DVD
As Frank Sinatra sang, it happened in Monterey. But just what did happen there? That’s the question at the heart of Big Little Lies (15)
HBO’s beautifully modulated murder mystery. The credits suggest we’re in line for a soapy look at apple-pie America. Then the story kicks in and we hear desperate panting (whose?) as the cops flit around a bloody corpse (whose?). At which point a tricksy time-scheme comes into play, as we hear a bunch of police interviews while watching flashbacks of the people in question that prove they’re lying through their (beautiful) teeth.
From Breaking Bad to breaking sad. Bryan ‘Walter White’ Cranston plays the title character of
Wakefield (15) a lawyer in a midlife logjam. Coming home from work, he spots a raccoon in the garage, shoos it out and… decides to hide out in its place. For the next two hours we watch him spying on his wife and daughters. It’s a glorious turn but it’s also a one-man show. The ladies hardly get a look-in – which means that, though it was written and directed by a woman (Robin Swicord), Wakefield’s structure comes to embody its lead’s miserablist misogyny.
Talking of which, meet Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), the hero of Get
Out (15) who is travelling to the ’burbs with girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to meet her folks. Who haven’t been told that, Chris is, er, you know, black. Does that mean Jordan Peele’s debut is Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner all over again? Not quite. What we have here is a rare thing, a satirically clever horror flick. Even if I tell you it’s part Robin Cook’s Coma and part Ira Levin’s Stepford Wives, you couldn’t begin to dream where this nightmare of a movie is taking you. A bad dream of a different sort is Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire (15) a shoot-’em-up starring Brie Larson that plays like Father Ted’s take on Reservoir Dogs, though not in a good way. Oldie of the week is Mickey One (12) made by Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty before Bonnie And Clyde. Self-indulgently surreal, this 1965 flick isn’t for everyone – but Warren Beatty was never more bewitchingly sullen and Stan Getz’s jittery jazz soundtrack is up with the best.