Film - showing at a cinema near you
Hancock
Cinema's infatuation with superheroes rolls ever onward with this story of John Hancock (Will Smith), the unwilling recipient of superhuman capabilities - flying, incredible strength, indestructibility... you know the drill. Rather than embracing his powers and the responsibilities they carry, Hancock hits the bottle and remains a perpetual grouch. When he saves the life of PR guru Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), however, he is presented with an opportunity to overhaul his image with a stint in jail, a stretch in rehab and a few anger management classes. There is a pretty fine premise behind Hancock, and it floats along quite satisfactorily for the first quarter before one realises that the jokes just ain't that funny, and the plot is staggering off in an unexpected - and uninteresting - direction. As for love interest... well, Charlize Theron is a knockout, but there is, to me, a complete lack of sexual chemistry between her and Smith. Poor Charlize is left to smoulder on her own. The interesting thing with Hancock will be to see whether the sheer audience-wooing clout of Will Smith can counteract the thorough limpness of this movie.
12A, 92 mins
My Winnipeg
Sitting somewhere between documentary and fantasy, My Winnipeg is Guy Maddin's tribute to the Canadian prairie city where he was raised. The young Maddin, played here by Darcy Fehr, lived above a hairdresser's shop with his mother, who is played by the grand dame of film noir, Ann Savage. Her appointment alone speaks volumes about one of the film's central relationships - that of a son and his over-bearing, unceasingly dramatic mother. The real heart of this film, though, lies in the inextricable bond between Maddin and his hometown - a place where facts blur into fiction, where horses freeze in the river and streets are named after prostitutes. Maddin runs together archive footage and modern scenes, all shot in a similar monochromatic style, over which runs his voiceover, speaking of the city's architectural heritage, its geography and the scent of its beauty parlours. It makes for a touching, occasionally befuddling and always stunning film.
12A, 80 mins
La Graine et le Mulet (Couscous)
In the southern French town of Sete, the elderly men of the substantial North African population still struggle to find their place in the community while their womenfolk establish themselves and their children drift away from them. Slimane (Habib Boufares) is one of them: in his 60s, recently made redundant, separated from his wife, Souad, and now living in a guesthouse run by his lover. Each Sunday, the family congregate at Souad's house to cook her speciality couscous: expect the usual kind of messiness heralded by a meal attended by many members of an extended family - the wrong things spoken aloud, and things left unsaid. Really though, this is the story of Slimane, and how he attempts to forge an identity for himself by refurbishing a boat in the harbour and turning it into a couscous restaurant with the aid of his family and, most notably, his lover's teenage daughter Rym (a brilliant Hafsia Herzi). There is a certain predictability to Couscous, and it reaches its close by a rather rambling route, but alongside its weary plot, it also carries an irresistible warmth.
TBC, 151 mins
Sex and the City
Whether the big screen return of Sex and the City fills you with unbridled glee or a sense of unremitting gloom (and I have to say, I'm in the latter camp), there has been an undeniable fanfare surrounding the whole event. But can this movie ever hope to live up to its unofficial title of 'the most important chick flick ever'? Well, it rather depends on what sort of chick you are. If you were the sort to revel in the televised tales of columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her cocktail chums - career-gal Miranda, sex-aholic Samantha and prim little Charlotte - then it's chocks away for you: a clattering of high heels, fancy drinks and mucho shagging. There is a plot, too, buried deep in the two-and-a-half hours of this film, and it involves Carrie planning her wedding to Mr Big (Chris Noth), things going wrong and things going right, and a trip to Mexico. But the plot's not really the point here: the point is that, gee, there's nothing so important as your best friends. And shoes. And a walk-in closet. And sex.
15, 148 mins
Mes Amis, Mes Amours
Based on Mark Levy's novel (and here directed by his sister, Lorraine Levy) Mes Amis, Mes Amours takes us to a French enclave in London's South Kensington - affectionately referred to, we are informed, as 'frog alley'. The drama comes from the arrival of a divorcee from Paris, Mathias (Vincent Lindon), who is to live with fellow single parent Antoine (Pascal Elbe), from whom Mathias struggles to keep the affair he is having with TV reporter Audrey (Virginie Ledoyen). Mathias and Antoine are chalk and fromage in every way you could imagine, which makes for considerable domestic tension, and the focus of the film. It makes for a nice little tale, but Mes Amis, Mes Amours rarely does anything but bubble in an agreeable - yet not entirely engaging - fashion.
15, 99 mins
Teeth
Teeth is a whipsmart movie - a kind of horror-comedy, Fifties B-movie pastiche, knowing teen flick, and, upon contemplation, perhaps a rare example of the feminist slasher movie too. Dawn O'Keefe (Jess Weixler, perfectly cast) is a member of The Promise - a Christian association that encourages teenagers to remain virgins before marriage. Through The Promise she meets the swoonsome Tobey (Hale Appleman) and the pair start dating in a chaste and Christian fashion until, one day, Tobey can contain himself no longer and forces himself upon his lovely girlfriend. It's at this point that Dawn is revealed to have - how shall one put this? - an anatomical aberration that explains the teeth of the movie's title. Needless to say, Tobey's first time is not quite what the lusty young fellow envisaged. From here on in, Dawn realises that she and her teeth possess the ability to wage some kind of vengeful campaign on the hormonal young men of her safe, suburban town. It's only at this point that Teeth becomes a smidge repetitive. The rest of the time it's a crisp, clever kind of movie.
18, 88 mins
Female Agents
Director Jean-Paul Salome - accompanied by some of France's finest actresses - offers a rather nice antidote to all of those tedious manly war films in this tale of five female Resistance fighters who parachute into WWII France. Louise Desfontaine (Sophie Marceau) and her brother Pierre (Julien Boisselier) are rounding up recruits in the lead-up to D-Day, in a desperate effort to prevent Allied landing plans from falling into the hands of the Germans. They find a ragtag bunch, including a showgirl (Marie Gillain), a prostitute (Julie Depardieu), a feverishly religious girl (Deborah Francois) and a radio operator (Maria Sansa). They have two main objectives: to rescue a geologist from a Nazi hospital before he spills the beans, and get rid of the head of Nazi counter-intelligence (Moritz Bleibtreu). The women's characters, so potentially rich, could perhaps have done with a little more investment, there's an ounce too much in the way of melodrama, and you can almost hear the film straining - but not quite managing - to be a serious account of the role of women during the war. Still, it makes for a seriously swashbuckling adventure.
15, 120 mins
The Visitor
Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) occupies a half-hearted existence: a professor of economics at Connecticut University; a penchant for red wine; a distant relationship with his wife; life chugging by in a procession of recycled lectures and piano lessons. It's a trip to New York that shakes him from his slumber. On a rare excursion to an apartment he keeps there, he discovers that it has been sneakily sub-let to a Syrian drummer named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira). At first startled, he soon decides to let them stay, befriending the pair, taking up drumming, feeling the old vitality coursing through his veins once more. But when Tarek is hauled off by the police for being an illegal immigrant, and his mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass) arrives to help him, Walter's life shifts yet again. The Visitor could be one of those terribly smooth, sugary films - cinematic blancmange for liberals - but, while there are some flaws here, director Tom McCarthy (who previously gave us The Station Agent) has in fact created a movie that is challenging, surprising and extremely likable.
15, 103 mins
Wanted
And so the summer blockbuster kerplunks into our laps. Adapted from Mark Millar's graphic novel, Wanted brings us the story of young Wes (James McAvoy) who has a dead-end job, is much-berated by his boss and largely ignored by his girlfriend. It seems, in short, that he will amount to very little. But meeting Angelina Jolie can have a strange effect on a fellow. Here, Jolie plays Fox, an assassin and member of The Fraternity - a secret society headed by the mysterious Sloan (Morgan Freeman) - which works to maintain civilisation by bumping off ne'er-do-wells. Fox recruits Wes when his estranged father (a top Fraternity assassin) is killed, and sets about transforming him into a well-honed, revenge-enacting machine. Wanted is actually tremendous fun and looks stunning, thanks to the art of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov. Jolie is here doing what she does best - smouldering and looking as if she might whup your sorry ass at any minute. And it's hard not to feel a rush of delight for McAvoy, who's cementing his big-league place in Hollywood with what amounts to a classy action thriller.
18, 110 mins
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
A couple of years on from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, we now have the second installment of Disney's adaptation of CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series. But a lot has changed in Narnia: while it's wartime in Blighty, in the land through the wardrobe door the creatures have all disappeared, the great hall lies ruined, and dour-faced men in body armour rumble about, fiendishly plotting. At the heart of the distress sits poor Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) and his viperous uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellitto) who has taken the throne from Caspian's father. When Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley), Narnia's exiled kings and queens, are flung back into this world - all glorious manners and innocent faces - it seems the very least they can do is sort things out. The Chronicles take a darker, more ominous turn here, and all the glowering might prove a little too much for younger children. Yet for the older ones this is a smashing film - with war, political intrigue, a burgeoning romance between the Prince and Susan, and of course the full gamut of furry critters. It's perfect children's entertainment.
PG, 147 mins
The Happening
With The Sixth Sense, M Night Shyamalan introduced cinema-goers to a new kind of thriller; one that was slow, subtle, sinister - and subsequently much-imitated. His work since then, however, has lacked sophistication, and sadly The Happening falls at the same hurdle. It stars Mark Wahlberg as a Philadelphia science teacher named Elliot Moore who flees to the farmland of Pennsylvania with his wife (Zooey Deschanel), best friend (John Leguizamo) and young daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez) when things start turning a bit strange in the city: glowering skies, people keeling over dead, mass suicides. As they hunt for a place to hide, Elliot first tries to work out what the heck is going on, and second to mend his marriage - the former often seeming less complex than the latter, and ultimately attributable to Nature's long-overdue revolt against mankind. It's not a bad idea for a movie; it's just that, despite the pedigree cast, The Happening is played out with such heavy-footed tedium that it's rather hard to care.
15, 91 mins
A Complete History of My Sexual Failures
Chris Waitt is a thirty-something Londoner and failed rock musician, with little else to recommend him on his CV apart from his lovely blonde hair. And when I say 'lovely', what I really mean is unkempt. Dumped by his girlfriend of three weeks, Waitt decides to go on a journey of self-discovery (recording this documentary in the process) by way of consulting all of his many, many former girlfriends to find out just what went wrong. Clue: a few problems in the boudoir, coupled with a fundamental immaturity. Aiding the process is Waitt's long-suffering mother who digs out sheaves of old love letters that her son never bothered to answer, while Waitt continues to trawl through past girlfriends and sets out online to meet potential new ones. He also heads off to see Vicki, the love of his life, who sadly turns out to be settled with a new man. And pregnant. This is a brilliantly self-effacing movie, at times quite magnificently funny - largely due to Waitt's unblinking willingness to be humiliated. Excellent stuff.
18, 90 mins
The Edge of Love
This much-awaited Dylan Thomas biopic starring Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley (with a screenplay by Knightley's mother, Sharman MacDonald) had the potential to be a puffy and over-trumpeted exercise in movie-star indulgence. But in fact it triumphs as a film of great beauty and Britishness. The film focuses less on Thomas's poetry and more on the women in his life (they are, after all, more photogenic): his wife Caitlin (Miller) and the lovely Vera (Knightley), his childhood sweetheart. It's 1941, and Vera has established a nice line in entertaining the troops, winning the heart of a captain named William Killick (Cillian Murphy). But when William trots off to war, Vera embarks upon a kind of windswept love triangle with Caitlin and Thomas (Matthew Rhys). The most startling revelation in The Edge of Love is surely Miller, who, after all the canoodling and boho-ing about, suddenly reveals herself to be an actress of some clout. The movie makes for a surprising - and lovely - start to the summer.
15, 110 mins
The Incredible Hulk
Hark! The sound of cinema cash registers ringing across the land! Yes, everyone's favourite raging man-monster is back. The story goes that nuclear physicist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) has been irradiated in a lab - an event that means every time he gets a little cross he turns green and transforms into The Hulk. As exciting as this is for General Thunderbolt Ross (William Hurt), who foresees a way of gathering The Hulk's DNA to spawn a generation of super-soldiers, it's less thrilling for his daughter and Banner's girlfriend, Betty (Liv Tyler), who soon gets a little weary of her boyfriend's fancy new tantrums. While Banner is on the run seeking a cure for his condition, a biochemical experiment is turning power-crazed soldier Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) into a malevolent force named The Abominator - which only The Hulk stands a chance of defeating. The Incredible Hulk is precisely how comic hero movies ought to be - the pace is whip-smart and zingy, the effects suitably zappy and the cast unarguably impressive. What's more it makes a fine companion piece for Ang Lee's Hulk (2003), and a worthy stable mate for Iron Man.
12A, 114 mins
Reviews by Laura Barton
FIRST POSTED
JULY 3, 2008
