:00:18. > :00:19.Hello and welcome to the Film Review on BBC News.
:00:20. > :00:24.To take us through this week's cinema releases is Mark Kermode.
:00:25. > :00:39.A very mixed bag. We have snowed in, the new drama by Oliver Stone. We
:00:40. > :00:45.have The Office Christmas Party. Yes, it's Christmas! And Life,
:00:46. > :00:54.Animated, a really to refit documentary. -- terrific
:00:55. > :00:58.documentary. We begin with Snowden, about Edward Snowden, the former NSA
:00:59. > :01:04.contractor who blew the whistle on surveillance culture in the US after
:01:05. > :01:07.911. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the idealistic young man who joins the
:01:08. > :01:11.intelligence services because he wants to serve his country but
:01:12. > :01:12.becomes alarmed by how intrusive their surveillance is of apparently
:01:13. > :01:25.ordinary citizens. It's not dirt we need necessarily
:01:26. > :01:32.but a pressure point, something intimate, some weakness. Can we look
:01:33. > :01:45.through his family? How about his sister-in-law? What is that? Is that
:01:46. > :01:57.some of video she sent somebody? No, this is live. What do you mean live?
:01:58. > :02:00.It is camera activation. Activation? Yes, the laptop is off. She forgot
:02:01. > :02:13.to close it. I always wondered what was under
:02:14. > :02:17.those. You can see from those it is a
:02:18. > :02:22.creepy drama about surveillance culture. The problem is that there
:02:23. > :02:26.was a documentary which is in this film and we get someone playing the
:02:27. > :02:30.woman from the film. In that documentary, we saw these
:02:31. > :02:33.revelations, and it was a horrific documentary, informative and edge of
:02:34. > :02:36.your seat stuff. Much of it takes place in a hotel in Hong Kong when
:02:37. > :02:41.he was getting the information out into the world. It is nail-biting
:02:42. > :02:45.stuff. The documentary is more dramatic than this dramatisation.
:02:46. > :02:48.The documentary makes clear that Snowden does not want to be the
:02:49. > :02:54.centre of the story. It is bigger than him. So to make a drama called
:02:55. > :02:58.Snowden about Snowden seems perverse, since the story is not
:02:59. > :03:01.meant to be about him. Also, the genius of the documentary is that it
:03:02. > :03:06.deals with complicated technical issues and makes them
:03:07. > :03:09.understandable. Watching this, I felt like I came out knowing
:03:10. > :03:14.slightly less than when I went in. It is not that it does not have some
:03:15. > :03:17.dramatic virtues, but when you have seen something as good as the
:03:18. > :03:24.documentary, you want to go, just watch that. It is dramatic, tense,
:03:25. > :03:29.informative, explanatory, it does everything that this dramatisation
:03:30. > :03:34.does, and much more. Which leaves you feeling, what's the point? And I
:03:35. > :03:40.honestly don't know what the point is. The documentary covered it all.
:03:41. > :03:45.Let's move on The Office Christmas Party, about a party that gets way
:03:46. > :03:50.out of hand. It sounds like the BBC News channel Christmas Party
:03:51. > :03:53.yesterday. I sincerely hope that was more fun than watching this film. I
:03:54. > :03:58.went in with high expectations because it is from the makers of
:03:59. > :04:01.blades of Glory. Jennifer Aniston is the hard-nosed boss who is closing a
:04:02. > :04:05.failing office and Jason Bateman decides the way to make it succeed
:04:06. > :04:10.is to throw a Christmas Party to attract business. The plot makes no
:04:11. > :04:14.sense and it looks like the film-makers said, never mind, just
:04:15. > :04:17.get to the party when everyone is throwing stuff around. The problem
:04:18. > :04:27.is, on the one hand it has some talented performers. It is a bit
:04:28. > :04:32.like being the only sober person in a room full of increasingly drunk,
:04:33. > :04:36.shrieking loud people. And the more shrieking, drunk and loud they get,
:04:37. > :04:40.the more it feels like you have a hangover without the fun of the
:04:41. > :04:44.party beforehand. And the real shame of it is that I keep going to see
:04:45. > :04:47.this kind of film thinking, this is the one that will change my mind,
:04:48. > :04:56.that is Willie good fun. And then you go, no, it is just that movie.
:04:57. > :05:00.And this was just that movie. Timed for the Christmas market? Yes, Ray,
:05:01. > :05:05.thanks, Christmas present nobody asked for. Let's move on to Life,
:05:06. > :05:13.Animated, which is a fantastic piece of work. A superb documentary by a
:05:14. > :05:19.director who won an Oscar in 2010. It is the story of the son of an
:05:20. > :05:23.award-winning journalist. As a young man, he is somebody who has
:05:24. > :05:27.discovered a way of understanding the world through Disney films. What
:05:28. > :05:31.happened was, at the age of three he suddenly started to retreat into
:05:32. > :05:36.himself and he was diagnosed as autistic. For a long time, his
:05:37. > :05:44.parents were worried that he had completely lost touch with them and
:05:45. > :05:49.the world around him. Owen just started changing really fast. You
:05:50. > :05:58.know, he wasn't sleeping, that was the first thing. He would be up in
:05:59. > :06:03.the night, all night. His motor skills were deteriorating. And then
:06:04. > :06:13.his language processing broke down. He just started reciting gibbering.
:06:14. > :06:14.It was hard for me to understand what people were saying. They were
:06:15. > :06:37.all garbled. It's like we are looking for clues
:06:38. > :06:42.to a kidnapping. Someone kidnapped our son. And that image is really
:06:43. > :06:46.powerful. The parents feel completely disconnected. Then they
:06:47. > :06:50.realise he is watching these Disney cartoons intently. At one point, the
:06:51. > :06:55.father gets a Disney glove puppet and asks his son a question, and he
:06:56. > :06:59.answers with a line from the movie. And they realise that in fact he is
:07:00. > :07:04.in gauging with these movies and if they can talk to him in language
:07:05. > :07:09.from the movies, actually he can be brought out of this isolation. This
:07:10. > :07:13.documentary is so uplifting, so brilliant. On the one hand, we see
:07:14. > :07:18.what eight refit young man he has become. He is lively and engaged. He
:07:19. > :07:21.has this Disney cartoon club in which he gets people to talk about
:07:22. > :07:26.the way these archetypal stories reflect their lives. It is a film
:07:27. > :07:29.about the power of cinema to genuinely transform people and to
:07:30. > :07:35.transform their experience of the world. And it is a film which has as
:07:36. > :07:40.its subject somebody who is very, very honest, somebody who literally
:07:41. > :07:43.says it as they experience it. Hearing him being able to express
:07:44. > :07:48.very eloquently what his experience of the world is, how it is that
:07:49. > :07:52.watching Disney cartoons, Disney narratives has enabled him to
:07:53. > :07:56.reconnect with those around him, is wonderful. He has this rich fantasy
:07:57. > :08:02.life in which he has a kingdom of lost sidekicks, because he started
:08:03. > :08:05.drawing Disney characters, always the sidekick, and in visit himself
:08:06. > :08:10.as the champion of the sidekick. The other thing is that they managed to
:08:11. > :08:14.get Disney to clear the rights to all of the clips. The way they did
:08:15. > :08:19.it was that the director took the movie to this roomful of scary
:08:20. > :08:24.lawyers and showed them, and they were all in tears, they were so
:08:25. > :08:28.moved. It is wonderful. If you are a fan of Disney it makes sense, but it
:08:29. > :08:33.is great to see animation working like this, and the transformative
:08:34. > :08:38.power of sin are. Such a wonderful subject, someone whose company you
:08:39. > :08:43.will feel privileged to spend an hour and a half in. Your best movie
:08:44. > :08:49.out at the moment. Edge of 17. I think it is to reflect. It is a
:08:50. > :08:52.story of a young woman who is struggling with being a teenager and
:08:53. > :08:57.trying to find her place in the world. It is really funny but also
:08:58. > :09:03.poignant, and it feels very real, like it is made honestly. It
:09:04. > :09:07.captures just how difficult it can be, being a young person. I think it
:09:08. > :09:12.does that really well, and it is really funny and smart. And I have
:09:13. > :09:20.yet to find someone who has seen it is not loved it. Best DVD? A weird
:09:21. > :09:23.little Scandinavian drama about a group of young women who manage
:09:24. > :09:28.through a magical potion to transform themselves into boys, so
:09:29. > :09:31.they can experience life in the other gender. It's very interesting
:09:32. > :09:37.drama. Some of it does not quite work but it has the magical realist
:09:38. > :09:41.element to it. It talks eloquently about the difference between the
:09:42. > :09:44.genders and the different experience of boyhood. It was a film I knew
:09:45. > :09:48.nothing about when I started to watch it, and I was completely drawn
:09:49. > :09:53.in. Very adventurous, fairy tale quality. Makes an interesting double
:09:54. > :09:59.bill with your name, a Japanese animation which has been a runaway
:10:00. > :10:03.success in Japan, about a boy and girl whose swap bodies
:10:04. > :10:06.inadvertently. A very good double bill. Thank you very much for all of
:10:07. > :10:09.that. A quick reminder before we go that
:10:10. > :10:12.you'll find more film news and reviews from across the BBC
:10:13. > :10:14.online at bbc.co.uk/markkermode. And you can catch up
:10:15. > :10:22.with our previous programmes That's it for this week. Thanks for
:10:23. > :10:29.watching. Goodbye.