SECOND SCREEN
Eight years ago, Frost/Nixon told the story of the famous meetings in 1977 between TV interviewer David Frost and the by then disgraced former US President, Richard Nixon. Seven years on and it’s the turn of Elvis & Nixon (12A) *** to tell the much less well known story of the 1970 meeting between Nixon and ‘the King’, Elvis Presley.
Actually, no one knows exactly what happened when they met. For as this Liza Johnson-directed picture admits, no notes were taken and Nixon hadn’t yet begun his habit of tape-recording every conversation and phone call he had in the Oval Office.
What is known, though, is that Presley was worried about the direction America was moving in (particularly when it came to drugs and young people), desperately wanted to be appointed a ‘Federal Agent at Large’ and given an official badge, and that Nixon didn’t want to meet him.
This is lightweight, slightly slow-moving and only mildly entertaining stuff, its impact progressively lessened by the fact that the more we learn about Presley, the madder he appears. He carries several guns as a matter of course, watches three TVs at once, and while he pays lip service to America’s growing drug problem, it’s clear that what this man-child really wants is that shiny badge.
What makes the film worth catching is Michael Shannon. For while Kevin Spacey’s gruff, stooped, mildly paranoid Nixon is pretty much what you expect, Shannon’s Elvis is not, avoiding cliché and impersonation with a nonchalant ease.
When it comes to feature-length animation, Chris Renaud is a creative force: he co-directed the two Despicable Me films and produced last year’s Minions movie, which is why a Minions short precedes his latest offering, The Secret Life Of Pets (G) ***.
With a starting point of what our pets get up to when their owners go off to work, this lacks some of the originality of his earlier movies but it’s fun, the 3D depiction of New York is gorgeous and, for the
very first time, I see the point of Kevin Hart. His voice performance as Snowball, the murderous, former magician’s bunny who now runs the animal underworld in the sewers, is the comic highlight of the film.
The story begins as Max – a rescue terrier voiced by Louis CK – waits for his owner Katie to return. But when Katie brings a new dog home – giant mongrel furball Duke – the trouble starts.
Children should enjoy what ensues, while adults can play spot the clever film references. In Lorene Scafaria’s The Meddler (12A) HHHH, Susan Sarandon plays Marnie, a wealthy widow who has given up Brooklyn to move to LA, where her daughter Lori (Rose Byrne) is struggling to establish herself as a screenwriter.
The problem is Marnie is clearly lonely and overcompensates by interfering in every aspect of her daughter’s life, slowly driving Lori mad.
Sarandon and Byrne are great together, and the gruff J K Simmons relishes a rare romantic part in what is an intelligent and touching exploration of long-term grief.
The spirit of Pedro Almodóvar is never far off in Ma Ma (12A)
HHHH, the strange but moving story of a newly single, newly unemployed mother-of-one who finds she has breast cancer. But Magda (an on-form Penélope Cruz) will not go gentle into that good night.
Written and directed by Julio Medem, who gave us Sex And Lucia and the excellent Lovers Of The Arctic Circle, the story unfolds in a heightened reality where the cruellest circumstances provide Magda with a new relationship, and her oncologist becomes so besotted with her that he sings to her before her mastectomy.