May issue - Magazine - Page 29
Glenside
News
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ENTERTAINMENT
CINEMA & TV REVIEWS
By David Taylor
The Christophers
(Cert 15) is out in cinemas
You never know quite what you're going to get with a
new movie by the determinedly eclectic director Steven
Soderbergh – a glossy Hollywood blockbuster like
Ocean's Eleven and Erin Brockovich or else a low key
chamber piece like sex lies and videotape or Side Effects.
His latest caper comedy, The Christophers, tends towards
the latter, with Ian McKellen as a reclusive, misanthropic
artist who takes on a new assistant (Michaela Coel),
kudos to the film-makers for recognising that the
publishing world has moved on in the ensuing two
decades – Runway magazine has gone digital but is
finding it increasingly hard to provide the salacious clickbait demanded by an easily distracted modern audience,
while slashed budgets have left imperious editor Miranda
Priestly (Streep) forced to travel Economy with the hoi
poloi. Fashionistas can have fun ogling the fancy frocks
and keeping a scorecard of the celebrity cameos, which I
guess is the point.
The Sheep Detective
(Cert PG) is out in cinemas
unaware that she's actually a forger hired by his moneygrubbing children (Jessica Gunning and James Corden) to
'complete' a set of priceless unfinished portraits – the
Christophers of the title – he has hidden away somewhere
in his studio. While engrossing, the ins and outs of this
deception take a back seat to the delightfully prickly
relationship between the two main characters, with both
McKellen and Coel on absolutely top form thanks to a
script that crackles with venomous wit.
This comic barnyard whodunit has been likened to the
delightful Babe, but in truth it's closer to the darker tones
of that film's peculiar sequel, Babe: Pig in the City. When
genial shepherd Hugh Jackman is found dead, it falls to
his flock of sheep (variously voiced by Julia LouisDreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Chris O'Dowd, Bryan Cranston,
Bella Ramsay, Regina Hall et all) to try and point clueless
police officer Nicholas Braun towards his killer. For the
most part the film is endearingly daft and often laugh-outloud funny, but there's an odd undercurrent that surfaces
occasionally where the sheep ruminate soberly on their
mortality that feels slightly at odds with the story's
otherwise whimsical nature.
The Devil Wears Prada 2
(Cert 12A) is out in cinemas
Having started as a bestselling novel and hit film
adaptation then morphed into a popular stage musical, it
was inevitable The Devil Wears Prada would eventually
spawn a sequel. The only surprise is that it has taken 20
years. The key cast members – Anne Hathaway, Meryl
Streep, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt – all reprise their roles
and the script is either comfortingly familiar or
disappointingly generic depending on your outlook. Still,
Hokum
(Cert 15) is out in cinemas
Even if you found that Irish director Damian McCarthy's
two previous features, Caveat and Oddity, promised more
than they delivered, his latest Hokum is a clever and
consistently inventive spin on the hoary old sceptic-hasto-spend-the-night-in-a-haunted-house trope. Severance's
Adam Scott plays an obnoxious bestselling author who
books into a remote Irish inn to scatter the ashes of his
parents, only to scoff at the local legend that claims the
hotel's off-limits honeymoon suite is haunted by the ghost
of a witch. It takes a good half-hour of intricate and
seemingly superfluous set-up before Scott even opens the
sealed chamber, at which point the film kicks into high
gear and what seemed like just random chitchat earlier
suddenly gains ominous resonance. The result is both an
intriguing murder mystery, an interesting character study
about guilt and a full-throttle scare machine.
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