Film review: Made of Honour, Nim's Island, Joy Division, Tovarisch, I am Not Dead | Arts

Made of Honour

Finding a new spin on the wedding romcom can be a difficult task, but Sony has (sort of) triumphed with this tale of a charming, successful lady-killer named Tom (Patrick Dempsey) who realises that his best friend, the fragrant Claire (Michelle Monaghan), is in fact the love of his life. Sadly, the realisation thuds home at the precise moment when Claire is embarking upon a whirlwind holiday romance in Scotland, returning home with a ring on her finger and plans to appoint Tom as her 'maid' of honour. Sure, the ensuing 'who will get the gal?' shenanigans that follow have a rather predictable flavour, but it's a sparky, intelligent cast - and everyone needs a little wedding romcom in their lives sometimes, right?
12A, 101 mins

Nim's Island

This adaptation of Wendy Orr's charming novel is a bit of an odd fish. As Nim - a motherless young girl living on an island with her marine-biologist father who seeks solace in her favourite literary creation (an action hero named Alex Rover) - Abigail Breslin is as heart-melting as ever. And her father Jack (Gerard Butler) is thoroughly acceptable and indeed believable. But the movie stumbles a little with the appointment of Jodie Foster as the agoraphobic author of the Alex Rover books - a semi-hermit who receives the email a desperate Nim sends to her hero when her father is lost at sea. As capable as Foster undoubtedly is, her appearance only reminds us that it would be jolly nice to see her play a role in which she had to pull an expression that did not convey 'uptight'. Still, a nice, friendly little movie.
PG, 96 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

Joy Division

In the wake of last year's mesmerising Control comes this documentary by Grant Gee about the magnificent and hugely influential Manchester band led by Ian Curtis, who killed himself at the age of just 23. With appearances by the late Tony Wilson (who founded Factory Records), Curtis's former bandmates Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris (who would of course go on to form New Order), his lover Annik Honore, and contributions from Touching at a Distance (the book written by his widow Deborah), it makes a fine stablemate for Control. Rather than a mere portrait of a talented but troubled young man, Gee offers us a moving picture of Curtis's city in the late 1970s and early Eighties, when Manchester - a once-proud centre of industry - had grown stagnant and depressed.
15, 93 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

Tovarisch, I am Not
Dead

For 25 years, Dr Garri Urban has been trying to discover whether any members of his family survived the Holocaust, and at the same time attempting to obtain evidence that they were imprisoned by the Soviets prior to being sent to the concentration camps. His search has gained momentum since locating his brother in Israel, and soon he will be reunited with his former fiancee, who was jailed for 10 years as punishment for their relationship. This is of course a remarkable tale, and here it is rendered all the more extraordinary by the fact that the documentary has been made by Dr Urban's son, Stuart, who has been recording his father's search for the last 14 years. It makes for sensitive and intensely emotional telling.
12A, 85 mins

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

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

In Bruges

Racist dwarves, wisecracking hitmen, elephantine American tourists, the camp cutesiness of mediaeval Bruges - Martin McDonagh's self-directed script is abundant (indeed, over-abundant) with scraps of Tarantino, shards of Ritchie and a soupcon of Private Eye. The film's fun, though, and it's a pleasure to see Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes having such a murderously good time. The plot? Two Irish contract killers are sent to Bruges to lie low after a job goes messily wrong. Why Bruges? Because Harry, the Essex crimelord (Fiennes), loved it when he was a kid and thinks it might make a terminal treat for Ray (Farrell). The tone's uneven - what should be cheerfully amoral hinges on something truly nasty - but there are plenty of good jokes here.
18, 107 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

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