Film Reviews by Kurtz

A worthy addition to the lengthening list of unflinching examinations of Britain’s unflattering underbelly, “London to Brighton” throws us in at the deep end of a trick that has turned horribly wrong, and from that point on we share the fears of the central characters as they seek to escape with their lives. It’s a brilliantly spare piece of storytelling, with nearly all the performances convincing and drawing us into the action. Johnny Harris is excellent as the heartless pimp, with Lorraine Stanley superbly gutsy as the tart with a heart. There’s a certain grim humour in the way that, needing raising seventy quid fast on a dank, windswept day on a desolate seafront, she mutters “I’ll get it”, smoothes her miniskirt down over goosepimpled thighs and trudges off in search of the inevitable john…

Early Anne Hathaway vehicle which gives you the unexpected sight of PG fave Hathaway enthusiastically servicing her pretend gangster boyfriend then losing her heart and key items of underwear to a real one played by Freddy Rodriguez. Hathaway and her mates play an infuriating bunch of privileged teens who are obsessed with being “street” and “keeping it real,” taking occasional trips to the less swanky areas of town like tourists at Whipsnade Zoo. When the only characters with any integrity are Rodriguez’ bunch of murderous crack dealers, you know that it’s going to be tough to care what happens to anyone in the film, and the weak ending is lost in a haze of indifference.

“Oldboy” is a riveting and totally insane slice of Korean extreme- the plot seethes with horrifying twists and turns, there is wince-inducing action and gallons of pitch-black humour; and at the film’s heart there is an outstanding bug-eyed performance from Choi min-sik as the man plucked from the street and imprisoned for fifteen years, then released without explanation. He sets off to identify his abductors and wreak revenge on them, only to find that they haven’t finished with him yet…

The story of an intense friendship between two teenage girls during a surprisingly sunny English summer in what looks like Yorkshire. Natalie Press is excellent as the downtrodden Mona who gets a glimpse of what life could hold beyond the valley she lives in, while Emily Blunt’s plummy stirrer seems more of a stretch at times but is always watchable as she’s the one with all the ideas.

Yes, it’s a sexual relationship, but the film is never salacious and these scenes are sensitively done by director Pawlikowski, who shows himself worthy of moving into Shane Meadows territory- no higher praise than that! Speaking of Meadows, solid support in this film from Paddy Considine as the unlikeliest born-again Christian you ever did see.

This is a spellbinding piece of Parisian cool from director Audiard. It tells the story of Thomas, brilliantly played by Romain Duris who spends his time providing muscle for his slumlord Dad, conniving with other lowlives to evict unprofitable tenants. A chance encounter with a colleague of his dead mother, a concert pianist, re-awakens Tom’s love of music and his desire to achieve recognition as a pianist himself. From this point on Tom valiantly tries to balance loyalty to his Dad and a sense of obligation to Mum, just as a chaste relationship with a colleague’s wife comes to boiling point. Brilliantly done, and you don’t have to know anything about classical music to find it really enjoyable and affecting.

If you enjoyed the adventures of Napoleon Dynamite, you will love this too- it’s a similarly affectionate portrayal of socially awkward loners and losers with grandiose ideas. It takes itself much less seriously than the other quirk-fest I’ve seen recently, “Me and You and Everyone We Know”, and its heroine Lily, played by Loren Horsley, is certainly an antidote to the tough, confident women who seem to crop up in your standard Hollywood fare. Mousy- looking and retiring by nature, she nevertheless worms her way into her idiot boyfriend Jarrod’s life, charms his family and by her quiet persistence gives him a chance to repair some of the damage he’s done to his own life. But the question is, being a complete tool, will he take it?

If like me you felt nothing but a little uncomfortable when hairy male followers of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” felt compelled to drag on their girlfriends’ underwear, you might have shared my initial misgivings about “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”, but two minutes in it’s obvious that this is a completely different beast- Hedwig him/herself, for example is a sublime creation, poignantly played by his/her creator, John Cameron Mitchell, firing killer one-liners and capturing the character’s sadness and dignity even while delivering an infamous “carwash” to unsuspecting audience members- (has to be seen to be believed!) There can’t be many other movies that invoke an unholy mash-up of Plato, Lou Reed and the Tina Turner and still communicate a coherent message…AND THE SONGS REALLY ROCK!!!!!!!! (…and I didn’t even mention Yitzhak, the most unconvincing boyfriend ever…)

...it might have been his grandkids cutting a swathe through the Rome underworld of the late twentieth century like the central characters here. I’m not making the “Godfather” reference lightly, either: this is a blinding film which is a worthy descendant of the Coppola classic. There is crunching action, great performances and a clear point being made by the director about how the material wealth that the characters build up fails to make them any happier, more fulfilled or even safer. So although they get the glamorous lifestyle, in many ways they are as trapped as any wage slave trying to make the mortgage payments. This modern take on crime, an adept interweaving of great political events in Italy into the story and a thumping contemporary soundtrack brings it into “Goodfellas” territory. And with a pedigree like that, how can the world resist “Romanzo Criminale”?

You can’t help but admire Woody Harrelson’s suit/tie combinations and the pitch-perfect re-creation of the shadow-world of Washington politics in “The Walker”, which focuses on the bored and cynical wives of the power players, but there’s precious little action to get your teeth into. There’s a rather half-hearted foot chase and a some threatening behaviour in a bar, but mostly it’s a question of sitting back and watching Woody realising how empty and precarious his existence on the margins of this world is as his friends and confidantes close ranks against him. Like Woody’s character, the film is great to look at but short of substance.

Enjoyable long-con drama from Argentina. If you’ve seen “House of Games” and “Matchstick Men” you’ll know the drill, but the central pairing is effective: Gaston Pauls’ young trickster is outwardly bland but harbours a great talent for what he does, whilst Ricardo Darin is excellent as his oily mentor. The ending is a touch theatrical, but part of the pleasure in this type of film is trying to spot where the rug is being pulled out from under our feet, and I have to admit that the director Bielinsky certainly did a number on me.

Got to agree with the positive review- “Day Watch” is an atmospheric treat, stuffed with great lines and wild action. Director Bekmambetov seems to have a freer hand here, having dealt with all the backstory in “Night Watch”,so he delivers a clearer, tighter story with all the usual supernatural malarkey, and in amongst it all there are affecting father/son stories, respect between the leaders of the two camps, and fascinating glimpses of the old and new Moscow. OK, so he wimps out on the possibilities of a gender-swap shower scene, but sex is perhaps the one thing that “Night/Day Watch” was never about.

OK,the Pixies are my all-time favourite band, so I was always going to love this- the concert performances are wonderful and they capture the band’s delighted amazement that a) they can still cut it as performers after nearly ten years apart and b) that a young fanbase has come to love their music despite the band’s rather modest commercial success in their first incarnation- but the insight into the backstage and offstage lives of the four godparents of grunge is what really sets this documentary apart. They are quietly nudged into exploring the tensions that tore the band apart in the first place, and which clearly are still simmering, and their struggles with addiction, relationships and ailing parents are affectingly laid bare. All together now…Cariboooooooouuuu…….

This was Luis Bunuel’s biggest commercial success, and it is still a highly regarded movie today- an eminent film historian provides the talk-track as one of the extras on the DVD. It is undeniably stylish and succeeds in creating a powerfully erotic atmosphere without actually revealing very much bare flesh- there are a few shots of Catherine Deneuve in her faintly scary sixties lingerie, but most of the frisson comes from the internal fantasy sequences where she imagines a life far removed the rather chaste and sterile world she inhabits with her husband. It was these sequences that Bunuel invented, grafting them on to material from the original novel to explain how Deneuve’s upper-middle class Severine ends up working in a brothel. Bunuel’s assistants tell in interviews how they did extensive research into female sexual fantasy (tough job, but someone’s got to do it!), but I’m unconvinced about how many women would actually get that hot under the bodice about being pelted with cow dung and whipped and ravished by randy coachmen. Maybe it was more a question of male fantasy, Sr. Bunuel? Throughout it all, though, Deneuve’s icy, mask-like impassivity reveals nothing either way.

Intacto is a stylish and original film that spawned a Pendulum video. Unlike “Voodoo People,”it tells its tale in an unhurried way, but interrupts its ruminations on fate and fortune with bursts of action, most of which are centred around Monica Lopez’ identikit trigger-happy cop-with-a –past, or increasingly bizarre trials of luck. Possibly to redress the balance, the director has made nearly all the other characters rather cold presences, especially Max von Sydow’s arch-gambler who is so cool, even in a sand-coloured suit, that he can’t even be bothered to learn Spanish for the movie and delivers most of his lines in his inimitable Sydowese English which we are expected to believe that all the Spanish characters understand perfectly. Didn’t work for us on holiday in San Sebastian!

There’s nothing like a good yarn to while away the hours, and the Aboriginal culture seems particularly rich in the tradition of storytelling. Filtered through a doubly distancing lens- a story within a story- and told largely in the Aboriginal language, “Ten Canoes” nonetheless catches the attention with mystery, magic, murder and forbidden love. A worthy film that is part entertainment, part defiant celebration of a culture under extreme threat.