Actor’s transition from Downton man to charismatic low-life
THE GUEST (R16)
Directed by Adam Wingard
✪✪✪✪
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
YOU don’t need to see many films in your life before you know that any movie that opens with a shot of two feet running down an isolated country road is never going to end well.
Usually those two feet will belong to a victim; a lone survivor of some gratuitously traumatising omni-shambles in the recent past that we – the slavering popcorn chewers in the audience – will now sit back and watch unfold.
The Guest inverts this old equation – and many others – from the get-go. The feet on this bad dirt road aren’t those of some panicked victim. Nope, they belong to an Afghan war veteran on his way to meet the family of a fallen comrade. Or that’s his story anyway.
Who this ‘‘David Collins’’ actually is and what he might be capable of is at the very guts of The Guest. And it’s this secret that director Adam Wingard (You’re Next) and his writers are going to have all sorts of fun slowly revealing. Before long, ‘‘Collins’’ is ensconced in the family’s spare room and making himself a part of the household. Younger brother Luke is in thrall to this man who can beat up an entire bar-room of bullies without collecting a scratch, while older sister Anna has caught an eyeful of him coming out of the shower wearing nowt but a low-slung towel and can’t shake the memory of those washboard abs. As for Dad Spencer, he’s just happy that he’s been promoted to regional manager, now that his boss is dead from an apparent suicide. That the ever-more-clearly batpoo-crazy Collins is played by Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens just adds to the fun. If you ever watched Downton and thought to yourself ‘‘if the bloke playing Matthew Crawley just worked out for a few months, got a tan and a haircut, and adopted a flawless Texas accent, he’d make a terrific villain’’, then – trust me – you’re a loss to the casting business. Next to Stevens, it’s Maika Monroe as Anna who does most of the heavy lifting here. We last saw Monroe in It Follows; a film The Guest reminded me of a lot. Like It Follows, this is a movie made by people with a real love for the genre, and enough understanding of it to know exactly what rules to break and why.
The Guest is my film of the week, gleefully recommended.
TRAINWRECK really isn’t the movie the shorts and poster are advertising.
TRAINWRECK (R16)
Directed by Judd Apatow
✪✪✪✪
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
That poster – Amy Schumer drunk, Bill Hader standing mortified behind her – promises a simple and fun comedy of bad behaviour and poor taste. Bridesmaids-for-one maybe. But Trainwreck – even despite the name – is not that film.
Sure there are some hellaciously funny moments, and most of them do involve drinking, sex and some pretty impulsive decision making. The ‘‘talk dirty to me’’ scene is going to be quoted and marvelled over for months, especially as Schumer’s partner in the scene is John Cena, who is still far more famous in the hilariously hyper-macho world of professional wrestling than he is as an actor on the rom-com circuit.
But beyond the boozing and the bedding, past the stunningly funny riff on tampons in toilet bowls, and despite the fact that Schumer’s co-stars Bill Hader, Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller and the fantastic Colin Quinn are all very left-field casting decisions, Trainwreck is a surprisingly conservative romantic comedy, based on Schumer’s own script of mostly excellent scenes hanging off a very old fashioned girl-meetsboy framework.
I could argue that director Judd Apatow should have left 20 minutes of the film’s two-hour running time for the DVD extras, but considering Apatow’s last directing credit was the atrociously self-indulgent drivel This Is Forty, I’m just happy that Trainwreck has turned out to be as funny, smart and occasionally provocative as it has.
THE MAN FROM UNCLE (M)
Directed by Guy Ritchie
✪✪✪✪
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
REBOOTING a 50-year-old TV show with a couple of strictly B team leading men hardly sounds like a recipe for big screen success. But terrific films have sprung from less, and it seems to me that director Guy Ritchie is at his best when the weight of expectation isn’t too heavy. He debuted with the still impressive Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but stepped backwards with the flashier follow-up Snatch. And while Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes relaunch was a lot of fun, his 2011 sequel was exactly the load of old wallop we all expected first time around. So here, with a franchise no-one really cares for and a couple of leading men a long way shy of Depp/Pitt/Clooney megastardom, Ritchie is free to enjoy himself.
A fairly hoary old plot about missing scientists, uranium and computer discs makes a sturdy enough chassis to hang a selection of impressive set pieces from. The jeep/buggy/motorbike chase that ushers in the third act is about as well a choreographed action sequence as I’ve seen this year.
In the leads, Henry Cavill (Superman: Man of Steel) and Armie Hammer strike a series of decent notes.The Man From UNCLE emerges as an enjoyably daft, but stylish night out.