Sorry to Bother You (15)**
Dir: Boots Riley
With: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer
Runtime: 112 minutes
BOOTS Riley’s comedy is set in a future America where people work for lodgings and are generally at the mercy of big corporations. Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is one such miserable worker bee. Taken on as a cold caller, Cassius is a disaster until the day he takes the advice of a colleague and puts on a “white voice”. Now attracting the attention of the management, how far can and will he go up the greasy pole? Riley, here making his feature debut as a writer-director, has some clever ideas, but as satire Sorry to Bother You is too obvious to succeed. Only Stanfield (Atlanta) and Thompson (another girlfriend role after Creed II) keep things watchable.
Mug (15)***
Dir: Malgorzata Szumowska
With: Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Malgorzata Gorol
Runtime: 90 minutes
A JURY prize winner at Berlin, this impressive Polish drama asks to what extent looks maketh the person. Mateusz Kosciukiewicz plays Jacek, one of hundreds of workers installing a giant statue of Christ to rival the one in Rio. With money in his pocket and a girlfriend, heavy metal-loving Jacek is having the time of his young life. But after a gruesome accident at work, he undergoes a life-changing operation. Traumatic enough in itself, but it is how people treat him after the op that adds to Jacek’s woes. The subtly comic Mug is a film of few words, which relies heavily on Kosciukiewicz for its success. Job done.
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