Film reviews
Female Agents
June 27, 2008Last week, former Apprentice candidate Michael Sophocles revealed in an interview with the JC that he wanted to review films for us. Always willing to give someone a second chance, we invited him to cast his eye over a French-language wartime drama. Here’s what he thought. (15)The Ruins
June 20, 2008(18) This grisly but dim shocker recalls all those rickety low-budget 1950s genre B films but without their zest, but with plenty of added gore, including an on-screen double amputation. A formulaic tall tale of American college in which students fall victim to killer vines on top of an ancient Mayan pyramid, it is shaky drivel, strictly for horror-flick aficionados only.The Incredible Hulk
June 12, 2008(12A) Five years ago the execrable flop The Incredible Hulk deservedly dashed art-house director Ang Lee’s bid for multiplex glory. The experience left Marvel Comics licking their wounds and hoping to revive a potentially 24-carat comic-strip franchise. And, if plentiful action enlivened by superb CGI special effects and punctuated by aspirant intellectuality are what audiences want, then producer Avi Arad and director Louis Leterrier have delivered a surefire hit.Priceless
June 12, 2008(12A) Genuine charm is rare in contemporary movies, which makes this light but entertaining French-language romantic comedy even more engaging, largely thanks to the charismatic appeal of Audrey Tautou. She is utterly delightful as the scheming adventuress Irene who, dropped by her elderly rich lover, mistakes shy barman/waiter Jean (Gad Elmaleh) for another convenient millionaire to woo. Understandably smitten, Jean goes along with the deception, paying for his expensive courtship by becoming a gigolo.Mongol
June 5, 2008(15) Russian co-writer-director Sergei Bodrov certainly deserved his Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign-Language Film of 2008 for this stunning vision of the life and legend of Genghis Khan. Bodrov vividly illuminates the formative years in the life of Mongolian fighter Temudgin who was born in 1162. He chooses his future first wife Borte at the age of nine, briefly becomes leader of his tribe after his father is poisoned by a rival, is variously betrayed, captured and sold into slavery while Borte is abducted by a rival.Sex And The City
May 29, 2008It makes no pretension to art, but Sex and the City succeeds as a ‘well-honed, character driven, comedy chickflick’ (15)Heartbeat Detector
May 16, 2008(12A) It is necessary to concentrate to follow Nicolas Klotz’s intriguing drama since the director slowly builds his complex story without resorting to cliché. But the effort is worth it. This is a riveting narrative which, scripted from Francois Emmanuel’s book, La Question Humaine, draws parallels between the profit-driven inhumanities of contemporary corporate life and the brutalities of the Holocaust.A Secret
May 8, 2008(PG) Philippe Grimbert’s well-received 2004 autobiographical novel Secret centred on a Parisian Jewish family suffering unspeakable strain during the Second World War German occupation of France. Now the novel has been sensitively adapted for the screen by director Claude Miller (with Natalie Carter) and transformed into compelling, beautifully played drama.What Happens in Vegas
May 8, 2008(12A) What Happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, as the saying goes. Not for Jack (Ashton Kutcher) and Joy (Cameron Diaz) in this entertaining screwball comedy, cunningly created with younger multiplex filmgoers in mind. The couple — he’s a slacker, she’s “awfully hostile for a girl named Joy”, as someone remarks sagely — meet in the Nevada gambling capital where Joy is drowning her sorrows having been dumped by her boyfriend. They drink to excess, marry in haste and then win a fortune.
Teeth
June 20, 2008(18) This alleged black comedy about a chaste young woman whose sexual organs have teeth, to the terminal terror of her sexual partners, never adds up to anything more interesting than writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s deliberate but not very clever attempt to shock for shock’s sake. Avoid.The Edge Of Love
June 20, 2008(15) I thought Keira Knightley’s finest performance was her compelling portrait of a troubled waitress in director John Maybury’s barely-seen fantasy thriller The Jacket — much better than her work in the much-praised hit Atonement.The Happening
June 12, 2008(15) Having earned his place in cinema history with the milestone thriller The Sixth Sense, writer-director M Night Shyamalan has gone on to prove the law of diminishing returns with increasingly underwhelming movies like Unbreakable, Signs and the Titanic-scale aquatic disaster Lady in the Water.Gone Baby Gone
June 5, 2008(15) Eleven years ago, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon won the best screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting. Since then, Damon has established himself as the thinking man’s James Bond in the Bourne thrillers, whereas Affleck’s acting career faltered, reaching its nadir with the dreadful Gigli. Now, on the evidence of this riveting thriller, Affleck has finally found his true métier, which is not actor, but director.Superhero Movie
June 5, 2008(12A) David Zucker, the man behind such landmark comedies as Airplane!, The Naked Gun and Scary Movie, joins writer-director Craig Mazin for another outburst of hit-and-miss parody. This time he is aiming his scattershot attack at cinematic superheroes, particularly Spider-Man, as nerdy high-school student Rick (Drake Bell) gains bizarre superhuman powers after being bitten by a genetically enhanced dragon-fly.Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
May 22, 2008(12A) At 65, Harrison Ford has earned his right to sit back and take things easy. Instead (and surely not because he has made a mess of his pension plans), he is back again as Indiana Jones, wielding his whip once more. Director Steven Spielberg and creator/executive producer George Lucas are back too with a snappy screenplay that pitches Our Hero into the Cold War in 1957 and has him battling Soviet agents led by Cate Blanchett’s dangerous Irina Spalko.Charlie Bartlett
May 16, 2008(15) An entertaining variation on the teenage coming-of-age movie. Seventeen-year-old rich kid Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) achieves his dream of popularity by dealing out prescription drugs to his schoolmates. Since he is not obviously an admirable character, it is to Yelchin’s credit, allied with Jon Poll’s deft direction, that Charlie emerges as eminently likeable.Terror's Advocate
May 16, 2008(12A) The subject of Barbet Schroeder’s unsettling film is a cinema staple — the smug, limelight-seeking “star” lawyer. What makes Terror’s Advocate so chilling is that its “star” — French lawyer Jacques Vergès — is a real-life attorney notorious for his infamous clients.I Served The King Of England
May 8, 2008(15) A refreshing cynicism pervades Czech director Jiri Menzel’s satirical black comedy. It is an approach that even succeeds in making palatable his diminutive hero Dite’s marriage to a Nazi sympathiser after having to prove his suitability to wed by conveniently discovering his own German background, and then having her gaze at a portrait of Hitler during their wedding night.Cashback
May 8, 2008(15) Writer-director Sean Ellis has very enjoyably expanded his prize-winning short film into an offbeat fantasy-comedy feature. Art student Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff) is so distraught when his girlfriend leaves him that he falls victim to chronic insomnia. Resolving to make use of his extra eight hours of wakefulness, he goes to work the night shift at Sainsbury’s.
