They do everything else with sickening panache, but the French have never got to grips with the slasher flick, which makes this back-to-basics horror as unexpected as it is violent. A sexy teen (C
DIRECTED BY Errol Morris
Opens April 2, Cert PG, 106 mins
As a WWII pilot, then later as Secretary of Defence under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Robert McNamara was privy to three of the most pivotal and terrible events of the past 60 years?the bombing of Hiroshima, the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam war. Although he sacrificed a potentially lucrative career in the private sector to work for Kennedy, he is regarded by many as a cold, charmless technocrat who applied the pragmatic values of big business to global politics. Here, Errol Morris (Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control, Mr Death) has succeeded in persuading McNamara, now in his late eighties but still gimlet-eyed, to put his side of the story, interspersed with documentary audio and visual footage.
Morris films his subject with a device called the Interrotron, enabling McNamara to stare directly to camera as he fields Morris’ questions, which are mostly edited out. This enables McNamara to appear as if he’s delivering a lecture
DIRECTED BY Roman Polanski STARRING Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston Opens April 23, Cert 15, 130 mins Though it was Polanski's most acclaimed film before the overrated The Pianist, 1974's Chinatown?massively reliant on Robert Towne's seductive script?was never typical of his work. His themes of sexual violence and jealousy were toned down, and he indulged instead in a love-hate nostalgia for the heyday of noir. While juggling the perspectives of Chandleresque fiction, he allowed classy performances to drive the story, his directing deliberate and subdued (albeit with much clinical voyeurism). It's nonetheless entered the lexicon of LA as represented in movies. Private eye Jake Gittes (Nicholson) is hired by Evelyn (Dunaway) to tail her husband, who's escorting a mystery blonde. But Jake's been set up, and is pushed beyond his depth into a labyrinth of corruption involving crooked bureaucrats, incest and the Water Department's plans to shaft farmers. The big (bad) daddy figure is Evelyn's father (regally played, with implicit postmodernism, by Huston). Despite having his nose nicked by an unlikely hoodlum (Polanski), Jake, handcuffed physically and metaphorically, can't make things right. He fatalistically accepts that, for some, immorality's a state of mind?it's "Chinatown". Polanski himself deemed this a hack job, done to prove to producer Robert Evans he was back on track after the Manson murders and Macbeth. Most film-lovers would beg to differ.
DIRECTED BY Roman Polanski
STARRING Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
Opens April 23, Cert 15, 130 mins
Though it was Polanski’s most acclaimed film before the overrated The Pianist, 1974’s Chinatown?massively reliant on Robert Towne’s seductive script?was never typical of his work. His themes of sexual violence and jealousy were toned down, and he indulged instead in a love-hate nostalgia for the heyday of noir. While juggling the perspectives of Chandleresque fiction, he allowed classy performances to drive the story, his directing deliberate and subdued (albeit with much clinical voyeurism). It’s nonetheless entered the lexicon of LA as represented in movies.
Private eye Jake Gittes (Nicholson) is hired by Evelyn (Dunaway) to tail her husband, who’s escorting a mystery blonde. But Jake’s been set up, and is pushed beyond his depth into a labyrinth of corruption involving crooked bureaucrats, incest and the Water Department’s plans to shaft farmers. The big (bad) daddy figure is Evelyn’s father (regally played, with implicit postmodernism, by Huston). Despite having his nose nicked by an unlikely hoodlum (Polanski), Jake, handcuffed physically and metaphorically, can’t make things right. He fatalistically accepts that, for some, immorality’s a state of mind?it’s “Chinatown”.
Polanski himself deemed this a hack job, done to prove to producer Robert Evans he was back on track after the Manson murders and Macbeth. Most film-lovers would beg to differ.
OPENS APRIL 9, CERT PG, 93 MINS At first, it doesn't look good. It opens in high-art film style, with a man (Nezam Manouchehri) driving a car through a desert with his sleeping wife (Leila Hatami). And driving. And driving. But don't go to sleep just yet, because this turns into quite an absorbing, pellucid little drama that gets better as it goes along, building to a proper emotional climax, albeit an understated, oblique one typical of Iranian cinema. When the man's motor breaks down, he's forced to seek help in a nearby town that's populated with old women, children and a schoolteacher (Mehran Rajabi), who fortunately also happens to know a bit about cars. He and the husband go off for a spare part, leaving the beautiful but slightly neurotic wife in charge of the schoolkids for the day, and by slow degrees both children and the haunted visitor from the city establish a touching rapport. Underneath the surface, though, there's a surrealist turbulence stirring up the waters, and a powerful tragic undertow. Stunning cinematography and a restrained score help cast a mesmerising spell.
OPENS APRIL 9, CERT PG, 93 MINS
At first, it doesn’t look good. It opens in high-art film style, with a man (Nezam Manouchehri) driving a car through a desert with his sleeping wife (Leila Hatami). And driving. And driving. But don’t go to sleep just yet, because this turns into quite an absorbing, pellucid little drama that gets better as it goes along, building to a proper emotional climax, albeit an understated, oblique one typical of Iranian cinema.
When the man’s motor breaks down, he’s forced to seek help in a nearby town that’s populated with old women, children and a schoolteacher (Mehran Rajabi), who fortunately also happens to know a bit about cars. He and the husband go off for a spare part, leaving the beautiful but slightly neurotic wife in charge of the schoolkids for the day, and by slow degrees both children and the haunted visitor from the city establish a touching rapport. Underneath the surface, though, there’s a surrealist turbulence stirring up the waters, and a powerful tragic undertow. Stunning cinematography and a restrained score help cast a mesmerising spell.
OPENS APRIL 30, CERT 15, 122 MINS
On June 12, 2000, “Sandro”, a former street kid and escaped convict, hijacked a bus in Rio, taking its mostly female passengers hostage. TV cameras were on the spot almost immediately and the entire siege was broadcast live to a rapt audience. Apparently high on cocaine, Sandra jabbered menacing threats to negotiators and brandished a gun, recklessly jutting his head out the bus window. The SWAT team, though, were under instructions not to shoot him because the sight of his spattered brains might upset viewers.
Film-maker Jos
OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 18, 105 MINS
The controversy that greeted (read: promoted) Irr
DIRECTED BY Michel Gondry
STARRING Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo
Opens April 23, Cert 15, 108 mins
An intellectually rigorous, wildly entertaining pile-up between Alice In Wonderland, Groundhog Day and Memento, this Charlie Kaufman script is as breathlessly challenging as his previous pearls. If Gondry?best known for Bj
DIRECTED BY Patty Jenkins
STARRING Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci
Opens April 2, Cert 15, 109 mins
Apparently, this writer wasn’t the only one who spent the first few minutes of Monster wondering when Charlize Theron was going to make an appearance on screen. Her physical transformation into the role of Aileen Wuornos, serial killer in the making, must be the most drastic since De Niro’s bloated gross-out in Raging Bull. With disfiguring dentures, 30 pounds of flab and a complexion like decaying gorgonzola, there isn’t a trace of the glamorous, blonde Charlize we’ve come to know and not take much notice of. Theron’s track record hasn’t suggested bold artistic ambition, but as the Oscar voters recognised, there’s a desperate intensity about her performance here that hints at a giant hinterland waiting to be discovered.
Wuornos, a homeless prostitute, was convicted in 1992 for killing six men, and had become a national cause c
OPENS APRIL 30, CERT 15, 139 MINS This is Ashton Kutcher's stab at changing his image. Half-baked ideas about chaos theory, developmental psychology and genetics loom large when Kutcher's college student Evan discovers that he can travel back to his troubled past by reading his old diary. This allows him to fiddle with history to sweeten his future and that of his childhood friends. And what a childhood it is: death, home-made bombs, a loopy father, and a nasty experience playing make-believe with a friend's dad and his video camera. Kutcher and the film's writer/directors Eric Bress and J Mackye Gruber (the team behind Final Destination 2) were obviously hoping that the film's scientific mysticism would achieve the Donnie Darko effect, but it begs too many questions to be taken seriously. Kutcher can't cope with tragedy, either; the more taut the drama, the less credible he becomes. Were The Butterfly Effect less vain, less pretentious, all this wouldn't matter so much. It's really just Back To The Future without the laughs.
OPENS APRIL 30, CERT 15, 139 MINS
This is Ashton Kutcher’s stab at changing his image. Half-baked ideas about chaos theory, developmental psychology and genetics loom large when Kutcher’s college student Evan discovers that he can travel back to his troubled past by reading his old diary. This allows him to fiddle with history to sweeten his future and that of his childhood friends. And what a childhood it is: death, home-made bombs, a loopy father, and a nasty experience playing make-believe with a friend’s dad and his video camera.
Kutcher and the film’s writer/directors Eric Bress and J Mackye Gruber (the team behind Final Destination 2) were obviously hoping that the film’s scientific mysticism would achieve the Donnie Darko effect, but it begs too many questions to be taken seriously. Kutcher can’t cope with tragedy, either; the more taut the drama, the less credible he becomes. Were The Butterfly Effect less vain, less pretentious, all this wouldn’t matter so much. It’s really just Back To The Future without the laughs.
OPENS APRIL 16, CERT U, 106 MINS Another triumph from precocious Iranian cine-savant Samira Makhmalbaf (The Apple, Blackboards). This time arid, rubble-strewn, post-Taliban Afghanistan is the suitably dramatic (and ultimately cinematic) setting. There our feisty neo-feminist student protagonist Nogreh (Agheleh Reszaie?a non-professional, like the rest of the cast) hopes to become president of the new Republic while her infant nephew slowly dies of starvation, her ramshackle neighbourhood gradually fills with bedraggled, malnourished refugees and her fundamentalist father loudly bemoans the everyday blasphemies he sees around him?like music and women. Which, when combined with Makhmalbaf's gripping neo-realist style and her eye for composition (a crowd of women in blue burqas moving slowly, like a river) is all genuinely compelling in an 'oh isn't life awful when the West has bombed you out of existence and you're a strong woman in a man's world and everyone's going to die because of political ignorance' kind of way. But it's also kind of obvious, too.
OPENS APRIL 16, CERT U, 106 MINS
Another triumph from precocious Iranian cine-savant Samira Makhmalbaf (The Apple, Blackboards). This time arid, rubble-strewn, post-Taliban Afghanistan is the suitably dramatic (and ultimately cinematic) setting. There our feisty neo-feminist student protagonist Nogreh (Agheleh Reszaie?a non-professional, like the rest of the cast) hopes to become president of the new Republic while her infant nephew slowly dies of starvation, her ramshackle neighbourhood gradually fills with bedraggled, malnourished refugees and her fundamentalist father loudly bemoans the everyday blasphemies he sees around him?like music and women. Which, when combined with Makhmalbaf’s gripping neo-realist style and her eye for composition (a crowd of women in blue burqas moving slowly, like a river) is all genuinely compelling in an ‘oh isn’t life awful when the West has bombed you out of existence and you’re a strong woman in a man’s world and everyone’s going to die because of political ignorance’ kind of way. But it’s also kind of obvious, too.
OPENS APRIL 23, CERT PG, 106 MINS One of those 'sweet' British 'issue' movies (see East Is East, Billy Elliot) which feeds a valid point to the great unwashed by piling treacle on top of syrup, this inexplicably-titled comedy drama from Paul Morrison is hard to dislike. You know it's lame, and about as grittily real as The Full Monty, but it does its warm-glow thing with professional panache. Eleven-year-old David (Sam Smith) is a cricket-loving Jewish boy in '60s south London. Trouble is, he's crap at cricket. When a Jamaican family, their dad being Delroy Lindo, move in next door, there's snidey racism from other neighbours. But Delroy builds a cricket net in his back garden, and teaches David to be the next WG Grace. His mum, Emily Woof, swoons for super-Del's charms; even his dad comes round. Other locals, slow to realise this is a revisionist feelgood flick, set fire to the Jamaicans' house, but everyone's seen the light and discovered the joys of calypso and swing by the rose-tinted ending. It'll bowl audiences over, thanks to its spin.
OPENS APRIL 23, CERT PG, 106 MINS
One of those ‘sweet’ British ‘issue’ movies (see East Is East, Billy Elliot) which feeds a valid point to the great unwashed by piling treacle on top of syrup, this inexplicably-titled comedy drama from Paul Morrison is hard to dislike. You know it’s lame, and about as grittily real as The Full Monty, but it does its warm-glow thing with professional panache.
Eleven-year-old David (Sam Smith) is a cricket-loving Jewish boy in ’60s south London. Trouble is, he’s crap at cricket. When a Jamaican family, their dad being Delroy Lindo, move in next door, there’s snidey racism from other neighbours. But Delroy builds a cricket net in his back garden, and teaches David to be the next WG Grace. His mum, Emily Woof, swoons for super-Del’s charms; even his dad comes round. Other locals, slow to realise this is a revisionist feelgood flick, set fire to the Jamaicans’ house, but everyone’s seen the light and discovered the joys of calypso and swing by the rose-tinted ending. It’ll bowl audiences over, thanks to its spin.
OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 18, TBC MINS Expanded from a two-minute fantasy sequence in Spaced, this is Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright's way of combining all their comedy obsessions (zombies, pubs, suburbia and soft rock) into one proper film. The result? A snappy gorefest with hit potential. Pegg is Shaun, a loafer on the verge of 30 who cocks up at work, forgets Mother's Day and gets dumped by his girlfriend all on the same day. None of which seems so bad the next morning, when London is over-run with zombies. With his flatmate (Spaced co-star Nick Frost) he learns how to decapitate them using spades or Dire Straits records and sets out to rescue Mum from zombie stepdad (Bill Nighy), find his ex and lead them all to the safety of the pub. Having raced through a hundred sight gags, witty bickering and a grisly dismemberment, events are wrapped up in an allegory?zombies are always allegorical?about friendship and 'surviving' relationship damage. Sounds twee, but it puts enough meat on the film's rotting bones to make it a real date movie, as well as a corpse-defiling laugh.
OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 18, TBC MINS
Expanded from a two-minute fantasy sequence in Spaced, this is Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright’s way of combining all their comedy obsessions (zombies, pubs, suburbia and soft rock) into one proper film. The result? A snappy gorefest with hit potential.
Pegg is Shaun, a loafer on the verge of 30 who cocks up at work, forgets Mother’s Day and gets dumped by his girlfriend all on the same day. None of which seems so bad the next morning, when London is over-run with zombies. With his flatmate (Spaced co-star Nick Frost) he learns how to decapitate them using spades or Dire Straits records and sets out to rescue Mum from zombie stepdad (Bill Nighy), find his ex and lead them all to the safety of the pub. Having raced through a hundred sight gags, witty bickering and a grisly dismemberment, events are wrapped up in an allegory?zombies are always allegorical?about friendship and ‘surviving’ relationship damage. Sounds twee, but it puts enough meat on the film’s rotting bones to make it a real date movie, as well as a corpse-defiling laugh.
OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 12A, 136 MINS "Based on a true story," Hidalgo tells the tale of half-Indian Pony Express rider Frank T Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen), who salves the pain of witnessing the infamous Wounded Knee massacre by signing up for Saudi Arabia's legendary "Ocean of Fire" horse marathon, in which he and horse Hidalgo trek 3000 miles across the unforgiving desert. Along the way, Hopkins rubs shoulders with a beautiful desert princess (Zuleikha Robinson), a wily old sheik (Omar Sharif, hamming it up nicely) and a scheming English toff (Louise Lombard). It's very expensively mounted and 100 per cent untrue. Sure, Hopkins existed, but the rest is bullshit?he never set foot in Saudi Arabia, and you won't find the "Ocean of Fire" in the history books. This wouldn't matter if the flick was good, but it's not. It's emotionally fraudulent, poorly constructed nonsense. The anti-Seabiscuit, if you will. Hidalgo squeaks one star for a great Malcolm McDowell cameo and Mortensen's undoubted star power, but even Viggo's laser-eyed charisma can't rescue this overlong pile of steaming Turkish Delight-laced horseshit.
OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 12A, 136 MINS
“Based on a true story,” Hidalgo tells the tale of half-Indian Pony Express rider Frank T Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen), who salves the pain of witnessing the infamous Wounded Knee massacre by signing up for Saudi Arabia’s legendary “Ocean of Fire” horse marathon, in which he and horse Hidalgo trek 3000 miles across the unforgiving desert. Along the way, Hopkins rubs shoulders with a beautiful desert princess (Zuleikha Robinson), a wily old sheik (Omar Sharif, hamming it up nicely) and a scheming English toff (Louise Lombard). It’s very expensively mounted and 100 per cent untrue.
Sure, Hopkins existed, but the rest is bullshit?he never set foot in Saudi Arabia, and you won’t find the “Ocean of Fire” in the history books. This wouldn’t matter if the flick was good, but it’s not. It’s emotionally fraudulent, poorly constructed nonsense. The anti-Seabiscuit, if you will. Hidalgo squeaks one star for a great Malcolm McDowell cameo and Mortensen’s undoubted star power, but even Viggo’s laser-eyed charisma can’t rescue this overlong pile of steaming Turkish Delight-laced horseshit.
Sleazecore rocker Rob Zombie pays homage to the golden 1970s heyday of psycho-slasher flicks with his wilfully trashy but memorably nightmarish debut feature, which makes up for a slow start with its final descent into a shock-rocking Hellzone of backwoods mutants, Satanic serial killers, hardcore violence and unimaginable torture. Mixing grainy film stock and period detail, Zombie takes inspiration from Driller Killer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Evil Dead and other midnight-movie classics.
Sleazecore rocker Rob Zombie pays homage to the golden 1970s heyday of psycho-slasher flicks with his wilfully trashy but memorably nightmarish debut feature, which makes up for a slow start with its final descent into a shock-rocking Hellzone of backwoods mutants, Satanic serial killers, hardcore violence and unimaginable torture. Mixing grainy film stock and period detail, Zombie takes inspiration from Driller Killer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Evil Dead and other midnight-movie classics.
Kooky low-budget Brit-flick gets a moribund Scandinavian once-over as Danish Dogme disciple Lone Scherfig (Italian For Beginners) directs this contrived tale of two contrasting Glaswegian brothers?one is dying, one wants to die; one is sexy, one is square, etc?caught in a love triangle with mousy hospital worker Shirley Henderson. Annoying.
Kooky low-budget Brit-flick gets a moribund Scandinavian once-over as Danish Dogme disciple Lone Scherfig (Italian For Beginners) directs this contrived tale of two contrasting Glaswegian brothers?one is dying, one wants to die; one is sexy, one is square, etc?caught in a love triangle with mousy hospital worker Shirley Henderson. Annoying.
Cynical lapsed communist Daniel Auteuil gets lost driving through a dark forest, and encounters haughty bilingual seductress Kristin Scott Thomas. An episodic shaggy dog story ensues, sprayed with romance and bleak jokes. Pascal Bonitzer writes/directs a unique, odd mystery which is splendidly acted by all. Let's face it, if you're casting a haughty bilingual seductress, Kristin's your woman.
Cynical lapsed communist Daniel Auteuil gets lost driving through a dark forest, and encounters haughty bilingual seductress Kristin Scott Thomas. An episodic shaggy dog story ensues, sprayed with romance and bleak jokes. Pascal Bonitzer writes/directs a unique, odd mystery which is splendidly acted by all. Let’s face it, if you’re casting a haughty bilingual seductress, Kristin’s your woman.
Bright, polished but ultimately lightweight Britcom about a forbidden romance between a London girl of Indian parents (Preeya Kalidas) and a white English boy (James McAvoy), Jeremy Wooding and former NME editor Neil Spencer's debut feature rehashes a bog-standard culture-clash plot. The incorporation of Hindi film song-and-dance numbers into a naturalistic story is a nice touch, but at heart this is the kind of creaky yarn that might have made a generic TV drama at best.
Bright, polished but ultimately lightweight Britcom about a forbidden romance between a London girl of Indian parents (Preeya Kalidas) and a white English boy (James McAvoy), Jeremy Wooding and former NME editor Neil Spencer’s debut feature rehashes a bog-standard culture-clash plot. The incorporation of Hindi film song-and-dance numbers into a naturalistic story is a nice touch, but at heart this is the kind of creaky yarn that might have made a generic TV drama at best.
Peter Stollett's refreshing debut is somewhere between Larry Clark's Kids and a witty Lower East Side comedy of manners. It takes a hugely charismatic teen cast, light docu-style shooting and a textured screenplay and then follows eponymous virgin-surgeon Victor (Victor Rasuk) and his embattled Latino clan over one momentous and hormonally challenged summer.
Peter Stollett’s refreshing debut is somewhere between Larry Clark’s Kids and a witty Lower East Side comedy of manners. It takes a hugely charismatic teen cast, light docu-style shooting and a textured screenplay and then follows eponymous virgin-surgeon Victor (Victor Rasuk) and his embattled Latino clan over one momentous and hormonally challenged summer.
For all his bravado, Vincent Gallo's reputation as a lunatic genius rests chiefly on this (not always intentionally) hilarious/absurd 1998 psalm of self-pity. The writer/director stars as a just-freed convict who forces Christina Ricci's dancer to pretend to be his wife to impress his folks. It's beautifully shot, and support from Mickey Rourke and other cult figures is staunch.
For all his bravado, Vincent Gallo’s reputation as a lunatic genius rests chiefly on this (not always intentionally) hilarious/absurd 1998 psalm of self-pity. The writer/director stars as a just-freed convict who forces Christina Ricci’s dancer to pretend to be his wife to impress his folks. It’s beautifully shot, and support from Mickey Rourke and other cult figures is staunch.
Before The Trip starts, an earnest middle-aged voice warns us that we're about to witness "a shocking commentary on a prevalent trend of our time". This is Roger Corman's ass-covering joke at Middle America's expense:his 1967 drugzploitation classic is nothing more than Jack Nicholson's paean to lysergic acid. Ad exec Peter Fonda takes the trip in question, encountering sundry LA groovers along the way: Bruce Dern, the inevitable Dennis Hopper, even an unknown Gram Parsons. Turn on and tune in!
Before The Trip starts, an earnest middle-aged voice warns us that we’re about to witness “a shocking commentary on a prevalent trend of our time”. This is Roger Corman’s ass-covering joke at Middle America’s expense:his 1967 drugzploitation classic is nothing more than Jack Nicholson’s paean to lysergic acid. Ad exec Peter Fonda takes the trip in question, encountering sundry LA groovers along the way: Bruce Dern, the inevitable Dennis Hopper, even an unknown Gram Parsons. Turn on and tune in!
