Sightseers; The Hunt; Great Expectations; Everyday; Rise of the Guardians; Here Comes the Boom
After the suffocating horror of Kill List, director Ben Wheatley heads for the great outdoors with a jet-black comedy about the barely repressed psychosis of the great British caravan holiday. Pitched somewhere between Mike Leigh's Nuts in May and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, Sightseers (2012, StudioCanal, 15) follows the increasingly violent misadventures of Tina and Chris (brilliantly played by co-writers Alice Lowe and Steve Oram) as they embark on an "erotic odyssey" into a land of tramways, pencil museums, viaducts and murder.
After consigning an obnoxious litter-dropper to the dustbin of local history, our cagoule-clad anti-heroes develop a taste for the hard stuff which no amount of picturesque National Trust landmarks can assuage. One moment they're racing fellow campers for a prime spot in the Dingly Dell (as opposed to outside the toilet block), the next they're clubbing a hiker to death after falling out over the subject of the disposal of dog poo. Despite the outlandish killings, this remains (just) close enough to home to be recognisable, juggling entertainment with revulsion, laughter with unease, presenting a cracked portrait of this green and unpleasant land that retains the ring of truth even as it descends into fantastical insanity. Behind it all lurks the ghost of Alan Clarke, who remains Wheatley's most significant influence, informing his tendency to hold a scene just a little too long to efficiently uncomfortable effect. The result is a sick and twisted affair; very funny, very nasty and very British.
In Festen, the Danish director and Dogme co-conspirator Thomas Vinterberg addressed the spectre of hidden child abuse with attention-grabbing results. In The Hunt (2012, Arrow, 15) he turns that scenario on its head with a harrowing drama about a false accusation that turns a respected teacher into a hounded pariah. Mads Mikkelsen is electrifying as the wrongly condemned man whose community turns on him after a young girl in his care makes an allegation that she doesn't understand but which she is effectively encouraged to repeat by her terrified, over-zealous elders. Counterpointing the raggedy hand-held rawness of its thematic predecessor, The Hunt replaces the edginess of Festen with an altogether more classical visual style, even nodding momentarily towards The Deer Hunter during its talismanic rural wraparound. It's extremely powerful stuff – tense, gripping and disturbing – with plaudits due, too, to young newcomer Annika Wedderkopp, who handles the challenges of her central role with aplomb.
There's an appropriate air of full-blooded gothic romance about Mike Newell's Great Expectations (2012, Lionsgate, 12), the latest adaptation of Dickens's endlessly re-interpretable text, which does a pretty good job of wrestling a superfluity of narrative and incidental detail into a manageable, mainstream two-hour movie. Jeremy Irvine and Holliday Grainger are the children living in the shadow/absence of their respective parental figures, both entangled within the labyrinthine webs spun by previous generations. Grainger (who was so impressive in the atmospheric Scouting Book for Boys) is particularly good as the emotionally stupefied Estella, fomented in the brooding fog of her mentor's hatred of men. As for Helena Bonham Carter, it would have been easy for her to go OTT and offer a mere variation on Bellatrix Lestrange, but her Miss Havisham is altogether more controlled, more cracked, more convincingly broken.
Playing to the heart rather than the head, Newell isn't afraid to crank things up to 11 when the moment requires, with the early misty moorland scenes evoking the lurking monstrosity of Frankenstein – both Whale's and Branagh's. Somewhat underappreciated on its initial release, I suspect that this will become a perennial favourite in years to come.
First shown on television, after which it enjoyed a brief outing in cinemas, Michael Winterbottom's terrific Everyday (2012, Soda, 15) finds its natural home on disc. Shot over a period of five years, which allows its central characters to grow before our very eyes, this intelligent, compassionate drama explores the fallout of imprisonment on a family who are reunited only during visiting hours – both inside and out. John Simm and Shirley Henderson are utterly convincing as the mother and father confronting life at a distance, each changing subtly between brief interludes together while their children grow up with alarming rapidity. Typically, Winterbottom keeps his cameras intimately unobtrusive, allowing him to film low-key dramatic scenes with the air and conviction of a documentary.
In cinemas, DreamWorks' animated fantasy Rise of the Guardians (2012, Paramount, PG) was presented in distracting 3D, serving to distance audiences even further from its already emotionally uninvolving narrative. On 2D disc this is a more welcoming proposition, although, as with Zack Snyder's (unconnected) Legend of the Guardians ("Wow, look at the feathers on that owl"), the complexity and artistry of the digital rendering remains the most memorable feature. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that this overpopulated mash-up of Jack Frost, Santa Claus, the Sandman, the Easter bunny et al (think Avengers Assemble with fairies) lacks storytelling heart and soul, despite its arresting technical proficiency.
Which is a lot more than can be said for Here Comes the Boom (2012, Sony, 12), in which irritating screen presence Kevin James plays a lovable teacher attempting to save his school's music programme by getting beaten up in the wrestling ring. Punching itself firmly in the face as the hapless loser actually starts to win (rather than just survive), this is a knockout only in the sense that it will put you to sleep.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/24/sightseers-hunt-great-expectations-dvd
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