Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, From Afar, Notes on Blindness The Film Review

Club. That is all coming up at 6:30pm. Euro 2016 Sportsday with me,

Olly Foster. But first, it is time for the Film Review.

Hello and welcome to The Film Review on BBC News.

To take us through this week's cinema releases is Mark Kermode.

As I am sure you know, we have Absolutely Fabulous the movie. That

has been so much publicity about it. We have from afar, an award-winning

Venezuelan drama. And we have Notes On Blindness. Like a lot of AbFab

fans, I want AbFab to be fab. There is always a sense of trepidation

with TV shows when they go to the big screen. There were worries about

Dad's Army. Rightly so. It had its moments. This is the feature length

adaptation of a show with a cult following. This essentially rings

back Bedene are played by Jennifer Saunders, reunited with her

long-standing best friend forever Patsy Stone. Let's the clip to put

us in the mood. I want to go in there, but I have to

go past that big mirror. I think I am now officially fatter sideways

than front on. Darling, you don't need those, I am your mirror. How do

I look? Fabulous! Thank you! You need to move that, Eddie. Yes, I

will call Kelly Hopton. Fabulous! I laughed. That is the

kind of thing which made the TV show good. But when you bring something

into a movie you have to expand it out. At some point they are all

going to go on holiday abroad because that is what you do. The

second thing is, the celebrity cameos. Absolutely Fabulous is

packed with celebrity cameos. In my mind, most of the celebrity cameos

existed in a comic vacuum with people from the world of fashion and

TV. And also, being the person I am, I don't recognise half of them

anyway! Or they are not capable of delivering a good joke. That stuff

feels very badly, very much like padding to me. Mike longer episode

stretched out for a movie. On the plus side, Joanna Lumley is

magnificent, she really since her teeth into the movie. If only the

movie itself had as much bite as she does. There is also residual

affection for these characters. We'll run about how much we loved

the TV show. It is not a disaster. It is not Zoolander two which was

not a movie, just a guest list. There are laughs, Cathy Burke is

terrific. It needs a nip and tuck, it needs editing. It needs to be the

length of a slightly extended TV show. Like a Christmas special? Yes,

and Kate Moss is like a clothes hanger on which to hang the best

comedy routines. A major philosophical question, is it a

celebrity cameo if you have no idea who the celebrity is? I hadn't even

thought about that. If I don't recognise them does it make them not

celebrity? I think they are still celebrities, the fault is mine and

not there's! From Afar? This is from the Lorenzo -- Venezuelan director

Lorenzo Vigas. It is a very strange movie about a voyeuristic dental

technician who lives his life from a distance. His sexual relations are

nonphysical, he is alienated from his sister. He meets a young man

called Elder. When he first meets him he is mugged and beaten up. But

somehow, they start to develop a relationship. What is really

interesting is it is a film where I genuinely did not know where it was

going. At times it looked like a murder mystery, at times it looked

like a detective thriller, at other times it was a relationship drama.

There are no these are cool clues. Only a specific part of the screen

is in focus to accentuate the characters. I found myself really

intrigued, really wanting to know more and see where it was going. It

is so great, at a time when movies lead you by the nose so often and

ran home every point, to see a movie which made you want to investigate,

I found it really, really intriguing. I would like to see it

again. Looks of it like a Venezuelan Death in Venice. You might see an

element of that but I would say see it and we will talk about it next

week. I think you would really, really enjoyed it.

OK. Notes On Blindness? I thought this was fantastic. It could be a

documentary or a tone poem. It is based on the writings of John Hull,

a theologian, who lost his sight and recorded audio diaries of his

experience which were later turned into a book in the 1990s. It takes

the audio tapes along with interviews and other stuff, and sort

of creates a docudrama around them. Hard to explain. Let's see a clip.

Occasionally, I go home in the evening and I feel as if my mind is

almost blown with new ideas and new horizons. I find myself connecting

more, remembering more, making more links in my mind, between the

various things I have read and learned all my life. I now feel

clearer, more excited, more adventurous, more confident

intellectually than I have ever felt in my life.

There are other sections in the documentary, do you remember another

film where they were lip-synched against tape recordings. They have

done that technique here. It works brilliantly because in a way what it

does, it describes his State of mind. This film does something quite

extraordinary which is to take cinema and use it as a medium to

explain and experience of somebody undergoing blindness, and explained

their own experience of it. There is obviously, in his mind, a divinity

at work in all of us, but actually, I think you could take the release

humanist message away from it. I thought it was really exceptional

piece of work which felt as if it was educating and explain something

which I have not seen explained so before. What is interesting about

the idea of having a DLO June and experiencing this, it goes back to

John Mille's famous poem about why God has done this to me? -- a

theologian, it goes back to John Mills' poem. At some point he comes

to realise soon, he says it is a gift. Not a gift that I wanted but a

gift nonetheless. Not why did it happen, but how do I use it? I

thought it was really exceptional and I would be surprised if come the

end of the year this was not in my list of top ten films. We do the

best of the week but that is it? But you have another one? There is

filled out at the moment which you have to look for. It is called adult

Life Skills. It is quirky story. It is about a 29-year-old who has

retreated to her mother's shed and she is refusing to move on and grow

up. If you saw it from the outside you might think it was overly quirky

and you know I am not great with quirky. But I thought it was

touching, funny and poignant and I laughed out loud on several

occasions. I thought it was a charming little film that I would

recommend wholeheartedly. It is strange because from the outside it

looks like exactly the kind of thing would not appeal to me. The kind of

film but normally Mark Kermode does not like. But this time I did.

Coming-of-age films when you're turning 30 is a new genre, is it?

Bridesmaids as well? In that genre will not do it any harm whatsoever.

It is funny and poignant. I really liked it. I really liked it, that

will do. Your DVD is son of salt. This is a very, very difficult film.

-- son of Saul. The central character Saul is a prisoner. He is

forced to work in the gas chambers. The subject matter is obviously

appalling and overwhelming. It is one of those things that the cinema

has to be careful about how to approach a subject like this. One of

the issues that the film-maker does is the camera concentrates almost

entirely on the face and shoulders of that central character. Although

you are aware of the atrocities, many of them are to do with the

soundtrack, you are seeing them reflected in his face. It become

something which is deeply profound and deeply moral. The perfect

synthesis of someone using a stylistic device for a moral reason.

This is not a subject that cinema should or would approach lightly. It

is overwhelming and I think some people might find it too much to

watch because the subject matter is too overwhelming, but I thought it

was a really important film. Can I make an obvious point here we is it

is the kind of movie you would not want to go to on a Friday or

Saturday night out, it is the kind of movie you would want to see on a

DVD? If you have not seen it yet, you should do. It deserves and needs

to be seen but you are quite right, it is very hard to go out to the

cinema for it. If you have not seen it, do watch it. Profound, important

and in my opinion, deeply moral. Thank you, Mark.

A quick reminder before we go that you'll find more film news

and reviews online at bbc.co.uk/markkermode and you can

Good afternoon. The globe behind me says it all, Sunny one minute, sharp

showers the next. If you do not believe me, take