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tv   The Film Review  BBC News  September 19, 2021 11:45pm-12:00am BST

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that greavsie was really was. to say that greavsie was required saturday lunch time viewing when i was a kid. i counted many of us grew up with a jimmy greaves telling us what to expect later on on a saturday afternoon. the word legend does get bandied around. but when you look at his progress, you look at his career, the word legend i think absolutely fittingly applies. i think absolutely fittingly aulies. , , i think absolutely fittingly aulies. , , applies. absolutely, absolutely. great to see _ applies. absolutely, absolutely. great to see you. _ applies. absolutely, absolutely. great to see you. thanks - applies. absolutely, absolutely. great to see you. thanks for - applies. absolutely, absolutely. - great to see you. thanks forjoining us both. really good to talk to you. that is some of the stories that public will be waking up to tomorrow morning. that's it for the papers tonight. coming up next it's the film review.
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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. 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,
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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. i...am looking on behalf of...
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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
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ourself, the way in which other people perceive us, the way in which you can seem to be one 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 is the title tells you everything you need to know.
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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 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.
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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. "4th sure. that's fun, right? yeah, yeah, it'll be just like it was, like nothing ever happened. 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
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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. and it manages to be none of the above. it ends up being that worst of all possible things — mawkish.
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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, 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,
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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 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.
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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, �*cause it�*s a dystopian future, commits acts of violence, he is then captured and put in prison and told he can get out
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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 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.
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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 there. we start this new week off on a fine note thanks to high—pressure efficiency quite a bit of sunshine around and do feel quite warm in the afternoon. both today and into tuesday. then towards the end of the week, we will see an active jets spin up deep areas of low pressure which could bring more autumnal to our shores. gales and outbreaks of rain will feel cooler too. for today, scott�*s mother from pushing to the northwest of scotland, yesterday�*s weather front still straddling, east anglia in the southeast with quite a bit of cloudy times, some showers around, the odd heavy one too.
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and it starts a bit wetter for northwest scotland through the day with a few showers for northern ireland. the best of the sunshine, slightly to central portions of the uk but we�*ll see highs of 21 degrees. generally into the high teens the way we have more cloud. as we head through monday night, the weather fronts in the northwest sink southeast words, fizzling out leaving no more than a band of cloud and maybe the odd shower. eventually, we lose that weather front across east anglia in the southeast. where skies clear will be quite cool, single digits butjust holding onto the cloud around ten to maybe 12 degrees. so, we start tuesday off of our area of high pressure dominating the scene, but we have a deep low spinning up to the north of the uk. lots of isobars here, but it will be quite windy across the northern half of the uk, cloud coming and going for the northwest of scotland and maybe just a few showers, particularly by the end of the day with the rest of the country. england and wales, england scotland a lovely day with temperatures reaching 20 degrees aberdeen 2! or 22 for the cell. we start to see some changes after tuesday. our area
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of high pressure begins to pull away and allows this to blow in the door to influence our weather and indeed wednesday is the autumn equinox. it will be feeling more autonomy mental across the uk. a band of rain spreading into scotland and northern ireland followed by sunshine and blustery shadows of the gaels developing in the north. a breezy day as well to the south of this rain band. for much of england but anotherfine one getting rain band. for much of england but another fine one getting the sunshine out, temperatures 20 to 22 degrees feeling quite warm for that wednesday it looks like being the last day because behind his mother fronted to thursday temperatures drop a deep blow, spins up across the north of the uk we think that will bring widespread gaels. it�*s turning cooler across all areas. thursday and friday will be windy particularly across the north of the uk with scales and outbreaks of rain.
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�*welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i�*m karishma vaswani. the headlines.. early russian election results show president putin�*s party set to retain a parliamentary majority — but there were widespread reports of irregularities. a volcano erupts spectacularly on la palma in spain�*s canary islands — spewing out lava, ash and smoke — and forcing the evacuation of local villages. canadians prepare to vote in monday�*s

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