Film - showing at a cinema near you
Deception
With Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor on board, Deception is certainly not short of beefcake, thus ensuring the film is both aspirational enough for straight male audiences and swoonsome enough for the ladies. The tale is one of a humdrum accountant, Jonathan (McGregor), who finds his life transformed when lawyer Wyatt (Jackman) introduces him to an exclusive sex club. It's all fun and games for a while of course, and Jonathan's heart even starts a-tumbling for a luscious young lady (Michelle Williams). Alas, when Jonathan is investigated for the disappearance of a young woman, he realises that Wyatt has rather set him up, the blighter. Deception is, you may have gathered, one of those glowering, after-hours psychological dramas, and while it brings nothing particularly new to the table, it is rather entertaining - in a dimly-lit, rather seedy kind of way.
15, 108 mins
Happy-go-lucky
After the dour tale of Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky is not altogether what one expects from Mike Leigh. Here we have perhaps the most crowd-pleasing, entertaining film of his career: Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a London schoolteacher, irrepressible, colourfully-dressed and infused with a spirited optimism. She lives with her best friend, takes tango classes, helps the homeless and spreads cheer wherever she goes. When her bike is stolen, she begins driving lessons with the considerably more uptight Scott (Eddie Marsan) and their repeated clashes make for much of the narrative. Poppy is initially a startling character - so jinglingly happy that one wonders first whether one can survive two hours in her company, and second whether beneath all that chirp and chatter she might have some terrible secret. She doesn't. And despite all this, the film loses nothing of its fundamental Mike Leigh-ness. It's still rich and vivid and sinewy - a film that feels very much alive.
15, 118 mins
Protege
Derek Yee's movie starts well with a tumbling opening sequence showing the Hong Kong skyline, while deep in the city, drug addict Jane (Zhang Jing Chu) shoots up and passes out before her daughter strays into the room and takes out the needle. It's an abrasive introduction to a movie about drugs - the people who take them, the people who sell them, the people who try to prevent it. Undercover cop Nick (Daniel Wu) has been gaining the trust of upscale heroin dealer Lin Quin (Andy Lau) for eight long years. Now facing ill-health, Lin Quin wants to groom a successor, and selects Nick - a plot device that allows Yee to take us on a drug-themed tour of Hong Kong. It is an interesting idea of course, but one that cannot flourish here. The film seems trapped in a tricky place somewhere between documentary and movie - overgrown with facts, its drama is undeveloped.
18, 106 mins
21
A precocious sort of movie about an equally precocious university student. Ben (Jim Sturgess) aims to harness his maths spoddery and win big at the tables of Vegas, in order to fund his way through Harvard Medical School. He is joined by a gang of his similarly precocious peers, including the object of his affection, Jill (Kate Bosworth), and their oily maths professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) who's overseeing the project. It's when they get to Vegas that things go awry - both for the students and for the movie. For the former, it's the hard-fisted (though not entirely unassailable) reality of the gambling world; for the latter, it's the clatter and din of Sin City conveyed in a tired old montage of clips - Casinos! Consumerism! Cash! What could have been a very smart film swiftly becomes a souped-up version of that old adage, 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas'.
12A, 123 mins
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Here we go again into familiar Judd Apatow territory with another of his productions telling the tale of some laid-back slacker dude who's trying to woo the girl, but is cursed by a lack of cheekbones and pectoral muscles. Only this time it's in Hawaii. Our hero is Peter (Jason Segel), who composes music for a TV cop drama and for five beautiful years dated the show's star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). Until she dumped him. And started dating a rock-star, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Now they are all, by some terrible freakish chance, holidaying on the same island. This is a very modern break-up movie - Peter, we learn, is not short of offers, including the hotel receptionist Rachel (Mila Kunis), but his heart only belongs to Sarah. Or does it? It's hard not to be charmed by the honesty and awkwardness of the gawky Apatow school, but it might, at some point soon, be time to alter the hottie-and-the-dough-faced-boy pairings, which are starting to wear a tad thin.
15, 112 mins
Street Kings
Despite the fact that he co-wrote the script, this adaptation of James Ellroy's novel fails to bring the vibrancy of his prose to the big screen - yet it does remain an energetic outing, full of blood, bullets and furious action. Keanu Reeves is Tom Ludlow, a detective with the LAPD who harbours a tragic past. He is also a member of a gang of uber-violent, crime-hungry police officers in the force who bound through the city bawling, cursing and firing rounds, led by the impressive Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker). Ludlow, however, highly-trained and thuggish, is coming to realise that he is somewhat trapped by his own violent schooling, and that the city and police department offer a rather grizzly environment. As movies go, it's as daft as a brush - bloody, shouty, manly. But for all that, it's also boisterously entertaining, and Keanu proves rather awesome in the role.
15, 109 mins
My Brother is an Only Child
This vibrant, flavourful film explores the way that politics can divide a family, telling the story of two Italian brothers living just outside Rome in the late 1960s. Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio), the elder, is a blustery, confident chap with an eye for the ladies, who follows his father into a job at the local factory and becomes a Communist. The younger, Accio (Elio Germano), is of a more intellectual bent and intends to enter the priesthood, but when he is expelled from the seminary he embraces Fascism. It's a division, needless to say, that is not easily reconciled. There's a real punch and immediacy to this film. Its characters are full-bodied and well-textured, and while there are times when one wonders quite what the point may be (other than a nice trip down memory lane), it still remains a rich and hearty kind of movie.
15, 99 mins
Stop-Loss
Kimberley Pierce's last movie, Boys Don't Cry, was a tremendous success, feted by audiences, critics and Oscar judges alike. Her follow-up - a study of American armed forces on duty and at play - is every bit as powerful. We begin with a troop of white-picketed, bravado-rich boys who are left traumatised by a casualty-heavy checkpoint shoot-out in Tikrit. Soon after, the group, led by Staff Sgt Brandon King (Ryan Philippe), is relieved to be sent home - in King's and best buddy Steve's (Channing Tatum) case, to Texas. But when King learns that he must return to Iraq, he goes AWOL, driving cross-country, destinationless, with Steve's fiancee (Abbie Cornish) by his side. That the movie here becomes a little confused and purposeless may to some appear a fault, but in many ways its rambling quality is exactly its point: there are no easy answers in war, and no happy, neatly-tied endings. An intensely forceful film, in which Philippe and Cornish are particularly impressive.
15, 113 mins
Flashbacks of a Fool
Out in Hollywood, Joe Scot (Daniel Craig) has enjoyed a decadent lifestyle and a successful career that is now on the wane. After one particularly extravagant evening, he receives a telephone call from his mother informing him of the death of a childhood friend, an event that forces him, staring out at the Pacific Ocean, to return to his memories of the British seaside town where he grew up - his teenage self (played by Harry Eden) running amok in the arcades, sleeping with his unhappily-married neighbour (Jodhi May) to the distress of his sweetheart (Felicity Jones) and the tragedy that ensued. Ultimately he's compelled to fly back to Britain and confront his past. Flashbacks of a Fool is occasionally overly-styled and wants a more robust flavour, but it's enjoyable nonetheless, and whenever Craig hits the screen you are reminded of what a compelling star he is.
15, 113 mins
Leatherheads
In recent times, Mr Clooney has made an agreeable swerve towards directing (with the impressive Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night and Good Luck). His latest offering, Leatherheads, is an attempt to rekindle the pep and zing of those 1940s screwball comedies with a bouncy tale of an American football team. The man himself plays Dodge Connelly, the star of a financially troubled professional team in Duluth, Minnesota. As all the glamour dwells with the college teams, Dodge sweet-talks the star of Princeton (John Krasinski) into joining Duluth. It's a marvellous plan - until the two lock horns over Renee Zellweger. So it rolls on, without any particular purpose. Set in the era of prohibition, there are naturally plenty of nods to cops busting up speakeasies, and that's just how it feels when Leatherheads reaches its close - as if everyone is rollicking along having a jolly good time, and then it ends. In short, it's great fun, but without the usual Clooney fire.
PG, 114 mins
Shine a Light
Martin Scorsese's latest rock flick - he also made The Last Waltz, with the Band, and No Direction Home, with Bob Dylan - is essentially a Rolling Stones gig movie, filmed over two nights in New York in 2006. But what a gig movie! Jagger (then aged 63) is at his Dionysiac best, prancing, pouting, mugging and leering; Keith is all roguish charm, greeting Hillary Clinton's mother with a raffish "'Ello, Dorothy"; Ronnie loveable; and Charlie cool. The songs (Shattered, Sympathy for the Devil, Some Girls and many, many more) are terrific, while Buddy Guy, guesting on Champagne and Reefer, is all a big voiced bluesman should be. Intercut with old Stones interviews and a running joke about Scorsese not getting the set list, it's a gas, gas, gas - if 40 minutes too long.
15, 122 mins
Persepolis
Based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and directed by the author in tandem with Vincent Paronnaud, there is a real sense of elegance and towering greatness to this animated autobiographical coming-of-age story. Animation, in recent times, has come to mean the kapow and zap of the brashly-hued movies that Pixar and co produce, but here we have a flat, sombre-coloured depiction of the streets of Iran, where Satrapi grew up in the time of revolution. Voices are provided by Chiara Mastroianni as the young Satrapi, Catherine Deneuve as her mother and Danielle Darrieux as her grandmother - a wise, quick-witted woman who embodies the movie's feminist heart. As the revolution rages, Satrapi's family sends her off to the safety of Vienna, where she enjoys the freedoms of the West but pines for her home. Her decision as to whether or not to return to Iran is the central conflict of the film, though the mood never turns mawkish. Movies of this calibre and boldness come along rarely, and serve to remind us of the incredible possibilities and subtleties that film can allow. An absolute gem.
12A, 95 mins
The Orphanage
The most important lesson taught to us by The Orphanage is surely that horror is so much better when it happens to be Spanish. There are plenty of the usual ingredients here: the creaky house miles from anywhere, the good-natured couple, Laura (Belen Rueda) and Carlos (Fernando Cayo), and their adopted son Simon (Roger Princep) and the building's grim history that threatens to blight the milk-and-cookies happiness of the future - in this case, an exceedingly benevolent plan to transform the spooky old house (which is in fact the orphanage where Laura was raised) into a hospital for ailing children. There are also, of course, ghosts seen only by their son, and horribleness galore unveiled by a seance. But first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona somehow turns these weary plot devices into something quite unexpected and really rather poised, balancing supernatural schlock and family melodrama to great effect.
15, 106 mins
Son of Rambow
It's the early 1980s, and in a school hallway somewhere in England we see an encounter between two markedly different schoolboys: Will (Bill Milner), whose deeply religious upbringing keeps him away from corrupting forces such as television, and Lee (Will Poulter), the school scallywag who stirs up a fight everywhere he goes. Yet they form an unlikely bond, based largely upon the illicit viewing of a bootlegged copy of Rambo: First Blood, and pledge to spend the summer creating their own interpretation of said action flick for a novice film-making competition. This is, as you might expect, a low-budget film, entirely without affectation or guile - and as a result it is utterly charming.
12A, 96 mins
Reviews by Laura Barton
FIRST POSTED
APRIL 24, 2008
