TMW #29: The Monkey, I'm Still Here and Pixar's Win or Lose reviewed

Reviews of the week's biggest releases, plus recommendations and the latest trailers

Happy Friday, movie devotees,

And welcome to your weekly review round-up of the biggest releases in cinemas and at home (or on your phone, if that’s your preference). Today we’ve got The Monkey, Osgood Perkins’ speedy follow-up to last year’s Longlegs (no rest for the wicked-minded, you might say); Walter Salles’ Oscar hopeful I’m Still Here and multi-perspective Pixar show Win or Lose. Dip beneath the paywall and we’ve got another cracking bunch of recommendations and this week’s talking-point trailers.

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We’ll be back on Tuesday with a look ahead to the Oscars, thoughts on that Bond bombshell and plenty more Wing-wisdom besides. Enjoy the newsletter…

Matthew (Matt and Jordan)

The Monkey

15, in cinemas now

⭐⭐⭐☆☆

Theo James in The Monkey (credit: Black Bear)

Seven months after Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs and four months after Stephen King adap Salem’s Lot comes a King flick by Perkins. A toy story of terror based on a 1980 magazine yarn (later revised for an anthology), it’s a lot more Salem’s than Longlegs, despite sharing the latter’s interest in cursed collectibles. But gone are the slowburn, stylised solemnity and Kubrickian chills, replaced by comic shocks and crowd-rousing splatter.

The tone’s set in the, ahem, gutsy opener, where a bloody-uniformed airline pilot (Adam Scott) bustles into a pawn shop, desperate to offload the wind-up monkey doll (“Don’t call it a toy”) he unwisely bought for his two sons. We swiftly learn why. A turn of the monkey’s key and its lips peel back, revealing a hideous toothy leer; next, its drumstick-wielding hand shoots up, like Norman Bates about to stage a shower inspection, before beating a rhythm to ‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’. And then? All hell breaks loose.

With its profane laughs and creative carnage, it’s a banger of a scene - replayed, in essence, throughout the rest of the film, to variable effect. The monkey winds up in the possession of chalk–and-cheese teenage twins Hal and Bill (both played by Christian Convery), who discover its terrible, inexplicable power for themselves, as one elaborate ‘freak accident’ follows another. Never mind Final Destination comparisons; death and drumming haven’t been this entwined since This is Spinal Tap.

Longlegs saw Osgood exert fastidious control of every frame, all the way to that last, Satanic shiver. Here the reins aren’t pulled quite as tight. Some of the set-pieces hit like a wayward harpoon. There are other moments when the writer/director goes in for the kill, but the timing feels off; jump scares that aren’t jumpy enough. Efforts to cultivate an emotional throughline falter, too. Decades pass and the boys become men (played, in another two-for-one performance, by Theo James). Yet the sense of adults reckoning with childhood trauma doesn’t pack the same punch as other King adaps like IT or even Doctor Sleep.

But unlike, say, The Conjuring Universe (several entries in which were also produced by James Wan’s Atomic Monster outfit), The Monkey doesn’t stray from its B-movie path into thickets of backstory and mythology. Sometimes you want an unfathomable simian sadist just to be an unfathomable simian sadist, you know? Young Convery does a fine job of differentiating the antagonistic sibs (one a lonely misfit, the other too cool for school) and there are charismatic, if fleeting, turns from Scott, Tatiana Maslany (playing the boys’ mum), Elijah Wood and Perkins himself, as a louche uncle. Behind the camera, meanwhile, the director continues to flaunt his eye for a sick, slick visual; The Monkey may feel like a step back from Longlegs, but like that film it ends on a note gore fans may lose their heads over. (Matthew Leyland)

IN SHORT: A matter of laughs and death: not as hair-raising as it could’ve been, but the gags are top banana.

STAY FOR THE END CREDITS? Definitely maybe - at the review screening there was a teaser for workhorse Perkins’ next frightener Keeper, but at time of press it was unconfirmed whether this would be attached to all prints. Anyway, it’s an eerie belter, suggesting a return to Longlegs-style nerve-rattling.

KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY: Look out not just for Perkins but his daughter Bea, clocking up her fourth role in her dad’s filmography.

Win or Lose

Episodes 1 and 2 on Disney+ now

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (based on episodes 1-4, of 8)

Laurie (voiced by Rosie Foss) in Pixar’s Win or Lose (credit: Disney)

It’s been a slow journey to the small screen for Pixar’s first original series - ie. not based on an existing property like Monsters at Work or Dream Productions - but on the evidence of this first batch of episodes, it’s been worth the wait (I first saw some teaser footage at the D23 convention in 2022). It’s a neat concept: in the week leading up to a championship game, every episode focuses on a different character connected to a middle-school softball team. Each chosen protagonist also gets a metaphor made manifest, so you have nervous Laurie, daughter of Coach Dan (Will Forte), who has an ever-growing sweaty globule living parasitically on her. There’s also the umpire protecting himself behind imaginary armour, and the young player selling homework to find the fees that her wannabe-influencer mum (who also gets an episode) is seemingly too distracted to cover. It’s clever, witty and moreish, and a slight shame it hasn’t been released in one bingeable drop, as it’s all set over one timeframe. Visually, it’s gorgeous: cartoony character design, marshmallow-soft surfaces and incredible lighting, from the floodlight field to dusky magic hour. It looks as good as the best contemporary animated movies, with no indication that the budget or effort has been reduced for TV. It’s hard to truly judge it without seeing the whole lot, as much of its lasting success will come down to how satisfyingly it ties together the disparate story threads. But it’s off to a winning start so far. (Matt Maytum)

EASTER-EGG WATCH: The title of one of umpire Frank’s beloved romantic-fantasy books nods to Pixar’s most famous character.

I’m Still Here

15, in cinemas now

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Fernanda Torres in I’m Still Here (credit: Altitude)

An adaptation of the horrifying true story of the Paiva family, who were among the many victims of forced disappearance during the military dictatorship in Brazil in the early 1970s, this biographical drama is a sincerely moving work, and features a dark horse Best Actress contender in Fernanda Torres. Set in Rio de Janeiro, it depicts the state-sanctioned abduction of former congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) – a criminal act with no legal recourse, leaving Paiva’s wife Eunice (Torres) to pick up the pieces.

Anchored by Torres’ powerfully stoic lead performance, it’s a film of devastating restraint. Under constant surveillance, and with young children to keep blissfully oblivious, the abduction isn’t even discussed in the home – the true cruelty of the practice being that, as weeks, months and years of silence go by, Eunice has no idea if Rubens is even alive. Emotionally redundant epilogue and overly distended set-up aside, it’s director Walter Salles’ (The Motorcycle Diaries) best work in some two decades, and an important reconstruction of a grave chapter in Brazilian history. (Jordan Farley)

FAMILY AFFAIR Fernanda Montenegro plays the older Eunice. Montenegro starred in Salles’ 1998 film Central Station, and is the mother of Fernanda Torres.