coming up on bbc news, we look ahead to the start of the new premier league season and ask, can anybody stop manchester city? katarina johnson—thompson throws down her challenge in the heptathlon, just the 800 metres to go. at lord's, the heavens opened but there was enough time for india to lose three wickets. that's all at 6:30pm, but now it's time for the film review. hello and welcome to the film review on bbc news, and taking us through this week's releases is jason sullivan. what have you got for us? this week, we go to beirut in 1982. it's mad men in the middle east, wherejohn hamm tries to negotiate the release of a hostage in the negotiator. and there's a big goldfish, an angry one coming up. there it is, jason statham getting his teeth into the meg,

and a prehistoric shark is on the loose. can he save us from it? and we take a rare cinematic trip to paraguay for a film called the heiresses. it's about late flowering freedom found amongst older women. so let's start with the negotiator. this has been billed as sort of bond or bourne meets mad men, in beirut. that's right, bourne is a particularly good example, because it's written by tony gilroy, the scriptwriter who wrote the first four bourne films and directed one of them himself. so he's very good on shady operations of the cia and the negotiations that happen, and mad men, because donald draper, one of the great tv characters of our time, was played byjohn hamm, who left the television after that series to go to the movies, and i don't think he's ever quite had the part that matches don draper. there are very few around. until now. he plays mason skiles. it's not as good a name as don draper, i'll give you that. but he is enjoying the high life in 19705 beirut,

when a terrorist incident ruins his life and family. ten years later, he's a washed—up alcoholic settling small trade disputes in no town, america and propping up the local which is when he gets a strange tap on the shoulder and the cia, in shady form, try to recruit him again. $6,500 and a first class ticket. i wouldn't go back to beirut if it was the last place on earth. flight leaves at 8:45pm tonight. well, it sounds like you've got about six hours to find somebody else. i was told that is not an option. look, i have no idea what's happening here. it would be a lot easier for both of us if i did. but, er... i was told to tell you that... time is extremely tight and the agency would be deeply grateful for your cooperation. it's a serious request,

they know that. tell them i don't have a passport. they put one in there with the ticket. so what do you make of it, jason? well, off he goes to beirut and he's given a handler called sandy, a local cia operative, played by rosamund pike, with a succession of cold stares, which helps him through the rubble of beirut. this film is really good on the atmosphere of the crumbling town that beirut has become, because it's been seized from all sides, druze militia on one side, muslims, christians, the jewish negotiations with the israelis. we don't know who's got the hostage, is it the plo, is it the various militias? it was an extraordinary time in the middle east. i don't know if you were out there as a news correspondent... i was sent to beirut actually in the ‘80s. john mccarthy had just been kidnapped. it was just a terrifying time. so hostagetaking was all the rage in a way, terry waite and john mccarthy, and that's the era we are in here,

especially with the americans trying to horse trade. they wanted the release of another terrorist. it becomes a moral maze as well as a kind of bond scenario. the tension is great. it's a real game of poker, which is what mason skiles is really good at, and that's whatjohn hamm excels at. he's got this sort of sweaty, intense desperation. one thing that's refreshing about the film is it's a lot of adults talking a lot. the action is not as much as it would be in a bourne, although that's there, but a lot of it is about the negotiations and the quick talking and shady characters. you never know who to trust or not. there is always going to be a switcheroo and a double cross at the end. it's available in cinemas and and on download as well today,

and it's called beirut in some territories. if you are looking for the negotiator, sometimes it's called beirut. that's a bit confusing! there you go. let's move on to the meg, which is definitely called just the meg, about a prehistoric shark. it sounds like a watery version ofjurassic park. yeah, i thought it might be like a dance inspired by meg ryan in the delo doing that fake orgasm, but it's not. it's just jason statham taking on a prehistoric shark, which has been awoken from the sea bed by a billionaire sea explorer. jason, who plays a deep sea rescuer, obviously, those down in his submersible to try and save people stranded at the bottom, but they awake this shark. something huge is out there, they say. yes, it is. there's this huge shark, like jaws after a lot of fish food. he's got bigger and bigger. almost too big — you can't really see the monster that well. it's almost not as scary as it should be, but there are moments where it leaves teeth marks on the glass, and that is a scary fish! that doesn't deter statham, who dived in. he was a former diver, actually, in his previous career, before he became an action hero.

so the watery stuff, he's really good at, diving off boats, taken on the shark with his captain ahab moment. look, it's a silly, popcorn, summer blockbuster movie, and it does deliver on all of those. interestingly, although it's about a prehistoric monster, it's probably the future of blockbusters, with a lot of chinese characters in it, because that's the burgeoning market. and it's set in some chinese resort, a swishy chinese resort where there are a lot of people in the water and they need to get out pretty quick before the shark comes. but statham will be there to save them, don't worry, and if you are worried, as seems to be contractually obliged, in alljason statham films, he does get his top off at some point. it's up to you to decide if that's anything to do with it. all right. thank you very much for that. and then we've got the heiresses, which is a spanish drama. even more unusual than that, it's a paraguayan drama. i'm not sure i've ever seen a film from paraguay. we had a great latin american new wave of films from chile at the moment, argentina and brazil over the last 15 years. this is the first from paraguay and, if this is anything to go by, i hope there's a lot more to come.

it's called the heiresses, and it's a really extraordinary story about two women who live in a crumbling mansion in the capital of paraguay. that's a good question, what's the capital of paranoid? er... it's asunci n. of course, i did know that. it was on the tip of my tongue. ecuador. no. so in asunci n, and i've never really seen it in the cinema before, but it's obviously a capital that is riven by inequality, so there's the wealthy area, where this is set, and it's about class privilege, but it's also about a female couple who live in a house they've clearly inherited, but they are coming up on hard times. one of them might be sent to prison for tax evasion, ok, it looks pretty atmospheric. it is. the atmosphere is really good, the cinematography, the kind of crumbling nature of this area, but also the faces that we get. one of the women that we see there is cella. when her partner gets sent to jail, that prison is very evocative. it's a chaotic space with poorer people, and she ends up in a sort of ferrying richer women around, because they don't trust local taxi

drivers in paraguay. in most of south america, a risk of kidnap is a major thing. there's a lot of it about this week in the movies. she becomes a sort of local taxi driverfor the rich, the ladies who lunch in this area of asunci n, and she suddenly discovers a freedom when she gets behind the wheel of a car, a late flowering romance with another woman called angie come who she finds rather striking, played by ana ivanova. the woman, cella, won the best actress at the berlin film festival earlier this year for her performance. it's her first screen performance ever. that's how rare cinema is in paraguay. she's been a stage actress all her life and this is her first ever screen appearance. you'd never know. she's brilliant. i hope there is more from paraguay. it's a very tender, atmospheric and suggestible film. it is very slight and you have to read between the lines, a lot of glances and looks, but i thought it was excellent and a really oppressive debut. probably the film of the week. 0k. jason, best out at the moment.

the best film out at the moment, i know there is mamma mia and mission impossible, but if you are looking for a sort of small british success, there is a film called apostasy, which is out at the moment. again, a rare glimpse into a society i'd never seen on camera before. it's jehovah's witnesses. the writer and director of this, dan kokotajlo, was a jehovah's witness growing up and he's sort of now showing what it's like in there. if you've ever wondered what it's like, and it's notjust the jehovah's witnesses, it's any religion, any sect where the intensity, children are growing up and splitting from the mother and questioning things... you rarely see a british film that's actually about religion or about faith, and that's what this is. i thought it was brilliant. fantastic performances from morley knight and siobhan o'halloran, who plays the mother. a brilliant glance into a bit of british society which, you think you've seen it all, you haven't. and a quick look at the best dvd. a big change of pace here! i'm going for peter rabbit, which is out. not anything immediately to do with beatrix potter,

which i always found a bit twee, be honest. this is james corden voicing the voice of beatrix potter's fluffy tailed hero, and i think he does it rather well. i think it's funny. it got terrible reviews when it came out, including from me, and i've since seen it with my kids and i think it's really funny. they love it, it's got a lot of energy, and it's kind of anarchic and funny, and very well done in many places, with lots of characters for the animals. it's a very funny film, and i'm sorry i gave it a bad review in the first place. i'm retracting that and saying it's good. jason, you've changed your mind. thank very much indeed, jason. that is it for this week. thank you for watching the film review. the weather is improving now for the second half of the day, just in time for friday night, if you are popping out. this evening. the weather is

going to remain changeable overwrought this weekend, but we are entering over the next few hours a window of quieter weather after the rainstorms and thunder and lightning that we've had in the last day. i wa nt to that we've had in the last day. i want to show you where the lightning has been in the last few hours, from lunchtime onwards. quite a lot across the south—east, the midlands, parts of eastern britain. these are the showers that brought the storms, moving out into the north sea, and the skies clearing nicely behind it. one of these scenarios where you had really dark cloud overhead, it's out of the way and the skies are suddenly clear and blue. a beautiful evening on the way, but a chilly one. there will be that thing in the air. temperatures down to seven, 8 degrees, even in city centres, and london could be nine or ten. saturday, we have a weather front approaching the uk, but it's not going to bring rain until later in

the day, so most of saturday morning is looking beautiful across the bulk of england, scotland and northern ireland, but by around lunchtime the clouds thickening and maybe some rain getting into the west country and into wales and the north—west of england. a bit warmer tomorrow, temperatures in the low 20s, and that's because the winds are starting to come in from the south—west, and there is still some warm air across france heading our way. with that, an increase in the humidity. for sunday, the low pressure has sparked itself pretty much across the uk, and just to the west of us. that means spells of rain almost anywhere across the country on sunday so, if you are hoping for completely dry weather, it doesn't look like it's going to happen, and most of us will get some rain. there will be gaps in the weather, and there will be some sunshine as well, and mostly into the low 20s across the uk. next

week, just a quick sneak peek of what it's doing in the south, temperatures warming up to about 25 but, for most of us, pretty much the average, and it will remain relatively changeable. overall, the outlook for the first half of the week is looking like it's going to stay mainly where we are at the moment keep a brolly to hand. the struggling department store chain house of fraser is bought by sports direct. it agreed to pay £90 million for the business, just hours after it went into administration. sports direct‘s billionaire owner, mike ashley, says he wants to turn the chain into the harrods of the high street. sports directjust seems like quite a jump from house of fraser, it doesn't really, in my mind, really fit together very well. we'll ask what the move means for house of fraser's 17,000 staff, and its customers. also tonight: england cricketer ben stokes tells the jury at his trial he doesn't remember knocking a man

unconscious during a fight outside a nightclub last year. flash floods in the south of france force hundreds of locals and holiday—makers to flee towns and villages — at least one person is missing.