DIRECTED BY
DIRECTED BY
Something’s Gotta Give
OPENS FEBRUARY 6, CERT 12A, 128 MINS Jack Nicholson plays Harry, a 63-year-old millionaire infamous for seducing young women, who has a heart attack bedding his latest flame (Amanda Peet). He and her uptight mother Erica (Diane Keaton) make love as he recuperates, while his young doctor (Keanu Reeves) romances Erica as well. Looking more sexily comfortable in his skin than for decades, Jack recalls the weathered masculinity of late Gable and Bogart. But while he gives his side of the screen a gritty glow, the usually effortless Keaton (Jack's partner from Reds) is an unwatchable tangle of self-conscious twitches. Like the movie as a whole, she's a victim of writer/director Nancy Meyers'inane view of the sexes, where women are touchy-feely neurotics incapable of comprehending men, making this a chick-flick in the most insulting sense. The film's setting amid the showbiz elite also drains sympathy. Glib, smug and glossy, it's still worth sneaking into for Jack's latest life lesson.
OPENS FEBRUARY 6, CERT 12A, 128 MINS
Jack Nicholson plays Harry, a 63-year-old millionaire infamous for seducing young women, who has a heart attack bedding his latest flame (Amanda Peet). He and her uptight mother Erica (Diane Keaton) make love as he recuperates, while his young doctor (Keanu Reeves) romances Erica as well.
Looking more sexily comfortable in his skin than for decades, Jack recalls the weathered masculinity of late Gable and Bogart. But while he gives his side of the screen a gritty glow, the usually effortless Keaton (Jack’s partner from Reds) is an unwatchable tangle of self-conscious twitches. Like the movie as a whole, she’s a victim of writer/director Nancy Meyers’inane view of the sexes, where women are touchy-feely neurotics incapable of comprehending men, making this a chick-flick in the most insulting sense. The film’s setting amid the showbiz elite also drains sympathy. Glib, smug and glossy, it’s still worth sneaking into for Jack’s latest life lesson.
Son Frère
OPENS FEBRUARY 20, CERT 15, 92 MINS
If you like escapism from your cinematic treats, stop reading now. The new film from Patrice Ch...
OPENS FEBRUARY 20, CERT 15, 92 MINS
If you like escapism from your cinematic treats, stop reading now. The new film from Patrice Ch
Osama
OPENS FEBRUARY 13, CERT 12A, 90 MINS The first feature film made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, Osama is an impassioned account of the oppression and injustice meted out by the regime. And while the film owes an obvious stylistic debt to the work of Iranian directors such as Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and Panahi, the story is unmistakably Afghani. A mother is sent home from her hospital job, leaving three generations of women without support. She disguises her 12-year-old daughter as a boy and sends her out to work. Her stint as breadwinner is brief, as she's soon rounded up with other boys to attend a madrassa. Things go from bad to worse, reaching a harrowing conclusion to compete with the fates of any of the women in Panahi's The Circle for unstinting hopelessness. The amateur cast is convincing, particularly the daughter, Marina Golbahari, whose huge, frightened eyes director Siddiq Barmak uses to reflect the precarious existence on the streets of Kabul under the Taliban.
OPENS FEBRUARY 13, CERT 12A, 90 MINS
The first feature film made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, Osama is an impassioned account of the oppression and injustice meted out by the regime. And while the film owes an obvious stylistic debt to the work of Iranian directors such as Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and Panahi, the story is unmistakably Afghani.
A mother is sent home from her hospital job, leaving three generations of women without support. She disguises her 12-year-old daughter as a boy and sends her out to work. Her stint as breadwinner is brief, as she’s soon rounded up with other boys to attend a madrassa. Things go from bad to worse, reaching a harrowing conclusion to compete with the fates of any of the women in Panahi’s The Circle for unstinting hopelessness. The amateur cast is convincing, particularly the daughter, Marina Golbahari, whose huge, frightened eyes director Siddiq Barmak uses to reflect the precarious existence on the streets of Kabul under the Taliban.
It’s All About Love
OPENS FEBRUARY 13, CERT 15, 104 MINS This is not quite Ishtar, but it falls through every trapdoor with a po-face, both incomprehensible and unintentionally funny. After the Dogme discipline of Festen, Thomas Vinterberg wanted "to say yes to everything", but desire can't give this ludicrously pretentious fable wings. John (Joaquin Phoenix) arrives in a futuristic New York, where "people are dying of lack of love", to ask estranged wife Elena (Claire Danes) to sign divorce papers. She's a world-famous ice skater, and security around her is tight. Too tight: she asks John to help her flee "the corporation", who are grooming captive young girls as her lookalike replacements. Africa's frozen over, and gravity's gone wonky. With us so far? Douglas Henshall's her deceitful brother, and these three run from the metropolis into the snow. It all ends badly, with Sean Penn giving absurd, potty voiceover flurries from a crashing aeroplane. It's even dafter than it sounds. For all the art deco interiors and echoes of Hitchcock and Wenders, it's a mess. The pity of it is: you can almost see what he thinks he's doing.
OPENS FEBRUARY 13, CERT 15, 104 MINS
This is not quite Ishtar, but it falls through every trapdoor with a po-face, both incomprehensible and unintentionally funny. After the Dogme discipline of Festen, Thomas Vinterberg wanted “to say yes to everything”, but desire can’t give this ludicrously pretentious fable wings.
John (Joaquin Phoenix) arrives in a futuristic New York, where “people are dying of lack of love”, to ask estranged wife Elena (Claire Danes) to sign divorce papers. She’s a world-famous ice skater, and security around her is tight. Too tight: she asks John to help her flee “the corporation”, who are grooming captive young girls as her lookalike replacements. Africa’s frozen over, and gravity’s gone wonky. With us so far? Douglas Henshall’s her deceitful brother, and these three run from the metropolis into the snow. It all ends badly, with Sean Penn giving absurd, potty voiceover flurries from a crashing aeroplane.
It’s even dafter than it sounds. For all the art deco interiors and echoes of Hitchcock and Wenders, it’s a mess. The pity of it is: you can almost see what he thinks he’s doing.
The Barbarian Invasions
OPENS FEBRUARY 20, CERT 18, 99 MINS
Whereas Son Fr...
OPENS FEBRUARY 20, CERT 18, 99 MINS
Whereas Son Fr
The Last Laugh
A silent classic from the halcyon days of German expressionism, Der Letze Mann is FW Murnau's dreamlike melodrama of hubris?a big-budget 1924 masterpiece of light, shadow and set design. Restored to a crispness that's worthy of '40s film noir, it stars Emil Jannings as a shambling, walruslike doorman who's demoted to the hotel lavatories. Slow and emotionally laboured but fluid and spectacular to watch.
A silent classic from the halcyon days of German expressionism, Der Letze Mann is FW Murnau’s dreamlike melodrama of hubris?a big-budget 1924 masterpiece of light, shadow and set design. Restored to a crispness that’s worthy of ’40s film noir, it stars Emil Jannings as a shambling, walruslike doorman who’s demoted to the hotel lavatories. Slow and emotionally laboured but fluid and spectacular to watch.
Seabiscuit
That rarest of things: a film about a racehorse that'll run and run. In the mid-'30s, Seabiscuit was an unlikely loser turned winner, trained by a too-tall jockey (Tobey Maguire), a distressed millionaire (Jeff Bridges) and a jaded cowboy (Chris Cooper). Gary (Pleasantville) Ross, who also wrote, directs the three actors (and the horses) without excessive mushiness.
That rarest of things: a film about a racehorse that’ll run and run. In the mid-’30s, Seabiscuit was an unlikely loser turned winner, trained by a too-tall jockey (Tobey Maguire), a distressed millionaire (Jeff Bridges) and a jaded cowboy (Chris Cooper). Gary (Pleasantville) Ross, who also wrote, directs the three actors (and the horses) without excessive mushiness.
All The Real Girls
Confused and rather dull boy-loses-girl story which inexplicably got some pant-wetting reviews. The greatly admired David Gordon Green loosely introduces us to the small-town Romeo and younger college girl who fall in love, only for her brother to kick up a rumpus and for her to break hearts. It's all wilfully vague and indecisive, and her infidelity doesn't make sense. Terrence Malick meets Dawson's Creek.
Confused and rather dull boy-loses-girl story which inexplicably got some pant-wetting reviews. The greatly admired David Gordon Green loosely introduces us to the small-town Romeo and younger college girl who fall in love, only for her brother to kick up a rumpus and for her to break hearts. It’s all wilfully vague and indecisive, and her infidelity doesn’t make sense. Terrence Malick meets Dawson’s Creek.
A Man Apart
This is a workmanlike, halfway-successful attempt to consolidate charmless lunkhead Vin Diesel's status as the action star of the moment. Actually, he's not half bad as the widowed (and therefore vengeful) narcotics agent Sean Vetter, but veteran action director F Gary Gray (The Negotiator) is absolutely treading water. Best saved for a Friday night when you've got nothing else to do.
This is a workmanlike, halfway-successful attempt to consolidate charmless lunkhead Vin Diesel’s status as the action star of the moment. Actually, he’s not half bad as the widowed (and therefore vengeful) narcotics agent Sean Vetter, but veteran action director F Gary Gray (The Negotiator) is absolutely treading water. Best saved for a Friday night when you’ve got nothing else to do.
The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Sean Connery's over-inflated reputation allows him to text his dozy performance in. He's not the only one snoozing through an utterly uninspired, token "imagining" of Alan Moore's superb comic book. A low-rent X-Men, with clunking script outdone only by haphazard effects and nonsensical action sequences. And the supposed "invisible man" is rubbish.
Sean Connery’s over-inflated reputation allows him to text his dozy performance in. He’s not the only one snoozing through an utterly uninspired, token “imagining” of Alan Moore’s superb comic book. A low-rent X-Men, with clunking script outdone only by haphazard effects and nonsensical action sequences. And the supposed “invisible man” is rubbish.
Exodus
Timely release for Otto Preminger's gripping and surreal Zionist propaganda that casts blue-eyed Aryan poster boy Paul Newman as Israeli agitator Ari Ben Canaan, espouses terrorist attacks as a legitimate means of nation-building, and reveals how, in 1948, the bloodthirsty Arabs were in fact commanded by, er, German Nazis.
Timely release for Otto Preminger’s gripping and surreal Zionist propaganda that casts blue-eyed Aryan poster boy Paul Newman as Israeli agitator Ari Ben Canaan, espouses terrorist attacks as a legitimate means of nation-building, and reveals how, in 1948, the bloodthirsty Arabs were in fact commanded by, er, German Nazis.
Last Party 2000
Philip Seymour Hoffman?in faint danger of over-exposure recently?does a Michael Moore, fronting a hand-held, ramshackle documentary which asks why Bush is so bad and the Democrats only marginally better. He hits those hanging chads and Supreme Court sinners with the help of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Jackson, Courtney Love and Eddie Vedder. Lively.
Philip Seymour Hoffman?in faint danger of over-exposure recently?does a Michael Moore, fronting a hand-held, ramshackle documentary which asks why Bush is so bad and the Democrats only marginally better. He hits those hanging chads and Supreme Court sinners with the help of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Jackson, Courtney Love and Eddie Vedder. Lively.
No End
Imagine Ghost replayed as a slow, spiritually-charged polemic set in the bleak housing complexes of martial law-era Poland, and you're close to Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1984 drama. The spirit of a dead lawyer watches over as his young wife descends into grief and one of his former clients is pushed toward compromise to save his neck. In cinema terms, food for the soul?but it really needed Whoopi Goldberg and a potter's wheel to make it a hit.
Imagine Ghost replayed as a slow, spiritually-charged polemic set in the bleak housing complexes of martial law-era Poland, and you’re close to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 1984 drama. The spirit of a dead lawyer watches over as his young wife descends into grief and one of his former clients is pushed toward compromise to save his neck. In cinema terms, food for the soul?but it really needed Whoopi Goldberg and a potter’s wheel to make it a hit.
Big Jake
Underrated late John Wayne vehicle, a bracing 1971 western with The Duke, in formidable form, in hot pursuit of Richard Boone's gang of colourfully villainous and cheerfully murderous kidnappers. Surprisingly brutal, with Boone a fearsome presence and several very bloody shoot-outs. Much enjoyed by John Carpenter, who appropriated the "I thought you were dead" catchline for Escape From New York.
Underrated late John Wayne vehicle, a bracing 1971 western with The Duke, in formidable form, in hot pursuit of Richard Boone’s gang of colourfully villainous and cheerfully murderous kidnappers. Surprisingly brutal, with Boone a fearsome presence and several very bloody shoot-outs. Much enjoyed by John Carpenter, who appropriated the “I thought you were dead” catchline for Escape From New York.
Wisegirls
Mira Sorvino and Mariah Carey as waitresses who get mixed up with Italian mobsters? Surely one for the all-time turkey hall of infamy? Surprisingly, it's perfectly watchable?Sorvino's always been a decent actress, and Carey, believe it or not, swears like a potty-mouthed trooper and almost outshines her bosom. And doesn't sing. OK, it's no GoodFellas, but what is?
Mira Sorvino and Mariah Carey as waitresses who get mixed up with Italian mobsters? Surely one for the all-time turkey hall of infamy? Surprisingly, it’s perfectly watchable?Sorvino’s always been a decent actress, and Carey, believe it or not, swears like a potty-mouthed trooper and almost outshines her bosom. And doesn’t sing. OK, it’s no GoodFellas, but what is?
Belleville Rendez-Vous
You'll never eat frogs' legs again. This darkly witty 2D animation feature is full of cute moments and haunting images, if perhaps not the life-altering classic it's been hailed as in some quarters. The rotund Madame Souza buys her shy grandson Champion a bicycle, and years later, after much strictl...
You’ll never eat frogs’ legs again. This darkly witty 2D animation feature is full of cute moments and haunting images, if perhaps not the life-altering classic it’s been hailed as in some quarters. The rotund Madame Souza buys her shy grandson Champion a bicycle, and years later, after much strictly regimented training, he’s competing with the best. Then, in a fit of surrealism, he’s kidnapped by shadowy men in black. Granny and faithful canine Bruno defy all logic to cross oceans and metropolises to rescue him. En route, they team up with three eccentric old ladies, who survive on memories of their halcyon days as ’30s music hall stars. And frogs’ legs.
Gently sending up all Gallic clich
Sex Is Comedy
In this quasi-autobiographical account of the tortured filming of A Ma Soeur's sex scenes, formerly dour feminist director Catherine Breillat holds tongue firmly in cheek as she demolishes the petty vanities of 'movie people' (including, gamely, her own honed auteur persona) while simultaneously celebrating the alchemy of movies themselves.
In this quasi-autobiographical account of the tortured filming of A Ma Soeur’s sex scenes, formerly dour feminist director Catherine Breillat holds tongue firmly in cheek as she demolishes the petty vanities of ‘movie people’ (including, gamely, her own honed auteur persona) while simultaneously celebrating the alchemy of movies themselves.
The Tempest
Derek Jarman's 1979 version of Shakespeare's final play is suitably 'camp' and 'punk', starring Toyah Willcox and Heathcote Williams, and culminating in Elisabeth Welch singing "Stormy Weather" to a bunch of jolly sailors. It's visually flamboyant and wants badly to be sexy, but it's aged dreadfully, and its shock tactics seem a bit silly now.
Derek Jarman’s 1979 version of Shakespeare’s final play is suitably ‘camp’ and ‘punk’, starring Toyah Willcox and Heathcote Williams, and culminating in Elisabeth Welch singing “Stormy Weather” to a bunch of jolly sailors. It’s visually flamboyant and wants badly to be sexy, but it’s aged dreadfully, and its shock tactics seem a bit silly now.
Tears Of The Sun
Gory, sentimental parable about honour and redemption in 'war-torn' Africa, with Bruce Willis' hard-bitten Navy SEALS sacrificing themselves for gorgeous doctor Monica Bellucci and a column of predictably long-suffering refugees. Director Antoine Fuqua?who helmed the terrific Training Day?clearly had higher aspirations, but it's more Wild Geese than Wild Bunch.
Gory, sentimental parable about honour and redemption in ‘war-torn’ Africa, with Bruce Willis’ hard-bitten Navy SEALS sacrificing themselves for gorgeous doctor Monica Bellucci and a column of predictably long-suffering refugees. Director Antoine Fuqua?who helmed the terrific Training Day?clearly had higher aspirations, but it’s more Wild Geese than Wild Bunch.
