:00:00. > :00:00.after a skiing accident. We will meet the man hoping to win his
:00:00. > :00:20.fourth World Darts Championship. Now, it's time for The Film Review.
:00:21. > :00:24.Hello and welcome to THE FILM REVIEW on BBC News.
:00:25. > :00:32.To take us through this week's cinema releases is Jason Solomons.
:00:33. > :00:43.So Jason, what do we have this week? Yes. And it is our last season. . We
:00:44. > :00:46.will see if the movie can match the legend as Idris Elba takes on the
:00:47. > :01:01.role of playing Nelson Mandela along to freedom. Then we look at Last
:01:02. > :01:09.Vegas. Is it worth a to the dais? -- a throw of the dice?
:01:10. > :01:23.Then we look at a documentary memoir from Cambodian director.
:01:24. > :01:29.A great book, Long Walk To Freedom. It is based on a novel by someone
:01:30. > :01:44.who interviewed Mandela several times and gave a flavour of the man.
:01:45. > :01:52.Interestingly, it shows Mandela in a period when people did not know him,
:01:53. > :02:01.ie in the early 1950s and 60s. As he was making his impassioned defence
:02:02. > :02:07.of Victoria. It shows the rolling hills of South Africa and what a
:02:08. > :02:09.beautiful and it was. It travels from his incarceration breakthrough
:02:10. > :02:15.to the time when he walked to freedom. There is a lot to pack in.
:02:16. > :02:20.There is a great gap of inactivity were Nelson Mandela was
:02:21. > :02:24.incarcerated. It comes hot on the heels of blanket coverage of the
:02:25. > :02:29.man's life because of his recent death, of course. It is a monument
:02:30. > :02:37.will task because the film is sort of a monument itself. It is perhaps
:02:38. > :02:40.too soon to say anything controversial about Mandela to a
:02:41. > :02:45.Hollywood movie. But it does build into the complex politics and the
:02:46. > :02:58.things that were gnawing away at the soul of Nelson Mandela. Here he is
:02:59. > :03:03.in that trial in 1963 in Pretoria, . We want equal political rights. One
:03:04. > :03:07.man, one vote. I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the
:03:08. > :03:15.African people. I have fought against white domination. I have
:03:16. > :03:21.fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a free
:03:22. > :03:26.democratic society, we're all persons live together harmony with
:03:27. > :03:35.equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and
:03:36. > :03:41.achieve. But, if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to
:03:42. > :03:45.die. I thought it was a wonderful
:03:46. > :03:48.performance by eco-celibate. The film did not shirk away from some of
:03:49. > :03:56.the other bits about Nelson Mandela 's life. Particularly relations with
:03:57. > :04:04.Winnie Mandela. Of course, Nelson Mandela as a
:04:05. > :04:13.gunman looked very different. He was a very physical man. And I think
:04:14. > :04:19.Idris Elba captures that likeness. It captures the sprightliness and
:04:20. > :04:24.spring in the step and in the soul. What is interesting about this film
:04:25. > :04:27.is it tries to be a family film. Because he could not do much for
:04:28. > :04:33.politics while he was incarcerated, it is about his struggle for his
:04:34. > :04:46.family, his wife, the death of his son which impacted on him greatly.
:04:47. > :04:52.Perhaps it is not as easy to gauge the character of Winnie Mandela.
:04:53. > :04:55.One thing I did not understand was why Winnie Mandela could be so
:04:56. > :04:58.bitter and why her politics were so different, but I think that was
:04:59. > :05:05.beautifully explained. Yes, it was a great performance from
:05:06. > :05:18.Ione Harris to help us understand that. It helps the film move along.
:05:19. > :05:22.Perhaps the film is a bit a to Z. It is about a man who is beyond a
:05:23. > :05:27.standard biopic, this could have been about anyone. I would have
:05:28. > :05:37.liked to have seen something a bit more inventive.
:05:38. > :05:43.Your next choice is Last Vegas. I can imagine the pitch for this: We
:05:44. > :05:51.will take for actors in their twilight years. It is the Hangover
:05:52. > :05:55.for old men, isn't it? These guys really should know
:05:56. > :06:00.better. They have read hundreds of scripts between them but they still
:06:01. > :06:04.cannot say no. You have Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline and Michael
:06:05. > :06:11.Douglas. I wish they would stop doing awful comedies. It is about
:06:12. > :06:21.childhood friends who meet up for a kind of stag do. He is marrying
:06:22. > :06:27.someone who is 32 years old. As Morgan Freeman says, he has a
:06:28. > :06:33.haemorrhoid older than that! We say that we're going to party like it is
:06:34. > :06:39.1959. There are few good gags, but they basically just local girls in
:06:40. > :06:44.bikinis in Las Vegas. For me, it really just was not fun. It was the
:06:45. > :06:49.last place on earth I would want to go.
:06:50. > :06:57.Let's move on to something which sounds a lot better but more
:06:58. > :07:01.serious. The Missing Picture. It is called the Missing Picture
:07:02. > :07:09.because they are trying to convey what happened when they can approach
:07:10. > :07:12.-- when the Khmer Rouge took over. There is no documentation of this
:07:13. > :07:16.period, when millions of the middle classes were shipped out to work in
:07:17. > :07:22.the rice fields and labour camps in what later became known of course as
:07:23. > :07:28.the killing fields. What he does is he reconstruct this with sculpted
:07:29. > :07:32.figurines carved out and a little bit of archive footage and what we
:07:33. > :07:39.get is this extraordinary documentary memoir. It is already on
:07:40. > :08:40.a long list for Oscar nominations. Here is a short clip.
:08:41. > :09:03.What are the real picture is there? That is Khmer Rouge propaganda.
:09:04. > :09:10.It is interesting because he was 13 when the Khmer Rouge came into Phnom
:09:11. > :09:13.Penh and there is still a bit of that revolutionary zeal within him.
:09:14. > :09:17.I think he still believes in some way that the teachings that were
:09:18. > :09:22.inculcated in kids on the killing fields, he sort of admirers the
:09:23. > :09:26.purity of the revolution. But actually, the system in which it was
:09:27. > :09:31.executed was obviously terrible and wreaked havoc on his family. This is
:09:32. > :09:38.him, in a sense, exercising some of those ghosts. He uses these
:09:39. > :09:46.figurines to kind of play out this and I have never seen anything like
:09:47. > :09:56.that. Quite extraordinary. It is very playful, it is about cinema. He
:09:57. > :10:02.was intellectual as a kid and there is a sort of before and after look
:10:03. > :10:06.at it. This is one of those documentaries that does not really
:10:07. > :10:09.is fact, it uses memory and playfulness and it is an interesting
:10:10. > :10:20.period to try to invent things where you do not have facts.
:10:21. > :10:24.Next film is American Hustle. If you have not seen this then catch up
:10:25. > :10:34.with it immediately. It is the best value can have. It includes Jennifer
:10:35. > :10:42.Lawrence, who isn't as big again. There is a lot of big here in this
:10:43. > :10:49.movie. Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence are both good. I am not
:10:50. > :10:55.sure what it is quite about. My one quibble was that only
:10:56. > :11:06.American scriptwriters could call a woman Sydney. Anyway, moving on. The
:11:07. > :11:12.Conjuring. Your DVD choice. This is a horror movie, a strange
:11:13. > :11:16.choice for me. I do not normally like these kinds of movies but this
:11:17. > :11:23.harks back to those great horror movies of the 1970s. It is directed
:11:24. > :11:32.by James Wan. Up it is about a Jew who go about exercising ghosts. They
:11:33. > :11:45.go to help Lili Taylor who has been possessed by a house. I do not why
:11:46. > :11:52.this was the idea. It does all the whispering stuff that you think may
:11:53. > :11:57.be cliched, but it scared the living daylights out of me.
:11:58. > :12:04.That is pretty much what you would like from a horror movie. You can
:12:05. > :12:07.get more film News online. That's it for this week. Thank you for
:12:08. > :12:29.watching. Goodbye. The weather is a bit horrific and
:12:30. > :12:30.will stay like that for the next few