June issue - Magazine - Page 27
Glenside
News
GlensideNews@mail.com
ENTERTAINMENT
CINEMA & TV REVIEWS
By David Taylor
The Life of Chuck (Cert 15)
is out in cinemas from August 22
Stephen King may be a brand name horror author, but the
best films based on his stories – Stand By Me, The
Shawshank Redemption, Misery – tend to be adaptations
of his more mainstream works. You can add The Life of
Chuck to that list, a whimsical comedy drama that unfolds
in reverse, charting the life of accountant Charles 'Chuck'
Krantz from adulthood (Tom Hiddleston) back to his
schooldays (played variously by Jacob Tremblay,
Benjamin Pajak and Cody Flanagan). Kicking off this
point, the rage virus has been eradicated across Europe
but the UK has been declared a quarantine zone and left
to fend for itself (in the first of the film's possibly
intentional or maybe just clueless decisions, the map of
the UK depicted includes the Republic of Ireland). After
numerous zombie encounters and much exposition, the
plot only really kicks into gear halfway through the
running time, when a plucky teenager (Alfie Williams)
and his desperately ill mother (Jodie Comer) leave a
fortified colony on Lindisfarne in search of a mythical
medic still living on the mainland (Ralph Fiennes as a sort
of cross between Dr Moreau and Mr Kurtz in Heart of
Darkness). There are some enervating sequences, but the
decision to intercut the zombie attacks with footage of the
Battle of Agincourt from the 1944 film of Henry V is
baffling, while the final few minutes are just offensively
stupid. And correct me if my maths is wrong, but if we're
three decades into the pandemic would not the vast
majority of the infected now be well into advanced
middle age?
Elio (Cert PG) is out in cinemas
inverted history is a schoolteacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who
becomes increasingly intrigued by a rash of adverts
proclaiming “39 great years! Thanks Chuck!” that begin
springing up in magazines, on billboards, on television
and even being written across the sky. Revealing any
more of the plot would be unfair, but the comparisons to
It's A Wonderful Life are not unjustified and there are a
wealth of winning cameo appearances by Mark Hamill,
Karen Gillan, Matthew Lillard, Heather Langenkamp,
Carl Lumbly, David Dastmalchian and – best of all – Mia
Sara, making a delightful return to the screen after more
than a decade.
While it might not soar to the stratospheric heights of the
best of Pixar's animated adventures, Elio is still an
enjoyably daft addition to the studio's canon. The title
character is an orphan who dreams of being abducted by
28 Years Later… (Cert 15) is out in cinemas
Having sat out 28 Months Later…, director Danny Boyle
and screenwriter Alex Garland obviously decided the time
was right to revisit the viral landscape of 28 Days Later…
with – you're way ahead of me – 28 Years Later… By this
aliens, only to get his wish when he's sucked into a
wormhole to the Communiverse, a sort of intergalactic
think tank for the greatest minds in the galaxy, which
mistakenly believes that Elio was the brains behind the
Voyager mission in 1977. Complications arise when a
blustering warlord – a sort of giant caterpillar in a heavily
weaponised exoskeleton – tries to muscle his way into the
Communiverse by force.
Materialists (Cert 15)
is out in cinemas from August 15
It really has to be pointed out that Materialists is
promoting itself with one of the most egregiously
misleading marketing campaigns in recent memory and
anyone expecting a glossy romcom is going to feel
they've been sold a pup. Dakota Johnson plays a slick
professional matchmaker who has refined modern
CONTINUED OVERPAGE
Page 27
