Get Out, The Salesman, Personal Shopper The Film Review

prepare to meet last year's runners-up, Madrid. England prepare

to meet Ireland in the Six Nations. That is all at 6:30pm. Now one BBC

News, 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.

So, Mark, what do we have this week?

We have Get Out, a horror movie come social thriller. We have The

Salesman, a prize-winning offering. And Personal Shopper on top form. I

am fascinated to know what you thought Get Out, because even

watching the trailer, I felt very tense. The trailer sells it as a

horror movie, and it is. The director described it as a social so

essentially, it is a satire about post-racial America, in inverted

commas. There is a photographer with a preppy girlfriend, and they are

going to have rich parents' house for the weekend, and he says, they

do know I'm black, right? And she said, why would they need to know,

they are liberal? And when they arrive at the Mansion- like cows,

that is pretty much the first thing he says cinema I would have a delete

-- I would have voted for Obama for a third time. Here is a clip. How

long has this been going on, this thing? For months. Four months? Five

months, actually. She's right, I'm wrong. That's a boy, better get used

to saying that! I'm so sorry. She's right, I'm wrong. Does he have an

off button? D1 to unpack? At first, everything seems chummy, but there

are signs that everything isn't quite right. The housemaid and

groundskeeper smile in a way that seems robotic almost. The friends

turn up and they are not just attentive, it's almost as if they

are treating the guest as some kind of trophy. We then move into

something that the writer of Stepford wives would have

recognised. It manages the ship between being just about credible

and going into something rather different very gradually. At its

best when I think all the horror remains hidden. The way to think of

it is as something that starts out as a modern version of Guess Who's

Coming To Dinner and then it drifts towards Greenroom. There is humour

all the way through, and there are dark laughs in it. The satire is

really sort of piercing, and then when it needs to turn into something

thrilling, shocking, it doesn't hold back. I thought it was a really

effective piece of work. I so it with a full screening room of people

who were jumping, shrieking and laughing when they were meant to.

It's a really, really smart social thriller/ horror film. Overall, is

it a satire about race? Weirdly, it is about the underlying racism of

the Liberal elite, to some extent. It is not a film in which rednecks

are the bad guys. The Liberals, who appear to be incredibly egalitarian,

but there is something really sinister beneath the surface. I

don't want to give anything away. As you say, the trailer is a real

teaser and will get a lot of people going dizzy. They will be

disappointed. Really intriguing. The Salesman won the best

foreign-language Oscar. It did. It was boycotted by the director

because of Donald Trump's travel ban. I think this is a very fine

piece of work. Husband-and-wife, part-time actors, putting on the

play, Death Of A Salesman. The real-life relationship spills onto

the stage. Some people have complained the film is too

schematic, that the bridge between the play and real life is too

contrived. I disagree. I thought it slip from social observation into

psychological thriller almost unnoticed. The performances are

terrific. I think it is a really humane work and you can absolutely

believe in the characters and their situations. I think it's a film that

blends the personal level and the political rather beautiful Lake --

rather beautifully. Having heard a few lukewarm reviews, I was very,

very impressed by it. He won before for A Separation. That is in a

league of its own and it's not as good as that, but that is a high

water mark. It is a smart, intelligent, melancholic, insightful

drama about people you can really believe in. You mentioned good

performances in that. That seems to be the overriding theme of

Personal Shopper. It juxtaposes the spiritual and material wealth. It is

literally a search for the afterlife and a search for a nice pair of

shoes. She is a personal shopper for a rich celebrity, so she spends her

life going round choosing her wardrobe. However, she is also

buried, having lost a brother, and she's trying to make contact with

her brother because she was a medium. He was a clip. You're

staying here tomorrow? I'm waiting. I told you I was waiting. What are

you waiting for? We made this both. -- oath. Whoever died first would

send the other a sign. A sign... From the afterlife? You could call

it that, call it a million things. How do you know if it is a sign? I'm

a medium. He was a medium. I'll just know it. So, it's a really

intriguing setup. At the beginning, it looks like being a really creepy

goat story, has her walking around the house, attempting to contact her

brother. Then, she starts getting text messages, and it's almost like

her phone is working as a Ouija board. She doesn't know that the

text messages are coming from a brother, another spirit, a real-life

stalker, or whether as the Don suggests, they are coming from

herself, they are somehow subconscious. The techs are asking,

what are you afraid of and ashamed of? The phone almost becomes a

confident. As the film slips between the genres, as far as the

supernatural stuff is concerned, it starts to be less sure-footed and

drifts into territory that could be rather foolish. The reason that

holds it together is because of her performance. She is in almost every

shop, and it's a really sort of raw performance. She is brilliant,

someone who is trying out different identities in the way she tries out

different clothes. For all the flaws of the film, and there are many, she

is so good that she just carries it through, and I was mesmerised by

her. As I said, I have been a huge fan of hers for a while. I love the

Twilight movies, but in this, she is really fine and it silences all the

critics. This is a properly brilliant performance. So it is

worth seeing it for her? The film is fine, adventurous, but it is flawed,

but I would rather something aimed high and fell slightly short of the

mark than just settled for something. This isn't something that

you've seen every day. OK. We always like to talk about film of the week.

You and I could still be talking about the film at won the best

picture Oscar. It is great, go and see it. We should perhaps pick out

something else. There is another choice, this animate called Silent

Voice. It is a schoolyard drama dealing with serious subjects -

bullying, isolation, loneliness, self harm, suicidal thoughts,

disability, in a way that is uplifting. A beautiful score, the

animation is really well done, and it is one of those films that is all

about learning to look the world in the, about learning to apologise for

your mistakes. It is a film with a lot of crying in it, and I don't

just mean on-screen. I thought it was very touching, very impressive,

and done with honesty. Good. Moonlight is still the best film!

DVD of the week is, and anyone who follows me on Twitter know is that I

detested Nocturnal Animals. Very stylish but hugely anti-women, and a

difficult watch as a woman, and a lot of people have said that. I

don't think it is, but I understand that point of view. There is an LA

art dealer who receives a manuscript from her ex-husband, which is a

violent story which seems to have parallels with their life together,

and the way in which one reads that story within a story, the fiction

within a fiction, affects the reading of the film. I know that a

lot of people really don't like it, and I utterly respect that they

don't. I have to say that I don't think that it is offensive in the

way that some people do, but it is worth flagging up the fact that

there are some people who have seen it and thought, this is just a film

that is revelling in his violence. In its defence, on the violence

issue, there is very little that you see. I mean, I think that one of the

reasons it is powerful is because its ideas are powerful, and

unpleasantly power. -- powerful. You don't, that's right, but it is

unsettling. And that may account for the fact that it is only a 15 as

well. It would be more unsettling if it was less well made and you could

just switch off. It is a 15 because there is very little actually

explain -- actually despite, but you think it is worse because it is

tense. I absolutely understand your reservations, I just uncheck them.

Ferry North. Thank you very much. That's the DVD for this week -

Nocturnal Animals made by Tom Ford. Before we go, you will find all our

film reviews on the website. And all our previous programmes are there,

and on the iPlayer, of course. That is it for this week. Enjoy your

cinema going. Goodbye.