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tv   The Film Review  BBC News  September 18, 2021 11:45pm-12:01am BST

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a little bit overdue. we overdue? a little bit overdue. we have seen — overdue? a little bit overdue. we have seen same-sex _ overdue? a little bit overdue. we have seen same-sex two - overdue? a little bit overdue. we have seen same-sex two sex - overdue? a little bit overdue. we - have seen same-sex two sex hearings have seen same—sex two sex hearings on shows like dancing on ice. so as not perhaps the novelty of that strictly thought it was. but it's fantastic to see the show back tonight. we will all be cheering on, i knowjoe will be cheering on adam pd and particular. at the same time it's always refreshing to see the way in which they show moves with the times, has such a remit of entertaining children, entertaining grandparents, it's classic saturday night entertainment. i’m grandparents, it's classic saturday night entertainment.— night entertainment. i'm very excited to _ night entertainment. i'm very excited to see _ night entertainment. i'm very excited to see her _ night entertainment. i'm very excited to see her back. - night entertainment. i'm very - excited to see her back. absolutely. classic saturday night entertainment as is the paper review. thank you both for joining me tonight. that's it for the papers for now. goodbye.
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hello and welcome to the film review, here on bbc news. taking us through this week's cinema releases, i'm pleased to say, is mark kermode. and we haven't been together in a studio for about 18 months. i know, it's terrifying. you're looking fabulous. so are you! thank you very much. anyway, talk us through this week's releases! very, very diverse batch. we have rose plastulie which is an intense psychological drama. we have gunpowder milkshake which is a very frothy action romp. and we have the starling which is the new movie starring melissa mccarthy. let's start off with rose plays julie. this is a young woman adopted at birth who discovers that her mother is an actress and she goes to find her. it looks like a terrific movie, actually, from what i've seen.
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i think it's great. it's by christine molloy and joe lawlor who are an irish film—making duo. they made films like helen, which is a wonderful, intense psychological drama. so the story is, our central figure, rose, discovers where her birth mother lives. her birth mother said that she didn't want any contact, but she goes from dublin to london, and it turns out that her mother, who is an actress, her house is on the market, so she goes to the house, posing as somebody who might be interested in buying it. here's a clip. are you really looking to buy the house? why do you ask? well, it's just you look a little young and i really don't want to waste anyone's time here. erm... silence. the thing is...you're right.
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i...am looking on behalf of... what? a client. so how many square feet is the property? 3,000. mmm. so you can see even from that clip performance is a lot of it, so she is pretending to be somebody else, she then meets her mother, she wants to know why her mother gave her up and i won't give away the answer to that — but she then adopts another identity to go to track down aidan gillen. so these two film—makers, christine molloy and joe lawlor, what they're really fascinated in is identity, and role playing, and the way in which we perceive ourself, the way in which other people perceive us, the way in which you can seem to be one
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thing but be a different thing. they're also very interested in the idea of history, the present and the past living together. and what they manage to do with this film — which also has a very timely kind of me too theme running through it — is, on the one hand, this is an intense, psychological drama which is really gripping, but on the other hand it's a much more kind of, you know, they've looked almost to archetypal greek tragedy for something which is a timeless story about somebody trying to figure out who they are. i've seen this three times now. i don't think i'm yet fully through all of its mysteries. it has a wonderful score by stephen mckeon and obviously it's waited a long time to be in the cinemas because of everything that's happened with cinemas closing, and i would love people to go and see it because it deserves to be seen on the big screen. it's a really terrific piece of work and really fascinating and mesmerising. very timely but also, strangely, timeless. mmm, 0k. and rather different... yes! laughs. and potentially winner of this year's craziest movie title, is gunpowder milkshake. the thing with gunpowder milkshake
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is the title tells you everything you need to know. so, it's a sugar rush movie. so the story is, karen gillan is an assassin. when she was young her mother was an assassin, gave her up and she was 12, she's now grown up to be as deadly as her mother. the generations are reunited when she finds herself looking after a young girl who's been kidnapped which puts her at odds with �*the firm' for whom she's worked, and she teams up with the librarians who are a group of women who keep heavy weaponry in library books. so the whole thing is a comic book set up. it's all neon drenched and none of it feels in any way realistic. it's good fun, it's entertaining — there are some fun fight sequences, the whole thing has got this garish hue to it. none of it has any emotional impact whatsoever but you don't go to a movie called gunpowder milkshake thinking what you're going to get us an in—depth character study. what you go for is the comic book, the graphic novel feel to it. the guy who directed this made a film called big bad wolves which is a lot tougher and has got
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a lot more grit to it. but this is good fun, it's in cinemas and on sky cinema. i think that karen gillan carries off the central role very well. you know, it's a romp, it's a film called gunpowder milkshake, it does exactly what it says on the tin. some of it looks video game, i have to say. yyyes. . . is that unfair? i think it is unfair because i've yet to see a video game that looks as good as gunpowder milkshake but understand the comparison. 0k. let's go on to the starling. this is melissa mccarthy and chris o'dowd, who were both in bridesmaids actually, weren't they? this, yes, this is, however, a film which falls under the most difficult of categories — the dramady. the drama with comedy. so, they play a couple who they have lost their child to sids, and she isjust about holding it together. he, on the other hand, checks himself into an institution because his life has fallen apart. here's a clip. i thought maybe we could go up to the lake again when you get home. you know, for the forest. sure. that's fun, right? yeah, yeah, it'll be just like it was, like nothing ever happened.
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i didn't say that. no, i know. no, but that is why i'm here, isn't it? i'm just supposed tojust go back to being my good old self and we can all get on with our lives. it's just gonna take time, that's all. don't, don't, don't. please. no, do you really think that time is going to make all of this 0k? it's going to make us 0k? i'm not saying that, i'm just saying that we can't stay here like this, this is not good. i know. but i don't know how i fit any more. i don't know how we fit, how any of it works, i'm just not like you lily. you're not like me? i carried her inside me for nine months! so, why are you here? so, here's the thing. this is obviously a very difficult subject for a film to approach and what this tries to do is to be sort of, you know, sentimental and sometimes funny and sometimes serious.
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and it manages to be none of the above. it ends up being that worst of all possible things — mawkish. it feels kind of like a movie that doesn't know exactly how to pitch itself. one thing that happens to melissa mccarthy's character is that she is constantly harassed by �*the starling' — of the title — a starling that is in her garden and it becomes a metaphorfor grief. she is sent to find somebody who she is told will give her psychiatric help who turns out to be a vet who used to be a psychiatrist, but is now a vet. so it's full of these kind of overly kooky, quirky contrivances, and there are so many moments in it. the score keeps telling you �*this is the bit to feel good' and �*this is a bit feel sad', there's a kind of soft rock thing going on, and i have to say, i did find it quite hard going because at no point did it actually get under the skin of its subject. it wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, not dramatic enough to be a drama. but it is just right in that sweet spot in the middle and it is mawkish and sentimental,
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and i think it is a shame because i think there is talent on screen and i think that somewhere in the middle of it it, it's trying to tell an uplifting story and is just not managing it at all. other people may feel differently. i really didn't get much out of it at all. i'm guessing you haven't seen this one three times. no, i haven't. just the once did it for me. that was enough! that was enough, yeah. right, best out. well, this is a movie that does know how to balance light and shade. so herself, it's a new movie by phyllida lloyd, it stars clare dunne who also co—wrote the script. this is a story about a woman who is escaping from domestic abuse and in order to do that she discovers that it is possible to build a house for a fairly small amount of money. so on the one hand it's gritty and touch, on the other hand it's almost fairy tale fantasy — the fantasy of building your own house, but in a realistic way. and i think this is a film that does understand how to manage those different elements and still keep the audience on board, and actually tell a very important
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story about domestic abuse but tell it in a way that makes an audience want to watch the film, that makes the audience think, oh, i've heard this is a really interesting movie. and i thought it was... i've seen it a couple of times now because at first, a year or so ago, because everything's been delayed for such a long time. it is really well worth seeing and it is in cinemas, and again, it is worth seeing in cinemas because it looks great, it's a really interesting piece. 0k. we're also finally going to talk about a clockwork orange which is, unbelievably, half a century old. it was made in 1971. astonishing. so there's a 4k reissue, it will be coming out on disk in a few weeks' time and at the moment it's back in cinemas. did you see clockwork orange in the cinema or did you? yes, in cinema, but a very long time ago. just talk people through the history of it because not everyone will know all about it. so it is a stanley kubrick film of an anthony burgess novel, and the novel is really about the battle between free will and constrainment and also crime and punishment. so the central story is a teenager,
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�*cause it�*s a dystopian future, commits acts of violence, he is then captured and put in prison and told he can get out only if he submits to the ludovico technique which will take away his free will but will turn him into into a proverbial clockwork orange. when the film came out it was a real cause celebre, there was a lot of censorship fuss about it. kubrick withdrew it in the end, didn�*t he, because there was such a backlash. kubrick�*s family asked for warner bros to withdraw it from circulation in the uk, so for ages in the uk it was effectively banned, yeah. it was never banned by the bbfc, although they didn�*t want to pass it on video originally, because it had this kind of strange reputation around it. i mean, i think the thing now is, people remember the first 45 minutes. what they forget is... which was very scary. yes, but it�*s also very stylised and it�*s — the whole thing is narrated by the character who�*s talking in nadsat which is a mixture of english and russian. and of course the design is extraordinary. the use of music is really phenomenal. i mean, it is — there is no doubt
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that it is a confrontational film and there are some people who absolutely will loathe it. but, it�*s a weird thing to say about a film, it�*s a design classic. tarantinoesque, would you say? tarantino couldn�*t hold a candle to a clockwork orange. sorry. ok, well, on that thought, mark... laughter. we�*ve finished for today! thank you so much mark kermode. thank you very much for watching. that�*s it for this week, goodbye. hello, again. for many of you it has been a fine start to the weekend, dry with some spells of sunshine for many. however, the weather is certainly getting a lot wetter at the moment. we have got showers or longer outbreaks of rain pushing their way north of the onto really quite heavy downpours but things will start to get a bit dry as we head into the very first part of sunday morning across western areas of northern ireland but otherwise expect rain at some point during the day. the rain will tend to push its way
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eastwards as it reaches its way eastwards as it reaches eastern to halt. the amount of rain we get here is going to vary quite a bit from place to place but some could see as much as 30 or a0 millimetres of rain. that�*s enough to cause some localised surface flooding. as the west, because, it is increasing weather picture through the day with improving dry weather and increasingly sunny skies. a lot of dry weather with sunny spells in the day on tuesday. low pressure then moves in. there will be gales later in the week as low pressure moves in.
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this is bbc news. i�*m philippa thomas with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the rift deepens between france and key western allies over a cancelled submarine contract. the french foreign minister says relations with australia this is bbc news — i�*m philippa thomas — with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world... there has been lying duplicity a major breach of content. things are going well between us. ,, things are going well between us, ,, ..,, things are going well between us, ,, , ., us. us officials moved thousands _ us. us officials moved thousands of - us. us officials moved thousands of migrants us. us officials moved - thousands of migrants from the us border town after a rapid influx missing from haiti. a month after the taliban takeover in afghanistan — secondary schools reopen — but only for boys. as america admits a drone strike killed ten afghan civilians by mistake —
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relatives say the us apology, isn�*t enough.

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