Film Review of the Week


Sci-Fi

Companion (15)




Review: In a few brief years, voice and gesture-prompted virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and Gemini and artificial intelligence chatbots have become casually embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives. No longer the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, these complex learning models have become invaluable best friends that set reminders, quickly research important information, play music, make travel plans and check the weather forecast. Written and directed by Drew Hancock, Companion is a survival thriller that solders together narrative circuitry from Ex Machina and Don’t Worry Darling to imagine the next logical step in this queasy amalgamation of human and mechanised worlds: lifelike androids designed to cater to our every whim, especially carnal desires.

The picture’s fresh-faced heroine, played with gusto by Sophie Thatcher, is blissfully unaware that she is at the mercy of programming that prevents her pleasure-giving automaton from rebelling against a cruel and selfish master, who can alter her level of intelligence with one swipe of a finger on a digital screen. Hancock’s darkly humorous script barrels at full speed into horror territory in a bloodthirsty second half with predictable twists that pit Thatcher’s terrified creation, now self-aware, against cold-hearted humans intent on shutting her down with a bullet to her computer brain. The balance of power shifts between hunters and prey but our sympathy remains firmly rooted with the high-tech Stepford Wife.

Iris (Thatcher) meets Josh (Jack Quaid) in her local grocery store where his awkward and amusing attempt to flirt results in a tsunami of oranges spilling across the fruit and vegetable aisle. This embarrassing mishap only endears Josh to Iris and the pair fall deliriously in love. Iris nervously accompanies her beau to a weekend getaway with friends, hosted at the country home of sleazy Russian businessman Sergey (Rupert Friend), who claims to have “fingers in many pots”.

Sergey is currently dating Josh’s friend Kat (Megan Suri) and she is strangely cold and hostile towards Iris. The home is remote, situated in unspoilt wilderness several miles from the nearest neighbours, guaranteeing peace and quiet for the gang including Josh’s friend Eli (Harvey Guillen) and his foodie boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage). Underlying tension between the two women explodes by a lake and Josh intervenes, telling Iris to go to sleep. It transpires that Iris is an automated companion rented from Empathix Robotics, who has been programmed to protect human life at all costs.

Companion is a briskly paced battle royale between man and machine, which mines humour and discomfort from the fractious power dynamics of modern relationships. Thatcher and Quaid are well matched, the latter revisiting a Machiavellian side glimpsed in recent instalments of the Scream franchise. Hancock strips away dramatic fat from his picture’s exoskeleton to restrict the overall processing time to a sadistic and sprightly 97 minutes.



Find Companion in the cinemas


Drama

Hard Truths (12A)




Review: Writer-director Mike Leigh’s fascination with the misery and bile-speckled mirth of human nature comes full circle from his pithily titled 1971 directorial debut, Bleak Moments, about a socially awkward secretary who cares for her sister. In Hard Truths, the 81-year-old filmmaker once again focuses on the relationship between siblings and fashions, potentially, his most unsympathetic and unlikable character: a 50-something mother and wife in the suffocating grip of depression that causes her, with the slightest provocation, to vociferously lash out at everyone around her.

She rages against charity workers, who proposition strangers outside stations and supermarkets (“Cheerful, grinning people, I can’t stand ‘em!”), clothes for infants (“What’s a baby got pockets for?”) and her own GP, who leaves his patients in the capable hands of a colleague while he attends the funeral of a close relative (“Why’s he bothering with the dead when he’s got the living suffering here?”) A barnstorming lead performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste electrifies every frame of Leigh’s brutal and unsparing London-set tragi-comedy and tests the limits of our compassion and understanding.

Her onscreen alter ego is monstrous, callous, insensitive and almost intolerable – an unfiltered mouthpiece for frustrations of the modern world who says what she thinks and damn the consequences – yet by the film’s conclusion, she is also painfully vulnerable. In arguably the film’s most touching scene, the venomous harridan accepts comfort at a graveside from her sibling: “I don’t understand you, but I love you.” We can relate to that uncomfortably conflicted sentiment.

Pansy (Jean-Baptiste) lives with her henpecked plumber husband Curtley (David Webber) and unemployed adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), both of whom are easy targets for her percolating rage. They suffer her tirades in melancholic silence. In stark contrast, Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) is a warm and outgoing hairdresser and single mother, who cheerfully embraces noise and mess as she raises daughters Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson).

These sisters are bubbly, quick-witted and go-getters: Aleisha is a lawyer and Kayla works for a cosmetics company under a disparaging boss (Samantha Spiro) who rejects her pitch of a coconut-free formulation (“It’s a non-starter”). A Mother’s Day celebration unites two branches of the family under one roof and sparks fly.

Carefully shaped in improvised workshops between director and cast before cameras rolled, Hard Truths is dominated by Jean-Baptiste’s anguished matriarch and her incendiary outbursts. She confidently surfs tidal waves of splenetic dialogue, pausing for breath to allow other cast to quietly make their marks. The script hints at intergenerational trauma as the root of Pansy’s suffering, but like many of Leigh’s films, nagging questions are unanswered.



Find Hard Truths in the cinemas


Comedy

Saturday Night (15)




Review: Unfolding almost in real time, director Jason Reitman’s breathlessly staged comedy drama imagines the pulse-quickening backstage chaos before the taping of the 1975 launch episode of NBC sketch show Saturday Night, which would be rechristened Saturday Night Live. Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan draw inspiration from interviews with living cast and crew, who experienced the nail-biting tension firsthand, to parachute us into the middle of escalating madness at NBC Studios in Manhattan.

“Are you OK?” an NBC staff member (Finn Wolfhard) asks producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) before he heads into battle with dismissive executives and mutinous crew. “Ask me in 90 minutes,” he smiles. Thus, Reitman’s picture starts a stopwatch at 10pm on October 11, 1975 and for roughly the next hour and a half, the pace rarely slackens. Several scenes are choreographed as unbroken single shots on a handheld camera that skilfully bobs and weaves between backroom conversations, capturing the persistent hum of adrenaline that needs to detonate with purpose at 11.30pm with the warmly welcoming catchphrase, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”.

The ambition of Reitman and Kenan’s script ultimately exceeds its grasp, barely registering some of the vast ensemble cast within a 109-minute running time that passes in a delectable blur. However, the carefully controlled pandemonium delivers a steady stream of hearty guffaws. Saturday Night is undemanding and slickly engineered nostalgia.

Supported by NBC’s director of weekend late night programming, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), Lorne Michaels (LaBelle) whirls around the building in the run-up to going live at 11.30pm. He witnesses a public showdown between censor Joan Carbunkle (Catherine Curtin) and acerbic head writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), who likens television to “a lava lamp with slightly better audio”.

A seven-strong cast comprising Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), John Belushi (Matt Wood), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn) and Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) stumbles through final rehearsals while Michaels struggles to articulate his vision. “I know the ingredients, just not the amounts,” he confesses. Special guests George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) and Andy Kaufman (Braun again) seek Michaels’ counsel as his wildly overbudgeted production spirals out of control. “You love surprises like Anne Frank loved her drum set,” quips Michaels’ wife and writer, Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott).

Saturday Night is a self-congratulatory pratfall down memory lane from an era oblivious to political correctness, when smoking cigarettes indoors did not raise eyebrows and cast and crew forcefully slapped each other’s backsides as playful salutations. LaBelle is an instantly endearing ringmaster, visibly shouldering tension as showtime approaches. Co-stars convincingly embody famous faces but sensibly resist note-perfect mimicry. The show must go on regardless of whether everyone is ready.



Find Saturday Night in the cinemas