Comedy
Allelujah (12A)
Review: In 2018, the Bridge Theatre in London staged Allelujah, Alan Bennett’s bittersweet anthem to the National Health Service set on the geriatric ward of a beloved community hospital in Yorkshire under threat of closure. Magical flourishes that soared on stage, including a chorus of patients performing heartfelt renditions of Little Richard’s Good Golly, Miss Molly and Cliff Richard’s Congratulations, have been surgically removed by screenwriter Heidi Thomas from an entertaining and moving film adaptation that acknowledges the devastating impact of coronavirus on the NHS front line in a succinct and quietly powerful coda.
The play’s narrative curveball, neatly dispensed at the end of Act One as a mood shift for the audience, diminishes in translation to the screen but still induces an icy shiver of discomfort. Opposing attitudes to care and support for the elderly are encapsulated in an early scene, seen through the eyes of a hard-working and effusive doctor born in India, who is culturally hard-wired to respect his elders. “I like old people,” he affirms without irony. “Even old people don’t like old people,” curtly remarks a patient’s son. Allelujah sermonises proudly and unreservedly on the side of the caregivers.
Director Richard Eyre’s film strolls down the corridors of a fictional hospital affectionately known as the Beth, short for Bethlehem, so-called because when the facility first opened in the 18th century, there was always room for anyone in need of care. The chairman of the hospital trust (Vincent Franklin) invites a two-man documentary crew onto the Shirley Bassey and Dusty Springfield geriatric wards to interview residents who will be forced to transfer to a soulless custom-built facility in Tadcaster in the event of the Beth’s demise. The visiting director and cameraman liaise with no-nonsense ward sister Gilpin (Jennifer Saunders) and Dr Valentine (Bally Gill) to capture fly-on-the-wall footage of former schoolmaster Ambrose (Derek Jacobi) and retired librarian Mary (Judi Dench).
Meanwhile, management consultant Colin Colman (Russell Tovey), whose cantankerous father Joe (David Bradley) is a resident of the Beth, arrives from London to finalise his recommendations to the minister who will ultimately decide the fate of patients and staff. Tension crackles between father and son. Joe is a former miner and vociferously disapproves of Colin’s openly gay lifestyle far removed from his northern roots. Their intergenerational tug of war echoes deep-rooted divisions within the Beth and the wider, target-driven NHS.
Allelujah prescribes a full dose of Bennett’s earthy humour, generously distributed among an impressive ensemble cast. Gill radiates compassion and understanding, strengthening the film’s emotional pulse, while Saunders exercises her dramatic range beyond the expertly timed deadpan one-liners. Some of the script’s incisions fail to cut to the bone but overall, Eyre’s picture is in rude health.
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Horror
Pearl (15)
Review: There’s no place like an unhappy home. Director Ti West’s luxuriously overwrought prequel to his 2022 horror film X is a disorienting Technicolour fever dream that repeatedly refers to The Wizard Of Oz. Except here his Dorothy is mentally unstable, wilfully duplicitous and would prefer to greet Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion with a blood-smeared axe than a wicker basket containing Toto.
Fittingly subtitled An X-traordinary Origin Story, Pearl cranks up the horror-saturated melodrama from its heavily stylised opening titles and initial deafening blasts of composers Tyler Bates and Tim Williams’ score. West sustains the queasy conflation of fantastical delirium and nauseating reality until the eponymous farm girl has relinquished her tenuous grasp on sanity. Goth delivers a jaw-dropping, powerhouse performance that skips fancifully between childlike delusion and psychopathic fury.
The piece de resistance is an incendiary soliloquy in which Pearl tearfully confides: “It seems like there’s something missing in me that the rest of the world has”, and fully reveals the malevolence festering in her guts to her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro). Filmed in unsettling close-up, the scene includes a six-minute monologue that refuses to cut away from Goth’s face as she discloses her diabolical sins. We’re certainly not in Kansas anymore. Instead we’re in 1918 Texas, almost 60 years before the nightmarish events of X.
Teenager Pearl (Goth) begrudgingly completes her chores to appease her domineering German immigrant mother Ruth (Tandi Wright). The pair have been isolated at Powder Kegs Farm for weeks to prevent the Spanish flu from crossing the threshold and potentially dealing a fatal blow to Pearl’s paralysed father (Matthew Sunderland). Pearl waits impatiently for her soldier husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) to return from The Great War so they can leave the state and realise her burning ambition of becoming a dancer. “Please Lord, make me the biggest star the world has ever known so that I may get far, far away from this place,” she prays.
During a rare excursion into town, Pearl encounters the projectionist (David Corenswet) from the local cinema and he fans the flames of the teenager’s rebellion. Mother and daughter clash, the former fearfully recognising the monster under her roof, who secretly kills farm animals with a pitchfork for pleasure.
Co-written by West and Goth, Pearl hangs entirely on a fearless central performance that conjures a tormented kindred spirit to Psycho’s Norman Bates. Motifs and themes from the first film, set in 1979, resonate more clearly once their origins are revealed, expanding a gore-slathered mythology that intends to conclude with a sequel to X entitled MaXXXine. At the end of The Wizard Of Oz, Dorothy dismisses her witch-slaying actions with a plaintive: “I didn’t mean to kill her. Really, I didn’t.” Pearl cannot say the same.
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Action
Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (12A)
Review: Wise-cracking teenager Billy Batson (Asher Angel) and fellow foster kids Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), Mary (Grace Caroline Currey), Pedro (Jovan Armand), Eugene (Ian Chen) and Darla (Faithe Herman) wrestle with growing pains as they live under the roof of their guardians, Victor and Rosa Vasquez (Cooper Andrews, Marta Milans). But, growing up looks pretty different when you possess god-like superpowers. Especially when the Daughters of Atlas aka Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Anthea (Rachel Zegler) arrive on Earth in search of the stolen magic. With the sisters threatening their family and humanity, the kids must channel super-human bravery and fight for what they love.
This is Deadpool for kids, a cheesy, comedic superhero movie with every trope of the genre chucked into the mix. While soundtracked brilliantly by Christophe Beck with a similar vibe to Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy, the plot and writing sadly fall below the mark, with every relationship, parental, fraternal and romantic in the movie feeling stilted, and many plot points shoehorned in.
Making her DC debut, Rachel Zegler plays the love interest and mysterious woman Ann well, and delivers comic lines with Bambi-like innocence. “What’s Comic-Con?” she asks when being hit on by loveable nerd Freddie. And sure, they are cute, but it all feels a bit too mushy and a bit much for a film that feels more familial. Unfortunately, the writing of ‘bad guys’ Hespera and Kalypso is surface-level, with so much opportunity missed to make the most of two brilliant actors, whose performances are enjoyable, but not ground-breaking.
More could have been made of all of the actors in this film, and no one, except perhaps the engaging and geeky Jack Dylan Grazer, seem to really meet the mark. DC combined with Greek mythology could have kids more interested in heading to museums, but I’m not sure anyone of any age will be idolising the band of kid superheroes with seemingly unlimited powers.
With so many key heroes, it is a struggle to remember half of their names and so much of this film relies on the flimsy foundations of the first one, instead of being a brilliant watch in its own right. This is – in both plot and viewership – a family film, with a loving family focus at its heart. But with a script pumped full of flat one-liners, and constant references to Gatorade and Skittles that leave a sickly taste in the mouth, this flick feels more cringe than classic.
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