Wild River, Insyriated and It The Film Review

Indies. All that and much more in Sportsday at 6. 30pm. Now though 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 releases, welcome back, Mark. What have you watched in the last

few weeks? Very interesting. We have Wind River. We have Insiriated, a

tough and tense drama, set in Damascus. And It, Stephen King's

classic comes to the big screen. It may be a classic. We'll talk

about that later. You're such a horror fan! Let's start with Wind

River. I watched the trailer for this in awe when I saw Detroit. Even

the trailer is visually stunning. But so stark. Yeah, written and

directed by Taylor Sheridan, saying it's the conclusion of a trilogy

about the American frontier. It's set in Wyoming on a Native American

reservation. There's the death a young women at the start, which

brings together two characters. One is the hunter, tracker, who is

dealing with his own issues of grief and guilt. The other is an FBI agent

who is basically - she's in Vegas beforehand - she arrives completely

unprepared, a total outsider, not even the right clones for the job.

Immediately everybody thinks what's she doing here. Here's a clip. I'm

June Banner. Are you by yourself? Yeah, just me. I'm the tribal police

chief. That's Cory Lambert. He found the body. This is his father-in-law,

Dan. We got the same job hey. I'm sorry to meet under these

circumstances. Do you want to show me the body? I don't mean to be

rude, I'm just freezing my as off here. The quicker the better. That's

going to get a lot worse if you go out there dressed like that. The

body is five miles in snow mobile. I got the call and this is what I've

got. At the beginning there's hostility towards her character.

She's tenacious. In order to pursue the case she needs a tracker on

board. You saw from that clip how much of it is to do with the

environment, to do with the landscape. You said watching a

trailer made you feel - I was cold by the end of the trailer! It was

extraordinary. Whoa, I thought, this is going to be bleak. That

chilliness goes all the way through the drama. Actually, though it is a

murder mystery investigation with a sort of lib rainth plot, it's about

this land, about people being forced to live in a land never meant for

anyone to live in it, about the hardship, the difficulty of that

life, about the community and what I like about the film is it's very

sympathetic towards its characters. It's all to do with placing and

setting. That Wyoming back drop is brutal. Jeremy Rhoner is well cast.

He tends to underplay emotions. A lot is done by saying and doing

little. She comes along and has to prove her way and prove that she's

worthy of this case. During the course of the film, you really come

to see her character understand the bleakness of this landscape, the

difficulties of the people who live here face. So I think it's a very,

very solid, very gripping drama. Bizarrely, when you consider that it

is narratively a murder mystery thriller it's much more about

environment. It's about place. It's about those people. It's about the

plight of the indigenous people. Your second choice now. This is a

drama not a documentary. It's absolutely a drama. Set in Damascus.

There's an apartment block where a family and others in the block are

trapped inside by sniper fire and helicopters and gunfire outside.

What happens is that there is a character who is the matriarch, who

is brilliant, who is controlling looking after everybody in the

apartment block. There is a young couple, who have a young baby, who

are planning to leave. They're going to make the getaway at nighttime.

But then what happens is tragedy strikes. There is an air of

deception that surrounds the tragedy because the central character

doesn't tell what she knows. Somehow through this deception it's as if

the outside conflict comes in. Then you have a series of characters

trapped within this really hellish environment in which there is a lie

that they are dealing with. There is a knock at the door, it turns into

something approaching a home invasion movie and it becomes very

claustrophobic. Filmed with very tight hand held cameras following

you around the apartment. You feel the space. At times, although it's a

completely different setting, it reminded me of under the shadow,

another story about conflict outside and a mother and a daughter dealing

with the - there's a shell that's come through the roof, but it's a

ghost story. In many ways this is a story about there being a ghost in

this house. It's tough. There is a central sequence which is very hard

to watch. Though it was very well filmed, not exploit Tivoli filmed.

Occasionally it drifts into melodrama. It's a tough film in

which you believe in the characters and in the battles between them and

the stress that's they're under. You really do feel this oppressive

environment that they're living under. All right. Now, the third

choice I don't know why I'm laughing. Because you are right to

laugh. Because you're back from your summer holidays, you thought, I know

I'll give Jane one that she will not like at all because it's not my

thing. I think you will do. This is It. I love your optimism! It's an

adaptation of a Stephen King door stopper novel, which has been done,

there's a very famous TV version with Tim Curry as penny wise the

dancing clown, so the story is basically, a group of kids living in

a town, who are all haunted by visions that seem to tap into their

deepest fears. Somehow there's a central character, It, who seems to

be feeding upon their fears. It starts with a sequence which has

become iconic in which young Georgie meets Penny Wise. Here's a clip. No!

Ah! Hiya Georgie. What a nice boat. Do you want it back? Erm...... Yes

please. You look like a nice boy. Do you want a balloon too Georgie? I'm

not supposed to take stuff from strangers. Oh, well I'm Penny Wise,

the dancing clown. Now we aren't strangers, are we? How are you

feeling? This has provoked so much debate in the newsroom today. I am

the only person surrounded in a sea of people who had no desire to go

any further than that scene. Here's the thing, yes, it's a horror story,

there is a strong horror element, but it's a coming of age drama about

a group of kids called the losers, who gang together to try and find

this midgical evil to try and unravel the curse happening time and

again to the town. The films that it refers to are poltergeist, the

goonies, there's nods to ET, there's a touch of stand by me in there. It

is a film which works because the director cares about the young

characters. He cares about the misfits, the outsiders. You come to

care about them too. Yes, it is, there are, moments of fear, moments

of shock, jumps. Anybody who finds clowns fundamentally creepy is going

to be very impressed by the performance. He does a good job of

filling Tim curry's clown shoes. But it's an adventure. I mean it's a

horror inflected adventure, but it is an adventure. This is the early

years of the novel. There's a section of the grown up years, this

is chapter one. There's going to be a second one. There is. This owes a

debt to nightmare on elm street. At one point the kids go past a cinema

showing that. There's a score that goes from lush orchestral adventure

music to nursery rime chimes, the strange, twisted... You're not

buying this. It's a romp. It's really enjoyable. It's really good

fun and it's scary when it needs to be. Personally I would have liked it

to be more scary. I still remember the first time I saw Penny Wise the

clown, you get those moments, but I really liked it. What was best about

it was how affectate it is for the source material. I think fans will

really go for. It Let's talk about the wonderful Bill Nighy. Yes, Lime

house Golem is trifric. It's set in 1880s London. A killer is stalking

the streets. His detective is sent to investigate it. They know it's an

unsolvable case and they want him to take the fall. The film is about

theatre, the theatre of murder, the theatre of death and real life. So

on the one hand, half of it takes place on stage, musical, half of it

takes place in the morgue and out on these misty streets. A lot of hammer

in the way in which it's lit, the way in which it's ghoulish. Very

visual. Musical. Yes, and funny enough people haven't quite

appreciated enough what a good looking film it is. It's brilliantly

written by Jane Goldman, who adapted the novel. It's a complicated novel

to put on screen. I really liked it. Danny mayes was wonderful. I think

you'll enjoy. It it is gorery. It is gorier than It. There is Gothic gore

in there. You see, there's a line between that and being scared out of

your wits. Actually, here's what you should do, see both of them and then

tell me which you enjoyed the most. Good plan Mark, back-to-back, with a

bottle of gin to get me through it! I shouldn't advocate that, this

might be on in the morning. We'll edit that bit, right. Let's talk

about the DVD. Yeah, actually Blu-ray, shock treatment has come to

Blu-ray. Shock Treatment is the sequel to rocky horror. It was

described as an equal, not prequel or sequel. It's a mess, no question

about it. The creator said it's a mess because it started as one thing

and turned out as another. What's really interesting is it's becoming

incredibly pressient. It's about a world taken over by reality

television. It's about people thinking they can solve everyone by

becoming part of a game show. The songs and dance routines are

fabulous. When it came out, I thought this is a mess but I'm

enjoying it. This is a mess but it's nightmarishly profetic and I really

like it. Lovely to see you back... Just about. Nice to see you. See you

next week. You'll find all our film news and reviews from across the BBC

online. Find all the previous programmes on

the BBCi player. That is it for this week. Whatever you're brave enough

to see, I hope you enjoy it. Soft drinks are available! Thanks very

much for watching. Have a great week, bye-bye.

Good evening. If you're off to the cinema this weekend, it might be a

dash from the bus or from the car as you said in there, because there'll