Film Reviews by Kurtz

Deeply morose British thriller with director Hodges hoping to revisit his earlier “Get Carter” territory and falling well short. There is early promise as we follow Clive Owen’s gadabout kid brother Jonathan Rhys Myers on his rounds of the beautiful people before a nasty fall from grace, but once Owen’s character shows up with revenge on his mind he spends most of his time wandering around glaring at people and Charlotte Rampling gets to do very little in each of her scenes, so once these two take centre stage it’s snoozeville.

Another blinding piece of human wickedness from the director of "Oldboy". "Thirst" mines the vampire myth for material rather than "Oldboy's" gangster genre, but it's really only telling half the story to call it a vampire flick. There's much, much more- love triangles, musings on faith and doubt, and some bizarre comic moments.Oh, and tons of sex and gore....

Yes, I’ll admit I fell asleep on first viewing (it’d been a long night and it’s not a knockabout thrillfest!) but when I went back to “La Nina Santa” in a more alert frame of mind I was impressed by the unique atmosphere of the film. The hotel setting becomes almost a character in its own right, with cramped corridors, flimsy plywood doors and a chronic lack of privacy; the director jams people into the background of even the most intimate scenes and clamorous background noises drown out conversations . As for the message of the movie, take some hard-line religious teaching, mix with teenage sexual curiosity and a bit of middle-aged frottage and this is the result. Everyone knows exactly what they should do, but no-one can quite manage to live up to their high moral ideals. Bit like life really.

A brilliant family drama which deals with momentous and horrifying events in an understated way- even the kids are excellent and Connie Nielsen has to be one of the most gorgeous women on the planet. The Americans liked this film so much that they recruited the director Susanne Bier to make Hollywood movies like “Things we lost in the fire” and gave this film the starry re-make treatment featuring Tobey McGuire and Jake Gylenhall- but the Danes got there first and it’s worth seeing the original before the US version.

One of the things I usually love about South Korean films is that the directors have all seen lots of American movies so whilst the culture and language are very different, many of the situations in their films are familiar and some scenes are clearly affectionate tributes to Hollywood hits. Director Jang Jun-hwan simply can’t decide which movie reference to jam in next in this film and it despite the manic energy of his cast, “Save the Green Planet” ends up feeling a bit empty and derivative. Take your pick from “Saw”, “The X-Files”, any bungling kidnapper movie, any washed-up cop movie- they’re all in there- throw in a frankly risible Star Trek-type ending and it’s disappointment all round.

A gripping, at times harrowing account of a hunt for a serial killer in rural South Korea. Song Kang ho (brilliant in “The Host” and “Thirst”) is sublime again as a harassed local cop who gradually realises that his usual tactic of pulling in the local lowlives and beating confessions out of them isn’t going to work. He has to accept the help of city detective Kim Say Kyang who goes about things in a more cerebral way, a kind of Sam Tyler to Song’s Gene Hunt. It reminded me a lot of David Fincher’s “Zodiac” - here too, the focus is on the investigation rather than the occasionally glimpsed crimes, and the long-running case has a similarly corrosive effect on those hunting the killer. Apparently it’s one of the most popular South Korean movies of all time and it’s easy to see why.

I approached this movie rather warily as I doubted whether it could be as good as the buzz claimed during its cinema release, but I was charmed from the outset- Ellen Page is just brilliant, the script is super-smart, the supporting cast are all very convincing, the soundtrack is spot-on… it’s only with hindsight that the unlikeliness of it all starts to kick in; not so much the teen pregnancy itself, but Juno’s down-to earth response to it and everyone’s acceptance that she knows best. Must be the parent in me! A minor quibble, though, because “Juno” is that rare thing- a well-written, beautifully acted film featuring likeable characters dealing with believable situations.

I was hoping that this might be a satirical send-up of science-fiction/adventure movies from Lucas and Spielberg but it was all a bit of a mess and the humour- I mean, it was surely too daft to take itself seriously, wasn’t it?- was lost in a whirlwind of dreadful eighties music and fashions. When the fate of mankind rests in the hands of a be-gelled Peter Weller who’s dressed like an extra from “Miami Vice”, it’s time to make your peace with your Maker. As well as Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin and Clancy Brown of “Highlander” fame also waste their (and our) time.

Much-lauded insight into Ceausescu-era Rumania with excellent performances by the two leads. The unremittingly grim portrait of Eastern-bloc existence, with constant surveillance, a rampaging black market and hatchet-faced petty officialdom oppress characters and audience alike, so it’s hardly a fun-filled experience, but the gritty determination of Anamaria Maninca’s character as she deals with all of the above, her whiny pal and her self-obsessed boyfriend are strangely uplifting.

The first thirty minutes of this backwards –told story are as challenging an experience as you’re likely to get watching a movie- you get dropped into the middle of a furious confrontation in a squalid subterranean hell-hole (excuse the pun if you’ve seen the film) with no idea of what’s going on or who to root for, and the camera appears unable to settle and roves off to unhelpfully film the ceiling in the middle of the action. You then witness some truly gut-wrenching violence involving a fire extinguisher and as things start to take shape and a more settled narrative emerges, an even more shocking act takes place. If you’re up for all this, you’ll probably admire the film for its bold narrative and unflinching presentation of humans at our very worst. But it’s a really hard film to love!

This Spanish film documents four days in the lives of a tiny band of humans who have survived global war and are now fending off attacks from “The Strangers”, zombified carriers of a deadly plague. To add to their problems they suffer from the attentions of a further, possibly alien, foe which is a large green glowing special effect roaming the corridors of their hideout at night. “The Dark Hour” is hardly original ( it wears its allegiance to “Blair Witch”, “Alien” and “The Omega Man” with pride), but it’s very atmospheric and although the human characters are fairly one-dimensional sci-fi/horror staples, e.g. kid, troubled teen, mother figure, sensitive type, viper in nest, grizzled veteran, etc. the actors do a good job portraying the mounting dread as their time seems to be running out.

Aaagh! Writer/ director Mark Stephen Johnson tackles one of my favourite books and rips out its dark, sprawling heart in order to make undemanding Sunday afternoon fare with schmaltz overload. The whole point about John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” is that it’s an unsentimental yet affecting chronicle of the tiny disabled hero’s life. In the film he’s elevated to a junior Jesus character (actually playing the holy infant in the school nativity play) who occasionally reminds the other rather mystified characters that God has a plan for him. The nativity play (amusing) and the fateful climax (lame) are all inventions of Johnson’s and Irving was apparently so horrified at what had been done to his book that he demanded that the main character’s name be changed and that the opening credits state that the film is “Suggested by” the book and not “Based on.. Still, it looks very nice in a “Stand by Me” kind of a way, the kid actors are good and isn’t it gratifying to see actors like Platt, Judd and Jim Carrey getting well paid for undemanding work?

This film was the last in Donald Cammell's provocative career as a film director, and it's not really how I want to remember him. It courts the usual level of controversy with its depiction of sexual shenanigans featuring various combinations of the cast, but the plot is half-heartedly sketched in and the performances are wildly uneven. The celebrated seduction scenes involving Anne Heche and Joan Chen feel tender and authentic, but there are seemingly endless scenes of macho bluster from Steven Bauer and Christopher Walken to sit through before the women take centre stage.Walken in particular seems to lose the plot big time here. I'm usually quite a fan of his, but his habit of RANDOMLY SHOUTING EVERY OTHER LINE makes this a gruelling watch. So determined is he that his character is a big wheel and should be taken seriously that he is constantly waving things around to make his point- a big cigar, a gun, and even, memorably, his manhood (thankfully just out of shot).Unlike the unfortunate Cammell, though, Walken has had the opportunity to redeem himself with some good work since making this film.

I've got a funny feeling that this film depicts very accurately what would happen in the wake of a major terrorist attack. The sense of confusion and isolation is brilliantly conjured up, and the two leads do an excellent job maintaining a believable relationship through layers of polythene. At this point in the crisis, there is hardly any talk of the perpetrators of the act, which is clearly the focus only of those who are comfortably removed from the immediate danger- those affected just seem to want to survive as best they can, and the bitter irony of following the well-meaning advice from family members and the harassed and heavy-handed authorities is brought home by the film’s closing scenes. Despite its backdrop of big events, “Right at Your Door” is a small-scale delight that remains taught and tense to the end; the kind of intimate thriller that “Hard Candy” tries and fails to be.

Following the defeat of their army in 1940, many of the civilian population of Paris fled the city as the German army approached. The roads to the south became choked with people and their vehicles and hundreds of thousands became refugees in their own country. “Strayed” tells the story of one family and how they try to cope in these circumstances. Emmanuelle Béart plays the mother and Gaspard Ulliel, who resurfaces later in “Hannibal Rising” is the outcast loner who helps the family escape from a Luftwaffe attack on the refugee column and becomes their protector and provider despite Béart’s disapproval of him. It’s a handsome film but as the director chooses to spend most of its running time examining the unfolding relationship between Béart and Ulliel in their rural retreat, it loses all sense of time and place and we learn nothing new about this chaotic wartime period.