The wedding of Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is interrupted when they are both threatened with the death sentence. Their only hope is to do a deal and to track down that crazy punk pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Plain sailing is interrupted, continually, by the amazing squid-faced Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) and his grotesque crew of barnacled Bills.

They say:

Rolling Stone: “You won’t find hotter action, wilder thrills or loopier laughs this summer.”

Los Angeles Times: “Intermittently fun and high-spirited, Dead Man’s Chest sags under the weight of its own running time.”

We say:

When the opening sequence includes a caged prisoner having his eyes poked out by a scavenging crow you know that Walt Disney movies have changed since Snow White.

This is family entertainment with a dark side and more than the odd bit of adult behaviour, erotic and even sadistic at times.

No one is odder here than Johnny Depp’s weird, subversive, camp and very funny Jack Sparrow. Depp repeats his strangely original characterization of the pirate captain, mincingly incompetent but ahead of the game, sexually ambiguous, worldly but with the all-inclusive curiosity of a child. It is a masterful performance, which walks, perilously, along a tightrope, Buster Keaton style, between heroics and slapstick.

Director Gore Verbinski may have a giant treasure chest for his second Pirates movie but all the familiar ingredients are repeated:

Increasingly attractive Keira Knightley and ever-earnest Orlando Bloom return as the love interest; spectacular sea battles are shot brilliantly with sensational special effects: the script continually delights in sending itself and the whole genre of adventure films sky high with enough of a plot, just, to hold the whole romp together.

Bill Nighy, barely recognizable under the fantastic tentacle-waving mask, is outstanding amongst the excellent cast. He captures the pathos as well as the menace of Davey Jones, the love-lorn, organ-playing villain cursed to sail the seas for eternity with a crew of barnacle-crusted zombies.

Can’t wait to see them all at Disney World.

Cert 12A

starring:
Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy

Director:
Gore Verbinski

Running time:
2 hrs 31 mm

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Director Robert De Niro’s film is long and slow but, if you give it a chance, it brings its own rewards.

Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is a high-flyer at Yale University in 1939 when he is recruited to join the American secret service. His hidden life gives him first hand experience of the Second World War and the Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe whilst his beautiful wife, Clover (Angelina Jolie) and only son, Edward Junior (Eddie Redmayne) suffer in ignorance.

By 1961, Edward is involved in a failed invasion of Cuba. “A stranger in the house” has leaked the plan to the Russians and the search is on to find the double agent. His family life in ruins and his loyalties severely stretched, Edward discovers that friends can be enemies and enemies can be friends.

They say:

New York Observer: “No previous American film has ventured into this still largely unknown territory with such authority and emotional detachment. For this alone, The Good Shepherd is must-see viewing.”

Los Angeles Times: “An intricate, deliberately paced work that not only quietly presents this quicksand world but also makes us feel what it would be like to live in it.”

We say:

The Godfather it ain’t but in only his second movie as a director, Robert De Niro has come up with something pretty impressive.

OK, it’s long and very slow moving – it has an elegant and stately tread in slow 2/2 time – but it is stylish and absolutely refuses to compromise.

Spies don’t usually come from exotic Mafioso families. They are anonymous, silent and secretive. This, of course, is Robert De Niro’s problem. He has set out to dramatise the deafening silence of counter-intelligence without falsifying a world where very few cards are ever put on the table and where it is not wise to wear your heart on your sleeve.

And, in case we Brits think we have a monopoly on stiff upper lip, the movie’s CIA agents make Jeeves look like Jade Goody on a bad day.

You will hate it if you were one of those kids who kept asking “are we there yet?” but if you are prepared to enter De Niro’s tightly organised, beautifully shot and carefully orchestrated world then you will be moved by its humanity and, when the shocks do come, you will be stirred beyond your expectations.

Matt Damon, who has never had Jim Carey’s facial elasticity or Jet Li’s rubber limbs, brings all his sober and solid charms to the central role of Edward Wilson, the perfect spy who has the stiffest upper lip anywhere outside of a mortuary.

It is a tough call with most of the acting concentrated around his mouth which can be kept resolutely shut as required by the job but which can flicker with emotion or tension and very occasionally and most movingly, burst into life when he allows his real self to emerge.

When he falls in love with the profoundly deaf Laura (the excellent Tammy Blanchard) who has to lip-read his usually deadpan face, he is forced to move those lips and the screen virtually explodes. This film is very good on the slow burn.

Robert De Niro has drawn some mightily impressive names into his cast – it would have been an impossible dream for any other trainee director to assemble such a line-up.

Joe Pesci’s brief cameo reprises, wittily, his long line of dodgy Italian/Americans whilst Michael Gambon delivers another of his magnificent human ruins. William Hurt demonstrates his ability to impersonate nice guys with troubled interiors and De Niro finds time for a powerful performance as the tough but fair general.

It isn’t just the big stars that shine. Some of the best acting comes from lesser names such as John Turturro as a no nonsense CIA operative and Eddie Redmayne as Wilson’s neglected and vulnerable son.

Angelina Jolie is the problem casting here. Beautiful, gorgeous even, she is just too exotic for this movie with its varying shades of grey. We just don’t get why she would fall for a guy like Wilson. If she can fancy him then none of us are safe from marauding screen goddesses whenever we go out at night.

Her other problem is that, whilst Matt can get away with the tricky age range from fresh-faced eighteen to baby-faced forty, Angelina just can’t get away with young any more. She has wrinkles now, sexy ones for sure, but wrinkles just the same and her hands have “gone”. Looks like she’s been hand-washing too many of Brad Pitt’s smalls.

If you don’t like your films slow and long then stay away but if you are interested in a thoughtful and skilled movie about the secret world that still controls our lives then go to a cinema with comfortable seats and allow it to work its magic.

Cert 15

Starring:
Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, William Hurt, Michael Gambon, Joe Pesci, Tammy Blanchard.

Director:
Robert De Niro

Running time:
167 minutes

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Albert Pierrepoint (Timothy Spall) is Britain’s most notorious hangman priding himself on his speed and accuracy and carefully minimizing their suffering as he dispatches over 600 convicts between 1933 and 1955. His fame spreads when he is called on to execute Nazi war criminals and eventually he has trouble sleeping at nights.

They say:

“It’s heavy going and rather ghoulish at times, but Spall’s enactment of the struggle between duty and doubt is just about perfect.” The Independent.

“While Spall expertly captures his character’s emotional complexities, the overall feature is a little too understated and austere, diluting the natural drama in an apparent attempt not to sensationalize its subject matter.” Radio Times.

We say:

Timothy Spall gives an outstanding performance as the dour Lancastrian hangman, Albert Pierrepoint in Adrian Shergold’s not always sure-footed biopic. His wonderfully rubbery features are alert to every emotional nuance as Pierrepoint tries to do his grizzly job with dignity and humanity whilst also trying to live a normal life with his silently suffering wife (the excellent Juliet Stevenson). The film was originally planned for television and suffers from the characteristics that haunt certain “quality” television dramas; there’s too much “period detail”, they’ve plundered their local Acorn Antiques Shop, there’s constant moody dim lighting to reinforce the idea that it’s “grim up North”, immaculately detailed and very clean costumes and perfect period hair-dos but also rather static camerawork, loads of fussy extras (“background artistes” to their friends) going about their everyday business in money-on-the-screen street shots. Unrealistically, nothing is wasted, everything is there for a purpose; an incongruous scarecrow in an early scene comes back in a clumsy nightmare sequence or a woman making an anti-capital punishment speech at Speaker’s Corner, inevitably sees Pierrepoint go by in his car. In other words this film creaks and it descends into the sudsiest of soap operas when, in a feeble twist in the script, Pierrepoint has to execute his best friend. However the executions are shown unflinchingly and unsentimentally and the hangman’s respect for his victims is not just surprising and moving but thought provoking. A wasted opportunity then but worth catching for Timothy Spall’s acting when it is repeated on television.

Cert 15

Starring:
Timothy Spall
Juliet Stevenson

Director:
Adrian Shergold

Running time:
90 min

The post Pierrepoint appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is a melancholy child with a vivid imagination and a love of escapist fairy tales. She needs all the comfort she can get when her pregnant mother (Aradna Gil) brings her to live with her new husband, Captain Vidal, (Sergi López) the sadistic commander of a remote garrison in guerrilla country.

As real life gets brutal and her stepfather puts down the rebel insurgents with increasing cruelty, her fantasies come to life. The weirdly sinister Fauno (Doug Jones) gives her magic powers and tells her that she is the lost princess of a secret kingdom where there are no lies or pain. Do fairy tales come true? Will anyone live happily ever after? Don’t count on it.

They say:

Independent: “Del Toro has made a magnificent alchemy of fantasy, horror and history that is at once outlandish and utterly plausible”

Channel Four: “The transitions from reality to fantasy and back again are beguiling and the viewer always has the sense of watching something not just gripping but also of vital importance.”

We say:

In this dark, bleak, mixed media fairy tale for adults, Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro has made a companion piece for his previous Spanish Civil War film The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and the new movie is even more powerful than its twin.

As befitting the work of a former make-up artist, Del Toro is very strong on the visuals. There is nothing glamorous here though. The action takes place in a dark world of greys and browns, with gloomy blue lighting in a landscape of mud and skies heavy with rain. The only bright colour is red but that is always blood.

It is usually night but even when it is not; the settings are as dark and sinister as a candle-lit Spanish church. Del Toro based his design on, amongst other things, Goya’s gruesome series of paintings, Disasters of War and Arthur Rackham’s bizarre illustrations for Alice In Wonderland. The result is truly spectacular with each scene a painting in its own right.

The “fairy tale” creatures, superbly executed, are far removed from even Walt Disney’s worst nightmare. They inhabit a macabre underworld where their only real charm is that they are not part of the real life cruelty that surrounds Ofelia, the young heroine (the wonderfully poignant Ivana Baquero). This fairy kingdom is filled with giant cockroaches, wood lice and locusts and even a terrifying giant monster that eats humans. Cosy it ain’t but it offers its own strange consolation to anyone gifted, like young Ofelia, with some imagination and the need to escape. It is not a place for the faint-hearted.

Neither is the garrison ruled by the ruthless fascist Captain Vidal who reveals his own particular introverted sadism from the first time we see him fastidiously shaving with a cutthroat razor. Sergi López, with an unpleasant resemblance to Hitler but without the comic moustache, is all the more frightening because of the quiet under-playing of his role. López is truly impressive in the power that he radiates whilst keeping his voice down and his movements deliberate. He oozes the troubled sensitivity of a psychopath. This is a man, damaged in childhood, and made all the more dangerous by his lack of imagination. Chillingly, we recognise his type, daily on the news.

There is a very strong cast with powerful performances from Aradna Gil as the frail mother struggling with the agonies of a life-threatening pregnancy as well as a bad marriage and, outstandingly, from Maribel Verdú as the Captain’s heroic and long-suffering servant Mercedes whose loyalties really lie with the rebels. Verdú, in a performance that mirror images the repressed Captain, is all simmering emotion and anger and becomes the magnificent personification of suffering Spain when her misery is pushed to the extremes of violence.

Violence is always present, not just when Captain Vidal produces his instruments of torture. It is there in the creaking floorboards, in the shadows that infiltrate every shot and in the menacing musical score with its dark melancholy string tones. The tension is maintained masterfully from the very first scene so that, when something truly nasty happens, you are already feeling the pain.

For all its flights of imaginative fancy, this is a gloomy and relentlessly pessimistic study of cruelty, both political and personal, but it is not without a glimmer of hope. A frail hope in the power of imagination and a tearful hope in the human capacity to rise above suffering. Qualities needed as much as ever today in a world still full of violence and cruelty and where the weak and vulnerable are still too easily pushed aside. Go see it and weep.

Spanish language with English subtitles

Cert 15

Starring:
Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Aradna Gil, Doug Jones

Director:
Guillermo Del Toro

Running time:
119 minutes

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Richard E. Grant directs a cast of luvvies in this sentimental portrait of his childhood. In the late 1960s, young Ralph Cameron watches his parents’ marriage disintegrate as he grows up in colonial Swaziland on the eve of independence.

They say:

“As you’d expect, Grant works expertly with a terrific ensemble” – L.A. Weekly

“Theatrical in the worst possible way. People are so busy shouting out abuse that you wonder if the entire cast is hard of hearing.” – Boxoffice Magazine

We say:

Richard E. Grant’s directorial debut begins with moody images of circling birds, then a series of generalized panning shots of the Swaziland landscape before cutting to a sunset in a clumsy metaphor for end of empire and showing all the signs of an inexperienced director working with an expert cameraman.

Poor little Richard, or Ralph as he is called here! The movie describes his traumatic childhood in colonial Swaziland where he had to endure the sight of his mother’s adultery in the family car and his father’s alcohol fuelled rages. Far worse than that, he had to suffer life with Africa’s colonial English who, if this film is to be believed, resemble a cast of over-the-top luvvies from an amateur operatic society. So it comes as no surprise that they all end up in an amateur production of “Camelot” which is so nauseating that it even turns the stomach of visiting royalty. So all the signs of an inexperienced director working with a cast of stars and letting things turn into a romp.

Talking of turned stomachs this film will appeal only if you like a lot of sugar with your, uh, sugar. Ralph/Richard (played admirably by both Zachary Fox and Nicholas Hoult) is already a thesp-in-waiting. So if you have ever wondered how arch-luvvie Grant ever got that way, look no further than the central performances from Gabriel Byrne, as his dad, who is Peter O’Toole and Oliver Read all rolled into one and Miranda Richardson, his mum, as the tragedy queen whose libido is even greater than her snobbery. This is all heady stuff if you like a dose of theatricality but sadly it feels more like an over-dose.

Cert 15

Starring:
Gabriel Byrne
Emily Watson
Julie Walters
Nicholas Hoult
Miranda Richardson

Director:
Richard E. Grant

Running time:
99mm

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When a bedraggled lemming on an apparent suicide mission is found in their waste pipe, Alain (Laurent Lucas) and Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) find the first blemish in their perfect marriage.

They say:

“The movie mixes the ridiculous and the macabre and uses the resulting fume of unreality to create something enjoyably hallucinatory.” – The Guardian

“Dream and reality overlap to unsettling effect in Dominik Moll’s dark comedy of domestic rupture” – The Independent

We say:

No one who sees this film should even hint at its surprising ending. All we can say is that it does end and the build up is so tense we don’t even really know what we wanted to happen at its conclusion.

Lucas and Gainsbourg perform suavely as the brilliant young designer and his beautiful nest-making wife before subtly disintegrating until they end up looking and, presumably, feeling something like that unfortunate drowned lemming.

They are helped on their way by the boss’s wife, Alice (Charlotte Rampling) who first of all wrecks their dinner party and then their lives. Rampling’s Alice has gone right through the looking glass into her own personal hell and her agony is expressed in the slight tension of the mouth, a certain rigidity of body but the rest is in the eyes, a Rampling speciality, telling us that this is a dangerous woman, full of hatred and erotic magnetism.

Dominik Moll, in a long line of Hitchcock-inspired French directors, knows just how to spin his yarn. The dialogue is dished out in tiny morsels, like nouvelle cuisine; sound effects, the gurgling percolator or the neighbour’s bouncing ball, pinch our nerves and each shot is so carefully composed, integrated and timed that everything happens slightly slower than in real time and yet the tension builds rapidly and relentlessly.

The use of mirrored sequences is extremely effective especially where first Benedicte and then Alain go on the same spooky journey through the house accompanied by the sound of their own breathing.

Finally, Alain’s invention, the superbly ridiculous flying web cam should be on everyone’s must-have gadget list.

French with English subtitles

Cert 15

Starring:
Laurent Lucas
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Charlotte Rampling
Andre Dussolier

Director:
Dominik Moll

Running time:
129 minutes

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They say:

“Felicity Huffman’s magnificently tense performance proposes that it’s a serious stretch of physical and psychological practice for a man to become a woman – even if the man is a woman in the first place.” – The Independent.

“Though Huffman is outstanding, the film itself lacks focus – unable to decide whether it’s a serious exploration of identity issues or a smart-mouthed buddy flick.” – Radio Times.

We say:

That well-tried genre the American road movie is claimed for transsexuals in Duncan Tucker’s funny and poignant film starring Oscar-nominated Felicity Huffman – a woman playing a man playing a woman. This is no camp drag act; the comedy never obscures the psychological trauma as transsexual Bree/Stanley faces surgery and fatherhood all in the same week. Felicity Huffman out-totters Jack Lemon in Some Like It Hot, in her impersonation of a gawky, shy, even rather conventional man trying to be feminine; she stumbles in high heels, forgets to cross her legs and handles her fully functional prosthetic penis with magnificent disdain when caught short on the open road. True to the genre, there are many colourful cameo performances en route as the couple encounter a mostly benign but sometimes sentimentalised mid-America on their journey from East to West. Kevin Zegers as her bewildered street-wise son Toby fights manfully for his place amidst a cast of big performances, none bigger than Fionnula Flanagan as the over-powering Catholic mother who is horrified at simultaneously losing a son and gaining a daughter. The film is a clever take on the masculine and feminine divide and shows that, contrary to some opinion, there is more to being a man than just having a penis.

Starring:
Felicity Huffman
Kevin Zegers
Elizabeth Pena

Director:
Duncan Tucker

Running time:
103 mins

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The makers of the Matrix have moved the action on into the future. Britain has become a Fascist state and the anarchist terrorist V (Hugo Wearing) has started to blow things up. A victim of the regime’s experimental concentration camp, V now hides his mutilated features behind a grinning Guy Fawkes mask and sets out to get his revenge. He rescues the curfew-breaking Evey (Natalie Portman) from the ungentlemanly attentions of a seedy group of secret policemen and involves her in his explosive exploits. Not only is V after the nasty guys from the concentration camp, he wants to bring down the government led by an iron chancellor (John Hurt) and blow up some of London’s most famous landmarks – cue the brilliant special effects guys from the Matrix.

THEY SAY:
“Politically confused and badly acted, the view of a totalitarian state depicted here is hopelessly outdated” The Independent.

“A powerful piece of action movie filmmaking with all manner of rebellious badges pinned to its lapel” The Observer.

“This is both visually uninspired…and ultimately unpersuasive in its posturing radical chic” – Time Out.

WE SAY:

Rather like that ill-fated comedy film about window cleaners on the Twin Towers, V For Vendetta struggles with a plot that was over-taken by events. In this case, an heroic attempt to blow up Parliament with a tube train packed with explosives. There is no question about the brilliance of the scenes involving spectacular explosions in the heart of London but it is all too close for comfort. The film with its muddled political message, is never quite sure about its position on terrorism. It is 1984 all over again with its warning about authoritarianism but the script is part of Hollywood’s recent flirtation with “woolly liberalism” where the bad guys are so monstrous and the government so evil that we all want to be anarchist terrorists….or do we? When the good guys are as irritating as they are here, I’m not so sure. V (Hugo Weaving) struggles behind a mask that never comes off and has to rely on a smugly unchanging voice, which would be better used recommending Mr. Kipling’s Exceedingly Good Cakes. Natalie Portman might have wished that she could have hidden behind a mask too as her face is frozen blankly through most of the film. Her most memorable moment and Hollywood’s idea of total horror, is when her hair is shaved off live on camera – no special effects here – just an electric razor and that look that only a suddenly bald actress could proffer. The other good guy is Gordon, the only nice guy in the film’s nightmare vision of the BBC. He is played by Stephen Fry in one of his too often repeated flabby nice liberal roles sounding as if he is competing with V for that Mr. Kipling ad. He is also central to the film’s worst scene – an embarrassing Benny Hill-type piece of television satire. John Hurt is the evil dictator with bad teeth and a bad temper. Subtle he ain’t but there’s no question about Mr. Hurt’s ability to rant and rave or his strangely apt resemblance to David Blunkett.

So don’t go if you want to see fine acting or an engaging political drama. If you loved The Matrix and want some more, then still don’t go: V might be an ace with the flying daggers but you have to sit through one heck of a lot of verbiage before you see much action.

Cert 15

Starring:
Natalie Portman
Hugo Weaving
John Hurt
Stephen Fry

Director:
James McTeigle

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