Film Review: 28 Years Later is ambitious — and blackly comic
And so to the cinema, there to take refuge from all the rage swirling about the world, where we discover – courtesy of 28 Years Later (16s) – that a rage virus has infected most of the UK's population, turning them into rampaging zombies who feast on human flesh.
Happily, a self-sufficient community has kept itself safe on an island for the three decades or so since the virus first erupted in 28 Days Later (2002).
On a rites-of-passage trip to the mainland, however, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) make a terrifying discovery: the zombies have made an evolutionary leap, and soon father and son are fleeing for their lives from an apparently indestructible Alpha.
Alex Garland and Danny Boyle reunite as writer and director, respectively, for a gripping zombie flick that seeks to expand the parameters of the genre.
Occasionally self-indulgent – there's an insistence on equating the survivors with the heroes of WWI, for example, or the doughty yeomen of Shakespeare's Henry V; the percussive soundtrack, meanwhile, is frequently intrusive to the point of irritation – the film is endearingly rooted in the most prosaic of vital concerns: there might be a plague of ravenous zombies roaming the mainland's rewilded forests, but Spike will stop at nothing to get medical help for his ailing mother Isla (Jodie Comer).
The storytelling is erratic at times, such as when a Swedish commando, Erik (Edvin Ryding) pops up to save Spike and Isla from certain doom, but it's also gloriously cinematic when the deranged hermit Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) emerges from the wilderness like a mellow Colonel Kurtz.
All told, it's a sprawling, ambitious and blackly comic take on the zombie genre, and one likely to make a star of young Alfie Williams.
Disney/Pixar's Elio
Elio
★★★★☆
Theatrical release
Elio (G) opens with the space-obsessed, friendless Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) desperate to be abducted by aliens.
So it's joy unconfined when Elio finds himself beamed up to the Communiverse, where all the intelligent life of the universe convenes.
There are just two small issues: one, the other aliens believe Elio to be the leader of all Earthlings; two, the warlord Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), rejected by the Communiverse on the grounds of excessive aggression, has declared his intention to bring the rest of the universe to heel.
Can Elio and his new pal Glordon (Remy Edgerly) save the Communiverse?
Directed by Adrian Molina, Madeleine Sharafian and Domee Shi, this latest offering from Pixar delivers a charming sci-fi yarn that promotes a timely message of plurality and inclusivity in the face of an authoritarian threat.
Vividly delivered as the Pixar creatives cut loose on all manner of alien possibilities, the story also gives us an unusually vulnerable, self-doubting hero: Elio is a likeably ebullient character who is comically unaware of his very many failings as a space-faring hero, which only adds to the poignancy of his quest.
Renowned Swedish TV-duo Filip and Fredrik embark on a trip to France, aiming to rekindle the zest for life of Filip's father in The Last Journey
The Last Journey
★★★★☆
Theatrical release
Concerned that his 80-year-old father Lars, a retired teacher, has resigned himself to 'rotting into his armchair,' Swedish filmmaker Filip Hammar decides to take Lars on a road-trip – The Last Journey (PG) – from Sweden to the South of France, where the Hammar family spent many idyllic summer holidays.
Slightly bewildered and more than a little depressed, Lars reluctantly agrees, and so the pair, with Filip's filmmaker colleague Fredrik Wikingsson along for the ride, take to the road in a battered orange Renault 4 (aka 'Europe's most overtaken car').
What follows is a touching account of Lars' gradual revitalisation, even if the process is not without its perils, physical and emotional, and especially because Filip, determined to force his father's recovery, can occasionally ride roughshod over his father's fears that he is being pushed too far.
Overall, though, the film is a bittersweet, heart-warming affair; you would be well advised to have some tissues handy for the concluding scenes.
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