“My guinea pig ate it”…“I forgot how many children I had”…“Oh I’m sorry, I thought it said tux return – that’s why I’m dressed like this”…
There’s no doubting that a late tax return can inspire rare feats of creativity when it comes to excuses – but perhaps never so much as in this week’s head-spinning sci-fi action adventure/comedy/existential treatise/family drama Everything Everywhere All At Once, which sees Michelle Yeoh having a very bad day at the IRS.
Meanwhile, Zac Efron tries to protect his pyromaniacally-inclined daughter from sinister forces in Firestarter, and Mark Wahlberg finds god in Father Stu (don’t worry, it’s not a Father Ted remake)…
New releases
Everything Everywhere All At Once
There are some films which it is best to go into knowing as little about them as possible.
In that spirit, I headed down to City Screen on Monday night to catch a preview of this hotly-tipped US indie film, knowing only that it was, as the blurb puts it, ‘a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman (Michelle Yeoh) who can’t seem to finish her taxes’.
Three days later, I’m still not quite sure what I saw, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that it included the following: super high-concept sci-fi shenanigans; super low-brow humour; Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; Jamie Lee Curtis with a truly terrible haircut; and at the centre of it all, a sort of mystical bagel.
Suffice to say that future cult favourite status is all but nailed-on – perhaps not surprising, given that it’s made by the directing duo known as Daniels, who previously cast Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse in 2016’s oddball comedy Swiss Army Man.
Cert 15, 139 mins | |
City Screen, Everyman | |
From Fri May 13 |
Firestarter
Of all the spooky happenings in this latest Stephen King thriller, the scariest thing for some viewers might be the realisation that former High School Musical pin-up Zac Efron is now old enough to be cast as a dad.
There are obvious shades of Carrie in this tale of a young girl (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) with extraordinary pyrokinetic abilities which she struggles to control – though she at least has more supportive parents in the form of Efron and Sydney Lemmon (Fear the Walking Dead), who have taken their daughter on the run to protect her from sinister federal agents who want to harness her power.
As with other recent King adaptations, it’s the second go-around on the source novel – the conflagrations in the 1984 original came courtesy of a post-E.T. Drew Barrymore – with this new version brought to us by modern day horror maestros Blumhouse (Insidious, Get Out).
Cert 15, 110 mins | |
Cineworld, Vue | |
From Fri May 13 | |
More details |
Father Stu
One look at the poster for this film and you assume it’s another knockabout, one-laugh-per-half-hour Mark Wahlberg comedy in which he plays an ex-con on the run from the mob who pretends to be a priest – a Sister Act for bros, if you will.
But – despite it also reuniting Wahlberg with his Daddy’s Home 2 co-star Mel Gibson – this is very much not the case; it is instead a based-on-a-true-story drama about a former boxer (Wahlberg) who becomes an unlikely man of the cloth after surviving a terrible motorcycle accident.
Gibson and Jacki Weaver (Bird Box) co-star as Stu’s estranged parents in the inspirational tale, which was something of a passion project for Wahlberg – and like many a passion project before it, it’s met with a fairly lukewarm critical response. Divine intervention required, perhaps…
Cert 15, 124 mins | |
Cineworld, Vue | |
From Fri May 13 | |
More details |
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Other screenings
A heavily pregnant woman forms an unlikely bond with an escaped Indigenous convict in Australian western The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, which shows at City Screen this week (Fri 13th, Mon 16th, Weds 18th, Thurs 19th).
Classic musical Cabaret turns 50 this year, and to celebrate City Screen are opening the doors of the Kit Kat Club once again on Sun 15th in their regular reDiscover strand, which offers big screen classics at a reduced price of £8 (£5 for members).
Two documentaries showing at City Screen deal with the difficult subject of death and loss. Filmed in and around Brighton, Dead Good (Sun 15th) follows three groups of people dealing with the process of saying goodbye to their loved ones, aided by a team of free-thinking funeral directors who want to challenge the increasing corporatisation of the process.
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It’s followed on Tues 17th by Eleven Days in May, a memorial to the children who were killed in Gaza during an 11-day bombing campaign by Israel in 2021, with each child’s story told via archive and personal testimony – though be warned that it features images that viewers may find upsetting.
To coincide with the release of Gaspar Noé’s Vortex – a study of dementia which marks a change of pace for the notoriously provocative Argentinian filmmaker – City Screen are running a season dedicated to some of the film’s influences, chosen by the man himself, and starting this week with 1970 murder mystery The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Mon 16th).
The film marked the debut of the celebrated Italian director Dario Argento, whose name is synonymous with the pulpy giallo horror subgenre (recently homaged in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho), and who makes a rare foray in front of the camera in Vortex.
As anyone who’s been watching the Top of the Pops repeats on BBC4 over the last few months can testify, there’s never been another band quite like the KLF, and it was inevitable that the aura of mystery with which they surrounded themselves would inspire a documentary at some point – made without the duo’s co-operation, but with their (eventual) blessing, Who Killed the KLF? (City Screen, Weds 18th) is a tour through the weird and wonderful world of Messrs. Drummond and Cauty.
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No word yet as to whether Jade, Perrie and Leigh-Anne will be sending a million quid up in smoke on the final date of their pre-hiatus concert tour, but if you can’t get there in person to find out, then the bet-hedgingly titled Little Mix Live – The Last Show (For Now…) is being broadcast live from the O2 on Sat 14th (Cineworld, Everyman, Vue) – with an encore screening at Vue on Sun 15th.
At the opposite end of the musical scale, documentary This Much I Know to Be True (Everyman, Sun 15th) follows the enduring partnership of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis as they rehearse for their 2021 tour, while the Twenty One Pilots Cinema Experience (Everyman, Vue, Thurs 19th) is an extended cut of the US band’s livestreamed release show for their recent Scaled and Icy album, remastered for the big screen.
Documentaries are all well and good, of course, but you know you’ve really made it if your song gets covered by a punk rock porcupine – and the ever-eclectic musical selections of the Sing 2 gang are once again your family-friendly budget offerings this weekend at Cineworld (£2.50) and Vue (£2.49), while City Screen have an Autism-Friendly screening on Sun 15th (£3.00).
Meanwhile, City Screen’s Kids’ Club screening on Sat 14th (£3.00) is an old-school Disney classic in the form of Lady and the Tramp.
And finally, a trio of classic oldies back on the big screen this week – Everyman are possibly tempting fate with a screening of the original Friday the 13th on, er, Friday 13th, and their Nicolas Cage season continues with 90s action classic Face/Off on Tues 17th, while Vue’s James Bond odyssey arrives at 1967’s You Only Live Twice (Sat 14th), in which Blofeld finally shows his face and John Barry composes one of the greatest Bond themes of all. Take it away, Nancy…