The Choral
(12A, 113 mins)
Verdict: Out of tune
This week’s good news is that Alan Bennett, now aged 91, has written a new original screenplay. Furthermore, The Choral is directed by Nicholas Hytner, with whom Bennett has impressive form: their previous cinematic collaborations are The Madness Of King George (1994), The History Boys (2006) and The Lady In The Van (2015).
The bad news is that The Choral – set in a fictional Yorkshire town during the First World War, where the local choral society is preparing to perform Edward Elgar’s The Dream Of Gerontius – is second-rate Bennett and for that matter, second-rate Hytner.
In trying to be a comedy, a weepie and a history lesson; in attempting to tackle class, sexuality and bereavement; in straining to be melancholic, profound and fun… The Choral never quite convinces as an actual story.
Which is a shame, because it has a tip-top cast (Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Simon Russell Beale, Alun Armstrong, Mark Addy) all doing their utmost with disappointingly flabby material.
Fiennes plays Henry Guthrie, a refined local doctor who reluctantly agrees to take over the choral society. It is 1916, and England is ablaze with patriotism.
Unhelpfully, Guthrie has ties to Germany, a country he regards as more civilised and cultured than his own. He is also discreetly homosexual.
But by jove he’s a terrific choirmaster, and finds enough musical talent in the town to prepare a Gerontius fit for a king, although not necessarily fit for Elgar (played by Simon Russell Beale as a caricature of pomposity indistinguishable from his character in the latest Downton Abbey movie).
Roger Allam as Alderman Duxbury and Ralph Fiennes as Dr Guthrie, Amara Okereke as Mary, Alun Armstrong in The Choral
BRIAN VINER reviews Nicholas Hytner’s The Choral
There are many sub-plots, some of which work nicely while others fall flat, mostly related to the war raging on the Western Front.
But there are too many big, set-piece monologues; and every tug on the heartstrings feels more like someone energetically ringing the church bells.
Also, much as the best Bennett one-liners can make the heart sing, a mediocre one just makes the eyes roll.
‘There are atheists now… there’s one in Bradford.’ That’s not worthy of the great man, and nor, for all its occasional virtues, is The Choral.
Dragonfly
(15, 98 mins)
Verdict: The acting soars
Dragonfly, by contrast, is quite brilliantly written and directed (by Paul Andrew Williams), and revolves around two acting performances that could be shown to drama students for the rest of time.
Brenda Blethyn and especially Andrea Riseborough take the breath away as lonely next-door neighbours in semi- detached suburban bungalows, who come to rely on each other for company.
Elsie (Blethyn) is an elderly widow, overweight and infirm. Her middle-aged son John (Jason Watkins, also wonderful) has hired carers to call daily, evidently to appease his own conscience for not visiting enough.
Colleen (Riseborough) next door is in her mid-30s, an unhappy woman on benefits, who shares her home with her beloved Sabre, a cross- breed bull-terrier.
Brenda Blethyn and especially Andrea Riseborough, pictured, take the breath away as lonely next-door neighbours
Gradually, the two women form a friendship built on mutual need but also genuine affection, with Colleen keeping a gimlet eye on the comings and goings of the carers. When one leaves well before her hour is up, Colleen, sitting outside her home like a vigilante, is unsparing in her criticism.
Skinny and hollow-eyed, ferocious-looking dog at her heel, she might not present well, but the truth is that she seems more decent and dutiful than the mostly absent John.
Not much else happens, at least until the last 15 minutes or so, when the sort of film that Mike Leigh might have crafted morphs into something more redolent of Tales Of The Unexpected.
It really is exquisitely acted. Riseborough played a similarly downbeat, life-battered character in To Leslie (2022) and was nominated for an Oscar. She is every bit as good here.
Anemone
(15, 125 mins)
Verdict: Unrelentingly grim
Speaking of Oscars, nobody has won the Best Actor gong more than Daniel Day-Lewis, whose ‘retirement’ in 2017 was duly mourned. But he’s back, in Anemone – the directing debut of his son Ronan, with whom Day-Lewis shares the writing credits.
He’s brilliant, of course, as Ray, an angry, possibly traumatised former soldier now living like a hermit in a Yorkshire wood, estranged from his brother Jem (Sean Bean, also splendid), former partner (Samantha Morton) and son (Samuel Bottomley).
It’s a heavy, intense tale, in which Jem tries to draw Ray towards some kind of reconciliation, but except for the mighty acting there is nothing to relieve the film’s unrelenting gloom.
The Predator franchise snarls on, bellowing its way back into the multiplexes – almost 40 years after the original 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, here comes Predator: Badlands (12A, 107 mins, HHIII), in which Dek, a predator outcast, teams up with Elle Fanning’s wise-cracking humanoid to hunt down a terrifying monster called the Kalisk. In truth, Dek would be much better off hunting down a good dentist. His incisors are in terrible shape.
The Predator franchise snarls on, bellowing its way back into the multiplexes – almost 40 years after the original 1987 film
Director Dan Trachtenberg’s 2016 film 10 Cloverfield Lane was one of the better sci-fi horror films of recent years. Predator: Badlands does not scale the same heights.
Die My Love (15, 118 mins, HHIII) is directed by Glaswegian Lynne Ramsay, whose credits include Ratcatcher (1999) and We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011). She does not favour what you might call cuddly subjects.
True to form, Die My Love stars Jennifer Lawrence as Grace, a self-harming young mother in the grip of what appears to be post-natal depression. ‘Everybody goes a little loopy the first year,’ says her mother-in-law (Sissy Spacek).
But Grace is beyond help, it seems. Her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson) is incapable of defending her from her demons, as their life in rural Montana becomes a tumult of violence. It’s bleak stuff indeed.
Train Dreams (12A, 102 mins, HHHII) is also set out west, in the early 20th century. Joel Edgerton plays a hunky railroad labourer who, in search of work, must keep leaving his lovely wife (Felicity Jones) and their daughter in their remote log cabin.
There’s a sense something bad is going to happen, and it does, but this is a film light on action, heavy on mood, and consistently appealing on the eye. A fine supporting cast includes William H Macy and Kerry Condon.
All films in cinemas now.
