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tv   The Film Review  BBC News  November 24, 2019 11:45pm-12:00am GMT

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trump's reckless and and as he calls trump's reckless and unethical approaches, he wants to get in there. it is only ten weeks before the first primary, so i think this is incredibly late, and he has also onlyjust become a democrat, so it is interesting. it is quite accepted... 0k, it is interesting. it is quite accepted... ok, let's move on very quickly to our next story, still with the times, and again, air quality. they have looked at people who are living within 50 metres of a road and the effects on children's long development and also cancer and heart diseases. they have come up with figures which show that if you live far away, in a less crowded area, probably in the countryside and so on, then your chances of getting heart disease or cancer is much less. and cutting our pollution is really important, and this is just re— emphasising that, the
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health benefits. you know, if we can move to electric cars and we can get rid of some of the exhaust emissions, especially in london, which is pretty awful that it is not just the exhaust emissions, is it?l huge contribution is be particulates, the brakes and tyres. let sta nd particulates, the brakes and tyres. let stand with the front page of the fda. how big a story is this? the mainstreaming. potentially a big story, because what has been happening for the last almost 20 yea rs happening for the last almost 20 years is that football has come up in grade competitions, the premier league, the champions league, and broadcasters have been willing to spend enormous sums of money to get them but the broadcasters have reached their limit. they don't want to spend any more money. uefa, who run the champions league... isn't sports broadcasting very lucrative? it is, but there is a limit to how much they can charge from their customers. uefa are thinking they can stream it in the way that amazon and others work streaming, and
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therefore control the whole thing coming up the sponsorship money as well, the advertising money as well, and particularly, they are aiming for markets outside europe, in asia and so on, where european football is so popular. people in singapore change their sleeping habits to watch it, you know. customers keep wanting prices to come down, rather than go up. the streaming market is getting very busy, our monthly bills are building. we have had britbox, disney+. thank you for watching. that is it for the papers this weekend. don't forget you can see the front pages of the papers online on the bbc news website. it is all there for you seven days a week at bbc.co.uk/papers, and if you miss the programme any evening, you can watch it later on bbc iplayer. thank you, mihir bose and ros altmann. next on bbc news, it's the film review.
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hello and a very warm welcome to the film review on bbc news. to take us through this week's releases, as ever, mark kermode. hello, mark. hello. something for everyone this week. we have harriet, which is a true story of bravery. we have frozen 2. let it go, again. and 21 bridges, a ‘70s—inflected crime thriller. well, let it go has of course been an earworm all day... of course, of course. ..but let's start with harriet, which i'm really hoping you are going to tell me is really good. it is really good. good! so this is a film about a former slave turned abolitionist harriet tubman. cynthia erivo is the woman who escapes slavery, makes her own way to philadelphia where she meets up with
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the underground railroad, who cannot believe that she has made this journey pretty much under her own steam. here's a clip. so where are the others? weren't no others. you know, you can trust me. i'm a friend. who — who'd you make the journey with? i left my husband and family. it wasjust me and the lord. well, i don't know if you know how extraordinary this is but by some miraculous means, you have made it 100 miles to freedom, all by yourself. would you like to pick a new name? to mark your freedom? most ex—slaves do — any name you want. they called my mama rip. but her name harriet. i want my mama name and my husband. harriet tubman.
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wow. you really have to remember that cynthia erivo is british as well. remarkable. it is a really brilliant performance. the tag line is be free or die. there is talk about it doing a harriet tubman biopic for quite a long time — i think 20 years ago is when they started talking about it — and no... i mean, it is a really inspirational story. she is terrific in the title role. it is very well — kasi lemmons and the co—writer gregory allen howard do a really good job of taking a quite complex historical story and compressing it into something which works as a really sort of adventurous, engrossing narrative on screen. 0n the one hand, you have the grit of the story, the horror of the story. in the way the film is shot, you get — i don't know if you remember this, but with 12 years a slave, there was always that thing about the beauty of the landscape against the horror of what was happening. yes, yeah! you get some of that here. you also get this kind of slightly mystical element. she's had an injury to her head which causes fainting,
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but she seems to have almost like a hotline to the almighty, and it plays with that really, really well. but the most impressive thing about it is that it manages to tell a historical story in a way that is really dramatic, really engrossing that assumes you wouldn't know anything about this story beforehand and does so in a way that i think a mainstream audience could completely embrace and i think it's, you know, it's think it's a really, really well—made film and a really engrossing story and great to see this story told on the big screen. yeah. fantastic. rally looking forward to that. frozen 2. i mean, i cannot stop singing it all the time, but, yes... ok, so this picks up, you know, some — a few years after the first film. elsa hears a straight sound calling out of the north, calling her to the forest. now there is a new quest, a new problem to be solved. josh gad is olaf who is grown up and is now dealing with some of the problems of maturity. we have all the stuff that you would expect —
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we have spectacular visuals, water, ice, you know, heroines, action, drama. we have some absolutely belting songs. we have idina menzel belting out into the unknown which is kinda of up there to some extent with let it go. there's a lovely song by olaf about when i'm older, everything will make sense, but it doesn't make sense now. i have no doubt that this is going to be a runaway smash and i have no doubt that it is going to find a very, very sympathetic audience because we know these characters, we love these characters, we have so much invested in it — and you can hear a big but coming. laughs. the thing is, from my point of view, you remember when toy story 2 came out and it was "wow! it's actually better than toy story!" yes! and you remember when godfather 2 came out and it's like "wow! "it's actually better than godfather!" well, frozen 2 is... it's fine. it's fine, yeah. but the thing is when i saw the first one, i just thought "this
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is so magical" and i didn't — you know, i had no expectation about it. it was so magical and so thrilling and so wonderful. i have no doubt that this is going to, you know, score a home run with its audiences but what it does not do — and i know it's asking a lot, what it doesn't do is take it to the next level. so it's fine. but that's. .. they're not going to put that on the poster, are they? "it's fine." it's fine. so chadwick boseman as a new york cop with a reputation for shooting bad guys. sienna miller is a narcotics cop. they meet up in the wake of a crime which has gone wrong and a number of policemen have been shot. they decide that they are going to shut down manhattan by closing the 21 bridges and then they have to pursue what they think are two suspects, including a quite breathtaking chase sequence. here's a clip. police, stop! don't shoot!
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it's tense! yeah, so what do you immediately think of when you see that? you immediately think of french connection. popeye doyle chasing charnier on and off the train, 0k? and the film is obviously referring back to those ‘70s thrillers. it doesn't have the grit or the depth of, you know, serpico or french connection. what it does have is a kind of very cliched, hard—boiled dialogue. it has an absolute nuts and bolts plot. you know, at the beginning, we've got something to do, we've got a limited amount of time to do it, the bridges can only be closed until five o'clock in the morning, we've got to catch these two people.
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and so, it's kind of set up almost like you think of something like the warriors. you know, very, very simple set—up — you've got to do this and you've got to do it in a limited period of time. what i liked about it is that, for me, it was an a—list b—movie. remember we talked about black and blue before? mmm — yes, yes. i said it's the same thing. you know, it's something which is a nuts and bolts idea but it's elevated because it's got every good performances. the dialogue in this is so ripe, you can actually smell it, but it's fine because you think "0k, it's a b—movie, but itjust happens to being played by very fine performers and it's directed with an efficiency and an enthusiasm for the genre." and i like a ‘70s—inflected crime thriller, i'm not making any claim for it being great, but i really enjoyed it as a good nuts and bolts popcorn thriller. there is a twist in it that you see coming a mile away. chuckles. but that's absolutely fine because it knows what it is and it does what it is efficiently. it does not have any great depth but then, frankly, it doesn't need it. but it's honest.
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it's honest! honest! exactly, it's an honest thriller. and best 0ut this week is a re—release? it is. so the bfi‘s got this musical season and so they have put ken russell's tommy back into cinemas. now, i — i love ken russell. i think ken russell is the great, you know, british post—war film—making talent. you know, powell and pressburger and then onto ken russell — that's the lineage. and tommy is extraordinary. it is based on the who's rock opera but it's completely reinvented by russell because russell was interested in films about false messiahs in, you know, twisted religions. it's got brilliant songs, as we know... yes, yes. ..from the who. it's got a a range of completely crazy performances, including famously elton john as the pinball wizard up on those massive boots and i'm — you haven't seen it, have you? laughs. you need to — no, but this is brilliant. it's an embarrassing admission! no, no — it's not! because when tommy came out in cinemas, ok, the only place you could see it with a proper sound mix was in leicester square, when it played... and i was five! yes, exactly. but everyone else who saw it in the cinema saw it with a bad sound mix. now, it's back in the cinema so you can enjoy for the first time the way that ken russell wanted you to experience it.
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this is a thrilling treat and i think you should embrace that moment. i will, i will! that's the joy of a re—release. it is. that's the joy. and a quick thought about dvd this week? look, i did this with you in mind, 0k? annabelle comes home. i see this! i don't — i don't think it's by any means — but here's what it is. firstly, of all of the annabelle movies, it's the one that i like the most. and i've chosen it for you because it's a horror movie but it's actually not very scary. it's actually... 0k... it's got nice characters that we can empathise with and we can enjoy and it's like a — it's like roller—coaster fu nfair ride. so thrilling, but not — it's not disturbing. it'sjust — it has got a... 0k. it's like a — it's like a — it's like a way in. you haven't heard how much i swear on a roller—coaster! it's not pretty! i am going to get you to like horror movies. it's a — i'm — this is gonna happen. this is a very good way in. annabelle comes home. it's fine, just a little bit but nothing deeply disturbing. 0k. scary enough to count as a horror genre, however... yes. 0k. but not scary enough to disturb you or give you a sleepless night. 0k. well, it is certainly a week with something for everyone. something for everyone. exactly as you say.
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i'm afraid harriet is top of my list but it won't surprise you to hear that. it's really worth seeing. thank you very much. thank you very much for being with us. bye— bye. hello. we will start monday on a mild mode, but also with a lot of cloud and further spells of rain, slowly pushing their way northwards across the uk through the day. somewhat heavy initially, particularly across southwest england, wales and into the midlands, becoming patchy on its journey north. heavy rain to the northern ireland, drier in the afternoon, not so much rain getting into the far north of scotland, another windy day for the shetland isles. another mild day across the uk, 913 is the afternoon high. further rain to come through the evening, weakening as it pushes its way north. dry but murky for a time, before another spell of heavy rain pushes into southwest england in the early hours. with that comes more trouble moisture. a start to tuesday morning, seven or eight is the overnight low. talking of low pressure, this area has the remnants
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of what was tropical storm sebastian embedded in it, so that will pick up the rainfall strength and the wind, in the very unsettled day on tuesday, with strong and gusty winds in south wales and southwest england.
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i'm sharanjit leyl in hong kong, the headlines: a pro—democracy landslide in hong kong's district council elections, sweeps aside the pro—beijing establishment. turnout was more than 70% — the highest ever recorded in any hong kong election. 0ur correspondent witnessed an upset. you witnessed an upset. can hear all the excitement here, you can hear all the excitement here, that is because a 23—year—old democracy activist has just unseated a pro—government incumbent who has held that seat for the last 20 yea rs. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme:

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