The Girls review – poignant coming-of-age romance is an understated gem of Sri Lankan cinema

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Sumitra Peries’ 1978 film about teenage sisters and thwarted romance is laden with passions that can’t be spoken aloud Here is a gem of South Asian cinema from 1978, by the Sri Lankan director and editor Sumitra Peries. With its lucid monochrome cinematography and calm, natural, unselfconscious performances, there is a freshness and warmth to this film. It is often on the brink of melodrama or soap opera, many shots having a tendency to slow zoom into the actors’ faces, and yet The Girls is in fact rather understated. A great deal of its poignancy resides in this very suppression of emotion. We are in a world of passions that can’t be spoken aloud. It is a story through whose entire running time I wistfully hoped for a happy ending, but that is what Peries ruthlessly withholds from her audience. Kusum (Vasanthi Chathurani) is a studious, serious teen from a poor family with a scholarship to a very good school. Her father is seriously ill and her mother works hard to make ends meet. She...
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Streaming: Cocaine Bear and the best ‘so bad they’re good’ films

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Farcical thriller Cocaine Bear – about a drugged-up bear on the loose – follows in the knowingly naff footsteps of Snakes on a Plane, Sharknado and more

There are some films that feel like a mere addendum to their trailer, and Cocaine Bear is one: an idea that sounds so good and so funny as a quick synopsis that it’s almost immaterial whether the finished film makes much of it or not. Whether or not you’ve seen Elizabeth Banks’s farcical, nominally fact-based thriller, released in cinemas in February, you’re probably aware of its one-line pitch: there’s a bear, you see, that somehow ingests a massive stash of cocaine and goes on an almighty rampage. Chaos ensues. What more do you want from a film?

As it happens, Cocaine Bear is a likably ludicrous romp – ideally suited, now that it’s available on VOD, to a Friday-night watch on the couch with a takeaway. (Perhaps you thought the premise sounded just too silly to justify a cinema trip.) But it never quite matches the zippy energy and gonzo hilarity of its trailer, and it doesn’t really try. It’s a one-joke film that considers its work done when you’ve been sufficiently amused to sit down and watch it.

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