Film - showing at a cinema near you
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
There is a mind-boggling amount of stuff crammed into the 110 minutes of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II (the follow-up to his first adaptation of Mike Mignola's comic-book heroics, Hellboy). For a start, we have Hellboy himself: exiled from the underworld, he stands a devilish red, and - though his horns have been lopped off - he's still enticingly demonic. At the paranormal research lab where he is gainfully employed, Hellboy is dealing with the fall-out of a resurgent war between elves and humans, the arrival at the lab of new agent Dr Johann Kraus (Seth MacFarlane), and the return of his partner in heroics, Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) - not to mention a love story between our curiously seductive hero and the melancholic Liz (Selma Blair). Where most comic adaptations focus on the kapow and splat of special effects, del Toro chooses to evoke an atmosphere which is more old-fashioned and chivalrous - part pulp fiction, part film noir. It's all told in such high-res, lurching splendidness that it's hard not to fall a little bit in love with Hellboy II. Fabulous stuff.
12A, 110 mins
Somers Town
Shane Meadows has really cornered the market in scruffy modern Britishness in recent times. His films carry a sensuality that the swishy confections of Richard Curtis cannot rival. His last film, This is England, for instance, brought out the tastes and textures of 1980s Britain with astonishing accuracy. Here, Meadows is recounting the story of a young runaway from Nottingham, Tomo (This is England's Thomas Turgoose), who heads to London and encounters a Polish boy, Marek (Piotr Jagiello), with whom he strikes up a firm friendship. Together they run amok in the great sprawl of London, falling in love with a French waitress, doing odd jobs to fund the presents they buy her and getting legless when she returns home to Paris. Told mostly in black and white, with occasional Polish subtitles, it is an infinitely touching tale - a love story of sorts between the boys and their waitress, between Tomo and Marek, between Meadows and his country. More than anything, though, this is a portrait of a living, breathing, multicultural Britain.
12A, 75 mins
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 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
The Rocker
As the drummer for a 1980s hair-metal band named Vesuvius, Robert 'Fish' Fishmann (Rainn Wilson) is in the throes of his rock'n'roll fantasy when he's unceremoniously dropped from the band, just before they find fame. Imagine his delight, then, when 20 ropey years later he hears that his nephew's high school rock band is in search of a drummer. Fish - regarding this as his dreamed-of second chance at rock greatness - leads his young protegees on a great rock odyssey (or rather, a short tour) and kindles a romance with the chaperone Mom (Christina Applegate). The Rocker feeds off the same source as This is Spinal Tap and Jack Black's School of Rock - namely the rich comic ground that is the ageing rocker, complete with faded T-shirts, long hair and a full-throttle, devil-horned refusal to grow old gracefully. While it does not, therefore, deliver anything particularly new, it is still pretty darned funny and at times tender.
12A, 102 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
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
Get Smart
I'm a bit on the young side to be acquainted with Maxwell Smart - a television spy hero of yesteryear who forms the basis for this objectionably unobjectionable Steve Carrell vehicle. The basic gist is that Smart, aka Agent 86, is a kind of buffoonish American operative who, despite his cackhandedness, always gets the job done, aided and abetted by a bevy of one-liners and a foxy female sidekick (here played by Anne Hathaway). The plot is not especially important - it's the usual swashbuckle of foreign spies, raging bosses and a dumbo President (plus a lot of pepped-up action sequences and special effects). Carrell fills his role nicely, and Hathaway certainly fits the bill. In short, there's nothing really wrong with Get Smart, beyond the fact, of course, that it is so thoroughly formulaic and so tediously predictable that it feels like one long motorway drive of a movie.
12A, 110 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
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
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
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
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
Reviews by Laura Barton
FIRST POSTED
AUGUST 21, 2008
