Literary Adaptation

LEAN ON PETE

Cert 15 Stars 4

Yorkshire born writer director, Andrew Haigh, made one of this year’s best indie films with this understated and emotional coming of age drama, based on the novel by Willy Vlautin.

The impressive Charlie Plummer completes his transition from child star to adult actor as Charley, who finds work caring for an ageing racehorse, Lean On Pete. There he meets Chloe Sevigny’s jockey, and Steve Buscemi’s horse trainer.

To save Pete from the slaughterhouse, Charley leads him on a road trip across the US full of hope, heartbreak and adventure in search of a new place to live.

 

 

ON CHESIL BEACH

Cert 15 110mins Cert 3

A marriage heads for the rocks in this tasteful and thoughtful drama of love, desire and regret.

Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle play newlyweds spending their wedding night in a beachside hotel, but awkwardness in the bedroom has serious implications for their relationship.

It’s a poignant, fragile and wistful tale from award-winning writer Ian McEwan, which he adapted from his own 2007 novella.

The beautiful Dorset coast is photographed with a suitably chilly air as the story wades into strong emotional currents. It offers sympathy to the central characters while hinting at dark tides in their past. 

Recently Oscar nominated for best actress for Lady Bird, Ronan is painfully vulnerable as the reticent Florence. It’s her second adaptation of McEwan’s work after 2007’s, Atonement, for which she was also Oscar nominated.

Howle has to work extremely hard to keep up with the Irish actress, while Emily Watson, Anne-Marie Duff and Samuel West appear as in-laws who stick their oar in.

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY

Cert 12A 124mins Stars 4

Tuck in to this crowd pleasing tasty feast of a post-war detective story. Served with a heart-warming helping of romance, it’s far more satisfying than it sounds.

Star of Disney’s live action Cinderella and formerly of Downton Abbey, Lily James takes centre stage as a successful author called Juliet.

She’s sent to Guernsey in 1946 to write about the eponymous book and cookery club, established by the locals as a self support group during the wartime Nazi occupation.

To underscore the film belongs to James, she’s given a full Hollywood entrance in a stunning yellow ballgown. Always an engaging presence, she sweeps us away with her considerable talent and charm.

Though initially welcomed by the club, its members are reluctant to discuss the whereabouts of the founder member who is mysteriously ‘off island’. So Juliet sets off to uncover the truth of her disappearance.

Very much a love letter to literature of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, so true to form our romantically named heroine is caught between the attentions of Glen Powell’s dashing American diplomat, and Michiel Huisman’s hunky book-loving farmer, called Darcy, sorry, Dawsey. 

With complex family loyalties and grief and anger for those lost in the war, the script takes a sideways glance at the UK’s torturous relationship with the European mainland.

This is an exception to the cinematic rule of thumb which says the length of a films’ title is in inverse proportion to its quality. It’s stuffed with rich characters and production design, and set on the picture postcard-pretty island.

Plus there’s great warmth and humour from supporting cast, particularly veteran stars Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtney.

Director Mike Newell is one of the great unsung heroes of British cinema, due to his unassuming signature style which always serves the audience by putting the story first.

The result is a rewarding and entertaining slice of British fare you can really get your teeth into. 

 

THE GLASS CASTLE

Cert 12A 127mins Stars 1

Brie Larson fails to build on her 2016 best actress Oscar success with this shoddily constructed drama.

Based on the memoir of journalist Jeannette Walls, Larson plays the New York gossip columnist forced to confront her past when her parents move to a nearby bohemian squat.

Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts wholeheartedly commit themselves to the shabby material.

There is an astonishing unintentional disconnect between what we’re told to feel and what we see, as woefully misjudged as filming Wuthering Heights as a heartwarming tale of everyday farming folk.

Walls’ journey from poverty stricken childhood to successful adulthood was an itinerant experience full of neglect and alcoholism.

Yet the film drowns the story in romanticised mawkishness and presents her father as an unconventional romantic with huge dreams.

There’s a lack of emotional truth among the appalling abuse, fear and violence. And despite being based on a real story, I didn’t believe a second of it.

MY COUSIN RACHEL

Cert 12A 105mins Stars 4

Cornish cousins are caught kissing in this period potboiler of poison, property, and passion.

This gothic murder mystery melodrama is a hugely enjoyable adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s 1951 novel.

Poor sound quality marred the BBC’s version of her book Jamaica Inn, but this is excellent in every department.

Actor Sam Claflin has matured into an engaging leading man, and is on top form as Philip.

Having inherited a large estate, the young  man becomes besotted with his recently widowed cousin, Rachel.

Rachel Weisz is plays a brilliant guessing game with the audience as a beautiful older woman of questionable morals, uncertain motives and no income.

We’re teased as to whether she’s a permissive sophisticate on the make, or a proud woman frustrated at her financial dependence on men who are inferior in brains, charm and experience.

A strong supporting cast is headed by Holliday Grainger who quietly steals her scenes as Louise.

Plus the earthy design complements the breathtaking coastline in what is easily the best film of the week.

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

PAPILLON (2018)

Cert 15 130mins Stars 3

Geordie TV star, Charlie Hunnam, takes on one of the iconic roles of Hollywood legend, Steve McQueen in this effective period prison drama remake.

As a prisoner nicknamed Papillon, he sweats through the vicious regime of a remote island prison in French Guiana, before being sent to the notorious Devils’ Island.

He befriends a forger called Dega, and as good as he was as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, Rami Malek is no Dustin Hoffman.

This second adaptation of Henri Charriere’s famous 1969 autobiography is straightforward, sturdy and handsomely designed with impressive location work and always commits to the brutality of the story.

But it cleaves so closely to the earlier film without offering any new perspective on criminal justice, colonisation, racism or any other subject, I wonder why they bothered.

And Hunnam’s a piece of casting on a par with Carl ‘Apollo Creed’ Weathers, stepping into Oscar winner Sidney Poitier’s shoes in the 1986 remake of 1958 chain gang classic, The Defiant Ones.

THE GRINCH

Cert U 90mins Stars 3

Benedict Cumberbatch goes green in this colourful animated family adventure from the makers of the Despicable Me franchise.

It’s based on the 1957 children’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, by the genius author, Dr Seuss, and the Sherlock star voices The Grinch, a mountain dwelling creature who lives all alone except for his faithful pooch, Max.

Due to having a heart two sizes too small, the Grinch hates Christmas and plans to run it for the happy singing townsfolk of Who-ville, a village which looks like an electric rainbow of Swiss chalets.

Meanwhile a pigtailed poppet called Cindy Lou lives with her hard working single mum and twin baby brothers, and she intends to trap Santa Claus so she can ask him for a very personal Christmas wish.

Cindy Lou is voiced by Cameron Seely, best known as Hugh Jackman’s daughter in the smash hit musical, The Greatest Showman.

As The Narrator, singer Pharrell Williams has nearly as many lines as Cumberbatch, though sadly too many of them have been written especially for the film, while veteran actress Angela Lansbury can be heard in a minor role of as the voice of The Mayor of Who-ville.

Home to everyone’s favourite yellow idiots, the Minions, the Illumination Studio are the same company who produced the 2012 adaptation of Seuss’s masterpiece, The Lorax.

Although it captured Seuss’s unique illustrative style while souping it up with state-of-the-art animation, it included too little of his wonderful whimsical charm and the childish delights of his verse. And this is no different.

Giving the Grinch a hard-luck backstory helps the scriptwriters flesh out the slim source material to a full 90 minutes, and encourages us to sympathise with him.

Mind you, it’s more than possible not to have been raised in an orphanage and hate Christmas songs playing on the radio with the same passion The Grinch does.

Equally under-served is the velvet voiced Cumberbatch who struggles with a strangulated US accent while striving manfully with some of the weakest material of his career, and is often reduced to  just providing yips, yowls and yelps.

However there’s plenty of slapstick and sentiment among the cute animals and crazy contraptions, plus all the fur and clothes look reassuringly warm and cosy in the frozen landscape.

More appealing than Jim Carey’s laboured live-action adaption which appeared 18 years ago, little kids will enjoy this version for its zippy pace, bold colours and daft humour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

MORTAL ENGINES

Cert 12A Stars 3

The latest blockbuster to rumble across the big screen from the makers of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is surprisingly clunky and run of the mill.

Adapted from a series of books by Brit author Philip Reeve it’s a steampunk sci-fi fantasy epic set 1000 years into the future on an apocalyptic Earth.

Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar plays a young orphan bent on revenging her mother’s death and becomes involved in a fiendish plot to unleash centuries old technology with the power to destroy the world.

Her target is Hugo Weaving’s duplicitous patrician, who’s geared to driving London to a brighter future.

Tremendously designed and rendered in faultless CGI throughout, it’s a world where Europeans inhabit cities resting on ginormous armoured vehicles which prey on smaller mechanical towns for scarce materials such as fuel and salt.

There are sea-travelling prison towns on crab-like legs, small scavenger villages and a floating hot air balloon metropolis, while in the Asiatic east a static settlement sits behind a huge wall, and is presented as a fortified Shangri-la.

However the inspired premise is crushed beneath the wheels of misfiring storytelling, which has clanking dialogue, comedy and romance which barely register and is bereft of a sense of time or distance.

London is a giant tank thundering across Europe, flattening opposition and scooping up resources for it’s over-privileged upper classes, but this abundant wealth of satirical possibilities is wasted.

Despite determined efforts by the actors to provide emotional fuel, they’re too often squandered as grist for the towering spectacle.

Plus Hilmar’s nominal central role is squeezed out of focus by a bevy of subplots and not particularly interesting characters.

The best of which are Stephen Lang’s undead cyborg, who takes the story into an agreeably dark place, but it’s all too quickly back-pedalled from in favour of more family friendly action scenes.

And despite some game playing by Irishman, Robert Sheehan, his lowly historian and wannabe aviator is required to bridge an awkward divide between romantic lead and comic support.

With it’s strong Antipodean accent in front and behind the camera, this too often feels like an enormously souped up riff on Mad Max, but one with a fraction of the dynamism.

 

 

FIVE FEET APART

Cert 12A 116mins Stars 3

Sex means death in this teen romance which doubles as a disease awareness-raising drama.

Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse are a sweetly charming photogenic pair of patients, who meet in hospital while undergoing treatment for cystic fibrosis.

There is no cure for the genetic lung disorder which considerably shortens life expectancy. Five feet is the distance they must keep apart to minimise risk of a potentially fatal cross-infection, and touching and kissing are forbidden.

There are shades of the vampire Twilight series in their forced abstinence of contact, as well as noticeable nods to Kate Winslet’s epic romance in Titanic.

Based on the novel by Rachael Lippincott and dedicated to campaigner, Claire Wineland, it touches briefly on the financial cost of treatment and thankfully keeps the vomiting and other side effects down to a manageable degree.

If a little too much of the dialogue sounds like a teenage inspirational instagram post, then at least the film knows its target audience.