Film review – Dad’s Army (Oliver Parker, 2016)

Dad’s Army is one of the best-regarded sitcoms to ever come out of Britain. A film would always have two almost certain outcomes: making a lot of money and not living up to the public’s fond memories of the original series. In this sense Oliver Parker’s 2016 effort doesn’t disappoint.

This film adaptation stars Toby Jones as Captain Mainwaring, the leader of a Home Guard [1] platoon the fictional Walmington-on-Sea in England during World War II. His platoon consists of Sergeant Wilson (Bill Nighy), Lance Corporal Jones (Tom Courtenay), Private Godferey (Michael Gambon), Private Pike (Blake Harrison), Private Walker (Daniel Mays) and Private Frazer (Bill Paterson). They are being visited by glamorous journalist Rose Winters (Catherine Zeta Jones), there to report on the Home Guard.

The authenticity of this film is, to the untrained eye, fantastic. The colour washes and costumes give it the feel that you genuinely are watching a Home Guard operation in 1944. There is a clear attention to detail that has gone into this and the film is much better for it.

The plot, generally, is enjoyable. It is pitched at the right level between the series and what is expected of a big-budget film. It puts the Home Guard into a potentially larger plot that is at the centre of the war efforts.

Where this film majorly falls down is the humour, or lack thereof. The writing was on the wall with the trailer, which felt a little flat. Unfortunately, most of the best material was featured in one or more of the trailers, and between these moments the humour was lightly sprinkled in a way that may bring a smile to the audience members’ faces but never succeeds in delivering a belly laugh. In this sense it has been a huge failure in comparison to the original series.

The actors do a wonderful job impersonating the original cast members, to scarily uncanny levels. This is perhaps the only time when all these stars will grace the screen together and it is a real letdown that the material they’ve been served is so underwhelming.

A massive disappointment.

[1] During World War II, those unable to serve on the front line provided a second line of defence on British home soil. Platoons were generally made up of those too old or too young to serve in battles, individuals with injuries or illnesses that prevented them from being on the front line and those with professional occupation that were exempt from joining the front line war effort. It was a significant operation, consisting of around 1.5m volunteers.

Film review – Hail, Caesar! (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2016)

Hail, Caesar!, the new film from the Coen Brothers, is a film heavy on nostalgia and authenticity but light on focus to moving along the central plot. It has so many fantastic elements that seeing the final product fall short is a huge disappointment.

The film tells the story of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), head of production at Capitol Pictures whose job involves firefighting the many problems created by the studio’s roster of stars who seem to have an uncanny ability to mix themselves up in controversy. The studio’s next big film will be Hail, Caesar!, a biblical epic in which Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) will star. However, when a prop wine goblet is spiked by an extra on the set, he is kidnapped by a group of communist scriptwriters called The Future and held to ransom for a then significant total of $100,000, putting pressure on Mannix at a time when he is considering a career change to join the aviation industry with the Lockheed Corporation.

  
It felt at times that the Coen Brothers were so hell bent on fitting in a plethora of big-star cameos that they didn’t care that each time they did so they completely derailed the focus of the story. Take, for example, Frances McDormant’s studio film editor CC Calhoun. Her hammed-up effort is a nice comedy turn introduced at a critical point of the film. She could have easily turned into a key character, but never reappeared and thus there didn’t really seem to be much point to her appearance.

A bigger offender comes in the form of a more significant subplot featuring pregnant star Dee-Anna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) and surety agent Joe Silverman (Jonah Hill). It’s a huge eater of time but in the end resolves itself with little input from Mannix at a time when he is deciding that he needs to stay in the film industry, presumably because he is so critical to it.

Similarly, Channing Tatum, who features as Burt Gurney, gets a great song and dance scene – a real highlight to the film – but is probably only in three scenes in total. The time spent with Johansson and Hill may have been better served with Tatum. Instead, none of the three characters really feel significant enough to elicit the response they could have achieved had more time been spent with them.

  
One character that does end up getting fully fleshed-out is the Western star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich). He is introduced as a big studio star that has got where he is by his ability to perform massive stunts rather than any of his acting qualities. There are some fun scenes with Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) as he tried to get the best out of his acting abilities or lack thereof. Near the end of the film there is some subtle symbolism involving him figuratively lassoing Baird Whitlock and taking him back to the studios from the communists, a nod to the cowboy as an upholder of traditional American values. Whether or not they needed to spend so long in the film emphasising his cowboy skills to set this up is another question, but at least this character takes us on a journey and proves to be critical to the resolution of the story.

At the heart of the story is Josh Brolin’s Mannix, a man who is essentially a fixer for the studio. It is an interesting character and, along with Clooney’s bumbling Whitlock, he carries the film. His climactic scene with Whitlock underlines why his decision was made – he sees the communist issues surrounding the film industry as a huge threat to America and something he can have a significant impact on from his position. He takes what he considers to be the harder option but in doing so gives his future life more worth. 

There is an underlying message about the wider issues facing Holllywood at the time this film is set (1951) and how easy it was for people like Whitlock to get involved with communist cells. The discussions on such topics is outside the intended remit of this review, though the recent film Trumbo is a good starting point.

Hail, Caesar! offers a lot to fans of the Coen Brothers, though it feels like a hugely missed opportunity due to failings of an over-complicated plot that could have been significantly trimmed to focus the story on the most relevant characters. Fun in parts but overall a disappointment.

Film review – Deadpool (Tim Miller, 2016)

Deadpool may be many things. Some call it a superhero film. Some will call it an action film. Some will call it a romance. Some will call it a comedy. It may be all of these things, but one thing it doesn’t do is take itself seriously.

Deadpool has opened with the largest first weekend takings of an R-rated movie ever ($132.7m). Both the taking and the rating are well deserved. Where its superhero counterparts have sanitised the violence portrayed, Deadpool plays to it. There are beheadings. There are dead human carcasses splattered at high speed into road signs. There is terrible, offensive and graphic language. The violence is non-stop. There’s even more after the opening scene. Later, we visit a strip club. Indeed, there’s a sex montage that lasts about five minutes and is played for laughs. Nothing is off-limits.

It never loses its sense of humour, and at the centre of this achievement is Ryan Reynolds who proves that he’s the right guy for the job after all. We have seen Reynolds’s take on Deadpool once before, albeit in what is generally regarded to be a butchered take on the comic book character. His first appearance as the chatty bad ass was in 2008’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in which he was inexplicably not able to talk once he became Weapon XI / Deadpool. It was seen at the time as a missed opportunity by fanboys of the comics, though in hindsight it is hard to pin the blame on Reynolds. What else could he do with a silent character, especially acting alongside will.i.am?

This time around he is actively encouraged to pastiche other superhero films. Several times the fourth wall is broken to humorous effect, usually to take a poke at the previous Marvel films, the messy timeline involved in the X-Men franchise, Hugh Jackman himself and, most frequently, that underwhelming Origins film.

It’s refreshing to see a superhero film not taking itself very seriously. It was also great to see a director – a first-time director at that – given the ammo to do exactly what he wants with a film and not be told to fit it into a larger universe. We can only wonder if Ant-Man could have been this good if Edgar Wright was allowed to finish it.

Tim Miller has directed one short film prior to Deadpool. It was an animated short film from 2004 called Gopher Broke. You can view it here:

Supporting Cast

One of my favourite X-Men characters as a child was Collossus (Stefan Kapicic). Here he is given yet another outing on the big screen in a CGI creation that is well realised visually if not in terms of characterisation. He is present as one of Deadpool’s sidekicks solely for comic relief rather than to provide any real threat, and as a result it’s difficult to see him having any room to manoeuvre in future X-Men films.

The other sidekick character making up the lead trio is Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand). An emo-styled young mutant, she at least has some potentially useful strength. However, she is also on the receiving end of some great one-liners from Deadpool and doesn’t offer much to suggest she might ever become a fan favourite.

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These two supporting X-Men were clearly only ever seen as a bit of background built around the requirement for a subplot in the final battle sequence. A joke is made at one point about the studio not being able to afford any more X-Men. There is doubtless some truth in this.

Elsewhere, the supporting cast also includes the annoyingly evil Ed Skrein, who does a good job of making the fairly generic character Ajax quite dislikable. Morena Baccarin is well cast as the romantic interest, though it’s a shame we saw yet another an initially headstrong female character dissolve into a damsel in distress. Hopefully she will be given more prominence if a sequel is made – if they stick to the comic books she will become the mutant Copycat.

Conclusion

It is a very good film, almost a great film. It’s brash, it’s offensive and it’s graphic. It’s almost like a superhero film from an alternate reality, where the primary goal isn’t to sell action figures and lunchboxes. Its failings are more than made up for by how refreshing it was to see a completely different take on the genre.

If nothing else, at least now we can say a film has done justice to the Deadpool franchise.

Deadpool is out now at cinemas globally.

Film review – A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino, 2016)

A Bigger Splash tells the story of Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton), an ageing rock star taking a resting vacation on the remote Italian island Pantelleria with her boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), a filmmaker. Their vacation is disrupted when Marriane’s larger-than-life ex Harry (Ralph Fiennes) arrives with his daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson).

Watching A Bigger Splash is a little like watching a car crash in agonisingly slow motion. As the tensions rise and tempers are frayed, you see the action unfolding and there’s nothing you can do about it. Even though you want to look away you just can’t.

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An interesting choice attributed to Swinton herself was that Marianne is recovering from an operation on her vocal folds. It means that her abundant acting abilities risk going to waste. This isn’t the case at all. Indeed, that she is able to command her scenes whilst not even speaking highlights her presence in front of a camera. Her frustration at not being able to shut Harry up is evident. This, mixed with Paul’s desire to not be drawn into arguments and Penelope’s apparent disinterest in just about everything, means Harry is able to be the centre of attention at all times, much to the bemusement of the three people whose lives he is engulfing.

It’s a tremendous performance from Fiennes. He is most certainly an annoying person to watch on screen, let along imagine being on holiday with. He’s a tragic man desperate to avoid the realisation that nobody cares anymore. We all know someone like Harry in our lives, but none of us like him. Unfortunately, whilst the performance is fantastic and it plays out beautifully, it doesn’t necessarily make for great cinema. Achieving a cinematic goal doesn’t justify it.

One thing this film shares with La Piscine, the 1969 French film on which this is based, is the gratuitous nudity. It didn’t really feel integral to the plot, and lacked any kind of eroticism that it may have been angling for, feeling instead to be overly sleazy.

The political setting didn’t really give any edge to the film either. Set amid a backdrop of illegal migrants landing on Pantelleria, it just felt like a shallow attempt to date the film without adding much to the plot. This could have been rectified if we’d seen the migrants sooner, but by the time they were first mentioned it felt like an irrelevant afterthought.

The film also feels about twenty minutes too long, with the action seeming to reach a climax only to drag  on far beyond the point it held my attention. As with all car crashes, it’s not very enjoyable to watch. The elements are all there – great acting, beautiful scenery, fantastic plot development – it’s just that the overall effect doesn’t deliver on its component parts.

A Bigger Splash is out at cinemas now.

Film review – Day of the Outlaw (Andre De Toth, 1959)

Andre de Toth’s unusually complex Western ‘Day of the Outlaw’ has found its way onto the Master of Cinema label this month as a dual-format release. A forgotten and under-appreciated film, shining the spotlight on it will hopefully mean it finds a much-deserved wider audience.

The film is set in an isolated town called Bitter in Wyoming. The story opens with a couple of men on horses riding towards the camera in a frosty snow storm. It is a clever opening scene by De Toth, setting up the rugged main character Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) with the ominous line, “I’m through with being reasonable.” We know he’s got a bone to pick with someone, with the assumption that we’re going to find out who and why pretty quickly. That we do.

What is essentially a boundry dispute about the location of a barbed wire fence reveals a hidden layer of complication when we learn that Blaise is having an affair with Helen Crane (Tina Louise), wife to Hal (Alan Marshal) of said boundry dispute. She seems absolutely loyal to her husband despite evidently being in love with Blaise.

As tensions continue to rise, the two men end up in a standoff that will likely lead to one or both being killed. This is poleaxed by the arrival of an out-of-town gang headed up by Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), who pose a much greater threat to the men, their wives, their land and their livelihood.

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At 92 minutes long and a reported budget of just $400,000 (a little over $3m in 2016), De Toth has to work with what he has and work fast. It’s a great achievement that this was done so well, especially in what appears to be torrid weather conditions. Characters are fully realised despite often not being afforded enough screen time to develop them. A good example of this is young gang member Gene (David Nelson), who goes through an internal psychological journey in what amounts to about 10 minutes of screen time.

The film was cited by Quentin Tarantino as a reference point in the run up to The Hateful Eight and it’s easy to see the resemblance [1]. The opening sequence was a direct homage to Day of the Outlaw, with a long shot allowing the lead character(s) to naturally approach through a snow storm to join the viewer at the front of the screen. The secluded setting in increasingly worse weather, high tensions, conflicting characters having to live side-by-side whilst the story unfolds. Nothing is stolen, but it is clearly a film Tarantino rates.

Ryan’s Blaise makes a fantastic focal point around which the film plays out. He is a man who stands by his own morals. His affair with Helen is justified by him essentially saying he has no respect for her husband and thinks she deserves better. He undertakes an openly noble act of self-sacrifice for the good of the townspeople he thinks little of, though refuses to take any credit for it. He is the film’s only hero and he plays it coolly throughout. It isn’t Ryan’s most celebrated role but one worthy of a second look if you’re a fan.

Day of the Outlaw may be a flawed film but there’s enough on offer for fans of the anti-Western subgenre that seems to have found its way back to popular interest following the likes of Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and The Revenant. If you liked any of these films then this is worth checking out.

[1] In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tarantino stated, “I can definitely say that as bleak as our movie is, we are definitely the funniest snow Western ever made. This is funnier than The Great Silence, it’s funnier than Day of the Outlaw.” Quite what he means by this isn’t exactly clear. There isn’t much humour in Day of the Outlaw.

Film review – みな殺しの拳銃 / Massacre Gun (Yasharu Hasebe, 1967)

A stylish yakuza film originally released in 1967, みな殺しの拳銃 / Massacre Gun has received a lovingly-created remastering by Arrow Video that’s well worth picking up for fans of the genre.

The plot concerns three brothers. Ryûichi (Joe Shishido) is the eldest; he’s level-headed but he’s also a member of the Akazawa yakuza gang, turning on his employees when he is forced to murder his lover. Eiji (Tatsuya Fuji) is the middle brother – hot-headed but loyal to his siblings. The youngest, Saburo (Jiro Okazaki), is an aspiring boxer who over-exerts himself at a training session to prove his worth, infuriating the yakuza bosses who now have an injured star fighter. When the yakuza seek retaliation on him and ruin his career, this is the catalyst for their feud to quickly get out of control. Tensions rise as the stand-off escalates to full-blown gang warfare and a brutal final shootout.

The film oozes style. The sultry jazz soundtrack provided by Naozumi Yamamoto is almost a character in itself, providing an edge to the sharply-dressed brothers and the gritty world they inhabit. The monochromatic tones serve the film in a way that full-colour just wouldn’t have achieved.

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There’s a unique edge to everything that happens in the film, which is clearly an attempt by Yasharu Hasebe to mirror typical American film noirs. The world these characters isn’t a world that a typical viewer is familiar with outside of cinema, though the dedication to the genre is so absolute that it becomes absorbing. True, there are better film noirs out there, though few give themselves so absolutely to the concept of film noir itself.

However, there is something extraordinarily off-putting about the appearance of lead actor Joe Shishido. His cheeks seem puffed-up and almost chipmunk-like. Apparently, and I only found this out after seeing the film, this was by choice. He had his cheekbones enhanced to give himself a more masculine appearance. This really isn’t the case. In this particular film he looks like the most unlikely of lead actors, especially alongside his two brothers. It is an unnatural appearance, though it has the unintentional affect of providing Shishido with a heightened sense of being the underdog, which plays into the plot wonderfully.

This is a mere minor annoyance in an otherwise perfectly good film. It lacks the notoriety of the more popular Shishido yakuza film noir released in the same year – Branded To Kill – but both seems to inhabit the same world and will reward fans of the genre willing to seek it out.

Massacre Gun is out now on Arrow Video dual format Blu-ray and DVD, limited to 3000 copies.

Film review – Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2016)

There are obvious paths to go down to tell a story about victims of child abuse. This film eschews the story of the individuals who have suffered the abuse, instead concentrating on the journalistic team that fought hard to uncovered the abuse. It deliberately attempts to portray just how difficult it was to reveal the truth about something when nobody wants to listen and everybody involved is trying to cover up what has happened. It is an effective but devastating success.

The title of the film is taken from an investigative journalistic unit that tackles stories it deems of necessary interest to the readers of The Boston Globe. In 2002 it published an exposé on Roman Catholic priests in the Boston area, offering evidence of not only child molestation and rape, but also of the systemic cover-up of the evidence by the church. The truths they found were horrific in both nature and magnitude.

Whilst the movie is truly an ensemble piece, there are three wonderfully nuanced performances that help make this film so effective.

The first comes from Stanley Tucci as the attorney Mitchell Garabedian. Tucci is a really special actor and he’s in fine form here. Garabedian has represented innumerable victims of the abuse and each time has been unable to affect change, with critical documents being suppressed by the church. Reminiscent of his role in Margin Call as Eric Dale, he is a man with knowledge of the wider secret dying for those around him to find out what’s truly going on.

A smaller but memorable turn comes from Neal Huff as Phil Saviano, head of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Based on a real person going by the same name, he makes the most of his limited screen time when he provides a harrowing monologue the first time he meets the Spotlight team. A frustrated picture of a man that likely represents the emotions felt by each and every survivor.

The finest performance, however, is from Michael Keaton as the Chief Editor of Spotlight, Walter “Bobby” Robinson. Throughout the story Bobby is a man wrestling with his conscience. He knows that to make the story as effective as possible he needs to wait for all the facts to be in place and make a thorough, damning article that cannot be ignored. However, doing this means sitting on the information whilst the abuse continues in the city. Late in the picture when he finds out he was actually tipped off about the scandal twenty years previously, he must conclude that he is finally bringing justice to the city despite potentially having the power to prevent generations of systemic abuse. Keaton nails it, reminding us all once again how great it is to have him back on the big screen in a role of substance.

I’m surprised Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams have been selected for an Oscar nomination ahead of those they share the screen with. Fine actors though they are, it must have been a tough call to select two from a long list of solid performances. Ruffalo seemed to be holding back slightly, though that was perhaps a deliberate choice I didn’t pick up on fully.

It is rare that a whole audience is left in absolute silence at the end of a screening, but even on a busy Saturday afternoon there didn’t seem to be anyone that felt anything other than stunned. The reason for this was a devastating list of all the locations they have uncovered scandals in since the publishing of the initial article in 2002, firstly in the USA, then globally.

For this reason the film is now serving the same purpose as the original article: to shine a spotlight on a diabolical scandal that should have been eradicated decades ago. It is possibly the most important film you will see this year.

Film review – Joy (David O’Russell, 2016)

Of all the stories of all the people that have ever existed on this planet, perhaps one of the last you’d think to turn into a film would be that of Joy Mangano, inventor and telesales presenter. It’s not that she’s unremarkable or boring, but she is far from a controversial character. What she does encompass, however, is both a traditional tale of the American dream and a figurehead for strong-minded women that have ever felt oppressed in work or at home.

If you’re wondering what Joy Mangano looks like in real life, there’s a popular video below of her selling her first major breakthrough invention: The Miracle Mop. From then on she became a self-made millionaire, invented many more successful products and created a business empire.

It has to be said that whilst she may be a household name across the USA, the rest of the world remains unaware of her background. Or at least they did. That was until the film Joy came along. Starring Jennifer Lawrence in the title role alongside the likes of Robert De Niro, Isabella Rossellini and Bradley Cooper, the film reveals the journey she went on to get to where she is today – from divorced mother-of-two working for Eastern Airlines right up to her first business successes.

The first forty-ish minutes of the film try really hard to give us a potted history of the causes of Joy’s personality traits, actions and outlook. It usually works on a scene-by-scene basis but the pacing causes issues and seems to lack direction until Joy herself finds a focus in her life.

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From this point on the film has hit its stride and she breaks free from the oppression and the doubters. There are moments of humour (which surely explains the Comedy Golden Globe nomination, no?), edge-of-the-seat excitement (her first sell on QVC springs to mind) and fist-pumping success (I recall here a scene near the end set in a California hotel room). This is all driven by a remarkable performance by Jennifer Lawrence, reminding the world again that she isn’t just the girl from The Hunger Games but rather a girl with acting talent far beyond her years.

So whilst this film has its merits, the scatter-gunned first act and lack of consistency mean it won’t go down as one of the great films of the year, though Lawrence’s performance is worth the ticket money.

Joy is on general release globally now.

 

 

 

 

Film review – Hasta La Vista / Come As You Are (Geoffrey Enthoven, 2011) 

As road movies go, Come As You Are follows a well-worked formula quite closely. It goes something like this: a group of young friends decide to go on a road trip together to overcome a fear or hang-up. In the process of doing so they also learn a lot more about themselves and thus the purpose of the trip changes despite the goal remaining the same. 

That opening paragraph drastically does this film a disservice, because the unique plot elements are more than enough to allow this film to feel fresh and deliver an effective message. The three Flemish friends in this case all suffer from a form of physical handicap: Lars (Gilles de Schryver) is wheelchair-bound due to a debilitating and aggressive brain tumour; Philip (Mariano Vanhoof) suffers from paraplegia and has vastly restricted physical movement, thus needing constant care; Jozef (Tom Audenaert) is almost fully blind and can only see vague outlines of objects. The story starts with Philip, who has recently discovered that there is a brothel set up in the south of Spain especially for men with physical disabilities, so they decide they need to trick their parents into letting them go on a holiday to the vineyards of Europe, with the brothel as their real destination. 

The basic hilarity of this situation would be easy to play for cheap laughs, but director Geoffrey Enthoven and writer Pierre De Clercq thankfully find a more pertinent voice in the bittersweet frustration of their situation. Whilst the holiday should be a huge release to finally get away from their parents and see the outer world at their own pace, the day-to-day reality of their disabilities is far too restrictive. 

One of the more interesting story arcs is actually for the backup minibus driver Claude

Sisters (Jason Moore, 2015)

Sometimes cinematic events so huge occur that they transcend cinema and infiltrate the wider global conversation. To not see a film, occasionally, is to almost deliberately stand out from the crowd and, in some cases, refuse to be a sheep. Because everyone else is in love with a film but perhaps didn’t get it at first, the desire to take a stand gets in the way of allowing yourself to be interested.

If you’re in that boat and have taken a stance against Star Wars: The Force Awakens, then perhaps Sisters is the film for you. It is in so many ways the antithesis of an epic and excellent space opera. Yes, it isn’t very good. Yes, it vastly underused its two lead stars. But someone had to take the hit and be THAT film that was released the same week as the film that looks set to be the most successful in box office terms since Avatar.

The story is as banal as the majority of the jokes. Sisters Maura (Amy Poehler) and Kate (Tina Fey) find out that their parents are selling their childhood home and have to go home to clear out their rooms. They do just that, but in the process decide to throw a huge house party. Things get out of hand and they wreck the house, though in doing so learn some valuable lessons.

It isn’t without merit. Some jokes are downright hilarious. However, these appear to be the ones that were ad libbed by the two leads. There are a few examples of this is when they are trying on dresses ahead of the party. Additionally, the scenes with Maya Rudolph are all highlights and almost give a feeling of a rewarding experience. Most of the remainder, however, falls disappointingly flat.

A truly entertaining time was had by all. Just not in this screen.

After about half-an-hour I found myself in such deflated amazement that I started to enjoy it out of disbelief that it was such a waste of their talent. This twisted enjoyment sustained until the final section when it started to feel protracted – the party kept going slightly too long and the joke was wearing thin.

The final segment, which awkwardly ties it to Christmas and thus tried to justify it as a festive film doesn’t really convince with conviction. This was clearly an afterthought to a film that was obviously intended for a summer market but that the studios didn’t dare release into clear air when excuses would have been harder to come by than the Star Wars card.

Sisters is on general release worldwide now.