Four new films to see this week: Weapons, Freakier Friday, The Kingdom and Conor Walsh: Selected Piano Works
★★★★☆
Directed by Zach Cregger. Starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan. 16 cert, gen release, 128 min
We begin with a voiceover explaining how, in the small hours of a strange morning, all but one among 18 members of the same elementary school class rose from their beds and, arms extended, ran silently into apparent oblivion. Cregger's follow up to the fine horror Barbarian goes on to tell the subsequent grim story from several perspectives: a teacher, a parent, a vagrant and so forth. The set up is neat. The acting is excellent. But we are essentially looking at the best ever Stephen King adaptation to not actually be adapted from a Stephen King story.
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Freakier Friday
★★★☆☆
Directed by Nisha Ginatra. Starring Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Mann Jacinto, Mark Harmon. PG cert, gen release, 110 min
Lohan and Curtis are back, 20 years later, for a sequel to the hugely popular body-swap comedy. This time it's a double switch with the younger woman's daughter and her imminent daughter-in-law. The results are messy but charming. Jordan Weiss's screenplay is not short of zingers. 'I put my heart and soul into those songs,' Lohan's pop-star charge whines. 'No, a 44-year-old Dutch music producer did,' comes the pithy retort. This old-school confection, smartly reuniting the original cast, delights in every silly scene. Much better than recent dire disinterments such as Hocus Pocus 2.
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The Kingdom
★★★★☆
Directed by Julien Colonna. Starring Ghjuvanna Benedetti, Saveriu Santucci, Anthony Morganti, Andrea Cossu, Frédéric Poggi. Limited release, 108 min
Lesia, the 15-year-old heroine of this riveting 1990s crime saga, is hoping to go on a date with local shop-boy Fabien when she is instead deposited in a safehouse with her dad. The Corsican landscape – sun-drenched yet ominous – mirrors the uneasiness of every interaction. For all the familial complications on screen, The Kingdom neither mythologises nor tempers the Mafia. Violence lingers in the margins of mob dinners, boar hunts and bulletproof vests. The tight focus on Lesia and her realisation that the men she loves are also capable of monstrous things reinvigorates the form.
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Conor Walsh: Selected Piano Works
★★★★☆
Directed by Keith Walsh. 12A cert, limited release, 64 min
Touching documentary on the late Mayo-born ambient musician combines archival interviews with musical excerpts and attractive visuals. Much of those sequences could work in a gallery setting, but the film is also a touching study of a fascinating, if allusive, personality. Walsh's is the only voice we hear and, while he is elliptical about the music, he has much to (gently) tell us about a life lived under the cultural radar. He died tragically, at 36, from a heart attack in 2016. One can hardly imagine a better memorial than this quietly persuasive, impressively original project.
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