Film - showing at a cinema near you
Tropic Thunder
Spawned by the talents of Ben Stiller, Etan Cohen and Justin Theroux, Tropic Thunder is an occasionally sharp, occasionally too-familiar skewering of the film industry and its audiences. Stiller is in his element as Tugg Speedman - a fully-fledged action hero who hopes to reinvigorate his career with a 'Nam movie, starring alongside respected Australian actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr) and popular comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black). It's a movie that requires as much pyrotechnic force as the studio can muster - blood, guts, lost limbs and decapitations. But these aren't the only scenes of dubious taste: Kirk undergoes a skin-darkening procedure for his character; and Tom Cruise (as the film's Jewish producer) is a heavily latex-ed, money-hungry grotesque. It's all rather repellent, but the idea is, of course, that Tropic Thunder is an unflinching parody of Hollywood: its stereotyping, miscasting and love of violence. There are times when it gets a little lost on this mission, when the viewing is uncomfortable and the jokes a little trampled, but you can't help thinking that Stiller and co are saying something rather valuable here, and that it's rather bold of them to say it at all.
15, 107 mins
Zombie Strippers
Let's be honest, if you willingly venture into a screening of a movie named Zombie Strippers, you know what to expect. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jay Lee's camp horrorfest (scripted, directed, shot and edited all by his own fair hand) is that it's not quite as down-market as one might suppose. It's business as usual down at the Rhino strip club - all bumping, grinding, Perspex heels and catfights. But when - thanks to a crazy virus unleashed by a government agency - our lovely ladies are one-by-one transformed into a troupe of zombie pole-dancers given to devouring their customers after their performances, the mood begins to change. The flesh-eating undead and unclothed prove curiously popular, much to the annoyance of the non-zombie strippers, but to the unceasing delight of the club owner (Robert Englund). Surprisingly, alongside all the schlock and nudity, there are some attempts at political humour and intellectual banter - the lead stripper, played by the famous porn star Jenna Jameson, has a penchant for quoting Nietzsche. You have a hunch, however, that neither the strip-club clientele, nor the cinema audience, are really here to listen to her talk philosophy.
18, 94 mins
The Women
This remake of George Cukor's 1939 film, courtesy of director Diane English (Murphy Brown), seems propelled by the same force as Sex and the City: the idea that what women want is a movie with an all-female cast talking about relationships. This time, the cast numbers Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett-Smith, playing a housewife, a career gal, a mother and a lesbian (which isn't, strictly speaking, a profession, though in this instance you'd be forgiven for thinking it might be). Their lives entwine when a department store manicurist lets slip to one of them that the hottie behind the perfume counter (Eva Mendes) is canoodling with a rich married man - a fact that soon makes its way back to his wife (Ryan). All of the actors play their parts immaculately, with Ryan and Bening on particularly good form. But the problem here is a want of wit and bite; it's all too darned wishy-washy and feel-good and actually winds up feeling pretty false. There's also the questionable involvement of soap manufacturer Dove (product placement ahoy) as part of their 'campaign for real women'. And, ultimately, that's all The Women feels like - one long soap advert.
12A, 114 mins
Rock 'N' Rolla
With considerable fanfare, Guy Ritchie returns not just to our screens but also to the territory that made his name back in 1998 with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: the ducking and diving of London's gangsters. These are different times, of course, so Ritchie brings a frisson to proceedings by introducing Russian mobsters to the usual clutch of East End ne'er-do-wells. The action focuses on a shonky land deal organised by the Russians, which promises get-rich-quick possibilities for all manner of folk, including old-school gangster Lenny (Tom Wilkinson), Russian newbie Uri (Karel Roden) and Lenny's accountant (an excellent Thandie Newton). The plot thickens and thickens, until it proves almost unravellable - needless to say it involves a junkie rock star, a faked death, crooked police officers, tons of machismo, silly nicknames and a briefcase we never peep inside. One suspects Ritchie was aiming for something Tarantino-esque here, and he doesn't entirely fail - the movie has the romping feel of a good cartoon. But its characters are never fully drawn, and the movie feels strangely dated, which means, sadly, it never quite captures the zest of Lock, Stock.
15, 114 mins
The Wave
The Wave began life not as a movie, but as a television drama, before which it was a book, and even before that a real-life experiment in Palo Alto, California, in the late 60s. Frustrated by his pupils' lack of interest about the rise of Nazi Germany, high-school teacher Bruce Ross (Bruce Davison) embarks upon a project which swiftly becomes a social experiment to show how easily people can be swept up into a terrifying political movement. He inducts his students into a group called 'The Wave', which requires its members to adhere to strict codes of behaviour, and terrorise those who are not signed up. The project swiftly gets out of hand, of course, and as the entire school teeters on the brink of some fascist abyss, Ross must supply the short, sharp slap of sense. Even after all this time, it's a disturbing concept and a gripping film (though not as terrifying as Oliver Hirschbiegal's Das Experiment (2001), based on not-dissimilar events at Stanford Prison) and really ought to be compulsory viewing for high-school students.
15, 101 mins
The Duchess
Director Saul Dibb's cinematic debut Bullet Boy was a surly tale of gang life, so his second feature is an interesting step to the left. Here we follow Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (Keira Knightley), who - as we've often been reminded in the lead-up to the movie's release - was the great-great-great-great aunt of Princess Diana, and, in her day, also a fashion icon and gossip-column regular, trapped in an unhappy marriage. It's this last fact that occupies much of The Duchess, which skips lightly over Georgiana's political work (Milady was a prominent Whig) to focus on her relationship with William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire (a splendid Ralph Fiennes). She must tolerate his constant affairs (including one with her best friend), his decision to move his lovers into the marital home, and, in one scene, marital rape. She must also suffer her own unconsummated romance with Lord Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), her childhood friend and the future prime minister. So, of course, there is much bosom-heaving, sumptuous decor, and plenty of shots of Knightley (who delivers a sweet performance) looking beautifully sad. It's not what it could have been - a portrait of a woman who blazed something of a feminist trail through 18th-century London society - but at the very least it satisfies our deep need for a taffeta-swishing, lushly shot costume drama.
12A, 110 mins
The Wackness
We are in New York in 1994 - a fact hammered home in Jonathan Levine's movie with the considerable force of hip-hop parlance, nods to Rudolph Giuliani and Nirvana. Our focus on is the life of Luke (Josh Peck), a surly, introverted teen who hails from a relatively poor background and earns his pocket money by selling pot. One of his customers is a psychiatrist named Dr Squires (Ben Kingsley) who pays Luke not in hard cash but in therapy. Squires, though, is himself a little bit wayward, struggling to maintain his marriage while making out with a young stoner (Mary-Kate Olsen). Luke, meanwhile, is falling in love with Squires's daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) - a contrastingly carefree, optimistic and thoroughly popular young woman. The familiar territory of the coming-of-age drama is given new life here, largely due to a sweet, soft gentleness that permeates The Wackness. In mood and inconsequentialness, but also in sure-fire charmingness, it recalls Reality Bites - another movie that deals with growing up, falling in love, and just happened to be released in 1994.
15, 99 mins
Then She Found Me
Helen Hunt's directorial debut is a muddled, clouded work - but, one suspects, deliberately so. It is, after all, a story of lives confused and stumbling, based on the novel by Elinor Lipman. April (Hunt) is a kindergarten teacher, dealing with the death of her adoptive mother (Lynn Cohen) and the tailspin of her marriage to the immature Ben (Matthew Broderick) which has lasted less than a year and clocked up two of the most dispiriting sex scenes ever witnessed at the cinema, landing her pregnant as well. Into all of this blusters Bernice (Bette Midler), a blowsy, badly-dyed talk-show host who claims to be April's real mother, and Frank (Colin Firth), a divorced father who just might be April's knight in shining armour. There is a bravery to the way Hunt directs - this could have been such a gooey schmaltzfest, after all. But here the humour is kept dry, and the actors never appear dewy-skinned and golden. April looks perpetually gaunt and weary, Bernice borders on the clownish, Ben is a pale little worm and Frank (though exuding a raffish charm) is past his best and prone to bouts of over-emotion. It works, somehow, not least because Firth here is compelling - the seediness and machismo of his earlier career now giving way to a depth and maturity - and because Hunt is wise enough never to raise the temperature beyond a satisfying slow-burn.
15, 100 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
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
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
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
It is World War II, and an unlikely friendship is blossoming across a barbed wire fence: Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the eight-year-old son of a Nazi officer (David Thewlis) who finds companionship with Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) - a Jewish boy of his own age who is imprisoned in the nearby concentration camp. It's something of a rude awakening for Bruno as he discovers his father's involvement in the camp and draws a direct line between the man he thought he knew and the suffering of the people behind the fence who - to his young, innocent mind - are forced to wear striped pyjamas and spend their days working ceaselessly on a farm. That the resolution is grim is inevitable and necessary, though it still seems unsettling for what is essentially a children's movie (adapted as it is from the children's book by John Boyne). Strong performances from Butterfield, Scanlon and Thewlis only enhance what amounts to a sad, simple and deeply affecting tale.
12A, 94 mins
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
There have been an awful lot of documentaries about Baghdad in recent times - many of them excellent, of course. But even the most involved in the subject must be beginning to wonder whether they really need another 90 minutes of footage from the front line to tell them that war is bad. Heavy Metal in Baghdad, however, is a different kettle of fish. Filmmaker Suroosh Alvi managed to sneak into Baghdad, and - with the aid of a bulletproof vest and a security guard - set about making a documentary on the only heavy metal band in Iraq, 'Acrassicauda' (named after a particular kind of scorpion native to the Iraqi desert). His argument for entering the danger zone? "Uh y' know, heavy metal rules." Not even Jack Black could have put it so succinctly. The band plays one solitary gig at a hotel which will later be blown up by a car bomb, and as a result they hotfoot it to Damascus as refugees. Alvi's film is a splendid piece of DIY documentary. While the essential topic of heavy metal is at times amusing, the things that emerge from this film are the more serious subjects of Iraqi refugees and the impossibility of self-expression in this environment. Fantastic stuff.
15, 84 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
SEPTEMBER 18, 2008
