Everybody Wants Some!!, Green Room and The Hurt Locker: Your Week In Film (September 19-25)

Motor mouths: Jocks go wild in Everybody Wants Some!!

Films to look out for in the coming seven days on DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and TV...

Everybody Wants Some!! (out now on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WWW is Richard Linklater's spiritual sequel to his 1993 coming-of-age classic, Dazed And Confused. This time the Boyhood director focuses on the members of a 1980 Texas college baseball team. Beer is downed, weed is smoked, trash is talked, and occasionally these likeable jocks get around to hitting a ball or two. 

There is little in the way of plot – this is very much a character piece. Jake (Glee's Blake Jenner) is a freshman at a fictional Texas university on a baseball scholarship. His team is put up not in dorms like the other students, but in a ramshackle old house. They are unsupervised by the college authorities and, despite warnings not to consume alcohol on the premises or permit female guests upstairs, their domicile very quickly becomes party central. In the brief period before the start of the new college year, Jake grows closer to his new team-mates (male bonding and the urge to compete are the film's main themes), while striking up a relationship with performing arts student Beverly (Zoey Deutch).

Occasionally, you think the plot is going to move in a more dramatic direction but Linklater is keen never to make confrontation a focus of his story. He wants you to like his characters and you do, especially pipe-smoking gadabout Finn (Glen Powell), cologne-drenched uber-competitor McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin) and stoner-with-a-secret Willoughby (Wyatt Russell). It's all good clean fun, albeit bathed in enough rose-tinted nostalgia to float a battleship. (You can read my original review of the film here).

Blast from the past: Linklater waxes nostalgic

There is nothing 'rose-tinted' about Jeremy Saulnier's brutal horror/thriller Green Room (out now on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WW½, in which a US rock band – The Ain't Rights – finish up an unsuccessful tour with a gig at a backwoods club whose clientele Dead Kennedys once wrote a song about - 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off'. 

The group – which includes Arrested Development's Alia Shawcat and the late Anton Yelchin – stumble in on a murder scene and the rest of the film sees them desperately trying to escape before the club's nasty-bastard owner (Patrick Stewart, clearly relishing a turn for the villainous) and his mob of sieg-heilers can silence them. It's tense, intermittently thrilling, and vicious enough to make you flinch, but somehow feels a bit lightweight and straightforward when set against the perceptive exploration of revenge the director offered in Blue Ruin, his far better previous film.

Chronic (from Monday, Amazon Prime Video) WWW sees Tim Roth consign the likes of United Passions and Grace Of Monaco to the dustbin of history as he turns in his finest performance for many years. In Michel Franco's powerful but off-kilter character study, the Reservoir Dogs actor plays a palliative care nurse working with patients in Los Angeles. He's an odd, and clearly disturbed man, who gets altogether too close to those he looks after, whilst struggling to forge meaningful relationships in his personal life. It's this dislocation that Roth and writer/director Franco are keen to poke about in and they do so very effectively.

 

Gérard Depardieu is another veteran actor who has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent times and he is simply immense (in so many ways!) in Welcome To New York (from Wednesday, 22:05, Sky Cinema Premiere) WWWW. Depardieu plays Devereaux, a thinly-disguised version of disgraced former head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, in what is a horrible, unflinching, forensic examination of a powerful sociopath whose every act is steeped in misogyny and selfishness. Abel Ferrera's underrated movie is hard going at times but well worth sticking with.

A monster calls: Depardieu in Welcome To New York

The Big Short (from Friday, Netflix UK) WWW also has the behaviour of the one per cent firmly in its sights. Adam McKay's dramedy is a breathlessly entertaining dissection of 2008's global financial meltdown, seen through the eyes of the men who knew it was coming and got filthy rich as a result. Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling are all great and McKay must be applauded for the inventive, fun ways in which he explains some pretty tricky concepts. Smug? A bit. Smart? Most definitely.

Wading into the pit of vipers that was the Iraq War rarely ends well for American filmmakers and so it proves for director Kathryn Bigelow in The Hurt Locker (Sunday, 23:05, Channel 4) WW. Jeremy Renner is Sergeant First Class William James, a member of an elite bomb disposal unit based in Baghdad after the US invasion. And guess what? Yes, he's a bit of a maverick, happy to put himself and his comrades at risk as he goes into battle against IEDs, snipers and other evil Johnny Foreigner tricks designed to drive him and his brave comrades out of the country.

Clichés abound but there is still much to admire here: the 'man v bomb' scenes are powerfully shot and every bit as intense as you'd hope, while Bigelow's decision to eschew going big on plot to focus on these men's extraordinary day-to-day lives pays dividends. James and Co are, quite literally, one mistake away from being blown to pieces and Bigelow sells that fear-cum-thrill with real aplomb. It served her well, as The Hurt Locker won six Oscars and she became the first woman to emerge victorious in the Best Director category.

Unfortunately, the film really comes a cropper in its treatment of the Iraqi people themselves. Almost to a man, they are depicted as little more than terrorists, idiots or aliens in their own country. Gee willikers, don't these ungrateful wretches appreciate the freedom Uncle Sam has handed them, even though Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and sod all to do with 9/11? Invasion of a sovereign nation without proper UN authorisation, you say? Shut up and accept your 'liberation' or you'll end up in Abu Ghraib.

Blow-up: Stakes are high in The Hurt Locker

Bigelow apologists might argue the Iraqis are being depicted precisely as they appear to the US soldiers themselves and there is certainly evidence for such a view contained within the film. However, when you characterise victims as little more than bystanders or aggressors in what should be THEIR OWN STORY you are doing them – not to mention reality and history – a huge disservice. 

As Frankie Boyle had it, "Not only will America go into your country and kill all your people. But what's worse, I think, is they'll come back and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad." That's The Hurt Locker all over, I'm afraid.

Ratings

WWWW - Wonderful

WWW - Worthwhile

WW - Watchable

W - Woeful 

The Last 5 Films I've Seen

Ghouls just want to have fun: Ghostbusters brings the laughs

1. Barbara (2012): Emotionally and morally complex '80s-set German drama from Christian Petzold, who directed last year's superb Phoenix. Petzold's regular collaborator Nina Hoss is the titular Barbara, an East German doctor exiled to a rural town from Berlin after she applies for an exit visa. Planning to defect to be with her West German lover, Barbara is shadowed by the Stasi, who regularly ransack her room and subject her to humiliating strip searches. Mistrust looms large as Hoss keeps her new colleagues at arm's length, including Ronald Zehrfeld's head physician André, and a palpable sense of paranoia informs the whole thing. But, ultimately, it's a tale of sacrifice and perhaps learning to make the most of what you have. Hoss is, as ever, tremendous and, although low-key, the film skewers Soviet-era Communism quietly and effectively. Rating: WWWW

The good German: Nina Hoss is tremendous in Barbara

2. Summertime (2015): Post-Blue Is The Warmest Colour, any French drama concerning a lesbian love affair is inevitably going to be compared – probably unfavourably – with Abdellatif Kechiche's controversial Palme d'Or winner. But Summertime shouldn't be dismissed so lightly as its a powerful and pleasing piece of work in its own right. Set in 1971, it tells the story of farm girl Delphine who travels to Paris and gets caught up in the city's burgeoning feminist movement. She meets Spanish teacher Carole, and the pair begin a relationship. However, when Delphine's father falls sick, she returns to the farm with the older woman in tow. The pair have to keep their affair a secret from conservative locals, while Delphine struggles to square the circle of wanting to be with Carole but also needing to support her family. It isn't as instantly lovable as Blue... but neither does it fall victim to the graphic clumsiness of that film's sex scenes (although, being French, there is nudity in abundance). Izïa Higelin and Cécile De France are terrific and believable in the lead roles, director Catherine Corsini and her cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie bring the beauty of rural France crackling to life and, come the ending, there won't be a dry eye in the house. Rating: WWW

A place in the sun: Summertime is a fine romance

3. Ghostbusters (2016): With Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) in the director's chair, Parks & Recreation's Katie Dippold on script duties and Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig leading the cast, there was no way this female-centric remake of the beloved '80s supernatural comedy was ever going to fall flat... whatever the micro-penised trolls of the Internet wanted us to believe otherwise. It might not be as good as the original, could have done with one or two more killer gags and McCarthy is oddly subdued, but it had me smiling from beginning to end, and laughing out loud on at least a couple of occasions (Chris Hemsworth as dopey receptionist Kevin gets the best lines). In fact, there's a sense of joy about the whole enterprise, from Kate McKinnon's larger-than-life turn as nuclear engineer Holtzmann, to some nicely judged cameos from the original cast (Murray! Aykroyd! Weaver! Hudson! Slimer!). Rating: WWW      

Slimelight: Ignore the haters, Ghostbusters is good fun

4. Green Room (2015): Jeremy Saulnier's horror/thriller sees a US punk rock band – The Ain't Rights – finishing an unsuccessful tour with a gig at a backwoods club boasting a worryingly far-right clientele. The group – which includes Arrested Development's Alia Shawcat and the late Anton Yelchin – stumble in on a murder scene and the rest of the film sees them desperately trying to escape before the club's nasty-bastard owner (Patrick Stewart, clearly relishing a turn for the villainous) and his mob of neo-Nazis can silence them. It's tense, intermittently thrilling, and brutal enough to make you flinch, but somehow feels a bit lightweight and straightforward when set against the perceptive exploration of revenge the director offered in Blue Ruin, his far better previous film. Rating: WW

Rock and a hard place: Things go south in Green Room

5. The Legend Of Tarzan (2015): When I was a kid, Tarzan was as much a part of UK pop culture as Doctor Who – I seemed to spend my life surrounded by comics, cartoons, TV shows and old films dedicated to the Lord Of The Jungle. Thirty-odd years down the line, though, Edgar Rice Burroughs's most famous creation has slipped so far outside the zeitgeist, he makes The Six Million Dollar Man look positively hip and happening. The main problem, I suspect, is that the idea of a white English posho lording it over black Africans is, in these more enlightened times, seen as an embarrassing evocation of Empire as well as incredibly racist. Director David Yates and his team tackle this obstacle head on and make a decent fist of repositioning Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgård) as an honourable cove with nothing but love and respect for the tribes he and wife Jane (Margot Robbie) encounter. Putting the iniquities of the 19th Century slave trade front and centre – and giving Samuel L Jackson a sizeable role in proceedings – help too. It could have done with more humour, some of the plotting is a bit clunky, and I wasn't always convinced by the CGI – especially if you set it against that featured in The Jungle Book. That said, Skarsgård is suitably butch and brooding as the titular character and Christoph Waltz adds another bravura villain turn to his CV. Ultimately, it tries to do too much but, as reboots of classic characters go, I've definitely seen worse. Rating: WW

Jungle fever: The Legend Of Tarzan has its moments

Ratings
WWWW - Wonderful
WWW - Worthwhile
WW - Watchable
W - Woeful

The Hateful Eight, Green Room and Total Recall: Your Week In Film (May 9-15)

Make it so: Patrick Stewart is a nasty piece of work in Green Room

TV, Radio, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and cinema picks for the next seven days...

Monday 9th: Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) is typical of the director's late period work - self-indulgent and interminable, yet chock-a-block with clever writing, excellent performances and genuine WTF moments. Set a few years after the American Civil War, it sees a cast of ne'er do wells holed up in a snowbound staging post with recrimination and paranoia their only companions. Essentially, it's an Agatha Christie-style 'locked-room' mystery, albeit one regularly punctuated by eye-watering acts of ultra-violence. Samuel L Jackson is superb as a badass bounty hunter but it's Jennifer Jason Leigh as convicted killer Daisy Domergue who steals the show. Read my original review here. 

The Hateful Eight: Eye-watering acts of ultra-violence

Also available from today is Room (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) for which Brie Larson won the Best Actress Oscar. Lenny Abrahamson's film starts off as a claustrophobic thriller about a mother and her young son imprisoned in a tiny room by a Fritzl-style abductor, but quickly turns into something rather more complex and emotional. Jacob Tremblay - only nine years old when he made the film - turns in the finest performance I've seen from a child actor in many years. Elsewhere, Kristen Wiig plays a bipolar woman who uses her lottery winnings to finance a bizarre TV talk show in the offbeat and underrated comedy Welcome To Me (VOD), while Janis: Little Girl Blue (DVD) is a warts and all documentary about the life and death of tragic rock 'n' roller Janis Joplin. The Criterion Collection gives us the dated but massively influential '60s road movie Easy Rider (Blu-ray), and Tom Hardy's bravura turn as both Kray Twins is reason enough to watch Legend (Amazon Prime Video).

Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson are superb in Room

Tuesday 10th: Whatever happened to Paul Verhoeven, the talented and subversive Dutch director who bestrode '80s and early-'90s cinema like a colossus with films such as Robocop, Basic Instinct, and Total Recall (23:10, ITV4)? I'd got it into my head he'd been laughed out of Hollywood following the critical mauling meted out to 1995's kitsch and seedy Showgirls but that turned out to be a false memory (rather fitting as we shall see). In fact, the filmmaker was back on top form just two years later with the underrated sci-fi satire Starship Troopers, and directed Kevin Bacon in the big-budget Hollow Man at the turn of the century. But maybe 20 years in La La Land were enough as Verhoeven - now 77 - returned to his native Holland soon after, from where he gave us 2006's Black Book and this year's Elle (starring Isabelle Huppert and about to debut at Cannes). Total Recall remains a beautifully-realised and hugely-imaginative slice of SF. Based on the Philip K Dick short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, it stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid, a man travelling to Mars to lead a revolt against a corrupt regime – or, thanks to false, implanted memories – he could be dreaming the whole thing. It's certainly one of the very best Dick adaptations and the jaw-dropping special effects – courtesy of Rob Bottin and his team – deservedly won an Oscar. I still haven't seen 2012's remake/reimagining/reboot (or whatever the hell it was) and have no plans to do so. Betty Blue: The Director's Cut (23:35, Film4) stars Béatrice Dalle as the seductive but self-destructive titular character in a much-extended version of Jean-Jacques Beineix's '80s classic. The fact this film is 30 years old makes me feel positively ancient.

Accept no substitutes: Arnie in the original Total Recall

Wednesday 11th: Brendan Gleeson is on top form as a doomed priest in fine black comedy Calvary (Amazon Prime Video), while to mark the start of this year's Cannes Film Festival, MUBI are showing The Duellists. Ridley Scott's debut feature, which charts an epic feud between two Napoleonic officers (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel), won Best Debut Film award at the 1977 festival. My Week With Marilyn (22:00, BBC4) is based on Colin Clark's memoir about the friendship he struck up with Marilyn Monroe during the 1957 London shoot of The Prince And The Showgirl. Eddie Redmayne is Clark, Kenneth Branagh plays Laurence Olivier and Michelle Williams makes a pretty convincing Marilyn.

Thursday 12th: Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes (MUBI) features the likes of Bill Murray, Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni in a series of vignettes all connected by the titular items. The Film Programme (16:00, BBC Radio 4) pays homage to producer/director Antonia Bird (Ravenous, The Hamburg Cell) who passed away in 2013. A retrospective of her work runs at the BFI from today. 

Yes we Cannes: Ridley Scott's The Duellists

Friday 13th: Director Richard Linklater (Boyhood) talks about Everybody Wants Some!! on Kermode And Mayo's Film Review (14:00, BBC Radio 5 Live). The movie - a nostalgia-soaked comedy about a college baseball team - opens in UK cinemas today. As does Our Kind Of Traitor, another John Le Carré adaptation, this time starring Naomie Harris and Ewan McGregor as an ordinary English couple in way over their heads when they get mixed up in international espionage and dirty politics. Equally promising is Green Room, writer/director Jeremy Saulnier's follow-up to 2014's excellent Blue Ruin, a horror-thriller which sees a down-on-their-luck punk-rock band menaced by unhinged club owner Patrick Stewart and his gang of neo-Nazi skinheads. Your best bet TV-wise today is Roman Polanski's film noir masterpiece Chinatown (00:35, Channel 4). In a 1930s LA riddled with corruption and tawdry secrets, Jack Nicholson is dogged private eye JJ Gittes, Faye Dunaway the femme fatale who might just be the death of him. Brilliant stuff.

Green Room: Band on the run

Saturday 14th: The X-Men face off against Batman on terrestrial TV tonight. X-Men: First Class (Channel 4, 21:00) is director Matthew Vaughn's '60s-set tale of how Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy rather than Patrick Stewart) brought his first generation of merry mutants together to battle Magneto (Michael Fassbender rather than Ian McKellen). It's certainly a lot more fun than Christopher Nolan's terminal grit-fest The Dark Knight (ITV, 22:15), which sees Christian Bale's Batman take on The Joker (the late Heath Ledger) and Two Face (Aaron Eckhart). Oscar-winner Ledger makes a terrific Crown Prince of Crime but the film is too long, Bale's gruff Batman voice quickly becomes irksome, and the whole shebang could have done with a lot more humour. At least it's better than The Dark Knight Rises though. 

Heath Ledger's Joker lights up The Dark Knight 

Sunday 15th: I happened to catch Home Alone for the umpteenth time recently and seeing John Candy's cameo in that film made me realise just how much I miss the late, great Canadian comic. He was a very, very funny man who passed away at the ridiculous age of 43 back in 1994. Uncle Buck (16:00, ITV) in which Candy plays an unreliable slob with a penchant for disaster, isn't his best work but certainly has its moments ("Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face! Good day to you, madam"). 21 Jump Street (21:00, Channel 5) is a genuine rarity - a movie reboot of an old TV show that actually works. Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are the mismatched rookie cops sent back to their old high school to infiltrate a drugs ring. If you're after something a bit more cultured, there's John Huston classic The Maltese Falcon (20:00, TCM) which sees cynical private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) searching for a mysterious statuette following the death of his partner. 

Humphrey Bogart is Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon

Last 5 Films I Saw
1. Son Of Saul (2015): László Nemes's Auschwitz-set story of a Jewish prisoner trying to arrange a proper burial for a dead boy he believes to be his son (or does he?). It's an extraordinary piece of work that is both harrowing and artful. In cinemas and On Demand now. 

2. Look Who's Back (2015): Not that I'm obsessed with Nazis or anything but... Adolf Hitler returns to life in 21st century Berlin in this biting satire from Germany. Disappointingly, it hasn't had a cinema release in the UK or even been released on DVD/Blu-ray here. It is available on Netflix though.
3. The Last Picture Show (1971): Peter Bogdanovich's '50s-set tale of a dying Texas town fully deserves its classic status. Coming of age stories have rarely been this bleak or melancholy.

4. Ricki And The Flash (2015): Meryl Streep is fantastic as a failed rock singer trying to reconnect with the family she walked out on years before. It'd be nothing without Diablo Cody's excellent screenplay though. Currently showing on Sky Movies Premiere.
5. Special Correspondents (2016): Let's hope Ricky Gervais's forthcoming David Brent: Life On The Road is an improvement on this Netflix-only release, which is not only deeply unfunny but also clumsily racist. 

Son Of Saul: Harrowing and artful

UK box office top 10
1. Captain America: Civil War R
2. The Jungle Book R
3. Eye In The Sky
4. Zootropolis R
5. Bastille Day
6. Demolition
7. Friend Request
8. Son Of Saul R
9. Eddie The Eagle
10. Ratchet And Clank

R = Recommended