Reviews

A very subtle and accomplished Portuguese comedy drama, directed with a light touch by young António Ferreira. It's the story of a dysfunctional family, with the father and mother both hitting mid-life crises at precisely the same time. She wants some magic in her life, and seeks it from him; he wants some in his life and seeks it from ... well ... magic. Throw into this vortex of dissatisfaction a punk daughter, an ailing grandfather, a troubled niece with a penchant for arson and a goat and you have the recipe for a very enjoyable ride. There's neat editing and good use of music, and Ferreira's direction of his actors is excellent: Custódia Gallego and António Capelo are smashing in the main roles and there's a touching performance from veteran Fernando Taborda as the grandfather in the winter of his life. All in all, 'Esquece ...' is simply a lovely little film.

The Palestinian situation is fertile and as-yet largely fallow soil for film-making. 'Divine Intervention' tries hard, and gives us an insightful peek into the almost surreal life of those caught up in the troubles, but the film amounts to little more than a handful of (admittedly lovely) visual jokes thrown onto celluloid, while the links between them become increasingly obscure as the film progresses. A missed opportunity to say something more coherent about a very topical issue.

The magnificent Daniel Auteuil is ... well ... magnificent once again in this study of a common man whose world turns unaccountably pear-shaped, and who is powerless to get out of the increasingly large hole he's dug for himself. The sequencing of the film is very neatly done - we know from the word 'go' that Faure has done something horrendous, we're pretty sure what it is, and we are led to find out why through a complex series of flashbacks. The art of Auteuil is in his ability to make Faure a sympathetic character, despite his many flaws and the gruesome crime he commits. The painstakingly constructed portrait of a man in torment may get painted on a little too thickly at times, but Auteuil's descent from mixed-up family-man to lethal psychopath is gripping stuff.

As interesting as a sheet of cardboard, this dispensable period piece has little going for it. It's overly wordy and fails spectacularly to evoke the tension and fear that the real-life characters must have felt as they dodged the French Revolution's fickle hand of justice. Eric Rohmer at 82? It shows.

There are some nice set pieces in this film, many that will hit home for anyone who's ever had to share a flat with someone else. But, like its protagonist, it lacks any real direction and at times betrays a malicious line in stereotyping, something it ostensibly sets out to criticise: the dippy English prude and her lager-lout brother? What's all that about? And the final shot, a self-consciously clever-clever closing of the circle as our hero 'takes off', mirroring the plane in the opening scene, is frankly embarrassing.

'Signs' is a lazy film. It goes through the motions. It borrows (steals?) from any number of other films of its type. The performances, apart from the kids (Shyamalan = Spielberg?) are strictly perfunctory. The effects are weedy. Its pay-off is extremely weak. In fact, the film has nothing going for it except the reputation of its director ... but this cannot be anything other than seriously dented. The man surely can't produce another 'twist in the tale' story like this ... can he?

One of those films that make you realise just how good American cinema could be in the 70s. The plot is less important than the beautifully written and performed off-beat characters, all in their own way in search of an elusive (and finally impossible) pot of gold.

But perhaps the strongest feature of the film are the set pieces: James Caan gets a lift in the truck of a grumpy farmer: "Get out of my truck!" "Well, can you stop it first?"; Caan visits the 'head' in a diner, and a terrified customer comes rushing in - what's scared him?; the final ten minutes, a trailer marooned in the middle of the road, destruction all around, and James Caan finally waking up (existentially): "What the f*** am I doing here in a vegetable stand in the middle of nowhere?"

Caan showing a subtle touch with light/black comedy, the glorious Sally Kellerman, Peter Boyle as always wacky as hell ...

Pure gold.

'Lantana' is so convoluted that in the hands of a lesser director than Ray Lawrence it may have disappeared up its own behind. It doesn't: all the loose ends are neatly, and in some cases quite touchingly, tied up. Ostensibly a whodunnit, we soon come to realise that it doesn't matter who, or how.

The body's a macguffin around which various lives and relationships are inextricably entwined. There are loads of fortunate coincidences, but we don't mind because each one resolves a situation or has its resolution later, and changes the destinies of people we grow to like very much.

There are some smashing performances, notably from Antony LaPaglia as the brutal but mixed up cop and Kerry Armstrong, magnificent as his tormented wife, who can't figure out why their relationship and her life are falling apart.

True life drama. Brilliant.

Bill Murray is caught in hell, living over and over again the same day in the dull little town of Punxitsyawney (or something like that). That is, it's hell until he realises it can be heaven and, using the knowledge he builds up over the countless repeated days, sets about getting the girl, by relatively fair means when he's always used foul before.

The film is packed with wit (Phil: "Do you ever have dejá vu?" Landlady: "I don't know - I'll take a look in the kitchen."), has Andie MacDowell at her most appealing and Bill Murray in sublime form as the grumpy weatherman who learns humility the hard way.

In short - a blast.

This is an exquisite film to watch. Each scene is so meticulously designed, it almost takes your breath away. But where it has surface in spades, it lacks real substance. It's very difficult to get involved in any of the relationships, despite some excellent individual performances: Tom Hanks is fine as the honourable hit-man, Paul Newman typically on the button as his boss, grappling with a quandary of loyalty over business and self-preservation, Jude Law suitably menacing as a very seedy mercenary.

But something on the human side doesn't click. Maybe it's a case of aesthetic getting in the way: one example that did it for me was a car being stopped a couple of hundred metres from a farmhouse just so that the camera would be able to track the characters running through the field that separates the road from the house. There was a drive, and the car could have driven up it, but having the characters run through the field, well that would look much prettier (thought the director). It's that kind of thing that jars and detracts from the human drama unfolding.

As for the motifs of the story - well, things like loyalty, devotion, treachery, revenge were dealt with with much more aplomb, and more convincingly, in 'Millers Crossing'. In that film, the characters were all pawns in a giant game of chess, and we weren't supposed to necessarily 'feel' anything for them. Sam Mendes' film wants us to feel, but I for one didn't.

A magnificent study of growing up, only here it's a 40-year-old doing it. The relationships painted are so true, the dialogues so spot-on, the humour so surprising, the performances (from every single actor) so right that the film nudges perfection, if it wasn't for a slight overload on the pathos. But hey, we like a good cry, and the resolution is so uplifting that we come out wiping our cheeks but smiling. Film of the year!

The film thinks the 'catch phrase' is funny. It isn't. Nor is the script. Nor are the performances. Nor is the film. It's an unspeakably lame excuse for an action comedy that insults the intelligence of anyone who pays up their hard-earned dosh to see it. We are used to seeing Eddie Murphy in turkeys and this is just one more of them. But Robert de Niro? Oh why, oh why? Do you really need the money that badly, Bob?

Flee from this one, cinema-goers!

I liked the first - it had a certain vulgar charm and I laughed a bit - so I went to the second with a very open mind, hoping for a good time. I gave it 45 minutes then left. Puerile, heavy-handed, dim-witted ... and that's being kind. I gave it 1 out of 10 on the IMDb ratings, but only because there wasn't a 0. Easily the worst film of this, or possibly any, year.

It's clear that the Polish Bros. wanted to make an off-beat film here, but it's not only derivative (for example, 'Barton Fink' in feel, 'Dead Ringers' and other Cronenberg in subject), it's also pedestrian in execution: the acting is wooden, the pace is slow-to-stop. It woke me up twice: the boys tell Penny that they were born of a cow, and Penny meets an elephant ('Pinky') in a field near the end. Apart from that, it's all like a(n admittedly-out-of-kilter) TV film, only I've been moved more by many TV films ...

This film has restored my faith in American cinema. Involving, funny, touching ... real. These are real people, warts and all, and we care. Because they are us - they share our doubts, our frustrations, our difficulty in seeing the point of it all. And the whole thing is handled with such sublime understatement by Kenneth Lonergan. A gem of a film in all respects. Bravo!

Let's not beat about the bush - the worst film of the year so far. Derivative, poorly paced, embarrassing performances (and the actor look embarrassed - "I wish I hadn't signed that contract" written all over their faces), cheesy effects... it has nothing going for it at all except a neat take on the smiley badge for the promo posters. What can you say about a 'comedy' that doesn't raise a single laugh for the whole of its running time? An absolute stinker.

This is a brilliant evocation of the tangled web that is the drug trade, set in Mexico/USA but universal in its relevance. Soderbergh has taken various strands of society that affect or are affected by the flow of drugs onto the market place and made them all, at times harrowingly, human. Each strand, each element, is so vividly brought to life that it's impossible not to get involved with every character, and there are many, that moves across the screen. Of these, Javier (Benicio del Toro) is by far the most sympathetic, and it's a tribute to this actor's talent (never has an Oscar been better deserved) that the internal torture of the underpaid Mexican drugs officer is always crystal clear yet never overstated. He is the brightest star of a film that only loses points in its determination (mistaken, I felt) to leave no end loose, so that the tying up of the situations of the main characters comes across as mainstream Hollywood, when the feel had been refreshingly independent throughout. But that's maybe to gripe - it's a gripping film by an outrageously talented director. A must-see.

Once you've overcome the strangeness of Clarice Starling being completely different from 'Silence', there's a lot to be got from this sequel. It's a more leisurely affair, but the relationship between Clarice and Hannibal is well extended, and the monster somehow even grows on us. The sequences set in Florence are very elegant, too. It all falls apart a little near the end, however, with the gratuitously harrowing comeuppance of one of the villains which touches on the absurd and breaks the spell. Fun, then, but flawed.

A complex but breathtakingly simple film. During almost three hours we're shown how three generations of a Taiwanese family go about dealing with birth, life, love, heartbreak, death. Eight-year old Yang Yang is having existential doubts. His adolescent sister is going through the throes of puberty and unrequited love. Their father is in a mid-life crisis, regretting lost opportunities. Their mother, in one of the best of many brilliant scenes in the film, admits to her husband that it doesn't take her a minute to relate to the grandmother what she did with her day, the grandmother is in a coma and becomes the sounding board for all their worries. But if you think three hours seems daunting, think again. You don't want these people to go away, ever. No moment is wasted, no scene rushed. The whole thing is an exquisite patchwork that leaves us drained but strangely uplifted. And if you have a dry eye after the final scene, it probably means that you're already dead. Hollywood! - watch and learn!

'Kes' meets 'Brassed Off' meets 'Flashdance' ... but for all its derivativeness, 'Billy Elliot' manages to come up smelling as fresh as a great big bunch of dewy roses. A lot of it is down to some marvellous performances, notably the astonishing Jamie Bell (Oscar, where art thou?) but there is also excellent writing here: the relationship between Billy and his Dad requires double-strength Kleenex; setting the story at the time of the 1984 miners' strike is a master-stroke. But at the heart of the film's success is the glowing beacon of young Billy's ambition, drawing us to the most magnificent of conclusions. Every year British cinema comes up with a gem. This is the latest.

Actually, that's not entirely true - I actually like the slow, atmospheric, mysterious build-up in this film, David searching for the reason for his existence, the doubting, the incomprehension. And some of the set-pieces are excellent - the conversation on the train; the harrowing chase down the subway steps; David's visit to Elijah's gallery, his head silhouetted against a table lamp and giving him a halo; the pool scene. But per-lease - yet another tricky twist at the end? It's like one of those shaggy-dog stories that we used to tell as kids, and everyone groans at the punch-line. Night Shyamalan has to get out of this rut next time round or they'll be calling him a one-trick pony.

A slight film of forbidden love in early sixties Dublin. There is some great period detail and some lovely funny and touching and dark scenes, but the film IS Albert Finney - a momentous performance as a gay man desperate to consummate his passion for a man he knows he cannot have, and desperate also to create beautiful things in a grey, humdrum world which just doesn't understand him. Finney is absolutely fantastic.

It wants to be a 'Cincinatti Kid' crossed with 'The Hustler' and 'Mean Streets', but it doesn't come within half a dozen downtown blocks of these greats. One problem is the density of the technical info thrown at you - straights, flushes and low-hi 30-40s (or something) go in one ear and out the other, which would be OK if it didn't matter to the build-up of tension - but it does! The final game is a damp squib because we really don't have a clue what's going on. Another problem is some of the performances. John Malkovich has a truly preposterous (Russian!?) accent and wouldn't frighten a kitten, but he's supposed to be The Man who's supposed to put the fear of God into Matt Damon, who in turn just can't carry such an intense role, I'm afraid. A film that wants to be cool but that comes out cluttered and awkward. A major disappointment.

A strange and strangely touching allegory on life, love, self-realization, racism ... you name it. And if you can suspend disbelief at the on-the-surface preposterous premise, there's a lot to be got out of it, not least some excellent performances, notably (but not only) the wonderful Joan Allen as a flowering mum. On the down side, some of the plot devices are a bit clunky (how the two youngsters find their way into Pleasantville, for example) and the film may pull its punches a little (on the question of racism, for example). But if you can disregard these shortcomings, you're in for a very pleasant time.

This is some cool movie and time has been very kind to it. There's little story to speak of - Steve McQueen's detective has to protect a witness and things go wrong - but the style!: the exquisitely long time given for the actors to do things, the refreshing absence of music for the most part, the excellence of the music (Jerry Goldsmith) when it appears, the iconic Steve (icy cool - chasing a hoodlum, he runs for ten minutes in a polo neck, cord jacket and mackintosh and ne'er a bead of sweat), THAT car chase (every bit as good as we remember it) ... and looking back, it was so influential - just about every set-piece has been copied in detective movies ever since. All in all - a gas, man!