A Scottish choir of angels in a city full of sin? Magic
premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January last year. Now it’s finally here and we duly discover that it’s not the horror film it sounds like – an expectation that writer-director Sean Durkin clearly intended and makes use of – but a psychological drama about the ‘get rich quick’ attitude of the 1980s and the damage it caused.
Jude Law is on top form as the too-good-to-be-true commodities broker who moves his family back to England from America to take full advantage of the Big Bang. But that involves a big house, expensive schools for the children, a horse for his wife… Carrie Coon impresses, too, as the wife battling both her own suspicions and the ingrained sexism of the day. Its only real negative is that it all may be a little too unresolved for its own commercial good.
Fresh from his triumphs with Get Out and Us, Jordan Peele turns his attention to Candyman, the iconic 1992 horror picture, albeit ‘only’ as producer and co-writer of a new sequel. But with Nia DaCosta directing, they both do a hugely impressive job of breathing new life – and, of course, many nasty deaths – into the franchise based around the urban myth about a hook-handed killer. Say his name five times into the mirror and you’re in trouble.
With the Chicago ghettos of Cabrini-Green – setting of the original – now gentrified and the name Anthony ringing all sorts of bells, the pick-up, screenplay and execution are things of carefully crafted, racially recalibrated joy. If you saw and enjoyed the original, you’ll definitely want to see this.
In The Last Bus, 64-year-old Timothy Spall plays Tom, a character some two decades older, a widower travelling by bus from John O’Groats to Land’s End to keep a promise he made to his late wife (Phyllis Logan). Spall overacts, the screenplay is underwritten, and any touching moments in Gillies MacKinnon’s film come way too late.
You won’t want to stick out your hand for this one.