Robert Tanitch reviews the last DVDs
THE YOUNG POPE (Sony). American orphan, abandoned by his hippie parents and raised by nuns, becomes Pius XIII, a smoking (“I know I am sexy”) pontiff who has no time for modern laxity and preaches sacrifice and suffering. He is anti-abortion, anti-divorce, anti-same sex marriage and he wants to root out homosexuals. He is a canny politician, but is he a saint? Does he believe in God? This intelligent Vatican City drama series, directed by Paulo Sorrentino, is not, as some people may have thought, a hatchet job against the Catholic Church. Jude Law is excellent as the Pope. So are Silvio Orlando as the Secretary of State and Javier Camara as the Pope’s private secretary
INDOCHINE (StudioCanal). Regis Wargnier’s 1992 sprawling, unfocused expensive French epic is set in Indonesia during French colonial rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. A rubber plantation owner (Catherine Deneuve) falls in love with a very young and very handsome French naval officer (Vincent Perez) who falls in love with her adopted pretty Vietnamese daughter (Linh Dan Pham)) who becomes a revolutionary and kicks out the French. The elegant Deneuve and the Vietnamese landscape are staggeringly beautiful. The film will appeal to audiences who love a good old-fashioned romantic drama on a large scale. Nowadays the most likely venue for it would be a ten-part television series.
JASON BOURNE (Universal). Matt Damon, who made his first appearance as Bourne 15 years ago when he was 30, looks older and more serious these days. Paul Greengrass knows how to direct a superior thriller. It’s all action and the more crowded the sequence the slicker he is. The action is so slick it’s difficult to know what is actually going on in this cyber-stalking, mobile phone surveillance world. There is no time for characterisation. Tommy Lee Jones looks extremely haggard. The film builds to an absurd car chase and car carnage climax. Bourne will be born again. No doubt about it.
SAUSAGE PARTY (Sony). Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg’s brilliant adult cartoon is set in a supermarket. The hero and heroine, a hot dog and a bun, who long to consummate their relationship, discover that the shoppers who buy food actually devour it. The script is notable for its satire on religion, its foul language and its scenes of horror in the kitchen where the food is “massacred”. The groceries decide to fight back. They celebrate their victory with an orgy. This is definitely not a cartoon for children, nor is it a cartoon for adults to watch just before they are about to have a hot dog and bun or indeed any meal.
THE MAN BETWEEN (StudioCanal). Carol Reed’s The Third Man, set in post-war Vienna, was a great British movie and a huge success in 1949. Reed’s The Man Between, a 1953 espionage thriller, set in post-war Berlin in ruins, was inevitably compared to it and inevitably found wanting. It’s better than its reputation. The action is fine. It’s the talk which gets in the way. James Mason plays a kidnapper employed by the Communists to capture West Berliners. The young and beautiful Claire Bloom plays an Englishwoman who is kidnapped by mistake. A young boy on a bicycle adds to the tension.
SING STREET (Lionsgate) Dublin schoolboy (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) wants to meet a girl (Lucy Baynton) so he forms a band and persuades her to appear in his music videos. Music is an escape from his divorcing parents and the bullies in a Catholic school. John Carney, who directed Once, remembers his childhood in Dublin in the 1980s and films the boys writing, rehearsing and performing pop songs. Jack Reynor as the boy’s older brother and Baynton do the acting. I shouldn’t be surprised if Sing Street finds its way to the stage.
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