The Disaster Artist, Happy End, Wonder The Film Review

this hour. Thank you to you both.

Coming up next, the Film Review.

Hello and welcome to

the Film Review on BBC News.

To take us through this

week's cinema releases,

as ever, Mark Kermode.

Hello, Mark.

What have you been watching?

Very interesting, we have

The Disaster Artist,

which is the story of the making

of the best worst movie ever.

Happy End, the new film

by Michael Haneke.

And Wonder, a very touching drama

starring Jacob Tremblay.

The Disaster Artist.

Yes.

Even watching the trailer as many

times as I have now,

even the trailer, you're

sitting there like this.

Have you seen The Room?

This is part of my question,

you need to explain all this.

Basically, it's the dramatised

retelling of the making of The Room

which Tommy Wiseau made in 2003.

It's a film that was so bad that it

spawned a whole cult following.

People go along to join

in the screenings, much in sort

of Rocky Horror Show style.

Tommy Wiseau basically wrote,

directed, and starred in it

and financed it.

Now we have James Franco,

who plays Tommy in the film,

directing and producing this film

based on a book by Greg Sestero,

who was a co-star in The Room,

who is now played by

James Franco's brother, Dave.

We're keeping up.

You're keeping up so far?

We're keeping up.

OK.

So essentially, Greg is a model

and an actor and we first meet him

in a theatre studies thing -

he's doing a terrible version

of waiting for Godot -

and then suddenly, Tommy comes up

and takes one word from

a Streetcar Named Desire,

"Stella!"

And does this writhing piece.

Greg is completely entranced.

He said, "This is amazing.

You've got so much talent,

you're so uninhibited,

how do you do it?"

And Tommy says, "Well,

I just believe in myself."

And together, they go to Los Angeles

and they decide they'll make it

and become stars but Hollywood

rejects them, and so Tommy,

who appears to have A, no fixed age,

B, no fixed accent and C,

untold wealth, no-one knows

where he comes from,

writes his own movie.

Here's a clip.

The Room.

The Room.

Nobody writes it yet.

So today, you will be the first one.

I can't believe it,

man, you did this.

And, of course, you play Mark.

You want me to play Mark?

It's a big role.

Second lead.

Yeah, it's a huge role.

Are you sure?

If you don't want to do it, fine,

I'm having Johnny Depp available.

No, no, I want it, I want

the role, I'll take it.

It's like you say, Hollywood rejects

us, then we do it on our own.

And you have the money to make this?

I have, it's no problem.

You're really going

to make this thing?

No, Greg, we are going to make it.

Mark has just laughed about 20

times during that clip.

I've seen that film

twice and both times...

But here's the key to it -

firstly the fact that Tommy's such

a strange character.

He says he's from New Orleans

and his accent sounds like he's

from outer space.

But what I like about it,

there's a film made by Tim Burton

called Ed Wood about

Edward D Wood Jr, who made Plan 9

from Outer Space, which was

previously thought of as the worst

film ever made.

And the reason that film worked

was you didn't just think Ed

was a terrible film-maker,

you thought he was a visionary -

you believed in the film

even though it was terrible.

Now, in the case of this,

Tommy appears to actually believe

that the film he's making

is a Tennessee Williams-level drama

and he really thinks that he's

making some incredible piece of art,

and the reason The Disaster Artist

works is yes, the film-making

is terrible, yes, the endless takes

of the same lines and the awful

script and the bad acting

and the awful direction that's

in The Room, yes, all those things

are there, but it only works

because you also believe that

beyond it, there is something

of pathos, there is something

of tragedy, there is something

of the dream about Tommy that

makes him acceptable.

We see him behaving

appallingly on set.

The film doesn't shy away

from the fact that on set he did

behave, you know,

really, really badly.

Do you need to have seen

The Room to get the joke?

I don't think so because I think...

I mean, for a start,

you see The Room, it makes no sense

anyway and when you see

the individual scenes that they're

recreating, I mean, it makes sense

because you understand

that basically Tommy...

At one point Seth Rogen,

who is playing the script

supervisor, says it's not to do

with whether he's made a movie,

has he even seen a movie?

He genuinely has no

idea how to do this.

I thought it was really funny.

I thought it was dark

when it needed to be dark.

I thought it had a strange sort

of dreaming charm about it but,

in the end, it's a story

of triumph over adversity,

by making something that's

so catastrophically terrible that it

ends up getting celebrated.

And it made me laugh twice

all the way through.

OK.

Well, I'm intrigued.

You done that for me,

I'm definitely intrigued.

Happy End - is that an ironic title?

It's a Michael Haneke film.

It's the closest he'll

get to making a farce.

This is a Michael Haneke film

about a bourgeois family who,

behind the facade, there are foul

lurking secrets and the cast

includes Isabelle Huppert,

Jean-Louis Trintignant

and Toby Jones - our

very own Toby Jones.

As with all Haneke's work,

it's engrossing, it's creepy,

it's unsettling, but there's also

a very strange sense of deja vu.

There's a thing early on with video

phone footage that reminds me

of Benny's Video, a very

early film of Haneke's.

There's some other stuff which has

got surveillance-type footage

which makes you think

of Cache, of Hidden.

There's also a strange kind

of left-turn referral back to Amour

and the weird thing about all those

films I've just cited,

when we first saw them

they were startling,

they were original,

they were surprisingly.

This isn't.

It's well-made...

Haneke knows how to get brilliant

performances out of actors,

he knows how to make something feel

creepy and strange without quite

telling you what it is.

But it did feel like we were

retreading old ground.

I think he's a great film-maker

but this is that weird thing.

To me this felt like...

And I never thought I'd use it,

an incidental Haneke film.

It just felt like, "OK, there we go,

that's the new Haneke film."

That's it, that's it.

And we'll move on.

And it lacked that element...

I remember when I saw Amour,

just thinking, "I can't believe

he just made that movie because it's

just so breathtaking"

and this isn't.

Wonder - what did you make of this?

I've read such divided

things about this.

Have you?

I haven't read other reviews

so I'll tell you up front,

I liked it.

It's adapted from RJ Palacio's

novel by Stephen Chbosky,

who's best known for Perks

of Being a Wallflower.

Story is Jacob Tremblay

is a young kid, Augie,

who is really interested in science,

really interested in space,

and has spent most of his childhood

being home schooled because he's had

a series of facial operations

as a result of a rare genetic

condition.

Now, as he becomes a fifth grader,

he's going to school for the first

time, so it's a thing

about going to school,

which is difficult enough,

also made more difficult by the fact

Augie understands that he is

different to the people

with whom he's going to have

to interact, and it's about,

at the beginning, that journey.

Here's a clip.

Now, I gotta stop here because past

this point is a no-dads zone

and you don't want to walk

up with your parents

because it's not cool.

But you're cool.

I know I am, but technically

most dads aren't, so...

Neither are these helmets.

Hey, two rules - First,

only raise your hand once in class,

no matter how many answers you know,

except for science -

crush them all.

Check.

Second, you're going to feel

like you're all alone,

Augie, but you're not.

Check.

Shall we lose this?

Come on.

Costumes are for Halloween.

Prepare for blast-off.

I love you.

I love you, too.

Have fun.

Bye.

So Owen Wilson, Julia Roberts

and of course, Jacob Tremblay.

You can see from that,

lots of laughs in that clip and it's

also something that tugs

at the heartstrings.

It's also more complicated

than it looks like.

At the beginning, you think you're

going to see from his point of view

but actually what happens

is the narrative fractures

and you see the story

from lots of different characters'

point of view.

From the point of view

of his sister, who feels that she's

been neglected because all her

parents' attention have gone

to her brother.

You see the sister's friend,

who is no longer a friend,

and you find out her backstory.

Even boys in the film are given

context for their bullying.

So I thought for a start it's a much

more complex narrative than people

have perhaps given it credit for -

it has perhaps a kaleidoscopic

structure.

The other thing is the film made me

laugh and the film made me cry,

and those are difficult

things to do.

People take them very much

for granted and think it's very

easy to do.

It's not easy and it works

because the performances are good,

the script is well honed,

and it felt like to me a film

that was made with heart, with care,

by people who were telling this

story and they really cared

about the way the story was...

Yes, there is sentimentality in it

but I think it is sentimentality

that it turns.

I mean, I cried a lot,

I laughed a lot, I was really

engaged with the story,

and I went in slightly suspicious

because I'd seen the trailer,

which was a little bit...

You didn't know quite which way

it was going to go but I thought

it was a pretty

terrific piece of work.

And Jacob Tremblay, he's a really,

really talented young actor

and I thought that the director

handled it with exactly the right

degree of schmaltz and seriousness.

I laughed, I cried, it worked.

OK.

Best out this week?

Battle of the Sexes.

This came out last week and this

is the fictionalised

or the dramatised story

of the tennis match

between Billie Jean

King and Bobby Riggs.

It became called the

Battle of the Sexes.

There was a documentary about this

almost exactly the same

name in 2013.

Again, going in to see the drama,

the documentary was so great,

will they be able to

capture that spirit?

And they do, they really, really do.

Emma Stone is great

as Billie Jean King.

Steve Carell absolutely

inhabits this clown,

you know, male chauvinist buffoon

role of Bobby Riggs.

The texture of the film is great -

it feels like a film that was made

in the 1970s.

It's got an important LGBT story

at the centre of it,

it's got political relevance,

it's very, very personal.

Again, it's funny.

It is a comedic drama

and it's all true.

The weird thing is you're looking

at it and you think,

"They must be making this stuff up"

and then you see the documentary

and it's absolutely true.

Yes, fantastic.

Quick thought about DVDs for anyone

who wants to stay in?

My Feral Heart came out last week -

we weren't on last week -

but this is a really,

really great indie pic.

One of my favourites of the year,

directed by Jane Gull.

Steven Brandon is a young man trying

to find his place in the world.

It's a film that did brilliantly

with the Our Screen programme

in which people put on screenings

in their own cinemas.

It really found its audience.

It was a film with a very,

very low-budget.

Again made with an enormous amount

of heart and it is terrific.

It's called My Feral Heart

and I defy anyone not to be won

over by it.

Excellent.

I am looking forward to that one.

Thank you very much, Mark.

Thank you.

A really interesting week.

Thank you.

Just a reminder, of course you can

find all film news and reviews

from across the BBC online.

And all our previous programmes

are on the iPlayer

as well of course.

And that is it for this week.