STOP! THAT! TRAIN!
(15) 90mins
★★★☆☆
IT seems strange to think of a time when RuPaul’s Drag Race was not part of popular culture.
The US drag queen competition has variations all around the world, and guest judges including Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus.
Stop! That! Train! is the story of best friends Tess (Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (Jujubee), a pair of train stewards who work on a terrible network Credit: PA
This utterly ridiculous film, directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray!), has obvious influences from Aeroplane and The Naked Gun Credit: PA
Now producers from the TV show, which has run for 17 years, have spread their no doubt bedazzled wings into the movie world.
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Featuring a flamboyance of former contestants who have become household names in the US — and cameos from an eclectic mix of actors — this silly, camp comedy often feels like it was made up by kids who ate too many E numbers.
It is the story of best friends Tess (Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (Jujubee), a pair of underappreciated train stewards who work on a terrible network called Stank Rail.
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While preparing for their shift, they discover their jobs are finished and decide to catch a ride on the glitzy Glamazonian Express by pretending they work on it.
But the sassy girl gang, who run first class and often break into song and dance (Symone, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Marcia Marcia Marcia), humiliate the pair and pit them against each other. Meanwhile, outside the Barbie-like carriages, a catastrophic “Stormaganza” is brewing and threatens to derail the high-speed train and kill everyone on board.
The problems of the hurtling train and its very OTT passengers are brought to the nation’s President, Judy Gagwell (RuPaul), who, to this point, has been very popular. We see her enjoying life’s comforts, surrounded by posters featuring her campaign slogan, “She Fun”, and expressing her desire to go into an “Oprah mood” by giving out tax rebates.
But soon she has to go full Trump by ejecting a journalist (Michelle Visage) from a press conference, while her aide (a hilarious Matt Rogers) threatens the media with working in a Zara clothes shop if they break his one-question-only rule. And that train is still racing along, with no one to stop it.
This utterly ridiculous film, directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray!), has obvious influences from Aeroplane and The Naked Gun and asks very little of your brain cells.
The two leads are clearly great performers, as is RuPaul, but the jokes often feel too toned down — and the last third of the film, well, drags.
& SONS
(15) 119mins
★★☆☆☆
Bill Nighy plays Andrew Dyer, a celebrated author who wrote brilliant novels in his youth but is now an angry, bearded drunk Credit: Alamy
EVERY family is complicated, but this feels especially so in Pablo Trapero’s adaptation of David Gilbert’s 2013 novel.
Bill Nighy plays Andrew Dyer, a celebrated author who wrote brilliant novels in his youth but is now an angry, bearded drunk who scrawls nonsense on bits of paper and refuses to leave his sprawling manor house.
Living with him are devoted housekeeper, Gerde (Anna Geislerova), and his college-aged son, Andy (Noah Jupe).
The motherless youth was the product of an affair that destroyed Andrew’s marriage to Isabel (Imelda Staunton) and his relation-ships with his older sons, filmmaker Jamie (George MacKay) and recovering alcoholic screenwriter Richard (Johnny Flynn).
Andrew calls on the pair to visit, where they find their dad to be a boozing, jazz-obsessed narcissist who barely knows a thing about their lives.
They are further hurt by his revelations, which create a twist in the tale. The acting is good, with powerful scenes between Nighy and Staunton, but the film is frustratingly slow and melancholy and the stellar cast could have coped with a broader set of emotions.
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TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA
(15) 112mins
★★★★☆
Hannah Einbinder plays a geeky filmmaker who gets the chance to revive her favourite horror franchise in this seductive Eighties-style slasher with a twist Credit: PA
THIS seductive flick is a little like an Eighties slasher film, mixed with a large dose of sex therapy.
Kris (Hacks star Hannah Einbinder) is a geeky writer-director who gets a chance to reboot her favourite horror film franchise.
Studio bosses want to reinvent 1980s series Camp Miasma, which featured a trans character as a mass murderer. But they decide to update the narrative, and Kris sets off to the original shooting location to meet Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) who was in the first movies.
She is now a recluse, living alone on the camp grounds and watching clips of herself on film while wearing silk robes and painting on an unseen canvas. She fascinates Kris, and they form a bizarre and intimate relationship that becomes very bloody.
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun, this funny, strangely beautiful look at cinema’s obsession with the slasher film is hypnotic. And the soundtrack is exquisite, with some surprise tracks playing alongside gory scenes.
Often feeling like a dream sequence, it laughs at the cliches of the genre while also deeply respecting it.
