:00:00. > :00:00.performance data -- release, and the latest from UK snooker. Now on BBC
:00:00. > :00:34.News, time for the film review. Bigwig, Sunset Song, the new film by
:00:35. > :00:40.Terence Davies. -- big week. From Bulgaria, tense drama, The Lesson.
:00:41. > :00:48.And something different for Christmas, Krampus! I have not seen
:00:49. > :00:51.Sunset Song but I really want to like it, I hope you will say good
:00:52. > :00:57.thing. I went into it inking the same thing, very long awaited
:00:58. > :01:01.adaptation of the Lewis Grassic Gibbon novel, 15 years to get to the
:01:02. > :01:04.screen, first tried to do it in the wake of the house of mirth, that was
:01:05. > :01:09.2000, long time to get this done. The story follows Chris Guthrie,
:01:10. > :01:13.growing up in north-east Scotland, early 20th century, discovering her
:01:14. > :01:15.identity. -- The House of Mirth. Formed between the land and
:01:16. > :01:21.education, which may take her away from the land, between a brutal
:01:22. > :01:24.father, and her growing love for the young Euan, all overshadowed by the
:01:25. > :01:51.gathering clouds of the Great War. What does it mean? They send white
:01:52. > :01:54.feathers to the Coward. All of them government men, ready to die for
:01:55. > :02:00.their kin, any day of the week. Twice on Sundays (!) they say that
:02:01. > :02:06.Parliament will pass the conscription act. That means if we
:02:07. > :02:13.do not volunteer, they will make us go anyway. Well, what will we do
:02:14. > :02:23.then (!) will we both be taken? Yes, yes... But you have been excused
:02:24. > :02:39.before! They do not take folk who farmed their online! -- farm their
:02:40. > :02:44.own homeland. -- own land. What is interesting, how it are themes that
:02:45. > :02:47.recur throughout his cinema, autobiographical films, the trilogy,
:02:48. > :02:53.Long Day closes, Distant Voices, Still Lives that kind of thing.
:02:54. > :02:57.First, you can tell that he has been working on this for a long time and
:02:58. > :03:01.loves the source material, the second thing, the performances are
:03:02. > :03:06.very strong, Agyness Deyn, we talked about her in Electricity, really
:03:07. > :03:09.good. Terrific. Holding her own against Kevin Guthrie and Peter
:03:10. > :03:13.Mullan, very accomplished screen performers, she does a very good
:03:14. > :03:17.job. What makes this sing is the cinematography, it is a mixture of
:03:18. > :03:24.digital for the interiors, the interiors sometimes have the tone of
:03:25. > :03:28.a Vermeer and these last six to celluloid exteriors, which have a
:03:29. > :03:32.kind of Terrence Malick sweep, there's so much of the source
:03:33. > :03:36.material is about the land, and when you are making this kind of film,
:03:37. > :03:41.you have got to have that sense of the rapture, the wonder of the land.
:03:42. > :03:45.You can smell the cows (!) when we be talking about the most recent
:03:46. > :03:51.adaptation of far madding crowd, we said there was not enough dirt under
:03:52. > :03:58.its fingernails, this does, this film is not scared of silence or
:03:59. > :04:02.song, somebody is in love with the source material, but also understand
:04:03. > :04:07.how to make it brought to a cinematic audience. I think Terence
:04:08. > :04:12.Davies is one of the greatest auteurs we have in this country, it
:04:13. > :04:24.was in 2008 that his career was restarted, with Of Time and the City
:04:25. > :04:28.in 2008, and I think that he has another one in the can,, a quiet
:04:29. > :04:33.passion, and it is great. Very strange Bulgarian movie, lending
:04:34. > :04:38.social unit realism of the Dardenne brothers with a jet black streak of
:04:39. > :04:43.comedy, centring on a schoolteacher, schoolteacher at the beginning, we
:04:44. > :04:49.see her lecturing the class on the morale at the thieving, turns out
:04:50. > :04:54.her house is in danger, a reckless husband has squandered the money she
:04:55. > :05:01.should have been using. -- morality of thieving. She is torn between
:05:02. > :05:12.employers who will not pay back pay, unsharp adventures -- pay back pay,
:05:13. > :05:14.loan sharks, thanks. It is described as a quiet rebellion of the little
:05:15. > :05:19.person, and absolutely you are centred on her as a character, you
:05:20. > :05:23.see somebody who is very controlling, whose life is
:05:24. > :05:26.descending into chaos, and you are with her. I thought it was a very
:05:27. > :05:30.fine piece of work, it is something that you need to know and understand
:05:31. > :05:35.and care about the character and you really do. I thought
:05:36. > :05:40.gripping. You have got to seek it out, it is not a wide release, The
:05:41. > :05:43.Lesson, check it out. And also, a lot of great films coming out of
:05:44. > :05:47.post coming as to Eastern Europe, the obvious comment to make. Only
:05:48. > :05:52.enough, quite a lot of films around at Christmas which are not just what
:05:53. > :06:00.you would expect from the Christmas festive season. Not a lot of
:06:01. > :06:06.yo-ho-ho! Krampus is the antidote, this is yo-ho-horror! Christmas with
:06:07. > :06:10.the Coopers, the night before, this is the antidote! This is based on
:06:11. > :06:14.the ancient legend of the shadow of Saint Nicholas, the dark side, we
:06:15. > :06:17.begin by meeting a family who have lost the Christmas spirit, they
:06:18. > :06:23.think it is a time for giving... Up! All of them are sick of the site
:06:24. > :06:32.of each other! Here is a clip. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas... Gosh,
:06:33. > :06:36.I am so glad you could make it. You have no idea, accidents all over the
:06:37. > :06:44.freeway... Six hours... We brought you a little taste of home... Thank
:06:45. > :06:50.you. Incredible... Keep the traffic jam going now... Let me help you...
:06:51. > :06:52.Thank you for joining us. Sarcasm, Tommy... Does your butler have the
:06:53. > :07:08.night off? LAUGHTER looking cute in your matching
:07:09. > :07:10.jackets. They are cranky because the Pittsburgh Steelers lost. Tell your
:07:11. > :07:21.aunt about the presidential fitness award. It is a good story... Well,
:07:22. > :07:29.that is a lot of -- that is not a lot of yo-ho-ho! In another movie,
:07:30. > :07:37.they would work it out, they would learn to love each other... Chevy
:07:38. > :07:40.Chase would turn up. In this one, a beast arrives, Krampus, the
:07:41. > :07:52.touch-tone, on the 1 hand, I would say, Gremlins, Joe Dante, a touch of
:07:53. > :07:55.capital at the poltergeist, and rare exports, very strange, obscure film.
:07:56. > :08:00.There is a kind of Spielberg quality to the music, we feel like we are in
:08:01. > :08:06.safe hands. -- Rare Exports. What is lovely about it, it is not
:08:07. > :08:10.frightened to show its teeth, like Gremlins, when it needs to bite, it
:08:11. > :08:15.shows its teeth. Gremlins is a work of genius. This is not that, what it
:08:16. > :08:20.is aiming in the right direction. I saw this, having had a week of
:08:21. > :08:23.really quite icky Christmas releases, it was a real place to see
:08:24. > :08:27.something that did not mind being a little bit nasty, that was not
:08:28. > :08:32.scared to be a bit scary. It does not entirely work, some of the jokes
:08:33. > :08:35.do not completely come off, you need a leap of faith to get over some of
:08:36. > :08:40.the cracks in the narrative logic, but there is enough predator faced
:08:41. > :08:47.clown dolls (!) and scary gingerbread men in it, if you are
:08:48. > :08:52.looking for a Christmas release, seek this out! It did look like two
:08:53. > :08:58.different films. What is nice, gremlins is the same, people forget
:08:59. > :09:09.how nasty nasty bits of Gremlins are, how much of a bite the movie it
:09:10. > :09:13.is! -- how much they -- how much of a bitey movie it is. What have you
:09:14. > :09:25.yet seen Carol? Have you yet seen Carol? I have not,
:09:26. > :09:31.some of us have to work from time to time! What it does, it adapts this
:09:32. > :09:35.for the screen from the Patricia Highsmith novel, it is a screenplay
:09:36. > :09:40.which is 16, which is not overly wordy, so much is to do with gesture
:09:41. > :09:44.and nuance, fantastic performances from Kate Blanchette and Rooney
:09:45. > :09:49.Mara, behind it all, the maestro, Todd Haynes, one of those directors
:09:50. > :09:52.who has moved from the margins of arthouse experimentation into the
:09:53. > :09:57.mainstream without ever selling out. -- Cate Blanchette. Without ever
:09:58. > :10:01.losing the subversive edge. -- it is a screenplay which is cis inked. You
:10:02. > :10:05.can tell that this is the man who made capital letter Superstar: The
:10:06. > :10:11.Karen Carpenter story, who made a film using Barbie dolls, you can
:10:12. > :10:14.tell that he made Poison. And yet it has the mainstream appeal of
:10:15. > :10:27.something like far from Heaven. You will love it. I have taken the
:10:28. > :10:33.delivery of your DVD choice. Mia Madre. Indeed, I think this is
:10:34. > :10:41.incredibly accessible, superb from nano Marathi -- Nanna Maretti. And
:10:42. > :10:47.the American actor with him she has to work, he is utterly insufferable,
:10:48. > :10:52.John Turturro. Superb performance. As with all of his best work, it is
:10:53. > :10:56.very strongly personal and autobiographical but what I like
:10:57. > :11:02.about it, it is a humanist movie, it is about real people in real
:11:03. > :11:07.situations that you can... You understand the situation. Even if it
:11:08. > :11:11.is nothing that you have experienced, you sympathise, it is
:11:12. > :11:19.very low key, it is very funny but also melancholic. -- Nanni Moretti.
:11:20. > :11:25.Five out of five that are hits, in various ways, incredible! That is
:11:26. > :11:30.interesting. Sunset Song, I have to say, is, for me, the standout. When
:11:31. > :11:34.you see at the beginning -- when you say at the beginning you want it to
:11:35. > :11:38.be good, when I first saw it, I was terrified that it would let me down
:11:39. > :11:42.because I'm such a fan of Terence Davies. I have seen it three times.
:11:43. > :11:48.It did not let me down. I have seen it three times. That is love! A
:11:49. > :11:51.quick reminder before we go, Moore film use and reviews from across the
:11:52. > :12:01.BBC online including all of the previous shows. -- more film news
:12:02. > :12:03.online. Thank you very much for