Check out our selection of the top films and TV box sets available this week
CHLOE GRACE MORETZ is in fine form as the titular teen in the funny and warm LGBT drama The Miseducation Of Cameron Post.
And dark secrets will out in the genre-hopping neo-noir Bad Times At The El Royale, where guests checking in –but not all checking out – include Jon Hamm, Jeff Bridges and British breakout star Cynthia Erivo
(15), 87 mins, out February 4
THE reliably excellent Chloe Grace Moretz stars as Post, dispatched to the God’s Promise camp for conversion therapy - the ridiculous but deeply harmful practice of attempting to “cure” gay or bisexual people. Despite the emotive topic, this never lapses into right-on lecturing or hectoring. Instead, we get a tender - and often very funny - study of emerging adulthood in which director Desiree Akhavan gives her characters room to breathe and to grow.
The able support includes Brit Jennifer Ehle (Zero Dark Thirty) as the implacable doctor who believes she is fighting the good fight -- the closest the movie has to a villain amid the happy-clappy guitar sessions, games of table-tennis and terrible Nineties moustaches. (Man, do you feel old when a movie set in the Nineties can be considered a period drama.)
But the issues are as relevant as ever. Witness the recent admission by Mormon conversion therapist David Matheson that, yup, he’s actually gay himself. Well, duh.
What could have been mawkish and clumsy is instead a naturalistic, beautifully understated portrait of teenage self-discovery in all its agonising, awkward wonder.
★★★★☆
(15) 135 mins, out February 4
THE beautifully crafted opening to this Sixties-set metaphysical noir has the calculated stillness of an Edward Hopper painting. Under the floorboards of a nondescript motel room, a man stashes a bag of loot. We see his gun in silhouette. The denouement is alarmingly sudden. It’s a bravura introduction the rest of the movie almost lives up to.
The El Royale is a curiously understaffed hotel sat bang on the state line between California and Nevada. The border is marked with a gaudy red line that hints at the bloodshed to come and poses the question: “Which side are you on?” Rooms in California cost a dollar more than Nevada rooms. Apparently some guests think it’s worth the extra buck.
Guests repeatedly face off over that line. The stacked cast includes Jon Hamm as an iffy salesman, Jeff Bridges’ boozy priest, Cynthia Erivo’s doo-wop singer and surly vamp Dakota Fanning. None are what they seem -- and neither is the hotel, which has an oppressive, purgatorial air. Inevitably, there are visual echoes of The Shining’s Overlook and Psycho’s Bates Motel. On TV, Richard Nixon dissembles about Vietnam, heightening the sense of paranoia and doom.
What follows is taut and twisty with striking visuals, most notably in a mesmerising sequence that reveals the hotel’s dark past. But director Drew Goddard (The Cabin In The Woods) loses control in a ramshackle final act dominated by Chris Hemsworth’s glistening six-pack. (Admittedly, some viewers won’t mind that.) The crazier the action gets, the more predictable it all becomes -- proof that more is not always more. What could have been a cult classic ends as a Royale with cheese.
★★★★☆
(18) 90 mins, out now
NOT a fourteenth sequel to that Eminem movie but a silly, sweary and occasionally squelchy anti-terror actioner, with Mark Wahlberg snapping arms and cracking wise in pursuit of a deadly isotope.
It’s Homeland meets House as Wahlberg’s psychotic savant Jimmy Silva escorts a slippery double-agent through hostile territory swarming with nasty Russians. Silva must be a genius because his underlings keep saying so. There is scant evidence otherwise as he blunders from disaster to disaster. He’s also an intensely irritating presence, a high-octane pub-bore prone to spewing cod philosophy and dismally inept banter.
John Malkovich literally phones in his performance as the sleepy middle-manager orchestrating the op via drone, headset and V-neck sweater, while UFC legend Ronda Rousey gets an outing as one of Wahlberg’s pawns. A Star Is Bourne this is not. Summing up the movie’s absurdity, Rousey -- a professional martial artist turned wrestler, remember -- only ever uses a gun, while Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead’s Maggie) is engaged in fisticuffs for much of the running time.
Just as dumbly, the informant they are tasked with protecting is an all-but-indestructible superman, who needs protective custody like Godzilla needs water wings.
The action is shockingly brutal at times and competently shot by directorial safe-hands Peter Berg. While heroes and villains repeatedly get up from blows that would kill an elephant, at least the carnage occasionally drowns out Wahlberg’s relentless monologuing.
★★☆☆☆
(15), 86 mins
LET’S be honest -- nobody is watching this for the plot. In fact, there might not be anyone watching this at all. Fight movies don’t have to be this po-faced, so unremittingly grim.
The action is dynamic enough -- although real-world stunt work is occasionally contrived to look like cheap CG. But there’s nobody to root for. In his umpteenth small-screen outing, charisma-free anti-hero Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins) runs afoul of various crooks and corrupt military types, before making nice with the widow of a man he kills in the ring. The highlights are the accidental laughs.
“He’s dead,” Boyka is told of his opponent. “What do you mean, he’s dead?” Boyka asks astutely. Sigh. This after the man’s he’s pounded into an inch-thin layer of bloody gruel is diagnosed with what a doc says “looks like a concussion”. No kidding.
★★☆☆☆
