A New Hope

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (2016)

Sennia Nanua begins the film strapped into a wheelchair wearing a Guantanamo Bay-style jumpsuit, before progressing to a Hannibal Lecter face mask and eventual freedom. Ultimately, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS addresses its dystopian zombie world with issues of race, gender, and generational responsibilities.

ADAPTED from his own best selling novel by M.R. Carey, this absorbing dystopian/infection horror sees humanity ravaged by a fungal disease, were the afflicted become mindless, cannibalistic "Hungries." A small band of hybrid children - including the exceptional Melanie (Sennia Nanua) - hold the key to a vaccine, and go to "school" at an army base where they are simultaneously educated by Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) and experimented upon by Dr Caldwell (Glenn Close). When the camp and lab is overrun, a muzzled Melanie, Helen and Caldwell escape. Together with Sgt Parks (Paddy Considine) and soldier Gallagher (Fisayo Akinade), the group attempt to communicate with survival cell "The Beacon," while scavenging for food and monitoring the behaviour of their prized asset. 

Utilising authentic locations such as RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, and with urban London landscapes doubled by drone footage of Prypjat near Chernobyl, the production is firmly helmed by esteemed television director Colm McCarthy. THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS mixes 28 DAYS LATER with that always effective mechanism for terror, children, but also follows Danny Boyle's release for referencing themes from cult entertainment. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is wonderfully alluded to in the mutating mass of decomposing bodies encircling BT Tower, threatening to spread its spores for the "second phase." Pod-like behaviour is also evident in the genuinely creepy notion of standing sleep, where the Hungries react to the slightest movement. It is also consistently grisly and black humoured: for example, Caldwell reveals to Melanie that second generation Hungries were discovered after newborns killed their infected mothers by burrowing out of the womb.

Despite a meagre budget of £4m, the casting of the production is exemplary, especially Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine. 

With the zombie genre now bloated to the extreme, there is a now a confused blurring between inspiration and mimicry. Interestingly, Carey's prose shares similar themes and plot points to the PlayStation game 'The Last of Us', which was released the same year as his source short story Iphigenia In Aulis. Both feature a fungal plague, have a last stage of infection where people sprout spores, and the infected overwhelming rely on a senses (smell and sound). Most tellingly, they each feature a young girl who potentially has the cure. THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS also taps into our ever-expanding psyche of mortality, evolution of diseases and destruction by environment. Underneath a pounding soundtrack and photography filled with sickly greens and yellows, its heavy handed Greek subtexts are more than compensated for by rounded performances which make you believe in the slow transformation of command. It could be argued that the theatrical appearance of feral infants late on goes against the grain, and that the movie lasts just one scene too long to accommodate its misjudged coda.

The Old Familiar

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA (2013)
THE WORLD'S END (2013)

"I'm Siege Face"; at last, Norfolk's finest is brought to the big screen in the uproarious ALAN PATRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA. 

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA sees self-proclaimed broadcasting kingpin Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) working as a DJ in the mid-morning slot at North Norfolk Digital, together with Sidekick Simon (Tim Key). When the station is taken over by the Gordale media conglomerate and renamed Shape ("The Way You Want It To Be"), Alan finds himself defusing a violent siege set in motion by the firing of fellow North Norfolk DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney). Using the situation in an attempt to boost his own career, Partridge acts as mediator between Farrell and the police, with hostages caught in the crossfire. Written by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Steve Baynham and Rob and Neil Gibbons, ALPHA PAPA successfully takes Partridge's long-standing entertainment persona and fully injects it with a claustrophobic yet cinematic scale. Fans will love to see regulars like harassed PA Lynn Benfied (Felicity Montagu) and Michael the Geordie (Simon Greenall) well into the mix, and Coogan's portrayal of his most famous alter ego is totally at one with the environment.

The most painfully endearing character created by Iannucci and Chris Morris for radio's 'ON THE HOUR' - which morphed into the prophetic TV hit THE DAY TODAY - Partridge started as an inept sports reporter, a man able to grasp only the rudimentary aspects of communication. Coogan - a renowned perfectionist - made Partridge a true great of British comedy, and his embarrassing situations, which included shooting a guest dead on his chat show KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU, set the scene for the next masterstroke of squirmedy, David Brent. In fact, Partridge has been under siege all his life, a car-crash of an existence that has been undermined by terminal - but chirpy - interpersonal skills and a trademark 'sports casual' look. It is a career that has mirrored the rise of media and consequent decline in value; radio, TV, mockumentaries, webisodes and now film have all danced to his tune for over twenty years, illustrating a fluidity in format that has helped keep the character fresh.

The boys are back in town: old school friends aim to revive past glories in Edgar Wright's disappointing conclusion to the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, THE WORLD'S END. 

On the more abrasive comedy scale, THE WORLD'S END - Edgar Wright's completion of the loose trilogy started with SHAUN OF THE DEAD and continued with HOT FUZZ - tells of Gary King (Simon Pegg), who has always regretted failing to finish 'The Golden Mile' on his last day of school (a circuit of twelve pubs in his uneventful home town of Newton Haven). Obsessed with the idea that completing the task would make up for all his life mistakes, he persuades his original 'Mile' mates - over two decades later - to abandon their respectable lives and recreate the crawl. Car salesman Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), estate agent Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), architect Steven Prince (Paddy Considine) and lawyer Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) are drawn in, despite festering resentments towards Gary. When King has an altercation with a youth in the Gents who turns out to be a blue-blooded robot drone, it becomes apparent that the whole town - except for a few willing collaborators (including one played by Reece Shearsmith) – have been replaced by replicants under the control of aliens called The Network. These beings have guided recent technological advances for the human race and are determined to enforce conformity across the universe.

At a time when numbers of the quintessential British pub are ever diminishing, THE WORLD'S END takes the notion of the pub crawl and turns it into a quest of almost Arthurian nature. Although entertaining, awash with the director's trademark editing frenzy, there is nothing new despite cast and crew proclaiming how profound its message. Individuality is - quite literally - King, forced home by the use of Primal Scream's soundbite from THE WILD ANGELS ("free to do what we want to do"). The climactic verbal melee between Gary, Andy and Steven with The Network ultimately ends with the aliens giving up trying to talk to the humans and telling them to "fuck it". By Gary convincing the aliens that mankind is not worth winning over - and in a flat coda Andy, in London ruins, explaining to children that the alien withdrawal led to an apocalypse - the film drowns in its aura of fractured relationships and failed opportunities. Whereas THE WORLD'S END ticks the boxes of its own making, ALPHA PAPA takes its own dysfunctional family and moulds a far more successful whole.

The Strife of Brian

STONED (2005) 
SHINE A LIGHT (2008)

Scene of the crime? In November 1968, Brian Jones became the owner of Cotchford Farm, a Sussex country house previously owned by A. A. Milne.

DIRECTED by Stephen Woolley, STONED is the story of the inevitable premature death in 1969 of The Rolling Stones founding member Brian Jones (played by Leo Gregory). Within the seven intervening years from The Stones formation, Jones' increasing liability saw Mick Jagger take the limelight by shouldering the bad-boy image. In reality, the lead singer was more cautiously cultivated, paving the way to big business. Although Jones was the archetypal shattered mirror of the 60s, there was no room for him in the increasingly shrewd canvas of The Rolling Stones world.

STONED uses the relationship between Jones and builder Frank Thorogood (Paddy Considine) - hired to renovate his rock star retreat - as a counterbalance to the wild lifestyle he adopted right up to the point of his supposed "death by misadventure" in a swimming pool. Thorogood is at once drawn into and kept out of Jones' pampered world; the Rolling Stone loafs brazenly in a haze of drink, drugs, women and effeminate finery, while exploiting the workers. In one scene, Jones demands a wall be built, rebuilt elsewhere and then built again in the original position. In another, Jones offers Anna Wholin (Tuva Novotny) to a disbelieving Thorogood in the spirit of free love, but when Wholin tires of the prank, Thorogood is left humiliated on the kitchen floor.

Brian Jones with Anita Pallenberg, one of the great 60s rock chicks. Her "evil glamour" moniker (a term used by Marianne Faithfull) encapsulates Pallenberg's modelling and acting career. When she first met Jones at a Stones gig in Munich 1965, it was the start of a two-year relationship which saw the musician become increasingly abusive, drunk and paranoid.

The film draws from the basic mechanics of PERFORMANCE; whereas the celebrated Donald Cammell/Nic Roeg release snares a working class gangster into the exotic trappings of a faded rock star - ironically played by Jagger - STONED sets up a similar clash of sensibilities between Jones and Thorogood. But Woolley's picture is too simplistic, functional and clichéd, haunted by a weak script that leaves the likeable performers nothing to work with; furthermore, its prurience towards the female cast serves little dramatic effect. Ultimately, it is difficult to show emotion over Jones' death because the film does not contain any justification that he was either a great musician or a particularly compelling personality. Neither does it reveal much about his relationships with Keith Richards (Ben Whishaw) and Jagger (Luke De Woolfson), or offer anything other than a cinematic portrayal of the drowning.

The "death by misadventure" tag has never sat true, mainly because of the low levels of drink and drugs found in Jones' system. Conspiracy theories fogged the story for many years, with some of the more lurid suggestions implicating Jagger in Faustian bargains. When Thorogood made a deathbed confession in 1993 ("It was me that did Brian"), it seemed to further trivialise the tragic event. Jones was the embodiment of the Swinging Sixties, but his Cotchford Farm residence was more than just an escape to the countryside; it was also a means to distance himself from London and The Stones, but not from his "lashing tail of paranoiacal fears," referred to in an unrecorded song (Thank You) For Being There, the only known lyric Jones left behind. The musician' s mood swings were notorious ("a complicated couple of blokes" quipped Richards) and self-doubt plagued him to the end. In fact, as early as 1965, The Stones and manager Andrew Loog Oldham were already expressing doubts of Brian's ability to cope with fame, Jones harbouring an all too transparent resentment of Jagger and Richards' domination of his band.

Cinematically, The Rolling Stones will be forever measured by GIMME SHELTER. But instead of Hells Angels and tripping hippies, the front row in SHINE A LIGHT is full of gym members and raised camera-phones.

Jump ahead thirty-nine years and we arrive at Martin Scorsese's SHINE A LIGHT. A vanity project documenting the second of two 2006 Stones-headlined charity benefits, both performances took place in upper Broadway's Beacon Theatre, a vaudeville hall with a capacity of 2,800 (“a dolls house” comments Jagger). It is a wholly tepid Stones performance; we invariably get some high points (a riotous opening Jumpin' Jack Flash, a heartfelt Some Girls) to offset the low ones (truly rotten renditions of Shattered and Sympathy for the Devil), but it is the guest stars that add the real ballast. Jack White looking genuinely humbled to join Jagger for Loving Cup, but it is Buddy Guy’s electrifying Champagne and Reefer that steals the over-bloated show, a veneer light years away from any even lingering memories of Brian Jones.