Peaky Blinders’ star doubles up in Brum

Films by Graham Young

THE GOOD BOY (15, 110 mins) ***

Fast becoming one of Britain’s greatest actors, Stephen Graham fans can see now see him in double trouble on the silver screen.

After two weeks on release, Peaky Blinders – The Immortal Man (15) is still running at both The Mockingbird Cinema in Digbeth and Everyman Mailbox. And, from today (March 20), it’s available to Netflix subscribers around the world, too, with Graham returning as docker Hayden Stagg.

But the Kirby-born star is also now starring in The Good Boy, a Get Out-meets-Misery / serial killer-style drama directed by Poland’s Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi, 2019).

The action begins at a party where everyone is living life to the excess, but after 19-year-old Tommy (Anson Boon, 2017) stumbles out on to the street he has no idea what comes next.

In the basement of a grand country pile, Chris (Graham) tries to correct bad behaviour.

The Good Boy’s appeal relies heavily on Graham’s extraordinary talent for nailing every character he plays. Here, it’s his framed, frozen eyes and his attachment of an unexplained toupee that are mesmerising.

Graham’s greatness not only overshadow’s creepily-depressed missus Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), but diminishes our feelings re the ultimate fate of captive Tommy, too. Moreover, we really don’t learn enough about Chris’s (financial and engineering) background.

Externally sourced, the greatest moment of tension is too brief – and it would also be in the wider interests of women’s safety for the film’s coda alone to have earned an 18 certificate.

PROJECT HAIL MARY (12A, 156 mins) ****

It’s official! Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are geniuses. But even geniuses have flaws!

The pair behind Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Lego Movie and Spider-verse now prove their mettle with the kind of live action sci-fi thriller that would leave Messrs Spielberg (E.T.), Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Ridley Scott (Alien) in thrall – especially if seen in IMAX (Cineworld) or Dolby Screen (Odeon Luxe) formats.

After playing moon-landing Neil Armstrong in First Man (2018), Ryan Gosling (La La Land, Barbie) returns to space as science teacher Ryland Grace who wakes up on board a one-way interstellar space mission wondering how he came to be there – not least because his two colleagues have died. Can his research save a humanity that’s still at risk of a potentially catastrophic cooling of the Earth?

Based on the Project Hail Mary novel by Andy Weir (Gravity, also adapted by Drew Goddard), the film co-stars the brilliant German actress Sandra Huller as Eva Stratt who is running the mission.

The film poses many relevant questions about our future on Earth as well reminding us that, even when he is acting alone, Gosling is far and away the leading Canadian star called Ryan and not the Deadpool wisecracker, Ryan Reynolds.

When Project Hail Mary is at its best, the fluid combination of fine cinematography by Oscar-winning Greig Fraser (Dune), score (by Daniel Pemberton) and editing are as good as anything you will ever collectively see and hear in a cinema – a clarion call for Avatar’s James Cameron to return to Earth himself.

Although the story is told with too many flashbacks – making the 156-minute running time feel much more excessive than the spellbinding thrills of the ride – joint directors Lord and Miller should still take a bow for prioritising the human heart over wanton destruction.

READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME (15, 108 mins) ***

The original Ready or Not (2019) film had an adult certificate. This splatter-fest follow-up has somehow been watered down to a 15 despite one extended, sickening sequence very uncomfortably taking the edge off such a belated sequel where many characters literally disintegrate to comic effect.

Samara Weaving returns as Grace MacCaullay who lost her husband and in-laws in the first movie. Now, along with once-estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton), she is still at risk given that four of the world’s wealthiest need to kill her to preserve their own status.

Gruesome black comedy humour ensues in the kind of reality show variant you would hope never to see for real. But, be warned – any real-life female victim of domestic or any other kind of male violence should run a mile.

ARCO (PG, 89 mins) ****

Given that it looks more like a Japanese adventure by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, 2001), this Oscar-nominated French animation is a welcome diversion away from the relentless drive for computerised Pixar perfection.

Mark Ruffalo, Natalie Portman and Will Ferrell add their voices to the clear nods to The Iron Giant, E.T. and Technicolor Dreamcoat in a story about a boy whose life in the clouds in 2932 becomes a back-in-time visit to our own increasingly robot-led future world of 2075.

Impatient ten-year-old Arco shouldn’t be flying for another two years, but then he borrows his sister’s rainbow cape in a bid to time travel to see dinosaurs.

Crash-landing, he is taken home by ten-year-old Iris, whose parents (Ruffalo and Portman) all too often rely on a robot called Mikki (endearingly voiced by a blend of the two stars) to look after her. Can Iris help Arco to return home?

With themes about what the world is and what it might become, there’s no shortage of stormy / wild fire ‘environmentalism’ at play here which might feel over-egged and simplistic.

Far more interesting are the risks debut director Ugo Bienvenu takes to determine how the film might end in unexpected fashion.

MIDWINTER BREAK (12A, 90 mins) ****

Having moved from the Belfast Troubles to Scotland in their younger years, mature couple Stella and Gerry (Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds) go on holiday to Amsterdam in this adaptation of Bernard MacLeverty’s 2017 novel of the same name.

Hinds, 73, still cuts a dashing, imposing figure and Manville, now 70, impressively jumps on to the bed next to him upon arrival. But it’s the weighty, emotional impact of their walks that will matter more than the city’s own history.

The use of Amsterdam as a third, neutral character is a terrific stage for two of our finest actors to shine as they echo Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan in Roger Michell’s Paris-set Le Week-End (2013).

Debut directed by Polly Findlay with cinematography by Laurie Rose (Peaky Blinders, 2016), there are some lovely incidental lines like ‘When I open my glasses case now I’m pleasantly surprised to find my glasses.’

Manville has starred in eight Mike Leigh films to date, including my own favourite Vera Drake (2004). This is not dissimilar for its carefully-lit texture and an unnerving ability to peel back a lifetime of emotional layers – with Catholicism at its slowly-opening, maternal heart.

Midwinter Break is at Omniplex Great Park, Rubery; Royal Cinema, Sutton Coldfield, Lockworks Wolverhampton and Showcase Dudley – but not at MAC Birmingham until April 24.

Reviewing films in Birmingham since 1989, Graham Young is a former UK Regional Film Journalist of the Year and three-time runner-up.

PICTURE CREDITS

The Good Boy / Signature

Project Hail Mary / Sony Pictures Releasing

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come / The Walt Disney Studios

Arco / Picture House Entertainment

Midwinter Break / Universal