T2 Trainspotting, Sing, Hacksaw Ridge The Film Review

match. We will also look at Rafael Nadal in the Australian open. Now

though, it is time for film review. Hello, and welcome to

the Film Review on BBC News. To take us through this week's

cinema releases, as ever, Mark Kermode is with me,

and what will you be telling us It is a very big week. Trainspotting

T2, they beat up after 20 years. Then we have a look at a film by the

people that brought us minions. And Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson at war.

Trainspotting two. I can't wait. T2 Trainspotting. One of those titles

you can't quite get a measure of. 20 years later, the original characters

are reunited. Renton is drawn back into his past for reasons which are

not immediately explained and we find the old crew ravaged not so

much by heroin is by age and by disappointment and buy a degree of

emasculation and the way in which their lives have not worked out as

they will have expected. Bigby has been in prison and Spud, when Renton

first bind him, has basically all but lost the will to live, until his

friend returns and getting new figure. He is a clip. -- and gives

him new vigour. I can't fail again. I need to detox

the system. Spud, detox the system? What does that even mean. It's not

getting it out of your body that's the problem, it's getting it out of

your mind. You are an addict. I am trying. So, be addicted. The

addicted to something else. You have got to channel it, you have got to

control it. People try all sorts. Some people try boxing. Boxing?! It

was just an example. What did you channel it into? Getting away. That

clip is good because it was funny but ends on a melancholic note. As

somebody who saw the original 20 years ago, I remember being really

astonished by how dark it was. But people forget about how shocking it

was. What I liked about this was it felt like a film about middle age,

about the way in which the world changes, about the way in which the

characters bodies have changed, their characteristics have changed,

and as with so many of Danny Boyle's films, it's about friendship, the

way the present loops back to the past and has this elegiac longing

for the past. My only reservation with this, I thought it worked

really well because I didn't want to be let down. I didn't want them to

be revisiting this for cash, Paul Money, because that is an easy thing

to do. It is a film with integrity. The screenwriter has created

something new. They have created something artistic. It is really

well directed. My only question would be, I don't know what it would

look like if you were a young viewers seeing it for the first

time, not having all that history with Trainspotting, because a lot of

what it is doing is playing with the past. But I like that about it. The

interplay between the past and the present. It's like meeting these

characters again and genuinely seeing what time has done to them.

And the screenplay from the original from the Irbin Welsh book was funny

and quite philosophical. A brilliant screenplay. If it as good? I think

he has done a brilliant job. There are an awful lot of laughs in it. It

is definitely more melancholy than the original. It doesn't have that

vampiric bite that the original had, not the venomous feeling. But what

it does have is a sense of ennui, though I feel like I am underselling

it. A sense that life is full of disappointments but somehow finding

vibrancy and giving a life to those -- a voice to those characters who

would otherwise have been written off as deadbeats again, following on

that tradition. I am looking forward to your other choice. Sing is by

is about a group of animals in a is about a group of animals in a

singing competition. It owes a lot more to Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland,

old school, let's put the show on here than a singing competition. It

starts out as a singing competition but moves on to saving a bit. It won

me over very gradually. At the beginning I thought it was sweet

natured barn but as it went on, it started to have that child, that

old-fashioned throwback charm which I loved from all those old musicals.

You can tell it's not just something which is just fluff. Yes, it's

bright and shiny with more pop tunes in it than you could wave a stick at

but it has something important. It has a bit part in it and that is

down to Garth Jennings. Hacksaw Ridge. Mel Gibson reinventing

himself again? This is about someone who volunteered as a medic in World

War II and refused to carry a weapon into the unfolding horror of war.

Let's see a clip. How come you don't fight? You think you are better than

us? No. What if you were attacked? Do you like that? You have to turn

the other cheek customer you see, I don't think this is a question of

religion, fellows. I think this is cowardice, plain and simple. Is that

right? Well, go on. Take a poke. I'll tell you what, I'm going to

give you a free shot. Right there. He to me. Though one. Let him have

it. The peculiar thing about this film is before I saw it, I heard

people comparing it to what I think is Mel Gibson's best work but this

is not it. This is to films fighting for supremacy. The first half of it

is almost cheesy. Its saccharine sweet almost. Then we moved to the

war scenes and they are brutal and bloody and if you have seen the

Passion of the Christ, you know that Mel Gibson absolutely really does

law. What that means is you get to separate movie is going on.

Sometimes the battle scenes are absolutely horrific and up there

with the Stephen Spielberg stuff from saving Private Ryan but

sometimes they teeter over into something which approach is parody,

almost Tropic Thunder, so you get a weird mix. The movie feels like it

is pulling in a number of different ways. I came out of this slightly

baffled because there are things addict that I really cheesy --

things in its that are really cheesy, something that I really

saccharine, other things that are brutal and I think it has moments

that are really striking. The story is really striking. It is a true

story and I have read a bit about him in the past. It is a great

story. The point about that was that he is a brave man and refused to

fight. Just because the story is great, doesn't mean the film is

consistently great. I wonder if the saccharine start at the beginning

was Mel Gibson trying to prepare the American public to find someone who

was a conscientious objector brave. I literally spent the first third of

the film thinking, when is this going to turn into the great movie

that everyone tells me it is? Once we had got into the war sequences as

I said, he can do that stuff really well, but he can also push it too

far. Not Clint Eastwood then? No, but that is an interesting

comparison because his movies are different to an American audience

than to a British audience. What more can we set about Lala land? I

love it. People are concerned that it is not as good as we have been

saying, like it is overhyped, but I haven't stopped singing it since I

saw it. I loved Lala land. Best film and Best Director for the BAFTAs and

the oft is -- and the Oscars? Yes, I think it will absolutely sweep the

board. Finally, under the shadow, which I haven't been yet. You must,

because he will absolutely love it. It is a British production set in

Jordan. It is about a mother and her daughter in an apartment building

being shelled but they are being terrorised by a gin spirit. It owes

a debt to things like the tenant, and's baby. It is smart, it is

influenced by the brother Dick and I promise you you will love it. Right,

that is my homework for the weekend. I shall look for under the shadow.

You will find more film news and reviews across the BBC including all

our previous shows on the website. Thank you for watching. Enjoy the

movies. Hello. January has been dry and we

have been watching for the change to much