Animation
The Canterville Ghost (PG)
Review: A little bit of Fry and Laurie enlivens a computer-animated retelling of Oscar Wilde’s 1887 short story about the spectre of a nobleman, who is condemned to haunt his ancestral home unless a brave descendant solves a riddle and fulfils an ancient prophecy. Screenwriters Giles New and Keiron Self make minor renovations to the original text, losing one member of the visiting Otis family to focus attention on a spirited teenage daughter, who will realise her destiny, free the ghost from its earthbound shackles and learn wholesome lessons about the enduring power of love.
A galaxy of homegrown talent including Meera Syal, Imelda Staunton and Miranda Hart ply gentle humour in supporting roles, the latter at her most effusively plummy as a gung-ho ghost hunter who pledges to rid Canterville Chase of its unwanted manifestation. From an opening scene of night-time menace replete with flashes of lightning and a cawing crow, The Canterville Ghost treads lightly when it comes to paranormal activity. Scares are exceedingly gentle so there’s little chance of young audiences losing their ectoplasm. When the titular phantom dislocates his head to shock two impish boys, the troublesome tykes are amused not frightened and promptly use the noggin as a football.
According to local legend, Sir Simon de Canterville (voiced by Stephen Fry) drowned his wife Lady Eleanor in the lake of Canterville Chase and for hundreds of years the nobleman’s ghost has been cursed to haunt the manor. American patriarch Hiram B Otis (David Harewood) moves from Boston into the country pile after the previous owner, Lord Monroe (Bill Lobley), is driven mad by one of Sir Simon’s nocturnal hauntings. Hiram’s well-to-do wife Lucretia (Syal) and mischievous twins Kent (Bennett Miller) and Louis (Jakey Schiff) are excited about the move but daughter Virginia (Emily Carey) makes her displeasure clear.
Desperate to travel the world, Virginia forges a pact with Sir Simon to scare her parents back to America and the apparition promises to have Hiram and Lucretia “gibbering down the driveway within the week”. Meanwhile, phantasmagorical investigator Algernean Van Finchley (Hart) visits the house and Virginia is spooked by a mysterious gardener (Hugh Laurie) and her feelings for kind-hearted dignitary Henry Duke of Cheshire (Freddie Highmore).
Directed by Kim Burdon and co-directed by Robert Chandler, The Canterville Ghost is undemanding family-friendly fare that mocks outdated gender stereotypes. “Whoever heard of a girl in trousers? It is against nature!” blusters Sir Simon upon his first meeting with Virginia. Animation lacks the sophistication and realism achieved by Pixar and DreamWorks but there are occasional cute flourishes like one doomed love story realised as clockwork pop-up theatre. The film chugs towards its heart-warming resolution like clockwork too.
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Comedy
Dumb Money (15)
Review: In January 2021, prominent hedge funds faced eye-watering losses when avid readers of online social network Reddit triggered a short squeeze of the stock of American video game retailer GameStop. Wall Street had been betting heavily against the high street business, expecting losses in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic. Instead, an impassioned movement of individual investors – casually dismissed as “dumb money” by the big institutions – responded to videos posted by Roaring Kitty (aka Keith Gill) and rallied behind GameStop, creating a tidal wave of stock purchases that propelled the company’s value to more than 200 US dollars per share.
This bruising battle of hard-working Americans against cold-hearted financial goliaths informs director Craig Gillespie’s crowd-pleasing comedy drama, which bets heavily on our fascination with underdogs but ultimately yields lower returns than the Oscar-nominated dramatisation of The Big Short. Paul Dano instantly endears us to his self-professed nerd, who triggers a meltdown of financial markets with four simple words – “I like the stock” – and advocates transparency by publishing his balance sheets to prove he has been backing GameStop for months with his savings.
Keith’s wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley) supports her husband’s decision to wager their future on GameStop but others are not so enthusiastic. Nurse Jennifer Campbell (America Ferrera) considers answering Keith’s call to arms but one work colleague sounds the alarm bell: “I wouldn’t take investment advice from a guy in a catsuit!” Elsewhere, colleague student Riri (Myha’la Herrold) tries to reason with her girlfriend Harmony (Talia Ryder), who thinks she can clear her debts by buying into GameStop. “That sounds like the literal definition of a pyramid scheme,” dismays Riri.
Hard-working GameStop store clerk Marcus (Anthony Ramos) is persuaded by Keith’s logic and backs his employers. As the stock price climbs, hedge funds including Melvin Capital founded by Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) and Citadel founded by Kenneth C Griffin (Nick Offerman) face losses running into billions of US dollars. Commission-free broker-dealer Robinhood founded by Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan) and Baiju Bhatt (Rushi Kota) controversially suspends purchases in GameStop, adding fuel to the inferno of public resentment towards Wall Street.
Dumb Money is consistently entertaining, championing the collective power of everyday people to punish callous and greedy institutions simply by sticking together. Pete Davidson injects broad comedy as Keith’s mischievous brother, a contact-free delivery driver who grazes on fast food orders before they reach customers’ front doors. Working from Ben Mezrich’s nonfiction book The Antisocial Network, screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo minimise technical jargon so it’s easy to follow the GameStop saga to its inevitable conclusion. With every gamble, there are winners and losers. Gillespie’s polished picture is a safe bet.
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Action
Expend4bles (15)
Review: Realism and plausibility are both expendable in a bombastic fourth instalment of the action-packed franchise, which has changed directors for each deadly mission in the company of testosterone-fuelled mercenaries led by Sylvester Stallone’s cigar-chomping Barney Ross. The Rocky star helmed the initial foray back in 2010 and the baton passes here to Scott Waugh via Simon West and Patrick Hughes. Waugh orchestrates destruction on land, sea and in the air, working from a ramshackle script penned by Kurt Wimmer, Max Adams and Tad Daggerhart which thumbs its bloodied nose at naturally flowing dialogue and deep characterisation.
A proficient, pyrotechnic-laden opening set piece is oddly truncated by the Expend4bles title card a few minutes before a cacophonous, fiery crescendo provides the obvious place to draw breath and survey the devastation. Three female characters are permitted to trade barbs with returning cast including Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture, and only Megan Fox’s sharp-shooter makes a discernible impact in figure-hugging attire that seems better suited to a gym than a battle royale with gun-toting terrorists intent on starting a third world war.
Slickly choreographed hand-to-hand combat between Jason Statham and Indonesian martial artist Iko Uwais clearly has only one logical outcome but Waugh’s sweat-drenched picture begs and pleads with us to suspend disbelief and consider their frenetic fisticuffs an evenly matched encounter. During another overblown sequence, a two-dimensional villain likens one member of the eponymous crew to a sexually transmitted infection: “Always showing up where you’re not wanted and refusing to go away.” The franchise is equally guilty of outstaying its welcome.
Non-nonsense CIA agent Marsh (Andy Garcia) recruits Ross (Stallone) and his team to prevent Suarto Rahmat (Iko Uwais) from forcibly acquiring a consignment of nuclear detonators concealed in Colonel Gaddafi’s old chemical plant in Libya. Regrettably, the terrorists steal the deadly payload and prepare to trigger war between America and Russia by detonating a bomb on a cargo ship situated off the coast of Vladivostok. The team including second-in-command Lee Christmas (Statham), his on-off girlfriend Gina (Fox), sniper Gunner Jensen (Lundgren), demolitions expert Toll Road (Couture) and new recruits Easy Day (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), Galan (Jacob Scipio) and Lash (Levy Tran) prepare to storm the vessel to thwart Rahmat and unmask the plot’s diabolical and glaringly obvious mastermind, codename Ocelot.
Expend4bles is a joyless slog that makes surprisingly heavy work of neutralising the terrorist threat and averting nuclear armageddon. A heavily sexualised Fox summarises her character’s combat skills in one line of dialogue to justify a high-profile role in a final mission assignment that is literally all at sea. Abandon ship.
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Drama
The Lesson (15)
Review: During a tense exchange between a revered author and an interviewer in director Alice Troughton’s debut feature, the self-aggrandising scribe holds court on the absence of originality in his craft and gleefully proclaims “Great writers steal”. Screenwriter Alex MacKeith heeds his own words, borrowing elements from other power struggles between mentor and ambitious protegee to fuel a largely predictable study of a cuckoo in a family nest, who witnesses his emotionally scarred hosts unravel at the seams (with some gentle prodding).
Nenagh-born actor Daryl McCormack, who set hearts aflutter as a sex worker in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, is in various states of undress here too as the ardent fan, who sheds his rose-tinted spectacles when he observes his literary hero at uncomfortable close quarters. A central tug of war between McCormack and Richard E Grant’s supercilious novelist generates disappointingly few friction burns even when the latter cruelly dismisses his doe-eyed disciple’s years of creative toil as “passable airport fiction”. Cogs of a fanciful plot are well oiled and constantly turn to keep the running time comfortably under two hours.
The Lesson opens with first-time novelist Liam Somers (McCormack) sitting nervously on stage in front of a packed audience, poised to discuss his critically feted story of a fading patriarch in the throes of grief with a moderator (Tomas Spencer). A gentle first question about the inspiration for the book prompts a flashback to the idyllic summer that Liam is hired to tutor the son of his literary idol, JM Sinclair (Grant), who has retreated from public view following the death of eldest child Felix.
JM’s elegant wife Helene (Julie Delpy) furnishes Liam with a contract and non-disclosure agreement prior to moving into the family home. She kindly offers advice on how to navigate JM’s prickly nature: “We don’t talk about his work, we don’t talk about Felix. Follow those rules and you should be fine.” Liam obliges, keen to study the writer and further his literary ambitions, and he builds rapport with young scion Bertie (Stephen McMillan) who must prepare for a university admissions interview to study English Literature at Oxford. Under the silent gaze of family butler Ellis (Crispin Letts), Liam gains the trust of each member of the clan and his positive energy encourages Helene to scold her husband for wallowing in misery. “I married a writer… so write,” she urges.
The Lesson isn’t as sly or ingenious as it wants us to believe, aptly mirroring the misplaced superiority of Grant’s pompous patriarch. Performances are solid but Delpy’s neglected spouse is underpowered until the contrived machinations of a fraught final act. If a great film steals our attention then Troughton’s slow-burning thriller won’t be charged with grand larceny.
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