None of the classics are safe anymore. Hedda (R) is the latest one to receive a makeover. Dia Da Costa has transplanted the feminist fable Hedda Gabler from Henrik Ibsen’s Norway to a 1950s English manor.
The text has been changed to make it relevant for the #MeToo era. With all these iterations are we not in danger of losing the flavour of the original? By pushing the envelope too far, can we not be accused of trying to reinvent the wheel?
After the Hunt (R) seems tailor-made for such an era. It deals with a sexual assault charge brought by a university pupil against a staff member. Julia Roberts is the department head struggling to deal with this, as well as a secret of her own. From an ostensibly straightforward beginning it morphs into a cornucopia of complications.
Keanu Reeves plays a guardian angel, Gabriel, in the ditsy supernatural comedy Good Fortune (15A). He plans to teach beleaguered factotum Aziz Ansari (who also directs the film) that money can’t buy happiness. This he does by swapping his identity with that of Ansari’s affluent boss (Seth Rogen).
When Ansari starts to do quite nicely with his new-found wealth, however, the plan comes unstuck. Gabriel is punished by being deprived of his wings and forced to live among us mortals here on Earth.
Edward (Conclave) Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player is showing on Netflix at the moment as well as in selected cinemas. A slick crime caper with existential overtones, it has the ever-busy Colin Farrell playing a compulsive gambler struggling with money problems, as compulsive gamblers tend to do.
He tries to escape his past by indulging himself in high-stakes baccarat games in Macau, the so-called ‘Los Angeles of the East.’ His encounters with the mysterious Dao-Ming (Fala Chen) and private inves-tigator Cynthia Blythe (Tilda Swinton) force him to confront his demons. But will they propel him towards salvation or doom? That’s the 64-marker.
If any of you out there, like me, regard 1982’s “Nebraska” as being Bruce Springsteen’s finest album you’ll want to see Deliver Me from Nowhere. It charts its embryology from The Boss’ New Jersey bed-room, where he first started composing the incendiary lyrics. He’s fighting burn-out from the rigor-ous touring he did promoting “The River,” and about to plug into a more introspective side of him-self.
Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man (R) documents six decades of activism in the life of the controver-sial Republican who traded in the bullet for the ballot box when a post-Provo agenda took root in the lead-up to the Good Friday Agreement.
Adams has been relatively quiet recently apart from a case he took against the BBC last summer. He sued the station for libel after a 2016 programme had alleged his complicity in a murder, winning a 100k euro pay-out. The victory tasted particularly sweet for him, having been waged against The Auld Enemy.
He hasn’t gone away, you know.
