Reviews

Inspector Erlendur (Ingvar E. Sigurðsson) has to investigate a "messy and pointless" murder. A dirty old man has had his head bashed in in his flat. "Typical Icelandic", he thinks.

Iceland just touches the Arctic circle. It's a long way from anywhere else. It is grey and gritty, spectacular and melancholy, buffeted by blasts of wind, snow and steam. Against this background Erlendur doggedly untangles the connections and the crimes of the past, digging up corpses and secrets shameful or tragic. Landscape and society alike are revealed and commented on, drily and laconically.

Being based on a novel by Iceland's most successful crime writer, the characters are as well known to the home audience as Rebus, for instance, is in Britain, and carry enough of the baggage of real life to make them credible and sympathetic. There are visual themes of burials and exhumations, post-mortems, pathology labs and fast food, and a sound track of male voices shading into electronic moans and growls, which in turn dissolve into the wind. It's a very well-constructed package, which is thought provoking, gruesome, touching and funny, and it's certainly worth seeing.

I was persuaded to watch this film on late-night TV by the cast: Tim Robbins, Jodie Foster and John Turturro, and lots of familiar faces who you're glad to see, even if you don't know their names. Turturro is better in this than in most of his later work. Psycho? or just a stupid, unhappy bully, whose violence seems almost normal in the tough, white, working class neighbourhood which gives the film its title. He is genuinely threatening, mean, short fuse, unpredictable, but a believable rounded character who excites our pity as well as our disgust. Foster and Robbins fit their roles like fingers fit gloves, the period setting - 1964 - is nicely realised, and the script sets up and resolves a series of classic conflicts with some originality and some appealing off-the-wall subplots. Of course, the good end happily and the bad unhappily, but that is fiction, my dear, and that is why I call it a melodrama. If it comes up on the late-night schedules, or you see it in your local video-store, watch it.

Ann Lord is on her deathbed. The symptoms of her illness, or possibly the side effects of the drugs she is taking, include unreliable flashbacks to the '50s, and her best friend's wedding. Clever scripts use unreliable (witnesses, memories, flashbacks) to introduce twists and surprises, but this one doesn't. 'Evening' has been compared to Douglas Sirk's works, but the similarity is limited to the period and the setting amongst the rich and glossy. His powerful romances are not hobbled by having to return to the bedside every few minutes, nor are they made ridiculous with CGI moths and fireflies. They manage to tackle real issues and portray real feelings, even in unreal settings, just as grand opera does.

The large, mainly female cast includes some great names, and they all, both great and small, do their best with the thin material they have to work with. Meryl Streep has a cameo role and gets to deliver the line which might be this film's epigraph "Nothing is as important as we think it is." 'Evening' is not nearly as important as it thinks it is.

This has very little to do with history, or real life at any period, but it is fast-moving and colourful and I enjoyed the snappy script:

"You are insolent."

"Only to people I don't like."

Richard Greene, who played Robin Hood in the British TV series in the '50s, is playing almost the same role, in a costume from somewhere around 1800, with a sword instead of a longbow. Assurance counts for a lot, especially for a hero, and he is surrounded by presumably Mexican actors(They all have Spanish-sounding names, but the film was made in the US.) as monks, dancers, feisty heroines and lovable rogues, who know what is expected of them as well as he does. If being a travesty of history stopped a work from being enjoyed and appreciated, a lot of Shakespeare would have to be thrown out. This one is far from being Shakespeare, but it certainly is fun.

A case of the Emperor's new clothes syndrome. Once we have been told that something is understated, subtle and delicate, it is easier to nod wisely and agree than to come out as an uncultured clod and say "There's nothing there."

In plenty of 'art' films, very little happens for long periods, but at least there is usually some kind of artistic purpose, or pretension to one. Reproducing the barrenness of long car journeys and halting conversations between people who no longer understand one another, the wetness of water and the greenness of trees, is not such a purpose. It may not be easy to reproduce these things. You have to edit your script very carefully to rid it of anything so artificial as narrative or drama, and probably lug your equipment over some difficult terrain, but Oscars are not awarded for that.

One critic praises it, more or less, for sending him to sleep. Though short, at one hour and a quarter, it seemed quite long, and would have seemed longer if I had known that there was no twist, no resolution, no explanation, no catharsis, no bang and hardly even a whimper.

In this latest offering from Michael Haneke, Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche are a successful, driven media couple hungry for more success. They have a 12-year-old son, Pierrot, unpredictable, voluble, taciturn, sweet and surly by turns. Is he autistic? Troubled? No, he is just 12. You might say he is unfinished, an incomplete being. Auteuil, familiar and recognisable as his face has become, is completely finished, defined and as smooth as marble in the role of the TV culture-show host, but you can see that there is turbulence beneath the surface.

Somebody – and we never know who – starts sending video tapes, surveillance tapes of their house in a chic Parisian suburb and their comings and goings, then photographs, notes, phone calls that show a disturbing depth and accuracy of knowledge about them, and in particular about an unpleasant episode in Georges' childhood. The guilt and suspicion connected with the tapes and messages spread like an infection to their relations with each other, their son, their friends and their work. Have the lies that Georges told about the Algerian boy his parents were intending to adopt driven that boy to suicide as a middle aged man? Was the suicide planned and staged to undermine Georges professionally and personally? Do the Algerian and his son have anything to do with the tapes and messages? Are Georges' bosses and colleagues beginning to look askance at him, sideline him, because of the whiff of scandal? He leaves the office early and goes home, telling his wife not to disturb him, as he will be asleep. He draws the curtains against the daylight, takes some sleeping pills – surely not enough to kill himself – and dives into bed, hiding, which is nearly the end.

This is an intriguing, ambiguous, complex film, which asks more questions than it answers, primarily about trust, truth and privacy. The cast, especially Auteuil, are wonderful, inhabiting an edgy, unreliable, almost real world which you are led to scan eagerly for every significant detail.

Cuba, 1964. A group of passionate young graduates from the Ukrainian film school in Kiev, steaming like new loaves with freshness, commitment and training, are sent to help the newly established government of comrade Fidel Castro to make a propaganda film. Their brothers from the revolutionary cadre of the people's university of Havana have prepared a story and a script. The peasants and workers willingly allow their comrades to film and give their services as actors and extras.

This is not the scenario of the film itself, but the story of the making of it, which somehow pokes through as clearly as the poles on a wigwam. It is part of the finished film's charm that it wears its heart on its sleeve. Even when the roped-in comrade actors, or their lines, are pretty dreadful, they are clearly sincere in telling us that capitalism is the villain of world history, and socialism will save the oppressed people of Cuba from ignorance and poverty.

Peasants, students and workers are politicised by pivotal experiences of corruption and brutality. All is shot in beautiful expressionist black and white, and there is enough accidental beauty in landscapes, buildings and people to touch the viewer unexpectedly, and give the film a depth, a feeling of nostalgia for sincerity and pre-post-modernism, which it has acquired, like a good bottle of wine, from being laid down for forty-odd years.

A lot of critics call this "noir", and it's certainly morally murky, but "noir", of course, isn't French and this film is. It's a homage to Chabrol, cynical, playful and assured. Unlike the Hollywood "noir", of Fritz Lang and others in the 40s and 50s, it is shot in lovely edible colour, (which makes London look gorgeous), and the dialogue (perfect 'British' English by Allen himself, except for one "gotten") and acting are naturalistic rather than stylised. The other comparison that comes to mind, apart from Allen's own - "Crimes and Misdemeanours", is Hitchcock, and look how the French new wave directors admired and emulated him. If you expect an Allen comedy, this is far from typical. There are few verbal gags, but there is humour in the plotting, what you might call 'life-jokes', enhanced by the lightning narrative of the first section of the film, which sets up the moral problem at its centre: a problem for the central character, Chris. He has to choose between social and economic security on the one hand and lust and commitment to his pregnant mistress on the other. He is venal, weak, a chameleon trading on charm and looks to make his way. His wife is a little foolish and desperate to get pregnant, but his privileged lifestyle, job and social acceptance are tied to her. His mistress is a hot cookie, but now that she is pregnant, and seems to expect him to dump wife, success and all, she has become a millstone. Scarlett Johannson never looks like a millstone, she looks terrific and her performance stands out because she is playing the alien in this very British social setting, but Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Chris) and all the supporting cast are equally good. How Chris will solve his problem is the puzzle for us. For me, the only fault this film has is that the tension of this puzzle is stretched too long, particularly considering the speed of the earlier part. The rushing stream seems to have run into a pond, but it does find its way out again, and it's a cracking climax, full of twists and false trails, with a conclusion that ties everything into an agonising knot.

Jesting Pilot.

From the start in a TV studio in 1957,This film accelerates like a Jumbo through the genres. After takeoff,we surge to "15 years later" (titled), which is like the 'Fasten your seat belts' sign. We never see another title, we dive in and out of the past, often in the form of unreliable scenarios, like they do in CSI, (he says … the evidence suggests … the reporter guesses …) but Atom Egoyan is a superb pilot, and we never feel lost. Uncertain, certainly, but only because we are meant to be. We are on a search for truth, we think we are approaching it, it dangles before us like the carrot of paradise and then it turns into a skyrocket and explodes in a cloud of stars … dear me , it must be all that champagne and Quaaludes.

The stars are Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. You can see that they are only acting stars. They come across like Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster in one of those boardroom/courtroom/showbiz-behind-the-scenes movies. It appears that their characters are loosely based on Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (The telethons, the girls, the pills, the booze – but the names are completely different). It is good to see actors acting so industriously - no irony - they both give fantastic performances.

Alison Lohman is the magazine-reporter in 1972 in hot pursuit of a sensational expose. She has to age backwards (as it were) to nine years old, which she does as well as the nature of film truth or magazine truth demands. Journalists are a stand-by of film noir, cynical and idealistic as it suits them, and legitimately always curious. Another genre there .. and it's a whodunit, the reporter as detective, shades of Hitchcock, and (narrator as vital character) Sunset Boulevard. In this murder mystery, the victim bears quite a resemblance to the sleuth, especially in the nude, I thought – but you can see for yourself – and there is quite a lot of nudity, depicting the fast, sleazy lifestyle enjoyed by TV stars, but it's all in very nice hotels and has a kind of airbrushed quality which distances it and makes it sexy-but-acceptable. I cannot recommend this film too highly to anyone who isn't already familiar with Atom Egoyan's films - this is one of the best. His existing fans will see it anyway. It's a glorious flight through Cinespace, controlled and contrived by a master, to tell a story and make you think about stories. (If you think you know who did it in the end, keep an eye on the cushions used for smothering/attempted smothering.)

This is a spin off from the TV series 'Firefly', not yet on mainstream UK TV. If you like SciFi, if you like Buffy (not just S&M Gellar, but the whole girlie-empowering, advertising-selling Hotdog) you cannot fail to enjoy this. Even if, like me, you've never watched Firefly, the situation and characters are clear enough and strong enough to stand alone as a movie. There are plenty of jokes, fit boys and girls in tights and fights, (battles, even) and quality special effects, so what more could you want?

Well - originality: and I don't just mean this is derived from the TV show - after all Joss Whedon created that too - but it's full of romantic, adventure, comedy clichés. Haven't we seen the gallant mavericks save the day/world/universe pretty often before? and the fragile little thing with superhuman martial arts skills? Maybe Joss Whedon partly invented that one, but that was long, long ago and far away, and it's time for a new idea. And the gags: take the slightly less-than-perfect engineer-girlie who is gagging for a shag. An unattractive (relatively, though I would certainly give her more than one) sexually aggressive woman is funny. Ever seen that before? Ado Annie in 'Oklahoma', for instance? And it would be nice if there was some depth, significance, true feeling, those things that great movies often have. This isn't great, but it's excellent entertainment, like a superwhopperburger isn't cordon bleu, but when you're hungry, it looks pretty good.

A first feature by youngish American video/performance artist Miranda July, this is written by and stars Miranda July and is about the life and romantic fantasies of a youngish American video artist. It isn't bad - that would be the wrong adjective: it's cute, kooky, ditsy, neat, sweet (bitter sweet? hardly) sentimental, whimsical and inconsequential. As a film, it's very professional, if not very ambitious. No stunts, no special effects; everything happens in sunny Californian streets, parks, shops and houses. Everyone is believable, (select adjectives from the string above) and well played and there are some interesting observations of child, teenage and Internet sex. That's it, really - I wasn't bored, but I wasn't impressed, and if I wasn't writing this, I would almost have forgotten about me and you and everyone we know.

Like another commentator, I have hoped for a film as good as 'Chocolat' in vain. Still, obscure and rambling as this is, it's interesting, often beautiful, and I sucked some kind of story-satisfaction out of it, perhaps more satisfying because it was hard-won. Less so because some of the puzzles - like why does the protagonist have two identical sons, one in Tahiti and one in France, one alive and one dead? - seem to be there just to obfuscate, as though the film-maker were holding her hand in front of your eyes. Fantasy and symbolism are fine, but there has to be some structure in which to classify and interpret them. Other puzzles, like who most of the characters are and why they are doing what they are doing and what it has to do with the 'story', are part of the challenge of Mlle Denis's narrative technique, which I hope she continues to develop and refine to the point where everyone understands inexpressible things without quite knowing how, instead of not knowing how things are meant to express anything at all.