Pass on the plot as tornadoes rule in Twisters
It may be a reboot of a ’90s classic, but Twisters’ weather at its worst owns every single centimetre of the big screen. There’s just one thing missing, writes Leigh Paatsch.
Leigh Paatsch
Don't miss out on the headlines from Leigh Paatsch. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A couple of reboots are hitting our big screens this week as Hollywood rolls out some new blockbusters for movie buffs to enjoy.
TWISTERS (M)
Director: Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Maura Tierney
Rating:★★★
Just shooting the breezes
Not much fine print to the undeniably entertaining contract you’ll be signing here.
What you get with Twisters is a decades-later rewrapping of the same package offered by that blowhard ’90s classic, Twister.
This means anything that isn’t tied down will be heading skywards sooner than later, thanks to the unpredictable intercessions of nature’s most powerful vacuum cleaner, the tornado.
Many a roof will be making tracks for the clouds above. So too will the occasional car, cow, chicken coop, campervan and community hall.
However, the true, spellbinding spectacle that holds this disaster movie together are the spookily sudden entries and exits made by the tornadoes themselves.
These high, wide and most unhandsome exemplars of weather at its absolute worst summon a frightening sound and awesome fury that owns every single centimetre of the big screen.
From the beginning of Twisters, the niggling notion that another one of these swirling bursts of anarchy is about to strike never quite goes away.
Unfortunately, the sappy storyline linking each frontier-clearing super-storm to the next never quite goes away either. Don’t pay the plot too much attention. It will soon pass.
The only two characters worthy of a mention are Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a winsome weather scientist, and Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a storm-chasing social-media superstar.
Kate lost some close friends to some big winds back in the day, and understandably isn’t that keen on getting up close and personal with anything beyond a severe gale.
As for Tyler, he’s never met a tornado he didn’t like, nor posed for a selfie with. This guy (played by Powell as a non-stop delivery system for smiles, struts and snappy one-liners) is constantly driving into the eyes of storms for no other reason than more followers on Instagram.
If you’re wondering what role recent developments in the field of climate change might be playing here, let’s just say that Twisters only briefly nods at the issue.
The movie’s principal concern – and that of an audience who have come to see the kind of carnage that makes insurance companies buckle at the knees – is to make the storm sequences as convincing as possible.
That task is completed relatively successfully, except for the odd digital point-of-view blip where you suddenly feel as if you’re trapped inside a kitchen blender.
Twisters is in cinemas now
KINDS OF KINDNESS (MA15+)
Rating:★★½
General release
If we learned one thing from Poor Things last summer, it is that its director and all-round creative overseer Yorgos Lanthimos doesn’t do ‘normal’ in any sense of the word. However, where Poor Things blazed a deceptively accessible and defiantly original trail – which ultimately led to a Best Actress Oscar for Emma Stone’s astonishing performance – Lanthimos’ latest work follows no discernible path whatsoever. That means you’re going to have to settle for a whole lot of weirdness and not much else this time around.
This three-chapter tale of three different gentlemen (all played by Jesse Plemons) wriggling in and out of three distinct binds pours on the enigma from the outset. In the first story, Plemons’ character is hard-pressed pleasing a demanding boss (Willem Dafoe), who might also be his sugar daddy. In the second, Plemons is a husband haunted by the notion that the ID credentials of his wife (Emma Stone) no longer check out like they used to. As for the third, Plemons gets mixed up with a surreal sex cult while he and his spouse (Stone again) search for a woman reputed to raise the dead.
Yes, there is style as far as the eye can see here, but where the substance might be hiding in this long, 165-minute head-scratcher affair is a matter for each individual viewer.
BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F (M)
Rating:★★★
Now streaming on Netflix
A moderately unnecessary, yet totally enjoyable nostalgia bomb is detonated here, the aftershocks of which will fully connect viewers of a certain age to what they loved and laughed about the original Beverly Hills Cop some four decades ago.
An energised Eddie Murphy is in appealing form as the one and only Axel Foley, who’s apparently been cooling his heels down in Detroit since we last saw him. However, it only takes a spot of bother involving his estranged daughter (Taylor Paige) and a missing pal (Judge Reinhold reprising his iconic role as Billy Rosewood) to haul Axel back to the high life in Beverly Hills, where he once again engages in his usual non-textbook techniques to save the day.
What genuinely works here is all the result of Murphy’s trademark charisma as a comedian. When the quips need to be quickly delivered, he’s still got the goods. Co-stars Kevin Bacon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
More Coverage
Originally published as Pass on the plot as tornadoes rule in Twisters
Robbie Williams biopic is a minor movie miracle – monkey and all
Turning global pop star Robbie Williams into a CGI monkey could have backfired spectacularly but it actually turns Better Man into a musical biopic that’s a cut about the rest, writes Leigh Paatsch.
One big problem with Lion King prequel
The animals and action look incredible and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s songs are just fine, but there is something a bit too familiar about Mufasa: The Lion King.