SEPTEMBER 5*****

SEPTEMBER 5 is a stunning film depicting the horrific and murderous attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. Where Kevin Macdonald's superb and comprehensive documentary ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER gives us all the angles and the whole story, this new film tells the story from the perspective of the ABC sports journalists who were in the Olympic Village.  As it happened, this was the first Olympics that took advantage of satellite broadcasting to bring live coverage to the world.  As a result, this was the first terrorist attack broadcast live to the world - well before Mumbai or 9-11.  And it created both iconic images which are used as live in this film - but also deep moral questions about how far live coverage enables and recruits for terrorists.

As the film opens we are in the dark, claustrophobic ABC sports-room recreated by director Tim Fehlbaum in precise detail.  The journalists hear shots fired and suddenly realise they are in the midst of an attack.  They have to figure out how to wheel heavy camera equipment out to the village to shoot footage of the apartments where the Olympians are being held.  And they have to wrestle satellite slots to broadcast what they have.  In a powerful and pivotal performance, Leonie Benesch (THE WHITE RIBBON) plays a young German journalist who has to become an impromptu translator, listening in to police radio and local news reports.  Meanwhile, the always brilliant Peter Sarsgaard plays the Sports-journo boss who has to wrestle with his home news team who argue that mere sports reporters are out of their depth, and retain control of "his" story.  

There are two iconic and notorious moments. The first is when the journalists realise that the terrorists are actually watching their footage, and can see German cops attempting a rescue operation, because no-one switched off the TV feed to the apartment block. It's then that we get that iconic image of the hooded terrorist looking out of the apartment window and straight down the barrel of the TV camera.  The second iconic and notorious moment is when an ABC journalist (played brilliantly here by John Magaro) chooses to relay an unconfirmed report that all the sportsmen have been released alive and well. He wants the scoop. Simple as. 

Kudos to Fehlbaum, his production team and in particular his editor Hansjoerg Weissbrich, for creating a film of such taut, spare, suspense and high stakes.  The look and feel of it take you right into 1972 and into the fast-paced need for judgment.  It gives you sympathy for real people making tough choices in uncharted territory. Most of all, I loved the way in which the real footage of on-air broadcasts was seamlessly woven into the fictional recreation. So you can see Magaro's character speaking apparently to an on-air presenter and that presenter relaying the information he has been given. It's a masterclass of editorial brilliance.

SEPTEMBER 5 is rated R and has a running time of 95 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and Telluride 2024. It was released in the USA on January 17th and in the UK on February 6th.

THE LOST DAUGHTER**** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 8

Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut is a taut, superbly rendered, character-led drama featuring a bravura performance from Olivia Colman. It is faithfully based on the brutal novella of the same name by Elena Ferrante - a book that dared to ask what happens to a smart woman who dares to throw off the shackles of motherhood.

The protagonist is Leda - a middle aged literary professor who treats herself to an extended seaside holiday. She enjoys her routine of calm reflection and seems self-assured. But this calm is disrupted when her seaside idyll is disrupted by a rowdy working class family with an imperious attitude to their surroundings. 

Motherhood looms large over the film. Leda becomes fascinated with a young pretty mother, Nina (Dakota Johnson), and her wilful child.  Nina seems to be stuck in a domineering marriage to her small time criminal husband. She is also steamrollered by his family, not least his sister Callie (Dagmara Domincyk) who resents Nina for getting pregnant so easily when she is only now pregnant in her early 40s. Even Nina's daughter is a mother to her cheap plastic doll. And when both child and doll go missing, Leda rescues both but somehow cannot seem to give the doll back, despite the child's ongoing distress at its lost.

It becomes clear that the doll triggers a painful and undigested memory for Leda, of abandoning her own two small daughters when they were the same age as Nina's daughter. Though happy in marriage and motherhood in theory, her inability to continue her academic work and the fact that her husband (Jack Farthing) puts his career first, becomes suffocating. A chance encounter with two travellers who have thrown off the shackles of bourgeois expectations inspires Leda. And more significantly, one of them (Alba Rorhwacher) takes a sample of Leda's writing and gives it to an influential academic, effectively launching Leda's career. It's joyous to see the young Leda (Jessie Buckley) simply enjoy the act of ordering room service and eat it in peace and quiet. 

What the novel and film ask is what this means for Leda as a mother. Yes she is oppressed by motherhood, but she also does love her daughters. What sacrifices is she willing to make for career versus family? And what is the emotional cost of freedom?  In seeing Nina she sees another life lived, and Nina sees that in Leda too. Both are flirting with each other as an alternative path.  At one point Leda describes herself as an "unnatural mother" but I suspect most mothers feel that same frustration and oppression at various points of their life. It seems to be that these feelings are natural but largely unspoken.

Maggie Gyllenhaal gets so much right in this adaptation, starting with casting. Olivia Colman manages to convey so much without a word being spoken. Childlike joy at a happy moment on the beach. Anger and frustration at loud intruders. And Jessie Buckley matches her in quality to a tee. I also love how Gyllenhaal interrogates what it means to be a single middle-aged woman, where everyone feels it's their right to ask your age, and to intrude into your life - to walk into your flat and start cooking for you - to make you move from your seat to accommodate a family (because families trump single women).... And then the endless indignity of being a strong woman forced to face your fragility in a misogynistic society, from Nina's brooding husband menacing Leda as she tries to drive away, to noisy kids in a cinema who only shut up when a man tells them to.

This is a film full of emotional and physical menace and shows clearly the costs and challenges of living a full independent life as a woman where you fulfil all your potential. I guess my  only criticism of the film is that is shows an ending which is somewhat cleaner than the ambivalent version in the novel. Maybe Gyllenhaal is asking if we believe it? I felt it was just a little too tidy relative to the Ferrante. 

THE LOST DAUGHTER is rated R and has a running time of 121 minutes. It won Best Screenplay at Venice, and also played Telluride and the BFI London Film Festival. It will open in cinemas on December 17th and on Netflix on December 31st. 

JACKIE

JACKIE is a mesmerising portrait of Jackie Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of her husband, President John F Kennedy.  It attempts to give us an intimate portrait of one of the most recognisable and yet most enigmatic women in history at both her most vulnerable and strong moments - when she's both dealing with her personal shock and grief, but also struggling to protect the legacy of her husband and to shape his place in history. We are left with a picture of a woman who is intelligent, fierce in her protective instincts, but not above sly manipulation - Jackie as a political player then, equal in her influence to Bobby Kennedy, and a match for LBJ and even General de Gaulle.  We get Jackie famously refusing to change out of her blood-stained clothes for the cameras as well as the less well known fight to have an Abraham Lincoln style full state funeral. But at the same time, we are given a tragic portrayal of just how quickly the machinery of power, rightly but savagely, moves to protect the new President, and just how quickly the old President's wife and children are cast aside.  

Screen-writer Noah Oppenheim's choice to focus on Jackie and to make JFK, who killed him, his actual politics, almost incidental is novel.  But so too is Chilean director Pablo Larrain's decision to tell the story using a complex non-linear structure.  We move back and forth from the assassination to the autopsy to the swearing in to the funeral arrangements to the interview Jackie gives to a journalist where she creates the myth of Camelot.  But even this dizzying back and forth is intercut with flashbacks to Jackie guiding TV viewers through the White House in meticulously re-created awkwardly staged black and white footage, not to mention White House recitals and balls. The vivid primary colours of the times of Camelot - Jackie in stunning ballgowns dancing with her prince, make a stark contrast with the dun-coloured scenes of Jackie alone in the White House after his assassination, and sitting in the dreary rain-soaked country house to give her interview.  Kudos to Larrain and editor Sebastian Sepulveda for managing to pull off this complex construction while but not losing the viewer. 

BLACK MASS - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Six

BLACK MASS reminds me a lot of THE PROGRAM. Both are big glossy biopics on topics I am fascinated by, whose source books I have read, and whose cast and crew I admire. I found both to be well-made but ultimately rather dull linear paint-by-numbers narratives.  And in both cases, the real reason to watch are the outstanding acting performances.  In the case of BLACK MASS, that's Johnny Depp as the infamous South Boston gangster Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger and Joel Edgerton as his childhood friend FBI Agent John Connolly.

The story of BLACK MASS is so messed up you couldn't make it up, and speaks volumes about the incestuous corrupt politics of Boston in the 70s and 80s.  In what other universe of normality could Billy Bulger rise to be State Senator while at the same time openly consorting with his elder brother, a known felon?  And what kind of messed up world does their mutual childhood friend decide to co-opt Jimmy as an informant, so that while he and the FBI take down the mafia in a Rico case, Jimmy can move in on their territory?

NIGHT MOVES - LFF 2013 - Day Eight

As some of you may remember, this blog used to be called Movie Reviews for Greedy Capitalist Bastards, because I am one, and I have no truck with pretentious nonsense, vegetarians, and hippies.  So Kelly Reichardt's new flick NIGHT MOVES, fell right into my lap!  It shows you how do-gooding radical lefties can be as self-serving and arbitrarily violent as they would have usgreedy  capitalists be.  It's just that we own it!

So, in this movie three radical tree huggers decide to blow up a damn because this is going to supposedly disrupt the water supply and teach us ipad users a lesson or two.  The first hour of the flick basically plays as an anarchist revolutionary's handbook and I could definitely have done with a faster pace and more thrilling tense feel. It's always the way.  Indie directors think they can do genre, but genre movies are hard, and shouldn't be condescend to.  Making a taught thriller is not easy. 

Reichardt is on safer ground in the second half of the film where he can do his trademark interior exploration of psychology and mood.  Once the deed is done we see problems open up.  The preppie girl, Dena (Dakota Fanning) starts to feel guilty and blab.  Peter Sardgaard's Harmon becomes all too predictably, the manipulative sinister voice on the end of a phone.  That leaves us with the real  emotional and psychological heart of the film: Jesse Eisenberg's Josh.  His performance is so nuanced and moving in the final twenty minutes of the film that it elevates a rather second rate thriller into something altogether finer.   

NIGHT MOVES has a running time of 112 minutes.  NIGHT MOVES played Venice Toronto and London 2013. It will be released in France on March 5th 2014.

LOVELACE

The weird thing about LOVELACE is that it isn't a film about the porn industry. It isn't BOOGIE NIGHTS.  It's a film about domestic abuse. It's WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT. And like that Tina Turner biopic, this Linda Lovelace biopic is rather melodramatic and grim and over-wrought - it moves you, and features a very good leading performance, but it it often feels like a TV afternoon movie.

So for anyone under a proverbial rock, Linda Lovelace was the 1970s porn star of DEEP THROAT, the commercial success that popularised a certain type of fellatio and made it chic to take a date to a porno.  She achieved a cross-over fame, but not success, and for a brief moment was a pop-culture icon.  However, she later wrote a book claiming that her abusive husband had long since been pimping her out, even forcing her to star in animal porn, and that she made DEEP THROAT under duress. She never saw a dime, eventually found the courage to leave him, and tried to make some kind of normal life as a wife, mother and anti-porn campaigner.  This story has been told before, in Linda's own best-selling book, Ordeal, as well as in the documentary INSIDE DEEP THROAT.

In this movie, writer Andy Bellin sticks closely to Ordeal but definitely leaves out a lot of the harsher material concerning the early years of hooking, the bestiality - which apparently, shockingly, involved Hugh Heffner - and the weird affair with Sammy Davis Junior.  Bellin focuses on the story of domestic abuse and uses a clever conceit to contrast this with the public image of Linda as a smiling, willing porn star.  So the first half of the film shows us the headlines - innocent naive loved-up Linda trips and falls into porn, has a blast, becomes famous! We then revisit those same events and see her husband Chuck Traynor's manipulation, abuse and coercion. In this view, Linda did porn under the threat of a gun, with bruises on her legs, and the crew knew about it. 

The resulting movie plays as a deeply affecting melodrama.  Amanda Seyfriend is utterly convincing and utterly desperate as Linda. Peter Sarsgaard seems typecast but efficient in his portrayal as Traynor, effectively amping up his performance from AN EDUCATION. The real scene stealer is Sharon Stone as Linda's mother - almost unrecognisable in her ageing domineering prude role. She has very little screen time and has to do some horrible things but we always understand her complicated motivations.  The rest of the cast just feels like a parade of famous faces in over-the-top 70s costumes - and this becomes, at times, distracting. Did we really need James Franco as the Hef, or Chloe Sevigny? As for the direction, other than the conceit of the folded back narrative, it's pretty pedestrian, but I did like DP than choosing to use a kind of sun-bleached 16mm look to give the movie some nostalgia contrasted with the higher-def look of the later "real" scenes. 

You can hear a podcast review of this movie here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

LOVELACE has a running time of 93 minutes and has been rated R in the USA and 18 in the UK for strong sex and sex references and domestic abuse.

LOVELACE played Sundance and Berlin 2013 and is currently on release in the USA, Canada, Croatia, the UK and Ireland. It opens in Brazil and Taiwan on August 30th, in Estonia on September 6th, in the Netherlands on September 19th, in Denmark on November 21st and in Sweden on November 29th. 

ROBOT & FRANK

ROBOT & FRANK is a delicate film that breaks your heart, makes you think, and all with the lightest of touch.  It's also an astonishingly assured debut feature from Jake Schreier (director) and Christopher D Ford (screenplay).  Set in the near future, Frank Langella plays a retired cat burgler called Frank, afflicted by Alzheimer's but charmingly no-nonsense and wily.  His concerned son Harrison (James Marsden) buys Frank a Robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) to get him onto a routine and make sure he eats right.  Frank is wary at first, but eventually warms to the Robot who provides him with companionship, and indeed, facilitates a return to crime - ripping off their smarmy yuppie neighbours.  

The movie works on many levels.  At its most obvious, it's a loose sci-fi film, although those viewers looking for detailed applications of the laws of robotics per Asimov will be disappointed. Instead, the film is more concerned with the emotional implications of forming an attachment to a robot, and plays more like the most intelligent buddy-movie you've ever seen.  All this despite the fact that Robot is always reminding Frank that the friendship can't be real because Robot is, well, just a robot.  The sad fact remains that for Frank, Robot is a much more real emotional presence than his distant son or irritatingly right-on daughter (Liv Tyler). There's also a light critique of urban yuppies moving to the country, an a melancholy lament for the printed word that touched a chord with me.

Frank Langella gives a charismatic central performance as Frank. He's charming and grouchy all at once, but never in that mean grinchy Clint Eastwood way.  He always keeps us guessing as to how much Frank really knows what's happening, and how much his Alzheimer's is taking over.  I really loved Peter Sarsgaard as Robot too.  He has a melancholy tone to his voice that's just perfect - there's empathy if you want to read it that way, but neutrality if you don't.  I cared about the two of them, even though Robot was telling me not too. Special mention too for Susan Sarandon who gives perhaps the most challenging performance in a small role as a librarian that Frank befriends. 

Overall, ROBOT & FRANK is one of those surprising rare birds - a fragile movie that wears its deep thinking lightly and creates memorable characters and stirs deep emotions. I'm not ashamed to say that in two deeply poignant scenes near the end of the film, it got a little dusty in the theatre.

ROBOT & FRANK played Sundance 2012 where Jake Schreier won the Alfred P Sloan Feature Film Prize, and Sitges 2012 where he won the Audience Award for Best Feature Film.  It was released earlier this year in the USA, Canada, France, Kosovo, Kuwait, Taiwan, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. It opens in Hong Kong on January 31st; in Portugal on March 7th; in the UK on March 8th; and in Spain on May 24th. 

ROBOT & FRANK has a 89 minute running time and was rated PG-13 in the USA. 

GREEN LANTERN - the fifth rule of cinema: all green superheroes suck big honky ass

The Green Lantern strikes me as a remarkably anachronistic, even parochial, name for a superhero, considering that it's meant to have been invented by a bunch of super-intelligent Nietzchean aliens, who police the world with their Green Lantern corps officers powered by the energy of Will. I mean, can we take seriously any super-hero who has a magic ring (my precious!) powered by an old-school lantern - whose special power is basically manifesting his imagination as kids toys and power-tools? A superhero so crappy that his friends see right through his mask to his real identity? A superhero whose evil nemesis is basically a mean-looking Cloud, and whose human enemy basically looks like a weedy version of The Elephant Man? Colour me unimpressed.

And what can we say about the translation from comic book to screen? Well, sadly not much. Ryan Reynolds is certainly buff, but the screenplay doesn't take advantage of his talent for comedy, or of his genuine acting chops, as last seen in BURIED. Blake Lively, so impressive in THE TOWN, is limpid as his love interest, Carole Ferris, and about as believable as a test pilot as Jessica Biel in STEALTH. Tim Robbins is a caricature, Angela Bassett is under-used, Mark Strong, as Sinestro, looks like some camp Flash Gordon throwback, and as for Peter Sarsgaard as The Elephant Man, full marks for effort, but he chews up the scenery like he's in JURASSIC PARK.

GREEN LANTERN fails on every level. The plot is simplistic and predictable; the acting wooden; the special effects goofy (despite alleged millions spent on the CGI green suit); the action set-pieces unengaging. I didn't give a crap about any of it. And the tragedy is that we KNOW all these actors can act, and we KNOW, having watched X-MEN:FIRST CLASS, that origins movies that grapple with big ethical questions about the use and abuse of superpowers can be genuinely profound. I blame Martin Campbell, sometime BOND director. He looks like he was overwhelmed by his first big CGI action block-buster, and never really had the balls to bring some subtlety to the script. And the depiction of both the aliens and their perfect planet also looks like a lo-rent throwback - production design so goofy and unimpressive that kids were laughing at the alien Guardians in the screening I attended.

GREEN LANTERN is on release in the UK, US, New Zealand, Belarus, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Canada, India, Ireland, Poland and Qatar. It opens on June 23rd in Armenia, on June 30th in Argentina, on July 17th in Azerbaijan, on July 22nd in Japan and on July 29th in Belgium. Germany, Estonia, Spain and Sweden. It opens on August 5th in Australia, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway. It opens on August 10th in France, on August 11th in Hungary, on August 19th in Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay and Portugal. It opens on August 26th in Turkey and on August 31st in Italy.

London Film Fest Day 7 - AN EDUCATION

AN EDUCATION is a British coming-of-age drama set in the swinging sixties, based on the memoirs of the British journalist Lynn Barber. It's essentially the story of an intelligent young girl swapping a place at Oxford (and a conventional life) with her dream of being an urban sophisticate, in the arms of charming man (Peter Sarsgaard). As I was attending another screening, Our Gmunden Correspondent took my ticket. Here are his thoughts:

"Just a few thoughts on An Education.

Yes it was nice. The film is a fine period drama on the clash of bourgeois and bohemian life in the early sixties, expressed in the ambivalent experiences of young Jenny, coming of age. There is everything a good film needs to have, a perfect script, great set design, catchy music, and, above all, impeccable performances of a dream cast (even if it sometimes felt a bit overacted, meaning that the actors seemed more to enjoy themselves in showing off their great talent and skill than actually embodying a persona; but good, no doubt). It is entertaining and a pleasure to watch and to listen to. If that's what we are looking for in a film, mission accomplished, all good. If we are setting higher standards, want to see revelations and revolutions in filmmaking, it seems like a little etude, do everything you are expected to do and you will get a good movie, which is not more than the sum of its parts, rather less even. It would be worth looking the flick just to hear the actors talk, devour the great sets and sounds, and accomplish the perfect editing, yet there is something missing. It lacks the subtlety of showing the inbetweens of lifestyles, that there is grey zone between good and bad, between the deeds society demands and the pleasures the individual needs. To cut it short: Watch it, enjoy it, don't think about it too much. Full stop."

AN EDUCATION played Sundance 2009 where John de Boorman won the Cinematography Award and Lone Scherfih won the Audience Award. It also played Berlin, Sydney, Brisbane, Toronto and Helsinki 2009. It is currently on release in New Zealand, the USA, Australia and Israel. It opens next week in the UK. It opens in February 2010 in the Netherlands and Germany and opens in April in Norway.

ORPHAN – Who thinks this shit up?

Orphan isn’t a horror movie. It isn’t scary. It tries to be, it tries desperately.

I’m not saying Orphan is a bad film – it passes the time and keeps the audience engaged and vaguely interested. The characters aren’t wholly unbelievable, the script is decent, it’s not gratuitous or unnecessarily gory. But it’s not scary – and that leaves you asking: what is it then?

Is it a psychological thriller? The character development isn’t strong enough for that. Is it an examination of paranoia and fear in a dysfunctional marriage? It’s not deep enough for that.

No, this film is a hodge-podge. It’s a kinda original but ultimately failed attempt by Jaume Collet-Serra, in his first major directorial release, to combine the two major plot-lines of all good horror films: the evil child and the usurping, jealous female intruder. It’s sort of “Children of the Corn” meets “Hand that rocks the cradle” – it tries to play into the two most basic fears of womanhood – your children being in danger, and your husband being stolen.

Sadly the combination is ultimately ridiculous – you find yourself actually laughing at the climactic scenes – the resolution is ultimately unsatisfying because you just don’t believe anyone would think of making a plot that silly.

In some ways, it’s a big missed opportunity. Had the film firmly opted for psychological thriller rather than falling between stools – it could have been strong. The themes of marital infidelity, suspicion, alcoholism, child neglect, paranoia, paedophilia, and personality disorders are genuinely dark and deeply disturbing. But the film doesn’t have the balls to take a chance on these and run with them – and ultimately cops out and becomes yet another 2-dimensional shock-flick.

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun – I did. It passed the time, and was mildly entertaining. Just don’t get your hopes up for a fright or for intellectual satisfaction. It delivers neither.

ORPHAN is on release in the US, UK, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Ireland, Panama, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and South Africa. It opens in September in Malaysia, Serbia, Brazil, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, India, Argentina, Greece, Slovakia, Poland and Japan. It opens in October in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Russia, Iceland, Spain, Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and Portugal. It opens in November in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and in December in Belgium.

ELEGY - intelligent, emotionally brutal drama

ELEGY is a well-made, brilliantly acted, intelligent and moving drama by Spanish director Isabel Coixet and based on a novel by Philip Roth. It stars Ben Kingsley as an ageing academic with a penchant for sleeping with his students. More seriously, he has devoted his life to becoming truly independent, at the expense of his relationship with his son and a certain loneliness. The professor starts an affair with a stunning young student (Penelope Cruz). He is mesmerised by her beauty and frightened by the fact that he will never truly possess her. His flaws are to objectify her - think of her as unknowable - and to assume that she will leave him. This last is fatal. She is, in fact, remarkably self-assured, and prepared to brave society's scorn by introducing her older lover to her conservative family. *He* is the one who lacks faith, breaking her heart in the process. This act, so true to life, comes roughly half way into the film and the remainder of the movie is about how he comes to terms with his decision, his relationship with his son, and his relationship with the girl. There are no epiphanies or neat endings, but genuine character development and brutal emotional encounters.

Ben Kingsley gives a nuanced performance and has a real rapport with his unjudgmental best friend (Dennis Hopper) and, finally, with his son (Peter Sarsgaard). But the lynchpin of the film, and the real achievement, is that the relationship between Kinglsey and Cruz is utterly believable. We believe that they both find each other attractive and have a complicated, evolving relationship, despite the age difference. Cruz, in particular is superb as the student. Watch her reaction in the key episode at the centre of the film, and feel the tragedy of a photo-shoot near the end of the film. It's an award-winning performance. In addition, I would single out Patricia Clarkson for praise in her cameo role as a self-assured business woman. It's always a pleasure to see an older woman portrayed on screen as successful and sexually attractive.

ELEGY played Berlin 2008 and was released in Spain earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK, US and Canada and opens next weekend in Austria, Germany and Russia. It opens on August 28th in the Netherlands; on September 13th in the Czech Republic; on October 22nd in Belgium; on November 27th in Mexico; and on December 4th in Argentina.

RENDITION turns a serious issue into standard sentimental fare

As befits any glossy, Hollywood, issues-based drama, RENDITION weaves together three different plot strands on two continents and features an uncaring Senator in a three-piece suit. This is, I admit, a rather flippant opening sentence to a review of a movie that desperately wants to be a serious, intelligent, emotionally engaging drama. Sadly, it falls short.

The subject matter is certainly serious, but this film does not treat it with respect. The first segment of the film takes place in an un-named North African country. The young daughter of a police chief has run off with a young boy who tragically turns out to be a suicide bomber. His bomb does not kill her father but a CIA operative who happens to be in a passing car. This triggers the story of the second, inter-woven segment of the film, in which Anwar Il-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is the victim of an extraordnary rendition to North Africa, where he is tortured at the behest of the CIA on suspicion of organising the bombing. The third segment sees Anwar's heavily-pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) lobby her friend (Peter Sarsgaard), his boss the Senator (Alan Arkin) and the CIA big-wig (Meryl Streep).

So, big issues all round, namely what is the optimal trade-off between security and liberty? And is it ever justifiable to remove one man's liberty to secure, (as cited here) 7,000 Londoners' freedom?

But, to my disappointment, director Gavin Hood turns what could potentially be a very intelligent film into a rather banal Hollywood drama. It starts with small choices. He and the script-writer give the victim of rendition a heavily pregnant wife to manipulate us into feeling more sympathetic for them. The exchanges between the wife and the politicians have none of the sparkle or profundity of the Streep/Cruise conversation in LIONS FOR LAMBS. Alan Arkin is wasted in a cameo as the Senator and Streep looks far less menacing than in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and far less interested in her role than in LIONS FOR LAMBS. In the North African scenes, I thought Jake Gyllenhaal gave a fine performance as the CIA operative who has to witness the torture. But his character's credibility is sacrificed to the requirement for a Hollywood ending. In fact, pretty much the only story that is universally well-acted and emotionally engaging without being manipulative is the love story between the police-chief's daughter and the jihadist. These two kids bring more commitment and transparent emotion to the film than the rest of the high-wattage cast put together.

RENDITION played Toronto 2007 and is on release in Canada, the UK and the US. It opens in Singapore, Slovenia, Denmark and Iceland later in October. It opens in Argentina, Greece, Australia, Germany and France in November. It opens in France in December, in Belgium and the Netherlands in January 2008 and in Norway and South Africa in February.

SPOILER FILLED FINAL COMMENT: It seems to me self-evident that the one thing a film about rendition should categorically NOT have is a happy ending. But even if the director decides he wants to go down this route, I still don't see how this film could have ended on such a note. The CIA know that Anwar has escaped and that he will go back to the US to be with his family. Furthermore, they know he can only enter under his US passport. So why don't they just "render" him again when he lands at Chicago? If only to save themselves from a PR stink? Douglas has no story if Jeremy doesn't turn up in the US, after all.

YEAR OF THE DOG - neither romantic nor funny

Peggy (Molly Shannon) is a lonely middle-aged woman. Her sister-in-law (Laura Dern) is smug and self-centred; her boss is materialistic and selfish; her best-friend (Regina King) is callous and deluded. So Peggy finds solace in her relationship with her dog, Pencil. When he dies she transfers her attention to a similarly psychologically stunted dog-trainer called Newt (Peter Sarsgaard). Rejected once again, Peggy has what can only be described as a nervous breakdown.

This is not the stuff of romance nor comedy, and I was astounded at just what a relentlessly depressing film this was. From the trailer, one might have thought this would be another indie rom-com about quirky characters finding love, EAGLE VERSUS SHARK stylee. Instead, this is simply a long-drawn out tragedy in which a potentially normal woman throws away her life. To that extent, it reminded me of Mike White's previous script, THE GOOD GIRL, which left me similarly ambivalent about the central character and similarly depressed, despite the odd witty one-liner. Definitely one to avoid.

YEAR OF THE DOG played Sundance 2007 and was released in the US in April. It is currently on release in the UK.

JARHEAD - hoo-ra!

JARHEAD - a new movie about the US experience in the first Gulf War - is not the profound indictment of war and US foreign policy that Sam Mendes, the director, no doubt intended. Mendes specialises in over-hyped, well-shot, but emotionally sterile, pretentious wank-fests. American Beauty is one of the most over-hyped movies in recent memory and I still haven't forgiven the Academy for heaping it with Oscars, disregarding far better movies such as Election, The Insider, Topsy-Turvy, Being John Malkovich, The End of the Affair and The Sweet and Lowdown. What's worse, Sam Mendes has no cinematic humility: at several points in JARHEAD he shows the troops enjoying war movie classics such as The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now. The glimpses of better movies only heighten our belief that JARHEAD is rather mediocre fair. The reason why I love movies like Apocalypse Now is that they straddle the fine line between condemning war for its futility and stupidity while at the same time indulging in the pornography of war. Yes, yes, we share Martin Sheen's "horror" at Vietnam, but at the same time, what we love is the US choppers coming in to napalm the Vietnamese village, with The Ride of the Valkyries blaring from the speakers. We love Col. Kilgore's cheesy speeches about napalm and surfing.

Which is all a long-winded way of coming to my point. Sam Mendes has failed completely in straddling the fine line between condemnation and pornography. Every part of the film that tries to make a larger political point suffocates in a sea of piety and banality. The first five minutes and the final fifteen minutes of JARHEAD are some of the most ridiculous in cinema: platitutudes passed off as wisdom. Similarly, in the middle of a film we have a segment that should that shock the viewer, but because of the tone of the preceeding fifty minutes, completely fails to make an impact. Where Mendes succeeds is in the pornography of war - and to that end, he has made a movie that is not so much a liberal critique as a boon for the war buffs. With his combination of superb photography and gallows humour, he has created a glamourous, often-times hysterical, war movie. This is helped by superb cameos by Chris Cooper and Dennis Haysbert (President Palmer in 24). The dialogue is witty, the characters larger-than-life, the vintage rap music well-chosen. To sum it up, if you go see this movie, and there is no reason why you should not, you will remember it not for the scenes of dead Iraqis, but for Jake Gyllenhaal shaking his ass in a Santa* G-string. I bet the Republicans are shaking in their boots after *that* savage indictment.

JARHEAD is on global release. *Which makes me wonder if this movie is a second-order victim of Bina007's first law of movies.

FLIGHTPLAN - slick but derivative thriller

FLIGHTPLAN is a perfectly decent thriller set on board a commercial airliner. Jodie Foster plays a recently believed mother of a six-year old girl. She is flying back to the US with her dead husband in a casket in the hold. She wakes up to find her daughter missing. The only problem is that no-one believes that the daughter even boarded the plane. This sets up an interesting (if derivative) thriller: is Foster's character delusional or not? And will her frustration and anger put the flight in danger?

As I said, the movie is a well-made if conventional thriller. The production is slick and features good actors such as Peter Sarsgaard and Sean Bean, although they are not asked to strectch themselves as actors here. If you like thrillers and you don't watch that many movies, I suspect that FLIGHTPLAN will provide a good piece of entertainment. However, if you have even a cursory knowledge of cinematic classics, you will feel increasingly frustrated at the collage of other - better - movies.

FLIGHTPLAN is on global release.

Overlooked DVD of the month - GARDEN STATE

GARDEN STATE is certainly not an overlooked movie if you ask anyone on the festival circuit. In fact, it was one of the most hyped movies of 2004. However, as it received a fairly limited release in the UK, I am taking this opportunity to big it up in advance of its DVD release next week. The movie is a pretty sweet, wistful romantic comedy starring and directed by Zach Braff, of SCRUBS fame. It also features Natalie Portman as his love interest, Bilbo Baggins as his dad and Peter Sarsgaard as his best friend.

The movie is worth watching for a number of reasons. First, it manages to create a wonderfully hopeful yet lamenting tone. This is because it balances some fairly dark material - medication, death, resolving family conflict - with the standard rom-com fare. It features a character called Andrew Largeman, played by Zach Braff, who is hitting that painful part of life when you realise that you are no longer in that cool post-college phase, where you still have stuff at your parent's house and can get away with goofy behaviour. He is now an adult. It's time to work out whether he is being correctly medicated and actually engage with life. These revolutionary thoughts are triggered by his decision to go back to Jersey for his mum's funeral, and the ensuing confrontation with his domineering father. This being a fairly conventional romantic-comedy, Largeman "meets cute" a resoundingly cheerful chick with lots of kooky eccentric Indie-movie habits, and she facilitates his return to real life.

The sound-track of the film is also central to creating the tragi-comic feel of the movie and has become almost more famous and admired than the movie itself. It showcases a bunch of indie bands like Remy Zero and The Shins, while revisiting cult classics like Nick Drake. Which brings to me to my closing point. GARDEN STATE is a neat film and you should be sure to check it out. I really liked it, but I don't think it is The Great White Hope that some have made it out to be. Indeed, it is fairly derivative of movies by Wes Anderson and often-times feels a little self-indulgent. Sometimes you just want to press the fast-forward button, and the final scene is just pure schmaltz and undercuts the earlier edgier tone of the movie. Moreover, the whole issue of taking/addiction to/mis-use of prescription drugs is treated in a fairly off-hand manner. For all these reasons, I don't need to see it again, but I do listen to the soundtrack all the time. And for that, I am happy to have seen the movie.

GARDEN STATE showed at Sundance and London 2004 and was released in the UK last December. It is released on DVD next week.