07/02/2014 The Film Review

the Summer. And Katie joins us from Edinburgh head of another Six

Nations weekend. That is an Sportsday at 6:30pm. Now it is time

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

on BBC News. To take through this week's similar releases, Mark

Kermode. We have some good stuff. Yes, Dallas Buyers Club. Matthew

McConaughey has become a top awards contender. He would have thought

that three years ago? The Invisible Woman, directed by and starring

Ralph Fiennes, the story of Charles Dickens's private life. And of

RoboCop. What are they going to do with the 1987 original? -- a reboot

of RoboCop. Dallas Buyers Club, great performance by Matthew

McConaughey. Yes and Jared Leto. The story is inspired by Ron Woodroof's

story. He was diagnosed as HIV-positive and was given 30 days

to live. He took medication which did not work out for him and so he

started going outside the USA to set up a method of getting medication

into the country. It was the Dallas Buyers Club. There was a membership

fee, so technically they were not selling medication. The authorities

were not pleased. What are you doing here? I live here. Are you

roommates? Not exactly. What are you doing here? This is my patient. You

are treating these people? With what? Anything except that poison

that you are walking. Do you ever wear any colour? All I see is white,

the white coat, the white shoes. Tell him I am looking for him. I am

telling patients to stay away from here. Wants to grab a steak

sometime? I know it is read. The headline is the weight that he

lost. But that is the least remarkable thing about his

performance. What is really good, at the beginning Ron is an unlikeable

character. Homophobic, misogynistic, they get, and quite a dangerous

person. -- bigoted. When he looks for medication it is the survival

instinct but he brings it back for financial gain. His friendship in

inverted commas is with Jared Leto's character, and it is only to

bring in the drugs. But his character undergoes a change. He

softens. He comes to understand that the people that he was contemptuous

of before are dealing with the same thing that he is dealing with. The

triumph of the film, which has a naturalistic feel, shot in

widescreen, hand-held, by a director who did a great job with Crazy, no

incidental music, only music on the jukebox, so naturalistic and real,

with great performances. It also does that clever thing of giving you

a loathsome character at the beginning and, I hate to use this

phrase, standard Hollywood, you go on a journey with him. It is

redemptive. He redeems himself. It is like much of America and much of

the world which saw AIDS as a gay plague. He goes through that journey

and becomes a much better person after the fatal illness. There is

the comparison with Philadelphia, with the homophobic lawyer

approached by Tom -- Tom Hanks and in the film, he realises there is a

kindred spirit. It also manages to find genuine joy and an uplifting

story amongst the tragedy. And a great performance by Matthew

McConaughey. I think that was his best performance. And Jared Leto,

too. Terrific. The Invisible Woman. Directed by and starring Ralph

Fiennes and about Charles Dickens's relationship with a young actress.

They developed an affair. It is basically a story about what it

means for her to be Charles Dickens's partner that without being

his wife. It comes to life partly because it is done in a good weight

with an intelligent script by Abi Morgan which really understands

politics. -- a good way. But also Felicity Jones is very intelligent.

Jihad is one of those faces. You can look at somebody on the screen and

you can see what she is thinking. -- she has one of those faces. She has

a vibrant green presence. She implies with very little speech a

great depth of character. The film makes you understand her

circumstances without in any way being preachy fusty or stale. With

Ralph Fiennes playing Charles Dickens, it could feel

old-fashioned. But actually it is a very modern film because it is

dealing with her plight. The plight of many, being in this weird

position when she is the woman who is invisible. In terms of being a

director, Coriolanus, home territory, and this is very

different. Directing on screen is very different to the theatre and I

think this is well directed. The smartest thing about the direction

is that he understands it is about small gestures. The trick is to back

off and not flash the directing up. He is an actor's director and he

does very well with that here. I have to say that my expectations

were not tie with RoboCop. Did we need another one because the

original is one of the best of that genre ever? Total Recall was

terrible so what are they doing with RoboCop? It is basically the same

story, a man put into a robotic body. The twist is you cannot put

robots on US soil but if you put a guy in it, it is not a robot. But

the real sparks come when Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman fight out the

philosophical implications. What is wrong with you? Nothing. The

software release information to the brain. The computer has finished the

job. You wanted a man inside the machine and that is what you have

got. But the human element will always be present. Fear, instinct,

bias, passion, they always interfere with the system. OK. I have to give

the American people something they can root for, something

aspirational. Pretty good? I don't know how to sell OK. Help me. Just

get him to do that. Him to do that. It is a man inside the machine.

Right there! Great stuff, corporate stuff. Isn't that better than you

expected? Yes. The whole film is better than you expected. It does

not bring a whole new dimension to RoboCop and it does not threaten the

original but it is much better than it could have been. It is satirical

and it does have the politics in it at the same central concern. One

about fascist policing and secondly about man and machine. If you take

away bits of the body, when are we human? All those things are there.

Yes, it is not the original, but at least it appears to be made by

somebody who understands what is good about the original. It is not

the rehash of Total Recall. Best of the week is 12 Years A Slave. I will

change next week. I have flown the flag solidly! And now Paul

Greengrass doing what he does best, taking the drama and filming it like

a documentary. Tom Hanks's best performance, this. Captain Phillips.

The total newcomer is a wonderful actor, too. Nobody does this like

Paul Greengrass. What amazed me was how the pathetic you feel to Somali

pirates, not the most sympathetic people. -- how sympathetic you feel.

That is because he shows you who they are before, the economic

situation and what drives them to do what they do. Thank you. More film

reviews available on Mark Kermode's blog. That is it for us. Thank you

for watching and goodbye. Hello. I wish I had some good news

to bring you but I think the flooding could get worse over the

next few days. More storms heading in. The tell-tale curl of cloud on

the satellite picture out in the Atlantic, spiralling into the centre

of the next storm. That