May issue - Magazine - Page 29
Glenside
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CINEMA & TV REVIEWS
Continued
public servants. Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian
Stan and Wyatt Russell do what they can with the shoddy
material they're given to work with, but Hannah JohnKamen's Ghost simply serves as window-dressing and
Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster gets 10 seconds of
screentime and a single line of dialogue. Much has been
made of the way the film deals with the theme of clinical
depression, except this was explored far more incisively
in the cult 2012 superhero movie Chronicle.
The Ugly Stepsister (Cert 18) is out in cinemas
Describing The Ugly Stepsister as a comedy is quite
accurate, but be warned that that comes with a hefty
caveat: you might want to watch it on an empty stomach.
Taking the traditional Cinderella story, the screenplay
inverts it to the perspective of Cinder's step-sibling Elvira
(Lea Myrin), a perfectly attractive teenager who
nevertheless undertakes an increasingly invasive regime
of body modification in an attempt to make herself
irresistible to the not particularly charming prince. This
begins with a wincingly barbaric form of medieval
rhinoplasty and escalates from there.
ENTERTAINMENT
film lines up the causal chain of dominoes for the
elaborate death scenes, as every innocent household item
or item of scenery becomes a potentially lethal agent of
fate. Of course, it wouldn't be a Final Destination movie
without the presence of silken-tongued Tony Todd as the
iconic William Bludworth, who managed to complete his
role before his death from cancer in late 2024. Though
looking gaunt and painfully frail, there's still a twinkle in
his eye as he cheats Death one last time.
Nine Puzzles
(Cert 15) is streaming on Disney+
Although it takes a while to settle into its rhythm, the 12part South Korean whodunit Nine Puzzles emerges as an
eminently bingeable treat. Orphaned schoolgirl Kim Dami returns home to find her uncle murdered, with a single
piece of a jigsaw puzzle the only clue left at the scene of
the crime. Ten years later, she's now an extremely
eccentric criminal profiler when the jigsaw puzzle
murders resume and she's forced into an awkward
partnership with taciturn cop Son Suk-ku, who's still
convinced she's the prime suspect for the killings. With its
mixture of odd-couple comedy and hardboiled police
procedural it will appeal to jigsaw lovers and crime
aficionados alike.
The Ballad of Wallis Island
(Cert: 12A) is out in cinemas
As a cautionary satire about the dangers of obsessing
over unrealistic ideals of feminine beauty, the movie
certainly puts the Grimm back into fairytales, but the
director Emilie Blichfeldt also delivers some startlingly
beautiful images – a scene where silkworms repair a
damaged ballgown is genuinely magical - juxtaposed with
the grue.
Final Destination: Bloodlines
(Cert 15) is out in cinemas
Marking the return of the death-defying horror franchise
after a hiatus of 14 years, the ghoulishly entertaining
Final Destination: Bloodlines serves as both a prequel
and a sequel to the series. This sixth movie begins in the
early 1970s, where a young woman (Brec Bassinger)
manages to avert the deaths of everyone attending the
glitzy opening of a restaurant atop a Space Needle-style
tower. Fast-forward five decades and her grand-daughter
(Kaitlyn Santa Juana) realises that all of the extended
families of the survivors who have been targeted by Death
- which is to say, all of the characters in the previous
Final Destination movies - and she is the end of the line.
As always, the fun of the movie is in how intricately the
Almost a century ago, Ealing Studios crafted a series of
gentle, whimsical, quintessentially British comedies
diametrically opposed to today's brash, gobby farces. The
Ballad of Wallis Island is one of the few modern films to
faithfully recapture that wistful combination of wit and
eccentricity without becoming overly precious or
mawkish. Tim Key plays a widower living on an isolated
island who decides to spend his major lottery winnings on
getting his favourite folk singer (Tom Basden) to come to
his home and perform a private gig to an audience of one.
What the cynical, embittered songwriter doesn't know is
that his dorky patron has also invited along his former
singing partner (Carey Mulligan), from whom he
acrimoniously split ten years previously.
A running joke about having to use a waterfront phone
box to communicate with the outside world serves as an
homage to the film's closest antecedent, the 1983 classic
Local Hero.
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