the times | Friday November 27 2020 1GT 9
podcasts
T
he BBC’s I’m Not a Monster
(which ties into the
Panorama documentary
Return from Isis that was
broadcast on Monday) has
an extraordinary story, amazing access
and a narrator dodging bombs in Iraq.
The extraordinary story is that of
Samantha Sally, an ordinary American
mom who travelled to Syria with her
young family and joined Isis (not that
ordinary, obviously). This unorthodox
relocation was prompted by her new
husband’s decision to make a midlife
career change and
become an Isis sniper.
I’m Not a Monster is
filled with properly
bone-chilling moments.
One of Sally’s siblings
reads the desperate,
pleading email she
received from her
sister, which was written
as bombs crashed
around her. And
heartbreakingly there’s a
recording of Sally’s ten-
year-old son, Matthew,
explaining to his proud
stepdad how he will
detonate his suicide belt
if approached by American soldiers.
There’s a mystery at the heart of
all this: was Sally tricked into joining
Isis by her husband (as she initially
claimed) or did she want to go?
Nobody is better placed to answer
that question than the presenter Josh
Baker, who has interviews not only
with Sally (now in prison in America)
and her family, but with just about
everyone else who matters, from FBI
agents and Isis fighters to former
slaves of the caliphate.
Transmissions is a podcast about the
band Joy Division narrated by Maxine
Peake. It’s really good. It’s surprising
(for this millennial at least) to recall
that Joy Division’s thrilling, dark and
haunted music, which sounds as if it
was beamed out of a dystopian future
that never arrived, has roots that now
seem parochial and old-fashioned.
When Ian Curtis answered the
band’s advert seeking a singer he
had to call the guitarist Bernard
Sumner on his mum’s land line. They
rehearsed in derelict Manchester
factories. Everything was bleak and
postindustrial; the studio technology
was rudimentary.
Transmissions is excellent. The script
is deft and gripping, and there are
interviews with the band’s surviving
members as well as Liam Gallagher,
Damon Albarn, Deborah Curtis (Ian’s
widow) and more, plus tons of great
archive stuff, including recordings of
early interviews and performances.
The only flaw is Peake’s narration.
She does that typical actor thing
of performing the commentary
rather than just reading it out, and
the cheery inflections of her voice jar
with the gritty world she describes.Samantha Sally
with her son
Matthew and husband
Moussa ElhassaniSome easygoing chemistry between
the leads Charlie Hunnam and Jack
O’Connell, below, plus oodles of
carefully considered production design
(dive bars, grotty flats, seedy lairs),
cannot quite overcome the glaring
lack of authenticity, psychological
realism or even storytelling originality
in this neo-noir.
O’Connell
is Walter
Kaminski,
the
sensitive
“dumb
lug”
Boston
boxer
with the
crooked
manager
brother
Stanley
(Hunnam) who
together frequently
replay, poorly, the climax of On the
Waterfront (Instead of “I coulda been
a contender!” Walter says: “I’m a
f***ing joke!”).
When a failed bout leaves
Stanley with a huge debt to repay
to Mr Big, aka Pepper (Jonathan
Majors), the brothers must travel
across the country to Reno to deliver
a mysterious femme fatale, Sky
(Jessica Barden), to Mr Even Bigger,
aka Yates (John Cullum). It’s directed
by Max — son of Henry, “the Fonze”
— Winkler with some style, but never
moves beyond paper-thin pastiche.
O’Connell’s and Hunnam’s accents
repeatedly wobble. KM
Amazon, Apple, Google and Sky
from November 30Jungleland
15, 90min
{{(((The End of the Storm
99min
{((((The ultimate stocking filler for fans
of Liverpool football club has arrived
early with this shocking piece of
branded content disguised (badly) as
an actual feature documentary.
Billed as “an insider’s account”
of the club’s 2019-20 Premier League
winning season, it is, instead, a
ruthlessly bland march through the
matches, accompanied by carefully
curated clips from Jürgen Klopp, the
manager, speaking in generalities and
neatly deployed platitudes such as:
“The best football is always about the
expression of emotion.”
What’s worse is that the director
James Erskine repeatedly intercuts the
tedium on screen with meaningless
footage from around the globe of
Liverpool’s international fanbase (from
India, to China, to Egypt and the US),
offering commentary and, well,
watching the same matches on telly
(hmm, way to go with the insights).
And what’s even worse is that Erskine
recently directed the impeccable
music documentary Billie, which was
as intelligent, provocative and
ideologically nimble as this is dumb,
crass and intellectually incurious. It
must have been an off-day. KM
Amazon, Apple, Google and Sky
from November 30, plus DVD
and Blu-raypodcasts
A bomb-dodging,
bone-chilling drama
Sally’s ten-
year-old
explains
how he’ll
detonate
his suicide
belt
I’m Not a
Monster
{{{{{Transmissions
{{{{(An investigation
of an American
Isis wife impresses
James Marriott
b f b O r p r s a a h r y e s
deto
Samanth Sllmas rom-com
Harper’s old flame, Abby’s revulsion
at Harper’s ability to play the perfect
straight daughter — that you’ll root
for them to stay together, right into
the perilous last act.
It’s not a perfect movie by any
means, and there’s some awful
slapstick nonsense near the end that
seems far beneath the efforts of all
involved. Yet it does contain one of
the most unashamed and movingdeclarations of love (“I am done being
scared.. .”) since Bradley Cooper laid it
all out for Jennifer Lawrence in Silver
Linings Playbook (“Thank you. I love
you”) and Hugh Grant did the same
for Andie MacDowell in Four
Weddings and a Funeral (“In the words
of David Cassidy.. .”). You’ll weep.
You’ll chuckle. You’ll wish your
daughters were gay.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Skyll
i,
m) who
frequently
l h li ffO h