York film preview: The Fall Guy, Love Lies Bleeding and Tarot

If the Oscars ever introduce an award for Best Named Character – and I’m confident that my decade-long letter-writing campaign will pay off any day now – then the hero of this week’s big new release would surely be a hands-down winner.

Because tonight, in The Fall Guy, Ryan Gosling is…Colt Seavers. Is that a high point of cinematic nomenclature or what?

You’ve got the first name, which makes you think of guns, and horses, and the kind of man who knows how to handle both.

(It’s a perfectly pitched choice of equine moniker too. Stallion Seavers? Too try-hard. Filly Seavers? Too girly, dammit! Gelding Seavers? A debauched aristocrat who meets an untimely end in series five of Midsomer Murders.)

And then there’s the surname. Colt Seavers. You bet your ass he does. I don’t even know what seavering is, but I’m sure as hell glad a guy like Colt’s out there doing it.

What a name. What a man. If however you’re not a fully paid-up member of the cult of Colt, then other movie-going options are available, as romantic thriller Love Lies Bleeding takes us back to the 80s and a gang of friends gets dealt a bad hand in Tarot…

New releases

The Fall Guy

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt lead this fun-sounding action comedy about a stuntman who uncovers a criminal conspiracy while working on the set of his latest movie.

Loosely inspired by the 1980s TV series of the same name, the plot sees Gosling’s battle-scarred action man Colt Seavers recruited to work on a big budget blockbuster when its star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) mysteriously goes missing – a situation further complicated for Seavers when he learns that the film is being directed by his ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno (Blunt).

Helmed by stuntman turned filmmaker David Leitch (John Wick, Bullet Train), this celebration of cinema’s unsung heroes has picked up plenty of plaudits both for its laughs and its spectacular set-pieces, leading the Independent to wonder: “Could it be that good, old-fashioned, practical moviemaking is finally back in style?” Fingers crossed…

Love Lies Bleeding

Director Rose Glass announced herself as one to watch with her once-seen, never-forgotten debut Saint Maud in 2019 – but the setting of her eagerly-awaited follow-up couldn’t be more different from the chilly British seaside town which was home to that film’s eponymous troubled heroine.

Set in an American desert town in the 1980s, Love Lies Bleeding blends romance and film noir in its tale of Lou (Kristen Stewart), a reclusive gym manager whose life is changed when she falls for ambitious bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian).

En route to a competition in Vegas, Jackie finds her plans derailed as she tries to help Lou deal with her family problems – bringing them into the orbit of Lou’s estranged gangster father (Ed Harris) and setting off a violent chain of events.

Tarot

God bless the young, for without their naive exuberance and wilful disregard for heavily signposted consequences, the world of horror movies would be a much less exciting place.

Here they are again, cracking open a set of Tarot cards in a spooky old house for lols, and blithely breaking the sacred rule that you must never use someone else’s deck.

Before you can say “Final Destination”, the gang – including Pennyworth’s Harriet Slater and Jacob Batalon, aka Spider-Man’s best bud Ned – are racing against time to avoid meeting a terrible fate.

See, if you made the same film about a bunch of fortysomething chartered surveyors, they’d just go, “Never use someone else’s deck? Right you are, then,” and be in bed with an Ovaltine by half nine. Maybe run through that spreadsheet again before the breakout session tomorrow…

Other screenings

Community cinema

With Luca Guadagnino’s latest film Challengers serving an ace in cinemas at the moment, South Bank Community Cinema’s screening this month is a timely opportunity to revisit the director’s earlier tale of youthful lust, 2017’s Call Me By Your Name.

A breakout hit for both Guadagnino and his star Timothée Chalamet – Empire opined that ‘He alone would make the film worth watching, but he’s just one of countless reasons’ – the story follows the burgeoning relationship between 17-year-old Elio (Chalamet) and grad student Oliver (Armie Hammer) over one idyllic Italian summer in 1983.

Given the spring we’ve had to date, a couple of hours in the sun certainly sounds an appealing prospect – slap on some factor 30 and head to Clements Hall, South Bank from 7:30pm (film starts 8pm). Tickets are £4 (cash only), and SBCC advise that it’s best to book in advance by e-mailing [email protected].

Other new releases and previews

As if scoring critical slam dunks across the board wasn’t glory enough, Challengers also gets perhaps the ultimate accolade this week as it becomes the latest film to be selected for one of City Screen’s Dog Friendly Screenings – canine cinephiles and their human friends should head down to Coney Street on Sun 5th.

Tues 7th sees a special screening of acclaimed new documentary Fantastic Machine at City Screen – exploring the history of our obsession with the camera and giving this all-timer the big screen showcase it so richly deserves – followed by a pre-recorded Q&A with directors Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck.

Showing at City Screen on Weds 8th, Stopmotion is the creepy tale of a stop motion animator and their macabre creations, which look like being easily the medium’s most disturbing antagonists since Preston the cyber-dog turned up at 62 West Wallaby Street.

Meanwhile, fans of 2021’s mesmerising Japanese Oscar winner Drive My Car have a couple more chances to catch director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s latest enigmatic tale Evil Does Not Exist at Everyman on Tues 7th and Weds 8th – it’s an ecologically-themed drama about a rural community who discover that their home has been earmarked as a glamping site.

Family-friendly films

“Lassie! What’s happened, girl? A toy is wrapped? Is it someone’s birthday? A boy is wrapped? Trapped! A boy is trapped! Where is he Lassie? In a bell? How did he…what, you mean in the church, or…? Oh, a well! Sorry Lassie, you’ve been overdubbed from the original German and I think it was a bit of a rush job…”

Yes, direct from Deutschland but with Americans talking over the top of it, everyone’s favourite canine crusader is back in Lassie: A New Adventure, which sees the doggy detective hot on the trail of some Cruella de Vil types who have half-inched her best mate – come for the mild peril, stay for the oddly compelling disconnect between dialogue and speaker (Vue, daily).

It’s a busy week for kidnappers, with the airborne heroes of Super Wings: Maximum Speed tasked with rescuing a group of social media influencers after they’re taken prisoner by the nefarious Billy Willy. Can they succeed? Stop sniggering at the back and head to Cineworld to find out (Sat 4th to Mon 6th).

A family of ducks heading south wind up in New York by accident in Migration, which is your budget viewing choice this Bank Holiday weekend at City Screen (Sat 4th, £3.30) and Cineworld (Sat 4th to Mon 6th, £2.50) – you can also catch it at Vue at their standard price (Sat 4th to Mon 6th, £6.99 – £9.99).

Vue’s budget option is The Inventor (Sat 4th to Mon 6th, £2.49), an educational animated tale about Leonardo da Vinci’s later life, while Everyman’s Toddler Club has a Julia Donaldson double bill in the form of The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom (Fri 3rd, Sat 4th, £6.25 child/£8.65 adult and toddler).

The return of Jar Jar and the greatest Coens ever? Yah! Old favourites back on the big screen

City Screen are three weeks in to their extended season celebrating the films of the Coen brothers, with this week’s offering being an undoubted high point in the duo’s career – the redoubtable Marge Gunderson is back on the case on Mon 6th in the 1996 comic criminal caper Fargo, quite the most charming film ever to feature someone being fed through a wood chipper.

As a fan of horror films, cult eighties films and Steven Spielberg’s Duel, I’m very much intrigued by Roadgames, a film I’ve never heard of before which is showing at City Screen on Sun 5th – it’s a little-seen Australian thriller (tick!) from 1981 (tick!) starring Jamie Lee Curtis (tick!), about a truck driver playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a serial killer (tick tick tick!).

The same day also sees City Screen showing super-tense 2021 drama Boiling Point – famous for being filmed all in one take, the story follows Stephen Graham’s chef as he has a very bad day in the kitchen, and spawned an acclaimed BBC TV series last year.

There are teenage kicks aplenty (and bites, and gouges, and a great deal more besides) at Everyman this week as they screen two very different iconic films of the 2000s in the form of dystopian fight-fest Battle Royale (Fri 3rd) and the opening chapter of swoonworthy vampire saga Twilight (Sun 5th, Tues 7th).

Meanwhile, Cineworld kick off a season in honour of the one and only Danny Boyle on Tues 7th with a screening of the director’s acclaimed 2007 sci-fi thriller Sunshine (written by future Ex Machina director Alex Garland, whose excellent new one Civil War is well worth catching if you can).

And finally, podracers at the ready – Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace returns to our screens to celebrate 25 years of tapping the previously unrealised cinematic potential of intergalactic trade route taxation.

Subject to, er, a muted response on its release back in 1999, George Lucas’ prequel and its two successors have been undergoing something of a critical rehabilitation in recent years, evidence either of the enduring power of great art or possibly the fact that the kids who watched them in the early noughties are now in their mid-twenties and starting to have prominent voices in the media – decide for yourself with screenings at City Screen (Sat 4th only), Cineworld, Everyman and Vue (all showing daily).