Drama
My New York Year (12A)
Review: In The Catcher In The Rye, author JD Salinger’s literary alter ego, 16-year-old nonconformist Holden Caulfield, distils the intense pleasure of reading a great book into one effusive outburst. “You wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it,” coos Holden. “That doesn’t happen much though”. It happened to Joanna Rakoff in the mid-1990s when she moved to New York City and found herself working for Salinger’s literary agent, taking calls from the reclusive writer and answering fan letters on his behalf. Her first-hand experiences of a fusty, pre-digital age were distilled into the absorbing 2014 memoir My Salinger Year, which writer-director Philippe Falardeau has adapted into a handsomely bound coming-of-age drama.
With thematic similarities to The Devil Wears Prada, though none of the lacerating, acerbic wit, My New York Year remains largely faithful to the source text, affectionately evoking the city and era including a dreamy sequence in an ornate corridor of the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Pacing is extremely gentle, occasionally verging on soporific, but the casting of Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver as wide-eyed heroine and her cigarette-puffing mentor is a delight, including an unexpected hug between the two women that takes the latter by surprise.
In autumn 1995, after Joanna (Qualley) has completed an MA in English literature at University College London, she abandons her boyfriend Karl (Hamza Haq) in Berkeley to move to New York. Crashing with good friend Jenny (Seana Kerslake), she secures a job as an assistant to old-fashioned, technology-averse literary agent Margaret (Sigourney Weaver). From the firm’s wood-panelled office, Joanna is tasked with responding to a deluge of fan mail for JD Salinger with an impersonal standard letter, reproduced verbatim on a typewriter.
She is instructed to read every item of incoming mail and use her judgment to flag up correspondence of concern. “We’ve been extra careful since the Mark David Chapman thing,” whispers Margaret, referring to John Lennon’s killer’s obsession with The Catcher In The Rye. Joanna is deeply moved by some fan letters, especially one boy from Winston-Salem (Theodore Pellerin), and she contemplates typing a personalised response in direct violation of agency protocol. Away from the office, Joanna signs a lease for a cramped Brooklyn apartment with a socialist bookseller beau (Douglas Booth) and contemplates her gloomy emotional state.
My New York Year is comfortingly familiar, galvanised by gently effervescent on-screen rapport between the two female leads. Booth barely registers. Tellingly, when his unsympathetic, self-absorbed boor heads out of town to attend a friend’s wedding, the absence goes unnoticed. Holden Caulfield would argue, “People never notice anything”. In this instance, he’s wrong.
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Animation
Peter Rabbit 2 (U)
Review: When the first Peter Rabbit bounded onto the big screen in 2018, I suggested the thumping sound in Will Gluck’s film might be Beatrix Potter spinning in her grave (casually ignoring the writer’s final journey through Carleton crematorium). Actress Rose Byrne, who reprises her role as Bea in the sequel, explicitly mentions that subterranean whirring in one of the self-referential moments which litter a freewheeling script penned by returning director Gluck and Patrick Burleigh. Characters lament the insidious impact of Hollywood on literary adaptations, Peter (voiced by James Corden) meta-jokes about the unlikeness of this second film and when Bea is pressed on plans following the publication of The Tale Of Peter Rabbit, she shows dazzling foresight to outline a 23-book series featuring 109 creature inhabitants of Hill Top Farm.
Like its predecessor, Peter Rabbit 2 employs slick digital effects to realise the eponymous scamp and his anthropomorphic chums, melding furry and feathered creations with human cast and live-action elements in bucolic harmony. During two comic interludes involving a runaway jeep and a hillside “frolic”, the visual trickery oversteps the mark, replacing actor Domhnall Gleeson with an unconvincing computer-generated doppelganger to create the illusion of the leading man performing the bruising stunts. In both sequences, shot from a distance to casually conceal the not-so-special effects, his long-suffering farmer abruptly assumes the flailing disposition and weight of a straw-filled rag doll.
Thomas McGregor (Gleeson) and neighbour Bea (Byrne) enjoy a storybook wedding with Peter (Corden) as their ring-bearer. The newlyweds illustrate and print a book about the boisterous bunny and are thrilled when publishing heavyweight Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo) invites them to Gloucester to discuss the possibility of an initial print run of 5,000 copies. Bea asks Nigel to promise that he will protect the integrity of her literary world. “I give you my word. I will be your ferocious guardian,” he beams. It transpires that Nigel intends to warp Bea’s vision to boost sales by casting Peter as the bad seed of the stories.
The bunny is crestfallen and abandons level-headed cousin Benjamin (Colin Moody) and sisters Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki) and Cottontail (Aimee Horn) for a contemplative stroll around the city. He encounters thieving rabbit Barnabas (Lennie James) and criminal associates Whiskers (Rupert Degas), Tom Kitten (Damon Herriman) and Mittens (Hayley Atwell). They encourage Peter to unlock his villainous potential with a daredevil heist of dried fruit from a farmers’ market.
Peter Rabbit 2 is more cohesive and emotionally satisfying than the original – by a cat’s whisker. Corden repeatedly pokes fun at the sound of his voice as his mischievous mammal learns heavy-handed lessons about the sanctity of the family unit. Byrne and Gleeson are predominantly bystanders until a cartoonish climax pressgangs them into service as high-speed getaway drivers.
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Horror
The Unholy (15)
Review: According to writer-director Evan Spiliotopoulos’s hoary horror thriller, the Vatican rigorously applies three scientific tests to a claim of miraculous healing: the illness must be incurable, the cure must be instantaneous and the cure must be complete. It is safe to conclude, without the involvement of an inquisitor, that The Unholy won’t be confirmed as a miracle of modern moviemaking. Laden with familiar religious imagery – statues crying tears of blood, combusting crucifixes – this blundering battle between a disgraced tabloid journalist and a demonic force intent on claiming human souls is a tepid adaptation of James Herbert’s best-selling book Shrine.
A hooded spectre with staccato, spider-like body movements, reminiscent of vengeful, long-haired ghost Sadako in Japanese horror Ringu, wreaks havoc for a little over an hour and a half. Not once do we twitch nervously in our seats let alone jump as Spiliotopoulos unleashes his otherworldly antagonist from the shadows accompanied by a hellish caterwaul. Silent prayers for consistent visual effects go unanswered: one scene of words from a holy incantation melting off the page may be neat but a pivotal character’s fiery fate at an altar is wholly unconvincing.
Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) “wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $6,000” in his glory days working for The Examiner, when he falsified stories to bolster his profile. Now, he is reduced to begging for commissions, like his current assignment investigating possible Satanic interference with a cow in the sleepy Massachusetts community of Banfield. The bovine affair is attributed to a teenage heavy metal fan but Gerry unwittingly stumbles upon a bigger story: a deaf-mute girl called Alice Pagett (Cricket Brown), who gains the power of speech after a visitation from the Virgin Mary.
In front of an awe-struck flock, Alice’s touch allows a boy with muscular dystrophy (Danny Corbo) to walk and her wheezing uncle, local priest Father Hagan (William Sadler), to breathe easily after chronic emphysema. A media circus engulfs Banfield but Gerry has exclusive access to Alice as she waxes lyrical about her beloved Mary. “Spread her word and be rewarded!” the girl implores Gerry. The Catholic Church dispatches Monsignor Delgarde (Diogo Morgado) to assess Alice’s divinity. Meanwhile, seeds of doubt sprout in Gerry’s mind and he joins forces with medic Natalie Gates (Katie Aselton) to expose a dark secret buried more than 150 years ago in Banfield’s cursed soil.
The Unholy bows down at the altar of Insidious, The Conjuring and countless spooky imitators. Spiliotopoulos’s script lacks strong, clearly defined characters as it labours a central thesis about the power of faith to corrupt and redeem. Morgan navigates gargantuan leaps in logic and plausibility but even he can’t atone for sinfully clunky dialogue. Hail Mary? Absolutely not.
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