paulnewman2001 Reviews

Tiresia (2003)

Arty ambition gets in the way

[6/10 · 11 October 2005]

A slender allegory of Greek mythology's blind sex-shifting seer Tiresias, Bertrand Bonello's film might be a lot more enjoyable if it didn't strive so hard to be art.

Tiresia is a Brazilian transsexual prostitute living illegally in Paris who is kidnapped by a psychopath with poet pretensions.

Deprived of hormones, he reverts to the masculine (a female actor plays Tiresia 'before' and a male 'after'), is capriciously blinded by his captor and left for dead in remote woods. Found by a quiet country girl, Tiresia recovers and becomes a local legend after apparently transforming into an oracle with the ability to see the future.

Cutting between the two actors in the lead seems an unnecessary contrivance, but isn't as confusing as sinister Laurent Lucas playing both the abductor and the parish priest who later persecutes Tiresia (but as both have a fetish for roses, maybe they're meant to be the same person?).

A largely glacial pace and inserted footage of roiling lava rivers with excerpts of Beethoven's 7th Symphony thundering on the soundtrack signal Bonello's push for profundity but it's still an intriguing film with plenty of ideas and themes to examine.

Don't Move (2004)

Murky sexual politics but moving nonetheless

[6/10 · 11 October 2005]

Successful surgeon Timoteo (Sergio Castellitti) is waiting anxiously as colleagues operate to save the life of his teenage daughter but finds himself possessed by the past as he relives an abusive yet passionate affair from the time of her birth.

When his car breaks down, the younger Timoteo is helped by poor migrant worker Italia (Penélope Cruz) and repays her by drunkenly raping her. Returning the following day to beg forgiveness, he is slowly drawn into a relationship with her as an escape from his pristine but childless, unsatisfying marriage.

The sexual politics of the film may be pretty murky and politically incorrect, but Castellitti and Cruz give such committed performances that their on-screen relationship is never less than compelling and credible.

Indeed, Cruz is so accomplished in her role that it makes her subsequent rise in the Hollywood firmament all the more disappointing, considering the shallow star vehicles in which she's since found herself (Gothika, Vanilla Sky, Sahara).

Torremolinos 73 (2003)

Life after marriage

[7/10 · 11 October 2005]

Writer/director Pablo Berger's engaging sex comedy has been praised in some quarters as a Spanish Boogie Nights, but it's altogether a gentler, more romantic film.

Set in 1973 towards the end of the censorious Franco era, hapless door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman Alfredo (Javier Cámara) is given a blunt choice by his boss – accept redundancy or diversify into making 'sex education' home movies with his shy wife Carmen (Candela Peña) for the Danish porn industry.

After some hesitation, the couple set to with a passion and become increasingly bold in staging their fantasies for the camera – until Carmen unwittingly becomes something of an international sex symbol and Alfredo gets the chance to fulfil his dream of directing a feature film inspired by his cinematic idol Ingmar Bergman.

The leads weave a potent and convincing chemistry, both as lovers and as a long-married couple, while Berger lightly coaxes humour and an eccentric romance to the fore.

To the Ends of the Earth (2005)

A window on another world

[9/10 · 11 October 2005]

Meticulously constructed and perfectly played, To The Ends Of The Earth is a simply astonishing voyage out of our reality and into another age.

Based on William Golding's trilogy, these three 90-minute films chronicle the journey towards both Australia and experience of youthful aristocrat Edmund Talbot (Benedict Cumberbatch) aboard an aging man o' war in the early 19th century as he heads for a Government position Down Under.

Among the crew and hopeful emigrants sharing his passage are a tempestuous, bullying captain (Jared Harris), a politically radical philosopher (Sam Neill), a canny 1st lieutenant who's worked his way up from the bottom (Jamie Sives) and, fleetingly, the first brush of love in the form of a beautiful young woman (Joanne Page) whose ship literally passes in the night.

Quite aside from the astonishing degree of physical historic accuracy, director David Attwood and screenwriters Tony Basgallop and Leigh Jackson have a canny eye and ear for the manners and stiff etiquette of an earlier time, crafting a totally convincing microcosm of the Napoleonic era.

Shipboard life is one brutal, monotonous round of seasickness, squalor and danger after another and as Edmund becomes entangled in the loves, hopes and miseries of his fellow passengers he experiences a delirious whirl of life's hardships, Man's inhumanities and his noblest sentiments.

Those who enjoyed Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World or Patrick O'Brian's series of novels on which it was based will love this – for everyone else, it's a whole new world to discover.

Dead Meat (2004)

Cheap, cheerful, bloody good fun

[7/10 · 11 October 2005]

Say what you like about writer/director Conor McMahon's debut, but he knows his walking dead movies from the entrails out.

This loopy, atmospheric and gore-splattered low budget tale set in rural Ireland about mad cow disease jumping to humans and turning them into gut-chomping zombies is teeming with references and visual nods to a dozen other movies.

But whereas Shaun Of The Dead stuck largely with George A Romero's canon, McMahon's clearest inspirations are the brooding autumnal landscapes of The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, the invention of The Evil Dead and the unhinged splatstick of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead.

The tonal shift between horror and black humour isn't always smooth but McMahon and his enthusiastic cast hurl themselves into it with gusto, whether dwelling gleefully on the obligatory slippery red zombie picnic or ratcheting up the tension for some genuinely harrowing moments.

The Hillside Strangler (2004)

Offensive, unpleasant exploitation wholly lacking insight

[1/10 · 18 April 2005]

Much like Matthew Bright's Bundy, Chuck Parello's take on serial killer cousins Ken Bianchi (The Hitcher's C Thomas Howell) and Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro) is content to recreate the milieu, throw in a period soundtrack and recreate their crimes.

There's no attempt to ask how or why they came to be thrill-killing scumbags, leaving the unappetising spectacle of sadistic, ugly people doing sadistic, ugly things to attractive, often-naked and terrorised women.

It's hard to avoid titillating misogyny in these kind of films but it can be done (Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Summer Of Sam).

The Hillside Strangler falls woefully, and often offensively, short of the mark.

Intimate Strangers (2004)

Beautifully nuanced

[8/10 · 18 April 2005]

When a beautiful young woman mistakenly enters the office of a grey, quiet tax expert and, mistaking him for a therapist, shares her marital problems, she inadvertently sparks an unlikely, bittersweet friendship between them.

Even when the truth comes out, Anna (Sandrine Bonnaire) and William (Fabrice Luchini) continue to see each other, she coming to rely on his non-judgemental ear and he slowly becoming spellbound by her.

Patrice Leconte conjures up some of the sad, poignant atmosphere of Monsieur Hire but frames within it a much more optimistic story while eliciting two beautifully nuanced performances from his leads.

The I Inside (2004)

Convoluted yet fairly gripping

[6/10 · 18 April 2005]

Ryan Phillippe stars in this convoluted yet fairly gripping thriller as wealthy young heir Simon, who wakes from an accident to find he's suffering amnesia and adrift in his memories.

Is it 2000 and he's imagining his future or is it 2002 and he's reinventing his past? Whether he's time-travelling for real or only in his mind, it gives him the chance to patch together his fragmented memories.

Director Roland Suso Richter graces proceedings with a suitably unsettling visual style and the timeshifts are suitably jarring, recalling the style employed in such movies as Slaughterhouse 5 and The Butterfly Effect.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

Uncanny performance

[8/10 · 18 April 2005]

This superb biopic of the comic genius pulls no punches in its depiction of the deeply flawed, neurotic, petty tyrant behind the laughs and is driven by a perfectly nuanced, uncanny performance by Geoffrey Rush.

The various milieux and scenes from his key movies are vividly reconstructed and in a fine supporting cast Charlize Theron is particularly impressive as Britt Eckland.

The stylistic conceit of having Rush playing Sellers playing other characters in his life is an interesting idea but tends to pull you out of the film; otherwise, this is absorbing stuff.

The Invisible Man (1984)

Splendidly faithful

[8/10 · 18 April 2005]

The BBC's splendid 1984 adaptation of HG Wells' scientific thriller bears favourable comparison to James Whale's 1933 classic movie, similarly nailing both the book's gripping and occasionally comical tone and the sense of clammy madness seeping from the pores of megalomaniac researcher Griffin.

The remote locale in which the invisible and increasingly unstable Griffin attempts to hide is perfectly chosen and marvellously photographed and Pip Donaghy gives a thoroughly convincing performance, swaying between annoyance at the prying villagers and bursts of alarming mania during which he contemplates a reign of terror achieved via random murder and extortion.

The Beeb always does its period pieces well and here squeezes some excellent production values from the budget; even the special effects still look good, largely through being achieved in subtle and unshowy ways.

The Iron Giant (1999)

Beautiful fusion of children's classic with the Cold War

[9/10 · 22 March 2005]

Relocating Ted Hughes' seminal children's story to Cold War America could have gone dreadfully wrong and it's a real credit to director Brad Bird and his team that they pulled it off so beautifully while demonstrating the day of traditional animation is far from over.

From his first appearance during a storm at sea, this iron giant is spectacularly realised and his friendship with young Hogarth sensitively and intelligently explored.

The film's given a snappy '50s Beat sensibility, from the exceptional animation design and cool soundtrack to characters such as the offbeat artist Dean, who can't help but recall an idealised Jack Kerouac.

But it's the immersion of the story in the nuclear paranoia gripping the US of the period that proves to be so effective, as agents of the government which has nothing to fear but fear itself allow their suppressed terror to goad the metal alien into revealing its purpose as a thinking gun.

The Incredibles (2004)

Superpowered Pixar!

[8/10 · 22 March 2005]

After such Pixar successes as Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc, it seemed unlikely Brad Bird could deliver the goods again with this tale of everyday superheroes.

Fortunately, he smacks the ball right out of the stadium with a hyperkinetic, sharply observed and wildly exciting movie with plenty to appeal to kids and parents alike.

Shut down as heroes by a litigation-prone America, 'Mr Incredible' Bob Parr and his super family now live a quiet life in the suburbs – until his secret freelance heroics land him in big trouble with a new evil genius and the gang goes back to work.

The astute digs at costumed crimefighters are spot on (from the accidents capes can cause to the cornered good guy tactic of tricking the villain into 'monologueing' while they figure a way out) and they're seamlessly integrated into a genuinely gripping, visually exhilarating superhero story that puts the likes of Daredevil and Catwoman to shame.

Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

Snake pants

[2/10 · 22 March 2005]

So one big, badly CGIed snake wasn't enough for you, huh? Then climb aboard this leaky, star-free cash-in to sail into a whole nest of the implausible critters.

Whatever your feelings about the 1997 original (marginally more enjoyable than being digested by a giant snake), at least it could boast such 'name' talent as Ice Cube, Jennifer Lopez, Eric Stoltz and John Voight pulling the worst villainous sneer in film history.

Now it's got Johnny Messner and KaDee Strickland (who they?) heading the rosta, which holds out the promise of not knowing who's going to get chomped next (well, it does until you realise you couldn't care less if they all do).

Looking for a rare orchid which holds the key to immortality but blooms just once every twelvety years or some such guff, an expedition pays a hardened river rat to take it off to harvest a few.

Instead, they find the local anacondas have been scarfing them down for years, living longer and growing to implausible lengths.

Bride & Prejudice (2004)

A Bolly fun take on a classic novel

[6/10 · 22 March 2005]

Gurinda (Bend It Like Beckham) Chadha's exuberant Bollywood/chick-lit crossover is so unashamedly feelgood that viewing it is akin to being in a slow motion tornado as it rolls through the world's most colourful flowershop.

Relocating Jane Austen's novel of match-making and heartache to a small rural town in India rescues it from being forevermore a period piece by finding a context in which its arranged unions and propriety are still relevant.

But, really, any old romantic tale would have worked as well, given that Chadha's mission is to ply the senses with a vibrant kaleidoscopic whirl of colour, dancing and music.

And beautiful people, too. India's never looked so ravishing, with nary a pauper in sight as whole streets burst into spontaneous song and dance.

But even surrounded by so many fetching profiles, former Miss World Aishwarya Rai rather takes the breath away. It's almost a shame, because her stunning looks almost overshadow the genuinely relaxed charm she exudes as her fiery character Lalita plays loves-me-love-me-not with Martin Henderson's occasionally stuffy and cool-blooded businessman Darcy.

Look for anything like social reality and satire in Bride And Prejudice and you'll wind up disappointed but let yourself fall into it with your eyes and ears wide open and there's a good chance it'll run off with your heart – for a couple of hours, at least.

Fararishtay kifti rost (2002)

Stark, optimistic and striking

[7/10 · 3 March 2005]

This striking film from Tajikistan takes wing from an Islamic fable which posits that all people have an angel on their left shoulder taking account of bad deeds and another on the right tallying the good.

Tough guy Hamro returns to his wintering home village to care for his sick mother after a decade in Moscow, planning to sell her house and settle his outstanding problems.

But life's not so easily ordered and he has to contend with local gangsters and a son from a forgotten relationship while weighing up how he wants to use the rest of his life.

The film's unfussy, documentary style is a major strength, rendering the lives of its characters starkly believable as they face life with a combination of resignation, simple optimism and grim humour.

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

Uneven and a bit too self-indulgent

[4/10 · 3 March 2005]

The 11 comic conversations over coffee and cancer sticks comprising Jim Jarmusch's latest are shot in beautiful monochrome with great incidental music but prove disappointingly uneven.

Made piecemeal since 1986, they put together combinations such as Jack and Meg White, Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, Steve Wright and Roberto Benigni, but too often feel contrived and flat when they should have buzzed with banter.

That said, when they work they really motor. Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina share a deliciously uncomfortable and perfectly played encounter when the latter finds they're related, Cate Blanchett is funny as herself and her cousin in a discussion about the nature of celebrity while Bill Murray goes on a wry caffeine binge with Wu Tang Clanners RZA and GZA.

Saw (2004)

Saw away the hype for a solid cheap little thriller

[6/10 · 3 March 2005]

This low budget horror had great word-of-mouth, critics rushing to stake a claim in it and a savvy ad campaign ("Dare you see Saw?") – small wonder people expected The Blair Witch Project with gore.

And, in a way, that's what they got; a film so elevated by hype it was feted before it could be properly evaluated.

Look again and Saw's clearly not some masterclass in nerve-shredding terror but a passable, sadistic little thriller which works despite its average acting because it catches you up in its coldly manipulative plot as it tries to out-Se7en Se7en.

It opens as two men wake up chained in a filthy basement. Between them is a dead fella with a gun and before long they deduce they're the latest victims of Jigsaw (we see others in flashback), another celluloid psycho making some fatuous moral point by getting people to torture and kill each other and themselves.

Can they get out? Can obsessive ex-cop Danny Glover save them? Director James Wan drives it along with gusto and crafts some wince-inducing moments before unfairly cheating his audience in pursuit of a ludicrous twist ending.

Oldboy (2003)

Time for some new superlatives

[10/10 · 3 March 2005]

Harboiled. Awesome. Two-fisted. Shocking. Original. Stomach-turning. Captivating. It's near-impossible to come up with adequate superlatives for Korean Chan-Wook Park's ferocious, Jacobean tale of bloody revenge, particularly when they've been diluted elsewhere for so many lesser films.

Following a drunken night on the town, egregious businessman Dae-su Oh (Min-Sik Choi) is abducted and locked in a tiny apartment for no apparent reason. For 15 years.

During that time he has no human contact, is occasionally rendered unconscious for haircuts or medical checks and kills time by beating the walls, plotting his revenge, suffering hallucinations spurred by loneliness and poring over his past for a clue as to his persecutor's identity. A TV is his sole link to reality and it's through this he learns of his wife's murder.

Then one day he wakes up in a suitcase in the outside world and sets about hunting the jailer who still taunts him via a mobile phone. To say more would be to give away far too much of the labyrinthine plot, suffice it say that Dae-su's not the only one seeking retribution.

Park revisits many of the themes of his earlier Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, but here orchestrates them into an operatic, stylised crescendo of violence, grief and corrupted love, using precisely chosen original music and striking visual design to haunting effect while punctuating Dae-su's quest with moments of disturbing violence (a teeth torture scene is almost unendurable) and breath-taking audacious action (the protagonist's hammer fight with dozens of assailants, captured in a single take, is incredible).

Material this dark could so easily have been played wrong but Min-Sik Choi gives an astounding performance of such rare power and commitment that it's impossible not to be swept into the world behind his eyes.

Oldboy's certainly not for the squeamish, faint-hearted or easily offended but it's absolutely essential viewing for anyone with a passion for virtuoso cinema – the cutting-edge just got a lot sharper.

The World of Hammer (1990–1994)

It's Hammer time!

[18 February 2005]

With its fog-shrouded graveyards, heaving bosoms, period trappings and ensemble casts, Hammer Films was one of Britain's few international cinematic success stories.

The Studio That Dripped Blood dragged horror, staked and screaming, into the Technicolor age by lacing tired old formulae with blood and a bevy of femmes fatal.

Alongside the vampires and Frankenstein monsters, Hammer's prodigious output also took in sci-fi, prehistoric fantasy, crime thrillers and comedies.

This enjoyable series comprised 13 thematically grouped 30-minute episodes hosted by the sonorous tones of Oliver 'Curse Of The Werewolf' Reed which delve into every area of the studio's activities.

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee rightly get a special each while others focus on all aspects of Hammer's output (sci-fi, fantasy, crime, psychological thrillers, historical epics, comedy) and its history.

Reed's narration doesn't do much more than link together a welter of scenes but that's just fine because the meaty clips are a treat.

As singularly British as Ealing comedies, this is a great chance to relive a golden age of domestic film-making the like of which we'll never see again.

Fox Mystery Theater (1984)

Small screen swan song for the studio that dripped blood

[18 February 2005]

This 1984 TV series co-produced with Fox was Hammer's creative swan song, 13 mini-thrillers reuniting some of its 1970s creative personnel, importing US guest stars and occasionally lacing the stories with a dash of the supernatural.

When first broadcast they seemed divorced from the studio's characteristic ambiance but time's been kind to them and, retrospectively, their period tics and stylings make them feel more like 'proper' Hammer movies.

They range from straight crime thrillers such as The Sweet Scent Of Death and the outstanding Czech Mate (a tale of paranoia in the Eastern bloc starring Susan George) through to a man haunting his own past in A Distant Scream, sixties rock stars hiding a ghastly secret in Black Carrion and the suspenseful In Possession and The Late Nancy Irving.

Excepting the odd plot contrivance and red herrings so unsubtle they might as well arrive on a bed of crushed ice, these are very entertaining, small screen dramas.

Man on Fire (2004)

hollow man on fire

[5/10 · 18 February 2005]

Tony Scott's loose remake of the 1987 revenge thriller shifts the action from Italy to Mexico and hits all the right marks – crisp cinematography, concussive action – but no amount of graphic payback dished out by good-guy-playing-damaged-goods Denzel Washington can overcome the feeling that it's often little more than a polished big studio product.

Washington's solid as alcoholic ex-CIA agent Creasy, who takes a job as bodyguard to the cute daughter (the eerily impressive Dakota Fanning) of a wealthy family only to see her snatched for ransom.

Accepting her death as a foregone conclusion, he starts blazing away with such flourishes as exploding suppositories.

The hectic pace, gleeful bloodletting and sheer clout of the excellent support cast (Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke) carry it slickly along but when the dust settles it all starts to look a bit hollow.

Code 46 (2003)

The future is now

[7/10 · 18 February 2005]

Michael '24 Hour Party People' Winterbottom consolidates his position as one of this country's most interesting film-makers with this mood-driven science fiction.

Strikingly shot in the surreal urban landscape of Shanghai, it can't help but recall the alienating dystopia of Blade Runner, while its storyline of genetic sex crimes in a world of haves and have-nots strikes chords with 1984 and Metropolis.

Set in a near future of global warming, cloning and performance-enhancing viruses, William (Tim Robbins) is a detective sent to root out a black market trader in 'papelles', the papers every citizen needs to access the world's overpopulated but affluent cities.

But when his trail leads him to free-spirited worker Maria (Samantha Morton), the empathy virus aiding his investigative abilities helps him lose his head and his heart to her.

The plot line resonates strongly with many contemporary concerns and the aura of dreamy dislocation is enhanced by the sinuous ambient soundtrack but it's Winterbottom's attention to small detail that convinces, even if the downbeat ending hits an ambivalent note.

Before Sunset (2004)

It's such a perfect day

[8/10 · 10 February 2005]

Richard 'Slacker' Linklater does the near impossible and revisits the tentative, beautifully played Brief Encounter romance of his 1995 film Before Sunrise with insight, sensitivity and intelligence.

Nine years after they shared 14 hours in Vienna, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meet again when he's a successful author on a book tour in Paris.

He has a flight home in the evening, so they have just a few hours to explore the feelings they have for each other and rekindle the soaring emotions they first felt.

Love, life, the universe and everything drift by like the Seine and somehow manage to duck every cliché in the book.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Fast and smart as a zombie

[3/10 · 10 February 2005]

Given that game-to-movie transfers are inherently poor, Paul WS Anderson's 2002 big screen adaptation of zombie survival horror Resident Evil was no worse than most, offering a scantily clad Milla Jovovich and sharp production design in place of the game's claustrophobic scares.

Anderson wrote (or, rather, regurgitated) this by-the-numbers sequel for Alexander Witt to direct and it's a pretty unimpressive effort.

Picking up from the original's close, Alice (Jovovich) joins the remains of a combat squad to fight clear of a city swarming with the resurrected dead and facing the lumbering zombie behemoth born of the Nemesis Project.

There's action aplenty but the living dead are largely in the background and when it's not ripping off better movies it's a plodding slog.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

Beautiful, inspirational film-making

[10/10 · 10 February 2005]

Reaching for the human being behind the Athena poster, Walter Salles' adaptation of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's youthful diaries is simply one of the best road movies ever.

In 1952, young Argentines Che, a medical student, and his friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist, decide to see South America for themselves and set out on an ambitious trip through their homeland and Chile to Peru on a ramshackle 1939 Norton 500.

Their journey is punctuated by breakdowns, accidents, hardships, spectacular scenery and, eventually, hitch-hiking – but more important is the sense of the two friends accessing their cultural heritage and finding so much of it cut adrift by the economic imperatives of the very system which made their lives in Buenos Aires so comfortable.

By the time they arrive to volunteer at a leper colony, their experiences and meditations have left them questioning all the old values, sowing the seeds for the remarkable work they would do in the future.

It would have been easy for Salles to get the emphasis wrong, to slip into well-intentioned sledgehammer polemic, but he's far too subtle for that and delivers a measured hymn to idealism and freedom peppered with humour and wit.

This isn't the kind of self-important hagiography turned out by the likes of Richard Attenborough but an intimate drama of a time when two lives ran parallel for a while and it's a balance captured to perfection in the quietly majestic performances of Gael García Bernal (Che) and Rodrigo de la Serna (Alberto).

At its heart, The Motorcycle Diaries is the story of a remarkable friendship between two men and, by extension, the fraternity they come to feel for their fellows.

Deeply moving, beautifully crafted, inspirational film-making like this doesn't come down the road too often, so stick your thumb out.