High-Rise, Marguerite, 10 Cloverfield Lane The Film Review

Hello, and welcome to The Film Review on BBC News.

To take us through this week's cinema releases is Mark Kermode.

We have High Rise, an adaptation of a novel.

We have Marguerite, a musical tragicomedy.

And 10 Cloverfield Lane, which may or may not be related to

The singing a little bit later, but before that, High Rise.

The story is, Tom Hiddleston is Dr Lang.

He moves into a luxury high-rise apartment which

Down on the lower floors are the real families, and above him, the

At the very top is the penthouse in which lives Jeremy Irons, architect.

Of course, but it is far from finished.

The lake is the palm and we stand on the index finger, there.

I put all my energies into this tower.

It looks like the unconscious diagram

People have been trying to bring High Rise to the screen for decades.

There was a version being worked on back in the 1970s.

Now Ben Wheatley has succeeded where others have failed, but one

of the most important things he and the writer have done is go back

It is basically set in the 1970s, so it is looking at the past,

You get this kind of strange future that has already happened,

The script manages to realign but also respect the themes

Tom Hiddleston is wonderfully slippery as Dr Lang.

He's described by somebody as a 'self-contained threat'.

On the one hand he has that matinee idol look, but on the other,

I love the way the movie is designed.

I love the fact that the buildings almost look like dinosaurs,

with the crooked head like a lizard leaping up onto the ground.

I love the way you get this brutalist

interior architecture that on one hand is familiar from the '70s, but

The most important thing was it managed to maintain both

a creepy horror, but also the humour which we know

He has always specialised in doing cross-genre movies,

which will make you laugh and be shocked at the same time.

There is still a very strong element of that in this, and I thought it

was a really solid adaptation of a very difficult book.

They have really done something interesting with it

Let's move on, and we will hear some singing now, won't we?

This is Marguerite, which is inspired by

Florence Foster Jenkins, who is the subject of an upcoming biopic.

It is about Marguerite Dumond, who as a music lover proves that

The crucial thing is, that's funny, but the crucial bit is that

Everyone around her tells her that she can sing and she wants

People are trying to protect her, but also,

Actually what she's trying to do is get the attention and love that

And actually what the film does rather gently is it makes her

desire to sing somehow admirable in her belief in her music.

It makes it somehow wonderful - the fantasy of the music transcends the

I thought it was a really interesting film.

It is at times very funny and also very tragic.

But it runs the knife edge between...

There are sentimental moments and harsh moments, and all the way

through is the sound of that voice which you actually come to love.

You come to love the fact that she believes in it.

And it is quite a skill to sing badly.

It is really hard to do what she is doing, and she does it brilliantly.

You remember Cloverfield, it is basically described

as a blood relative of that film, which means it is not a sequel or

In fact it is a psychological thriller that starts with the young

She gets into her car and drives and wakes up in a car crash,

waking up in a bunker, and the only other person there

is John Goodman, who tells her, I haven't kidnapped you,

I'm not sure yet if it is chemical or nuclear.

Thank you so much for saving my life.

I guess I should go to a hospital now.

The question is, has something actually happened aboveground?

There is initially just the two of them but it turns out there's

a third person down there, and you wonder what they are doing.

The rest of it basically plays out as

a psychological story between this trio of people who you trust and

One of them believes something terrible has happened above ground.

However, Mary Elizabeth Winthrop's character, Michelle,

thinks it is some ruse to make them not attempt

It is sometimes like Broom meets the Disappearance of Alice Creed.

It plays its hand very close to its chest until very late

in the game and there is a certain amount of revelation.

I think the best thing to do is find out as little as you can about it.

I went to see it knowing little

about it, even knowing that the title makes it genetically

connected to Cloverfield, but it is a psychological thriller that began

I think they have managed to do a very interesting job of just

pitching it as being in the same postal district as that other movie.

That is the best way of describing it.

In terms of picking one that we must see, you are going to scare us?

It is a very difficult sell, because it is a story of family in

17th-century England who believe they are being preyed upon

It is a psychological thriller that asks you what you are believing.

There are aspects that are really disturbing and scary,

but don't go expecting the kind of jump scares that everyone now

The director cited his influences as Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick.

I really like it, it gets under your skin, but it has proved divisive.

Carol is out on DVD and I think it is a brilliant adaptation

It is basically the story of a relationship between two women

at a time when society was not open to their relationship.

But it also has a kind of film noir sense of threat underneath it.

It opens up quoting Brief Encounter and later looks like it may turn

You really believe in the characters and get involved in their story and

It might be the saddest thing you ever see, one critic wrote.

It is sad but it is also oddly joyous and uplifting because the

A quick reminder before we go that you will find more

film news and reviews from across the BBC online at our website.

You can catch up with our previous shows online as well.

That is it for this week, so thank you very much and goodbye.