:00:00. > :00:00.Britain at the European athletics Championships at 10:30 p.m.. Now, it
:00:00. > :00:16.is time for the film review. Hello and welcome to
:00:17. > :00:19.the Film Review on BBC News. To take us through this week's
:00:20. > :00:22.cinema releases is Mark Kermode. We have The Legend of Tarzan,
:00:23. > :00:26.which is the film I know you have Why isn't Tarzan
:00:27. > :00:39.back on our screens? We have Maggie's Plan, a very
:00:40. > :00:42.interesting sort of non-romcom,. And The Neon Demon,
:00:43. > :00:44.the controversial new film You're absolutely right, you know,
:00:45. > :00:50.Tarzan, King of the swingers, Yes, so this seems to be a cinematic
:00:51. > :00:59.reboot of a very timeless creation from the director David Yates
:01:00. > :01:01.who directed a number The script is co-written by
:01:02. > :01:07.Craig Brewer. This begins with John Clayton,
:01:08. > :01:17.Lord Greystoke, in London, where he has sort of become part
:01:18. > :01:22.of gentrified society, and he is to be sent
:01:23. > :01:24.back to the Congo where Christophe Waltz's emissary
:01:25. > :01:26.to the Belgian King is involved in a very sinister
:01:27. > :01:31.and horrible mission. With him is Samuel L Jackson's
:01:32. > :01:33.George Washington Williams, who wants to prove that the Belgians
:01:34. > :01:35.are involved basically So he provides the politics,
:01:36. > :01:38.Tarzan provides the action. Kill one and the rest won't stop
:01:39. > :01:48.until they've torn you to pieces. So how d'you want
:01:49. > :01:50.to play this, then? Their leader will come
:01:51. > :01:53.down and we'll fight. Promise
:01:54. > :02:21.me. I mean, for all the, you know,
:02:22. > :02:49.he's the interesting story and it's about exploitation,
:02:50. > :02:51.well, actually, it's about a guy It's kind of an old-fashioned action
:02:52. > :02:55.movie, albeit with Because he's acting with his abs
:02:56. > :03:00.and they are the most interesting Christoph Waltz, who is the sort
:03:01. > :03:14.of villain, does his sort of trademark sinister European
:03:15. > :03:17.and Margot Robbie sort of plays Jane So there are all of these elements
:03:18. > :03:24.that make you think this might be an interesting
:03:25. > :03:26.new take on the story, but it does come out
:03:27. > :03:28.as rather mudelled. There's a strange mixture
:03:29. > :03:30.of something which wants to be modern, but feels
:03:31. > :03:32.oddly old-fashioned. And I have to say that
:03:33. > :03:34.for me, it didn't gel However, there are large amounts
:03:35. > :03:38.of people who are going to the cinema who are going to see
:03:39. > :03:40.that incredible six-pack, which is on display
:03:41. > :03:43.for a lot of the film! I mean, the fundamental
:03:44. > :03:46.problem with Tarzan, It was that it is sort of set
:03:47. > :03:51.in the days of Empire. What this is trying to do
:03:52. > :04:03.the sort of revisionist, And you think, well,
:04:04. > :04:08.that's an interesting It still just feels like something
:04:09. > :04:12.that doesn't quite come together. Which is in dark contrast
:04:13. > :04:14.to Maggie's Plan which, I have to say, I went into thinking
:04:15. > :04:17.I wasn't going to like that much. This is the sort of Jane Austen
:04:18. > :04:20.influenced, as I said, non-romcom, So the story is, Greta Gerwig
:04:21. > :04:24.is Maggie and she's a very controlling person, and she has this
:04:25. > :04:27.plan that what she wants to do with her life is she's decided it's
:04:28. > :04:30.time to have children, but she doesn't want to
:04:31. > :04:33.have the inconvenience of a partner. So she plans everything out
:04:34. > :04:35.and she plans everybody's fate. But then, of course,
:04:36. > :04:45.what happens is that she comes across Ethan Hawke's academic
:04:46. > :04:47.who is a ficto-critical And apparently, he's the bad boy
:04:48. > :04:51.of this world and suddenly, And the thing I like about this
:04:52. > :04:55.is firstly, it's genuinely funny. It's got a really good way
:04:56. > :04:59.of sort of skewering The second thing is,
:05:00. > :05:03.it's a romantic comedy which just doesn't see marriage
:05:04. > :05:05.as an answer to anything, doesn't see romantic
:05:06. > :05:07.ends as being neat and tidy. It's all about the way
:05:08. > :05:10.in which people behave in odd ways Julianne Moore is fantastic
:05:11. > :05:16.as the person who we are originally told is a really scarily successful
:05:17. > :05:18.academic wife, but then actually turns out to be much more than just
:05:19. > :05:22.a sort of punchline to a joke. People have sort of compared it
:05:23. > :05:28.to Woody Allen a little bit, which I can understand,
:05:29. > :05:30.but I think it's very much As I said, oddly enough,
:05:31. > :05:33.the strongest influence Although as you quite rightly
:05:34. > :05:36.say, moving on... Emma didn't quite plan
:05:37. > :05:38.a family in the way... And Julianne Moore
:05:39. > :05:41.is just incredible. But in this, she is absolutely
:05:42. > :05:48.brilliant as the person who's playing Ethan Hawke's
:05:49. > :05:50.allegedly scary wife, who then turns out to be much
:05:51. > :05:52.more than that. Now, I loved
:05:53. > :05:53.Drive. I'm a big fan of Drive and I'm a big
:05:54. > :05:58.fan of Nicolas Winding Refn. So The Neon Demon, as you probably
:05:59. > :06:02.know, when it played at Cannes, There has been some outrage,
:06:03. > :06:05.some newspapers saying, oh, So the story's actually a very
:06:06. > :06:09.old-fashioned story. It's part an expose
:06:10. > :06:11.of the emptiness and shallowness Exactly, who could have imagined
:06:12. > :06:16.such a thing?! But it's also - more importantly -
:06:17. > :06:19.a fairy tale about an innocent going into the woods of Los Angeles
:06:20. > :06:22.and being pursued by beasts, She arrives in LA, where
:06:23. > :06:26.she is immediately surrounded by people who are sort of locked
:06:27. > :06:29.into the fashion world and all of whom don't have
:06:30. > :06:32.what she has, which is Don't you think that
:06:33. > :06:53.she's just perfect? She just got out of the body
:06:54. > :07:05.shop, she's still a Sweetie, plastics is
:07:06. > :07:10.just good grooming. Imagine going in here
:07:11. > :07:12.without brushing your teeth. It's kind of like a really
:07:13. > :07:36.darker version of Ab Fab. That line about, sweetie,
:07:37. > :07:38.plastics is just good grooming. It turns into something
:07:39. > :07:42.much more ghoulish. It turns into, essentially, a kind
:07:43. > :07:47.of 1970s Italian horror movie. And this is the thing that has sort
:07:48. > :08:06.of scared some critics off. As a long-standing horror fan,
:08:07. > :08:09.I am fine with all that stuff and I like the idea that
:08:10. > :08:12.Nicolas Refn makes these movies that There are moments in Drive when it
:08:13. > :08:23.suddenly becomes very, very sort of explicitly violent,
:08:24. > :08:26.and other times, it's very romantic. You know, it's about a world
:08:27. > :08:32.in which everything's to do with surface, everything's
:08:33. > :08:34.to do with artifice, everything is to do with the sheen
:08:35. > :08:36.of the way things look. And I think the film
:08:37. > :08:39.is very much like that. But it but does also
:08:40. > :08:41.have a certain amount of depth. And a fantastic score
:08:42. > :08:44.by Cliff Martinez, which is kind of synthy and squishy,
:08:45. > :08:46.and reminded me of Tangerine And also, when it turns
:08:47. > :08:49.into full-blooded... And I think there's no question that
:08:50. > :08:57.it's an explanation movie. And I think there's no question that
:08:58. > :09:01.it's an exploitation movie. There's no question that it tips
:09:02. > :09:04.over, it doesn't just dip into exploitation, it dives
:09:05. > :09:05.deep into exploitation. But I'm glad that Nicolas Refn
:09:06. > :09:08.is that kind of director. He is somebody who, for the critics,
:09:09. > :09:11.can be both the beauty He can delight the critics
:09:12. > :09:16.and then he can outrage What I liked about that little
:09:17. > :09:23.clip was the dialogue There's a kind of Stepford
:09:24. > :09:27.models about it. I'll just die if I
:09:28. > :09:29.don't get the recipe. I think the Stepford Wives thing
:09:30. > :09:37.is absolutely spot on, and I think that's exactly
:09:38. > :09:39.what they are doing. And I've read some reviews which say
:09:40. > :09:42.that the acting is really wooden. No, no, the acting is
:09:43. > :09:44.meant to be like that. Particularly in that scene,
:09:45. > :09:47.absolutely. It's based on the audio tapes
:09:48. > :09:57.of theologian John Hull - we talked about it last week -
:09:58. > :10:00.who sort of recorded losing his sight and then
:10:01. > :10:02.discovering a sort of new awareness. And what the film does is, it uses
:10:03. > :10:06.those tapes and it uses his stories, diaries and new interviews to create
:10:07. > :10:08.an extraordinary cinematic portrait that helps you to understand
:10:09. > :10:11.what that blindness means to him And it reminded me, I said before,
:10:12. > :10:16.of a film called Black But it's so interesting to make
:10:17. > :10:20.a film, you know, which is Doing this story and doing it
:10:21. > :10:24.in a way which is adventurous. I mean, I honestly have not heard
:10:25. > :10:27.one person who has seen this film And I would recommend
:10:28. > :10:30.it to everybody. As I said, I will be really
:10:31. > :10:33.astonished if this isn't in my list of best films of the year,
:10:34. > :10:36.come the end of the year. It is really profound
:10:37. > :10:38.and moving and engaging, It's basically a love letter
:10:39. > :10:51.to old Hollywood. It's got musicals, aquatic
:10:52. > :10:53.musical sequences. It's funny, because this was coming
:10:54. > :10:56.out roundabout the same time And it's fun, sort of screwball
:10:57. > :11:05.and crazy and quirky, but it does have some of the best
:11:06. > :11:08.comic sequences I've We've discussed the scene
:11:09. > :11:11.which I showed as a clip. I watched it again the other night
:11:12. > :11:14.and I laughed at all the same I love the way the Coen brothers
:11:15. > :11:30.know and understand the history A couple of reviews said they are
:11:31. > :11:35.just sneering. They are in love with the medium. Ray finds is incredible
:11:36. > :11:40.funny and I loved it to pieces and I would happily watch it again. I will
:11:41. > :11:45.borrow the DVD. Before we go, you will find more film news and reviews
:11:46. > :11:50.across the BBC online. And you can catch up on our preview shows on the
:11:51. > :11:52.BBCi play. That is it for this week, and you for watching, enjoy the
:11:53. > :12:07.movies, goodbye. Hello, if you are hoping for a long
:12:08. > :12:10.and warm and dry settled weather, you are probably out of luck. No
:12:11. > :12:12.significant changes in our