Daily Mirror - 30.08.2019

mirror.co.uk FRIDAY 30.08.2019 DAILY MIRROR^43

DM1ST

The

BIG

release

Watch at home STAR RATINGS ★★★★★Brilliant ★★★★Good ★★★Average ★★Poor ★Dreadful

AMAZING

GRACE

Cert U ★★★

Digital and disc

September 2

Legal battles and the death

of director Sydney Pollack

ensured the amazing concert footage in this documentary

of Aretha Franklin was locked away for decades.

Digital technology has been used to painstakingly piece

together the jumbled hours of recordings which were

recorded over two days in January of 1972, at a baptist

church in Los Angeles.

If you aren’t a fan of the Queen of Soul before you watch

this, you certainly will be afterwards.

POKEMON

DETECTIVE

PIKACHU

Cert PG ★★★★

Digital Monday, disc

September 16

This surprisingly

entertaining video game adaptation is a family friendly

comedy adventure which mixes live action with CGI, and

sees a teenager team up with a cute animated creature.

Ryan “Deadpool” Reynolds voices the adorable Pikachu,

while Justice Smith is engaging as his human partner, who

is new in town and investigating his father’s death.

Being shot on film not digital cameras gives a gloss to the

enjoyably silly and funny action, and it will make you wonder

why all video game movies aren’t this good.

LONG SHOT

Cert 15 ★★★★

Digital Monday, disc

September 9

Charlize Theron and Seth

Rogen try to defy the

romantic odds in this funny

and slick modern spin on the screwball comedy, set in the

whirlwind world of a political campaign.

She plays US Secretary of State Charlotte Field, whose

presidential bid is threatened when she falls for Rogen’s

newly appointed speech writer.

Brisk and full of nostalgic appeal for a middle-aged

audience, moments of gross-out comedy and drug taking are

mixed with political satire as the wheels of romance fall off.

with CHRIS HUNNEYSETT

THE INFORMER

Cert 15 Running time 113mins ★★★

T

his hard-edged, old-school crime

thriller is a resolutely grim and

increasingly violent affair, and

holds your attention with a hard-

working cast, decent production

values and a twisty story which holds its best

tricks until the end.

Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman scowls and

growls through the mean streets of New

York as Pete – for all the world a heavily

tattooed Athena poster wrought to rippling

life – and a ‘soldier’ in the Polish drugs cartel

that is importing huge quantities of heroin

into the US.

Though Kinnaman is far from miscast, he’s

the most Scandinavian-looking Pole you’re

ever likely to encounter on the big screen.

Pete’s also working as an

informer for the FBI in the hope of

leaving the criminal life and

making a fresh start with his

adorable daughter and loving wife.

The latter is played by Cuban

actress Ana de Armas, who’s soon

to appear in the next James Bond

film, No Time to Die.

But when a drug deal goes

wrong and leaves a New York cop dead, Pete

is forced to take the fall, and he runs in ever-

decreasing and desperate circles trying to

escape the clutches of both the Feds and

the mobsters.

Rosamund Pike is an American-accented

agent with a conflicted conscience, whose

boss is another Brit star, Clive Owen. A

veteran of twisty Hollywood movies such

as 2009’s Duplicity, his casting

is significant in a small but

pivotal role.

Filling the plot with corrupt

ambassadors, foreigners

flooding the US with drugs,

wronged army veterans and

honest blue-collar cops, the

script unashamedly leans into

the political narrative of the

current US administration.

It’s adapted from a Swedish crime novel,

and though Italian director Andrea Di

Stefano is more comfortable giving the

violence a bloody realism than offering depth

to the few domestic scenes, he delivers a dry

but effective entertainment.

He’s a Pole apart

‘‘When a drug

deal goes

wrong, Pete

is forced to

take the fall

In a crazily busy week at the cinema, other films released include

Swedish sci-fi Aniara, sci-fi documentary Memory: The Origins of

Alien, Jamaican reggae documentary Inna De Yard, the Robert

Redford-directed horse drama The Mustang, and Gary Oldman thriller Killers

Anonymous. So there’s something for all the family to watch – but not all the

family should be watching everything...

@ChrisHunneysett

BAIT

Cert 15 Running time 89mins ★★★★★

I was utterly hooked by this startlingly different British drama

which deploys an arresting visual style to catch the deep social

currents of a contemporary Cornish fishing village.

Edward Rowe is a force of nature as a proud, determined

fisherman who dreams of owning his own boat and maintaining

his family’s seagoing tradition. But an inexorable tide of middle-

class tourists are sinking the prospects of the locals, creating a

conflict which is to have tragic consequences.

Remarkable for its consummate editing, economical

storytelling, compelling humanity, salty dialogue and dry

humour, it thrillingly mixes cutting social observations and

elements of folk horror with an almost documentary air.

Harking back to post-war cinema by being filmed in black

and white on old-fashioned 16mm film stock, the stark

photography is full of gnarled textures and lends a timelessness

to this very modern tale, which is the best British drama of the

year so far.

FORCE OF

NATURE

Edward Rowe

MRS LOWRY

AND SON

Cert PG Running time

91mins ★★★★

A dream team of British

acting talent creates a

moving portrait of an

artist as a middle-aged

man in this achingly

melancholic biopic of

“matchstick men”

painter, L. S. Lowry.

Having won awards for

playing another great artist in Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr

Turner, Timothy Spall carries himself with a sad, quiet

dignity while being dominated by his bed-ridden, self-pitying

and snobbish mother.

She’s played by the grand dame of English acting,

Vanessa Redgrave who relishes the dialogue of Salford

screenwriter Martyn Hesford whose lines have the comic

observation of playwright Alan Bennett.

A thwarted concert pianist, the embittered woman tries

to persuade her son to stop pursuing his passion for

painting while he earns money as a rent collector.

Director Adrian Noble provides a claustrophobic canvas

for his stars to bring a testy and tender relationship to full-

drawn life.

MELANCHOLY Timothy Spall

plays Lowry in his middle years