Film reviews: News of the World | Slalom | Willy's Wonderland

Given the high-pressure intensity of their previous collaboration, the highjacking drama Captain Phillips, one might expect a western starring Tom Hanks and directed by Paul Greengrass to be a similarly nerve-jangling affair. But News of the World (12) *** eschews the Bourne Supremacy director’s signature shaky-cam aesthetic in order to take a slow-burn approach to the genre, one that’s perhaps a bit more reflective of subdued energy of a post-civil war Southern setting in which defeated Confederate sympathisers are a spent, if still dangerous, force.

Hanks plays Jefferson Kidd, a former Captain in said Confederate army who now goes from town-to-town across Texas keeping the locals up to speed on the latest news from around the country. The western equivalent of the “good German” in a Second World War movie, he’s a decent guy whose combat experience and post-war travels around the Reconstruction-averse South have wearied him enough to see the senselessness in fighting a lost cause in defence of the indefensible. Not that there’s much reference to slavery (Greengrass is careful to keep the details of Kidd’s beliefs buried beneath the vague-but-familiar backstory of a wanderer trying to escape a painful past).

That said, the plot does kick into gear when Kidd comes upon a lynching and finds a young white girl called Johanna (newcomer Helena Zengel) hiding at the scene. She's in the process of being transported back to relatives she doesn’t know after being liberated from the Kiowa tribe that slaughtered her family and kidnapped her as an infant. Naturally, Kidd feels duty-bound to deliver her to her kin and what follows is very blatantly an inverted spin on The Searchers, with Greengrass even paying direct homage to its famous final image. But while it’s interesting up to a point to see a modern film with a more nuanced understanding of America’s indigenous cultures riffing on that problematic John Ford/John Wayne collaboration, the power of The Searchers – as Martin Scorsese has frequently pointed out – remains its status as a portrait of America at its absolute worst.

By contrast News of the World buries this lead a little too effectively. It’s still a handsomely made film with good performances and at least one set-piece that reconfirms just how good Greengrass is at staging action, but by keeping any racialised violence off-screen or pushed to the margins, its themes don’t land with the power they perhaps should.

Slalom (18) **** sees French director Charlène Favier make an auspicious debut with a timely and uncomfortable film about a 15-year-old female skier (Noée Abita) being groomed for success by a predatory coach (Jérémie Renier). Subtly detailing the insidious ways the trainer/prodigy power dynamic can be abused, the film really comes into its own in the way Favier puts us in her protagonist’s headspace with brilliant use of music and a strong visual style that lets us understand the confusion and horror Lyz (Abita) is experiencing without, in turn, exploiting her trauma for cheap dramatic effect.

As the ideal conditions for watching the latest Nicolas Cage movie Willy’s Wonderland (15) ** aren’t really possible at the moment – it’d be best appreciated as part of drunken midnight movie crowd – it’s perhaps unfair to complain too much about a film that pits the latter-day b-movie maverick against a series of murderous animatronic cartoon characters. But like a lot of exploitation movie throwbacks, this doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its gonzo premise. Stranded in the middle of nowhere after his car is sabotaged, Cage’s never-named protagonist agrees to spend the night cleaning the condemned theme park restaurant of the title in return for the repair of his car, only to discover he’s been lured there as a human sacrifice for a demonic weasel and his band of psychotic robotic mates. Sounds fun, right? And it is for about 30 minutes, especially as it becomes apparent that Cage – who never utters a line of dialogue – has been conceived as something of a vintage video game hero (one scene featuring Cage stomping a robot gorilla’s head against a urinal plays like a particularly twisted tribute to Donkey Kong). Alas, the repetitive structure quickly becomes the film’s undoing and it’s neither funny enough nor inventive enough to sustain the gag.

Still it’s more entertaining than Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (15) *, a laugh-free comedy vehicle for Kristen Wiig and her Bridesmaids co-writer/co-star Annie Mumolo. They play a pair of middle-aged, culotte-wearing BFFs who live together, work together and spend every waking second together. When they both lose their jobs, they take it as a sign that they need shake up their lives, so decide to take a trip to a Florida resort, where they become embroiled in a diabolical plot by a Dr Evil-style megalomaniac (also Wiig) who wants to kill all the locals with a swarm of genetically modified mosquitoes. As that description perhaps indicates, the film – which Wiig and Mumolo co-wrote – has the feel of an improv sketch run amok and the randomness extends to the characters, with Jamie Dornan turning up as the villain’s emasculated henchman and a talking crab called Morgan Freemond ruminating wistfully on a life that bears an uncanny resemblance to the most famous roles of Morgan Freeman. Avoid.

News of the World is on Netflix; Slalom is available on demand via Curzon Home Cinema; Willy's Wonderland and Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar are available on demand

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Film reviews: News of the World | Slalom | Willy's Wonderland | Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar