Film - showing at a cinema near you
Julia 
There's something uneasy about Julia, the English-language debut from writer-director Erick Zonca (The Dreamlife of Angels, 1998), despite Zonca's own credentials and the casting of the mighty Tilda Swinton in the lead role. Inspired by John Cassavetes' 1980 film Gloria (with its fiery central turn from Gena Rowlands), Julia pitches itself somewhere between art-house and Hollywood cinema. Julia (Swinton) is a 40-something wreck, an LA-based alcoholic who, when fired from her job, is encouraged to attend AA meetings by an ex-boyfriend (Saul Rubinek). There she meets Elena (Kate del Castillo) who begs Julia to help her kidnap her son (Aidan Gould). This Julia does, but the threadbare plan begins to fall apart, and soon she is headed for the Mexican border, pursued by some thoroughly unsavoury types, and making ransom demands from the boy's wealthy grandfather while the boy is stashed in the boot of her car. Missing here is the lightness of touch that Cassavetes brought to his flick, and while Swinton and Rubinek turn in the kind of full, unflinching performances you'd expect, the film runs at such a persistently fevered pace that it's hard to stop and admire their subtlety.
15, 144 mins
Lakeview Terrace
Lakeview Terrace places itself in familiar territory: an innocent suburban street; a pretty, optimistic young couple moving into the neighbourhood; everything so perfect you're just counting down the minutes until the dream turns sour. This time our bouncy, liberal newcomers are Chris and Lisa (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington). They soon meet their neighbour, LAPD cop Abel Turner (Samuel L Jackson), who swiftly goes from being curmudgeonly to outright disturbing. At first he merely frowns on Chris's smoking habit and his taste in rap music, but ultimately, it's his views on inter-racial marriage that begin to worry the couple. The twist here is that Abel is not some predictable white thug, but a middle-class black man. Once the twist is turned, however, there are not really many places to go. Jackson's jig as the glowering neighbour who can't stand the mixed-race couple next door veers quickly into parody, and as Chris and Lisa's marriage begins to buckle, any insights we might have gleaned into the racial disputes are soon lost. What we're left with is something trashy and depressingly unsurprising.
15, 110 mins
Choke
The last time Chuck Palahniuk had a novel adapted for the big screen it was Fight Club (1999) - a tale of unbridled maleness and the thrill of good ol' fashioned physical fighting in an age of nice manners and more complicated ways to get your kicks. These themes are revisited in Choke - though this time the fisticuffs have largely been replaced by sex. Victor (Sam Rockwell) is a 30-something medical school dropout now working alongside his best friend Denny (Brad William Henke) as an historical re-enactor at a theme park. In the evenings they attend therapy meetings for sex addicts. Meanwhile, Victor's mother Ida (Angelica Huston) is in a care home suffering from dementia, where her fellow-inhabitants come to worship Victor as a saint, owing to a dubious tale about him being cloned from a religious relic. Victor somehow funds his mother's care via an elaborate scam involving feigned choking in restaurants and Heimlich manouevres performed by strangers. It is, as you will gather, a rather complicated tale, and one which first-time director Clark Gregg presents more as a run of individual events than as a collected whole. Still, it makes for something rather scintillating, with Rockwell and Huston delivering fiercely human performances.
18, 89 mins
Quantum of Solace
The last Bond instalment, Casino Royale, had a louche, easy charm, and although Quantum of Solace picks up where that film left off, it ups the pace from the outset. A heart-thumping car chase across the landscape of northern Italy introduces us to a plot that will swing, branch to branch, across Europe and to Latin America in pursuit of a shadowy organisation that is "everywhere, but you haven't even heard of it". Along the way, the deliciously growly Camille (Olga Kurylenko) leads Bond to her lover Mr Greene (Mathieu Amalric)- a supposedly ethical businessman plotting a coup with a Bolivian general (Joaquin Cosio). As the action shifts, we find that Bond is being trailed not only by gun-wielding villains but also by the CIA and MI6 (gamely represented by the lovely Gemma Arterton). It is, as you'll gather, all go. Daniel Craig's second outing as 007 sees the modern Bond placing less emphasis on the boudoir antics, and more upon the mystery that lies at the heart of the man, as well as his skills at physical combat over a reliance upon mere gadgetry. It works - to an extent: this is a breathless, furious thriller. But what has always made Bond different is those pauses to catch one's breath and enjoy a little light innuendo. And while Craig remains arguably the finest Bond to date, it would be a shame if the plots during his tenure were to let him down. 12A, 106 mins
Waltz with Bashir
Ari Folman's remarkable 'animated documentary' tells the story of the writer/director's attempts to piece together his role as an infantryman in Israel's 1982 incursion into Lebanon. Folman - a grizzled 40-something filmmaker - is shocked to discover that he has no memory of the conflict after a friend and fellow conscript complains of recurring nightmares relating to his part in the war. Through a series of interviews with psychologists, soldiers and a TV journalist, Folman assembles an account of his war - gradually realising that he has been suppressing the recollection of a traumatic massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. Pierced through with black humour and a great soundtrack, the film builds to a devastating climax that genuinely shocks.
18, 90 mins
Changeling
Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie's much-awaited collaboration brings us the true story of Christine Collins (Jolie), a single mother in 1920s LA who comes home to discover her son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) is missing. After several months of snowballing publicity, the chief of police (Colm Feore) 'reunites' Collins with a boy he claims is her son, but who Collins insists is not. Dismissed as an hysterical mother, let down by everyone from the police to the health service, she ends up in a mental institution. It eventually falls to a church minister (John Malkovich), a lawyer (Geoff Pierson) and a miraculously uncorrupt police officer (Michael Kelly) to help her out. There is something a touch exhausting about watching actors posturing for an Oscar; in the same way that a glamour model's pouting, posing and pushing everything up front might easily be mistaken for sexy, so might such vigorous screen performances be wrongly taken for great acting. Such is the case with Jolie - and indeed with the bulk of the movie's performances, not to mention its score and cinematography. And it's a pity. One senses that in Ms Jolie there lies a great actress, and in the truth of this story there lies a great movie - but in Changeling everything needs a whole lot of reining in.
15, 141 mins
What Just Happened
There are few emotional footholds in Barry Levinson's story of LA movie producer, Ben (Robert De Niro). Instead, we are given the smooth, sheer rock face of the Hollywood existence, all sleek cars, prissy actors, perpetually fretting agents and a few more caricatures thrown in for good measure. It's a perplexing situation; after all, one expects a certain satirical greatness from Levinson, director of Wag the Dog (1997), and his co-conspirator here, producer Art Linson, who gave us Fight Club (1999). Even the splendour of the cast (Robin Wright Penn as Ben's ex-wife, Sean Penn as a moustachioed incarnation of himself, not to mention John Turturro, Catherine Keener and De Niro himself) suggests something of magnitude might be upon us. Instead, as we follow Ben through his days of test screenings, Blackberrying, studio meetings, funerals and encounters with his ex, we get a mild comic flutter and some satisfying performances - but also the feeling that this has been done better elsewhere. Indeed, if What Just Happened gives us anything, it's a pang of appreciation for Curb Your Enthusiasm - a show that does just the same job, but faster and better.
15, 104 mins
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
This portrait of Patti Smith - the great poet-punk priestess - was 11 years in the making by photographer Steven Sebring, but the results are certainly worth it. This is not so much a documentary as a hazy, thrilled tribute to a personal hero. Sebring does not dwell on the well-known facts - the shows at CBGB's, the life with Robert Mapplethorpe, the heyday of punk. Instead, Sebring joins his subject in 1995 (the year after the death of her husband and her brother) when she returned to the stage after a hiatus of 16 years. We see some of those performances, of course; see her fierce and blistering as she sings, plays and performs her poetry. But we see her off-stage, too. We follow her to Jerusalem, Rome, Paris (to visit Rimbaud's grave), and most intimately, we see her in her apartment - a place cluttered with mementos and patrolled by her cat - talking through the deaths that have shaped her recent years; events that seem only to have intensified her love and reverence for life. Beautifully shot and elegantly structured, Sebring's film makes for a truly fitting work of devotion.
15, 109 mins
The Secret Life of Bees
Adapted from Sue Monk Kidd's bestseller, this is a sticky, sentimental tale set in North Carolina in 1964 which connects to the social and political upheaval of the time by only the finest strands. Lily (Dakota Fanning) claims she shot her mother dead when she was four. Now 10 years older, she lives with her scowling, no-good peach farmer father (Paul Bettany). One day she runs away with one of the farm-workers, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), who has been beaten up and imprisoned for trying to vote. The pair make it to a far-flung town and are welcomed into the home of three beekeeping sisters: May (Sophie Okonedo), an emotional sort; June (Alicia Keys), a politically active cellist (who knew such a thing existed?); and August (Queen Latifah), the kind of soft-smiling maternal figure who can care for Rosaleen and Lily. Sure, the outside world is busy revealing itself to be a hard, hard place, but inside there ain't nuthin' that can't be explained by the lessons of beekeeping. Somewhere, beneath the great pile of gloop that covers this movie, there's a tale of strong women, togetherness and female bonding. Finding it, however, will surely rot your teeth.
12A, 110 mins
Flawless
Heist movies - while diverting - are very rarely truly engaging. There are exceptions, of course - the Ocean franchise worked so well because it perfected the marriage of slickness, warmth and humour. More often though, there is an imbalance in the mix. Such is the case here in this Sixties London-based tale of Laura Quinn (Demi Moore): 40-something, Oxford-educated, wedded to her career in a diamond company but now discovering that her employers are set to fire her, she sets out for revenge. Laura is aided in her scheme by the company's janitor, Mr Hobbs (Michael Caine, without whom surely no heist movie is complete). He cuts such a pathetic figure that he is able to escape all suspicion. So far, so predictable; except that Flawless is curiously told in flashback, as Laura, in her later years, relates her story to a magazine reporter. Add to this a somewhat self-conscious nod to the inequalities of the diamond industry, and a rather tangled post-heist denouement, and what we have is altogether something of a muddle.
12A, 108 mins
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Long before we met Judd Apatow, we had Kevin Smith - helmsman of Clerks, and, one imagines, probably a bit ruffled by the challenge to his slacker-king crown by that whippersnapper Mr Apatow. So, here again he rises, this time roping in slacker-prince Seth Rogan as our pale, podgy hero Zack, who seeks to pay the bills by making an amateur porn flick with his best friend Miri (Elizabeth Banks). Actually, the crudest thing about Zack and Miri Make a Porno is its title. Yes, there's a fair bit of lewdness, potty-mouthing, references to numerous sexual proclivities and squelchy bodily functions, but essentially this is a love story. Somehow in the decidedly unromantic environs of a porn-shoot, Zack and Miri are destined to realise that they are, in fact, stupidly in love with one another. However, the sweet and the tawdry do not make altogether comfortable bedfellows, and while this is in many ways a charming lil' movie, it's hard to overlook Smith's attempts to make light of the porn industry, which, lest we forget, is in no way sweet or romantic or lovely.
18, 102 mins
Ano Una
Over the course of a year, director Jonas Cuaron (part of the growing Cuaron empire) took a series of still pictures which he then put together to make a film. Not a slide-show, but a film, its tale told in voiceover. The story involves a 14-year-old Mexican boy named Diego (Diego Catano, Cuaron's half-brother) who meets an American college student named Molly (Eireann Harper, Cuaron's girlfriend) who is visiting his country on an exchange. Molly spends a term in Mexico City, then heads back to New York and embarks upon a romance with one of her professors before returning to Mexico where she lodges with Diego's family. Meanwhile Diego is grappling with an almighty crush on his cousin and the slow death of his grandfather. He and Molly spend a day at the beach together and, in the spring, a day in Gotham, when the flicker of what might have been brings a sweet, melancholy light to proceedings. Gorgeously shot, this is a funny, poignant and richly toned movie.
15, 78 mins
Blindness
In this English-language adaptation of a novel by Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago, director Fernando Meirelles introduces us to a nameless modern city in which people are losing their sight, seemingly without cause. Those afflicted are quickly shooed off to a nearby hospital, where they soon descend into a kind of tribal existence, engaging in rivalries and power-struggles, even as they attempt to fathom what the heck is going on. In truth, this could be a quite painfully awful movie, the sudden onset of blindness revealing itself as linked to the grimacing unkindness of society. One braces oneself for a mawkish morality play, and on one level that is sort of what one gets. However, the fact that it is being performed by some of our greatest actors - Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal among them - and is directed by the splendid Meirelles (City of God, 2002; The Constant Gardener, 2005) means that while it never escapes its awkward preachiness, that very preachiness becomes something impressive to behold.
18, 120 mins
The Baader-Meinhof Complex
At a hefty two-and-a-half hours, this dense and detailed exploration of a decade in the life of the German terrorist organisation Red Army Faction doesn't make for easy viewing. Beginning in 1967 with the seed-sowing confluence of public riots, a student death at the hands of the police and the attempted assassination of a key left-wing figure, we see how a new kind of radicalism began to flourish in post-Nazi Germany. At its heart sat the trinity of Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), Gudrun Ensslin (a thoroughly brilliant Johanna Wokalek) and the older, quieter intellectual Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck). These early scenes are quite electrifying: fast-paced, intellectually stimulating and carrying the air of revolution. Though there's never a shortage of action in the remainder of the movie, it feels less contagious once we meet the cop attempting to outwit the faction (Bruno Ganz), and events become a steady routine of bombings, assassinations and jailbreaks. Even then, there is more to come: the organisation's three key figures are tried and imprisoned and a new generation begins. It's all just too much. The problem with all this reliance upon action, dates and detail is that - with the exception of Ensslin - the characters slip infuriatingly through one's fingers. There are probably three films in here; what a waste to roll them all into one.
18, 150 mins
Reviews by Laura Barton
FIRST POSTED
DECEMBER 4, 2008
