T2 Trainspotting, Hacksaw Ridge, Christine Film 2017

Hello, you're watching Film 2017, a programme all about things that

I'm Charlie Brooker and I'm sorry about that.

It may be late but assuming you're still conscious and capable

of using at least one finger, you can tweet us and say hello.

Details for that are on the screen now..

is up to? For 20 years? Choose a midlife crisis, Sick Boy, Christophe

Lourdelet, Renton and Spud return for 78 macro. Harrowing scenes as

innocent creatures are forced to sing and dance for undeserving

offspring in Sing. I am fine, thank you. Just keep things light, Rebecca

Hall enters the downward spiral as the journalist in tragedy Christine.

Or each... Also Rachel Weisz and Timothy

Spall go head to head in the courtroom drama,

Denial. So joining me to give the thumbs up,

thumbs down or preferably actually form sounds and words

with their mouths are critics are critics Ellen E Jones

and Danny Leigh... At this point it said awkward hellos

on the autocue. That is pretty awkward. I just did a weird one.

We start with the long-awaited sequel to the heart pumping,

drug-fuelled, era-defining 1996 classic, Trainspotting.

Twenty one years down the line and director Danny Boyle,

double-Ewans McGregor and Bremner, Johnny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle

are all back to reveal what happened next to this loveable bunch

Well it begins with Renton returning to Edinburgh, which kind of

reactivates the friendship of the four characters you saw on the

poster and you remember from the first film. What have you been up

to? For 20 years? They have always been there, these characters. They

never went away. There hasn't been a single week in the last 20 years

that someone has not said to me, hate, Begbie? It is that alchemy as

they come back together again. I missed you, Spud. Their friendship

imploded and this film finds them falling back together. And the

trajectory of their struggles for the last 20 years binds them in a

kind of dangerous, on a dangerous mission. That was brilliant. It was

thought about ten years ago, the script was not right. It is the

right time, but you're still fairly terrified. The prospect of coming

back to you guys was too great. You think this is an opportunity that

will never return. If anyone could pull it off, Danny could. I think

the only person who could pull it off was Danny. Action! Danny is

always pulling things out of the hat, all things that were not in the

script, he is throwing into the film. It is his own vision. It is

his own movie, really, it is not harking back to the original film.

It is what Trainspotting was in the 1990s, we have never seen before. It

is still a poppy style, it is quite a heightened world. There are

similarities in the style, but I hope it is not a pastiche or copying

of a style, it has tried to find a new one that suits this particular

story. And some of the sadness that is in the story. It is not getting

out of your body that is the problem, it is getting it out of

your mind. You are an addict. It is about boyhood and now it is about

manhood, when you realise, it is time that does not care about you.

You have got to channel it, control it. People try all sorts. What did

you channel into? Getting away. Obviously there is a lot riding on

this film and I was nervous when I went into the cinema to watch it. I

really enjoyed the first half of this film, would you say Danny Boyle

was wise to revisit the past which is what the film is all about?

Possibly very unwise. I have been dreading it and I think lots of

people whether they were fans or not, it was dreading it, who needs a

reminder of what the passing of 20 years will do to you. I think it is

very funny and has all the cute and strap bombs as you would expect but

it is also very blunt and bleak about the reality of not being young

any more. Why do you expect strap-ons? The wreckage, the

disappointment in yourself that settles over you into your 40s. All

that stuff is there and it is very upfront about it. I felt like the

movie was speaking to me in a way that not a lot of movies do. I would

be interested in the opinion of someone who is not specifically a

44-year-old man. I had a very strong coffee before watching this which I

think is quite a T2 thing to do. Then took heroin! My heart was

pounding and it did not stop. I was totally satisfied. With the coffee.

Just completely satisfied. Very soon it washes over you, the sense of

relief that Danny Boyle is back and making a film and you are in safe

hands and that opening sequence where they get introduced was just

as good as the first film. There is a doubt this time around. More

characterisation, the relationships are moving. I have to give credit to

Robert Carlyle for being genuinely scary. I felt all of these things

for the first 45 minute. I was relieved and enjoying it and I felt

I have not seen something like this in the cinema for ages and then, for

me, the problem was that the story then devolves into kind of a caper

and I was less convinced and I was not believing in it any more and

there is a character Veronica who hardly seems to feature in a lot of

the promo staff... She's a young glamorous woman who is hanging

around but these guys. Unless she is a fan of the first film, there is no

reason. It was always a bit of a caper. I think so. The first film

people think of as filthy and dark but I think for all of that, there

was a sense of summer holiday. It was part of this mood in 1996, of

celebration and optimism and now I think this film at heart is much

darker and bleaker. There are moments in this film, I have been a

bit lonely about the storyline and I think it would have worked better as

a miniseries. That is a good idea. There are moments that are

hilarious, a scene in a pub which is one of the things that are the

funniest things I have ever seen and moments of visual flair. The actors

are all 20 years better. When you look at challenge macro, he has been

in America and looks great and my theory about the physical

dilapidation is, fall down a bit. They do not look like 45-year-old

former heroin addict is -- 44 macro -- Jonny Lee Miller. There is a

pathos there. The acting has got a lot better. Ewen Bremner. He is not

given enough to do. I want to see more from these characters. The use

of video game analogy left a little to be desired. I don't understand

that. Slight change of tone now

so adjust your mental filter because next we're looking at Sing -

the ultra-realistic story of a theatre-owning koala

who launches an X Factor-style A sort of Vermin's Got

Talent if you will. Sing is set in a world like ours.

All the characters have regular lives and at the centre of the story

is a koala called Buster Moon played by Matthew McConaughey and his

theatre is losing money and it will be taken away from him and he tries

to stage something popular, a singing competition. A singing

competition! You follow five characters who are competing, an

elephant... There is a porcupine, played by Scarlett Johansson. A pig

played by Reese Witherspoon. As by self -- says McFarland and a gorilla

played by myself. # I would say the things I want to

say... Most of our principal cast have to sing their own songs. There

you go! You are a natural. That was both a challenge and a trait for a

lot of them. I am not thinking this. Johnny, you were supposed to be

keeping a lookout. Sorry, dad. But then animated film, the world is so

much larger-than-life and you have to really be muscular in the way you

deliver lines. This stage is about to explode with PB Power. I am so

sorry, I have no control. Even though the film starts with the

premise of a singing competition. It is never about recreating what we

see on television, it is about getting to the heart of stuff that I

love the most which is ordinary folks, having a shot at the big

time. Having a shot to chase their dream and the drama that comes with

trying to do that. You think you can sing like that? In front of a real

audience? I don't know. But I want to try. Now, I am someone who is

predisposed to despise that bet that happens at every CGI cartoon and at

the end of the film, the animals saying low Bamber as the end credits

roll and this is basically that bit of the movie and yet, I really

rather enjoyed it. I am very surprised to hear that. This really

fits in with my theory that some children's films are designed to

amaze children and others are designed to torment their parents

and this really felt like that to me. You hated it. It won me back a

bit towards the end, but it is relentless pop music and often quite

short snatches and you feel like you are being assaulted by pop songs and

it is very colourful... All these things people like! Like toe-tapping

music and colour is! What is wrong with you? They could have had a

thought for the parents. It is nice that it is all structured around a

singing competition because that is a very normal thing, we do not get

enough of those. We want to have more of those but it feels like a

singing competition because it feels like a lot of talented well-meaning

people frantically trying to inject some idiosyncrasy into a very

familiar old format. Koalas... Can we talk about the fact that I

watched this film with my children and I was watching it with a

two-year-old who frankly you could put in front of a poster and he

would stare at it and a four-year-old and they enjoyed it,

they laughed and all the right places... Where they morally

improved by it? I don't care! I was just about to say... You're sitting

online, doing the big shop... I think koalas are a terrible role

model. Buffalo gets treated shabbily. Boo-hoo! It's not real.

What I want from a kids film... To get me wrong, I would not watch this

as an adult, but as a kids film, my kids loved it. Yes, it was extremely

predictable, it was a very simple story, but my eldest is four years

old, he wants predictable. Sue troublous set the bar high. He has

not seen that. Did you not find it weird with Matthew McConaughey?

Sometimes with these cars, you have no idea who the people are. They

have got nice voices. Matthew McConaughey is very much heaven, he

is the terrible koala from the word go and I found it very difficult not

to see Matthew McConaughey from the wolf of Wall Street. My

four-year-old has not seen the wolf of Wall Street. I was jealous about

the music. There was an amazing number of what must have been

incredibly expensive songs, starting with the Beatles, that is showing

off. They paid for it. If you can get Katy Perry and toss it away on

the scene of a pig doom washing-up... I want something that

will distract kids and not absolutely appalled me and this did

the job. The last time I went to the cinema to see a kids film it was the

secret life of pets and lots of people were sitting there on

Facebook looking at fake news and I think that this it is entertaining

enough that you would get up and watch it.

Right another tonal gear shift now because next up,

Rebecca Hall stars as local US TV reporter, Christine Chubbuck,

who shot herself live on air in 1974.

Her final days is the subject of the dark drama Christine.

I am a reporter and I'm always on the lookout for a positive human

interest story. This is my first of the season. The film takes place

over about ten days prior to this act that Christine Chubbuck did,

which is that she took her life on live television. I had a huge

responsibility to her, to her memory, to make her a human being

that you empathised with. Are you OK? Yes, just... Summer allergies.

I had 15 minutes of footage, which I watched religiously, it took me

about three months to prepare for this role, and what started as an

impression had to turn into something different if I was to have

a chance of doing it well. Don't lose sight of what you have here. So

as much as I was finding a voice and physicality, was trying to work out

what it is like to be in that level of pain, what happens to my body, my

voice, when I am that uncomfortable in my own skin, so in that case, it

came from me. These flowers are fake, it sums up

the whole operation! Esteem, go home! These people are ruining me.

These people... Why will no one listen to me?

She is a woman who symbolises a transformative moment in cultural

history. It is a simple concept, if it bleeds, it bleeds. This movement

from ethical journalism to if it bleeds, it leads reporting. This

idea that you don't exist unless it is seen by a camera. TV 30 presents

what is believed to be a television first.

Now, I have to say, I wasn't entirely sure what to make of this

film. I found Rebecca Hall mesmerising and fascinating from

beginning to end. And I wasn't sure if the film itself knew what it was,

because there are elements of dark comedy, moments where it is a really

depressing character study of a very lost soul, and also elements of

satire to do with the newsroom and politics in the 1970s, so I didn't

know what to make of it at all. I think it is all of the above. The

thing about Christine is it is the film you expected to be, because you

reduce it down to this one idea of what happened to her, and that is

the film, you will catch up with it at some point, but it isn't quite

the day, but this isn't that film. It is human and hypnotic and

reminded me of almost like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, it has that

American 70s back drop, it has Michael C Hall who is 70% Philip

Seymour Hoffman. And in the middle this sad character who ends up in TV

trying to do good important work and clearly TV is no place for a human

being anyway, so you know how the movie is going to end, but what is a

tribute to it is that by the time you get to that scene, you don't

want it to happen. Christine, I feel invested in it, it is my cat maxing.

The central performance. -- it is my Saying. I think there is so much

focus on Christine, everything else is sketched hazily, the bosses just

literally shouting the subtext at them. What did you make of it? I did

think that her performance was so good it overshadowed the rest, but I

also left it confused about what I was supposed to take from it,

because it focuses on the last months of her life, it can't help

but be about her death, so it gives us something that is leading in

extra towards the end even though it gives us hope human side. There is

also stuff about how news became entertainment, although maybe you

should be watching Network or Spotlight if that is your take, and

it is good on the way Patriarca takes its toll on within in the

myriad ways that it does, but a lot of that still hasn't changed enough

for this to be an interesting period piece for me. There is a whole

industry of films and TV shows about tormented male antiheroes, and it is

refreshing to see Rebecca Hall playing a part. Christine is often

not even likeable or good at her job, she does human interest stories

and doesn't seem to be able to connect with people, so that is

fascinating. And it is a hard not to play, because it isn't an issue

movie, you can't explain why what the problem is, so she is playing a

character who was dissolving, but for reasons we don't quite know and

in ways that we don't often quite notice. And you can't tell where her

personal mental illness ends on the social situation she is in begins.

But having said all of that, I don't know if I would recommend it to

someone as an entertaining film. I would recommend it to anyone who

works in journalism to say, this is what the future holds. I like the

way it treats journalism, because we speak of that time, the 70s,

Watergate, the watershed investigative journalism, you can

see this line from there to click bait, and you can see that mapped

out. We have to move on. Our last film is Denial,

released on Friday, which just happens to be Holocaust Memorial

Day. Rachel Weisz stars as US professor

Deborah Lipstadt who was sued for libel by disgraced historian

David Irving and found herself in the momentous

position of having to prove, in court, that the holocaust did

indeed actually happen. The Holocaust happened. That isn't

opinion, that is fact, and I were debate fact. Denial is about Deborah

Lipp stat who has written many books, one of them is called denying

the Holocaust, and she did a few paragraphs about David Irving who is

a Holocaust denier. According to the evidence I have seen, there were no

gas chambers anywhere. Lipstadt accused David Irving of being a

Holocaust and I, so he takes to court. So she has to prove in court

that it did happen, almost impossible to do. Here is one of the

largest killing machines in human history. It is how we prove what it

is. The Holocaust happened, every body knows it, but once you have to

prove it, it is harder than you think. There are no holes in the

roof, there were no gas chambers. When we were making it, it was

before Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, so it couldn't be more

timely. In an age that has never been so riddled with information and

so difficult to find the truth in that information, information,

opinion and fact I different things. He's not a racist. He is a liar and

a falsify of history. This is about the fight for truth

and justice around this trial. The Earth is round, the ice caps are

melting and Elvis is not alive! At the end of the court case, there

might be a piece of paper, if she loses, that says the Holocaust did

not happen. It suddenly becomes respectable to set the Holocaust

didn't happen? ! Timothy Spall was alluding to that,

we live in an increasingly worrisome post-truth alternative fact era with

a resurgence of the far right. So in many ways, this feels like a very

timely film, even though it is about a trial that ended in the year 2000.

It asks a Topical Questions, which is how do you debate with madmen and

liars and people who believe the alternative fact of a thing, but it

is also weirdly out of step, because there is a lot to admire. Howdy

mean? A lot of people want escapism, the musical is doing very well, Lala

land, but it is also how do you go to a civilised court room, and it

was justified, and it got to the end, and it feels very 1990s. It is

a very good performance by Timothy Spall. He manages to do something

that communicates a real deadness of his soul in his eyes. You see him

come to life in front of the camera, David Irving, and then you see the

shark eyes. His costume is this jovial English chap in Tweed who is

ready with a funny sound bite for the cameras but obviously has this

deeply sinister agenda, I don't know if that would remind anyone of

anyone, but somebody does! I think there is a problem structurally with

the film which is that because it is about truth and a very sensitive

subject, and David Hare, all the dialogue you see in the courtroom

scenes is lifted verbatim from the court transcript, the problem with

that in a way is that what happened in the trial was that Deborah

Lipstadt was sidelined, she was denied the right to speak, the

opportunity to speak in court, and the problem, I don't think that

leads to good drama, because... It does make an interesting point,

there is a great line in it about how England is a club and David

Irving just wants to belong to it, and it makes a nice point about how

there might be other people who are excluded, and maybe Geber Lipstadt

is one of them. But it doesn't lead to drama. There is brilliant

writing, but maybe because Deborah Lipstadt is over from America has to

have the English legal system explain to her a lot, there are also

a lot of moments where the film is explaining itself, and David Hare is

a great writer, but it can feel a little bit like your slightly deaf

relative, and it is tapping you money, and saying, have you

understood this bit? He feels like every legal person you have ever

met, which is quite fascinating. It isn't the film's fault, but

because it takes at the end of the 1990s, I couldn't help thinking

about This Life. There was a secret in Auschwitz -- a sequence in

Auschwitz, and a sequence where Rachel Weisz, and we saw an

impressionist scene of people herding down the steps, but to me it

was more powerful to feel what she was imagining and experiencing. I

think that is right. I think if you film in Auschwitz, you just film.

Now I have to do a total shift and ask you what your film of the week

was. It has to be T2. I am going to say Christine. Not Sing? Mine would

be Trainspotting again, because although there were moments in it

that I felt were incredible, the final shot... It is not a spoiler.

Right, that's almost it, your ordeal's virtually over.

Lauren Laverne will be here next week, and she's

But we'll leave you with a whiff of Hacksaw Ridge

directed by Mel Gibson - there's a man who should

His film Hacksaw Ridge stars Andrew Garfield as an American GI

who distinguished himself in World War II despite

This is a personal gift from the United States government designed to

bring doubt to the enemy. I can't touch a gun, Sergeant. You don't

kill? No, sir. Do not look to him to help you on the battlefield. It

doesn't seem like a bad thing to me to want to put part of the world

back together. You are free to run into the hellfire of battle without

a single weapon to protect yourself. Help me. You will have to trust me.

You had better come home to me. It's something that drags you in

and crushes you to nothing.