Film Talk: Latest Movie Releases – Rom-com comfort and hearty helpings of horror
The nights are drawing in ladies and gentlemen, and the cold has been starting to bite.
All across the country, lads and lasses alike have spent the last few weeks hanging up the shorts for the season, and trading in the beach/barbecue ensembles of the summer for the cosy clobber of the brisker months.
Salads and light bites have been stripped from the evening tables and replaced with the hearty pies and stews we love to dig into as the temperature drops, and, of course, the stock on the shelves of supermarkets far and wide has begun to take on a festive feel. Indeed, folks, autumn is truly here. With this, we Brits are starting to batten down the hatches, hold each other close, and turn to those pleasures in life that give us the greatest comfort and spark that warm fuzzy feeling inside.
For many of us, this will mean getting the popcorn out and curling up with a jolly good movie or two.
While summer is the season when the blockbusters traditionally bust their blocks, for me the nicest time to be at the cinema has always been the autumn. Enjoying a fun flick with your pals has always felt most natural to me when the weather forces most of your social time to be spent indoors, and, indeed, there are few better ways to avoid that burgeoning chill than to embrace the shelter of your local multiplex.
With Halloween just over the hill, this week the flicks have delivered a healthy dose of horror. But, for those looking for something a little more warming of the heart, director Nicholas Stoller is here in the top spot with his new rom-com Bros.
Time to get nice and comfy and take a closer look...
BROS (15, 115 mins)
Released: October 28 (UK & Ireland)
Billed as the first gay romantic comedy released by a major Hollywood studio with a predominantly LGBTQ+ cast, Bros warmly embraces the cosy conventions of a boy meets boy love story and tempers emotional gooeyness with the acerbic wit of lead actor Billy Eichner, who co-wrote the script with director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall).
Audiences from across the Kinsey scale, which measures degrees of sexual orientation, will appreciate the film’s deep irreverence to pop culture, heteronormativity and gay representation, including uproarious self-mockery from Debra Messing, best known as one half of Will & Grace and a fervent ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
Eichner snags the lion’s share of zinging lines, like when his angsty forty-something jealously compares his fraught journey of self-discovery to members of Gen-Z navigating their sexual identities: “It’s not fair. We had Aids, they had Glee!”
Bros is delightfully self-aware and mines universally appealing humour from key talking points in gay culture – straight acting vs feminine, monogamy vs open relationship – without artificially sweetening or sanitising on-screen behaviour.
Hook-up apps like Grindr lead to raunchy sexual encounters that deliver surprisingly big laughs and gay characters are frequently their own worst enemies when it comes to deliberating the many glorious facets of masculinity.
Eichner and co-star Luke Macfarlane catalyse winning chemistry from their first lingering glance across a nightclub dancefloor.
Sardonic podcaster Bobby Lieber (Eichner) hosts The Eleventh Brick At Stonewall and is a proud recipient of a best cis male gay man award from his peers in New York.
His children’s book Are You There God? It’s Martina Navratilova was a rare misstep and Bobby intends to build on his brand of “getting angry about things” as curator of the first National LGBTQ+ History Museum in America, which requires an investment of five million dollars to open.
Bobby wears his single status like a badge of honour to the chagrin of a close circle of friends that includes married couple Tina (Monica Raymund) and Edgar (Guillermo Diaz).
During the launch party of a new gay dating app called Zellweger, where men chat about their favourite actresses before they hook up, Bobby locks eyes with handsome jock Aaron Shepard (Macfarlane), whose masculine energy is intimidating.
Despite obvious differences, the two men awkwardly navigate a no-strings relationship that is complicated when Aaron’s soon-to-be-married high school crush (Ryan Faucett) unexpectedly breaks off his engagement and comes out of the closet.
Bros is an effervescent and effortlessly charming treat that wears its heart on its sleeve next to a rainbow pride enamel pin.
The first hour is noticeably funnier and spikier before Stoller starts laying the groundwork for a grand romantic gesture that unabashedly plucks heartstrings and has tears visibly welling in Macfarlane’s eyes.
Old-fashioned, hopeful romantics will follow his lead. Boys do cry.
BARBARIAN (18, 103 mins)
Released: October 28 (UK & Ireland)
The perils of a short-term home rental are des res for stomach-churning terror in a derivative young-woman-in-peril horror that evicts plausibility before the first droplets of blood are spilt.
Written and directed by Zach Cregger with plentiful on-screen splatter and a disturbing breast-feeding sequence, Barbarian suckles on the dread of an overnight stay in unfamiliar surroundings.
Cregger has a firm grasp on teasing the omens of impending doom.
The opening 30 minutes, essentially a two-hander between actors Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgard, are deliciously tense and our discomfort is stoked by repeated intrusions from composer Anna Drubich’s discordant score.
Once the film’s ill-fated heroine opens the door to a basement and descends into the gloom, any nervous nail-biting is swiftly replaced by head-shaking and snorts of derision as the lead character blithely abandons common sense and deliberately puts herself in harm’s way to service the plot.
This cavalier attitude towards personal safety diminishes sympathy for the lead character to the point that we’re almost relieved when something unspeakable comes hurtling out of the darkness and punishes her reckless abandon.
A protracted second act set two weeks later, which introduces an obnoxious actor (Justin Long) facing allegations of sexual aggression towards a female co-star, continues to defy logic, teeing up another subterranean journey by flickering torchlight and a big reveal via stylised flashback to the 1980s.
Tess Marshall (Campbell) travels to Detroit for an important job interview and books accommodation for the night through an app.
Arriving at a house in one of the city’s rundown neighbourhoods during a raging rainstorm, Tess is shocked to discover the property has been double-booked by a man called Keith (Skarsgard).
“Why don’t you come inside?” he gestures.
Tess ignores her intuition and accepts his kind offer so she can telephone nearby hotels and find alternative accommodation ahead of an important job interview in the morning for a research position with a celebrated documentary filmmaker.
Unfortunately, there is a big convention in town and everywhere is sold out.
Rather than spend the night in her rental car, Tess agrees to take the bedroom while Keith sleeps on the sofa.
Strange noises emanating from below ground confirm that Keith is the least of Tess’s worries if she wants to survive a night in Michigan.
Punctuated by explosions of graphic violence that fully warrant the 18 certificate, Barbarian springs too many plot holes, allowing tension to gradually evaporate. Impressive prosthetics transform actor Matthew Patrick Davis into a terrifying and oddly touching antagonist, who deserves a better resolution than Cregger contrives here.
PREY FOR THE DEVIL (15, 93 mins)
Released: October 28 (UK & Ireland)
A nun confronts evil from her tortured past in a horror thriller directed by Daniel Stamm and written by Robert Zappia, Earl Richey Jones and Todd R Jones.
Haunted by memories of the demon that tormented her mother years ago, Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers) pursues a calling to become the first female exorcist.
She is thrust onto the spiritual frontline to save the soul of a young girl called Natalie (Posy Taylor), who is in the vice grip of demonic possession.
The darkness that consumes the child is chillingly familiar and Sister Ann realises that she has unwittingly answered the call of the devil.
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (15, 147 mins)
Released: October 28 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Swedish filmmaker Ruben Ostlund mercilessly skewers the social media elite, represented by models and influencers Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean).
The image-obsessed couple are invited on a free trip aboard a hyper-luxury yacht alongside business tycoons and heiresses, who behave abominably towards the captain (Woody Harrelson) and his crew.
Staff hope to earn sizable tips by fulfilling every belittling whim of the obscenely rich clientele.
When the vessel is shipwrecked during a violent storm, tables are turned and the most resourceful survivors like toilet cleaner Abigail (Dolly De Leon) take charge with shocking results.
