SIENNA MILLER leads a superb ensemble cast in a tale of tortured motherhood, American Woman. Say what you like about Godzilla: King Of The Monsters — you can’t claim there isn’t enough of the big fella this time.
Mickey Rourke rolls back the years in a sumptuous re-release of neo-noir Angel Heart. And Jesse Eisenberg is typically twitchy in the slick but insubstantial tech drama The Hummingbird Project.
DVD Of The Week: American Woman
(15) 111mins, out Monday
5
SIENNA MILLER is superb as Debs, the 32-year-old gran whose teenage daughter — herself a single mom — disappears one night. Debs is left literally holding the baby.
By turns tender and raw, this is a convincing, multi-textured, episodic exploration of the triumphs and tragedies of blue-collar life, or what might less charitably be called white trash.
There is bleak humour in Brad Ingelsby’s script but the beautiful performances across the board are what elevate American Woman about melodrama. Miller is no saint but a difficult, conflicted, troubled presence.
Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul are the biggest names in the supporting cast, as Miller’s forthright sister and potential love interest, but Will Sasso is every bit as good in an understated role as her brother-in-law.
If anything, there is too much incident packed in, as if director Jake Scott loses interest in the central conceit, but he too conjures a couple of transcendent images.
★★★★☆
Godzilla: King Of The Monsters
(12A) 132mins, out Monday
5
AVENGERS: Endgame showed megabucks blockbusters can be thoughtful and touching even as the universe explodes round our ears. If that’s too high a bar, big, dumb fun should at least be fun. This fails on even that basic score.
While Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla featured a handful of heartstopping moments and Kong: Skull Island had a certain gonzo derring-do, King Of The
Monsters is ponderous, lumbering and portentous.
You can’t say there isn’t enough Godzilla this time. Quite the opposite.
It is as exhausting and as entertaining as being yelled at for two hours by a giant toddler, smashing together the world’s most expensive toys because he doesn’t know what else to do with them.
Talented performers including Kyle Chandler and Charles Dance are left to stand around saying withering things about how absurd it all is, as if anyone needed reminding.
★★☆☆☆
Hitsville: The Making Of Motown
(12) 107mins, out now
5
RELEASED in cinemas last month, this celebration of Motown features more star names than you can shake your moneymaker at.
It is affable, undemanding viewing — a whistlestop tour of the Detroit record label’s greatest hits, with a soundtrack to warm the heart and get the feet moving.
Don’t expect profundity or a probing analysis of the cultural and social landscape upon which the Motown phenomenon exploded. There are a few nods to the simmering racial hatred in America’s Deep South but this is not that story. Most of the tales are told with a twinkle.
Hitsville is like your favourite uncles and aunties coming over to play you their killer record collection, then spending most of their evening talking over it.
★★★☆☆
Angel Heart
(18) 113mins, out Monday
5
SUMPTUOUS Blu-ray re-release for Alan Parker’s celebrated neo-noir… or maybe just noir, seeing as the film is more than 30 years old.
Mickey Rourke, long before he was a battered curiosity, exudes lazy machismo and mercurial sex appeal as the private investigator tasked with finding a missing singer — doing that rumpled, squinty Bruce Willis thing better than Willis himself ever has.
Robert De Niro gives an elusive, understated performance (yes, really) as the shadowy figure who kickstarts his quest.
The quasi-metaphysical battle-for-the-soul stuff is signposted early on — you’ll guess De Niro’s true identity about an hour before Rourke does — but retains an elemental power as the gore and madness ramp up.
Some surreal moments and stunning images position this as a cousin of sorts to Twin Peaks, which hit TVs a couple of years later.
Decades on from the controversy that surrounded its release, Angel Heart still shocks, thrills and enthralls.
★★★★☆
The Hummingbird Project
(15) 110mins, streaming now
5
DIRECT-to-digital release, aptly, for this dry, talky drama about the (fictional) race to build a super-fast data link between Wall Street and rural
Kansas — handing the winner a tiny but decisive edge over rival investors, worth billions of dollars.
Jesse Eisenberg brings his usual edgy energy as the scheme’s ambitious driving force, while Alexander Skarsgaard plays against type as his bemused egghead cousin Anton, the tech side of the operation.
Eisenberg’s presence makes comparisons to The Social Network inevitable. This has some of that look and feel but not the Oscar-winning script.
The performances keep it watchable, especially Better Call Saul’s Michael Mando, although Salma Hayek, looking like Storm from X Men, is almost cartoonish in the film’s sole major female role.
It is polished but pointless, slick but insubstantial, with nobody to root for. Early on, Eisenberg insists his team are David and not Goliath. In fact, there is no plucky underdog.
★★☆☆☆
