Little Men, The Magnificent Seven, The Girl with All the Gifts The Film Review


Little Men, The Magnificent Seven, The Girl with All the Gifts

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who is a sensation. And a Paralympic star reveals her winter sports

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targets. That is all coming up at 6:30pm. Now it's time for the film

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review. Hello and welcome to the film review

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on BBC News full stop to take us through this week 's releases is

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Mark Kermode. What do we have? We have Little Men, an impressive,

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low-key drama. We have a new version of The Magnificent Seven. And a

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terrific British genre picture, The Girl With All The Gifts. I quite

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like the look of Little Men. Rightly so. It's made by Ira Sachs. In his

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previous film, a same-sex couple in Manhattan lose their apartment and

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have to stay with family. In this week of Greg Kinnear, a struggling

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actor, who moved to Brooklyn after his father dies and he ends up in an

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apartment where he is the landlord for a shopkeeper who has been living

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with a rent that is now somewhere below market value. It's about

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gentrification and property. Crucially, you have these conflicts

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playing out between adults and yet their sons are developing this

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friendship which comes to be very important for them. As the adults

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squabble, one says, our parents are in a business dispute and it's

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getting ugly. The kids decide to respond by not talking to the parent

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any more, which doesn't go down well.

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Do you ever think about anybody other than yourselves? Huh?

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One of the hardest things to realise when you're a child

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is that your parents are people, too.

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You understand that? They care about things? They make mistakes.

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They try to do what they think is the right thing to do.

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Does any of what I'm saying make any sense to you?

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Why don't you tell me what's so funny, Tony?

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Think you've got it in you to be an actor?

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See how you react when you don't get into LaGuardia. Just see then.

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That's an awkward car journey. What I really like is that it can do

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awkwardness but it's also very funny. There is a sequence where one

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kid goats to a drama lesson and it's a very funny sequence. But it's

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about so many different things. On the one hand, gentrification,

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property, money. On the other hand, families breaking apart and being

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fractured. On another level, it's about the friendship between these

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two boys, which becomes everything to them. It's almost like a love

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story, but what's really lovely about the films is that it's sort of

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set up what in other dramas would be great moments of revelation and then

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steps away from them and allows the audience to decide what the personal

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interplay 's are. It doesn't demonise any characters, they are

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all good and bad with strengths and floors. It's funny and touching and,

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importantly, it's honest and moving. I was swept up in it. I thought it

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was a really beautifully understated film which, as I said, has socio-

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economic but can also be taken as a story of a great youthful friendship

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finding its feet. Interestingly, I sent not just about money but about

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the awkwardness of talking about money, about acknowledging money

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problems and all of that, acknowledging it in front of a

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different generation. There is real awkwardness and tenderness and

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affection and humour. It's a terrific piece of work. Moving on to

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The Magnificent Seven, which is a remake of that film, which was a

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reboot of Seven Samurai. It has Denzel Washington leading a renegade

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band called in to basically save a town, which is being hideously

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oppressed by a mining baron. This time, the renegade band is Ethan

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Hawke, Martin Sensmeier, Chris Pratt and others. On the plus side, they

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are a diverse gang, giving the film a contemporary relevance,

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particularly at the moment. On the downside, the film isn't ashamed to

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indulge in every single western cliche imaginable, people walking

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into bars and the piano stopped playing, loads of guns being twirled

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around people's fingers, and this stand-offs in which the camera

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focuses in on eyes. -- endless stand-offs. It is fine but not

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moving forward in any way. You wonder why you are not watching the

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original film. A lot of people might be watching and how does it compare

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with the previous one? It doesn't have any of the timeless quality of

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that, but it has action sections which are very cranked up, and that

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is the most modern think about it, the level of carnage in the gunplay

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sequences is very modern. It's not terrible. I know some people have

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taken against it. It's fine but not much more, which brings us nicely to

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The Girl With All The Gifts, which is really terrific and very

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impressive. This is a British chiller which takes a sort of new

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riff on very well worn zombie themes, to an extent. The land Scott

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is post-apocalyptic -- the landscape is post-apocalyptic, but it is

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closer to the concerns of Never Let Me Go. The world has been overrun by

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hungrys, marauding bands of zombies, infected by a fungal plague. We open

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with a young girl in a cell, manacled to a wheelchair, then taken

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to a classroom and we realised that these are children who, on one

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level, appear to be dangerous but, on another level, they just appear

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to be children. And by and by Zeus wanted to punish

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Prometheus for his mistakes, so he fashioned a woman of clay

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and gave her the name Pandora - Pandora opened up the box, whereupon

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every plague and tribulation, every misfortune and evil thing

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in the world came pouring out, and they have afflicted

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mankind ever since, Yeah, sweet dreams(!)

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Bloody talk to it. But then Pandora peered into the box

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and found one more And she lifted it in her

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hands and set it free. Hope is the good thing that makes

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you be able to stand Good night, black and

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white kitten. So Jim artisan, the teacher comes

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psychologist, sees them the newcomer, Sennia Nanua, who is great

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in the central role. You have Glenn Close as a doctor just sees these

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children as specimens. Paddy Considine is the soldier who is

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afraid of them but, during the film, comes to think something different.

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They go on the road to London, which is overrun by this fungal foliage,

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and they find themselves taking their way through groups of hungrys.

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The film is smart and adventurous. It takes well worn zombie riffs and

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does something new. It has a very good ensemble cast, all of whom are

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bringing their a game to the proceedings. It has a fantastic

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musical score, which superbly accentuates the sort of John Wyndham

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atmosphere. There is something of that in the clip. Off-kilter,

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unusual, slightly eerie, also a touch of David Cronenberg in its

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attitude to infection, seeing both sides of an argument. And I thought

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it was really well done. It's on a tight budget, 4.4 million. They have

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made the most of it. The resources are somewhat constrained but the

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vision of the film-makers is anything but. It's a film which

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dares to be adventurous, which dares to be challenging and to try

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something new. Not just looking back to the past, although it's happy

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nodding its head to Romero, but looking to the future and doing

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something interesting. I loved it very much. What do you pick out of

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all of those? The best thing in the cinema at the moment is Hunt For The

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Wilderpeople, a New Zealand film. It's about a story of a young boy,

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and his adoptive father. They go into the wild together in the middle

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of a manhunt. It's one of those movies which is funny and charming

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but also very poignant. It has essential human truth to it but it's

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completely unexpected. It's a terrific movie. A touch of Captain

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fantastic. It's not been very widely seen, because it on relatively

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limited release, but everyone who's seen it loves it. Once they go to

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DVD, who do you pick? Love And Friendship is a brilliant adaptation

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of an early episode rework by Jane Austen will stop fantastic central

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assortments -- central performance by Kate Beckinsale, who is terrific

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as a scheming Austin character who you admire and are afeared of.

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Brilliant comedy performance by Tom Bennett, who comes close to stealing

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the show. When you look at the director's back catalogue, you

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think, that makes sense, because there is so much of that Austin wit

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and humour running through his work. I've seen it twice and both times I

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beamed all the way through. It's intelligent and funny and insightful

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and adventurous and, again, not what you would expect, but a real winner.

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If you beamed all the way through... And you know how curmudgeonly I am!

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Thank you. A quick reminder that you can get more news and reviews online

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at the website. You can catch up on all the previous shows on the BBC

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iPlayer. That is it for this week. Thank you for watching. Goodbye.

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Hello. The weather is chopping and changing over the next few

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