Film Reviews by Kurtz

The blurb says “a plea for peace”, but giving one of the would-be bombers an articulate five minute speech towards the end of the movie on why he wants to go through with the plan is a risky strategy at least given the number of impressionable types out there. The film is chilling in its depiction of the preparation of the bombers- the rituals, the “martyr videos” and the icy calm that descends on the pair as they get close to their mission. The director tries to be even-handed; not only does he make clear the indignities of life on the occupied West Bank, the checkpoints, the arbitrary road closures and the constant presence of heavily armed soldiers, but he also shows the warmth of family life that the bombers are sacrificing for paradise and a piece of bloody history.

Uhhh... no, sorry Dave, you've lost me there.

I enjoyed Lost Highway and was prepared to go with Mulholland Dr. but this is a whole different league of weirdness.Lynch jettisons minor considerations such as plot, characterisation and story development in favour of... well... talking rabbits, people arguing in Polish, grainy black and white footage of an old gramophone, death by screwdriver and huge close-ups of the less decorative members of the cast-and it's all topped of some three hours later with an unaccountably upbeat song-and -dance number.The only bright spot is Laura Dern, who throws herself fearlessly into all her multiple roles.

"What the bloody hell is going on?" barks Jeremy Irons,the director of the film that Dern is starring in before it all goes haywire. Well, if you don't know, mate...

Unremittingly glum tale of a glum French farmer and his glum mates who glumly go off to fight in an unnamed war (probably one of the Gulf conflicts, judging by the burning oil wells on the skyline.) Here they don’t encounter the enemy but manage to lose their commanding officer and then embark on an ill-advised revenge mission that royally hacks off the locals. The survivors end up back on their glum French farms, where they continue to be glum. Director Dumont says he prefers to work with non-professional actors, and his direction to these people is “do nothing” so all the script is delivered in a flat monotone and no-one ever reacts to what’s going on. Very hard to like.

A heartfelt and moving account of life in the DDR. Stately and impresive rather than a gripping Bruce-a thon, it boasts nonetheless some intensely watchable performances from top German stage actors. The fact that some people had the courage to speak out against an all-seeing, all-knowing regime who had the power to ruin the life of anyone who stood against them is hard to take in when you've grown up taking everyday freedoms for granted, but the key message of "The Lives of Others" is that the desire for personal freedom is contagious and that no-one is immune.

The most surprising thing about this movie is how unsurprising it is- it really is a straightforward tale of revenge: Neil Jordan and Jodie Foster try to stress the inner torment of Foster’s vigilante but inner angst is a bit less interesting to watch than a spunky woman with a gun cutting a swathe through assorted lowlives, and we see a lot more of the latter than the former. Terence Howard is wasted as the sympathetic cop whose investigations bring him close to Foster.

Three, according to this rather overheated tale.Elisha Cuthbert of "24" fame, Camilla Belle and Katy Mixon all turn the pout factor up to eleven and vamp for all they are worth without ever producing convincing performances. Belle does a good middle distance stare, while Mixon overcompensates wildly for her unrequited crush on Cuthbert. Cuthbert herself must have the best-pressed cheerleader's outfit in the States considering the number of times she whips it off to go over those awkward creases with a steam iron. If you have a thing about doing household chores in your underwear, this is the film for you! The story itself gallumphs about in family secrets/adolescent angst/mistreatment of the disabled territory and although it wraps itself up nicely at the end there's nothing here you haven't seen done better elsewhere.

A film that tries to address the vexed issue of what some older members of modern German communities got up to during the Nazi period. A young girl starts trying to do some research into who did what in her town during the war, but soon meets a wall of silence, hostility and eventually intimidation. The director throws us all kinds of curve balls and alienation techniques to underline the film’s artifice- characters address the camera, scenes take place against back-lit projections and once, memorably, the family’s front room is transplanted into a crowded market square- all so that we can’t just take refuge in the story and have to ponder the issues. He also keeps dropping in unexpectedly humorous moments to break the mood of menace. All in all, an unsettling but intriguing watch.

Volver provides proof, if it were still needed, that the battle of the sexes has been decisively won by the girls' team.The women in this perky comedy-drama are all glamorous,resourceful and spunky, while the men are almost without exception feckless, venal and lazy and in some cases a lot worse besides. Any film made in the last twenty years that attempted to present women in such sweepingly negative terms would have been met with howls of protest.Perhaps Senor Almodovar didn't want his star turn Penelope Cruz to have to compete for the audience's sympathy with a mere male.In fact she does a great job here, and is far more appealing and less irritating in this film than she is in her Hollywood adventures.

There’s nobody better qualified than Anton Corbijn to document the rise and fall of Joy Division, as his moody black and white photos of the band graced many a copy of NME during the band’s brief heyday. Twenty years on, he gets to make a film on the band, inevitably focussing on Ian Curtis, their lead singer whose suicide in 1980 stopped the band in its tracks and signalled a change of direction into the more commercial New Order. There are many good things about the film- Sam Riley’s performance as Curtis, Toby Kebbel’s brilliant portrayal of JD’s acerbic manager Rob Gretton, and Riley and his actor bandmates and their spirited stabs at the band’s doomy but uplifting music. Sadly, though, a film charting a character’s slide into suicidal despair via illness and marital strain is going to end on a bit of a downer, and although JD fans will love it, the uncommitted will find it heavy going, to say the least. “24 Hour Party People” presents a considerably livelier version of the same story, with the unfortunate addition of The Happy Mondays.

This film really does set out to provoke, and the black humour is often grating- take your pick from sexism, racism, homophobia, paedophilia, and good old teen nastiness- it’s all there! The result is that the film varies wildly in tone, with some decent performances lost among all the PC-bashing. I particularly liked the hopeless lawyer who appeared to have wandered in from “Dude, where’s my car?” while everyone else thought they were re-making “Heathers” and James Woods… well God only knows what he thought he was doing!

I'm prepared to bet that this is the finest film about Hungarian ticket inspectors that you will ever see.

General de Gaulle’s appeal to the French colonies to help liberate France from German occupation in the Second World War was answered by thousands of men who had never set foot in France and who came to learn at first hand about the ambivalent attitude of the colonial powers towards the “foreign” soldiers who fought alongside their men. It’s an excellent film which takes a cool look at notions of equality and race whilst delivering some gripping battlefield sequences amid the shattered landscapes of occupied Europe that echo the ending of “Saving Private Ryan.” At first the men are anonymous in their battle fatigues but by the end, as the unit is thinned down in time-honoured style, you care much more about their fate than their military masters seem to.

First, the bad news- though billed as a Swedish horror comedy, "Frostbiten" is neither particularly scary nor laugh-out loud funny. It suffers a bit too from some poorly edited stunt work (although the ceiling creepers are pretty cool)and from some clunkiness from the "Before-I-kill-you-I-will-tell-you-all-our-secrets-oh-damn-she's-got-away" school of exposition.However, it does still have a lot going for it- the story moves along at a cracking pace, the young cast make up for any technical deficiencies (no acting masterclass, this),with some committed performances, and there's a vein of twisted humour running throughout that cannot fail to please. It's never easy to meet your girlfriend's parents for the first time, for example, but when you're going through the early stages of vampirism, the encounter is doubly hazardous, especially when trout in garlic is on the menu. Should have stuck to meatballs.

Director Andrea Arnold doesn't stint on the "local colour" in this slow-burning thriller: she devotes a lot of screen time to those parts of Glasgow where the sun don't shine; trash eddies in the breeze, concrete soars over urban wastelands, and lost souls sidle from bleak flatlet to sticky-carpeted boozer and back again. This downbeat setting, sparse dialogue and an apparently emotionally stunted heroine make this film heavy going for a while, but it rewards patience- as we are drip-fed information about the story we gradually come to understand some of her seemingly random actions, and the final scenes, with a detour for some pretty full-on bedroom gymnastics, pack a powerful emotional punch and a chance for redemption for more than one character- and looking at the lives they have to lead, I reckon they deserve a chance more than most.

"Inside Man" clearly wants to be more than a standard bank heist movie, taking time to show shadowy forces manipulating events surrounding a daring bank raid by Clive Owen and his ruthless band of robbers, and the excellent Denzel Washington's attempts to prevent a bullet-fest as the beleagured hostage negotiator.These background scenes can drag, though; they give the movie a bloated two hours plus running time and distract from the compelling clash between the two principals. It's worth a watch just to see who comes out on top, but having opened up several cans of political and social worms, director Spike Lee seems unable to wrap things up satisfactorily.