STACK November 2016 Issue 145

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ALSO SCREENING
IN NOVEMBER
The Potterverse continues in this spin-off from
J.K. Rowling's beloved series. According to the
author, this is the first of five planned features
that will link up with the Harry Potter films. Based
on a slim Hogwarts textbook, this period fantasy
finds wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne)
in 1920s New York, where the titular creatures
have been unleashed. Casting a spell on Nov 17.
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND
WHERE TO FIND THEM
Will Hunting meets Jason Bourne, but it's Ben
Affleck who plays the autistic math genius
and CPA who "uncooks the books" for criminal
organisations and moonlights as an assassin.
It all adds up on Nov 3. (See page 12.)
THE ACCOUNTANT
Luke (son of Ridley) Scott makes his feature debut
with this creepy, cautionary sci-fi tale about the
risks involved in creating a synthetic human –
needless to say, there are plenty. Frankenstein
meets Ex Machina on Nov 17. (See page 18.)
MORGAN
Amy Adams plays a linguist who must
decipher an alien language to avert global
disaster in this sci-fi drama from Sicario
director Denis Villeneuve. Arriving Nov 10.
ARRIVAL
visit
22 NOVEMBER 2016
CINEMA
REVIEWS
Chick noir – or ‘domestic noir’ as the novelists
themselves prefer it to be known as – has taken
the book world by storm, but so far the sub-genre
has not fared quite as well on the big screen. David
Fincher’s take on Gone Girl , arguably the book that
paved the way for this new style of psychological
thriller, was superb, perfectly capturing the sly
wit and menace of Gillian Flynn’s masterful novel.
However, the adaptation of S.J. Watson’s Before I
Fall Asleep was a proficient but overly melodramatic
chiller. The latest domestic noir best-seller to hit the
big screen, Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train,
sits somewhere between the two: while it’s not
in the same class as Gone Girl, it’s an absorbing
and ingeniously plotted tale of marital discord and
murder. Emily Blunt plays Rachel, the titular girl (well,
woman really) on the train who becomes obsessed
with a seemingly perfect couple – Scott (Luke Evans)
and Megan (Haley Bennett) – who she sees each
day from the window of her carriage. When the
latter goes missing soon after being spotted with
a mystery man, Rachel reports her suspicions to
the police, but we soon learn that she is a far from
reliable witness. As well as being an alcoholic who
lost her job months ago, she has been harassing her
ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) and his new wife,
Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), who live in the same
street as the missing woman. She may have even
confronted the missing woman on the night she
disappeared, and as Rachel suffers from drunken
blackouts, she begins to wonder whether she has
done something really terrible. Blunt is terrific as a
woman who begins to doubt her own sanity and
director Tate Taylor (The Help) does a good job in
sustaining the tension across the multiple time
frames over which the story unfolds. But he's less
successful at deploying red herrings, and the finale
is something of a letdown. John Ferguson
FURTHER VIEWING: Gone Girl
A faithful but flawed adaptation of the best-seller.
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Tate Taylor CAST: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux RATING: MA15+
Dan Brown’s pulp thrillers might make for a good
read on a long haul flight, but as movies they’re
something of an endurance test. The Da Vinci
Code was like listening to the audiobook as read
by Tom Hanks and Ian McKellen, and Angels &
Demons was strangely inert for a film about an
attempt to destroy the Vatican with antimatter.
Skipping the third book featuring cryptologist
Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, Ron Howard
proceeds directly to Brown’s most recent best-
seller, Inferno, and finally delivers the kind of
propulsive thriller the material demands. It’s easily
the best film of the three, which is faint praise
given the competition. Inferno finds Langdon
(Hanks) awakening in a hospital bed with a nasty
head wound, a case of temporary amnesia,
and experiencing nightmarish visions of hell on
Earth. Following an assassination attempt by a
Terminator-like lady cop, Langdon flees with British
doctor Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) in tow, and
must piece together the cryptic clues that link
Dante’s famous depiction of Hell with a deadly
pathogen designed by a mad billionaire to cull
the world’s population by half. It’s the usual race
across Europe, from one art gallery, museum
and basilica to the next, with the exposition
delivered on the run. Things get increasingly
more preposterous and some of the plot twists
are glaringly obvious, but the cracking pace,
some welcome humour, and Hanks’s earnest
performance as the thinking man’s Indiana Jones
holds it all together... just. If anyone can save
the world it’s Langdon, even if he has lost his
memory; the guy can still recognise a Florentine
spire from his hospital window, even if he can’t
remember what coffee is. Scott Hocking
FURTHER VIEWING: The Da Vinci Code
Upping the Dante.
INFERNO
RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Ron Howard CAST: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Ben Foster RATING: M