Film - showing at a cinema near you
Frost/Nixon
It was in May 1977 that British television host David Frost secured an interview with disgraced former-US President Richard Nixon - and it was no small coup. Frost, having stumped up his own cash and staked his own reputation, had put much on the line; Nixon was hoping the interview might soften the American public's feelings towards him - though, of course, he risked churning up further hatred too (a fact sweetened a little by his $600,000 fee). Here, Peter Morgan's compelling play about the process gets its cinematic overhaul by Ron Howard. In the lead roles are the original cast-members from the London production: a magnificent Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost, with Kevin Bacon as Nixon's advisor, Jack Brennan, forever bobbing nervously at the president's shoulder. You'll recognise the mood here from The Queen (2006), that other Sheen-starring, Morgan-written exercise. The struggle for power that governed that movie returns here, as we find the host and the former president wrestling for dominance - a process akin to watching Laurel and Hardy trying to carry a piano down a flight of stairs: at one end the sycophantic Frost, all flashing grins and louche demeanour, and at the other the hunched, jowly Nixon, determined not to give an inch. There are times you'd want Howard's direction to be a little braver, a little more flourished, but overall this is a tight, smart movie, beefed-up by two stellar performances.
15, 122 mins
Rachel Getting Married
To date, the problem with Anne Hathaway has been that while she does indeed look beautifully luminescent on screen, she has so far been shunted into a kind of oxbow lake of dreary roles: sweet, dribbly characters who must find their inner fire if they are to find true love. Rachel Getting Married is an altogether different prospect. Here, she is Kym: chaotic, unhinged, fresh out of rehab and heading to her sister Rachel's wedding in the picture-perfect location of their father's Connecticut farmhouse. The effect is like watching a fly land in the ointment in slow motion. She alights in her black, black mood, billowing smoke and with dark bags beneath her eyes, and succeeds in dragging the attention of her family - especially that of her father (Bill Irwin) - away from the blushing bride (Rosemarie DeWitt). Essentially, this is less a tale of recovery and the sprawling mess of addiction than the portrait of a family; one that is rough and dysfunctional, affectionate and true. There is no upward swoop, no saccharine polish; only the flawed familiarity of modern relationships. In this, it is a credit to the director, Jonathan Demme, but, yes, also to Hathaway, an actress who here at last seems to have found that inner fire.
15, 114 mins
The Wrestler
Second chances play big at the movies, and here we have a double-whammy: the tale of a washed-up wrestler with a second bite at the cherry, and in the starring role, one-time great Mickey Rourke. What's not to love? In the 80s, wrestling champ Randy 'the Ram' Robinson had it all: a loyal following, action figures and big turns in colossal arenas. Today, he's struggling to pay the rent, his long, wavy locks no longer look so golden, and those muscles have been steroided into the grotesque. But he's still got his dignity. To see him wrestling in the back rooms of those scuzzy halls is to see some kind of strange, spandexed Aslan down on his luck. Outside the ring, he is estranged from his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), and is trying to grapple with her anger. Meanwhile he's developing a puppy-dog crush on a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), unaware that her little routine in her Perspex heels is every bit as fake as his bouts in the ring. Still, there's a charm to Randy that none can quite resist, and it's this that pumps life and warmth into The Wrestler. Rourke has just bagged himself a Golden Globe for his performance, and director Darren Aronofsky - himself hoping for another chance after the crash of The Fountain (2006) - pulls it all off with aplomb.
15, 115 mins
Boogie
To call Boogie a coming-of-age drama would perhaps be misleading - its protagonist, after all, is a thirty-something man. But it possesses that same sense of awakening and discovery of self as many teen dramas. Bogdan (Dragos Bucur) enjoys a comfortable life as a furniture manufacturer, but over the course of one May Day holiday, he disturbs this contented equilibrium by returning to the hedonism of his youth. Bogdan is holidaying by the Black Sea with his wife Smaranda (Anamaria Marinca) and young son when he runs into a couple of old friends he has not seen for several years, Sorin (Mimi Branescu) and Vali (Adrian Vancica). The allure of their responsibility-free existence reminds Bogdan of the freedom he had before he was a family man, and, following a minor tiff with Smaranda, he heads out with the couple for a night of hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking and whoring. But as the night winds to a close, Bogdan begins to see the coldness of Sorin and Vali's lives, trapped in perpetual adolescence, and to understand the warm love of his own. As a director, Radu Muntean has already shown a true gift for realism in his earlier movie The Paper Will Be Blue (2006). Here, he continues to explore this tone with subtle scripting and camerawork, and a clutch of gentle, exquisitely-drawn characters.
15, 102 mins
Valkyrie
There are times when you wonder whether Valkyrie is propelled by the sheer vigour of Tom Cruise alone. So muscular, so strutting is his performance that the entire tale of Claus von Stauffenberg - a German count and colonel who attempted to assassinate Hitler - seems to ride along on his shoulders. Such a performance would make sense were this some kind of Mission-Impossible action romp. But Valkyrie has dreams of historical grandeur that make the slickness of Cruise's turn - and the general shininess of this movie (directed by X-Men honcho Bryan Singer) - feel wholly inappropriate. Cruise seems to be forever playing the role of von Stauffenberg with the twinkle of a man who knows he is Tom Cruise, which rather the defeats the object. It's swishly done of course, plotted to within an inch of its life and peppered with performances by Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Izzard and Terence Stamp, but this isn't enough to make it interesting or especially entertaining. Its major flaw, though, is its modernity and excess: the sheer number of accents at play, the fact that villains never merely glower, they glower with added scary music, and the nagging thought that this must have been awfully expensive to make, but who on earth will want to see it?
12A, 120 mins
Seven Pounds
Will Smith and director Gabriele Muccino were last together for the charm-assault that was The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), and their latest turn requires a similar suspension of disbelief. But instead of melting into a small puddle of sickly-sweetness a la Happyness, Seven Pounds grows to be something quite monstrously terrible. Smith is Ben Thomas, an IRS agent, but a good one, who one day accidentally kills seven people in a car crash. Being an earnest and noble figure who wants to atone for his actions, he effectively stalks seven other unwitting souls under his jurisdiction (among them Rosario Dawson) for their own good, intending to kill himself once his beneficent deeds have been done. For a little while this muddled tale is vaguely pleasant to watch as it putters along, baffling yet pretty, but then suddenly an awareness of the utter dreadfulness of the story descends. We all know how Seven Pounds will unravel - in some great big everyman-messiah mush. Smith is a talented actor, with presence and immense screen appeal; let us pray for someone to rescue him from this kind of drivel.
12A, 123 mins
The Reader
One would hope that a film involving the direction of Stephen Daldry, a screenplay by David Hare and the acting talents of both Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes might make for something rather special. In truth, though, The Reader feels a little too cold and slender to be ever truly lovable. We begin in mid-Nineties Germany where Michael (Fiennes) appears to have all the trappings of a wealthy law career. He lacks a rich emotional life, though, and predictably it takes a flashback to explain it. In 1958, Michael was 15 years old (played by David Cross), and a strange encounter introduces him to Hanna (Winslet), who is a great deal older but nonetheless seduces him. The pair enjoy an affair - lots of warmly-lit curves, strained limbs and some post-coital reading by Michael to convey the couple's emotional attachment. By the 1960s, they are no longer involved, but their lives meet again when Michael is at law school and is taken to see a trial of Nazi war criminals - only for Hanna to be among those charged. It's here that Michael learns Hanna's dark secret - not her past as a Nazi prison guard (for which she will be sentenced), but the shame of her illiteracy. As secrets go, it's really not so dazzling. And perhaps this is the problem here; everything about The Reader looks wonderful - Winslet especially, who not only looks great but also gives her best to an awkward role - but the film itself has little true depth or emotional resonance.
15, 123 mins
Milk
There's a frisky lightness of touch to Gus Van Sant's impressive new biopic that prevents the movie from sagging beneath the usual weight of a period drama, and though the tale may be tragic, there is little cod-solemnity. This is the story of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the San Francisco activist elected to the city's Board of Supervisors in 1977 and murdered the following year, along with the city's Mayor (Victor Garber), by a former supervisor named Dan White (Josh Brolin). Milk was one of the first openly gay elected officials in America, a fact that inspired many and infuriated some, but above all else demanded a shift in American politics and culture. We follow him here from New York City to the West Coast, from camera store owner to political recruiter, and chart his relationships and friendships as they rise and fall with his success. Van Sant's portrait of this pioneer is tender, intelligent and greatly aided by the casting of Penn, who brings his full actorly muscle to the role, playing Milk as a smart, clever, imperfect individual who was also blessed with substantial kindness. Van Sant has made a career out of conjuring melancholy, but here his tendency towards dreaminess is balanced by the story's hard city politics, allowing the film to be at once intimate and inspiring - and probably one of cinema's finest moments this year.
15, 128 mins
Faintheart
The most interesting thing about Faintheart is the story of its genesis. Developed on the social networking site MySpace, the public was able to vote not only for its director but also for its soundtrack, and to voice opinions on its script. This back story rather puffs up what is otherwise an agreeably predictable British comedy about a group of battle re-enactment devotees. In the West Midlands, Richard (Eddie Marsan) lives a dreary weekday existence as a DIY store employee, but at the weekend he is transformed into a Viking warrior as a member of the Bloody Broadswords. All the faux-battling helps distract Richard from the fact that his wife Cath (Jessica Hynes) wants a divorce. Real life will insistently creep in on the make-believe, though, as Richard's son Martin (Joseph Hamilton) is bullied for taking part in the re-enactments (though he gains some kudos from one cute female classmate) and Cath begins dating Martin's PE teacher (Paul Nicholls). It's fun, of course, and while not exactly hilarious it's certainly cockle-warming and reassuringly British.
12A, 92 mins
Defiance
It's 1941, and deep in the Belarusian forest, the four Bialski brothers - Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), Asael (Jamie Bell) and Aron (George MacKay) - are establishing an encampment for Jews fleeing the Nazi invaders. These rough-edged brothers have learned first-hand of the danger in their midst, having suffered the murder of their parents by local authorities in league with the Germans. The camp largely attracts what they refer to as "malbushim" - a dismissive term to describe a ragbag of schoolteachers and intellectuals, unaccustomed to physical labour. The purpose here, of course, is to thrust the swarthy physicality of the Bialskis up against a kind of ethical code, to forge a breed of defiance that marries both brute force and moral clout - a counterpoint to many Holocaust movies which have focused largely on victimhood. At the helm is Edward Zwick, who gave us Blood Diamond (2006) and The Siege (1998), and Defiance suffers from the same heavy-handedness and lumpen scripting as those earlier movies. So it's probably to Zwick's credit that despite this, Defiance works - in part by placing the viewer in a kind of emotional headlock, and, in no small way, thanks to its dazzling cast.
15, 137 mins
The Spirit
Frank Miller (300, 2006, Sin City, 2005) has assembled a surefire cast for this latest comic book outing, adapted from Will Eisner's classic series. It's the tale of a rookie cop (Gabriel Macht) who is knocked asunder by toxic goo and raised again as the Spirit to fight the evil-doers lurking in the shadows of his beloved Central City. Specifically, the Spirit has his eye on his nemesis, the Octopus (Samuel L Jackson), who harbours a desire to raze the city entirely. Miller's real card, though, is the gaggle of foxy ladies who attempt to sidetrack the Spirit as he pursues his quarry. They run like a somewhat predictable roll-call of male fantasies: the girl-next-door Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulsen), vampish secretary Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson), dubious nightclub singer with a sultry French accent Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega), the phantomish-yet-saucy Lorelei (Jaime King), seductive police officer Morgan Stern (Santa Katic), and, last but not least, the love of his life who has been transformed into a jewel-thief, Sand Saref (Eva Mendes). While it's essentially a comic-book adventure of the traditional sort, the movie's roster of femmes fatales is just a little too teenage-boy's-wet-dream to make The Spirit truly enjoyable viewing.
12A, 103 mins
A Christmas Tale
The French city of Roubaix provides the perfect setting for this tale - a run-down, former industrial giant, now faded after the decline of the manufacturing trade. The Vuillard family faces a similar struggle for survival. Many years ago, their first-born son, Paul, developed a disease that required a transplant, but no suitable donor could be found. The family went on to bear more children, but none of them matched Paul's blood-type, and he eventually died. Now all the children are fully grown, with children of their own, but they discover that their mother (Catherine Deneuve) has developed cancer and also requires a transplant - and so the search for a donor begins afresh. To complicate matters, the family is hardly conventional: the only daughter simmers with resentment towards her wayward brother and is over-protective of her son who has recently had a breakdown; the youngest son is happily married but his cousin is in love with his wife. And here they are, all united together in Roubaix for Christmas. It is, as you might gather, enormously, terrifically French: fierce, beautiful and passionately performed. An absolutely stunning film.
15, 150 mins
Slumdog Millionaire
The sheer sensual assault of Danny Boyle's latest offering is astonishing. Played out largely amid the squalor of Mumbai, the screen veritably reeks with the stench of rotting food, trash and stagnant water. Amid this fetid landscape stands Jamal (Dev Patel), a chai wallah who, through a series of convolutions, ends up on the TV gameshow Who Wants to be a Millionaire? We begin, in fact, with Jamal poised for the jackpot, but the story chooses to carry us back through Jamal's life, to the impoverished childhood amid India's slums (where he is played by Ayush Mahesh Khedekar), to a time when he and his brother witness the murder of their mother at the hands of an anti-Muslim rabble. The two boys, along with another orphan - the quietly beautiful Latika (Rubina Ali in childhood, Freida Pinto in later years) - must make their way in the wide world together, and soon fall into foul and villainous hands. The fascinating quality of Boyle's movie is the fact that the grimness and sorrow of this tale never truly surfaces. Instead, much in the manner of Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), we are left with a film that prefers to see the sunny side. Gorgeously shot and artfully scripted, this is a real triumph for Boyle.
15, 120 mins
Che: Part One
Steven Soderbergh's account of the life of the political insurgent Ernesto 'Che' Guevara bears scant resemblance to most biopics - nor indeed to much of Soderbergh's work to date. There is little of the gleam of most biographical movies; no dwelling on romantic passions, nor even a hefty attempt to grapple with the rebel leader's psychological motivations. Rather the attention focuses firmly on the rigours of guerilla warfare. This might seem a little off-putting, but in Soderbergh's hands it becomes something quite extraordinary. Part Two of Che will focus on the Bolivian uprising, but for the time being we are given Part One, which tells of how Che (Benicio del Toro) met Fidel Castro (Demian Bechir), and takes us from the mad hot scramble of the jungle to Che's 1964 trip to Manhattan as Cuba's Minister of Industry. Told largely in Spanish, Soderbergh's movie seems in possession of a certain truthfulness often lacking in this genre - its sources, after all, have been Guevara's own extensive writings and an interview with journalist Lisa Howard (here played by Julia Ormond), in which he set out the motivations and philosophy of the Cuban Revolution. Certainly this will seem a dour, relentless movie to some. But hopefully for others it will be a rewarding insight into a charismatic and ambitious cult figure.
15, 126 mins
Reviews by Laura Barton
FIRST POSTED
JANUARY 22 , 2009
