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tv   The Film Review  BBC News  February 9, 2019 11:45pm-12:01am GMT

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is front. many thanks indeed. that is it for the papers tonight. you can see the front pages on the website. and if you miss the programme, you can watch it later on bbc iplayer. a big thank you to my guests this evening, nigel nelson and jo phillips. next, it is the film review. hello there and welcome to the film review here on bbc news. taking us through this week's cinema releases, we have mark kermode. what have you got in store for us this week, mark? something for everyone. we have the lego movie 2, i know you're a huge lego movie fan. we have if beale street could talk, the new film by barryjenkins. and alita — battle angel, fantasy set in a dystopian future, is there any other kind?
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the question is, are you a huge lego movie fan? i am, the first lego movie i absolutely loved. lego batman i thought was great. by the time they got to the ninjago movie i thought they kind of ran out of steam. then along comes lego movie 2 to get things completely back on track and i fell in love again and i laughed all the way through it. so, did you see the first one? ok, so the first pretty much entirely plays out in the imagination of a young boy who has this great big legoland that his father owns. anyway, this begins at the end of that film, his sister is allowed to come in and play which causes complete chaos. she comes from the sistar solar system and brings in duplo and suddenly this wonderful world is created, and this bricksburg, which is this huge fabulous place in which everything is awesome is turned into an apocalyptic dystopia which is now called apocalypseburg. meanwhile, people from the sistar system have come to kidnap batman to take him off to be involved in some weird wedding ritual but emmet still thinks that back
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in apocalypseburg everything can be awesome. i know you're following this, here's a clip. this is my vision of the future. tada! a house? come on! let me give you the tour! very first one on the cul—de—sac... this is the living room, where you can live it up. tv room, dining room, planties room... whispers: kitty cat room. and out back, a double decker porch swing so we can always hang together! what do you think? it is going to attract aliens and get destroyed. ijust thought we could rebuild the future, make everything awesome again. sighs. emmet, you've gotta stop pretending everything is awesome, it isn't. every morning you walk through town singing that terrible, annoying manufactured pop song! that song really seems to upset you. no, it doesn't! the thing is, on the one hand it's got all the stuff i love from the first film, lots of really good jokes,
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it's visually really interesting, it's got excitement and action and all of that. what's really clever about it is this, this is basically a film which essentially plays out in the imagination of two separate characters — of the young boy and his younger sister. so therefore there is this collision of two worlds and the best thing about it is, if you imagine a really complex surrealist filmmaker making a film that's playing out in two separate imaginations, you know, it would be impossible. you watch it in the lego movie, you just accept it completely. the two dimensions incidentally arejoined by the dimension of reality which is the house in which they live, in where there is a real mum. and i just thought was really clever and really smart. i started laughing at the very beginning, i laughed all the way through. there are callbacks to the first movie and lots of in jokes. but it's designed in such a way that i think a younger audience will laugh at the slapstick and laugh at the fact they like the characters but an older more cynical audience would just be impressed that they've managed to create a movie that does this thing about, you know, it exists in two— remember that thing that eddie izzard once said — "two languages in one brain?
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no—one can live at that speed!" and watching lego movie 2, i kind of understood what he meant. i really enjoyed it. something very different, if beale street could talk, from barryjenkins who made moonlight, of course, the oscar—winning moonlight, which was terrific. yeah, i thought moonlight was absolutely wonderful. this is adapted from the james baldwin novel and has been nominated for three academy awards — adapted screenplay, for supporting actress for regina king — who i think is a dead certain — and for the music by nicholas britell. the story, which is set in ‘705 harlem, is, on the one hand you could see it as a story about oppression and unjust incarceration, about racial tension. but actually, it is a love story. it's a love story between these two characters, tish and fonny. fonny is in prison, tish is pregnant and it is about the way in which their relationship plays out against this backdrop of injustice. i think the real genius about barryjenkins' work is, like moonlight, he can take a story and by focusing on the specifics of, like in that case, the life of somebody growing up in poverty, amidst addiction and drugs, and somehow make that story universal by concentrating
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on the specifics. in the case of this, he gets all the period details right, he gets the details of the characters' struggles right, but it becomes completely universal. did you love moonlight? i did, i thought it was terrific actually, really good. and what's astonishing is that for a film that's that adventurous, for it to end up getting the oscar success that it did, finally, we now think of it as, well, of course it's an oscar—winning film, but when it was first made, it was like a strange arthouse movie that i think everybody thought had only a niche audience. also, brilliant use of music, gorgeous cinematography, he has a way of slowing down time during these tender, very passionate moments, i mean, i thought it was wonderful. yeah, looking forward to seeing that one. alita — battle angel. this is based on a manga series. this first caughtjames cameron's eye, apparently, something like 20 years ago and i think originally he was going to make it. now he's producing and co—writing the script, directed by robert rodriguez.
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it's a dystopian future. this bereaved hunter warrior played by christoph waltz finds the head of a female cyborg and he takes it back to his laboratory and rebuilds her. he calls her alita which is a name which means something very special to him. it turns out she has combat reflexes and starts to remember her past in which it looks she was some kind of battle angel, particularly when she finds this fantastically futuristic battle—ready body that she wants christoph waltz‘s character to give her to make her whole. here's a clip. this body, it has the power i need. i feel a connection to it, i can't explain. this could be who i am. you've been given a chance to start over with a clean slate. how many of us get that chance? why did an enemy warship respond to me? because i knew that ship! i've been on others like it, haven't i?
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haven't i? 0h, whatever you were, it's not who you are now. i'm a warrior, aren't i? her eyes really are extraordinary, aren't they? it's remarkable, isn't it, it's like a kind of cyborg movie as designed by margaret keane. so what you've got there is rosa salazar and motion capture and now the fact you can do this with visual effects and combine physical performance with extraordinary visual effects. that character exists absolutely in a thing known in the industry as uncanny valley which is that thing between — is it animation, is it live action? and i think it's really well done. i think the character's well done and i think rose salazar brings a lot to the role. the film itself is somewhat all over the shop. cameron is perhaps not the greatest screenwriter in the world, although in the past he has written things like terminator and aliens.
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this has spectacle to spare. often the story gets kind of lost. it's in the same area as films like robocop and rollerball and ghost in the shell and akira and blade runner. so there are ideas that we've seen played elsewhere, many of which come from a similar melting pot. but i went in with fairly low expectations and although i think like it is narratively challenged, i thought it held together largely because i think rosa salazar's central performance was good enough to make you intrigued by that central character and i was, as you were, watching, there is something fascinating about it. it's real but unreal at the same time and i thought that worked rather well. narratively challenged, does that mean not a great story? yes, kind of. so, best out? so burning which is this film i talked about last week, lee changodong's, it's a weird murder mystery in as much as the mystery is whether or not there has even been a murder. i mean, it may be a love story, it may be a murder mystery,
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it may be a social satire. it's such a bewildering, mesmerising movie, and ijust loved it and i don't pretend to understand it. 0k. best dvd? this is the latest version of a star is born, we've now had four incarnations, well, five if you count the predecessor. bradley cooper directing and starring, lady gaga as the trajectory kind of mirrors the trajectory. i absolutely loved it. it's great, isn't it? the songs are really good and it works in the music world and i thought it was terrific. i thought he directed it really well. the live sequences, you think that really is a live rock band. raw action on stage. yeah, with proper mistakes and, you know, it's set in like a live sound to it, no, i thought it was really good. do you think it's been properly recognised ? it hasn't done that well on the oscar front. there was a weird thing which was when it first came out, everyone said, well, this is clearly going to win best picture and now as we get towards to oscars and everybody
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thinks that roma will win best picture, a star is born, its star has slightly waned. however, as we all know, awards are massively unpredictable. i thought it was really great. as somebody who actually — i liked the streisand version and thejudy garland version obviously definitive. i did think that this was, you know, and i went into it thinking ‘please don't be bad' and it wasn't, it was really good. ok, we can't let you go without a word about albert finney who has very sadly died at the age of 82. one of the great stars of stage and screen. and an extraordinary career. at one point, the face of british cinema. saturday night sunday morning, oscar nominated for a huge variety of roles, going from things like tom jones, murder on the orient express, the dresser, erin brockovich from 2001. also great performances in things like tim burton's big fish which i think he got a golden globe nomination for. and of course a bafta fellowship which is a very high honour. it's also important to remember not just this extraordinary body of work in front of the camera but also people have been talking about his role behind the cover. i remember interviewing mike leigh said that bleak moments happened because albert finney was — the phrase he used was he was the magician behind it, he was the person who made
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that film happen. i think that thing about supporting rising talent as well is just as important as the stuff about being such an impressive actor on screen. definitely one of the greats. mark, thank you very much. that is it for this week. thank you so much for watching. from both of us, goodbye. and hello from me. the weather in the week ahead is not looking bad at all. tomorrow is expected to be a mixed bag. we have got some rain around across the country, that will last until sunday morning. four monday the weather is improving. lots of sunshine and that will probably last all week long. so here
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is the satellite image. a lot of cloud heading in the direction of the uk. cloud with remnants of storm eric, to the south of that plenty of fresh cloud drifting in and out of the south—west. spots of rain, some of them more than spots, quite heavy, actually, through the night here and there. in the north—east of england and much of scotland it will be dry. clear skies, and it will be nippy, temperatures will dip below freezing. frost first thing on sunday. so here is the weather map for sunday itself. one weather system here moving across southern and central parts of the uk. you can see it is drifting towards the east. that means the weather will be proving behind it. here is the early morning and it looks as though some of that cloud and rain may hang around through most of the morning and into the afternoon across parts of east midlands, east anglia, possibly parts of the south—east as well. a large chunk of england and wales and certainly scotland looking dry if not sunny through the
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afternoon. showers are expected in northern ireland, and those showers will move back into parts of england and wales later on sunday. here is this area of showers moving through the uk later on sunday. after that, i have already promised you find weather for monday. i have already promised you find weatherfor monday. high i have already promised you find weather for monday. high pressure builds on this high pressure were pretty much park itself across western parts of europe. and it won't be moving in a hurry. and that means that any weather systems and weather fronts you can see behind means that any weather systems and weatherfronts you can see behind me here will be diverted to the north, and we will be enjoying that settled weather. and the pattern for the jet strea m weather. and the pattern for the jet stream looks something like this. you can see it heading towards us and then it loops around us and dives back into europe. when we get this pattern, this arc in the jet stream, to the south of it high pressure builds and draws in that yellow milder air in our direction. so here are the bullet points for the week ahead. it will be mainly dry, the scotland a little bit of rain, mainly in the western isles.
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mild days, relatively, the nights will be chilly so there might be a touch of frost and we could also have some distant fog. so overall the outlook for this coming week, absolutely fine. this is bbc news. i'm ben bland. our top stories: seven jihadists are sentenced to life in prison in tunisia over attacks that killed dozens of people in 2015. the democratic senator elizabeth warren launches her bid to become the party's candidate for 2020 — promising to champion ordinary, working people. millions and millions and millions of american families are also struggling to survive in a system that has been rigged. rigged by the wealthy and the well—connected. the queen's husband, the duke of edinburgh, surrenders his driving licence just weeks after a crash that overturned his car and injured two women. and five paintings by adolf hilter went under the hammer — but failed to sell.
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we'll find out what went wrong.

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