The Girl on the Train, 13th, Blood Father The Film Review

football internationals with Dean Saunders. That's at 6. 30. Now

though, 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. What do we have? You must

know that the big release of the week is The Girl on they train,

there are posters for it absolutely everywhere.

We also have 13th, a documentary. And Mel Gibson is back in Blood

Father. The Girl on the Train, heavily

anticipated by a lot of us, especially those who've read the

novel? It's those that have read the novel that have been the most

vociferously critical about the fact it changed location, it's been to

America, the cast members are too glamorous, there's been a lot of

that stuff. Let's consider the film on its own merit. Emily Blunt is

Rachel, an alcoholic, her life has fallen apart since her divorce.

She's on the train every day. Her ex-husband is there. She looks away

to a neighbouring house where she imagines a couple living a perfect

life until she sees something which jars with her vision. However,

because of her condition, she's an alcoholic, she doesn't know what

she's seen. She's not sure what she remembers. She's not even sure what

she's done. Here is a clip. I'm here because I...

Because I... Because I woke up covered in blood.

I had bruises all over my arm and... I may have fallen

and somebody helped me up. My husband, he used to tell me what I'd

done the night before. I learnt when you wake up like that, you just say

you're sorry. You just say you're sorry for what you did and sorry for

who you are. And you're never going to do it again.

Very powerful. I think she's great. It's a really great piece of

casting. She's terrific in the movie. You can see the

cinematography catching her woozy state of mind. The film is shot in

your face, very expressive, as if the camera itself is drunk which I

liked very much. Some people have compared this to Gone Girl, although

actually a closer comparison would be with that film Before I Go To

Sleep. People forget? Yes, it's got amnesia, duplicity. As film making

is concerned, it's solid if not particularly remarkable. However,

Emily Blunt is like the lightning conductor, she's the thing that

holds the whole movie together and because so much of it is to do with

taking the various perspectives of the novel and making them into

something that works coherently on screen, I think she is the force

that holds the movie together. So I enjoyed it. I know that some people

who're crazy about the book don't lake it but you're always going to

get changes from page to screen. The cinematography was good and worked

very well. Although it's not directed with the same visual

panache as there was in Gone Girl, I think Emily Blunt is worth the price

of the ticket because she really made it work. To have a seriously

centrally flawed character is a great device to give you an edge.

You're not quite sure because she's not quite sure? Unbalanced unstable,

unreliable. Sympathetic and engaging and that is a credit to her. Now,

13th is about the 13th amendment of the US constitution? It's an

interesting documentary that argues in a balanced fashion that after the

abolition of slavery, the disenfranchisement that came with

slavery continued through various segregation laws and now is

represented in the penal system. The #139 amendment says the outlaw on

servitude except as a punishment for crime. What the film does is it

looks at the way in which the penal system is organised, it goes all the

way through the laws, through Nixon and the war on drugs and argues that

actually at key moments in history, politicians have used other language

to actually keep racially discriminatory laws in practise

without ever admitting it. They are looking at work done in prisons,

saying it's a modern form of slavery that companies use but don't like to

admit to it. I thought it was really well done. You are a great admirer

of the director and you look at this documentary and you can see why. She

has a line of argument and the film is poll emical, very interesting, a

fascinating watch, a grim watch, but I thought it made its arguments very

persuasive. A basic statistic is that there are more African-American

males in the criminal justice system in jail, on probation, than there

were slaves in the 1850s. Astonishing. I think you will like

this very much, it's in cinemas and also on net flick. Blood Father,

Liam Neeson, not Mel Gibson. It would be easy to dismiss this as

another dad-sploitation. He's got to rescue his daughter in trouble, you

know. It's a bit more than that. Mel Gibson's rehabilitation is eagerly

awaited. He's a washed up reformed alcoholic living in a trailer

convinced his life amounted to nothing. He gets a call from his

estranged daughter who is in big trouble and Mel helps her. It turns

out she's as pretty much messed up as he is. Here is a clip that has

almost no dialogue in it. It's that wounded bear thing that

he's doing, you know, big and burly but also tired, washed up. Then of

course what happens is he can't keep her safe for very long, the bad guys

turn up, then it turns into an action movie with shoot-outs and

punch ups and motorbikes on the road. It's an exploitation B movie

but it's very well done, it understands the genre cliches and

uses them rather effectively, harking back to things like Mad Max,

when Mel Gibson was young and had that crazed look in his eyes. Now he

looks like a wounded bear, which is great casting. Very good. It has a

throw back sensibility to some extent. I went in expecting it to be

the lowest common denominator and was pleasantly surprised by how, yes

it's a story you have seen before but it was told well, a good, solid

B movie that is exactly what it is, does what it says on the packet and

offers Mel Gibson a chance to do that wounded bear, angry father

thing that he does rather well. His name in the film? So John Link.

Link to the past. Yes. Exactly, you are becoming a film critic.

Your best of the week is Under the Shadow? The best out at the moment.

You'd love this. It's set in Tehran, set in Jordan, the UK's entry for

best foreign language film Oscar. It's a really intelligent chiller,

made by a British company. Draws on the devil's back. It's the story of

a mother and her daughter in an apartment block being besieged not

only by missiles because it's set in the war in the 80s, but also

apparently by spirits. It's really intelligent and smart. I say this as

a die hard horror fan, there were moments in it that were properly

scary. Why is it British? A British company made it and the director

lives here so it qualifies for our foreign language film Oscar.

I can see tick, tick, tick, tick, for the films you have chosen. Your

DVD is War Craft the Beginning. What is your problem? Have you seen it? I

haven't. I've heard about war craft. I'm very resistant. Two

It got stinky reviews partly due to the fact that it was under silly

embargoes. Duncan Jones taking on a huge gaming franchise and making it

to a fantasy movie. No-one went into this more worried than I did and I

was surprised by how much it had his thumb prints over it, how much it

was about characters that I was interested in. They are handled, the

gender politics are very impressive, it's a film that's clearly made by

somebody who loves the subject matter and believe me, it's lovely

to see a film that's made with love and attention for all Isth its flaws

and I'm flying the flag for it. On DVD and Blu-ray it will be

reassessed and in years to come, people will say War Craft was

mistreated. I'm speechless! Thank you very much. A quick

reminder, more film news and reviews from across the BBC at

www.bbc.co.uk/Americakermode. Next week we are on the red carpet at the

London Film Festival with special guests.

Thank you very much for watching, enjoy the movies, goodbye --

www.bbc.co.uk/markkermode. Still Somme dangerous weather

conditions along the East Coast of