The world and his wife (and their dog) will have seen Pixar's Inside Out trailer by now but here are five more previews for films making their cinema debuts today... 1. Eden French writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve's fourth film follows the fortunes of Paul, an ambitious teenage DJ in Paris in the early '90s. Perfectly evokes a nightlife of sex, drugs and music, music, music.
2. Best Of Enemies
Fascinating documentary chronicling the series of US TV debates in 1968 between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr. The encounters become explosive, vitriolic and gladiatorial, a way of presenting televised political discourse unheard of then but par for the course now.
3. Southpaw Jake Gyllenhaal bulks up for his role as Billy Hope, a boxer trying to get his life and career back on track after losing his wife in a tragic accident. To be honest, it all looks a bit overblown and clumsy (Billy Hope? Really?!) but Gyllenhaal is always worth watching.
4. Maggie Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in a zombie movie with surprising depth and humanity. Abigail Breslin steals the show with a fine performance as a young woman battling to keep hold of her humanity after being bitten by a member of the undead. Read my full review here.
5. The Legend Of Barney Thomson Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The World is Not Enough) stars and directs a Glasgow-set black comedy about a downtrodden barber whose dull existence is turned on its head when he accidentally turns killer. Emma Thompson - playing his mum - and Ray Winston also star.
Also on release this week... Inside Out The Last Sparks Of Sundown (from Monday) Promise Dad Ruth & Alex Wrong No. You're Ugly Too
UK box office top 10 1. Ant-Man 2. Minions 3. Ted 2 4. Jurassic World 5. Andre Rieu's 2015 Maastricht Concert (Event Cinema) 6. Terminator: Genisys 7. Bajrangi Bhaijaan 8. Magic Mike XXL 9. The Gallows 10. Amy
US box office top 10 1. Ant-Man 2. Minions 3. Trainwreck 4. Inside Out 5. Jurassic World 6. Terminator Genisys 7. Magic Mike XXL 8. The Gallows 9. Ted 2 10. Mr. Holmes
**This review contains spoilers in its final paragraph**
Maggie
Director: Henry Hobson
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson
Running time: 95 mins
Oh dear god, there’s hundreds of them. Don’t look back, just run. So many, so
many… overwhelming... no escape from them... they’re bloody everywhere. Yes, I
think it is safe to say I’ve had my fill of zombie-related movies, TV shows,
comic-books, novels and video games. We have reached peak zombie and the
walking dead (and, indeed, The Walking Dead) have delighted me quite enough,
thanks.
Unfortunately, while there’s a buck to be earned and a sub-genre to be milked
dry, the conveyor belt dedicated to churning out all things undead and Romero-esque
continues at full pelt. Hence Maggie, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Wade
Vogel, a farmer whose teenage daughter (Abigail Breslin) has a zombie bite and
is now slowly, irrevocably turning into one of them. At what point will Arnie
say “Hasta La Vista, Maggie” and pump her full of lead as the local coppers are
pressuring him to? Or will the big galoot fail in his duty, allowing Mags to
have his wife (Joely Richardson) and two younger kids for breakfast, lunch and
dinner?
Despite my reservations, Henry Hobson’s film succeeds in doing something a little bit
different to the usual ‘survivors band together and are slowly killed off
either by the undead or each other’ routine. Maggie is set after Zombageddon
and humanity is slowly recovering. Those infected and ‘on the turn’ are
quarantined, although, bizarrely, the doctors at the medical facility where
Wade finds his daughter hand her over knowing full well she’ll turn into a
flesh-munching monster in the coming days. It’s about as naive as returning a
member of ISIS to his family on the off-chance he might see the error of his
ways and set up a splinter faction called NICESIS dedicated to popping to the
shops for old ladies and feeding stray kittens.
Because the fight against the zombie hordes has been largely
won, we don’t see many of them and that’s a very good thing. When the undead do
pop up it makes their appearance that much more impactful and chilling. In
fact, one of the strongest scenes comes fairly early on when a zombified father
and daughter stray onto the Vogels’ land. It turns out Wade knew these people –
now human-shaped necrotic meat – and you really feel his horror and sorrow. It
isn’t the fact they are now wretchedly degraded killing machines that we first
notice but the fact they were once just a dad and his little kid. In its desire to make
everything bigger, scarier and crazier, the zombie genre has lost those small
and personal moments but Maggie is full of them.
Whilst admirable, Hobson’s low-key approach does mean his film
is slow at times. Perhaps not Walking Dead season two slow but certainly in the
same ball park. The longueurs are especially noticeable whenever Richardson’s character Caroline
is on screen, an underwritten part (this is the Arnie and Abi show!) and one with
which the British actress clearly struggles. The kindest thing you could say
about her accent is that it is recognisably American. From precisely where in America
is another matter though.
In place of Richardson,
I’d like to have seen more of Maggie interacting with her friends – at least
one of whom has also been bitten. There’s a powerful scene late in the film in
which she shares a kiss with the boy and it’s a perfectly-judged melancholy
moment full of ‘what might have been’. This is the life Maggie should have had;
this is the life the zombie plague has now stolen from her.
Demonstrably, Maggie is a zombie film but you won’t find a
single mention of the z-word anywhere in its 95-minute running time. You see,
these aren’t zombies; they are victims of the Necroambulist virus (it’s so
clumsy, even typing it made me wince). I’ll never know why creators do this.
Look, you know they’re zombies, your cast and crew know they’re zombies, your
audience knows they’re zombies, critics and bloggers like me know they’re
zombies, my cat and next door’s goldfish know their zombies. So why not just
call them zombies, eh? Is it merely a screenwriter trying to be clever (and
failing), or is there still a variation on the old ‘cultural cringe’ at play
here – despite the rise and rise of nerd culture, it seems copping to the fact you’re
making a zombie flick is still a bit embarrassing to some.
It’s refreshing to see Schwarzenegger for once playing a human
being rather than a cartoonish facsimile of one. He’s pretty good here,
actually – still a badass (what were you expecting, flower arranging and Reiki?)
but a vulnerable, sympathetic one. He conveys a palpable sense of loss as he
sees his daughter slipping away from him piece by piece. And that’s the most notable
part of the film – it’s rare to see the ‘zombism as terminal illness’ analogy
explored this deftly.
Hobson brings a forensic quality to Maggie’s deterioration – we
see her mind, body and humanity surrendering itself to the affliction in small,
heartbreaking increments. One of the strongest scenes sees her freak out when
she discovers a maggot feasting on her rotting flesh, in another she cuts off
one of her fingers after accidentally breaking it. Her shift away from humanity
takes a while, and it’s painful and it’s ugly but Breslin – her character battling
every inch of the way – sells it all very convincingly.
Considering he has the most prominent and celebrated movie
action hero of the last 40 years as his main star, Hobson sidesteps the obvious
fighting ’n’ shooting ending. Forget Arnie, Maggie is all about a brave young
woman taking control of a terrible situation and refusing to surrender to it without
a fight. Ultimately, though, she loses, accepts her fate and leaves this life entirely on her own terms. The film is all the stronger for it.
