Melissa McCarthy is routinely described as one of the finest comic actresses around today, though “comic” seems an unnecessary qualifier: her ad libs can be as exquisitely judged as many an accented Meryl Streep line reading. She further proves the point in Spy (Fox, 15), a bouncily silly espionage farce that reunites her with Paul Feig – director of Bridesmaids and The Heat, and a man who repeatedly allows her to draw honest, earthbound characters from inspired lunacy. For all its daft 007 mock posturing, this story of a CIA desk worker – think Miss Moneypenny in comfy slacks – accidentally forced into field agent peril is often most engaging when its star is permitted to play it low-key. Her professional exasperation and wistful pining for Jude Law’s Bond-slick super spy are all too human even as the plot (as knotty as Spectre, and arguably more logical) careers into wilder hijinks, giving her brash knack for slapstick a thorough, and thoroughly riotous, workout. She’s not the only actor having a blast here – Rose Byrne is a martini-dry delight as a withering Russian arms dealer, and trust Feig to unlock the frenetic comic timing of Jason Statham – but the film is in thrall to her just the same.
Irish animator Tomm Moore nabbed an underdog Oscar nomination this year for his crystal-delicate Celtic fable Song of the Sea (Studiocanal, PG); his loss to the slick Disney mechanics of Big Hero 6 was as inevitable as it was unjust, but his lovely, lawn-lush vision may just become a whispered word-of-mouth classic. Moore understands children intuitively enough not to pacify or patronise them: as the film follows two young siblings – one human, one selkie – as they find their way home after being brusquely moved to Dublin, there’s a very real sense of sadness and insecurity coursing through its fantastically imagined twist on folklore, drawn as though refracted through stained glass. Though it’s steeped in the imagery and mythology of its region, there are welcome echoes of the already missed Studio Ghibli here.
It’s certainly the most beautiful film out this week, despite a new film by Tarsem Singh – the stylist behind such waking dreams as The Cell and The Fall – also hitting the shelves. Alas, Self/less (EIV, 12), a po-faced genetics thriller starring Ben Kingsley and a form-hitting Ryan Reynolds as body-swap partners, is Singh’s first film that could reasonably be called indistinct: his customary florid derangement is scarcely in visual or narrative evidence. If it’s flat rather than calamitous, the face-freezingly horrid romantic comedy Lessons in Love (Arrow, 15) valiantly goes for both: Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek strike a negative number of sparks as bristling in-laws-turned-lovers, but what you might find hardest to shake is the memory of Malcolm McDowell bellowing: “Stop talking about my cock, woman!” Let’s never start.
It’s enough to make you more conducive than usual to the antics of Russell Brand, though the comic-turned-social-commentator is still pretty overbearing company in Brand: A Second Coming (Metrodome, 15), a slick documentary portrait by Ondi Timoner that nonetheless misses a trick by largely taking its subject at his big-mouthed word, rarely needling him into argument or revelation. Also concerning itself with dynamic surface is Cosima Spender’s Palio (Altitude, 12), a vividly rendered overview of the eponymous Italian horse race, coated in heat and dust, that conducts only moderate investigation into the tradition’s tangled inner workings.
Xavier Beauvois’s sober, Cannes-lauded Of Gods and Men was an art-house hit in 2010; his more whimsical follow-up, The Price of Fame (Studiocanal, 12), has shuffled off to DVD with nary a peep. A shame, since it’s the richer, more relaxed film: a loosely fact-inspired caper about two hard-up deadbeats in sleepy Switzerland who attempt to exhume Charlie Chaplin’s corpse for ransom, it’s brushed with melancholic comedy and glazed with a glorious Michel Legrand score that hearkens wistfully to a gentler strain of classic French cinema.
Speaking of which, there’s a lot of that available on the newly renovated BFI Player+. The British Film Institute’s discerning streaming service has expanded its online library while taking a more curatorial programming approach – including a weekly selection by our own Mark Kermode (this week’s pick is Hitchcock’s The Lodger) and access to themed collections for £5 a month. It was in its French classics folder that I stumbled upon Jean Renoir’s 1936 miniature Partie de campagne: 40 minutes of refined but playful bliss, as light and sheer in its carnality as lace delicates, it composes a romantic roundelay from a simple country picnic. It’s worth a monthly subscription fee on its own.
