NUREMBERG**

James Vanderbilt, screenwriter on iconic films such as David Fincher's ZODIAC, stages his directorial debut with NUREMBERG, a film about the trial of the infamous Nazi leader Hermann Goering.  

While trying hard to hue close to the historical record, Vanderbilt's script has two fatal flaws - it is patronising and it is far too pleased with itself.  The former manifests in endless passages of ham-fisted exposition, assuming that the viewer knows nothing and it is too stupid to figure it out.  This extends both to the historic events AND their contemporary resonance. 

The latter manifests in clever-clever cuts between lines of dialogue that flatly contradict each other for comic effect.  We get dumb action movie lines like "Welcome to Nuremberg" (insert mike drop), from dumb caricature characters like John Slattery's military prison guard. We get the same character anachronistically referring to two psychiatrists as "mental health professionals".  We get a desperately harrowing courtroom scene of real Holocaust footage shown and then a smash-cut to a cool jazz club and our protagonist flirting with a pretty journalist. Just no.

So this is a tonally jarring, condescending and obvious film containing a central bad performance from Rami Malek as US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelly. Why might it still be worth your time? A star each for Russell Crowe and Leo Woodall as Goering and Sergeant Howie Triest respectively. Crowe is absolutely magnificent as Goering - capturing his slippery charm, bonhomie, narcissism and at core his complete fanaticism.  It's a shame such a performance - Crowe's best in years - is wasted on this film.  And kudos to Leo Woodall, who recently impressed as the lead actor in TUNER.  As Howie, Woodall is the very moral and emotional heart of this film, far moreso than Malek's gurning shrink. Otherwise Shannon and poor Richard E Grant are mediocre in roles ill-written and under-serving their real life counterparts.

NUREMBERG is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 148 minutes. It played Toronto and San Sebastian. It was released in the USA last Friday and in the UK next Friday.

DAVID STRATTON: A LIFE IN FILM - BFI London Film Festival 2017 Preview

Director Sally Aitken's DAVID STRATTON: A LIFE IN CINEMA is one of those films that makes you fall in love with cinema all over again.  It's a must for cinephiles and especially for lovers of Australian cinema.  I must confess, however, that I sat down to watch it never having heard of the titular film reviewer. But it turns out that he's actually something of an icon - the Aussie Roger Ebert, say.  He started out living in England, before moving to Australia, and discovering his adopted country through its cinema. Obsessed with movies, he realised he could watch films for free if he volunteered as an usher at the Sydney Film Festival. He then worked his way up the be the festival's director for many years, before working as a critic for Variety, and then hosting a hugely popular and influential TV review show in Australia. Even now his passion for cinema is undimmed, and he teaches a seemingly never-ending class on world history at Sydney university.

The still-English accented Stratton takes us through his life and the development of Aussie cinema by highlighting movies that he thinks are exceptional but also personally important to him.  So we get Aussie classics like PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and recent films like MURIEL'S WEDDING by way of fan favourites like STRICTLY BALLROOM.  But he also subtly teaches us about the first time we saw an Aussie female director, or Aborigines take lead roles, or when Geoffrey Rush was the first Aussie to win an acting Oscar for SHINE.  He takes us through the Ozploitation trend and into the birth of arthouse cinema. And we even learn that the first ever feature film in the WORLD was an Aussie film about the Kelly gang. 

What I loved about this film was seeing actors and directors from Peter Weir to Nicole Kidman to Russell Crowe to David Michod discussing their films with Stratton - the insights and the debates. The most controversial of these is over the white supremacist film ROMPER STOMPER, starring Crowe, that Stratton thought was well made but actively dangerous.  The director hasn't gotten over the slight but Crowe is surprisingly gracious.  We also see Stratton change his mind over the Aussie classic THE CASTLE. 

Having watched this film, I desperately want to buy a compilation of Stratton's written reviews, to sit alongside those from Sarris, Kael and Ebert. He seems like such an insightful, historically literate critic.  This documentary has also given me a list of Aussie films recommended by Stratton that I can't wait to watch. To that end, it's a great doc insofar as it has deepened my understanding of old favourites and provoked a hunger to get to know more about Australian cinema.

DAVID STRATTON: A CINEMATIC LIFE has a running time of 97 minutes. It played Cannes 2017 and opened earlier this year in Australia. There are still tickets available for both screenings at the BFI London Film Festival. 

THE WATER DIVINER

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below:



THE WATER DIVINER is a brave directorial debut from Russell Crowe.  It tells the tale of a grieving father who journeys from Australia to Turkey to find the graves of his three sons, killed in the battle of Gallipoli four years previously.  In doing so he encounters a still highly contested and wartorn land, whether the men of the Imperial War Graves Commission has to rely on its former enemies, the Turks, to help them locate bodies on the field of battle.  And while World War One may be over, the war for the future of Turkey is only just beginning, with a nationalist uprising under Kemal Ataturk beginning, bringing with it a fierce debate over secular modernisation versus traditional religious values. 

LES MISERABLES

Helena Bonham Cartier as the devious Madame Thenardier

For the improbable few who don't know, Les Miserable is a remarkable novel by Victor Hugo, set in mid nineteenth century, post-Napoleonic France.  The main character is a good but traduced man called Jean Valjean who lives under an alias to escape his convict past.  He is hunted by Javert, a cop whose strict adherence to the rule of law will not admit mercy or humanity.  In the first half, Valjean is redeemed by the mercy of a priest, witnesses the death of a seamstress turned hooker called Fantine and promises to care for her daughter Cosette. Together they escape Javert in the anonymity of Paris.  In the second half, Cosette falls in love with a revolutionary young aristo called Marius, who is also beloved by the sad little innkeepers' daughter, Eponine. Valjean realises that rather than escape Javert by fleeing to London, he must save Marius from certain death on the barricade. In doing so, he challenges Javert to let him pass with the dying boy, thus fundamentally destroying Javert's worldview and self worth.  Javert commits suicide, and Valjean dies, his family knowing his true worth. 

In the 1980s, the novel was reworked as a musical by Claude-Michel Schoenberg and Alan Boublil. They stripped the Victor Hugo classic of its baggy social exposition leaving the bare bones of a story of young love crossed with a tragedy of redemption versus the rule of law. They also added a handful of truly superb songs and the comic relief of the con-artist inn-keepers, the Thenardiers. The result was a product of memorable songs, and overt sentimentality.  The only character of any real psychological interest was the conflicted Javert.  Even poor Eponine, suffering unrequited love, is so good that she leads her beloved Marius to Cosette.  It is, then, almost uniquely, a movie in which all the major characters are wholly good, and their songs speak to worthy but unfulfilled longing.  There are no song and dance numbers here. It's just torch song after torch song interspersed with the one truly comic number at the inn.

I am conflicted about Tom Hooper's translation of the musical to the big screen.  There is much to be commended.  He forces the actors to sing live during the take, rather than miming to a prerecorded track, giving the movie an emotional authenticity that is entirely novel.  Surely movie musicals can never go back from this new high bar?  Hooper is also unabashedly faithful to the original - capturing its grandeur and melodrama, ringing every last tear from his audience. I doubt any fan of the original will be disappointed with this on-screen translation. Hooper is fortunate in his cast. Hugh Jackman's background in musical theatre is well known and it shines through here with his heartbreaking Valjean. We have seen Amanda Seyfried sing in MAMA MIA! and are unsurprised by her pretty but slightly too trilly soprano.  Anne Hathaway and Eddie Redmayne as Fantine and Marius prove to be highly capable singers too.   The only weak link is Russell Crowe as Javert, but I didn't mind this at all as it is far more important that we believe his psychological deterioration in the final act - an d Crowe sells this well.  Of course, it was predictable that Eponone, played by Sarah Barkman, would be a scene-stealer given her theatrical background, and as usual we get the Papageno/Poor Joe effect with little Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche.  As comic turns, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen are predictably superb as the Thenardiers. 

Behind the camera, I love the ambition of Tom Hooper's vision.  The first scene that rises through murky waters to high above a dangerously listing great ship.  The choice of a beautifully ornate Catholic Church on an isolated hilltop for Valjean's conversion.  The use of colour in the scenes with barricades - the red of Enjolras' coat.  The metaphor of having Javert always walk on the edge of the precipice.  I particularly liked the idea of Fantine singing "I dreamed a dream" almost immediately after selling herself for the first time, utterly destroyed and vulnerable.

But there is one directorial choice that I found utterly grating, and for which I think the Academy was right to deny Hooper a Best Director nomination because it is so very fundamental to the success of the film. As I said before, Les Mis is different because the songs are rather uniform. There are no song and dance numbers, and only one out and out comic turn. Rather we have a mix of earnest, heartbreaking torch songs and earnest heartbreaking doomed political chants. Unfortunately, Hooper has chosen not to  vary his style of filming. In general he cuts between camera angles but keeps his camera still and focused, often in extreme close-up, on the singer.  I get this with Valjean's conversion. And I get it for Fantine's big turn.  But for every other song? By the time I got to Marius' "Empty chairs at empty tables" I was desperate for some kind of variation, and this detracted from Redmayne emoting his heart out. This lack of directorial imagination, or perhaps the fixation with a novel idea that was taken too far, is this movie's Achilles Heel.  So that while it works emotionally, and the performances and design impress, as a work of pure cinema, it fails. 

LES MISERABLES is on release in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Spain, the USA, Hungary, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Lebanon, Portugal, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Mexico, the UK and Vietnam.  It opens on January 18th in Estonia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; on January 25th in Poland and Romania; on January 31st in Italy, Slovenia, Thailand and Brazil; on February 8th in Russia and Taiwan; on February 14th in Cyprus, France, Argentina and Greece; on February 21st in Belgium, Germany and Finland; on March 1st in Turkey and on March 21st in Denmark.

LES MISERABLES is rated PG 13 in the USA and the running time is 157 minutes.

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS is not a movie you're going to enjoy on date night, sober. It's the kind of  movie that requires a few beers and a college dorm room so that it's inconsistency and sheer ridiculousness becomes a virtue.  It'll also help if you, the viewer, has a much of a geeky knowledge and love of The Shaw Brothers martial arts flick, and also with to pay homage to Gordon Liu.  This movie may be "presented by" Quentin Tarantino, but don't be fooled. RZA's directorial début is not like KILL BILL - tightly written, slickly produced, allowing all viewers a point of access. This is definitely a B-movie - not grungy enough to be pure blaxploitation wushu, not well-made enough to be taken seriously.  The plot is stupid, character development non-existent and the leading man (RZA himself) has about as much charisma as former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.   But when the movie works, in one or two key scenes, it really will make you laugh out loud, and the martial arts sequences are all excellent - as they should be, considering they star many of the genres most famous fighters. 

The movie is set in "Jungle Village" - a dirt poor town in 19th century China, that happens to have a kick-ass freed slave blacksmith (RZA) and a super luxurious whorehouse, presided over by Madam Blossom (Lucy Liu). It also houses the Blacksmith's hooker/sweetheart (Jamie Chung).  The blacksmith is forced to make kick-ass weapons for various rival gangmembers, not least Silver Lion (Byron Mann) and the late Golden Lion's real son The X-Blade (Rick Yune). Into this potent mix comes the Governor's gold shipment, which the Lion gang attempt to steal from the Geminis, and who knows where Mr Knife's allegiances lie?

The real fun of this film lies in a gloriously overweight Russell Crowe playing Oliver Reed playing Mr Knife. Pure Comedy Gold, especially in his interaction with Lucy Liu's proto-feminist brothel-keeper.  Crowe and Liu are joined by the wonderfully camp Bryon Mann in taking this movie about as seriously as it requires i.e. not very much, and all three are having a ball. It's a shame the other characters didn't join suit.  Sadly, whenever they're not on screen, you just get heavy exposition and boredom while waiting for the next fight scene. But these are worth waiting for. MMA star Dave Bautista is used to great effect, and I'm guessing we'll all remember what Gemini stance is from now on.

Overall, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS is far from a classy flick, but it drips with love of the genre and if you're in the mood to go with it, with a beer in hand, it's more than a fun time. And please will someone give Crowe more roles like this?

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS was released in November in the USA, Canada, Kuwait, Spain and Germany. It opens on December 7th in the UK, Ireland and Australia. It opens on January 2nd in France and Belgium; in January 11th in  Bulgaria; on February 8th in Sweden and the Netherlands; and on February 21st in Argentina and New Zealand. 

Preview - THE NEXT THREE DAYS

THE NEXT THREE DAYS is a faithful remake of Fred Cafave's French thriller, POUR ELLE / ANYTHING FOR HER. It has been remade by the American writer/director Paul Haggis, famous for scripts and films that are, to my mind, over-long, over-elaborate, over-technical and lacking in real emotion. Unfortunately, THE NEXT THREE DAYS is no exception.

Russell Crowe stars as a schlubby loser who loves his wife and little kid. So, when she's locked up for apparently murdering her boss in a fit of rage, he's devastated. When the conventional legal channels are exhausted, and his despairing wife attempts suicide, poor Schlub has no choice but to plan a prison break-out. Apparently, this is quite easy. You interview a guy who's already written books how to do it; watch a couple of YouTube How To videos; and while you are basically a good guy, you discover hidden physical strengths. These include the ability to a) cold-bloodedly murder some drug-dealers b) drive a car at high speed in on-coming traffic and c) hold on to your wife while your car performs a triple lutz with its door open.

As you might tell from my facetious tone, I wasn't any more convinced of the reality of this film any more than I was by the original. In both versions, the film-makers attempts to ground the movie in reality with a detailed slow-build of research before the prison break fails to do its job. And while Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks are just fine in their roles, the basic concept is simply too incredible to buy into.

Worst still, Paul Haggis direction and script adaptation contrives to bring us out of the film rather than keep us in it. For instance, why make the guy who sells Schlub fake passports deaf? I have nothing against deaf people, but when the actor playing him first spoke you could hear the audience wondering what was going on, (some of them tittering - shame on them) and it was a distraction. Another example is where Schlub has done something bad but then counters by doing something that's meant to be sympathetic. But as his car pulls away and we still the shot of what he's done, it's just plain funny. The audience in my preview screening laughed AT the movie, rather than being impressed by the emotional confusion of the protagonist. Third Paul Haggis does his typical thing of dumbing everything down. Why does he need to play a childish game, teasing us with whether or not the wife really did murder her boss? At least the French flick had the maturity to make that a non-issue. And finally, this movie has more endings than LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING.

Overall, dull, banal, incredible (literally), and while decently acted, utterly forgettable. Save your money, save your time.

THE NEXT THREE DAYS is on release in the US, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, Poland, Egypt, Kuwait, Singapore, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway and the Philippines. It opens next weekend in France, Greece and the Netherlands. It opens on December 24th in Brazil; on January 7th in the UK; on January 20th in Germany and Hungary.

STATE OF PLAY - derivative, badly made, dull political thriller

I love political thrillers, and have liked the previous work of the writers behind STATE OF PLAY - Billy Ray (FLIGHTPLAN), Matthew Michael Carnahan (LIONS FOR LAMBS), and Tony Gilroy (DUPLICITY, MICHAEL CLAYTON,THE BOURNE MOVIES & THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE). Unfortunately, these collective talents have turned in a script that, if one were being kind, might be accused of excessive nods to genre tropes, and if one were honest, would be accused of being derivative, lazy and predictable.

Russell Crowe plays an investigative journalist called Cal McAffry, who works on a Washington Post-style paper. We know he's a maverick reporter because, in lazy movie-shorthand, he's overweight, he needs a haircut and shower, his desk is a mess and he's mean to a newbie blogger, Della Fry, played by Rachel McAdams. He has a ballsy, fearless, old school, harrassed editor - is there ever any other type? - played by Helen Mirren. We know she's got balls of steel because she swears a lot. Then again, as soon as the cub reporter starts whimpering because she's being demoted, the apparently hard-nosed editor caves in. Where's the subtle power of Ben Bradlee is ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN - a movie that STATE OF PLAY overtly aspires to be? Cal McAffry has a friend who is a US Senator, Stephen Collins, crusading against the military-industrial complex, as represented by a Blackwater style company called Pointcorp. We know he's serious, earnest and a politician because he has a square jaw and bags under his eyes. His wooden acting may also be a marker of the essential superficiality of the political class, if we were still being generous. Cal and Stephen both dated a woman in college who Stephen later married, and cheated on with an intern who has since been found murdered. The wife is played by an age-appropriate delivery device - Robin Wright Penn - the intern is played by a red-head so we'll be able to pick her out easily in the CCTV footage.

From all this information, and given that I've told you that the writers are in awe of the great paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s, you should be able to piece together the plot. The politician is implicated in death of his young lover. Both were investigating multi-billion dollar government contracts. Could it be that greedy capitalist bastards did it? The movie is very much a standard-issue jigsaw puzzle. I knew whodunnit because I'd seen the infinitely superior British TV serial on which this movie is based. Doctor007 knew whodunnit about thirty minutes in because he has a brain and he's seen enough films like it.

Apart from the predictability and laziness of the plot and characterisations, I was deeply disappointed by the casting decisions and the production values. Russell Crowe, Robin Wright Penn and Ben Affleck are meant to be college contemporaries but Crowe looks a decade older than Affleck. I was sad to see the role of Dominic Foy cut down so much (although Jason Bateman was rather good in the role) and I was sad to see Ben Affleck's role become more two-dimensional. Worst of all, there was a lot of sloppy tech stuff that pulled me out of the film. Look out for some particularly ham-fisted photo-shopped pictures of Senator Affleck as an Iraqi war soldier. My god-daughter could do a more believable job of cutting and pasting a photo of one man's head onto another man's body. 

All in all, this movie is a cheap, serviceable thriller at best, and a pretentious, dull, derivative thriller at worst. Avoid.

STATE OF PLAY is on release in Canada, Iceland, Spain, Turkey, the USA and the UK. It opens in Egypt, Greece, Italy, South Korea, the UAE, Finland, Norway and Sweden next week. It opens on May 22nd in Japan and on May 29th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, New Zealand, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Lithuania, Mexico and Romania. It opens on June 5th in Estonia; on June 12th in Singapore and Brazil; on June 18th in Argentina, Chile, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal; on June 24th in France and on July 1st in Belgium.

SPOILER: Also, did anyone else find it a tad disappointing to have a movie aim at indicting the military-industrial complex but end up as a movie motivated by sexual jealousy?

BODY OF LIES - much like BLINDNESS, the Big Idea is way too obvious and ill-developed

Ridley Scott thinks his latest film, BODY OF LIES, has failed at the Box Office, because we, the movie-going public, are superficial assholes who'd rather watch MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL than be schooled about the War on Terror. Now, he may or may not be right about the public's desire to spend £15 hard-earned cash to be depressed into oblivion, but that doesn't change the fact that even by the standards of the genre, BODY OF LIES is a weak movie. SYRIANA failed through vaulting ambition; RENDITION was earnest but poorly made; perhaps the Meryl Streep/Tom Cruise in LIONS FOR LAMBS came closest to creating an interesting and intelligent discussion of these issues. BODY OF LIES never gets close to the dramatic tension and sheer brilliance of the best scenes in LIONS FOR LAMBS.

There are two big problems with this movie. First off, the point it's trying to make is blindingly obvious to everyone except, it would seem, the Bush and Blair administrations. People on the ground know far better what's actually going on than the policy-making big-wigs in Washington and Whitehall. Moreover, we'd have saved ourselves a whole bunch of heartache if someone had actually bothered to, you know, check some facts about WMD, and just Be Competent. Frankly, I don't need Ridley Scott to tell me this.

The second problem is that while Ridley Scott really wants to make a serious film about the War on Terror, his best intentions are trumped by his instincts to make yet another slick but unimaginative and pompous action flick. So yes, we do have two fine actors - Russell Crowe and Leo DiCaprio - facing off about how to bring terrorists to justice. Crowe's character embodies the banality of evil - ordering strikes while picking up groceries. DiCaprio is the conscience of the engaged liberal. There could've been a really great movie here. But instead we see good dialogue cut short by set piece action sequences.

So, basically, I think BODY OF LIES is a waste of time, with one exception: Mark Strong's superb, scene-stealing performance as the head of Jordanian intelligence - the man who runs rings around the CIA.

BODY OF LIES is on release in the USA, Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Canada, Indonesia, India, Russia, South Korea, Egypt, Serbia, France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Switzerland and the UK. It opens next week in Argentina, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia and Finland. It opens in Sweden on December 5th, in Venezuela on December 19th and on Japan on December 20th.

AMERICAN GANGSTER - handsome but heartless

AMERICAN GANGSTER is a handsomely produced, engrossing police procedural. But it fails to create characters, dialogue and emotional story arcs that draw you in and capture the collective consciousness.

Ridley Scott and Harry Savides have created a movie that oozes authenticity with it's detailed rendering of 1970s Harlem projects. Real-life heroin dealer Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington, slips through these rough streets with a cool confidence that is magnetic. He eschews the super-fly pimp stylings of lesser black criminals such as Nicky Black (Cuba Gooding Junior) or his own younger brother (Chiwetel Ejiofor). This is because Lucas is smart, and less a gangster than a businessman. He supplies a product that is twice as potent than the competition for less than half the price, because he goes straight to the supplier and cuts out the middle-man. Naturally, this puts the traditional Italian mobsters out of business so he cuts them in. But they work for him. He controls the mob.

Lucas gets away with it because of his restraint, his self-control and the endemic corruption of the New York DEA, epitomised in Josh Brolin's sleazy rozzer, Detective Trupo. But he slips up when he wears a flashy chinchilla coat to a a boxing match and is seen to have better seats than mob bosses. This brings Lucas into the sights of New Jersey's one honest cop, Richie Roberts, played by Russell Crowe in a middling performance. Roberts is in many ways a more interesting character than Lucas. Lucas comes to us fully formed - fully in control - fully unquestioning. He is a family man. A business man. But also a ruthless killer. Roberts is more complicated. He clings to his honesty in police matters but is an adulterer going through a messy divorce. He is flawed, but driven, and yet, somehow, Crowe never really made him live for me.

AMERICAN GANGSTER is a long film but never drags. I was hooked on seeing the net close in on Lucas, and thrilled to see the good cop and smart dope dealer unite in the final frame to sit on the real scum - the rozzers. The production design and cinematography is excellent. But this is not an epic movie as the portentious title might suggest. The movie has no heart. There is no family treachery, no conflicted love story, no crisis of conscience, at the movie's heart. In fact, I think this film is slick but ultimately disposable.

AMERICAN GANGSTER is on release in the US, UK, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Lithuania, Belgiu, France, Germany, Portugal and Iceland. It opens on November 23rd in Norway and Sweden. It opens in December in Russia, Greece, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain and the Czech Republic. It opens in January 2008 in Denmark, Argentina, Australia, Hungary, Singapore, Italy, Mexico, Egypt, Brazil, Finland and Turkey. It opens in Japan in February.

3:10 TO YUMA - outstanding Western

After GIRL INTERRUPTED, COP LAND and WALK THE LINE, here's another great film from director James Mangold. This time it's a remake of the 1957 western, 3:10 TO YUMA, itself based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. There's nothing pioneering or rocket-sciency about this movie: it's just a gripping story, really well-told.

The ever-brilliant Christian Bale plays an indebted Arizona rancher who commands no respect, even in his own eyes. In a last ditch attempt to raise some cash and do something heroic, he escorts a notorious thief (Russell Crowe) to the train station in another town, where he will take the 3:10 to Yuma prison. The small posse gets eliminated one by one as Crowe's charming but immoral villain takes them out en route. And all the time, they are being followed by the villain's gang, not least a nasty but dandy-ish side-kick, played by Ben Foster in a truly break-out performance. The drama of the piece is in the confrontation between a deeply moral but pathetic man and an amoral swaggering anti-hero. The tension builds to a thrilling final shoot-out from the town-hotel to the train station. Will Bale's character get the villain to the train? And how far will the villain, who now has a grudging sympathy for the hero, collude in his own arrest. It makes for a brilliant character play, with the added bonus of some superb action sequences and handsome design and photography. Not to be missed.

3:10 TO YUMA is already on release in Russia and the USA. It opens in the UK on September 14th, in Iceland on September 28th, in Norway on October 12th, in Italy on October 19th, in Singapore on October 25th, in Turkey on November 2nd, in Argentina on November 8th, in Estonia on November 20th and in Finland on January 11th 2008.

A GOOD YEAR - charming, if utterly predictable, romance

I know, I know. Movies where ruthless capitalist bastards "find themselves" in lushly photographed socialist villages are a tad predictable. A GOOD YEAR is no different, but if you're willing to accept the format, it has a lot of laughs and some good old-fashioned sappy romance. Russell Crowe camps it up in the opening act as Max, a greedy capitalist bond-trading bastard par excellence. He manipulates the market to within an inch of the law, shags around, insults his underlings and generally enjoys his Master of the Universe status. When his uncle (Albert Finney) dies and leaves him a French chateau, Max' first impulse is to sell it for a ton of money via his similarly ethically-challenged best-mate and estate agent (Tom Hollander.) There is little in life funnier that seeing Crowe drive past a bunch of French cyclists, give them the finger and shout out "Lance Amrstrong". There's also little funnier in life than seeing a banker stuck in an empty swimming pool unable to reach his blackberry.

Of course, Max is redeemed. He falls in love with a ballsy local waitress (Cotillard, unrecognisable out of her Piaf make-up.) He remembers his uncle and his own youth (Freddie Highmore). He reconciles with his illegitimate cousin (Abbie Cornish) and even his best mate softens. The highlights are the lush photography and Tom Hollander's scene-stealing role as the oleaginous agent. Of course, it's schmaltz. But superior schmaltz all the same.

A GOOD YEAR was released in autumn 2006 and is available on DVD.

CINDERELLA MAN - archetypes are really dull

CINDERELLA MAN is a fictionalised account of the career of James J Braddock - an American boxer who survived the Great Depression by staging a famous boxing come-back. The movie opens with a famous quote from Damon Runyan, "In all the history of the boxing game, you'll find no more human interest story to compare with the life narrative of James J Braddock." Maybe that was true at the time, but since then the world has witnessed Mohammad Ali. Comebacks get no bigger than the Rumble in the Jungle: you can find the real thing here.

But I've started all wrong. Despite all appearances, CINDERELLA MAN is not a boxing story but an archetypal story about the importance of family, love and hope. It happens to feature a boxer. The theme is that James Braddock was a decent guy who went back in for the punishment of the ring in order to save his family from starvation and the children from being parcelled out. If Braddock has to be the archetypal rough diamond hero, then his historic opponent, Max Baer, has to be a leering, crude, proud monster. His wife has to be an upright, doughty, loyal matriarch.

The problem is that archetypes make for boring, simplistic cinema. Take the perfect hero that is James Braddock and compare him to Rocky - another washed-up boxer hustling for money in hard economic times. In Rocky II we see how success corrupts Rocky. To contradict F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous quotation, Rocky's "great American life" DOES "have a second act". By contrast, Braddock, we are told at the end of Cinderalla Man, fought bravely in the Second World War. He was a simplistic hero, start to end.

The strength of the Rocky series also lies in the fact that Apollo Creed is not an evil monster (if, in later pictures, Stallone does drift into cold-war steroetypes.) By making Max Baer an evil man, director Ron Howard avoids having to address the issue of how the defeated fighter must feel. He avoids tarnishing Braddock's victory. Personally, I prefer more nuanced films, such as the wonderful South Korean drama, CRYING FIST, that challenge the audience by making us want BOTH fighters to win.

So, what's to like about CINDERELLA MAN? It is photographed with all the lavish care that one expects from a $90 million picture shot by Ron Howard ("A Beautiful Mind"). The boxing scenes are well-shot and derived from the Raging Bull school of cinema. It is filled with the kind of acting talent only double-digit millions and a sure-fire chance at an Oscar can buy: notably Russell Crowe, Renee Zellwegger and Paul Giamatti. It features a great British actor, Paddy Considine, as a radical union-leader and Braddock's best friend. Moreover, while this is undoubetdly "an uplifting family movie" it is no way near as manipulative and saccharine as it could have been given the subject matter and its director. After the travesty of NORTH COUNTRY, we must give thanks for restraint wherever we find it. Having said all this, I found this an uninvolving and over-long film, that pales into comparison with Rocky for feel-good drama, and Crying Fist for intelligent drama.

CINDERELLA MAN went on cinematic release in the US in May 2005 and in Europe in Autumn 2005. It is available on Region 2 DVD. Bizarrely, while the DVD extras includes footage of Norman Mailor, Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer watching the famous Baer/Braddock match, the producers didn't bother actually putting the footage of the whole match on the DVD. It's a real shame, but once again goes to show that this isn't actually a boxing movie at all.