Just out on Netflix is the toothless Polish satire The Hater. A man, thrown out of college for plagiarism, gets involved in the murky world of social media for politicians. Director Jan Komasa and writer Mateusz Pacewicz eschew any subtlety with a scattershot and simplistic approach to the material. Dropping phrases like ‘Fake News’ into the script may be done to make it feel timely but instead it just seems tired and cliched.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Also new on Netflix this week is the romantic comedy Plus One. Two single friends, with a summer’s worth of weddings ahead of them, agree to be each other’s plus one at all of the celebrations to avoid the embarrassment of sitting at the singles table. Admittedly, Plus One adheres strictly to the romcom formula as Alice and Ben, a seemingly mismatched couple, are brought together, but break up when one of them behaves badly before getting back together again. But this film has a lot more going for it than you might expect primarily because both of the lead characters feel like real human beings that you might want to spend time with, and Maya Erskine is terrific as Alice.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
This is shaping up to be another great year for lead female performances, as also demonstrated in a couple of the other offerings this week. It is hard to believe that Carolina Sanin is making her acting debut in Litigante, so assured is her performance. In Bogota, Silvia (Sanin), a single mother has a lot on her plate. Her mother, who she has a prickly relationship with, is terminally ill. Her crooked boss is trying to shift the blame on her as his fraud has been exposed and her son is being bullied for not having a father.
Director Franco Lolli leisurely depicts a few months in the life of Silvia is an extremely realistic way. Silvia is no saint but because of Sanin’s extraordinary performance, by the end of the film, I felt completely immersed in the story. Litigante is available on Curzon Home Cinema.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Tuppence Middleton gets a welcome lead role in the neo-noir thriller, Disappearance at Clifton Hill. Abby (Middleton) returns to her old home town of Niagara after her mother’s death. Memories of a possible kidnapping she witnessed as a kid become rekindled. But, as she has a history of making up stories, neither the cops or her sister believe her, so she investigates herself.
The setting of the faded tourist town was an inspired idea and director Albert Shin captures the seedy environs perfectly. Niagara is almost as down at heel as Blackpool, so a hint, if you are ever in the area, of course, take in the falls but spend time in the lovely Niagara on the Lake rather than the town of Niagara!
As Abby probes deeper into the events, the story grips amidst all the twists and turns. At any given point it is hard to know what the truth is and, although there is a nice twist at the end, not all the loose ends are tied up. Middleton is splendidly convincing as the unreliable hero and it is fun to see David Cronenberg in a supporting role.
Film of the week.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Disappearance at Clifton Hill is available on the usual main rental services, as are the rest of this week’s movies.
Simon Pegg is a warm screen presence and seems like a decent bloke, but outside of the Cornetto trilogy and the Mission Impossible franchise, his film career has been disappointing since Paul in 2011. Lost Transmissions doesn’t change that. He plays a schizophrenic music producer who decides to stop taking his meds. Pegg and Juno do their best with the material but the film feels aimless and falls apart in the second half.
Rating: 5 out of 10
The Boy (2016) was a surprisingly decent horror movie bearing in mind the questionable premise of an evil doll. Not played for laughs like Child’s Play, it managed to generate some genuine tension. The sequel, Brahms: The Boy 2 feels like a slightly watered down version of the original. It does a nice enough slow build but doesn’t deliver in the end and, in the lead role, Katie Holmes doesn’t have the warmth that Lauren Cohan did in the original.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Arkansas is the debut feature from actor Clark Duke, who also stars as a new drug dealer, Swin. He teams up with another rookie, Kyle (Liam Hemsworth) but the pair come into conflict with the boss of the operation, Frog (Vince Vaughn). Vaughn once again shows how he is much more suited to straight roles rather than comedic ones, and there are some nice set pieces. However, Duke has obviously been watching a lot of Tarantino but has little of his wit or style.
Rating: 6 out of 10