Max Minghella

Shell

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Zoe Shannon with her arms around Samantha Lake

First The Substance, now Shell – is there room for more body horror about the perils of staving off the ageing process? Shell attacks the same subject from the same angle but uses different implements. The result is less Cronenberg-inspired, as Coralie Forgeat’s The Substance was, more Paul Verhoeven, a cautionary tale with a leer and yuks. Director Max Minghella signals he has Verhoeven in mind in his very first shot – of Elizabeth Berkley in a bath trying to hack black lumps off her leg. She was the star of Verhoeven’s infamous Showgirls, a film that all but ruined her career and didn’t do anything for his – two barrels of old-fashioned, … Read more

Teen Spirit

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Violet gets her moment on TV

It doesn’t take much exposure to TV talent shows to realise that success with the voting audience or expert panel isn’t so much about the performance and talent as about the story the contestant tells. Teen Spirit takes that idea, the story, and turns it into a story of its own. In what could almost be a series of filmed inserts for a talent show we meet Violet (Elle Fanning), the bilingual daughter of Polish immigrant single mother Marla (Agnieszka Grochowska). Dad’s gone. Picked on at school. Loves animals. Works hard in a series of dead end jobs. But the girl loves to sing, as we can tell from the glimpse we catch … Read more