Film review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Wild Child, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, The Banishment | Home

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Surely it's scientifically impossible to find a more charming film than Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. For starters, we have the source material: Winifred Watson's bright, winsome novel of the same name, set in 1930s London. Then we have Amy Adams playing Delysia Lafosse, an American starlet trying to make it on the London stage, who in one light is utterly unbearable, but in another, quite ditzily adorable. And, of course, we have Frances McDormand as the put-upon Guinevere Pettigrew, an out-of-work governess who interlopes her way into a job as Delysia's social secretary. And Delysia certainly does require some assistance with her diary appointments - she has three lovers and a burgeoning career to juggle after all. What follows is a French-farce-meets-screwball-comedy, spread over a single day in which Miss Pettigrew, for the first time in her life, begins to have a jolly good time. Everything you could possibly want in such a movie is here: the Cinderella-esque transformation, the simmering cat-fights, the wonderful costumes, the fabulous music... light and airy and sweet, it's a perfect little souffle of a movie.
PG, 92 mins

The Banishment (Izgnanie)

In 2003, Andrei Zvyagintsev's first film, The Return, established him as Russia's brightest new director. Now he is back with this intense family drama revolving around two brothers, Mark (Aleksandr Baluyev) and Alex (Konstantin Lavroneko). The latter decides to up sticks with his family from the city to the countryside, but the rural idyll he dreamed of proves elusive. Not long after they arrive, his wife Vera (Maria Bonnevie) reveals that she is pregnant by someone else, and refusing to listen to her explanations, Alex turns to his brother who advises an abortion. When the operation goes badly wrong, it proves the first in a succession of unfortunate events. The moral and religious analogies in this film are all spelled out quite clearly: this, we understand, is a tale of paradise lost. It makes for heavy work, but the weight is lifted somewhat by the exceptional cinematography, and by Zvyagintsev's ability to simmer up tension. So, not the sprightliest movie out this week, but it is brooding, unsettling cinema at its near-finest.
12A, 157 mins

Death Defying Acts

The inescapable problem with Death Defying Acts is that the two pivotal relationships at its heart are so thoroughly unpersuasive. Guy Pearce is an actor of great talent and Catherine Zeta-Jones, the patron saint of smouldering, has a brilliant performance in her somewhere, but together on screen they never quite catch fire. The problem extends to CZJ's relationship with Saoirse Ronan who plays her daughter - a biological connection you can never quite believe. The pair are con-merchants roaming 1920s Scotland in search of a fast buck, and when they hear that Harry Houdini (Pearce) will be coming to Edinburgh - with the promise of $10,000 to any medium who can contact his dead mother - they see an opportunity for fast cash. The story is a cracking one, pulsing with vigour, and Gillian Armstrong in the director's chair makes a fine stab at it. Even the three principal performances, in isolation, are thoroughly impressive. The disappointment is that they should hang together so forlornly.
PG, 97 mins

Mamma Mia!

Since it opened in 1999, Mamma Mia! has become one of the most successful and best-loved stage productions in the world, and its transfer to the screen has therefore been hotly anticipated. Blessedly, the cinematic version is an absolute gem, full of energy and gusto, and bolstered by a gung-ho cast and the writer, director and producer of the stage play. For those unfamiliar with the story, Mamma Mia! relates the tale of Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep), the proprietor of a Greek taverna, who, having passed the 1970s somewhat promiscuously, has a daughter named Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), fathered potentially by one of three men. Now that Sophie is due to wed she wants to know which of these men should be walking her down the aisle - Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth or Stellan Skarsgard. One should add that - this being a musical - the story is told to the tune of Abba's greatest hits. The three paternal candidates all bring a certain disorientated charm to the screen, but it's the women who flourish here - not only Streep and Seyfried, but also Julie Walters and Christine Baranski in their supporting roles. Amid all the buffed-up action flicks and the chirpy-voiced animations haunting our screens this summer, Mamma Mia! provides the more voluptuous, womanly film choice.
12A, 108 mins

You Don't Mess With the Zohan

One might feel a little tired at the mere prospect of You Don't Mess with the Zohan. It's the latest gross-out flick that comes complete with an ensemble cast of Hollywood's male comedians (plus Mariah Carey and John McEnroe), a script part-written by Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler (who also stars, naturally), jokes about semen and hummus and a plot that hinges on the Israel-Palestine conflict. But I do advise you to muster the energy to see it: Zohan (Sandler) is a Jewish counter-terrorism operative who spends his days battling his nemesis The Phantom (John Turturro) and his nights dreaming of becoming a hairdresser like his hero, Paul Mitchell. So he flees to New York where he finds employment in a salon run by inevitable romantic partner Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) - who just happens to be Palestinian. Of course it's irreverent, disrespectful and makes light of a dreadfully serious situation, but it takes no sides, mocks everyone equally and is also terribly funny.
12A, 113 mins

Elite Squad

Brazil's highest-grossing film of 2007 carries with it the thwack, blood and energy of real-life violence, and as a result makes for some uneasy viewing. In the poverty and dirt of Rio de Janeiro's slums, life is largely controlled by the drug lords: they employ thousands, they carry machine guns, they demand loyalty. Up against them is the BOPE, the special police force, who approach this offensive like a military operation rather than a police investigation. We are led through this world of gang violence and corruption by the narration of Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura), who wants to leave the force before his pregnant wife gives birth, but needs to find a replacement officer with similar guts and grit to do the job. And so we follow him to the elite squad training camp where two new recruits (Andrew Ramiro and Caio Junqueria) are struggling to find their feet in this tough new world, compromising their ideals and endangering others in the process. It's gripping stuff of course, but the uncomfortable question - once the bullets have stopped raining, the blood has been stemmed and the sweat mopped up - is whether Elite Squad is really anything more than a tough-guy action flick dressed up as a movie with a social conscience. 18, 115 mins

WALL-E

WALL-E, Pixar's latest - and most wonderful - animated film, tells the story of a rubbish recycling machine (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) who trundles around an apocalyptic wasteland once known as Earth, in the company of his cockroach pal. Until, that is, he falls in love with another machine - the sleek and sophisticated research probe, Eve - who has been sent to inspect the state of the planet by an exiled human race. Inspired by a videotape of the film Hello, Dolly! that informs him on matters romantic, he attempts to woo the good Eve and ends up pursuing her across the galaxy. But this is not a mere robotic love story; it's a tale of man's short-sightedness and his destruction of our world in a flurry of waste and megastores. Mankind now lives on a far-flung space station where humans have ballooned into a kind of physical, mental and moral blubberiness. It is, you gather, a warning bell, a sounding of the alarm, to let us know what we could so easily become. Accordingly, WALL-E is charged with a deep melancholy, a sadness kindled by both the passing of our planet and by the fact that, despite it all, love still exists in what mankind has created. Absolutely brilliant stuff.
U, 98 mins

Wild Child

The plot of Wild Child - though undoubtedly updated for the i-Blackberrying-Nano generation - feels awfully familiar: LA brat, spoiled to within an inch of her life, one day pushes the parental boundaries so far that her widowed father (Aidan Quinn) parcels her off to one of those strict English boarding schools that smell of floor polish and crumpets and are overseen by an unceasingly upright headmistress (here played by Natasha Richardson who also, we must understand, has a heart of gold). The said brat (here named Poppy and played with conventional ease by Emma Roberts) learns the error of her horrid little poolside ways, warms to lacrosse and the headmistress's son (Alex Pettyfer) and learns to be something of a lady, while still retaining enough mischief to be charming. Yes, we've seen it all before, and Wild Child offers little illumination of the human condition, but it is nonetheless great, feel-good fun.
12A, 98 mins

The Fox and the Child

There will undoubtedly be many who do not warm to this film, who will find it too precious, or perhaps too slow. But in the fizzbombing world of children's entertainment, The Fox and the Child offers something cool, calm and rich. The first feature film from the team who gave us the March of the Penguins documentary, it is similarly preoccupied with the natural world. It's the story of a young girl (Bertille Noel-Bruneau) who follows some fox tracks into the forest surrounding her home in eastern France and begins to explore its magnificent, rambling beauty. Through the seasons (and with some set-backs) the fox and the little girl form a strong bond, only threatened by danger when the little girl attempts to domesticate her fox-friend. Narrated in gentle, measured tones by Kate Winslet, The Fox and the Child is aimed more deliberately at children than Penguins was, and as such, some adults may lose patience with it along the way. For the young, though, this is a delightful, eye-opening film that has all the wonder of a Hans Christian Andersen tale.
U, 92 mins

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging

Gurinder Chadha has demonstrated her ability to convincingly portray the world of adolescent girls before, in the feted Bend It Like Beckham. This time she's addressing those hellish years when girls' interaction is more popularity contest than friendship (see also Heathers and Jawbreaker) and boys loom large on the horizon. Both problems dominate the life of 15-year-old Georgia (Georgia Groome). She's stewing away in teenage misery on the south coast in Eastbourne and is head-over-heels with new boy Robbie (Aaron Johnson), who comes equipped with a twin brother Tom (Sean Bourke) who quickly becomes the object of her best friend's affection. It isn't the fieriest movie, perhaps, but it is a charmer - in a gentle, resolutely un-American way. The cast squawks and rages and flounces its way through to the conclusion in precisely the way that teenage girls are wont to do - and if only for that, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging deserves applause.
12A, 100 mins

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

This is the second screen adaptation of the Jules Verne novel of 1864, in which the science fiction author envisioned the centre of the earth to be a land of oceans and dinosaurs. The 1959 version starred Pat Boone, but this time, enjoying a modernised script, we have Brendan Fraser as Trevor Anderson, a university professor and expert in seismology who is still haunted by the disappearance of his brother Max some years earlier. When Max's stroppy teenage son Sean (Josh Hutcherson) comes to visit, he brings along some of Max's documents, including an annotated copy of the Verne novel in which he has floated his own theories about how to reach the earth's centre. Trevor and Sean promptly rush off to Iceland with Max's notes as their map, where they meet the frostily gorgeous tour guide Hannah (Anna Briem), and together they all go crashing into the earth. What follows is a science fiction film that is at once thrilling, tender and funny, and a glorious celebration of CGI. Indeed, the greatest achievement of this incarnation of Journey is perhaps the balance it strikes between big, splashy special effects and Fraser's thoroughly likable humour - it's a combination that saves this film from tumbling into true Vernian geekdom.
12A, 92 mins

Elegy

There's a glittering cast in this adaptation of Philip Roth's Dying Animal. It's the tale of respected university professor David (Ben Kingsley), who teaches literary criticism, publishes books about hedonism and has a habit of seducing his students - but who finds himself thoroughly undone by a ludicrously beautiful graduate student named Consuela (Penelope Cruz). In the wings are David's former student (now businesswoman and occasional bedroom companion) Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), his troubled son Kenny (Peter Sarsgaard) and his best friend George (Dennis Hopper). They all look on as David becomes terribly, stupidly infatuated with Consuela: he follows her, becomes unbearably possessive and dwells too long on her physical attributes. What Consuela so evidently wants is someone who appreciates her inner talents and someone who offers commitment, which David - for all his madness - does not. This is a stirring, intense and involving movie. It's laden with excellent performances and is, more than anything, a fine tribute to Roth's work.
12A, 108 mins

Man on Wire

High up above Manhattan on a late-summer day in 1974, a Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped into the air between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Petit (an experienced funambulist) proceeded to spend 45 minutes balancing on a wire stretched between the towers in a spectacular display of illegal tightrope walking. In his riveting film, director James Marsh recounts the feat itself and the events leading up to it, interviews Petit and his co-conspirators, onlookers and police chiefs - all in a considered documentary style that draws largely on Petit's own book, To Reach the Clouds. Not once does Marsh reference the events of September 11th and the loss of those towers from the New York skyline - a decision that appears gently respectful. This is, after all, a story about both mortality and the life-affirming effect that such a ludicrous gamble can have. It's a triumph of quiet simplicity.
PG, 90 mins

The Dark Knight

When Christopher Nolan gave us Batman Begins back in 2005, he brought a certain dourness to the previously brash world of cinematic comic book heroes. Here, he takes the director's chair again, and seems to bring the series to an even darker, moodier place. Christian Bale is back as the caped crusader, still chased by those demons, still looking one half chiselled superhero, one half American Psycho, but now also thoroughly unsettled when into Gotham City springs his nemesis, The Joker (a creepy, nerve-jangling and masterful performance by the late Heath Ledger), intent on wreaking havoc. It's the same old fight, the same old opponents, the same old love interest (here given a fresh twist by Maggie Gyllenhaal), but somehow The Dark Knight feels different. Gotham City itself is all glass and steel, more fragile-looking, while Batman is even more troubled, more elusive and more dragged down, it seems, by a sense of inevitable doom. The screens are crowded with superheroes this summer, but there are few as hauntingly impressive as this new, unsettling Batman.
12A, 152 mins