Film - showing at a cinema near you
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
El Cantante
For a brief, beautiful moment in 1998's Out of Sight, Jennifer Lopez showed us what a compelling actor she could be. Since then, that strong, fierce presence seems to have gone missing in a predictable array of frothy romcoms. El Cantante offered a glimmer of hope: a biopic of legendary salsa singer Hector Lavoe that takes him from musical stardom to heroin addiction. Lopez is cast as his wife, Puchi, around whose reminiscences the film is structured. Alarm bells ring as soon as one learns that Lopez's husband, Marc Anthony, is playing the lead. Lopez has made this kind of error before, playing opposite former beau Ben Affleck and even featuring him in one of her music videos. Another problem is that El Cantante does not differ greatly from any other musical biopic of recent times - huge fame, a character who comes alive only on stage, a drug addiction that threatens to lose him the love of his life etc etc. This, and the fact that Anthony is no acting powerhouse, makes it seem little more than a feeble aping of Ray or Walk the Line. Reassuringly, Lopez is by far the best thing in it: brittle, upright, passionate. If nothing else, let's hope this spells an end to those two-bob romances.
15, 116 mins
Angel
Francois Ozon's adaptation of Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 novel looks rather spiffing (in a flouncy, gaily coloured kind of way), but the drama itself is awfully flat and lifeless. The story of Edwardian novelist Angel Deverell (Romola Garai) rising from humble beginnings as the fame-hungry daughter of a grocer to become a celebrated author and the toast of the novel-reading public really ought to make for a terrific movie. Not least because Taylor's original work was a satire rather than a heartstring-pulling, rags-to-riches tale, and her heroine - while wooing the great British public and earning enough cash to buy a country pile and spend her days making eyes at brooding painter Esme (Michael Fassbender) - is in truth the most god-awful writer. Alas, the cast here never seems to gel, all the irony is lost and the dialogue is terribly creaky. Sadly disappointing stuff.
15, 134 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, 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
Never Apologise
Though it is a remarkably simple idea, actor Malcolm McDowell's one-man show about Lindsay Anderson is a riveting work. At the Edinburgh festival in 2004, McDowell staged a tribute to his friend, the director of If... and This Sporting Life, who had died a decade earlier. He reads excerpts from his diaries and letters and hauls out anecdotes involving Laurence Olivier, Richard Harris, Bette Davis and John Gielgud. He remembers fondly the time Anderson chose his epitaph, 'Surrounded by fucking idiots', after a rather trying luncheon spent in the company of British film critics. Anderson's life - not only as a director but also as a critic and writer - would be a source of great wealth for any performer, but for McDowell (who worked with Anderson on numerous occasions) it is almost an embarrassment of riches. It is easy to forget, in this whiz-bang age of technical wizardry and short attention spans, just how gripping a fantastic speech can be. And it makes a lovely thing to behold - there is such tenderness, humour and warmth here that you feel as if you're in attendance at the very best kind of wake.
TBC, 111 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
Step Brothers
Not so very long ago, the union of Judd Apatow and Jimmy Miller brought us Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky and Bobby starring Will Ferrell and John C Reilly. It was not only a magnificent movie, but also a rip-roaring success. So, they must have figured, why not do it all over again? Step Brothers reunites not only Apatow and Miller behind the scenes, but Ferrell and Reilly up on the screen as well, this time playing a pair of Apatow-trademark drop-outs who become brothers when their parents wed - an event that only seems to sustain their perpetual state of adolescence. The problem is that the jokes just aren't as funny the second time around - or the third, fourth, fifth. All those penis quips and Freudian yearnings are starting to wear a little thin. So, guys, it might just be time to grow up.
15, 98 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 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
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
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 starts 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
Times and Winds
Adolescence in a small mountain town in North West Turkey is strikingly different to that portrayed in the butts 'n' barfing American movies that we're used to (ably illustrated by Step Brothers). Here, best friends Omer (Ozkan Ozen) and Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali), along with solitary girl Yildiz (Elit Iscan), are edging out of their childhood years - a process that offers a series of rude awakenings: the sight of animals mating; falling in love with the village schoolteacher; and (in the case of Omer) fervently wishing one's father dead. Alongside their daily calls to prayer, the children are learning about the forces of nature in the classroom - the water cycle, the Earth's rotation - and it is these two powers (religion and the natural world) that come to dominate both their lives and the passage of the film. It makes for strangely unsentimental yet beautiful viewing; an unflinching, unsaccharined view of the start of teenage life.
TBC, 111 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
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
Reviews by Laura Barton
FIRST POSTED
SEPTEMBER 4, 2008
