Must troy harder with the accents!
A ROMANTIC comedy set in ruggedly beautiful County Mayo, Wild Mountain Thyme ( ★★III digital platforms) stars Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Christopher Walken and Jon Hamm, all grappling for screen time with every Emerald Isle cliché short of a Guinness-fuelled leprechaun dancing to fiddle music on top of the Blarney Stone.
The writer-director is John Patrick Shanley, adapting his own play, Outside Mullingar. Blunt and Dornan play Rosemary Muldoon and Anthony Reilly, who grow up on neighbouring farms strangely unable to see they are destined for each other, and even more strangely unable to master the local accent, haard though they troy.
There’s whimsy aplenty in all this, and one or two touching moments, but on the whole it’s a misbegotten affair which strains for authenticity like a hooley in a temperance hall, while never quite finding it.
Another good cast (Michael B Jordan, Jamie Bell, Guy Pearce) graces Without Remorse ( ★★III Amazon Prime Video), a lively but entirely formulaic thriller based on the novel by Tom Clancy.
The Artist’s Wife ( ★★★II digital platforms) has Bruce Dern doing what these days he does best: playing an irascible old man, in this case a celebrated artist with dementia. The title character is nicely played by Lena Olin, once a promising artist herself, who has lived for 20 years in his long shadow. The Wife, the 2017 film with Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, told a strikingly similar story with more elan.
The Mitchells vs The Machines ( ★★★II Netflix) is fun, an animation about a dysfunctional family who might be cousins of The Simpsons but are the best humanity has to offer when robots take over the planet.
If you’re looking for something more cerebral, I recommend Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation ( ★★★II digital platforms), not quite what it says on the tin, but a documentary profiling writers Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, great friends, largely in their own words.