What to Watch this Week: 30 Jan - 6 Feb
The best things to watch this week on the big screen, the small screen and your laptop screen, including Toni Erdmann and the (supposedly) final film in the Resident Evil series
What to watch in cinema:
Toni Erdmann
Toni Erdmann is a three hour German comedy. Wait! Please keep reading, because Toni Erdmann is also one of the year’s most loved arthouse releases. It debuted back in Cannes in the summer, where critics fell head over heels. It’s since cleaned up at the European Film Awards and been Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Picture at the Oscars.
The film follows a father as he tries to reconnect with his corporate daughter (she’s helping a multinational corporation justify the hundreds of layoffs in its Romanian offices) in the most ridiculous way possible: by putting on a ratty wig and crooked false teeth and pretending to be an eccentric business guru. It sounds like a goofy Hollywood movie, but the tone is pleasingly pitch-black, the performances deadpan and the comedy toe-curling – think Larry David at his most awkward.
Add in its sly critique of the type of multinational capitalism that thrives in the European Union and a bitter-sweet family drama and you have what many people – including the critics at Sight & Sound – reckon is the film of last year. Released 3 Feb by Soda Pictures
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
The last time we saw RE’s hero Alice in Resident Evil: Retribution she was standing on top of the White House, an evil corporation’s leader was in the President’s chair and a horde of people were outside wanting to get in to rip the administration to pieces. Prescient or what?
In this Final Chapter she’s once again been betrayed by the Umbrella Corporation and has to enter the Hive (the underground bunker from the first film) to kick some mutant zombie arse. Expect another lean 90 minutes of bad dialogue, graceful action set-pieces, balletic gunplay, cardboard villains, stylish cubist set design, steampunk costumes and breakneck action. In other words: a whole load of badass from the Paul Anderson who didn’t make There Will Be Blood. As for that title, take it with a pinch of salt. Released 3 feb by Sony
What to watch at home:
iBoy
This Netflix movie, based on Kevin Brooks’ YA novel, concerns a teen loser who manages to get a fragment of shattered iPhone circuitry embedded in his brain. (Talk about product placement!) The result is it connects him to the digital world around him and essentially turns him into a superhero. Sounds ridiculous, but no more so, we suppose, than being able to crawl on walls as a result of a bite from a radioactive spider or turning into a green rage monster after an overdose of gamma radiation.
What has sold us on iBoy is the cast, with Bill Milner (aka the kid from The Son of Rambow) as our Apple-improved hero and Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams as the girl on whom he has a major crush. Streaming now on Netflix.
Childhood of a Leader
One of the year’s most overlooked films, Childhood of a Leader marks the stunning directing debut of 28-year-old actor Brady Corbet. It’s the tale of a spoiled rich kid who grows up to be a despotic leader (remind you of anyone), and Corbet shapes the film as an operatic tragedy filled with sharp ironies and breathtaking set pieces.
Also stunning is the film’s nerve-shredding music, which comes courtesy of Scott Walker. The result of the collaboration is a powerhouse score – easily the year’s finest. Suffice to say, a few bows got snapped during the recording.
“You could tell that half the orchestra were a bit confused,” said Corbet when we interviewed him last year. “I never quite imagined how gargantuan [the score] was going to be, but when you ask Scott to do something grand, you can’t be like, ‘Hey, could you just tone it down a little bit?’ You have to let him turn it up to 11, it’s where he operates at his best.” Released on 30 Jan on DVD and Blu-ray
Ghosts of Mars
Some film fans might tell you that John Carpenter hasn’t made a great film since the 1980s, but they’re clearly overlooking this absolute gem he made at the start of the 21st century. The reviews that marked Ghosts of Mars' 2001 release were, shall we say, harsh. “Ghosts of Mars doesn't just scrape the bottom of the barrel,” said Derek Malcolm in the Guardian. “It is the bottom as far as this once talented director is concerned.”
Looking at the film a decade and a half on, it’s clearly a sturdy and supremely well crafted B-movie that would be welcome on your Blu-ray collection alongside Carpenter classics like Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York. In fact, with its intricate multi-point of view structure told through interlocking flashbacks, it shows that the old dog is still very much an innovator, even when he’s recycling old plots and scenarios.
One of the surprising champions of the film has been former First Minister Alex Salmond, who chose to screen Ghosts of Mars at Glasgow Film Festival in 2013 when invited to show his favourite “geek movie”.
“Any fool can come along with a great film,” he told the GFF audience. “It takes real style to come along with a Rotten Tomato.” Watch the full interview below. Released 30 Jan on Blu-ray from Arrow