SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE*****

Director Tim Mielants has delivered a quiet masterpiece in this film set in early 80s Ireland and based on the equally powerful, slippery novel by Clare Keegan with a screenplay by the writer Enda Walsh (HUNGER).

It stars Cillian Murphy (OPPENHEIMER) as Bill Furlong, the owner of a small coal business who is happily married and lives in a home filled with laughter and the tumbling chaos of a gaggle of daughters.  Nonetheless, as many who have scraped their way up from poverty, he can never quite shake off that feeling of insecurity and is haunted by memories of his childhood as an illegitimate child taken in by a kindly rich woman (Michelle Fairley - Game of Thrones).

The moral crisis of the film is triggered by Bill making a delivery to a convent himself, and seeing the exploitation of the girls there, and receiving a plea for help from one distraught teenager in particular. As viewers, we are sadly all too familiar with the decades-long abuses of the Magdalene Laundries, in which the Catholic Church exploited young pregnant women. The question is: what Bill will do?

As is made clear to him by the presiding Sister (Emily Watson - chilling), going against the Church means a kind of social ostracisation - and Bill has many girls to educate in the school that they run.  And yet, and yet, he all too well knows that his own mother might well have ended up in such an institution, had she not been taken care of by her kindly employer. 

The resulting film is beautifully acted and captures the claustrophobia and oppression of a small town suffocated by the Church.  The sound design is particularly notable for depicting the twin horrors breaking in on Bill's mind - of his childhood and what is happening in the convent. Just as with the novel, this is a movie that absolutely envelopes you in a certain time and place, and stirs up emotions and provokes moral questions. It is a thing of beauty and brilliance.

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 98 minutes. It played Berlin 2024 and was released in the USA and UK in November.

OPPENHEIMER*****

I have found Christopher Nolan's films deeply frustrating. I regard him as our most accomplished technical film-maker since Stanley Kubrick. And yet I have serially struggled to be truly emotionally involved in his films. I admired them. I was intellectually provoked by them. But they were arid, sterile things that failed to move me or to tell me anything insightful about the human condition. 

With OPPENHEIMER everything has changed. For the first time, Nolan has trained his IMAX camera onto a deeply personal, ethical, political, sexual story of a great but troubled man.  He has given us a film that feels at times more like an Oliver Stone political conspiracy film that takes us under the skin of American history. But at the same time, he gives us images and sound design of surpassing beauty and power.  Best of all, he allows us to view it on actual celluloid IMAX film.

Nolan's film is an interrogation of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the genius physicist who ran the US government's Manhattan Project and delivered them the atomic bomb that was controversially used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  One might think this would earn him a nation's grateful respect but in the Cold War anti-Soviet hysteria of the McCarthy witch-hunts, Oppenheimer was refused his security clearance on the basis of his 1930s sympathy with left-wing causes and effectively publicly silenced. Was Oppenheimer a Communist? No. But he was a fellow traveller who donated to worthy causes that were Communist front organisations. After all, as a Jew who was funding the escape of fellow Jews from Nazi Germany he was deeply sensitive to the plight of refugees. Was Oppenheimer a traitor? No. He hated Hitler and feared what would happen if the Nazis got the A-bomb. It was Klaus Fuchs who was leaking Los Alamos' secrets to the Soviets.  Oppenheimer - even after everything his country did to him - loved it to the end.

Oppenheimer was not, then, a traitor. But he was indeed guilty of naivety and highhandedness.  He was naive about how far his celebrity would protect him from the political machine. He was naive about how far a prurient establishment would excuse his incessant womanising, not least with the actual Communist Jean Tatlock. He was naive about how far he could cover up for his Communist friend Haakon Chevalier without being seen as complicit.  

Oppenheimer was also high-handed.  Perhaps this should be no surprise for the wealthy son of first generation Jewish immigrants who grew up in an apartment filled with expensive art and who had the resources to travel throughout Europe to lear from the champions of the New Physics. For a man who could be devastatingly charming at a dinner party, he was careless of appearing rude to powerful politicians. He had no time for the Game, and Game beat him in the end.  

In this film, politics is embodied in and personified by Oppenheimer's nemesis, Lewis Strauss. Strauss was also a second generation Jewish immigrant but unlike Oppenheimer didn't have the money to study physics at university, becoming a shoe salesman to raise the tuition fees. Despite later wild financial success and political success he never lost his insecurity over this lack of formal education. After World War Two, Strauss maintained his interest in science by chairing the Atomic Energy Commission, and so butted heads with Oppenheimer.  While never publicly regretting creating the A-bomb, or its use against Japan, Oppenheimer used all of his influence to try and steer US policy toward collaboration, containment, and against developing the H-bomb.  By contrast, the pragmatist Strauss simply wanted the US to be better armed than the Soviets.

Nolan's framing device for his film are the two trials in all but name of these two men that took place in the febrile McCarthyite political climate of the 1950s. The latter is the 1958 Senate hearing of Strauss, shot in black and white, where he fails to be confirmed for a Cabinet position.  The reason?  The vindictive kangaroo court he inflicted upon Oppenheimer in 1954 when the AEC refused to renew his top security clearance, and all but accused him of being a Soviet spy. Publicly shamed, Oppenheimer public life was effectively ended. 

The vast centre of the film within this framing device is the story of Oppenheimer's life as told by him in his statement to the 1954 Gray Commission.  In this part of the film we are in vivid colour and firmly in the subjective experience of our protagonist. From young student in Europe to charismatic Berkeley professor, to impressively driven manager of the Manhattan project.  We see him trying to balance his politics with his top security cleared job, and his ethics with the need to win the war against Hitler.  This becomes infinitely more muddy when Nazi Germany surrenders and it becomes clear that the bomb will be used against civilian subjects in Japan.  That decision is still debated, and it's unclear how much influence the scientists ever really had on the politicians. But Oppenheimer's self justification went along the lines that a demonstration of the awesome power of the A-bomb would scare politicians into co-operation within the United Nations for arms control. Evidently, this was not the case.

What can we say about this infinitely complex, nuanced, moving drama? Nolan's writing is a masterclass in concision and precision. Every line is considered - every intertwining of timelines adds meaning.  His direction is masterful. Working with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema he conjures up the magisterial beauty of New Mexico; the claustrophobia of the Commission's interrogation room; the vivid abstraction of quantum physics; and the awesome power of nuclear fire.  Working with composer Ludwig Goransson, Nolan creates a sound design and complementary soundscape that is at moments tender, at moments tellingly silent, and at moments so powerful and literally awesome that it shakes your entire body.  And working with his actors, well Nolan is simply a master.

Let's start with Cillian Murphy's haunting central performance as Oppenheimer - arrogant, haughty, stubborn, guilt-ridden, hunted.  But let's also speak of Robert Downey Junior as Strauss - puffed up, prickly, wiser, harder. And then we have the balancing presence of Matt Damon as General Groves - physically intimidating, no nonsense, practical, but humane. In smaller roles, I loved the interrogatory intensity of Jason Clarke's Roger Robb; Dane De Haan's sinister precision as security officer Nichols; and a truly intimidating cameo by Casey Affleck as his superior, Boris Pash. 

For the women, well, this is Nolan's weakness. I feel that both of the female stars are given short shrift. Florence Pugh is all too brief a presence as Oppenheimer's true love, Jean Tatlock. She is reduced to being naked, demanding, capricious.  We don't see her brilliance. But we get something of her brave, troubled nature. I also think (but need to rewatch to confirm) that Nolan inserts a slippery quick shot of a gloved hand intervening in her narrative. Similarly Emily Blunt has little to do for much of the film as Oppenheimer's wife Kitty.  A brilliant botanist who resented giving up her career to be stuck at Los Alamos with the kids, Kitty is a brittle alcoholic from the start in this version of her life. She exists to urge Oppenheimer to fight back - perhaps cathartically for the audience.  And to provide a channel for our anger when he is intent on being a martyr.

The short-changing of the female characters is a minor blemish on an outstanding film that pushes Nolan from technical mastery into the realm of "complete" film-making. He is now to be considered with the true masters of cinema.  This is a film that is intellectually and emotionally provocative, that excites visually and aurally, and that showcases outstanding performances. Please try to see it on IMAX celluloid. 

OPPENHEIMER is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK and has a running time of 180 minutes. 

THE PARTY - Day 9 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

THE PARTY is a brilliantly observed, nastily witty laugh-out loud dark comedy from writer director Sally Potter.  Filmed almost as a chamber comedy in one apartment, the entire 70 minute movie takes places over an aborted dinner party. It has been convened to celebrate the fact that Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just become Shadow Health Minister, much to the delight of her scabrously rational realist best friend April (Patricia Clarkson).  But, rather bizarrely, her husband (Timothy Spall) is apparently depressed if not borderline potty.  This is somewhat overshadowed in the early scenes by the totally bizarre behaviour of the strung out city banker Tom (Cillian Murphy).  The remainder of the guests are April's new age hippie boyfriend Gottfired (Bruno Ganz), brilliantly mocked by April - as well as a lesbian couple expecting triplets, Martha (Cherry Jones) and Jinny (Emily Mortimer).

It would be unfair to reveal the plot twists and dramatic turns that propel this short film toward its dramatic conclusion. I was utterly surprised by all of them - particularly the last.  But it felt to me that this film had it all - properly funny, but also with moments of real relationship trauma and deeply felt distress. In particular, the reaction of Martha to learning she's co-parenting triplets felt very raw and credible.  The acting is also universally good, with Patricia Clarkson stealing the show with her nasty put-downs.  I also loved Aleksei Rodionov's cinematography - effectively using lighting to create stark black and white contrast, and with a mobility and fluidity that kept this one-room drama feeling exciting and pacy. The music choices are also used to great effect - in one scene of near-death, the use of Dido's Lament had me corpsing too.

In the words of Meester Phil, this is a frankly delightful film. It's an unhinged expose of the middle class English suburban family and purported intellectuals. 

THE PARTY has a running time of 71 minutes. The movie played Berlin, Seoul, Sydney, New Zealand, Melbourne and London 2017.  It was released earlier this year in Germany and France. 

DUNKIRK

Christopher Nolan is a director of superlative technical skill, and his new film of the evacuation of DUNKIRK lives up to that billing.  However, in his choice to strip it of all historical context, and to keep a close-up on three sets of anonymous character tropes, he has created a film that has no epic sweep; that fails to convey the magnitude of Dunkirk; and that fails to move.  Where it works, it works because of fleeting nuanced moments of acting brilliance.  But this is no LAWRENCE and he is no Lean: he has failed to combine the epic with the personal.

So, some context, because the film gives you none. (I wonder if this will affect non-British audiences' ability to engage with the film?) We are in the early months of World War Two. Ignoring captured intelligence to German plans, French, Canadian and British and other allied troops have been lured into Belgium by a German feint and have now been encircled and driven back to the French coast. Roughly 340,000 men - the principal strength of the British army - crowded the beach at Dunkirk - a port protected by a mole, or sea wall, from which they could board the large vessels sent to ferry them back across the English channel.   In doing so, they were hugely aided by the French forces tangling up the German troops sent to cut them off at the Siege of Lille. They were also hugely aided by Hitler's inexplicable decision to order the Luftwaffe not to pursue the troops.  

The evacuation took days, and combined large ships taking people off the Mole with small requisitioned commercial vessels collecting soldiers from the shallows. All the time, the troops subject to aerial assault on the beach and in the water, and the risk of being torpedoes once aboard. The scale of the battle was thus immense - with the RAF flying 3,500 sorties and engaging the Luftwaffe in dogfights away from the beach (hence many soldiers wondering where the fuck they were) - 36 Royal Navy destroyers ferrying men home as well as the Small Ships flotilla - and c340,000 soldiers ultimately evacuated.  It was both a great military failure and a success - because as humiliating as the lost Battle of France was, it enabled Britain to survive to fight on with its men and materiel largely intact. 

Christopher Nolan makes the decision to avoid all of this explanation, and to give us a Dunkirk that focuses on the personal experiences of the war by land, sea and air.  These theatres are inter-cut but take place along different time-scales.  The land evacuation takes place over the week, although frankly days merge into each other and I couldn't keep track.  The sea rescue takes place over a day and the RAF dogfight takes place over an hour, roughly corresponding to a Spitfire's fuel limit.  I rather liked the concept of intercutting the three, and although we do get a cute crossover with the same character appearing in two of the theatres, Nolan doesn't make it too intrusive or incredible. 

Where I think his claustrophobic personal approach works best is in the air battles.  Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden play RAF Spitfire engaging in dogfights some distance from the beach. With IMAX cameras mounted on modified Yaks, Nolan takes us into the air for some quite spectacular aerial photography.  Nonetheless, the downside of this approach is that one gets the impression that the men on the ground are right to ask where the RAF are - that the scale of the aerial assault is minute when it wasn't.  I also find it absolutely incredible that a RAF pilot, knowing how desperate the British were for materiel, would risk his plane in the way that Hardy's character does.  This utterly took me out of the film. 

The sea battle is also done very well from a technical perspective.  We get a sense of the claustrophobia of being aboard ship, the shell-shock and the terror of a watery death, especially when combined with lit gasoline.  I thought the acting was by far the best in this segment.  I very much liked Mark Rylance's quiet earnestness as a civilian sailor sailing to Dunkirk with his son - the quiet communication between the two of them with glances - the profound sympathy toward Cillian Murphy's traumatised rescued RAF pilot.  And the scene of soldiers drowning under a fiery sea is one of the most memorable and rightly horrific in the film.  But I also had deep concerns with Nolan's portrayal of the naval evacuation.  He has Kenneth Branagh's Colonel declare that the Navy is only risking one Destroyer. This is just untrue. There were 36 in use! In general, his character summarises the worst of the writing on the film. He's not a character so much as a Patriotic Reaction Machine. When he gets teary at the sight of the Small Ships as Elgar floats up through the score (superbly done by Hans Zimmer), Nolan is telling us to shed a tear.  When he looks concerned at the Luftwaffe flying overhead, this is a cue for us to get concerned.  And when at the end he remains in peril to help the French, we are meant to think, ah well, this has been EXCLUSIVELY from the perspective of white male Brits, but never mind, we sorted out the French too.  Appallingly crass stuff. Still, this being Nolan, Branagh will probably get an Oscar nom for this nonsense.

Nonetheless, it is on the beach itself that this film ultimately fails.  We have small nuanced scenes of brilliance - a soldier decided to commit suicide by walking into the water - or the quietly proud smile of a Royal Engineer who has built a makeshift pier out of trucks - but there is no sense of scale or chaos. According to Nolan, the beach at Dunkirk was filled with about 3 columns of about 200 soldiers neatly waiting to be evacuated, and ducking and turning on cue to the director's megaphone. There's no fear, panic, chaos, disorder at all.  There's also no sense that we are dealing with hundreds of thousands of men.  Ultimately, then, Nolan has made a gross error.  He has given us a film that tries to convey intimacy - without ever naming a character or making a character more than a trope - and he has chosen NOT to convey the epic sweep of battle. Worst of all he has made gross historical simplifications and some outright errors that massively impact our understanding of what is happening.  And his refusal to name the enemy as the German army is simply perverse. 

DUNKIRK is rated PG-13. The film goes on global release the weekend of July 19th.

FREE FIRE - BFI LFF 2016 - Closing Night Gala - Day 12

Ben Wheatley's HIGH RISE may have been one of the most disappointing films of LFF2015 but his quick, scabrous shoot-em-up thriller FREE FIRE is a welcome return to form.  Moreover, after 12 days of melancholy art-house movies, it was the perfect palette cleanser and finale to this year's exceptionally good film festival. 

Short, sharp, cheap and nasty, the movie takes place almost entirely in a dingy warehouse some time in the 1970s.   Brie Larson plays the sole woman in the film and is presumably some kind of arms broker.  The buyers are two IRA terrorists played by Cillian Murphy and Wheatley alum Michael Smiley and the salesman are a South African (Sharlto Copley) and his enforcer (Armie Hammer).  Also present are associated side-kicks and half-wits played Sam Riley, Jack Reynor, Noah Taylor and Babou Ceesay.  Basically, this is a bunch of scoundrels, where trust and intelligence are both in short supply. So when a junkie driver brings up an old beef with another moron, shots get fired and pretty soon we're in a full on seventy minute shoot out.  

ANTHROPOID

Writer-director-cinematographer Sean Ellis (CASHBACK) returns to our screens with a period thriller based on the true story of the assassination of the SS officer Reinhard Heydrich during World War Two.  Operation Anthropoid had Czech soldier parachuted back into the country by the British, collaborating with what was left of the Czech Resistance, scouting out Heydrich's typical route out of Prague Castle, to gun him down. History tells us that the initial attack was thought a failure, but that Heydrich did indeed die of his wounds.  The men responsible for the assassination - the only successful high-ranking assassination of a Nazi - were betrayed and after a courageous 6 hour gunfight in a church - killed. The SS razed villages and killed thousands of Czechs in reprisal. But Czecho was, as a result, seen as an ally and the Munich Agreement nullified.

It's testament to the film that despite knowing the history of Anthropoid, I was genuinely gripped by it.  The tension of planning and executing the attack was painful and the final shoot-out in the Church exquisitely choreographed and genuinely emotionally affecting. Most of all, the brutal scenes of torture were truly unforgettable and a final moral confrontation haunting.  I also love the fact that Ellis chooses to shoot the film in Prague, using many Czech actors to lend the film authenticity, and indeed show the source material respect. The problem is, however, that it forces his British lead actors into adopting what I am sure they must think are Czech accents. The film survives because of the force of Cillian Murphy's lead performance, which more than offsets Jaime Dornan's weaker contribution.

ANTHROPOID is rated R and has a running time of 120 minutes. The film is on release in the USA and UK.

VERSUS: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF KEN LOACH

I got quite depressed when Ken Loach's latest and perhaps final feature, I, DANIEL BLAKE, won the Palme D'Or a few weeks ago.  Not because it's a bad film - I haven't seen it yet and it sounds amazing - but because it felt like he was the only film director daring to tackle the big social issues of our time.  I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Ever since the Global Financial Crisis, and more specifically the Tory response to it, the UK has been living through a period of deep fiscal austerity. But the artistic response seems to have been rather meagre. I contrast that to the angry, loud and multifarious response to the social upheavals wrought by Thatcher in the early 80s. Where's the protest music?  Where are the angry plays like GBH and Boys From The Blackstuff?  Where are the new Ken Loaches, Alexei Sayles, Billy Braggs, Communards?  Don't get me wrong. I'm happy that Loach is still working and able to tackle the issue of people struggling to survive in poverty and Britain - the sheer human tragedy and inexcusable horror of men and women in a developed nation going to food banks.  But shouldn't there be young angry film-makers tackling this stuff too?  The other thing that depresses me about this sort of film-making (or the lack thereof) is its efficacy.  I'd almost class some Ken Loach films in that category of agitprop documentary that preaches to the converted.  In other words, the majority of political film-making attracts an audience that already thinks the issues are important.  How many right-wing Fox-news watching people actually pay to watch a film like AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, for instance.

All of which preamble brings us to Louise Osmond's new documentary about Loach's work (ignore the title - the life's only in there insofar as it sets up the work).  It's a nicely constructed retrospective with interviews from key collaborators.  We get the social context of Loach's iconic works, such as KES, CATHY COME HOME and LADYBIRD,  and something of the public conversation they caused.  I think CATHY COME HOME may the one of the few examples of a feature that does what I claimed most agit-prop doesn't - it broke out of the arthouse and into national conversation, changing attitudes.  One certainly hopes the same will be true of I, DANIEL BLAKE.  But what could have easily turned into a piece of hagiography dares to make some bold statements.  Several people refer to Loach's ruthlessness in getting the shot or telling the story he wants to.  (The famous scene where little boys are caned in KES is case in point). Another interview refers to his child-like narcissism which is certainly enabled by being a director. However, I feel the doc. could have explored key controversial incidents more.  In particular, Loach was involved in a production of a play that was pulled because it was deemed anti-semitic.  The way it's told here (and I'm not unsympathetic with that view) is that this was a mistake and that Loach was righteously angry.  But given his record of boycotting festivals and films with Israeli funding one might have wanted to interrogate those highly controversial and potentially offensive views further.

VERSUS: THE LIFE AND WORK OF KEN LOACH has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated 12A.  It is currently on limited release (schedule here) and is available on several streaming services.

INCEPTION - It'll be just like in the movies. Pretending to be somebody else.

INCEPTION combines the elegant structure and intelligence of Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough indie hit, MEMENTO, with the stunning in-camera visual effects of BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT. More than that, INCEPTION demonstrates for the first time that Nolan can do more than “just” create intelligent mainstream blockbusters. Finally, he moves beyond the assured technique and shining surfaces to deliver a convincing and emotionally engaging love story. All of this is a great achievement. But it does not compensate for the over-use of exposition, weak characterization of the supporting roles, and the fact the questions raised by the central conceit have been explored in many films before this one.

The plot is neither as complicated nor as impenetrable as the critics would have you believe, nor as liable to be ruined by too much information before you watch the film. That’s because, while this movie is a heist movie in the classic tradition of RAFIFI or LE CERCLE ROUGE, the real substance of the film has nothing to do with the heist at all. Still, for what it’s worth, let’s explore the set-up. In the near future, corporate espionage isn’t about stealing files from an executive’s laptop but about stealing ideas straight from his subconscious when he’s in a drug-induced dream. To steal the idea, the thieves also have to drug themselves and enter into the subconscious of the victim – thus becoming vulnerable to any nasties the victim might be hiding down there. In this film, the thieves are paid to not to steal an idea, but to plant an idea in the victim’s mind so subtly than when he wakes up he thinks it’s his own. And this is precisely the engine of the film. Leonardo diCaprio’s Cobb is hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe) to plant an idea in the mind of his business rival Fisher (Cillian Murply), prompting Murphy to break up the massive corporate entity that he inherited from his father (Pete Postlethwaite). To pull off this reverse-heist, Cobb has to assemble a crack-team, made up of all-round side-kick, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); dream architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page); impersonator, Eames (Tom Hardy) and chemist, Yousuf (Dileep Rao). Together they engineer a situation in which they can sedate themselves and Fisher, engineer a dream within a dream within a dream, and plant an idea so deeply that they can achieve genuine inception.

There are, of course, plenty of rules about how this all works and the early parts of the film, and the characters played by Page, Levitt and Rao, do have a touch of the Basil Exposition about them. Even Pete Postlethwaite and Cillian Murphy, as dying father and grieving son, are similarly wasted. Once again, they exist merely as a sort of superbly tailored MacGuffin - the victims of the heist plot that propels the narrative. Only the superb Tom Hardy, through sheer force of personality, manages to carve out a memorable role for himself, stealing every scene that he’s in.

Still, I suppose that one shouldn’t begrudge Nolan the time setting up the intricate mechanics of Inception. There is something satisfying about the fact that, from what I can tell, the mechanics all hang together without any obvious holes in the logic. But for all the veneer of a sci-fi heist, let’s be honest, what we really care about – what drives our interest in the movie – is the central question of how someone so far steeped in the dream-world - in a dream within a dream within a dream – can tell the difference between the dream and reality. And, further, even if you could tell the difference, would you choose to live in the dream? In short, as my cousin Danny, conscious of this movie’s indebtedness to films like THE MATRIX put it, can you tell you’re living in a Matrix, and even if you could, would you choose to take the blue pill?

So, if the issues that Christopher Nolan is exploring aren’t particularly original, what makes this film worth watching? DP Wall Pfister’s beautiful cinematography; the elegant in-camera visual effects, so much more convincing that CGI; the wise-cracking Tom Hardy; and the intellectual puzzle at the heart of the film. All these things make it worth the price of entry. But to my mind, there are two genuine achievements. First, this is the first Nolan film where I feel he moved beyond being clever and technically accomplished to actually creating a relationship I cared about – that between Cobb and his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). I completely bought into their difficult relationship and felt that diCaprio had given one of his most convincing performances in a decade – Cotillard was typically brilliant. Her central dilemma and his reaction to it are heart-breaking. Second, and most importantly, Nolan manages to involve the audience in exactly the same paranoia that infects Cobb and Mal. He doesn’t so much show us how a mind can get lost in the narrow margins between dream and reality but take us there with his ambiguous and cleverly constructed final act.

Additional tags: Tom Berenger, Talulah Riley, Hans Zimmer, Wally Pfister, Lee Smith

INCEPTION is on release in the UK, Egypt, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Ukraine, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and Japan. It opens next week in Belgium, France, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, Austrlia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico and Sweden. It opens on July 29th in Argentina, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Austria, Poland, Romania and South Africa. It opens on August 6th in Brazil and Spain; on August 13th in Venezuela; and on August 24th in Greece. It opens in Italy on September 24th.

THE DARK KNIGHT - The Emperor's New Clothes

This review is replete with spoilers.

THE DARK KNIGHT opens with a suitably moody image of the Batman icon but soon cuts to a very modern, bright picture of the top of a skyscraper in a contemporary US city. It's as though Nolan wants to separate himself completely from Burton's urban gothic. Or maybe he just wants to show that a year after BATMAN BEGINS, Gotham has been cleaned up. So instead of the beautifully designed grunge, overland metros and grafitti of BEGINS, THE DARK KNIGHT looks like a sleek thriller. Indeed, the opening bank heist reminded me of INSIDE MAN more than BEGINS or the Burton movies. It was all very anonymous and rather disappointing.

Half an hour into the movie we get our first scene of The Joker having fun with emasculated Gotham mafiosi. Heath Ledger is captivating: a scene with a pencil is shockingly funny. Finally, I feel like I'm being entertained. I even overlook all his precious lip-smacking.

We then wander around for another twenty minutes. The familiar characters are introduced. Michael Caine and Lucius Fox are wise-cracking and wise respectively as Alfred and Lucius Fox. There's a lot of time-wasting in Hong Kong and some really rather nasty off-hand comments about buying American rather than Chinese. I really don't like the inference. Batman forcefully extradites a mafiosi money-launderer from Hong Kong and dumps him at the gate of Lieutenant Gordon. Gary Oldman - now there's a subtle performance! If anyone deserves praise it's Oldman. Just look at the flicker of a cheeky smile as he appraises Batman's gift. Later, look at him plead for the lives of his loved ones. Now there's real emotion. Contrast it with Maggie Gyllenhaal (an actress I have much respect for.) She never convinces as a lawyer or as a woman torn between two men. She has no chemistry with Aaron Eckhart's clean-cut crusading DA, Harvey Dent. She's even less convincing in her scenes with Bruce Wayne. Watch her tell him she'll be there for him. Could she be more non-chalant? She plays it like she's trying to remember where she put her keys.

Fifty minutes in and The Joker's back on the scene with a truly frightening window scene. We're back to the excitement. He's an anarchist and he wants us to play his game. He even teases us with shifting versions of his origins story. (A little rich from a director who just spent a whole film giving us Batman's!) Note that in my humble opinion you could have cut into this film at minute forty-five and not have missed a thing.

Then we're on again with all the crime-thriller shenanigans. Gordon and the Batman want to bring down the mafia via its money launderer so they take their eyes off The Joker. Bruce Wayne goes all CSI. Blah blah blah. The director attempts to pull the rug from underneath the audience a couple of times. We all figure out what's going on immediately. Like they'd let Gordon die. Of course, once we know he didn't die we know Rachel really has died. They couldn't pull it off twice. Let's stop dancing round each other and get to the action!

One hour and thirty minutes into this film we finally get a proper showdown with the only truly spectacular action sequence involving a truck flipping over.

One hour and forty five minutes into this film and we reach a natural end. It's truly brilliant. Dark, unresolved, nihilistic, The Joker's head out of the car window, laughing at us all. This is like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK only meaner.

Then we get another interminable forty-five minutes in which we basically get the origin story of Twoface, and a terribly rushed unwinding of his story. By this point, I'm fidgeting in my seat. I'm frustrated because Two-face's story should be more interesting than The Joker or BATMAN. After all, THE JOKER is an anarchist. There's no character development. Batman starts off conflicted and ends conflicted. He gets precious little screen time and he's just not that interesting here. But Harvey Dent could've been played like the fall of Michael Corleone. Except, Nolan shoe-horns his character arc into an unwanted epilogue rather than making it the strong start to the next movie. I esepcially disliked Two-face's make-up. The whole point about Batman is that the characters are normal people who are mentally disturbed. So Batman is just a man in a suit. The Joker is just a man with freakish scars and make-up. But Two-face looks so deformed he breaks through my willing suspension of disbelief. Less would've been more.

And, finally, what's with the crude attempt to get into the politics of The Patriot Act and the Ethics 101 practical philosophy class? The conversation between Batman and Lucius Fox about the ethics of wire-tapping to catch a terrorist is ham-fisted. It's as though Nolan is desperately trying to be political and of his time. But these sorts of political allegories are important and require a more profound treatment than a tacked on five minute scene.

Similarly, the philosophical dilemma with the two boats struck me as ridiculous. One boat is full of convicts: the other is full of ordinary citizens. Each boat has five minutes to blow the other one up or they both blow up. Nolan decides to have both the criminals and the citizens act with superlative integrity, despite a bit of whining from some of the people. How unrealistic is that? More to the point, it's completely out of keeping with the dark, subversive tone that he's trying to go for with the rest of the film. In fact, it's pure sentimental schmaltz. The Joker comes to spread anarchy and fear. But we good citizens won't play dice because, at heart, we love our fellow man. Please. The whole point of this film is that "with a few sticks of dynamite" The Joker can turn the most moral man in Gotham, Harvey Dent, into a pychopathic killer. Come on Nolan: make up your mind.

THE DARK KNIGHT isn't a terrible film but it is flawed. I didn't enjoy it except in brief flashes. It's overlong, and yet feels rushed. It has a brilliant cast, and yet feels poorly-acted. It's a comic book film but it films like a cliched movie thriller. Yes, Ledger is one of the highlights, but I've seen better performances this year. Indeed, I've seen arguably better performances in this film, not least that of Gary Oldman.

So, in the immortal words of PUBLIC ENEMY, Don't Believe The Hype.

THE DARK KNIGHT opened in Iceland, Argentina, Australia, Greece, Taiwan, Brazil, the US and Venezuela on the weekend of July 18th. It opens in Egypt, Italy, Nroway, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Turkey and the UK the weekend of July 25th. It opens in August in Belgiu,, Japan, France, Spain and Germany and opens in Russia on September 11th.

THE EDGE OF LOVE - Keira Knightley rises to mediocrity

Hard-drinking, womanising poet fucks wife and ex- in Welsh squalor. Cuckolded husband understandably pissed off at funding menage a trois while fighting WW2, returns with psychological trauma and loaded gun. Cillian Murphy phones in perf. as English cuckold; Matthew Rhys suitably charming as Dylan Thomas; Keira Knightley surprisingly not a disaster as The Ex, including plausible Welsh accent; Sienna Miller steals show as discarded wife despite complete lack of Irish accent. Highlight of film is close-up of Miller cryng, book-ending scene wherein she is betrayed. Other 100 minutes desperately dull despite visual flourishes.

THE EDGE OF LOVE is on release in Ireland and the UK. It opens in Australia in August and in New Zealand in October.

28 WEEKS LATER - wickedly brutal horror, but a plot with holes you could drive a horse and cart through

Day One. A mutant infection turns humans into slavering cannibalistic vicious Beasties. 28 DAYS LATER, Cillian Murphy emerged from St Thomas Hospital and wandered onto an empty Westminster Bridge, down the Strand and Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill to St Paul's Cathedral. In Danny Boyle's cult horror hit of 2002, much worse carnage was to follow. But nothing was so frightening as seeing London - specifically the London streets outside my house - decimated by disease.

When a small British movie takes six times its budget at the US box office, you can bet a franchise has been born. The first installment opens as the last film ends with Robert Carlyle's character giving in to the survival instinct and abandoning his wife to the infected. It's a truly horrific, shocking, emotionally brutal and bloody opening to a movie that uses handheld 16 mil and quick editing to keep the adrenaline up.

28 WEEKS LATER and the character works as a janitor in the Isle of Dogs - a secure area run by the US army. He has also been reunited with his children who were conveniently on holiday in Spain when the outbreak began. Cue a lot of traumatic equivocation about why mum didn't make it. There then follows a chain of events involving this family that provokes another outbreak of the infection. Cue lots of genuinely scary chase scenes in which Beasties and Britons are gunned down by US troops, the Isle of Dogs is firebombed and North London gassed. The pace is unrelenting, the score loud and monotonous and the effect exhausting. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (INTACTO) certainly knows how to scare the willies out of us with a bit of sleight of hand and a night-vision scope.

As far as it goes, this all makes for a decent horror movie. You have the genuine blood and guts and scares that are often missing from modern horror flicks. Best of all you have real acting and real emotional payoffs. Carlyle is of course brilliant, but the two kids, the delightfully named Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton, are also good. What it doesn't make for is a complex political allegory as I had been led to expect by some reviewers. This hardly matters. Sure, the US army runs the "camp", but frankly, given the storyline, you'd have to have a foreign power sorting stuff out. Britain is, after all, decimated.

But when the dust settled and I looked back on the film, I felt dissatisfied with a number of character and plot implausibilities.* As a result, while I had a brilliantly bad time watching 28 WEEKS LATER, it falls short of the originality and brilliance of the first film.

28 WEEKS LATER is on release in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan, the UK and the US. It opens in Malaysia on May 17th, in Estonia on May 18th, in Brazil and Mexico on June 1st, in Argentina and Bolivia on June th and in Spain on June 29th. It opens in Germany on July 19th, in Finland, Italy and Norway on September 7th and in Belgium, France and the Netherlands on September 19th.

*SPOILERS FOLLOW.........Why do apparently sensible kids decide to disregard common sense and orders to go into London? How come Janitor Dad has access to even the most high-level secure parts of District 1? How come Beastie-Mum has no guards? Did Beastie Mum allow Janitor Dad to kiss her deliberately. If so, it was pretty dumb considering she was bound to be his first victim. How did Wembley get built? Why in a movie previously so scrupulous about London topography do the heroes go from Regents Park to Wembley by way of Charing Cross Station? How come Beasties couldn't cross the channel first time round?..........

SUNSHINE - Utilitarianism 101

SUNSHINE is for the most part a beautifully designed but predictable sci-fi movie. Some time in a future imagined by Alex Garland (THE BEACH), mankind is about to freeze to death as the Sun burns out. A small crew of astronauts is sent to deliver a nuclear payload that will somehow cause the Sun to be reborn (there goes the Science!), thus saving all of mankind. But the Icharus never made it. And so, seven years later (biblical?!) another eight man crew is sent to nuke the sun in Icharus II. They comprise: Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis (WHALE RIDER), Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans (FANTASTIC FOUR), Troy Garrity (MILWAUKEE, MINNESOTA), Hiroyuki Sanada (THE WHITE COUNTESS), Benedict Wong (A COCK AND BULL STORY) and Michelle Yeoh (MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA). And yes, Icharus II has a nice soothing HAL-like voice.

Director, Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING, 28 DAYS LATER), and cinematographer Alwin H Kuchler combine to create some stunning visuals of space stations, passing planets and solar glare. And as things start to go wrong with the mission, they successfully ratchet up the tension. Of course, as the ethical questions and risk-return trade-offs are argued over by the crew, you feel like you're back in Ethics prelims. Heck, that's half the fun of sci-fi! And yes, it is marginally annoying that you can tell who'll last longest by who's the most beautiful and/or bank-able. And I must also admit that not once, not twice, but three times, at least half of the full-house at the National Film Theatre were tittering at unintentionally funny lines.

But for all that, SUNSHINE was a really great sci-fi movie (nicely acted, imagined and realised) until about half an hour into the end, when it turned into another sort of film entirely. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland seriously dropped the ball, and the fact that it still looked stunning and was edited in an innovative way couldn't stop me thinking they'd miscalculated badly. Shame.

SUNSHINE goes on release in Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Jamaica, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore and Taiwan on April 5th; in Iceland, Latvia, Mexico and the UK on April 6th; in Belgium and France on April 11th; in Argentina, Australia and Italy on April 12th; in Brazil, Norway and Poland on April 13th; in Japan on April 19th; in Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and Slovakia on April 19th; in Finland, Spain, and Sweden on April 20th and in Estonia on April 27th. It does not open in the US until September 14th.

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY - intelligent political drama

Ken Loach's new film, THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY, is set in Ireland just after World War One. The country is ruled by the English and the Irish population is brutally surpressed by the Black and Tans - English soldiers who have themselves been brutalised by the "Great War". In such a time, ordinary folk are politicised. The movie focuses on two brothers, Damien and Teddy, who join the Republican movement. They become what we might now call insurgents. They shoot English soldiers point black. Damien, played by Cillian Murphy, is the heart and soul of the movie. He is painfully aware of his slide into brutality and his ethical compromises. Hating the tasks he feels he has to perform in order to bring about a free Ireland, he naturally feels betrayed by the treaty that the Republican leaders eventually sign with the British. While Teddy sees the concessions to an Irish parliament as a start - a temporary holding position on the road to complete freedom - Damien cannot stomach the idea that Irish MPs should swear an oath to the British king. The idea of sitting and waiting for greater freedom does not sit well with him given that the Irish poor are literally starving to death. And so the fight goes on. But now, the Irish who want to enforce the ratified treaty and have some kind of peace are fighting the Irish who want complete political and economic freedom or nothing.

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY is a wonderful piece of film-making. It tackles sensitive political material without feeling dogmatic or didactic or self-satisfied about its own intelligence. The movie provides genuine emotional and intellectual insight into the current political landscape. Best of all, it never sacrifices narrative for politics and the characters are never ciphers. Their actions and motivations may set up a fascinating political conflict, but they always seem genuine. So, while we have lengthy scenes in which characters simply sit in a room and debate politics, the audience' interest does not flag. For we are, by this point, passionately engaged in the debate because of our attachment to the protagonists. Credit for this must go to the screenplay by Paul Laverty, who has worked with Loach on other political dramas, not least the outstanding flick, BREAD AND ROSES. The movie also has a uniformly excellent cast, of whom Cillian Murphy is perhaps the best known.

Overall, I cannot recommend this film highly enough. It is satisfying both as a historic drama and as a political meditation. However, in fairness, if you have no interest in politics you will probably be bored rigid.

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY premiered at Cannes 2006 where it won the Palme d'Or - the highest honour. It is now showing in the UK and plays in France from August 23rd and Australia from September 14th.

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO - find love, look beautiful, dodge the IRA

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO is another cracking film from Neil Jordan, director of The Crying Game, The End of the Affair, Interview with a Vampire, and the cult-classic, In the Company of Wolves. Covering some of the same thematic territory as The Crying Game - notably political violence and sexual identity - BREAKFAST ON PLUTO is altogether sweeter, and happier in tone. However, alongside the moments of hysterical laughter are interludes of shocking brutality. It is a strength of the film that it can move seamlessly between the two extremes - from brutality to farce - summing up the twin aspects of the "Northern Irish troubles".

The film is an extensive re-working of the novel of the same name by Patrick McCabe, whose work Neil Jordan has previously adapted for the screen. The novel tells the story of Patrick "Kitten" Brady. Kitten was abandoned by his mother on the doorstep of a Catholic Church in Ireland and grew up during the 1970s. All he wants is to be loved and to look pretty. To that end, he goes to London to try and find the mother that abandoned him. On the way, he gets involved with the IRA, the British police, magicians, prostitutes, and other sundry ne'er-do-wells. But he never looses his identity, no matter how brutalising current events.

Cillian Murphy's central perfomance as Patrick "Kitten" Brady is worthy of its Golden Globe nomination. But while his role does provoke belly-laughter, I would have put his performance in the Drama category rather than in the Musical/Comedy category. This is because Kitten is not funny in order to make us laugh. She is funny because if she didn't laugh she would "start crying and never stop". This is as much a story about survival. At the violent hands of the IRA and the British police, Kitten never drops her trans-sexual identity, and the farce of it all shames both the IRA and the rozzers into backing down.

Neil Jordan commented in the Q&A session after the screening that he makes so many films about trans-sexuals because identity was a such a key issue growing up in Ireland. You were defined as a nationalist, a republican, a Catholic, a revisionist - and these tags were inescapable. By contrast, Patrick Brady has created his own identity - which happens to be that of a girl called Kitten. Once in that character, he is never "on" or "off" but inhabits it wholesale. Like Tommy the Clown, he wears his face-paint to the funeral.

In addition, one could read this film as a damning indictment of the war on terror, and on the terrorist project itself. Not that Jordan claims to have made an overtly political film, but he is conscious any films with political over-tones released in the US is now seen as a searing indictment of the Bush administration. Jordan draws a parallel between the culture wars in the US right now and Thatcherite Britain. In the '80s, any vaguely intelligent movie was a searing indictment of ruthless capitalism. He claims his film does not fall into such a narrow political categorisation.

What else is there to like about this film? Plenty. Wonderful production design that takes us back to the '70s on a limited budget. Perfectly constructed cameos from Stephen Rea, Brendan Gleeson, the Wombles, and somewhat improbably, Bryan Ferry. A break-out supporting actress performance by Ruth Negga as Kitten's best friend. And finally, a great sound-track full of 70s classics - most notably the Harry Nilson song - "You're breaking my heart / You're tearing it apart / So f*ck you." This sound-track is more than just a Cameron Crowe-style nostalgic mix-tape: rather, it is a soundtrack that amplifies the story at every turn.

Not that there aren't flaws with this movie. For a start, the picaresque format sometimes leaves us wondering when we'll get back on track toward Kitten's goal of finding his mum. There are a couple of segments that could have been edited out with little harm to the movie, but then again, it is a brave director, who having hired Bryan Ferry and Stephen Rea, will leave them on the cutting room floor. So, overall, while not up there with Brokeback, there are few better films currently showing at your cineplex. Go check it out. And remember you're a Womble.

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO was scheduled for release at Cannes in 2005, but wasn't ready until Telluride and Toronto in September. It went on limited release in the US in November and is released in the UK on the 13th January. There is no scheduled release date for Germany, Austria or France.

BATMAN BEGINS - a greatful cinema-going universe breathes a sigh of relief

After the crime against cinema that was BATMAN AND ROBIN, the cinema-going universe feared that the Warner Brothers Batman franchise was dead. At the London premiere of his flick GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, George Clooney was still apologising for the debacle, and it has been eight years! So it was with heart-felt thanks that the world received Christopher Nolan's Batman prequel, BATMAN BEGINS. Admittedly, you can never completely get rid of the camp under-tones - this is a full-grown man dressed up in a rubber suit after all - but Nolan has managed to create an authentic, multi-dimensional superhero. Here we have, brilliantly acted, superbly scripted, all the back story you ever need and told with all the psychological authenticity you would expect from the director who gave us the wonderful thriller, MEMENTO.

Christopher Nolan gets so much right, and it is so great to have Batman back on his feet, that it is tempting for viewers and critics alike to forgive the movie its flaws. But, there is no denying that while this is a massive improvement on BATMAN AND ROBIN, it is still not up to the "original" Tim Burton 1989 BATMAN. While the key cast members do a great job, especially Gary Oldman as the future Commissioner Gordon, Cillian Murphy as The Scarecrow and Christan Bale as Bruce Wayne, you get the feeling that Michael Caine is on autopilot as Alfred the Butler. Katie Holmes is also rather anaemic as the love interest and has reportedly been off'ed for the next movie in the franchise. However, the fatal flaw for me was Christopher Nolan's complete inability to direct action sequences. The mangled, over-edited car chases gave me motion sickness and entirely failed to thrill. In this post-Matrix world, shoddy action sequences are simply unforgiveable. So, while I am hugely indebted to Nolan for resuscitating the bat, Burton's BATMAN remains the high water mark of the franchise.

BATMAN BEGINS is available on region 1 DVD and was released on region 2 DVD this week.

RED EYE - thrills and spills at thirty thousand feet

RED EYE is a taught thriller that provides the requisite gasps of horror, chases, fights and finally a schmaltzy ending. It doesn't tinker with the genre, or have pretensions beyond its basic mission, which is to hook us into a scary story, and watch it play out amidst an atmosphere of escalating tension. The set up is that Lisa Reisert is the manager of a hotel in Miami where an important US politician is going to stay. Nasty terrorists want him moved to a specific suite wherein it will be easier to assassinate him. To this end, they kidnap her father and, through their plant in the airplane seat next to her, force her to call her hotel and have the VIP guest moved. A large part of the movie takes place in the confines of the plane, and adds to the claustrophobia and rising fear at the limited options available to our heroine. But what really makes this film special is the superlative acting. The heroine is played by Rachel McAdams. She has been great in a bunch of mediocre movies, and I can't wait to see her get her teeth into a meatier role. The charming young man on the plane is played by Cillian Murphy - an Irish actor of great talent - notably in 28 Days Later, Batman Begins and the forthcoming Breakfast on Pluto. Finally, we have heavyweight Brian Cox in a brief part as Lisa's dad. I really can't fault RED EYE. At under an hour and a half it is a perfectly crafted thriller. It just goes to show that in this age of spoofs, post-modern ironies and overly worked editing, if you stick to the basics you can still turn out a great movie.

RED EYE went on release in the US in August and goes on release in the UK today. It hits Germany and Austria next week, and reaches France on October 26th 2006.