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In Memories of Murder, the South Korean director Bong Joon-ho made an interesting point about the police procedural – that no matter how “tortured” the cop/protagonist, no matter how broken his background, how fractured his family life, how severe his problem with drink, he always remains a hero. Not in Memories of Murder he doesn’t. … Read more
Home entertainment releases in the UK this week Sleepless Night (Icon, cert 15) A great French chase thriller set almost entirely inside a nightclub. All the cops are bent, there are a lot of bad guys, and they’re the boiled-in-piss sort (pockmarked Birol Ünel is one of them, if that means anything to you – … Read more
Bernie, a London Jewish boy who sees his barmitzvah as the very peak of his young life, suddenly realises it’s taking place on the same day as the 1966 football (soccer) World Cup final. Will anyone come, especially once the home team start morphing from total no-hopers to potential giant-killers? Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Serafinowicz, Eddie … Read more
Ed Norton continues on his quest to become the new Sean Penn with this very unusual and initially brilliant examination of the cowboy myth and its survival into the modern world. This represents itself in a Bonnie and Clyde love story between Harlan, an itinerant cowpuncher cum gas station attendant (Norton) who immediately quits his … Read more
A super confident woman, top of her game, a linguistics professor, one day discovers herself grasping for a word while she’s giving a lecture. This being the movies, where a cough in one scene leads to coughing up blood in the next, we automatically suspect she’s got Alzheimer’s. The title providing another nudge (why Still?). … Read more
Annie is the “turn that frown upside down” musical seemingly custom-built for stagestruck kids. But in writer/director/songsmith Will Gluck’s updating, it breaks out of the greasepaint shuffle-step limbo it’s been consigned to and makes a bold dash for the spotlight. Gluck opens with a swerve, showing us a precocious and stagestruck young ginger Annie holding her … Read more
Like an Inspector Clouseau party that’s forgotten to invite Peter Sellers, The Interview has a gigantic gaping hole where the comedy should be. Unsure if it’s a satire on modern entertainment or a Get Smart-style caper comedy set in the People’s Republic of North Korea, it squats uneasily between the two, leaving its game bromantic stars, … Read more
Out in the UK This Week Are You Here (Lionsgate, cert 15) Here’s a strange formless bromance from Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, a midlife crisis dressed up as a movie and sold winningly by its two stars – Owen Wilson giving off gigawatts of charm as the ladies man TV weatherman and stoner escorting … Read more
Out in the UK This Week Lucy (Universal, cert 15) Young innocent Lucy gains access to the full potential of her human brain in one of Luc Besson’s now infrequent bouts of directing. A kissing cousin of 1997’s The Fifth Element, it’s a fun and funky affair, helped enormously by the seven barrels of spunk … Read more
Mr Chips meets Dead Poets Society in Nicholas Hytner’s adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play, and depending on how you approach it, it’s either a fairly satisfying or a slightly disappointing event. Personally, I was disappointed, but then maybe I’d expected more from a film which as a play had garnered such critical plaudits. Or maybe … Read more
Ben Barka was a prominent revolutionary activist from Morocco who was “disappeared” by the French authorities in 1965. Co-writers/directors Serge Le Péron and Saïd Smihi tell his story as a dramatic reconstruction of what probably happened and cast the suave Charles Berling as the crooked film producer who is persuaded by the secret services into … Read more
Out in the UK This Week The Congress (StudioCanal, cert 15) With Waltz with Bashir, director Ari Folman used Tintin-esque animation as the visual clothing to a set of sober taped interviews between himself and the buddies he’d served with in Israel’s war against Lebanon. The Congress does similar unusual things, propelling Robin Wright – … Read more
