peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2017 02 17 T2 Trainspotting

T2 Trainspotting

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With Dave, 6:45pm session at Hoyts Broadway, $52.40 for the pair of us for the "extreme screen" preview. It wasn't entirely packed; we were five rows back with no one in front of us.

This sequel was better than I had any reasonable hope of it being. The continuity with the original navigates a narrow path between nostalgia and exploitation; much of it is a funeral for youthful selves, or in Sickboy's case, arrested development. I really liked Jonny Lee Miller both here and in the original, but it is Ewen Bremner's Spud who owns this episode. Robert Carlyle has to work harder at the Begbie snarl and seems too flabby to have spent twenty years in gaol; the voice is there but the psycho angularity is gone. Ewan McGregor seemed at ease, and I had hopes that Kelly Macdonald would let Diane fully rip once more. Newcomer Anjela Nedyalkova is not up to the standard of the others. There's a slightly clunky Gone Girl disconnection in the middle that is unsurprising and necessary for the plot. The music was interesting, featuring remixes of the old standards and some new stuff; Dad's Best Friend by the Rubberbandits is a standout.

More broadly this is an Edinburgh retrospective, showing the destruction of the buildings that once made Leith an industrial hub; now not even the geography remembers. Spud's residency in one of the few remaining projects is especially poignant. The plot is not much chop, and Irvine Welsh still cannot act, but that's not what anyone was there for.

The big thunder storm of the afternoon demonstrated that the roof over the kitchen of our current abode is not sound.