in the comfort and safety of your own home. in david finch�*s gone girl, rosamund pike played an enigmatic character behind whose smile lurked dark secrets. now pike is back on spiky form in i care a lot, a gleefully callous thriller packed with vicious gallows humor. good morning, ms peterson. i'm sorry to disturb you so early. the court has ruled that you require assistance in taking care of yourself. but, but i'm fine. i'm afraid it's not up to you to decide. she plays marla grayson, a shark who preys upon the elderly, hijacking their lives and fortunes by becoming their legal state guardian and then milking their assets for all they're worth. i'm here to help. but when marla picks the wrong cherry in the shape of dianne wiest�*s elderly retiree jennifer peterson, she finds herself face—to—face with roman, played by peter dinklage, an ex—russian mafia drug trafficker with a penchant for cakes, smoothies and cutting off his enemies�* fingers. i don't like you. you've onlyjust met me. written and directed byj blakeson, who made the viscerally—twisty three—hander the disappearance of alice creed, i care a lot is carried by pike, who wears a smile that looks like it could strip wallpaper at a0 paces. no living family? no family at all. as for dinklage, he's very well—cast as the sotto—voce criminal who hates getting angry and who sucks a straw like a vampire sucking blood, a quality mirrored by his new nemesis. lensed in bubble gum hues that seem to reflect the artifice and plastic superficiality of this world, blakeson�*s film has a slick, vacuum—sealed sheen matched by a brittle synthpop soundtrack. as with alice creed, the genuinely disturbing elements of the opening act gradually give way to more generic heist—y thrills, with blakeson reveling in wrong—footing the audience, upending our sympathies and allegiances in a manner that recalls the wachowskis�* debut feature, bound. i don't lose. i won't lose. i'm never letting you go. 0h. you're in trouble now. the result is a nicely nasty black comedy, a roller coaster ride that swaps genuine moral dilemmas for something rather more disposable. picking you up, spinning you round, and leaving you feeling entertained — if a little bit empty. you can find it now on amazon prime video. now, it's hard to remember a movie being more badly—received than music, the directorial feature debut from popstar—turned—film—maker sia, which came to uk vod platforms this week. it centres on two half—sisters, kazoo and music — and yes, i'm sorry, those really are the characters�* names. she sees the world in a completely different way from us. kate hudson's kazoo, orjust zu for short, is a recovering alcoholic and drug dealer who is unexpectedly required to care for her younger sibling, music, a young woman with autism who'd previously been living with her gran. music is played by former dance mum's star, maddie ziegler, prompting charges of ableism from those who thought the role should have gone to a neurodiverse performer, and who have also slammed the film's depiction of the dangerous physical restraint used to subdue its title character. music, it's yourfriend, ebo. sia's response to these criticisms was first aggressive and then apologetic. she's since conceded that she "listened to the wrong people" and announced that future editions of the film will come with a warning and some cuts. yet those alterations won't change the fact that this is trite nonsense that can best be described as woefully misjudged. we're about to have a pool party! robot voice: i am happy. swerving unevenly between cliched real life and day—glo coloured fantasy, music is a film that attempts to tell its internal story through the medium of modern dance and fails spectacularly. you can do this. from ziegler�*s gurning performance, which smacks of caricature, to hudson's utterly unconvincing portrayal of a hardened alcoholic — yeah, right — to the inclusion of celebrity cameos from the likes ofjuliette lewis, henry rollins and sia herself, the whole thing has a whiff of a misguided vanity project. as for the dance numbers, they're toe—curlingly awful — the kind of thing rowan atkinson would've come up with as his mime artist alter ego, alternative car park. the fact that music has been nominated for two golden globes just serves as a reminder that that dismal debacle is run by a bunch of unaccountable bozos who know nothing about film and whose votes are based entirely on the members�* desperate desire to hang out with famous people. # oo—oo—ooh, love you too... # this is the number we always play when people ask us to play more, because we know that after we play this, they couldn't possibly ever want to hear us again. now, when he�*s not being one half of bill and ted, alex winter has carved out an impressive directorial career, from the early—�*90s horror—comedy freaked to his latest outing, zappa, a documentary about the musical legend built upon a wealth of largely unseen personal archive material. i haven�*t heard anything like it before or since. frank embodied everything. you couldn't say, "oh, yeah, that's rock'n'roll, because it wasn't." it'sjazz — no, it's pop music — no, well, what the hell is it? it's zappa. describing his film as not a music doc or a conventional biopic but the dramatic saga of a great american artist and thinker, winter�*s passion project follows zappa�*s career from his days in the �*60s with the mothers of invention to his later orchestral projects. it also covers his fight against music censorship in the �*80s, even though the discs under attack were not his own, and his strange political career, which saw him being invited to become the czech republic�*s special ambassador to the west on trade, culture and tourism — yes, really. it's time for a revolution. i�*ve often said that the real test of a documentary is whether it makes you feel involved with a subject in which you had no previous interest. while the recent doc king rocker had had the advantage of being about a musician i really like, namely rob lloyd. my affection for zappa�*s music is, at very best, passing. i mean, i enjoy the stuff he did with beefheart, but not much else. so it�*s a credit to winter that zappa had me gripped, told me stuff i didn�*t know, and even convinced me to track down some of frank�*s classical compositions — not something i ever thought i�*d do. i think if you shoot any lower than that, you're gonna wind up with something sleazy. making inventive use of graphics and animations to augment the interviews, concert footage and home movie reportage, this is a thorough and thoroughly engaging account of a prolific artist, a film that william s preston esquire would doubtless hail as "excellent." you can find it at altitude. film. from the glades of california�*s laurel canyon to the suburbs of rome with bad tales, the berlin award—winning second feature from the d�*innocenzo brothers. despite the directors�* family name there�*s precious little innocence on display in this visually stylish yet morally dyspeptic tale which invites us to share its fashionably cynical worldview. narrated by a man writing in a young girl�*s diary, the story is declared to be "inspired by a true story that was inspired by a false story that is not very inspired" — a phrase which seems to provide its own review of the film. what follows is a collage of adults behaving badly while children imitate their behavior. parents acting like kids who act like bad parents in a dark suburban fairy tale. there�*s no doubting the artistry of bad tales, which is evocatively shot to juxtapose the hot summer setting with the coldness of its depiction of humanity, but beyond being a queasy exercise in modern gothic grotesquery, i�*m not sure that this has much to say, sharing the overheated bleakness of ulrich seidl but lacking the coming—of—age empathy of, say, lynne ramsay. personally, ifound myself increasingly impatient with the film�*s ever—so—slightly smug attitude, although others seem much more impressed. you can find bad tales now on mubi, which is also currently home to a couple of delightful canadian oddities. war. a foreign menace emerges and the fate of our country hangs in the balance. our troops spring into action... we shall fight for all that is right, and we will not stop until the world is perfect. but could one man be destined to save our great nation? in matthew rankin�*s debut feature the twentieth century, the film—maker constructs a satirical account of one man�*s battle to fulfil his destiny and become the canadian prime minister, proudly flying the flag of national disappointment. a dizzying collage of absurdist set pieces that draw inspiration from everything from orwell to german expressionism, this is divertingly bonkers fare, a hallucinogenic meld of twisted history and celluloid madness with a hint of dada, a dash of dali, and a smidgen of monty python�*s meaning of life. a new century. it also owes a debt to the great guy maddin, whose film work spans from tales from the gimli hospital to the saddest music in the world and the brilliantly surreal docu—fantasia my winnipeg, one of my favourite films of the 21st century. maddin�*s latest, also on mubi, is stump the guesser, a short co—directed with thejohnson brothers and boasting maddin�*s trademark blend of soviet silent cinema styles and deadpan satire. its subject is a carnival act who can guess anything, from someone�*s age to how many fish they have secreted about their person. but when our antihero meets and falls for a woman who turns out to be his sister, he must disprove the theory of heredity so that he may marry the love of his life. clearly maddin�*s work is not for everyone, but his films have consistently made me laugh, cry and scratch my head in wonder, and if you�*re looking for a way into his bewildering back catalogue then this head—spinning short is just the ticket. that�*s it for this week. thanks for watching the film review. stay safe and i�*ll see you next week. good night, children. we start the new week off on a largely settled note with quite a bit of sunshine around, but there will be some rain in the forecast thanks to a weather front that is affecting northern and western parts of england and eastern wales through the morning. that will clear away eastwards through the course of the day, so it will turn cloudy across eastern areas and will fizzle out, leaving a legacy of cloud. out west, it will brighten up in the afternoon and there will be plenty of sunshine for scotland and northern ireland, and relatively mild, ten or 14 degrees across the south—east. it turns even milder as we had to tuesday and wednesday, but a lot more unsettled thanks to this area of low pressure, particularly across northern and western areas, with lots of isobars, so it will be windy as well. but the wind will draw up the air from the subtropics, making it very mild for england and wales. it will be extremely wet in the north and west tuesday and wednesday, drier and mild across the south and most places will turn dry by the end of the week. this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i�*m celia hatton. a new martyr for myanmar — crowds pay their respects to mya thwe thwe khaing, who was shot during protests against the military coup. a three—month extension for un inspectors to access iran�*s nuclear sites, but there�*ll be no snap inspections. mapping the way out of england�*s lockdown — details on the government�*s plans to ease measures as coronavirus cases fall.