November issue - Magazine - Page 27
Glenside
News
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ENTERTAINMENT
CINEMA & TV REVIEWS
By David Taylor
Wicked For Good (Cert PG) out in cinemas
After a year-long interval we're back for Act Two of
Wicked, this time billed as Wicked For Good per the
opening titles. Inevitably, the charming phantasmagoria
now takes on a much darker hue. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo)
has been banished to the hinterlands of Oz and rebranded
as the Wicked Witch of the West by the Wizard (Jeff
Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and her
attempts to smash the authoritarian regime recast as attacks
on the people. Meanwhile, Galinda (Ariana Grande) and
father (Charles Dance). There's also a strange psychosexual
kink in having Mia Goth playing both the unrequited love
of Frankenstein's life and his beloved mother. Yet while
Del Toro has masterfully moulded Mary Shelley's words to
reflect his own preoccupations, this remains one of the
most faithful adaptations of the book to date, split neatly
into two halves narrated first by the creator and then his
creation, bookended by their final reckoning in the desolate
Arctic wastes. And notwithstanding the great heaps of
viscera and body parts splattered across the screen, it's
often breathtakingly beautiful thanks to the florid
imaginations of production designer Tamara Deverell and
costume designer Kate Hawley.
This Is Not A Murder Mystery (Cert 15)
will be televised soon
Nessa Rose (Marissa Bode) are being manipulated into
supporting the brutal crackdown on basic freedoms in the
Emerald City and Munchkinland respectively. Splintering
off all the main characters to different regions of Oz
worked well in Gregory Maguire's original novel because
it added depth and weight to the themes of the book, but
here it leaves their individual stories unfolding like a series
of episodes that never quite cohere into a whole – it's like
you're watching the movie from the wrong side of the
Wizard's curtain, aware of all the string pulling to
manipulate the plot to achieve the desired outcome. There's
also a sense all the best songs were front-loaded into the
first movie and even the combined star wattage of Erivo
and Grande can't breathe life into such flimsy halfmelodies. For a film that's nearly half an hour shorter than
Part One, it ends up feeling half an hour longer.
Frankenstein (Cert 15)
is out in cinemas and streaming on Netflix
In the 1931 film of Frankenstein the British censors
insisted on cutting the doctor's blasphemous line of
dialogue on breathing life into his monster: “Now I know
what it feels like to be God.” Heaven knows what they
would have made of the creation scene in director
Guillermo Del Toro's thunderous new adaptation of the
novel as the hapless patchwork creature is hoisted aloft
spreadeagled on a gigantic crucifix to literally receive the
blessing of heaven. The theme of fathers forsaking sons
cuts right through the movie, with the petulant dismissal by
Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) of his misbegotten
offspring (an almost unrecognisable Jacob Elordi)
mirroring his own upbringing at the hands of his callous
In true surrealist manner, This Is Not A Murder Mystery is
indeed a murder mystery. The six-part whodunit is set in
1936 and the world's foremost surrealists – Salvador Dali,
Max Ernst, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Rene Magritte – are
gathered together at an English country estate for an
exhibition that will launch them into art world superstardom, only to have their ambitions jeopardised by a series
of fiendish murders mimicking their artworks. Having been
framed for the first murder, Magritte (Pierre Gervais) joins
forces with the indomitable DCI John Thistlethwaite
(Stephen Tompkinson) and his feisty sidekick DC Mary
Quant (Donna Banya) to bring the diabolical killer to
justice. Like Hercule Poirot, the series is Belgian but the
dialogue is mostly in English and, as you’ve probably
guessed from the above outline, is playful in nature, though
the bitchy sniping between the pretentious artists and the
dogged sleuths stops just short of veering into high camp.
As well as the enjoyment of working out the mystery, you
can also have fun spotting dozens of little visual references
to surrealist masterpieces dotted throughout the frame.
Bugonia (Cert 15) is out in cinemas
It seems fair to say that director Yorgos Lanthimos has
found his muse in Emma Stone, the absurdist comedy
Bugonia being their fifth film together. Having said that,
he certainly doesn't give her an easy ride here, shaving off
her hair, slathering her head to toe in antihistamine cream
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