Hard to believe that it’s 19 years since a tornado swept across Birmingham very close to Westside on July 28 2005.
At that very moment – 2.37pm – I was thankfully cocooned inside the National Sea Life Centre during a summer family holiday visit to Brindleyplace. I had no idea that the ‘twister’ was uprooting trees and ripping roofs off on its rapid way across Kings Heath, Moseley and Balsall Heath, barely three miles away.
Visiting the affected area later was just like walking on to a movie set. Luckily, you can experience watching Mother Nature tearing our world apart in safety this weekend by visiting our brilliant multiplexes at Odeon Broadway Plaza and Cineworld Broad Street…
Twisters (12A / 122 mins). With the 1996 release of Twister on July 26 and then Independence Day just two weeks later, that year was like a ‘summer of destruction’ thanks to a new generation of big-screen special effects.
The original Twister was directed by Speed’s Jan de Bont from a story by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park). Here, the Oscar-nominated Minari director Lee Isaac Chung takes over, with Steven Spielberg again serving as an executive producer to guarantee some gale-forced special effects.
Back in 1996, Dr Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) was working on a tornado data-gathering device called ‘Dorothy’ – only to learn a rival had built his own version.
In Twisters, former storm chaser turned New York-based weather tracker Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is enticed back to the danger zone where YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) ramps up the tension of his own storm-chasing antics.
Verdict: **** After appearing in Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You and Hit Man recently, Glenn Powell looks even more like a future ‘old fashioned’ movie star here. He gleefully steps into the kind of role that Chris Hemsworth might have chased instead of becoming trapped in the Marvel universe.
London-born Daisy Edgar-Jones, whose step-up from the TV series Normal People to Where The Crawdads Sing was limited by the underwhelming silver screen adaptation, grabs her new opportunity with both hands.
She’s believable and likeable in equal measure and radiated some rapidly maturing 26-year-old star quality through the endless storm sequences. Her character’s tragic past means she’ll just have to return to the thrill of the chase to overcome those inner PTSD demons.
The film’s science lessons are less impressive than the clever romantic arc. But even though the characters never seem to think that windscreen cages would be a (very obviously) good idea if you are going to drive headlong into vicious storms, the filmmakers literally throw everything they’ve got into the grand climax. This includes a very neat, historic cinema trick being played on your very own audience.
Twisters relies heavily on repetition, but this is still a larger-than-life, eye-popping, summer blockbuster to really enjoy. That’s particularly the case on any of Westside’s best premium screens – whether that’s the immersive IMAX or seat-shaking / wind-blowing 4DX format at Cineworld or in iSense or Dolby at Odeon.
Longlegs (15, 101 mins). Serial killer Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) is on the loose, invading homes in different ways and binding and gagging women. Can the bright new rookie FBI female agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) decipher the clues to stop her target, whose nefarious abilities include influencing families to commit self-harm or even murder?
Verdict: **** Directed by 50-year-old Osgood ‘Oz’ Perkins, the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins, this is proper, grown-up filming that will do little-known cinematographer Andres Arochi’s career a power of good.
That it’s a slow burn will not make it to all tastes, but if you enjoyed David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), don’t miss it. Arochi’s classy cinematography keeps the 1990s atmosphere heavy enough to test Maika Monroe’s character when caught between youthful enthusiasm and fear.
Were he not billed, you might not even recognise the ‘Cage-d animal’. But it’s always good to see Hollywood’s most unconventional yet prolific superstar challenging himself to this unsettling degree. One day, perhaps he’ll be a pesky Bond villain, too.
Pictures: Twisters, Warner Bros; Longlegs, Black Bear.
ENDS
