Just when you thought life couldn’t get any worse, along comes the new Ken Loach movie. Sorry We Missed You (15, ★★★) tells of Ricky (Kris Hitchen), a labourer with plans to set up on his own.
He begs his care-assistant wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) to sell her car and uses the cash to buy a van so he can be a franchisee with a local delivery company. From the moment Ricky becomes the white van man of his dreams, he’s transported into a nightmare.
Now that he and Abbie are out of the house all day long, their son Seb (Rhys Stone) goes off the rails and starts bunking off school.
Sorry We Missed You tells of Ricky (Kris Hitchen, above with Katie Proctor), a labourer with plans to set up on his own
Soon enough, the law collars him, and Dad loses a day’s pay for insisting he be by his side. The next day Ricky’s beaten up on the job – and fined by his boss for not having protected the customers’ parcels.
At which point, like Oscar Wilde reading the death of Little Nell, I burst out laughing.
Loach piles so many troubles on Ricky’s shoulders that, by the end of the movie, he looks like Oliver Hardy sitting in a fireplace, with bricks from the chimney he’s accidentally destroyed falling on his head.
Thud. Guffaw. Thud. Guffaw. Thud, clomp, thud. Guffaw, giggle, guffaw.
More bad news in Judy (12, ★★★), a glittery biopic that tells of the last few months of Judy Garland’s life. Renée Zellweger is on fine form as our heroine – she gets the Garland strut, as well as the set of her upper lip, just right.
Renée Zellweger (above) is on fine form as our heroine – she gets the Judy Garland strut, as well as the set of her upper lip, just right
Alas, the show-stoppers don’t stop the show. Renée gives them everything she’s got, but that isn’t a zillionth of what Judy herself had. A star ain’t born.
A star IS born in Joker (15, ★★★★). Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a wannabe stand-up so devoid of talent he’s driven to destruction. Todd Phillips’s movie is a great character study cum mood piece – you really feel Arthur going batso – but it’s let down by the way it asks us to condone the Joker’s riotous violence.
Joaquin Phoenix (above) plays Arthur Fleck, a wannabe stand-up so devoid of talent he’s driven to destruction
Anyone who found the Beeb’s recent Christine Keeler drama sluggish and off-kilter should revisit Michael Caton-Jones’ Eighties take on the story, Scandal (18, ★★★★). Just out on an extras-laden Blu-ray, it stars Ian McKellen as John Profumo, John Hurt as Stephen Ward, Joanne Whalley as Keeler, and, best of all, Leslie ‘well, hello…’ Phillips as Lord Astor.
A deeply affecting drama.
Just out on an extras-laden Blu-ray, Scandal stars John Hurt as Stephen Ward and Joanne Whalley as Christine Keeler (both above)
Songs aplenty in Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles De Rochefort (PG, ★★★★★), from 1967. Real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac (who died in a car crash shortly after the picture wrapped) play twins Delphine and Solange.
Enter Gene Kelly in lilac jacket and pink polo shirt – a pack of Opal Fruits come to life. He sings, he dances, he sweeps the girls off their feet and into a dream of endless melody (courtesy of Michel Legrand).
Trust me, this is almost as miraculous as movies get.
Real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac (who died in a car crash shortly after the picture wrapped) play twins Delphine and Solange
Almost, because The Palm Beach Story (12, ★★★★★), from 1942, pips it at the post. Joel McCrea plays broke inventor Tom. His wife Gerry (Claudette Colbert) hatches a plan.
They divorce, she marries a millionaire, he funds Tom’s schemes. Needless to say, false love doesn’t run smooth. But there are pleasures aplenty.
Joel McCrea plays broke inventor Tom. His wife Gerry (Claudette Colbert, both above) hatches a plan. They divorce, she marries a millionaire, he funds Tom’s schemes
As for the hilariously contrived happy ending, nobody, not even Shakespeare, would have tried that on.