:00:05. > :00:15.fighting for Europe and survival. Sportsday at 6.30. Now on BBC News,
:00:15. > :00:28.
:00:28. > :00:33.Hello and welcome to The Film Review on BBC News and, as ever to
:00:33. > :00:41.take us through the cinema releases, Mark Kermode. Lovely to see you.
:00:41. > :00:45.Welcome. What about this week? Robert Downey Jr. Getting back into
:00:45. > :00:53.suit for Iron Man three, the concluding part of the trilogy. We
:00:53. > :00:59.have a Jet Black Comedy starring Jack Black, based on real events
:00:59. > :01:08.and the Look of Love, Steve Coogan playing the former King of Soho in
:01:08. > :01:14.a vaguely comedic biopick. Let's start with Iron Man 3.
:01:14. > :01:23.The last one?! Have you seen any of them? No, I'm just being rude.
:01:23. > :01:28.This is not my kind of thing. Ironmen saves the world, there is a
:01:28. > :01:32.vortex going into another dimension. This has left him with bad dreams.
:01:33. > :01:37.If you went through what he did, you would be having bad dreams.
:01:37. > :01:41.He's attempting to settle down with Gwyneth Paltrow's pepper pot, the
:01:41. > :01:48.love interest with whom he's trying to form a home. However, out there
:01:48. > :01:56.in the world is a terrible evil man, Mandarin, threatening to world.
:01:56. > :01:59.Tony Stark offers an ultimatum to him. Here is a clip.
:01:59. > :02:03.Here's the holiday greeting I've been wanting to send to the
:02:03. > :02:07.Mandarin. I didn't know how to phrase it until now. My name's Tony
:02:07. > :02:12.Stark and I'm not afraid of you. You are a coward. So I've decided
:02:12. > :02:17.that you just died, pal. I'm going to come and get the body. There's
:02:17. > :02:27.no politics here, just good old- fashioned revenge. No Pentagon,
:02:27. > :02:33.just you and me. Here's my home address, 108-80 Malibu Point, 90265,
:02:33. > :02:43.I'll leave the door unlocked. That's what you wanted, right. Bill
:02:43. > :02:43.
:02:43. > :02:48.Glad I wasn't in that journalist pack. Having issued the ultimate
:02:48. > :02:54.tum, they come looking for him, find the house and he's then
:02:54. > :02:59.basically off in hiding attempting to rebuild himself. Pepper pot is
:02:59. > :03:04.safe sort of but not really and the search for Mandarin is on. Iron Man
:03:04. > :03:11.3 is directed by Shane Black who worked with Robert Downey Jr. In
:03:12. > :03:16.Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and made his reputation. He had a real line in
:03:16. > :03:19.quotable and often rude zingers, as they were called. Got paid a huge
:03:19. > :03:23.amount of money for writing the movies and he's a sharp
:03:23. > :03:28.screenwriter. With Iron Man, the central character of Robert Stark
:03:28. > :03:32.is known for doing these zingy sharp, rude and sort of self-
:03:32. > :03:35.grandising things. That is a marriage made in heaven and also
:03:35. > :03:40.all the best stuff is to do with Robert Downey Jr. Playing that
:03:40. > :03:44.character and doing it in that way. You also have to have massive
:03:44. > :03:48.amounts of special effects. The suit now works on his command, the
:03:48. > :03:52.bits of the suit fly on to his arm as he commands them to. He also has
:03:52. > :03:56.a whole range of other suits which appear to work without people
:03:56. > :04:00.inside them. This means that, as the drama progresses, we move
:04:00. > :04:05.towards a transformers showdown which is the least interesting part
:04:05. > :04:10.of the film. It also has a very good villain in the shape of Ben
:04:10. > :04:15.Kingsley. The best thing about him playing Mandarin is, he shows a
:04:15. > :04:19.very great sense of humour about his own reputation for lovelyness.
:04:19. > :04:24.It's one of those films in which you think, when you see Ben
:04:24. > :04:29.Kingsley, you think, what is that voice that he's doing?! Of course,
:04:29. > :04:32.there is a reveal and it all makes sense. As far as the superhero
:04:32. > :04:37.movies are concerned, it's one of the better ones. It's messy,
:04:37. > :04:40.scrappy and too long and in the finale, when there are robots
:04:40. > :04:45.hitting each other, there is a lack of interest. The series proved to
:04:45. > :04:48.be more exciting than we had the right to expect when it began, it's
:04:48. > :04:53.down to the fact that it has a good script and Robert Downey Jr. Is
:04:53. > :04:58.very good at doing that sassy, sort of, you know, very self-confident
:04:58. > :05:03.and smart one-liner stuff. This works very well.
:05:03. > :05:07.Without revealing my own self- interest, let's move on to Bernie.
:05:07. > :05:13.I'm intrigued by the Jack Black thing, there's something about him,
:05:13. > :05:17.isn't there? What did you make of it? When he's reined in, actually,
:05:17. > :05:21.he's a very good actor. You have a story about a mortician who
:05:21. > :05:26.befriends a lady played by Shirley McLane, not popular within the
:05:26. > :05:32.community. They become very, very close, almost unusually close and
:05:32. > :05:38.then his thoughts turn slowly and unexpectedly to murder. The
:05:38. > :05:43.interesting thing is that when you watch Jack Black in a movie, you
:05:43. > :05:47.expect some kind of comedic term, Jack Black doing the larger than
:05:47. > :05:50.life loud aggressive comedy. In the case of this, you get something
:05:50. > :05:54.completely different which is him reining everything in and playing
:05:54. > :05:59.this strangely uptight, strangely precise character who, behind his
:05:59. > :06:04.smile, has an unexpected darkness lurking. This film is actually
:06:04. > :06:08.based on a real-life case and it takes a lot of, you know, it's a
:06:08. > :06:15.very risky endeavour to turn a story, a morbid black comedy about
:06:15. > :06:21.death, and to tell this story in a way which is fictionalised but
:06:21. > :06:28.broadly comedic. It works because Jack Black, the best comes out of
:06:28. > :06:32.him. Having seen too many annoying films with him in it, this is
:06:32. > :06:37.strange, creepy weird, can't get the measure of him and it's all the
:06:37. > :06:43.better for it. It's a small movie, but it's worth seeing and it works
:06:43. > :06:48.because of his performance. Look of Love, the film's had a lot
:06:48. > :06:54.of publicity, everybody knows it's out. What about this one? It's not
:06:54. > :06:59.a standard biopic. It's about the King of Soho who became the richest
:06:59. > :07:05.man in Britain but made his money running sexy shows, as he called
:07:05. > :07:11.them, and then a line of men's magazines. Here is a clip.
:07:11. > :07:16.Take a seat at your table, Sir. Thanks. �12,000 to you. I tried
:07:16. > :07:26.doing a magazine in the '60s. It didn't work. You didn't know what
:07:26. > :07:26.
:07:26. > :07:30.you were doing. We will. Men are buying into the world of cigars and
:07:31. > :07:35.exotic holidays and the luxury cars. This will take the world out to the
:07:35. > :07:39.nation. There'll be lots of beautiful girls, beautifully
:07:39. > :07:45.photographed. We have, as the fate of our
:07:45. > :07:50.magazine, a hot female columnist and she roadtests the men of Europe.
:07:50. > :07:54.So you get it generally from that. The interesting thing is that when
:07:54. > :07:59.people were first talking about this, you thought the cast is very
:07:59. > :08:03.clever because there is a touch of the Alan Partridge about that
:08:03. > :08:08.character. The primary view that you get from this is that it's a
:08:08. > :08:15.very affectionate look at the character of Paul. The backbone of
:08:15. > :08:19.the narrative is that the tragic story of his daughter. One of the
:08:19. > :08:23.problems with the film, and there is much to enjoy, Steve Coogan's
:08:23. > :08:27.performance is very funny and there are lots of laughs in it, and, you
:08:27. > :08:30.know, it's clearly made with enthusiasm, but the problem is it
:08:30. > :08:36.never gets below the skin of the central character and it's almost
:08:37. > :08:41.as if it's scared to delve into the seedier, nastier, darker, stranger
:08:41. > :08:46.side. If you have got that tragic, narrative ark, as the central
:08:47. > :08:51.backbone, you do end up wondering why so much of the film stays on
:08:51. > :08:56.the surface. That's not the say the surface isn't good. There's a lots
:08:56. > :09:00.of wig-bear wearing, stuck-on moustache wearing and fun period
:09:00. > :09:03.detail but they've not overly worried about it. Personally, I
:09:03. > :09:08.wanted more investigation of the characters and more investigation
:09:08. > :09:17.of the lifestyle. I interviewed Paul Raymond once. In person, he
:09:17. > :09:21.was nothing like as funny as Steve Coogan's character was. This is
:09:22. > :09:27.more like a broad comedy in the end. It's almost like a kind of cabaret
:09:27. > :09:33.act based on the life of Paul Raymond which is fine, but that
:09:33. > :09:36.sits oddly. The tragic story, it sits oddly with that. Because it's
:09:36. > :09:40.a controversial area, nudity and the obscene publications act and
:09:40. > :09:47.that sort of stuff, you want depth but you don't get that, you get a
:09:47. > :09:51.lot of wigs and moustaches and Partridge humour, but not much else.
:09:51. > :10:01.Missed opportunity perhaps. Is that perhaps not Film of the Week?
:10:01. > :10:06.film I like is Love is All You Need. It's a Pierce Brosnan movie. The
:10:06. > :10:14.way this has been described is, like Mamma Mia! Without the songs,
:10:14. > :10:18.as done by the company who we know better for bringing us films like
:10:18. > :10:23.Anti-Christ. It's made with real people in it. If you took the
:10:23. > :10:27.romantic comedy structure in it, fine, but what if these were
:10:27. > :10:31.genuine people with money problems and you let them play out. Actually,
:10:31. > :10:36.I went in, being cynical, having seen the poster and thought,
:10:36. > :10:40.really? I came out, firstly I'm a convert to Pierce Brosnan and that
:10:40. > :10:44.most surprising thing, Mamma Mia! Without the songs and it works
:10:44. > :10:49.really well. Wow!Yep. You have sold its to me! If I don't want to
:10:49. > :10:54.go out though and pay for a cinema ticket, what about DVDs? Pitch
:10:54. > :11:00.Perfect has been out for a couple of weeks. This is a really funny
:11:00. > :11:06.snappy teen comedy about the world of competitive act pel la singing.
:11:07. > :11:10.-- acapella singing. A really good cast, lots of very bitter, mean
:11:10. > :11:16.girl-style humour and skpwrust done with real panache. Again, I went
:11:16. > :11:21.into it thinking how funny can a film about Acapella be, the answer
:11:21. > :11:26.is very funny indeed. Excellent. Lovely to see you. That's my
:11:26. > :11:33.weekend sown up with Pitch Perfect. A reminder before we go that
:11:33. > :11:37.there's much more film news, reviews, background information on