FILM
YESTERDAY (M) hhhkj Director Danny Boyle Starring Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran Fancy a sweet shot of nostalgia with your glitch-in-the-space-time-continuum musical? Then Yesterday, about a struggling British singer-songwriter who awakes from a coma to discover he’s the only person on the planet to remember the Beatles, has got you covered. Imagining a world without John, Paul,
George and Ringo gives screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) an excuse to raid the Fab Four’s extensive back catalogue. And the narrative conceit of handing those exemplary pop tunes to an unsuccessful artist lends them fresh perspective. English actor Himesh Patel (above, EastEnders) adds texture with a well-judged performance that draws upon his everyman charisma. He doesn’t do a half-bad job with the songs, either.
Yesterday is a superior jukebox musical and it hits all the right notes as a crowdpleasing rom-com. But then, it’s directed by a British dream team, with the director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later reining in his colleague’s tendency towards schmaltzy excess. Lily James (Downton Abbey) creates a solid romantic foil as the slightly dorky high-school teacher who moonlights as the lead character’s manager (the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again star barely gets to sing a note).
MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL (M) hhjjj Director F. Gary Fray Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Emma Thompson Chris Hemsworth’s low-key impersonation of James Bond in this misguided alien action adventure lacks the Aussie actor’s customary twinkle. Thor: Ragnarok co-star Tessa Thompson, who made a big impression in the small independent drama Little Woods, doesn’t get a lot of traction out of her rookie agent, either. What saves this not-nearly-odd-coupleenough screen partnership from plain awkwardness is Hemsworth and Thompson’s (pictured) easygoing chemistry, which occasionally transcends the lacklustre screenplay. But not even a souped-up visual effects department can get this Men In Black reboot out of second gear. There are plenty of spills but few thrills and precious little comic relief. What few laughs there are, are provided by a tiny alien, Pawny (Kumail Nanjiani), who swears an oath of allegiance to 18 BRISBANE NEWS June 26-July 2, 2019
Thompson’s Agent M after his own chessset Queen is slaughtered. Proving that size doesn’t count, Pawny steals one of the movie’s key set pieces, which involves a shiny space motorbike, a spectacular Moroccan desert backdrop and a weapon that, on its lowest setting, can blow a crater 10 times the size of the Grand Canyon.
Directed by F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton, The Fate of the Furious), MIB: International kicks off at the top of the Eiffel Tower, with a crackling prologue in which the cocky Agent H (Hemsworth) and his mentor and boss, Agent High T (Liam Neeson), take on the invasive alien Hive. There’s a second scene-setting flashback
But this is Patel’s film. After years of performing in empty pubs to his three best friends, Jack Malik finally decides to call it quits. Riding home from his last, failed gig, Jack is struck by a bus at the exact instant the lights go out all over the entire world When he comes to – bruised black-andblue and missing his two front teeth – the Beatles, Oasis, cigarettes and Coca-Cola no longer exist. After some rather perfunctory soulsearching, Jack claims the Fab Four’s songs as his own, desperately wracking his brains to remember some of the more obscure lyrics (Eleanor Rigby eludes him for much of the film). There’s a fun scene in which Jack is constantly interrupted by his lovingly condescending parents after they ask him to perform one of “his” new tunes. Even the Beatles’ proven pop smarts don’t initially improve Jack’s fortunes. It’s only when Ed Sheeran hears one of the songs on a local TV talk show that his meteoric ascent begins. Kate McKinnon delivers a scenestealing performance as Jack’s brutally honest, money-hungry industry rep. When he attempts to sneak one of his own songs on to the new album, she dismisses it as so boring and forgettable, she can’t even be bothered listening to it again to be sure. Of course, the greater Jack’s success, the more his conscience troubles him. Ellie, long suffering manager, No.1 fan and would-be lover, serves as his moral compass. Even when you know you are being played like a three-chord rock ’n’ roll standard, the natural exuberance of Yesterday’s appealing romantic leads carries you along.
involving the young M, or Molly, who liberates a creature that looks a lot like a multi-coloured Gremlin after watching her parents’ memories neutralised. Twenty years later, Molly (Thompson) finally locates the “best kept secret in the galaxy”, MIB HQ in New York. There she persuades a steely Agent O (Emma Thompson, who does a lot with a blonde wig and a couple of good lines) to recruit her. For her first probationary assignment, Agent M is dispatched to the London office. There she meets the rakish Agent H, a former MIB star now regarded by many of his colleagues as a loose cannon. There’s a should-be-fun but ultimately flat interlude in Marrakesh involving a motormouthed mechanic with an autonomous, alien beard, followed by a game-changing detour to Riza’s Fortified Fortress of For Sure Death, which is lifted straight out of a Bond movie. Even MIB: International’s alien crowd sequences feel reheated. Perhaps the films should be retitled Six Characters in Search of a Fresh Idea. REVIEWS BY VICKY ROACH
V1 - BNSE01Z01MA