In this Corner of the World, Transformers: The Last Knight, Hampstead 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.

Very interesting bunch this week. We have In This Corner Of The World, a

very impressive Japanese anime. "Transformers: The Last Knight", the

saga rumbles on. And Hampstead, a film which does exactly what it says

on the tin. So, In This Corner Of The World, a

war movie with a difference? Interesting. It is an anime based on

a manga of the same name. It goes from the 30s to the mid-40s, a young

girl when she gets to the age of 18 marry someone she has barely met

before. She goes to live in a different home and start a new life

of which she makes the most, but meanwhile the spectre of war is

looming in the background. But normal life carries on. Here is a

clip. What is impressive about this is

that like a film like Grave Of The Fireflies it talks about dark

subject matter, with an innocent and universality that a live-action

movie could not do. We saw from that clip the cloud moving towards

Hiroshima. And our heroine is an artist, and at certain moments in

the movie she looks up and sees explosion in the sky as explosions

of paint. There are moments when the narrative deals with very dark stuff

you would get in a war movie, but does so by the animation unravelling

and becoming drawings and becoming fragments of animation, and by

looking at global events and tragedies through the eyes of a

particular character, it manages to watch as if from a distance or

slightly sculptured, without ever looking away from harsh realities.

This opens on Wednesday, and if you would like a film like Your Name,

which was a big hit, and returning to cinemas soon, this is well worth

checking out. It has won numerous awards and it is easy to see why it

has. A real integrity to it. The triumph is it approaches difficult

subject matter in a way that, to me, seems universal. And it does that

thing that animation can do that a live-action film can't do, to look

at the world in a different way, to make us see events in a different

and personal way. I liked it very much and you will too.

Thank you. And "Transformers: The Last Knight", I suspect you don't

like it as much and I suspect I won't either. Let's talk

about it. It is one of the least offensive of

the Transformers movies, I Michael Bay, it looks back to the past two

Arthurian legend and rebels around in Stonehenge. Mysticism and outer

space and interplanetary conspirator in. It is Transformers meets Monty

Python and spinal tap, but without the jokes. Anthony Hopkins is in it

and laughing all the way to the bank. This kind of eccentric

aristocrat who has a butler who is like see-through deal from Star

Wars. He believes the only way to save the planet is to bring together

a historian and Mark Wahlberg's junkyard king to save the world, and

frankly on the evidence of the world it is not that worth saving. On the

plus side, there are less leering shots with the camera looking up the

skirt of its performers than we have had in previous Michael Bay movies.

The pornographic sensibility is toned down slightly. The plot makes

no sense whatsoever despite endless scenes of people explain the plot to

each other, and indeed pointing at things happening on screen and

telling us what we are looking at. It is massively incoherent and

staggeringly dull. And it is a whopping li overlong, but in terms

of the rest of the Transformers movies it is on the less offensive.

I was not offended, I was just bored. It was like being shouted to

sleep. Did you fall asleep?

No, my job is to stay awake. Believe me, there were many moments in

which, I was going, you have to stay awake. Something interesting might

happen. No, it's OK on it is not going to.

Got it. Now, Hampstead, a wrong convert the older audience?

You saw the poster. That tells you everything you need to know. As does

the title. Thinking about Hampstead, expensive properties and a heath and

Artisan residents. Highgate Cemetery and a pond... At the centre of it,

Brendan Gleeson is a purely wild man living in a shack on the heat under

the radar. He is under threat of eviction from property developers,

and Diane Keaton is the recently widowed Hampstead resident who tries

to help him save his shack and gets very little thanks for her work.

Here is a clip. It's about what happened the other

day, and those people - they really wanted to help

you and I do too. I'm a man who lives as he chooses

to, and I'm not going to any court OK, listen, there's no reason

to wake the dead here - none. How can you expect anyone to

put up with all this nonsense? Here is the thing with this film, I

like both of those performers and you would have to be pretty

hard-hearted to get annoyed with the movie, although I have read some

reviews that took up against it. It is basically... You know the movie

you think it is? It is exactly that movie. In the back of it there is a

true story, isn't there are? There really was a guy who had a shack and

had to fight a legal battle, although I have to say this film's

relationship with reality is inspired by that true story, but

passing at the very best. Compared to this, Notting Hill, the richer

dirt is movie, looks like a hard-hitting and tough and gritty

film about urban grime. -- the film by Richard Curtis. Or Truly Madly

Deeply looks like a scary Gothic horror movie in comparison. It is

very twee. It does the things you expect this kind of movie to do. I

did not dislike it because I like those two performers. I like the

characters. I like... Despite the fact I don't believe in any of it at

all, it is a film which is best summed up as perfect Wednesday

afternoon viewing, which will go down well with a cup of tea and a

biscuit, and that is the kind of movie it is.

And it is supposed to be a wrong, -- it is what they are romantic comedy,

is it romantic and funny? It is romantic and I laughed a

couple of times. A lot of the scenes, you could not afford to get

a cup of tea there or a parking space. There is no way that would

happen in Hampstead. Now, best out at the moment.

By The Time It Gets Dark, you will have two search this movie out

because it is limited release and an extraordinary movie from Thailand by

Anocha Suwichakornpong. It starts off as a film about an atrocity in

the mid-19 70s when somebody tried to make a film about this. And what

happens as it becomes a much more immoral this study of the

relationship between memory and history, amorphous study, and the

inability of cinema to capture history perfectly. It is a film

which takes in the whole history of cinema right back to George Melly 's

and digital technology. It is witty and moving and it is strange. It

keeps looking back on itself and is clearly a film which cannot be

described in terms of plot, but if you like the films of, say, other

examples, which I know you do, it is well worth seeking out. But it is a

very small release and you will need to seek it out, but I was knocked

out by it. I went in with no knowledge of it at all and, although

I did not understand a little bit, it was really fascinating. I really

enjoyed it. It is called By The Time It Gets Dark.

And best DVD is a movie you have talked a lot about. You and you will

talk again, so that is fine. Touristy thing with Moonlight, you

cannot say too many times how good it is. -- here is the thing with it.

It was a major award winner when it was bursting. It was considered to

be an arthouse movie with limited appeal, but I think it is

beautifully directed and fantastically played, story of a

life in three separate chapters, and it does everything that you want

cinema to do. It tells a story that makes you feel involved in the

characters, even if your life is nothing like there are subtle, it is

compassionate and humane and thrilling in terms of its cinematic

construction. And I confess I have seen it four times now, and I will

probably go back and watch it again. Wow. I have seen it once.

That you liked it? I did love it.

See it again, you will love it even more.

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

and reviews from across the BBC online at bbc.co.uk/MarkKermode.

And you can find all our previous programmes on the BBC iPlayer.

Hello there. After the hit earlier this week it