Twisters overview: Watchable gale-force nonsense, writes BRIAN VINER

Twisters (12A, 177 mins)

Verdict: Gale-force nonsense 

Rating:

I did some more laughing out loud during Twisters, so strenuously blow-hard are the efforts to turn the weather into what amounts to a monster movie. 

The killer tornadoes ripping through Oklahoma are plainly the equivalents of Godzilla or alien invaders or the Great White in Jaws, especially as nobody, not even crack meteorologist Kate Cooper (Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones), seeks to explain them as, just possibly, a consequence of climate change.

That said, Lee Isaac Chung’s film thunders along with impressive verve and energy as Kate, seeking redemption following a tragedy five years earlier by attempting to show that tornadoes can actually be shrunk by scientific intervention, hooks up with a charismatic self-styled ‘tornado-wrangler’ called Tyler Owens (Glen Powell).

This might all be nonsense, but it’s very watchable nonsense, with a nice comic turn from Harry Hadden-Paton as a hapless English reporter, who is there to write a story about the phenomenon of chasing twisters across the American plains.

It might also be credible nonsense, if you’re the sort of person, as I am, who believes that anyone who drops ‘super-absorbent polymers’ into a sentence probably knows what they’re talking about.

Incidentally, I saw Twisters at its European premiere in London last week, where it was introduced by Chung himself. ‘I hope (after seeing it) all you Londoners will never complain about the weather again,’ he said.

I don’t think we can make that promise. Asking us to stop moaning about the weather is like asking us to take a pledge never again to drink tea or praise Sir David Attenborough; we’d be butchering our national identity.

But I took his point. We don’t (yet) live in a country where you can wind up in the next county without leaving your front room, so thank goodness for that.

Shades of Spinal Tap as Blur turn philosophers in middle age 

Blur: To The End (15, 104 mins)

Rating:

Not many rock band documentaries manage to escape the long shadow of This Is Spinal Tap (1984), and let me put it this way, Blur: To The End is not one of the exceptions.

Indeed, there are moments when the parallels are downright uncanny, as when drummer Dave Rowntree wrecks his knee playing tennis in Surrey, an injury as un-rock’n’roll as the ‘bizarre gardening accident’ that led to the death of Spinal Tap’s own former drummer John ‘Stumpy’ Pepys.

Nevertheless, Blur fans will love this affectionate chronicle of their 2023 comeback tour, which ends with their first Wembley Stadium gig and unashamedly presents the former Britpop titans as middle-aged philosopher-kings, hanging on to their every aphorism.

Even for those of us who preferred the musicianship of Oasis and Pulp, it’s fun to see them back together in their fifties. 

Front man Damon Albarn is as effortlessly (and swearily) charismatic as ever and his old school pal Graham Coxon as engagingly strange, while bassist (and now cheesemaker) Alex James, always mindful of his image, tries hard to make up for his considerable paunch with some proper retro chain-smoking.

It is James who offers a neat analogy about touring again: that it’s like riding a rollercoaster, in the sense that when you get off you’re not sure whether you want to get back on immediately and have another go, or never, ever do it again.

On the whole, they seem to favour the former, and helpfully, having apparently buried old enmities, appear to enjoy each other’s company.