Sing Street, X-Men: Apocalypse, Chicken The Film Review

and we also have the news that Brendan Rodgers is the new manager

of Celtic. That is all coming up later on. But now it is time for 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 Sing Street, which is a

musical 80s fantasy. X-Men Apocalypse, another superhero romp.

Chicken, very interesting low-budget feature. Sing Street. The latest

from John Carney, who made once, and begin again, he has a good eye and

ear for the strange magic of making music, than anyone else working

cinema at the moment. It is set in Dublin in the mid-80s, this awkward

teenager played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, but comes infatuated

with a local girl, he asks her to be in his band's pop video, she says

yes, but he says he does not actually have a band. He runs around

and rounds up the young musicians he can to form a band and they start

out, attempting to sound like Duran Duran, but as his older brother

tells him, that is not rock and roll. This is a clip. The girl, it

is all about the girl, isn't it? Yes. You are going to use someone

else's art to get her? We are just art in. Did the sex pistols know how

to play? You are not Steely Dan. You need to know not how to play, and

that takes practice. And you are not a covers band, by the way. Really?

Every wedding and every pub has a covers band and every covers band

has a middle-aged figure who never have the balls to write a song for

himself or stop rock 'n' roll is a risk you risk being ridiculed. I

don't know how to write a song. Close the door, it is going to be a

long night. I got school in the morning. This is school. Rock

School! Is closer to School of rock, and people have made comparisons

with The Commitments, which I think is misguided, but it is close to

school of rock. What I like about it, John Carney is great at

negotiating the difference between the sound in your head and the sound

any the room. It has the right blend, one foot in the kitchen sink

and its head is in the stars, and it manages to blur that line between

what is real and believable and what is slightly fantastical. It does it

superbly. The Keira frame of the film, what does it mean to be happy

sad? -- the key refrain. Like a great pop song, that is how the film

makes you feel, the music is not 80s pastiche, but very well done. In

terms of what kind of music you might have been making in the

mid-80s. As someone who was in bands in their teenage years, he has a

great eye for that moment when you sit down with somebody and you

attempt to write the song, attempting to rip off another song.

I really enjoyed it, I laughed and cried and I came out humming the

choose, and when was the last time you said a film really put a spring

in your step? That is true. Like the new Romantics, but not the same

make-up. One of them is in a cowboy outfit. It is very very funny, but

it has this proper streak of melancholy which worked very well.

When it gets into the starting fantastical area I thought it did it

in the right way, in the way that listing to a great pop record would.

It is really lovely. -- listening. That is good. And a good script, as

well. And now X-Men Apocalypse, I have low expectations. After the

disappointment of Batman versus Superman and then the surprise joys

of Captain America, this is somewhere in between. The narrative

goes from Egyptian pyramids to 80s Mr Agger, Bryan Singer has fun with

breakfast club, there are individual bits which are good. The plot is

around a boo-boo mutants who is attempting to end humanity, and it

is a cross between Stargate and Raiders of the lost Ark, and

sometimes like an overcooked Doctor Who story. It suffers from having

too many people for any of them to have traction and it has not been

very well received by critics and some fans. Some people said this is

the worst X-Men, I did not think it was, I enjoyed it enough, but like a

great big vat of popcorn it is big and noisy and insubstantial, and

considering the Apple -- pop elliptic subject matter. James

McAvennie and -- James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender can be great.

Yes, but the movie is not great. OK. And now Chicken. This is about a

young man with learning difficulties living in a caravan with his violent

brother. Richard is the main guy, brilliantly played by Scott

Chambers, he starts up a friendship with Annabel, the daughter of the

people who now own the land and they find a strange off-kilter

friendship. This is a clip. Look at this place. The air and the fields,

the sky, it is disgusting. Do you live here? Yeah. Where? In my

caravan. Oh, it is you, you are the gypsy? No, that is Polly, I'm a

farmer. Your sister is a gypsy? My brother is. Your brother is a Polly?

Yes. That is a girl's name. I don't know, you'd have to ask him. For

ever Polly. Not quite what I had in mind. What I love about the

performance on Scott Chambers, it reminded me of Leonardo DiCaprio in

what's eating Gilbert grape. It is very precise, to do with the

slightly skewed nature of the physical movements, the speech

patterns. It is a performance which is not patronising and that takes an

isolated character and it engages you in the world and it makes you

empathise and understand the complex emotional landscape that they

inhabit. The film itself reminded me of Ken Loach's cares, the disparity

between natural beauty and society and disorder, none was very drawn

into it, and I thought the characters were engaging -- I was

very drawn into it. It is beautifully played, the three

central forms is our very well done and directed enough distance to not

feel intrusive -- central performances. In the third act it

feels they have two move towards a thematic denouement, which I did not

think it needed, because I was so impressed with what it had done

until that point. The central performance on Scott Chambers is

really great. We can draw a graft of enjoyment versus the amount of money

that is spent on a film, if you compare that with X-Men Apocalypse.

Every single penny, it is all there, and it is clearly made with love and

affection from people who care about the material, that is worth seeking

out. If you get a chance to see it, please do. You're best of the week

is still Mustang? The Turkish film. Yes. French film, actually, but

about five Turkish girls, their houses turned into a wire factory,

as it is described, and although this is a tale of confinement, what

you take well -- away from it is their vibrancy and the sense of them

as being on time but, living life to the fullest, even though they are

living in these circumstances and I thought it was a very engaging piece

of work, very tender and dealing with an important subject matter.

Dealing with the humanity of these characters. You will love it. I know

I will. I have neglected it so far, but it is sunny outside! Row and now

the DVD of the week, that is Spotlight. When it was out in the

cinema, we discussed it, it makes the inside of a newspaper office

seem real. We have seen newspaper offices done badly, but this is

about investigative journalism, shoe leather, the way there is a lot of

drudgery, the investigation into the Catholic Church's cover-up of child

abuse. It is not simple blacks and whites, it is to do with where

responsibility lies and what the newspaper may or may not have done

to pursue this story. Very fine cast. All very good. Very well

directed by Tom McCarthy. I've seen it a few times, it is not all the

Presidents man, but what is? But what it does have, the sense of grit

and its fingernails, you get the sense it was made by people who

understand the newsroom. -- under its fingernails. When I left, the

first time I saw it, I googled Boston Globe and they have laid off

many journalists. That is part of the whole economics, can you do

investigative journalism on no money? The answer is no. You came

out of the movie and you went and did that, you were engaged enough

and you believed in the story to want to find out more about that

after. From a film perspective, we have seen so many poor

representations of the way papers work, I thought it was very good.

Much of it is boring work, but this is not a boring film. You knock on

people's doors, and you follow... In a way, in a way which is strangely

and dramatic. A quick reminder before we go, that you will find

more film news and reviews from across the BBC online.

And you can catch up with our previous shows on iPlayer.

We have got some changeable weather, all of us seeing some rain at times,

and some have seen that arriving already, but not everywhere. This

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