Monday new releases: 2 September 2024

Midas Man, The Crow and The Three Musketeers: Milady are all in cinemas

There are only two things wrong with Midas Man, Joe Stephenson’s biography of the Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

The first is what’s in it and the second is what isn’t in it.

Epstein died in 1967 at the age of only 32. He was a closeted homosexual who gave no revealing interviews in his lifetime, not did he have time to write a tell-all autobiography. So in order to flesh his story out to feature length the script (written by Brigit Grant and Jonathan Wakeham) has to make some educated guesses – with fingers crossed that their speculation will successfully add some psychological weight.

The episodes in the film that actually did happen are so familiar in terms of the Beatles story that they don’t illuminate them or Epstein. The Decca executive turning the group down – “groups with guitars are on the way out” – “rattle your jewellery” and George Harrison’s “I don’t like your tie” to George Martin during the first session at Abbey Road.

What the film doesn’t have is any actual Beatles music or Apple IP. There’s no logo on the bass drum and the actor/musicians playing the Fab Four (who do decent impersonations on and off stage, to be fair) have to resort to lame covers like “My Bonnie Lies Over the Water” and “Bésame Mucho” rather than anything that can prove to the audience that Epstein’s instincts were right.

There’s an argument that including actual Lennon & McCartney songs in a film where they aren’t the main attraction might be a distraction, but the film knows that we’ll be bored pretty quickly without some music and that we haven’t come out to see Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.

Add to that, the clunky fourth-wall breaking narration from Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and we get a film that knows its subject matter is painfully thin and is prepared to try anything to keep us interested.

Gosh but The Crow was an unpleasant experience. I have never seen any of the previous incarnations of the gothic comic book character (especially not the tragic Brandon Lee version) so went in with nothing to lose but the bleakness combined with the relentless charmless violence did nothing for me.