Episode 12 Film 2015

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Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy breathe new life into the monster

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas for Seth Rogen and Joseph

And having a whale of a time with Ron Howard, director

I see every movie as its own story yet to be fulfilled.

Plus we'll take a look at Terence Davies' Sunset Song starring

By my side, as ever, is the divine Danny Leigh.

And joining us is the brilliant critic, Kevin Maher.

First up is Victor Frankenstein, the latest cinematic take on

Starring James McAvoy as the devilish doctor with Daniel

It is a time of innovation and progress, when the world's greatest

minds push the limits of what is possible. And delve deep into the

unthinkable. Are you ready? I play Igor, and he

is living this abject, horrible life where he is abused, and Victor sees

him at the circus and sees him doing something that Victor realises would

very helpful to him. I can't just leave. You can be better than this,

I can save you from it, but you have to trust me. So he saves me from

this awful life and rings me into this world of creating monsters and

gives me a purpose, and at that point, it becomes about him trying

to achieve his goal and me trying to hope that he doesn't go mad as he

tries to do it. It's alive! It's alive, it's alive! Back in 1931,

Boris Karloff made Dr Frankenstein's monster instantly

recognisable. Christopher Lee made the role his own in truth Hammer

style in 1957. In the 1970s, Millbrook David Bates comic twist in

Young Frankenstein. You are putting me on. And Kenneth Branagh wrestled

with Robert De Niro's monster in the 90s. It's alive! Cinema has

repeatedly given new life to Mary Shelley's Gothic fantasy, and now it

has been resurrected once again. I don't feel like we've had

Frankenstein movie for a long time. Kenneth Branagh's was 21 years ago,

and how many Batmans and how many Spidermans have we had in that

time? Be careful, Mr Frankenstein. Life is sacred creation. You and I

shall be at the very heart of a scientific enterprise that will

change the world. I want to speak with a Mr Frankenstein. I think what

people will enjoy about this version of Frankenstein is the human element

to it, the psychological element. I hope that they understand what Mary

Shelley was trying to do. Which is to examine the question of loss and

grief and what we can do is human beings and what we can't do. Be

careful, Mr Frankenstein. You toy with wrathful forces, and there is

no mercy in nature. You are homicidal! We decided to run

with a maniac and let it affect our relationship in the film and the

energy in the film. That is one thing we wanted it to be, we wanted

it to have the pace of an adventure thriller romp.

OK, Danny? Appropriately, it is a horrible, monstrous abomination,

made up of the sad twitching disembodied bits of other, better

things. Mostly Sherlock Holmes, the Robert Downey Junior version. It

takes the rakish hero of the lead, the CGI malarkey, it is absolutely

shameless. You don't know if they filmed it all plugged in Guy

Ritchie's memory stick. And you have this tourist board endorsed casting

approach, Jessica Brown Findlay to remind people of Banton, Daniel

Radcliffe to remind people of Harry Potter. Anyone who has ever been in

any episode of Sherlock, they are thrown in. It is a really bad film,

a very bad film, and it is toxic, like a toxic chicken nugget. I like

small jams and chicken nuggets. I would love to come back and say, no,

it is really good, but it is one of the worst films of the year, or any

year. There are so many things wrong with it. I would hesitate to say it

has no dramatic core. They have taken the best things of Mary

Shelley's 200-year-old classic, and they have got rid of them. And what

they are left with is a relationship between Dr Frankenstein and Igor,

who was not in Mary Shelley's book but was in the 1931 movie, and it is

a dead relationship and they don't even give Igor the dignity of having

a hump, he has a makeover where they get rid of it. There are so many

things wrong with it. How long do you have? Let me just try and stick

up for it a bit. It is them, it is Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy.

It is them I feel sorry for. You feel sorry for the flesh and blood

parts of this. I feel sorry for Mark gaiters and Luiz Brearley who get

one line each. I feel sorry for Andrew Scott who is a very gifted

actor and deserves to be able to remember where he is wearing an eye

patch or not from one scene to the next. And I do feel sorry for James

McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe who throw a lot of gusto and a sense of

fun at this, but there is no fun to be had. Why is a film involving a

super-strength reanimated chimpanzee called Gordon this little fun? I

wasn't bored. It was rollicking, and there is the end. The end, you give

it the benefit of the doubt thinking, I can't wait to see the

monster at the end of this tedium, and the monster is basically a very

tall man with a rubber bucket on his head with an angry face drawn on it.

That can be quite scary. He was created by a kind of mad genius, but

every time he sketches in his medical sketchbook, the brain, he

has to write brain next to it, in confuses it with the coccyx,

possibly. I am older than both of you, but are we just too old? Is

this for 16-year-olds? No. No. 16-year-old kids are smart and

honest and social media crazy, this would be a patronising filmed

anybody. Someone has that then thought, we will take these things,

there is no Sherlock Holmes 3, we will get the director in and get him

to do it, and he will do his Sherlock magic, but you can't just

take TV is transplanted onto film, or we would always be talking about

how excited we are to see Barry chuckle on film. Not yet!

And now for our first Christmas film of the season.

The Night Before stars Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon Levitt roaming

New York in search of the ultimate Christmas party.

14 years ago to this very night I lost my parents. And you guys have

been with me every single Christmas since then. You knew! These three

buddies have a tradition on Christmas Eve that goes back ten

years now. And what you are seeing in this movie is the last time that

they are going to have this big night out on Christmas Eve. I really

liked the dynamic that all three of these guys brought to the table.

Seth particularly gets put in the comedy, and he is able to find the,

so you have him who is going to be having a baby. Don't you dare throw

up in here, swallow it! So this is still happening? He is a football

player, kind of allowed guy who likes a lot of attention and is very

charismatic, and an entertainer as much as an athlete. I am going to

teach you a Christmas lesson. OK. Later, sucker! You consider them

dramatic actors, and yet they have these kind of comedic jobs. Show me

the elf face. They go! That is it. This movie has something, some of

the big ridiculous, these don't have, which is people and stories

that actually resonate and meaningful. And I think having that

balance on Christmas is nice. I wanted the opportunity for an

audience to look at these three skies and say, that is me, that is

my friend. What I always thought was fascinating is how friends involved.

Do you hold them back, let them go? That is something everybody has to

content with. There are so many bits in this film

that I really liked and really laughed at. I can't give it a

massive vote of confidence. It kept veering off piste annoyingly, drug

jokes that didn't quite work. It is nearly a decade since Knocked Up,

and I feel we have been down this alley into whether a male friendship

can become slightly homoerotic. I have been there one to many times

with Seth Rogen. But there was enough in this film to make me

chuckle. I found bits of it completely

painful, but you are right, and I don't want to give anything away.

There are moments that are properly fantastic. I found it like being

greeted by a large and enthusiastic dog, a bit sloppy and grubby and you

want a hot shower afterwards, but in a certain context in a certain mood,

it is not an enjoyable. He does male friendship well. There is a nice

chemistry between the characters. It takes a certain skill to make a film

this dopey actually likeable. And the problem is, a lot of the jokes,

and there is one joke in particular, it is so genuinely offensive, which

is quite rare, we can't really even broach the subject on TV. But when

you are treading that Hangover kind of territory, to pull something out

and make it quite sweet and human... I found the sweet and the

heartfelt, and I can't give anything away, this must be so annoying to

watch, I'm sorry. But I found the heartfelt stuff painful, I was like,

be funny again! Enough of the messages. You are a cold and hard

person. I am! And the director keeps making those kinds of film, and the

bits of the film is not that funny when characters are either high or

taking drugs with no real story points, it is just the camera

looking at Seth Rogen who is on shrooms and having a bad trip, and

that was funny when he was in the church with funny Jewish jokes

happening in a church. Every now and then I thought that Jonathan Levine

finds it funny to look at the ball high. And a lot of people who end up

watching the film will be high when they are watching it. Even if it is

just an Lemsip! And I mentioned Julia Bell who plays Seth Rogen's

wife, she is funny. She isn't in it enough. Alana Glazer is really funny

as well, she steals the whole film, she is like a hipster grinch. And

Michael Shannon, playing a role which would have been Christopher

Walken's 15 years ago. I didn't like him. I didn't like him. I didn't

like the Scrooge thing, there is a Scrooge paradigms floating around in

the back of the story keeps drifting towards it. I like that paradigms.

Ron Howard may have begun his career as the Fonz's sidekick

in Happy Days but now he's an Oscar-winning director.

With a CV including all action block asters. -- blockbusters.

His new movie is epic action adventure In The Heart Of The Sea -

a film he says he could only make after picking up some top tips

Hurtling through space to the age of oblivion. Houston Open, we have a

problem. Pushing the limits to maximum overdrive. Certain death in

a blazing inferno. Director Ron Howard is in the business of keeping

us on the edge of our seats. What is at? With his latest film, In The

Heart of the Sea, he once again is aiming for the heart of the action.

In The Heart of the Sea is the Genesis story for Moby Dick, I had

no idea that that whale had actually existed, it had destroyed a ship

years before Moby Dick was written. This is the true story of a man

adventuring and being punished for it. It is not so much like Jaws, it

is more like King Kong, they awaken a force of nature that is perhaps

retribution. Mini moments in this movie, I was grateful for past

experiences, I had done a lot of water work, in Splash and also in

Splash. They are very different tones but the logistics of being out

there and trying to get something accomplished was similar. Madison!

There were times when you need to catch the weather at a particular

time to get a tremendous amount of work done and that comes from

planning and rehearsing with the actors and getting things to work

very quickly. If it was not for the photorealism of some of the CGI work

that was done in Rush, we would not get that photorealism in In The

Heart of the Sea, to get that whale inhabiting a space in an authentic

way that will transport the audience. The kind of action I like

to see in movies is always connected to characters and this is very much

a character movie even though it is a classic adventure on the one hand,

there is something very related and modern about what the characters are

going through and I wanted to extend that the action. It is a little bit

like a cousin to a movie I've directed, Apollo 13. Back-up the

tunnel. With Apollo 13, without doubt, the challenge was the

weightlessness and this was before CGI was an option and shooting those

weightless scenes in an aeroplane out over the Gulf of Mexico, that

was a huge physical challenge. That was a pretty successful broadcast. I

think that the weightlessness was the strangest action scene I have

ever been involved with, I think that the fires in backdraught was

the most dangerous. Because was always the feeling that something

could go horribly wrong and while weightlessness was a very big injury

and is test and sexy and cool, I do not think we felt afraid. But here

we had to constantly respect not only the mechanics of salt to

constantly respect not only the mechanics of Soto stunts that we

were doing but also the environment we were in. I do not go back and

look at the movies, I have not become that man who thinks, let me

just go back 20 years and take a look at those fires. I will

sometimes do it for reference. There are some fire scenes and I was very

grateful for my experience and generally I am kind to myself

because I also remember the challenges we were facing so yes, I

will say, I wish that scene could have been better and with the

technology of today I could have gone even further with that where I

wish that I knew then what I know night, all those things, but for the

most part I am pretty forgiving of young Ron Howard trying to work his

way through the medium. Part of your job want Happy Days is to recreate

the scene, the episode over and over again. To get those feelings. -- on

Happy Days. Everything is going to be fine. When I left acting on

television and realised I was to have a career as a director, I

wanted to be able to create all kinds of reactions for audiences and

I love a great, broad appeal, popcorn movie and likewise, I have

got tremendous respect for a powerful drama that reaches you in

another way. The s, it stove the ship. What drew me to In The Heart

of the Sea was the combination of the bigger visual ideas and the

cinematic elements but also, those acting moments that ran deeper than

you would expect in a normal adventure story. I see every movie

with its own story, yet to be fulfilled. Then it becomes a

creative exploration, every department, actors, writers,

everybody contributing everything that can be dreamt of, to elevate

the story and capture the most exciting bits to share with the

audience. While I use experiences from past movies and I was so

grateful for all of my experiences in making this movie, which is so

ambitious, I think that every story winds up being its own kind of

journey. Promise me to come back. I promise.

We will survive. And that film is out on Boxing Day.

Next is Sunset Song from veteran British director Terence Davies - a

coming-of-age drama set in Scotland just before the First World War.

You are the temp one thing I have ever seen. Willie Manu me? -- the

bonniest. Best of luck to us. -- will you marry me? It is about the

journey of a girl from girlhood to maturity and it is about the

humanity that is in all of us. I missed you. What is important, I

think, is that she learns to suffer and to forgive suffering. You are my

flesh and blood and I can do with you what I will. I was just so

inspired whenever I read the script and I read ) Gribbin's book, what

she could ensure through all these things and stand with their own

integrity and humanity, as a woman. I am not frightened of you! Spill

blood breeds ill. She will get knocks and she moves on and she goes

by feeling, she remembers through things and she is very observant in

life and what it means. Look at my hands. Read with scrubbing. I feel

daft, the place is fine. What more do you want? The dirt. Maybe you

like it like that? Maybe I do. I like you. The underlying courage

that the girl has, and it is unknown courage, you either have that kind

of courage or you do not and my mother had it and she had a very

hard life and was not embittered at the end. If we don't volunteer they

will make us go anyway. No one can stand and happy. He has enlisted and

gone to fight. I know what I want from me. There are a lovely things

in the world. Lovely, but they do not enter, and they are lovely for

that. I am nervous trying to explain why I like this because it is so

intensely visual and so much is tied up with this terribly barren

landscape and as soon as you start talking about the landscape, I know

I remember on a terrible family holiday, pointing out of the

window... Are we nearly there? Thank you, both! Take my word for it, the

landscape in this film in Aberdeenshire is just polishing and

ravaging and harsh and intimidating and beautiful all at once and in the

middle of it you have the stunning performance, Agyness Deyn, and

Terence Davies is a man who has stopped paying any attention to

popular culture in 1957 so he is the only director who I believe when he

says he had no idea who I miss Dean was and she is very tough, carrying

this movie. This is not Scarlet O'Hara, she has not got this

dramatic moment, everything is locked up inside, she has to take

this weather and do that accent and she pulls it off. Brilliantly. I am

a big fan of this film. So, the things you love about this film, I

like one of them, Agyness Deyn is brilliant but the landscape, weed

overcurl, Terence suffers from long lingering shotitis and the weeds

become a symbol and then going back to becoming wheat. A symbol for

what? It is just wheat. Solution and I have been to church services that

were shorter than the one in this film. It is nice to look at, there

are moments that drift into French and Saunders territory, like... You

have got no soul! The young couple having a couple and she thinks at

last things are changing for the better and at the same time the man

was passed on horseback and says that the Warner starting, I thought

that was funny! I was totally gripped, I was crying at one point,

I was engulfed and it is because of her, she does that so quietly and

with such strength. I don't get that, it could be like Sunday night

drama when someone says they are going to do the milking and the

doctor will come in and he will scowl and open up a hard-boiled

eight and with another draft this would be close to self-parody but

this is Terence Davies. Does he get a free pass? He doesn't get a free

pass. I love fields. Film of the week? Sunset Song. The Night Before.

Playing us out tonight is Tim Burton's 1990 classic,

25 years old this year, it launched the career of a very

That was the single most thrilling experience of my whole life!