Sue (Monica Dolan) is a “mousy” fiftysomething librarian “whose sensible knitwear suggests a thousand disappointments, bravely shouldered”. Her ideas for diversion are ably swatted away by her furiously disappointed son – the “lank of hair and glum of feature” Daniel – whose life revolves around his Xbox, games of pool, and his passion for death metal. Amid the listless search for a summer job, the endless torment of shoe-shopping with mum and all the angry moping, there are some affectionate moments between the pair, and the action, though minimal, mounts towards a subtly satisfying conclusion.
Adapted from a graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, the film counterpoints the death metal raging in its protagonist’s head with a wistful soundtrack by Belle and Sebastian, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. And its bright visuals – all pastel-hued, widescreen suburban vistas – create a sense of “frustrating summery nothingness” for Daniel to get lost in. Cave is a natural in the role, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph, and there are amusing turns from Rob Brydon as an oily history teacher and Tamsin Greig as a “New Age-y” fellow mum. But it’s Dolan’s “near-perfect” performance that elevates the film from “take-it-or-leave-it fare” into something “winningly tender”.
Available on many UK streaming platforms.
A Rainy Day in New York
Dir: Woody Allen (1hr 29mins) (12)
★★
“For a while, it seemed as though Woody Allen’s 50th film might never see the light of day,” said Alexandra Pollard in The Independent. In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, its US release was shelved by its distributor, owing to the abuse allegations still hanging over Allen ( see page 46). Several of its stars also disowned the film. But having been a box office hit in South Korea last year, A
Rainy Day in New York has now arrived in the UK. Timothée Chalamet stars as a preppy young poker player named Gatsby Welles who is showing his college girlfriend, Ashleigh (Elle Fanning), around town. She is an aspiring journalist, scheduled to interview a middle-aged film director (Liev Schreiber) – and ends up being pursued by him and two other older men. As the title suggests, the film takes place over a single rainy day, and it is a “washout”: at its best, “a simulacrum of a Woody Allen film, at worst a parody of one”, with unbearably arch dialogue, and a few lines that are plain creepy.
Wide shots of Manhattan; jazzy music; a neurotic male protagonist delivering polished one-liners... it’s familiar Allen territory, agreed Kevin Maher in The Times. But even by the standards of late-era Allen, this is slim stuff. And it is made a great deal worse by the director’s unwillingness to direct. His talented young leads are clearly crying out for guidance, but are left alone to deal with dialogue that even a seasoned Allen hand would struggle to make convincing or funny. Available on many UK streaming platforms.