SECOND SCREEN
The first half of Lean On Pete (15) ★★★★is probably the most enjoyable hour I’ve had in the cinema in 2018 so far. It’s a shame the second half doesn’t quite match it, but, even so, this thoroughly all-American tale is still a triumph for its British director, Andrew Haigh.
Charlie Plummer is a freshfaced delight as 15-year-old Charley Thompson, who, despite the fact that his mother has left and his womanising father is often so short of money they go hungry, is essentially a nice boy, generally trying to make the best of life in yet another new town. So when a local racehorse owner, played by Steve Buscemi , offers him a casual job looking after his horses – including a chestnut called Lean On Pete – Charley jumps at the chance.
This surely is his way out. But nothing in life, or indeed this sort of film, is that simple. What ensues inclines to the sentimental but comes over as a pleasing cross between All The Pretty Horses and The Straight Story, with a rite-of-passage dollop of American Honey.
I’m sure a young female crowd will enjoy I Feel Pretty (12A) ★★★ more than I did, but I’m sure they’ll also recognise that this so-so romantic(ish) comedy is a) awfully like Ugly Betty and b) not really Amy Schumer (above, with Rory Scovel) at her best. She plays Renee, a slightly overweight New Yorker struggling with her body image until… she bangs her head and wakes up believing she’s been magically transformed into a leggy beauty. Only we know what the rest of the world can see: she’s the same as ever.
Ah, but with her new inner confidence, who knows what Renee might now achieve… Mary Stewart wrote The Little Broomstick in 1971 so it’s not her fault that her tale of a lonely girl, a broomstick and a magic school for wizards and witches has been trumped by Harry Potter. But it is a problem for the Japanese animators who have adapted Stewart’s story into a feature film, Mary And The Witch’s Flower (U) ★★. I loved the attention to English period rural detail but the pace is sluggish, the story distinctly unmagical and the visualisation of a ten-year-old girl somewhat uncomfortable. In slasher-killer flick The Strangers: Prey At Night (15) ★a bickering family check in to a strangely deserted holiday park. You can guess the rest but you probably won’t be able to explain what Mad Men star Christina Hendricks (below) is doing in this nasty nonsense.