Film - showing at a cinema near you
I've Loved You So Long
This is precisely the kind of small, intimate movie Kristin Scott-Thomas was surely born to make. Here, she's playing the slightly dowdy and extremely weary-looking Juliette, who is trying to re-forge a connection with her sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) after an absence of 15 years. Lea is now married to Luc (Serge Hazanavicius) and kept busy caring for two adopted children and Luc's elderly father. Though Lea tells her daughter that Juliette has been away in England, it transpires that she has in fact been in prison, jailed for the murder of her six-year-old son. Though there is plenty of satellite action as Juliette fumbles her way into employment and through dinner parties and dates, the centre of this film is the bond between Lea and Juliette and their attempts to rebuild their relationship in spite of all that has passed. Set in eastern France, it's a very handsome movie, but the most compelling thing on screen is Scott-Thomas, giving us perhaps her finest performance to date.
12A, 115 mins
Righteous Kill
Getting Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on screen together for the first time since 1995's Heat must have seemed like a brilliant idea. But simply putting these two greats in the same room is not enough. There is a frustrating lack of direction and backbone to Righteous Kill and the result is that the two actors seem merely to flounder and revert to type - shouting a lot and looking angry. Two well-worn New York City cops, Rooster (Pacino) and Turk (De Niro) - who certainly earn those nicknames with their puffed-up, bird-like swaggering - are investigating recent activity by a suspected serial killer whom they thought they had jailed years before. Are they connected? Did they lock up the wrong guy? Do we care? It's certainly hard to give two hoots by the time the denouement comes round, since the film is something of a long trek (once the gleam of seeing two movie magnificoes up there together has worn off). The best way to pass the time is perhaps to wonder what you could have done with that budget (a whopping $60 million) and those actors.
15, 101 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
Redbelt
David Mamet continues to sniff around the subject of masculinity in this tale of Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a firm, devoted, Los Angeles jujitsu instructor. Based in an unexceptional part of the city, Mike is struggling financially, married to Sondra (Alice Braga) and blessed with a clutch of loyal students. His still, plain life is disturbed when two curious events occur: first, a stranger (Emily Mortimer) rushes in to one of his classes and fires a gun at a window; second, Mike rescues movie star Chet (Tim Allen) from a trouncing in a dead-end part of LA. By way of thanks Chet invites Mike and Sondra for dinner and offers Mike work on his new movie. But calm, noble and impecunious Mike falls victim to a con that leads him into a prize fight - competing not only for his pride but also for the money. This is no Fight Club, though; in tone and texture it's more like a classic Samurai movie. Occasionally you wish the film's visual grace would match its intellectual elegance - the clunking choreography of the fight scenes shares little with the best martial-arts movies. But this aside, Redbelt makes for intriguing viewing.
15, 99 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
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
Death Race
For all its meatheadedness, there is something strangely pleasing about Death Race. It makes no apology for its ultra-violence and there are no cringeworthy attempts to reach for highfalutin' dialogue. Instead, this is a plain, simple, monosyllabic monster-truck of a movie. An update of the 1975 movie Death Race 2000, this movie (courtesy of Paul W S Anderson - thankfully much improved since his Alien vs Predator days) places us in the slightly futuristic environs of 2012 New York, where the prison service is now commanded by dodgy private companies who have instigated a money-spinning ploy where inmate is pitched against inmate in various physical feats, screenings of which make for pay-per-view entertainment. In the jail where the creme de la creme of terrible inmates reside, prison warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) has a dilemma on her hands: her prized driver - the mask-wearing Frankenstein - has been killed and she is devising a plan to replace him with Jensen Ames (a perfect Jason Statham), a racing driver wrongly jailed for the murder of his wife. If he wins the race, he can walk free. It's an oily, hulking tale told in oily, hulking grunts, hot metal, fire and fumes.
15, 105 mins
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
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
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
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 in 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 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
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 25, 2008
