Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge, Baywatch, The Other Side of Hope The Film Review

our FA Cup sports day. Non-BBC News, it's time for the film really. --

now on BBC News, it's 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'm sure you must have noticed, there is a new Pirates Of The

Caribbean movie coming into cinemas. Why? LAUGHTER

Baywatch goes from small screen to big screen. And we are shown on the

other side of hope. Let's kick off with the Paris of the Caribbean,

Jacks are searching for the Trident of Poseidon. Every single of these

films, this is the fifth, has a search request. This time it's for

the Trident of Poseidon. The last time we were with Pirates Of The

Caribbean, it was one that anyone felt like an afterthought. The

reason we are back is because the movies make a huge amount of money.

We have some of the old cast, some new faces. But generally the same

old story. Yes, there is a curse, a quest, some goings-on. Here is a

clip. Because I just happen to be

Captain Jack Sparrow. The great Jack Sparrow is not

some drunk in a cell. A great pirate does not

require such intricacies. Do you know how long I've been

waiting for this moment? The audiences love it, so I give

them more and more? Have you seen the other Pirates movies? I think

saw the first one, long time ago. My daughter was all right, but I didn't

need more. Do think this gag is so fabulous it's going to take five

movies? Firstly, I was never a fan of the first one, the second and

third I found increasingly annoying on the fourth just felt like a

postscript. You have Johnny Depp doing that same performance that has

been getting more and more broad during the various movies. When he

first art doing it, and one said he was like Keith Richards from the

Rolling Stones. It has become more and more like a pantomime. His

accent seems to have gone to the other side of the world. He sounded

positively Australian in some moments. You also get the classic

thing of, we need to relaunch the franchise, let's have intertwining

plot, and all the way through your thinking, just give me a narrative

that actually makes some sense. The weird thing about the Pirates movies

is they feel quite so mechanical and soulless. Understandably, they come

from a ride originally, they are an attempt to take that and put it on

the screen. There is a real feeling is that I suspect even people who

are real fans of the Pirates Of The Caribbean series will feel they have

seen before and done better. I've never been a fan of them, but I

think even fans will start to think, for heaven 's sake, do we have to do

this all over again. Actually, it is one of those movies in which you can

almost see the accountants totting up the sums. But in this thing

together. It's like an abacus. There is no new wit or invention. A lot of

the script sounds like offcuts from carry on movies. You can take lines

from this and Kerryn Columbus and they are the same script writing

pattern. It's not the worst of the movies, is not the best of the

Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, boringly in the middle, with

emphasis on the boring. We get that! Something as with seen before is

Baywatch, a long-running sort of kitsch classic TV series, what 25

years ago? Long enough ago that when it was on I didn't have a

television. It a sort of post-modern reboot in the manner of 21 Jump St.

Zac Efron is a disgraced Olympian, a celebrity to who bring attention to

them. His character doesn't believe in teamwork. You know that over the

course of the movie, they will find some sort of affectionate bond, and

this will be driven by a long and rather creaky crime plot, because

it's the beach film, therefore has to have a crime plot. It's not

particularly good, but not particularly bad either. I counted

five times during this movie that I laughed, five times more than I

thought I would. It's nothing like as consistently funny as other

films, but Zac Efron and Dwayne The Rock Johnson are quite funny. There

is a slightly sharp thing about the fact there is a lot of camera

ogling, but its sack everyone who is being ogled. It is a two-hour movie

that is at least one hour in five minutes too long. If it was

officially five-minute TV special, they might have got away with it. I

have seen worse. Did at least laugh a few times, which is more than I

can say about Pirates Of The Caribbean. When it is described as

post-modern, I'm sure the makers of the film will be flattered. I'm sure

that that was how it was pitched in the first place. It's a post-modern

redo. Now, The Other Side Of Hope. This is a sort of comedy about

your's refugee crisis. It's Aki Kaurismaki, an interesting

writer-director. You will know his kind of deadpan comedy. It's

essentially a story about a young man from Syria arrives in Finland,

bullied on the street by thugs, but embraced by the displaced community

who try to show him the ropes. Here is a clip.

You get a centre that, that kind of bittersweet comedy. What I like

about this is that on the one hand it is very sensitive and humane, and

it feels real. It feels like a story about a character you can believe

in. It also has that Aki Kaurismaki sense of the world. It's laugh out

loud funny in some places, when you don't expect it to be. The central

character then meet up with a Finnish businessmen who decides he

will buy a failing restaurant, which he attempts to make work by doing

various things. At one point he decides to make it a sushi

restaurant, and he doesn't have sushi so they make salted herring

instead. There are these absurd moments, but it's a story about

dispossessed people and the way in which strange friendships can be

forged. It has beautiful use of music. At one point you get buskers

in the street and the blues band in a bar who seem to offer a kind of

Greek chorus commentary. There's a lovely moment in which somebody

start playing a tune which takes a run away to lost, distant lands.

It's beautifully put together, visually crisp and clear in that

kind of hyper real style. It's very, very difficult to get that balance

between tragedy and comedy, between smiles and tears. But it genuinely

manages to do both those things. The funny moments are funny, and the

tragic moments are profoundly moving. It's very humane and

touching. I think anybody could get on with it. It's really, really good

film. What is best out of the moment? I will say this for the last

week, it won't be in cinemas for too much longer. It's The Levelling. I

want people to see it on big screen if they can. It's a story about

young woman who goes back to a family farm where she has unresolved

issues. Fantastic performances, beautifully shot, wonderful

soundscape, wonderful sound design. You need to sit on the big screen

because so much of what's going on is going in the sound, the sound of

the wind, the rain, the farm itself. And you do lose that on the big

screen. I think this is a major talent, she was described as a

rising star of tomorrow ten years ago by screen International. It's

taken her that long to make this feature film. It's a great piece of

work, The Levelling. And best DVD? Jackie. When I reviewed this the

first time round, took me to make get to grips with it. One of the

things I love about it is the score, which is brilliant. A lot of lot of

attention of the central performance. When I first saw it, I

thought it felt strangely stilted, maybe a bit over theatrical. Second

time round, realised it's a film about a woman in a position whereby

she has to perform certain roles. And that awkwardness is very

deliberate. The theatricality is on purpose. It's a multilayered film.

It's not immediately accessible, but it really does, the more you watch

at the more we find in it. Which is another reason why if you saw it in

the cinema and went crazy about it, it's worth watching again at home.

It stands up on the small screen. OK, Mark. Thank you so much.

You can find all of our previous programmes on the iPlayer. And also

more online. That's thoughtlessly, thank you for watching, goodbye.

Some unusually high UV levels across the