26/04/2013 The Film Review

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Hello and welcome to The Film Review on BBC News and, as ever to

take us through the cinema releases, Mark Kermode. Lovely to see you.

Welcome. What about this week? Robert Downey Jr. Getting back into

suit for Iron Man three, the concluding part of the trilogy. We

have a Jet Black Comedy starring Jack Black, based on real events

and the Look of Love, Steve Coogan playing the former King of Soho in

a vaguely comedic biopick. Let's start with Iron Man 3.

The last one?! Have you seen any of them? No, I'm just being rude.

This is not my kind of thing. Ironmen saves the world, there is a

vortex going into another dimension. This has left him with bad dreams.

If you went through what he did, you would be having bad dreams.

He's attempting to settle down with Gwyneth Paltrow's pepper pot, the

love interest with whom he's trying to form a home. However, out there

in the world is a terrible evil man, Mandarin, threatening to world.

Tony Stark offers an ultimatum to him. Here is a clip.

Here's the holiday greeting I've been wanting to send to the

Mandarin. I didn't know how to phrase it until now. My name's Tony

Stark and I'm not afraid of you. You are a coward. So I've decided

that you just died, pal. I'm going to come and get the body. There's

no politics here, just good old- fashioned revenge. No Pentagon,

just you and me. Here's my home address, 108-80 Malibu Point, 90265,

I'll leave the door unlocked. That's what you wanted, right. Bill

Glad I wasn't in that journalist pack. Having issued the ultimate

tum, they come looking for him, find the house and he's then

basically off in hiding attempting to rebuild himself. Pepper pot is

safe sort of but not really and the search for Mandarin is on. Iron Man

3 is directed by Shane Black who worked with Robert Downey Jr. In

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and made his reputation. He had a real line in

quotable and often rude zingers, as they were called. Got paid a huge

amount of money for writing the movies and he's a sharp

screenwriter. With Iron Man, the central character of Robert Stark

is known for doing these zingy sharp, rude and sort of self-

grandising things. That is a marriage made in heaven and also

all the best stuff is to do with Robert Downey Jr. Playing that

character and doing it in that way. You also have to have massive

amounts of special effects. The suit now works on his command, the

bits of the suit fly on to his arm as he commands them to. He also has

a whole range of other suits which appear to work without people

inside them. This means that, as the drama progresses, we move

towards a transformers showdown which is the least interesting part

of the film. It also has a very good villain in the shape of Ben

Kingsley. The best thing about him playing Mandarin is, he shows a

very great sense of humour about his own reputation for lovelyness.

It's one of those films in which you think, when you see Ben

Kingsley, you think, what is that voice that he's doing?! Of course,

there is a reveal and it all makes sense. As far as the superhero

movies are concerned, it's one of the better ones. It's messy,

scrappy and too long and in the finale, when there are robots

hitting each other, there is a lack of interest. The series proved to

be more exciting than we had the right to expect when it began, it's

down to the fact that it has a good script and Robert Downey Jr. Is

very good at doing that sassy, sort of, you know, very self-confident

and smart one-liner stuff. This works very well.

Without revealing my own self- interest, let's move on to Bernie.

I'm intrigued by the Jack Black thing, there's something about him,

isn't there? What did you make of it? When he's reined in, actually,

he's a very good actor. You have a story about a mortician who

befriends a lady played by Shirley McLane, not popular within the

community. They become very, very close, almost unusually close and

then his thoughts turn slowly and unexpectedly to murder. The

interesting thing is that when you watch Jack Black in a movie, you

expect some kind of comedic term, Jack Black doing the larger than

life loud aggressive comedy. In the case of this, you get something

completely different which is him reining everything in and playing

this strangely uptight, strangely precise character who, behind his

smile, has an unexpected darkness lurking. This film is actually

based on a real-life case and it takes a lot of, you know, it's a

very risky endeavour to turn a story, a morbid black comedy about

death, and to tell this story in a way which is fictionalised but

broadly comedic. It works because Jack Black, the best comes out of

him. Having seen too many annoying films with him in it, this is

strange, creepy weird, can't get the measure of him and it's all the

better for it. It's a small movie, but it's worth seeing and it works

because of his performance. Look of Love, the film's had a lot

of publicity, everybody knows it's out. What about this one? It's not

a standard biopic. It's about the King of Soho who became the richest

man in Britain but made his money running sexy shows, as he called

them, and then a line of men's magazines. Here is a clip.

Take a seat at your table, Sir. Thanks. �12,000 to you. I tried

doing a magazine in the '60s. It didn't work. You didn't know what

you were doing. We will. Men are buying into the world of cigars and

exotic holidays and the luxury cars. This will take the world out to the

nation. There'll be lots of beautiful girls, beautifully

photographed. We have, as the fate of our

magazine, a hot female columnist and she roadtests the men of Europe.

So you get it generally from that. The interesting thing is that when

people were first talking about this, you thought the cast is very

clever because there is a touch of the Alan Partridge about that

character. The primary view that you get from this is that it's a

very affectionate look at the character of Paul. The backbone of

the narrative is that the tragic story of his daughter. One of the

problems with the film, and there is much to enjoy, Steve Coogan's

performance is very funny and there are lots of laughs in it, and, you

know, it's clearly made with enthusiasm, but the problem is it

never gets below the skin of the central character and it's almost

as if it's scared to delve into the seedier, nastier, darker, stranger

side. If you have got that tragic, narrative ark, as the central

backbone, you do end up wondering why so much of the film stays on

the surface. That's not the say the surface isn't good. There's a lots

of wig-bear wearing, stuck-on moustache wearing and fun period

detail but they've not overly worried about it. Personally, I

wanted more investigation of the characters and more investigation

of the lifestyle. I interviewed Paul Raymond once. In person, he

was nothing like as funny as Steve Coogan's character was. This is

more like a broad comedy in the end. It's almost like a kind of cabaret

act based on the life of Paul Raymond which is fine, but that

sits oddly. The tragic story, it sits oddly with that. Because it's

a controversial area, nudity and the obscene publications act and

that sort of stuff, you want depth but you don't get that, you get a

lot of wigs and moustaches and Partridge humour, but not much else.

Missed opportunity perhaps. Is that perhaps not Film of the Week?

film I like is Love is All You Need. It's a Pierce Brosnan movie. The

way this has been described is, like Mamma Mia! Without the songs,

as done by the company who we know better for bringing us films like

Anti-Christ. It's made with real people in it. If you took the

romantic comedy structure in it, fine, but what if these were

genuine people with money problems and you let them play out. Actually,

I went in, being cynical, having seen the poster and thought,

really? I came out, firstly I'm a convert to Pierce Brosnan and that

most surprising thing, Mamma Mia! Without the songs and it works

really well. Wow!Yep. You have sold its to me! If I don't want to

go out though and pay for a cinema ticket, what about DVDs? Pitch

Perfect has been out for a couple of weeks. This is a really funny

snappy teen comedy about the world of competitive act pel la singing.

-- acapella singing. A really good cast, lots of very bitter, mean

girl-style humour and skpwrust done with real panache. Again, I went

into it thinking how funny can a film about Acapella be, the answer

is very funny indeed. Excellent. Lovely to see you. That's my

weekend sown up with Pitch Perfect. A reminder before we go that

there's much more film news, reviews, background information on