| XMAS-SEASON RELEASES : includes 'Closing the Ring', 'The Kite Runner', 'Paranoid Park', 'The Violin' |
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| Saturday, 22 December 2007 | |
 IN WITH THE OLD, AND OUT WITH THE NEW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Closing the Ring (28 Dec) [3/10] UK/Canada 2007 Starring : Martin McCann, Shirley MacLaine Director : Richard Attenborough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Kite Runner (26 Dec) [5/10] USA 2007 Starring : Khalid Abdalla, Zekeria Ebrahimi Director : Marc Forster ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Paranoid Park (26 Dec) [1/10] USA/France 2007 Starring : Gabe Nevins, Lauren McKinney Director : Gus Van Sant ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Violin (4 Jan) [7/10] Mexico 2005 Starring : Angel Tavira, Dagoberto Gama Director : Francisco Vargas (Quevedo) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Wedding (16 Dec) [8/10] Poland 2004 Starring : Marian Dziedziel, Tamara Arciuch Director : Wojciech Smarzowski ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AS the old saying - and the Guinness advert - remind us, good things come to those who wait... even at Christmas. Perhaps even especially at Christmas, if the festive fare in our cinemas is anything to go by. Because, of the five releases under review here, by far the best are a pair of movies which have sat gathering dust on the distribution "shelf" for years - this despite both of them attracting considerable acclaim on the global film-festival circuit during that time. Such delays, though sadly far from utypical, seems particularly unjust in the light of the fact that the three relatively brand-new releases are so uninspiring - in two cases, we're actually talking (Christmas) turkeys - and will be seen on many more screens around the country than the two pictures which are emphatically their betters as well as their chronological elders. SPEAKING of elders, tireless octogenarian Richard Attenborough has directed his first movie for eight years - and, sad to report, Closing the Ring is an embarrassingly lousy affair. It's the kind of grindingly old-fashioned, sentimental, soapily-melodramatic nonsense that might just pass muster on TV on a particularly dismal Sunday afternoon - but whose many limitations are cruelly exposed up on the big screen. And while Attenborough has assembled a promisingly starry cast - veterans Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Brenda Fricker and Pete Postlethwaite, alongside fresher faces such as Neve Campbell as The O.C.'s Mischa Barton - they can do very little with Peter (son of Edward) Woodward's leaden screenplay. His lordship's stilted direction, meanwhile, certainly doesn't help matters. The "action" begins in leafily suburban Michigan in 1991, with the funeral of a decorated World War Two veteran. Among the mourners: whisky-sipping widow Ethel Ann (MacLaine), her daughter Marie (Campbell) and Ethel Ann's long-absent friend from the war years, Jack (Plummer). Jack's unexpected reappearance leads to the uncovering of long-buried family secrets, which somehow tie in with goings-on unfolding across the Atlantic in Belfast. On a hill above the Ulster city we find amateur-archeologist Quinlan (Postlethwaite) and his young assistant Jimmy (Martin McCann), searching for the remains of an American jet which crashed during the war... The two story-strands are brought together via much flashing back and forward between '41 and '91: the former sections weighed down by the truly wooden acting of Stephen Amell as Ethel Ann's doomed, Adonis-like beau (the computer-generated stars of Beowulf are more lifelike), the latter (partially) redeemed by McCann's sparkling big-screen debut as the irrepressible live-wire Jimmy - plus an amusing turn from Brenda Fricker as his ribald granny. But that's about it for the plusses: it seems to take forever for this dull, predictable story to unfold - even to 1941 audiences, Closing the Ring would surely seemed cliche-ridden, corny and laborious. And if you're after a time-hopping, tragic romance of grief, wartime guilt and regret, Atonement is out on DVD on February the 8th. A somewhat more successful example of the 'decade-straddling', manipulative tearjerker - though not itself any great shakes - is The Kite Runner, the latest from tirelessly prolific German/Swiss director Forster. Since Monster's Ball (2001), Forster has established himself in Hollywood as a safe pair of hands - so much so that he's been entrusted with the next James Bond picture. While his Will Ferrell vehicle Stranger Than Fiction (2006) took some unexpected risks, The Kite Runner - adapted by David Benioff from Khalid Hosseini's globally best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel - sees Forster on his very best behaviour. He adopts a careful, anonymous, don't-scare-the-horses approach - ironic, given that the movie has caused controversy in Afghanistan over the (impeccably-sensitive) depiction of a rape scene. It's the key moment in a cumbersomely bifurcated narrative which takes place mainly in a buzzingly multi-ethnic Kabul in the late seventies. One friendship which crosses cultural/social/ethnic divides is that between 12-year-old Amir (Ebrahimi) and servant's son Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada). The pair are best mates - teaming up for the spectacular city-wide kite tournament that provides the film with its title - until a violent, racially-motivated incident drives them apart. But even darker shadows are looming: the 1979 Soviet invasion, which forces Amir and his father to flee to America. More than two decades later, Amir (Abdalla), is a successful writer in his new land - but an unexpected phone-call from Kabul forces him to return home and face up to his long-suppressed guilt... Both book and screenplay essentially revolve around the idea of childhood "sins" weighing heavily upon individuals much later in life, and which symbolise much wider socio-political injustices - an idea similar to themes explored in Michael Haneke's Hidden (2005). In each case, the concept doesn't quite hold up to close scrutiny - but while Haneke is sufficiently skilful to deflect us from his thesis's fundamental flaw, journeyman Forster can't prevent the third act descending into coincidence-ridden, sentimental melodrama - undoing much of the good work (including some notably strong performances) that's gone before. ANY frequent cinemagoer won't need reminding that there's never a shortage of bad movies around: films which, through incompetence, sloppiness or a general lack of inspiration, simply aren't worth expending the time or effort required to watch them. Closing the Ring, reviewed above, is merely the latest example. But there's another category of films which are even more depressing in their mediocrity - because they pretentiously aspire towards the condition of art, and/or are made by talented individuals who are capable of so much better. There can be something particularly horrible about such films - which brings us to Paranoid Park. As Pauline Kael wrote about Jean-Jacques Beneix's The Moon in the Gutter (1983), "it's the kind of excruciatingly silly movie that only a talented director can make". Van Sant's is current cinema's most haphazardly unpredictable career (and I say this as a staunch defender of his near-universally-reviled Psycho remake.) So perhaps it was inevitable that one day (and only a few years after his 2003 masterpiece Elephant, one of the decade's few genuinely great films) he'd hit the kind of rock-bottom nadir which Paranoid Park represents: a modish "sk8-noir" (based on Blake Nelson's 2006 novel) about blank-faced teenager Alex (Nevins) who semi-accidentally causes the death of a security guard, then mopes around Portland like a baggy-panted descendant of Albert Camus's anti-hero Meursault. But it's still soul-destroying to see such a hideous example of cinematic mauvaise foi, as Van Sant revisits - and in the process mindlessly trashes - various seminal moments in his own filmography. What was, first time around, emotionally resonant, sometimes even beautiful, now comes across as a bafflingly, noxiously sour kind of self-travesty (the sole bright spot: Lauren McKinney, rather marvellous as Alex's precociously-wise pal Macy). His use of the late Elliot Smith's haunting track 'Angeles' - such a powerful element of Good Will Hunting (1997) - to accompany Paranoid Park's woefully limp, ever-so-clever-clever 'climax' is especially unbearable. All told, it's a truly mystifying experience: rather like realising that your favourite band's greatest-hits compilation is, somehow, by far their worst LP. NOW on to the good stuff, thankfully. Isn't thetre an adage that goes something like "you get the best tunes out of an old fiddle"? If there isn't, there should be - and The Violin provides ample evidence of this on about half a dozen levels. Most literally, a very old violin is a key element in the plot, which takes place in a mountainous/foresty rural spot during an unnamed civil war in a (deliberately) nameless Latin American country (grainy black-and-white adds much to the timeless feel). Then there's the violin's owner and player, an exceedingly venerable gent whose thirtysomething son joins the guerrilla resistance after his village is ransacked by brutal army personnel desperate to hunt down any and all rebel forces. Then there's the fact that the venerable violin-playing gent, the wonderfully-named Don Plutarco, is played by a non-professional chap of advanced years billed as Don Angel Tavira - "Don" being a particularly respectful variant of "Mr" in Spanish-speaking countries. Proud, dignified, quietly defiant, Tavira is terrific in what emerges, quite unexpectedly, the film's lead role - shades of octogenarian movie-stealer Esther Gorintin in Julie Bertucelli's Since Otar Left (2003), perhaps. Don Plutarco's special skills (his proficiency achieved despite his only having one hand) bring him into the confidences of the area's military jefe, El Capitan (Gama), who turns out to be not quite the evil martinet he initially appears. The scenes between Don Plutarco and El Capitan may remind some viewers of similar moments in Roman Polanski's The Pianist, but The Violin is a much more intimate affair, one which wears its toughness and sensitivity rather more lightly (and is also thus a cut above Ken Loach's thematically-similar The Wind That Shakes the Barley.) This is an impressively gritty little fable which manages to overcomes a somewhat hackneyed, unpromising opening to develop into a truly tense affair marked by unobtrusively powerful monochrome cinematography, restrained deployment of a suitably strings-dominant score, finely-drawn characterisations and a surprising avoidance of sentimentality. Recommended. YOU'LL need to seek out The Violin in the nation's arthouses, but audiences may need Sherlockian skills to track down arguably the best film "released" over Christmas 2007, as it's obtaining a very limited exposure through Dogwoof Picture's enterprising 'Polishconnection' (www.thepolishconnection.co.uk) programme. With The Wedding (which world-premiered at the Locarno Film Festival way back in 2004) feature-debutant Smarzowski manages to take one of the most hackneyed sub-genres in cinema - comically chaotic nuptials - and produce something delightfully scabrous, bracingly misanthropic, uncompromisingly intense. It's the wedding-day from hell: though the ceremony itself passes with only a slight hitch, the problems start as soon as the reception gets under way in a hired community hall. Disaster piles upon disaster, the toilets become a smoke-filled zone of noxiously Stygian gloom, and anything that can go wrong duly does. Such problems are invariably due to the venality and corruption of the participants - most of whom end up staggering, fist-throwing, bile-spewing, foul-mouthed drunk long before the first painful rays of sunshine poke above the horizon. There are no real innocents on view, but chief among sinners is Wojnar (Dziedziel, excellent) the harrassed, sixtyish father of beautiful, blonde bride Kasia (Arciuch). Businessman Wojnar is a thoroughly immoral, palm-greasing rogue whose receives a come-uppance of an increasingly (and pleasingly) extreme kind as the hours pass. And it's a very long night, featuring numerous dangerous, over-the-limit drives in dodgy cars, a very timely power cut, a stroppy band of hired musicians (whose songs, refreshingly, provide the film's only music), some humiliatingly sexy public 'games', the belting out of patriotic anthems, and an enormous, troublesome tub of rancid bigos stew. Half Vinterberg's Festen ("happy" celebration occasions family-implosion), half Altman's A Wedding (inconvenient death of grandparent), the picture deserves credit for follows the courage of its own sour convictions all the way down the aisle - sorry, line - right up to the dazzling (and Altmanish) crane-shot that accompanies the end credits. Neil Young ------------------------------------------------------------------------------  THE YEAR IN PICTURES: A TOP TEN FOR 2007 This year's Tribune movie top ten is, I should point out, the result of an entirely undemocratic ballot - with only a single voter (me), rather than any kind of office-wide poll. I've concentrated solely on films which obtained release in the UK during the calendar year - though "release" can mean anything from month-long saturation coverage of the nation's popcorn-reliant multiplexes (Hot Fuzz, Zodiac) to a single print on a single screen for a little over a week (Satan). Even that level of minimal distribution proved beyond several of the year's very best new films, of course, as they were deemed insufficiently "commercial" to be shown anywhere apart from the burgeoning film-festival circuit: this meant only audiences in (a) London, (b) Bradford, (c) Brighton and (d) Edinburgh could savour the rich delights of - respectively - (a) James Benning's casting a glance, (b) Travis Wilkerson's re-edited Who Killed Cock Robin?, (c) John Gianvito's Profit motive and the whispering wind and (d) LI Yang's Blind Mountain, - each of them already the recipient of rave reviews in these pages over the last few months. And the December 31st cut-off means that I must exclude two eminently-deserving 2007-premiering movies whose UK release is set for 2008. Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Jan 11th) - which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May - and Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export (date tbc), which somehow departed Cannes empty-handed but which many judges, myself included, reckoned at least the equal of the actual laureate. Both will, it already seems safe to bet, appear in Tribune's 2008 roll of honour one year hence. But for 2007, the chosen few are as follows - listed in strict alphabetical order. I've resisted the temptation to rank them in order of merit - but if forced to pick just one, I'd have to give the devil his due... THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (USA 2007 : directed by Andrew Dominik : released on Nov 30th) Easily the year's most heartstoppingly beautiful movie - courtesy of British cinematographer Roger Deakins - and also one of the bravest, taking a leisurely 160 minutes to recount, in minute detail and with numerous divagations, the story of how 19th century America's most notorious outlaw met his strange demise. Stately and profound, it's perhaps the best seventies anti-western Terence Malick never made. CONTROL (UK 2007 : Anton Corbijn : Oct 5th) Another strong year for British cinema, even if the pick of the bunch was directed by a fiftysomething Dutchman and shot - in ravishing monochrome - by a German (Martin Ruhe). A devastating biopic of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, marbled with Mancunian gallows-humour and built around a central performance - by newcomer Sam Riley - that's easily one of the decade's most remarkable. HOT FUZZ (UK 2007 : Edgar Wright : Feb 14th) Taking a leap beyond their amusing - but wildly overrated - breakthrough Shaun of the Dead, director Wright and star/scriptwriter Simon Pegg deliver what's by some measure the funniest movie of the year: a superbly-poised, expertly-paced two-hour spoof of cop-thrillers that's also a passionately admiring homage to the British horror-movie. If only Hollywood's commercially-oriented projects could have this kind of wit, intelligence and genial energy. THE LAST MIMZY (USA 2007 : Robert Shaye : Mar 30th) I haven't seen the much-praised Bridge To Terabithia, but this giddily inventive sci-fi mini-epic is perhaps the most satisfying kids' film since 1999's The Iron Giant - proving that you can never judge a movie by its title, no matter how off-putting the moniker. 'Mimzy', by the way, is a cute toy rabbit with hidden depths - and our pick for 2007's Best Performance By An Inanimate Object. A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (USA 2006 : Robert Altman : Jan 5th) The year kicked off on a bittersweet note with Altman's swansong - rushed into release (after languishing in distribution limbo) following the master's death in November 2006. Marbled with sly echoes of his greatest works, it's an elegaic movie about memories and farewells - so much so, in fact, that you'd never guess it wasn't actually intended as a career-capping adieu. 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST (A fost sau n-a fost?: Romania 2006 : Corneliu Porumboiu : Aug 17th) The Romanian "nou wave" is well and truly upon us, and with all due respect to Cristian Mungiu (see above), perhaps the pick of the bunch - so far - is this brilliantly-constructed comedy about politics, the 1989 revolution and the distorting lenses of the media and memory. As The Fall's Mark E Smith once put it: "What really went on there? We only have this excerpt!" SATAN (Sheitan : France 2006 : Kim Chapiron : Feb 23rd) Who says that cinematic masterpieces have to be political, poetical, serious and slow? Certainly not 27-year-old Chapiron, a Saigon-born DJ-provocateur whose deliriously demented debut - that rare film to combine (nightmarish) horror and (satirical) comedy without the one remotely diluting the other - scorched in and out of the ICA last winter before finding its rightful home as an instant cult-classic DVD. THE WEDDING [see above] (aka Wesele : Poland 2004 : Wojciech Smarzowski : Dec 16th) Reviewed elsewhere in this edition after finally obtaining some kind of UK cinema- release, more than three years after its world premiere. Chaotic nuptials in rural Poland bring out the very worst in all concerned - bride, groom, parents, clergy... and let's not mention the exceedingly shady "in-law". Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'rolling in the aisles'... YELLA (Germany 2007 : Christian Petzold : Sep 21st) British audiences got to belatedly discover what the rest of Europe has known for some time: Berlin-based Christian Petzold is one of the world's most talented film-makers. He's certainly in the top level when it comes to scriptwriting, as evidenced by this expertly-poised metaphysical psychological thriller set in the arid world of corporate capitalism. In the words of Gwen Guthrie: "No romance without finance..." ZODIAC (USA 2007 : David Fincher : May 18th) This gloriously offbeat, compulsively absorbing serial-killer epic (simultaneously a celebration and deconstruction of the genre) was scandalously overlooked and underrated at the time of its release, but is now being near-universally ranked as one of the year's best. At this rate, we'll all be crowning it as a modern masterpiece before the decade is out. And - like my colleague in the stalls Barry Norman never actually said - why not? Neil Young this list compiled for the Christmas double-edition of...  CLOSING THE RING : [3/10] : UK (UK/Can) 07 : Richard ATTENBOROUGH : 118m (BBFC) seen at Vue cinema, Leicester : 4th Oct : press show (Cinemadays event) THE KITE RUNNER : [5/10] : US 07 : Marc FORSTER : 128m (BBFC) seen at Vue cinema, Leicester : 4th Oct : press show (Cinemadays event) PARANOID PARK : [1/10] : US (US/Fr) 07 : Gus VAN SANT : 85m (BBFC) : seen 23rd October at Gartenbaukino, Vienna, Austria (public show, paid €7.50) - Viennale / Vienna International Film Festival THE VIOLIN : [7/10] : El violin : Mex 06 : Francesco Vargas QUEVEDO : 98m (approx) : seen 17th January at Fokus cinema, Tromso, Norway (public show, complimentary ticket) - Tromso International Film Festival THE WEDDING : [8/10] : Wesele : Pol 04 : Wojciech SMARZOWSKI : 104m (timed) : seen 14th March 2006 at Pictureville cinema, NMPFT, Bradford, UK (public / complimentary) - Bradford Film Festival. Previously seen 29th April 2005 at City-Kino cinema, Linz, Austria (public show, complimentary ticket) - Crossing Europe Film Festival
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