OF TIME AND THE CITY - cheeky? Miserable more like.

OF TIME AND THE CITY is a mean-sprited, curmudgeonly, visually uninspiring documentary from British auteur Terence Davies. Over the years he has produced beautifully framed, highly personal movies about his youth as a homosexual Catholic working-class boy in post-war Liverpool. But where DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES finely balances fond memory and grim reality, OF TIME AND THE CITY is simply a litany of snide criticism of his native city, a city he describes as "anus mundi".

Funded by public money, this documentary was meant to be a thoughtful work about Liverpool past and present - a crumbling industrial town, with a staunch Catholic population, recently regenerated into a vibrant regional centre. How perverse, then, to pick a director who seems to have a deep-seated hatred of both the old and the new Liverpool. Old Liverpool is, according to Davies, a city of crumbling terraced houses; garbage gathering in vacant lots; ration books; religious intolerance and sexual frustration. He sneers at the Beatles - drowning them out with classical music - just as he drowns out his upbringing with his ludicrously affected RP accent. I have rarely heard anything as hateful as his contemptuous "yeah, yeah, yeah". As for contemporary Liverpool he is similarly sneering. He uses the beautifully uplifting lyrics from the Mahler 2, words of hope and ressurection. But against this music he juxtaposes images of modern city life that he evidently finds alienating - multi-story car parks, shopping centres, aerial shots of polished civic architecture cut off from the city by multi-lane highways.

At first I didn't understand why critics had poured praise on such a sour film. I went back and re-read the reviews and realised that they hadn't found it sour at all. Here's Peter Bradshaw - a great critic, writing in The Guardian. "Terence Davies' new film....is a heartfelt and even ecstatic study of Liverpool... the sweetness of its temper...." Sweetness of temper? I'd sooner call her mother a wit.

Don't believe the hype. OF TIME AND THE CITY is no Liverpuddlian MY WINNIPEG.

OF TIME AND THE CITY played Cannes, Toronto and London 2008 and is currently on release in the UK. It is released in the US on January 21st.

*Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen,in heißem Liebesstreben werd'ich entschweben zum Licht, zu dem kein Aug'gedrungen.

Especially for Nikolai - a late review of ZOO - an intelligent look at inter-species erotica

One of Nikolai's favourite arguments is to question why bestiality is illegal. Why should it be illegal for you to pleasure, say, a cow? "Oh, but the cow can't consent!" I hear you cry. But Nikolai would respond that the cow can't consent to being killed and eaten either. So why is it worse to pleasure a cow than to kill it? Is society being hypocritical or at least inconsistent in its attitude to different types of human-animal relations? Finally, Nikolai gets a documentary that makes his case. It's intelligent, sophisticated, and extremely careful not to be lurid and unintentionally funny.

Director Robinson Devor' explores these issues by interviewing zoophiles living in North America. He manages to get breathtakingly candid footage of men describing how they came to realise they were attracted to animals and how they reconciled that with their preconceptions of "right" behaviour. He also explains how you go from thinking about it to actually doing it. The men would meet via the interent, find increased confidence among like-minds, and then finally meet on a ranch to, basically, have sex with horses.

When a zoophile died from a perforated colon, the police were called in, the zoos activities were exposed and the law was quickly changed to make zoophile activities illegal in Washington. Ironically, a well-meaning vet put down the horse to prevent it from being "abused" again.

ZOO played Sundance and Cannes 2007 and was released in the UK in May 2007. It is available on DVD.

Random DVD round-up 5 - JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM THE PLAINS

Jimmy Carter is a man of faith, integrity, and experience in negotiating peace in the Middle East. It has been decades since he was President, and he could easily retire, but he remains passionately engaged in the political debate. This documentary from Jonathan Demme follows Carter on his recent book tour to promote "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid", a book that provoked controversy simply for drawing a parallel between South Africa and Israel. The documentary is on one level a portrait of Jimmy Carter, but it's a lot more than that too. It's telling to see a man making a sophisticated argument confront a media machine used to glib sound-bites and Manichean positions. It's also telling to see the sort of ire he attracts for daring to criticise Israel. It's pretty tragic to seen fine minds spend their hours crawling through transcripts to find any hint of prejudice rather than engaging with the macro arguments.

JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM THE PLAINS played Toronto and Venice 2007, where it won the Biografilm award, the EIUC award and the FIPRESCI prize. It went on limited release in the US in October 2007. It went on limited release in the UK in August 2008 and is now available on DVD.

Random DVD round-up 4 - WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS

Malcolm D Lee may be kin to Spike Lee but he produces movies that are diametrically opposed to his cousin. Spike Lee joints are politically engaged, technically accomplished and audacious - sometimes to their detriment. Malcolm D Lee, by contrast, produces disposable commercial movies devoid of artistic vision. WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS is just such a movie. The story is pure romantic-comedy formula - nice guy (Martin Lawrence) with bitch-girlfriend does mean things to alienate warm-hearted friends before epiphany leads to apology, dumping bitch and dating childhood sweetheart. It's all very glossy and slips by easily enough, that is until you start choking on the crude racial stereotypes, blatant class-politics and generally stale contents. According to this movie, African-Americans are either assimilationist, materialistic sell-outs or obese, violent hicks. Formualaic plotting and racial stereotyping could be forgiven if this movie were actually funny. But it's not.

WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS opened in the US, France, Turkey, Egypt and UK in Spring 2008 and is now available on DVD.

Random DVD Round-Up - THE LAST MISTRESS / UNE VIEILLE MAITRESSE

Catherine Breilliat's French period drama is a beautifully played tragedy that never feels starchy or staid although it sometimes feels just plain bizarre. Okay, so maybe this is 1850s French high society but how many people do you know who talk in intimate detail about previous liasons with their future mother-in-laws? Such is the implausible framing device of Barbey d'Aurevilly's novel and this new movie. A young rake is sitting in his future mother-in-law's salon explaining his entanglement with a prostitute called Vellini. As a young man, Ryno (Fu'ad Ait Aattou) had dismissed Vellini as old, crumpled and vulgar, but no sooner had he said those words than, Mr Darcy-style, he fell into erotomania. They conduct a ten-year affair until Ryno throws Vellini over for a diametrically opposite, virginally pure, rich young girl. Soon after the wedding, Ryno spirits his bride away to the coast in order to escape temptation. But temptation follows him, with tragic consequences. Desire cannot be fettered.

THE LAST MISTRESS works because it balances attention to period detail and visual flair with an apparently modern take on sexual relations, not to mention solid central performances from Fu'ad Ait and Asia Argento in a role that seems made for her. It's a costume drama for people who prefer LA REINE MARGOT to Jane Austen, with none of the austere trauma of NE TOUCHEZ PAS LA HACHE.

THE LAST MISTRESS/UNE VIEILLE MAITRESSE played Cannes, Toronto and London 2007 and was released last year in France, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Russia, Australia and Turkey. It was released in the UK, Brazil and South Korea earlier this year. It is now available on DVD.

Random DVD round-up 1: KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS

KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS is a hillarious documentary that contains real-life people so ludicrous it feels like a Ben Stiller movie. Centre-stage is Billy Mitchell, a Ronald D Moore look-a-like egomaniac who thinks the whole world worships him because he's good at playing a 1980s arcade game. This is a man who has the ego of Gordon Gekko and absolutely no sense of irony. Mitchell basically spends his life being superior and schmoozing his fawning acolytes. Chief among them is Brian Kuh, a particularly weasally pretender to the title of "King of Kong". But Kuh aside, the amazing thing is that apparently very nice people are willing to give Mitchell so much time, and to envy his lifestyle so much. Take Walter Day, the referee of Donkey Kong competitions: "I wanted the glory, I wanted the fame. I wanted the pretty girls to come up and say, "Hi, I see that you're good at Centipede"." Because the hot girls so OBVIOUSLY go for guys who are good at arcade games! Seriously, you couldn't make this shit up!

Then one day, Mitchell's little racket is blown up by the appearance of a nice-guy-loser called Steve Wiebe (rhymes with "dweeb"). Wiebe is such a non-entity he's endearing, and he so evidently gets up the nose of Mitchell, Kuh et al that you can't help but be swept up in his journey to FunSpot to take on the world title. Evidently, Wiebe is brilliant at Donkey Kong. Mitchell is also, presumably brilliant. But the humour comes from Mitchell's complete cowardice in facing down Wiebe in public. It's positively embarassing watching the defending champion wriggle out of public competition and losing the respect of his peers.

Now, you could accuse Seth Gordon of using the slippery old Final Cut Pro to make Mitchell look like an idiot and Wiebe look like a hero. But how do you edit to create lines as Pure Comedy Gold as this: "I've pointed out to Steve that he's the person he is today because he came under the wrath of Bill Mitchell." I mean, who talks about their own wrath in the third person?

You HAVE to watch this movie. Don't wait for the feature film remake. Hear it from the horse's mouth!

KING OF KONG was released last year in the US and in June in the UK. It is available on DVD.