Pete Davidson confronts personal demons in The King Of Staten Island

FILM OF THE WEEK: THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND (15, 137 mins) Comedy/Drama/Romance. Pete Davidson, Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, Maude Apatow, Bel Powley, Ricky Velez, Moises Arias, Lou Wilson, Pamela Adlon. Director: Judd Apatow.

Released: June 12 (streaming and available to download from Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, iTunes, Microsoft Store, PlayStation Store, Sky Store, Virgin Media).

Dedicated to the memory of actor Pete Davidson’s firefighter father, who died on September 11, 2001, The King Of Staten Island is a loosely autobiographical comedy drama about mental health, grief and self-destruction.

Director Judd Apatow co-wrote the script with Davidson and one of his best friends, Dave Sirus, adding fictional gloss to a deeply personal story that mines gallows humour from palpable human despair. The film opens with the troubled lead character intentionally closing his eyes behind the wheel of a speeding car, while driving without a seat belt on a busy highway.

This heart-stopping scene is inspired by a real-life incident and buckles us tightly, and uncomfortably, to Davidson’s manic alter ego as he battles personal demons. Soul-searching is counterbalanced with potty-mouthed, snarky humour reminiscent of Apatow’s earlier work (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) like when Davidson’s dropout upholds the right to compliment a woman’s appearance.

“I just said she looked nice in those pants,” he protests. “I didn’t know I’d get MeToo-ed for it!” Tonal gear changes aren’t consistently smooth, the 137-minute running time is excessive and the lead character’s heartfelt redemptions sometimes feel like crowd-pleasing nods to convention rather than graduated changes in outlook or behaviour.

Seventeen years ago, Scott Carlin (Davidson) lost his firefighter father in a hotel blaze. Now 24, the pothead struggles to articulate feelings to his ER nurse mother Margie (Marisa Tomei) and younger sister Claire (Maude Apatow), who is poised to leave for college.

Instead, Scott puffs merrily on the pipe dream of opening a tattoo parlour-themed restaurant, oblivious to health and safety concerns about mixing needles and noodles. In the absence of a strong male figurehead, Scott wrestles with attention deficit disorder, Crohn’s disease and dark thoughts in the company of stoner buddies Igor (Moises Arias), Oscar (Ricky Velez) and Richie (Lou Wilson).

They sell pills to local kids and Scott occasionally shares the bed of childhood pal Kelsey (Bel Powley), whom he has known since fourth grade. “You deserve somebody way better than me,” he confesses in a rare moment of clarity.

Margie remains faithful to Stan’s memory until she unexpectedly opens her heart to firefighter Ray (Bill Burr). The arrival of another man in uniform sends Scott into a downward spiral and he resolves to poison Margie and Ray’s relationship using ammunition supplied by Ray’s embittered ex-wife (Pamela Adlon).

The King Of Staten Island is a touching if uneven underdog story that hits more frequently than it misses. Davidson is a sympathetic ball of pent-up energy, sparring effectively with Tomei and Burr in their emotionally charged scenes.

London-born Powley sports an impressive accent as one person who truly understands Scott but knows, deep down, the only person who can save him from the inferno is himself. The film has swearing sex and violence :: RATING: 7/10

ARTEMIS FOWL (PG TBC, 95 mins) Fantasy / Action / Adventure / Drama/Comedy. Ferdia Shaw, Nonso Anozie, Lara McDonnell, Josh Gad, Dame Judi Dench, Colin Farrell, Tarama Smart. Director: Kenneth Branagh. Released: June 12 (streaming exclusively on Disney+)

The luck and charm of the Irish carries Artemis Fowl, a bulging mouthful of whizz-popping eye candy scooped from the first two books in Wexford author Eoin Colfer’s hugely popular fantasy series about a ruthless and callow 12-year-old criminal mastermind.

Directed at a lick by Belfast-born Kenneth Branagh and adapted for the screen by Olivier Award-winning Dublin playwright Conor McPherson and Hamish McColl, this breathlessly paced origin story is a valentine to the island which one character rhapsodises as “the most magical place on Earth”.

Irish folklore and whimsy are drizzled liberally over every special effect-laden frame. In one memorable scene choreographed to the bombastic thrum of Patrick Doyle’s score, the gleaming hull of a spaceship opens to reveal a glowering Dame Judi Dench clad in green armour as an 802-year-old commander of the fairy police force’s reconnaissance division.

“Top o’ the mornin’” she growls straight-faced in a thick accent that skips merrily between its intended destination and Somerset. Her only f-words, spat in fury, are “four-leaf clover”. The eponymous antihero’s cynicism and emotional coldness have been thawed several degrees for his sprightly introduction to the big screen, affording 15-year-old Kilkenny-based actor Ferdia Shaw — grandson of Jaws boat captain Robert Shaw — some warmer interludes in his feature film debut.

The script employs a kleptomaniac giant dwarf as wise-cracking narrator, recounting events as testimony to a faceless MI6 interrogator in a secure holding cell situated in the Thames Estuary.

“Most humans are afraid of gluten. How do you think they’d handle goblins?” chuckles the wild-haired interviewee as he spins his outlandish yarn. Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl II (Shaw) has been raised on stories of fairies, goblins and leprechauns by his father (Colin Farrell), a globe-trotting dealer in priceless antiquities.

When the patriarch is kidnapped, young Artemis learns the truth about his noble bloodline and a darkness that threatens our world. From his family home on the wave-lashed Irish coast, the resourceful lad launches an ingenious rescue mission accompanied by trusted bodyguard Domovoi Butler (Nonso Anozie) and his plucky 12-year-old niece, Juliet (Tarama Smart).

The ransom is a device called the Aculos, “a weapon so powerful and mysterious, it can barely be imagined”.

To locate the otherworldly trinket, young Artemis places his trust in rookie elf officer Holly Short (Lara McDonnell) and dwarf Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad), who can tunnel at speed by furiously gobbling dirt and expelling it violently from his back side.

Artemis Fowl confidently combines ancient mysticism and high-tech modernity at a relentlessly brisk pace. Meaty character development is sacrificed at the altar of slickly orchestrated spectacle, including temporally disrupted set pieces involving a rampaging troll. Key events and protagonists from Colfer’s books have been altered or excised to facilitate a trim running time, neatly setting up future instalments without substantial emotional investment from the audience. No swearing, no sex but some VIOLENCE. Rating: 6/10

CITIZENS OF THE WORLD (12 TBC, 90 mins) Comedy/Drama. Ennio Fantastichini, Giorgio Colangeli, Gianni Di Gregorio, Salih Saadin Khalid. Director: Gianni Di Gregorio. Released: June 12 (streaming on Curzon Home Cinema)

A trio of septuagenarians contemplates leaving the gentle ebb and flow of Italian community life for a brighter future overseas in writer, director and star Gianni Di Gregorio’s comedy.

Former Greek and Latin teacher Professor (Di Gregorio) has grown tired of daily life and wonders if he should settle abroad for his twilight years. Neighbour Giorgetto (Giorgio Colangeli) is struggling to make ends meet on his pension while small-scale antiques dealer Attilio (Ennio Fantastichini) yearns to recapture some of the excitement and wild abandon of his hippy youth.

The three friends decide that an overseas adventure is just what they need to energise their souls. They vigorously debate the benefits of moving to different countries. The old men’s fanciful dreams are thrown into sharp relief by the desperate plight of a Malian refugee Abu (Salih Saadin Khalid), who has fled his home for the relative safety of Italy.

YOU DON’T NOMI (18, 92 mins) Documentary. Director: Jeffrey McHale. Released: June 12 (streaming and available to download from Amazon Prime Video, BFI Player, Curzon Home Cinema, iTunes, Rakuten TV, Sky Store) In the mid-1990s, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven was surfing on the crest of a wave from back-to-back successes with RoboCop, Total Recall and the erotically-charged thriller Basic Instinct starring Sharon Stone.

The film-maker hoped to repeat the feat with his salacious 1995 picture Showgirls headlining Elizabeth Berkeley as a hitchhiking drifter, who employs feminine wiles to clamber up the ladder of stripping success in Las Vegas.

The film was met with a deafening chorus of derision from critics, and Showgirls bombed at the box office. In the intervening 25 years, Verhoeven’s picture has gained an unlikely status as a cult classic and sparked impassioned debate about sex and gender, which strikes a deeper chord in the current climate.

Written, directed and produced by Jeffrey McHale, feature-length documentary You Don’t Nomi looks back at the making of Showgirls and examines the film’s legacy with lively contributions from film critics, cultural scholars and ardent fans. COMING NEXT … Jesse Eisenberg and Clemence Poesy star in the inspiring wartime drama RESISTANCE.