Sundance London 2012 - CHASING ICE

CHASING ICE may well be the most important movie since AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.  And I say that as a self confessed greedy capitalist bastard and sceptic about all social activism, causes, and anti-corporate whining.

For me, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH was a movie that raised awareness but also raised questions about the veracity of climate science. Was the climate really changing and if so, was human activity the cause?  And most importantly would changing human activity  reverse the damage or is it already too late?  What CHASING ICE does is, for the first time, give powerful, irrefutable, visual, easily understandable evidence that climate change is happening, and at a pace that is frightening.

Jeff Orlowski's documentary does this by basically shadowing a nature photographer called James Balog, in his worse time lapse photographic melting glaciers.  That all sounds much simpler than it really is. The doc (as penned by Mark Monroe -THE TILLMAN STORY) shows exactly what a labour of love it has been.  Balog and his team have had to hike up to some of the most inaccessible and hostile places on earth to install cameras to take the photographs - designed bespoke equipment to withstand the gruelling climate - and at no small cost to Balog's health.  It becomes clear that Balog didn't start out as a climate change evangelist. He was just a guy who took amazing photographs of nature, and somehow stumbled onto this story.  But once he found it he pursued it with a passion that seems at times reckless, and produced visuals that deserve to be seen by the widest possible audience.

CHASING ICE answers he question of whether climate change is happening. It is. Naysayers need to just get over it.  That said, CHASING ICE doesn't get to the part about whether governmental action to alter human behaviour would reverse the change.  That's fine: that's not Balog's job.  But it sure does throw down the gauntlet to the rest of us.

The run-time is 76 minutes.

FAIR GAME

True story. Valerie Plame was a CIA operative, building networks to fight terror in the Middle East. Her husband, Joe Wilson, was a pugnacious ex-diplomat, and mediocre businessman.  When the Bush administration misquoted his research, and used it as casus belli for a "pre-emptive" war in Iraq, Wilson went public, explosively. In an act of miscalculated vengeance, Dick Cheney's aide, Scooter Libby, outed Wilson's wife as a CIA agent, exposing her network in the process.  Plame and Wilson had their reputations slandered in the press, suffered the stress of intrusive paparazzi, but ultimately history will see them as on the side of truth. Scooter Libby went to prison for obstructing justice but Bush soon commuted his sentence. And, of course, on the larger issue, the war in Iraq, it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

FAIR GAME is a new feature film based on this political and family drama, directed and shot by Doug Liman (MR AND MRS SMITH, THE BOURNE IDENTITY) and written by John-Henry and Jez Butterworth (THE LAST LEGION).  The movie drips in earnest good intentions. It wants us to be utterly repulsed by the dinner-party ignorance in Washington; by the brazen exploitation of Plame by the Bush administration; and the manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraqi war. It wants us to share in Joe Wilson's outrage and see his journey as one of vindication - from puffed-up has-been to inspirational public speaker. It wants us to admire Valerie Plame's loyalty, and sympathise with her disillusionment.

I think the problem with the film is that for those of use who share its political stance, none of this is new, and for those who don't - well, they are hardly going to pay to watch it. I was shocked at the time, but too much time has passed - too much nefarious wrangling has been exposed - for the shock factor to still exist. And as for the mechanics of cooking up a war, there is no better exposition than Armando Iannucci's IN THE LOOP.  And, suffice it to say, IN THE LOOP managed to be unbelievably entertaining, while at the same time expository. In contrast, FAIR GAME where it's mission very heavily indeed.  All that is not to say that the film isn't handsomely acted and technically well-made. It just fails to spark up.

FAIR GAME played Cannes 2010 where it lost to OF GODS AND MEN for the Palme D'Or.  FAIR GAME was released in 2010 in Italy, Norway, Belgium, France, Canada, Finland, Spain, Sweden, the USA, Bulgaria, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Thailand, Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Austria, Taiwan, Portugal, Denmark, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia and the UAE. It was released earlier in 2011 in Iceland, India, Egypt, Croatia, Singapore, New Zealand, Estonia, Indonesia, Ireland and Latvia. It is currently on release in Serbia, the UK and Brazil. It opens later in March in Brazil and Mexico. It opens in May in Argentina and Poland; in June in Chile, Kazakhstan, Russia and Uruguay; and it opens on July 14th in Ukraine.

Pantheon movie of the month - ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS (1969) - This year's girl

1969 was a year when Old Hollywood was being challenged by New Hollywood. Movies like MIDNIGHT COWBOY addressed sex openly, and featured protagonists that were unpalatable, urban and grimy. Movies like BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID took well-worn genres and reworked them, infusing them with a modern sexual sensibility, strong female characters and ambiguity. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE is a movie so scabrous and seditious it still seems as sharp and tart today as it did then.

It might seem odd, then, that I am championing a movie which was a commercial failure, and while nominated for ten awards, remains comparably unloved and undiscussed - Charles Jarrott's debut feature ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS. It is, in some ways, a deeply old-fashioned film: a lavish costume drama full filmed on location at no expense, filmed in cinemascope, and dripping with talent. It was produced by Hal Wallis at the end of a career that began in 1931, and went from silent flicks, to subversive noir, navigated the strictures of the Hays Code, and came out the other side. He'd done the greats in the old classic American style - THE MALTESE FALCON and CASABLANCA - morphed into a producer of Elvis' commercial hits - and still produced challenging genre pics - notably THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER and TRUE GRIT. He also had form when it came to challenging historical dramas - having produced the seminal Burton-O'Toole BECKET in 1964. Hal Wallis, then, knew what he was doing when he took on adapting Maxwell Anderson stage play for the screen. He wanted the big-budget lavish look of a commercial hit, but he also wanted an intellectually honest movie.

The film is yet another take on the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. It's a story that we are all familiar with, and have seen on screen many times: from the philosophical debate of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (one of my favourite films of all time); to the domestic soap opera of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL and television's THE TUDORS. Each production has its particular angle, but few face it as head on as ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS and even fewer give us as strong a pairing as Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold. And I realise that there is an irony here. Richard Burton apparently thought his is a weak performance and hated the film. I, however, think this is a great Burton performance! 

The film opens with Cromwell asking Henry VIII for his signature on Queen Anne's death certificate, convicted of adultery, witchcraft and incest. He is torn - is she really adulterous? Should he give her another chance to bear him a son? What is God's will? And so we move into Act One. Anne is at court, in love with Percy, but the King maliciously stops her marriage so that he can amuse himself with her. She refuses, genuinely in love with Percy, and painfully aware of how the King threw over her sister once he had had his way with her. In Act Two we see Anne move from genuine opposition to the King's advances to falling in love both with him as a man - an intellectual equal with whom she gains pleasure from sparring - and equally with power - his power, and her power over him. She is not a coquette - as in THE TUDORS and THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL - but a clever girl who wants to protect her position, and not be used and rejected by her King. In the Third Act, Anne is undone. She produces a daughter and then a dead son. Henry's eye roams; Anne manoeuvres to protect Elizabeth's right to succeed him; both are undone by Cromwell. We never doubt that they love each other, but the marriage is unworkable. In the epilogue, we see the tragic consequences: Henry is given the freedom to marry Jane Seymour, but he knows he has been complict in killing the woman he loved and respected. Anne is, however, supreme, in the very final scene - it is her daughter who will reign after all.

Why do I love this film? First, because many a worse film survives thanks to the intrinsic fascination the world has with the story of Henry and Anne. Second, because the film decries the modern fashion to make Anne a capricious, manipulative woman who over-shot her place (curious misogyny that harks back to her original trial, and speaks volumes about the state of modern feminism). By contrast, Geneviève Bujold's Anne is clever, clever, clever. She is neither capricious nor manipulative. She understands the stakes, she knows the strength of her hand, and when she acts it is because she wants to protect herself from being used, and then to protect her daughter. She is rational, loving and prescient. She is, in short, the true hero of this film, and Bujold is equal to that portrayal at every turn. Th third reason why I love this film is for Burton's Henry. He is neither the arrogant boor of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS nor the insufficiently-regal, easily-turned incompetent of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL. Rather, he feels fully formed, and for every vice there is a virtue. Yes, he is arrogant, but he also respects Anne's intelligence. Yes, he is lustful, be he is also loyal to Anne, and genuinely grieved at her death. He does what he does not from over-weaning pride, but because he desperately wants to preserve the Tudor dynasty.

Thus, to my mind, ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS is one of the most even-handed and fascinating of the many portrayals of Henry and Anne. Just see them in combat! It's a sheer intellectual joy. And for dignity, pathos and power, I defy you to give me a better valedictory speech than Bujold's Anne. Just watch her un-man Wolsey in Henry's eyes. This is bravura screen-writing and acting. And better still, it is the highlight in a film that features location work, a superb score, a solid supporting cast of British character actors, and Arthur Ibbetsen's camera-work.

ANNE OF THE THOUSANDS DAYS was released in 1969 and was nominated for ten Oscars. However, it only one Best Costumes. The strength of film-making that year - and the revolution sweeping Hollywod that would make big budget costume dramas seem old-hat, is shown by a quick survey of the films it lost to in the other categories: MIDNIGHT COWBOY, TRUE GRIT, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, HELLO DOLLY!

Late Review - MR NICE

Director Bernard Rose takes a break from contemporising Russian literature, with his straight-ahead adaptation of Howard Marks' autobiography, MR NICE. The charm of Marks' story is that he stands against the cliché of the drug dealer typically seen in films. He doesn't grow up in a mean urban setting - he doesn't push drugs to survive - he isn't particularly flash - he doesn't do whores - he's faithful to his wife and kids - and he studiously avoids Class A drugs - both dealing them and taking them. In fact, he is rather more like a hero of an Ealing Comedy - stumbling into drug dealing quite by accident and permanently amused that he is getting away with it.

Marks was basically just another middle-class kid studying at Oxford and smoking hash when a mate asked him to do a favour and drive a car stuffed with drugs back from Germany. Marks was quite happy to quit teaching for easy money-making and soon hooked up with the Provos to bring his hash into UK airports without the inconvenience of customs checks. Before long he's got the biggest outfit in the UK and tries to crack America. Moreover, he's been recruited by his old college chum to be a spy in Kabul - after all, he moves in circles they can't penetrate! The first time he's busted for dealing he gets off on grounds so spurious he seems to be amazed, but he does eventually serve time - and not because of hubris, or narcissism, or betrayal - but basically because he was too bored to quit.

The film is charming and fun, and uses a deliberately lo-fi amateurish style, with live action footage digitally inserted into grainy old vintage footage of the 60s and 70s. Rhys Ifans is suitably bumbling and charming as Marks and he and Chloe Sevigny as his wife seem genuinely in love. I also love David Thewlis - who has just that edge of danger required to play the Provo, Jim McCann. The charm and the fun is entirely in keeping with Marks' carefully cultivated persona as Mr. Nice. Yes, that was his real alias, but he also wants to be seen as basically a good guy. To that end, this movie drips with family values, and to watch it, one would think that his wife and daughters never blamed him for one second for being absent from their lives. The film also refuses to question how far his involvement with the Provos was morally pretty nasty - after all, the dodgy money they were earning wasn't going into real estate, was it? And there is a deliberately cultivated equivocation about how far he ever really did any spying for the British.

So, MR NICE is basically a rather fawning film - frothy, light, charming, disposable. It doesn't get to grips with Howard Marks - but provides him with a yet another self-justificatory platform. Is that bad? Who knows. But there is something rather, well, distasteful in an international drug dealer who consorted with the IRA palming himself of as a charming rogue.

MR NICE is currently on release in the UK.

Late review - London Film Fest 2010 Day 4 - CARLOS

CARLOS is a sprawling, intense five hour cine-spectacular biography of the cack-handed, vainglorious terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos aka Carlos The Jackal. Written and directed by Olivier Assayas and originally broadcast as a three part mini-series on French TV, the film was shown in its original length, back to back at this year's London film fest.It is also being released in some countries as a three hour edited down movie. It features a charismatic central performance from Edgar Ramirez who, as Carlos, isn't just IN every frame, but dominates the film.

As the opens we see Carlos as a good-looking, womanising, politically motivated young man living in Paris, hiding weapons in the bedrooms of compliant girls. He moves into the big leagues when he persuades a Lebanese terrorist organisation (the PFLP) to bypass his immediate superior and make him their point-man. Flush with pride and power, he organises a raid on OPEC headquarters in Vienna. The first part of the film ends with the terrorists and their hostages on a plane desperately trying to find an Arab country that will give them permission to land. Carlos thought they would be feted as heroes, but turns out no-one wants to alienate the international community. He is embarrassed and angry, but shows his true colours - when the ultimate sacrifice is called for - he wants life, fame, girls, money - rather than a martyr's death. And so the pattern is set. He isn't a revolutionary. He's a bank robber - self-interested, petty, vain, eager for cash and respect. He hides out in Hungary, festering, brooding, drinking, fucking. He hides out in Sudan. He causes a few more ructions but never really pulls anything off. Basically, he's just a massive pain in the ass. And then, when the Berlin Wall came down, he was a flabby irrelevance, of interest only to Interpol and the vengeful French prison system.

The ironic truth of Carlos' life is established: as a terrorist he's both a failure and a success. In pure terms, he causes little damage - his missions are failures. But in terms of causing terror with his notoriety - he is a roaring success. And this is irony is perfectly portrayed by Edgar Ramirez - in one of the stand out performances of the year - he is everything Carlos is - charismatic, pitiable - good-looking, a physical mess - radical, bourgeois. It's a multi-faceted performance, enabled by the long run-time of the movie - a long run-time, by the way, that simply skips by. The movie is also beautifully directed by Assayas, and while it was financed by TV it really does look tremendous on the big screen. One can only assume that cinematographer Denis Lenoir (PARIS JE T'AIME, RIGHTEOUS KILL) shot the action sequences and that Yorick le Sau shot (I AM LOVE, JULIA) the beautiful vistas of Lebanon. At any rate, however, they sliced up the credits, the film looks beautiful.

There is a rule that states that if a movie is shown on TV anywhere before it's released at the cinema, it can't be eligible for the Oscars. This is a desperate shame because CARLOS would certainly be in the mix for Best Director and Best Actor. It's definitely worth checking out, and ideally in the long form.

CARLOS was shown on French TV in May 2010 and played Vancouver, Cannes and London 2010. It will be released in the UK as two feature films. It is also airing on the Sundance channel as a 3 part mini-series.

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 16 - Closing Night Gala - 127 HOURS

I don't do extreme sport. I don't really do common or garden sport. In the words of George Burns, 'I never go jogging: it makes me spill my martini.' If some fuckwit decides to go up a mountain or into a canyon on his own, without telling anyone about it, and then gets his arm trapped under a boulder, I basically have no sympathy. I mean, I'm glad said fuckwit survived, but do I really want to watch a dreary, dismal, against-all-odds movie where we basically spend 90 minutes watching a bloke drinking his own urine and then hacking off his arm with a blunt knife? No.

The triumph of writer-director Danny Boyle is that 127 HOURS is NOT that movie. He brings all the energy, visual style and bravura editing of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and TRAINSPOTTING to a story that could've been claustrophobic and grim. Better still, he had the faith to cast James Franco in the central role of real-life canyoneer Aron Ralston - an actor who is pretty, no doubt, but also very gifted and only now starting to get roles that show his potential.

The movie begins with a hi-energy, thumping sound-track from A.R.Rahman, and split screen footage of urban life - crowds of people and noise - trading floors and sports stadia. We see Franco's Ralston grab a map, some supplies, his cam-corder, jump in a car, music blaring, and head for the Canyon. This is clearly a guy full of energy, personable, but basically too busy to bother checking in. He's on the move - looking for that perfect outdoor sports high. And Boyle tells us all this without any dialogue - just some bravura editing and a really original approach to the material.

When we get to the Blue John Canyon, we see Aron charm the pants off two lost hikers, showing them the joy of dropping into an underground pool. Again, it's a brief episode but sketches in his character - good fun, witty, and a dare-devil. Tellingly, just as Aron ran out of the store not even turning to wave goodbye but impatient to move on to the next thing, he runs off from the girls, waving without turning. It's all about the next adventure.

Before we've even paused for breathe, Aron's dropped into a canyon, the boulder has crushed his arm, and he's realised, mid-swigging from his water-bottle, that he's "in deep doo-doo." And for the first time, the camera pans out from the ravine, out of the canyon, and there isn't any rock music on the sound-track. It's a great contrast to the first half hour of the flick.

What then follows is some superb acting from James Franco, as he portrays a man who veers from pragmatic, ingenious engineer to delusional, dehydrated hysteria. And Franco is matched point for point by Boyle's inventive use of the camera. From inside-the-water-bottle POV shots, to quick edits of Aron's delusional visions - the movie never loses pace or interest despite the constraints of basically shooting a guy in a ravine. (Admittedly, Boyle is helped by the fact that the real-life Ralston really did cam-cord himself, giving the screenwriters a neat device to break the silence and alter the POV.) In fact, far from being grim, 127 HOURS is often very funny indeed. And, most importantly, by making us enjoy Aron's company, and by making us see what he has to go home to, the movie makes us completely invest in his survival. As a result, when Aron finally has to break his arm and then cut through it to free himself, the audience gasped in horror at his pain, and cheered with joy when he finally escaped the trap. And when he finally saw a family in the distance, and the helicopter came for him, the feeling of relief and catharsis was palpable. I practically bounced out of the cinema on a natural high.

So, whether or not you typically like extreme-sport-survivor movies, you should definitely check out 127 HOURS. To use that most hackneyed of phrases, it really is a feel-good film of the best kind - a movie that earns its warm fuzzy glow by making you identify with its protagonist and taking you through what feels like authentic pain. The resulting film is full of energy, emotionally engaging, brilliantly acted, and technically imaginative. I think it's Danny Boyle's finest film to date, and certainly James Franco's best performance - combining the talent for comedy shown in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS with the ability to show real emotion seen in HOWL and MILK.

127 HOURS played Telluride and Toronto 2010. It opens in the US on November 5th 2010 and in the UK on January 7th 2011.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 3 - CONVICTION

Another film fest and another disappointing, soupy Oscar-bait flick starring Hilary Swank. She plays Betty Anne Waters, a middle-aged mother who put herself through her GED, college and then law school in order to represent her brother and over-turn his murder conviction. It's a two hour film that reads like a police/court procedural, where plucky little Betty Ann digs out evidence and outs corruption with her can-do, no-nonsense attitude. She has a best-friend with a heart of gold (Minnie Driver) and understanding teenage kids with hearts of gold, and a New York injustice-fighter (Peter Gallacher) with a heart of gold. It's all so bloody banal and twee and Hallmark TV afternoon movie I wondered what the frack it was doing in a Film Festival. Neither Tony Goldwyn's direction nor Pamela Gray's script ever move beyond hammy cliche. The only, only things elevating this movie beyond utter mediocrity are a small cameo from Juliette Lewis, as usual, typecast as a skank, and a scene-stealing role for Sam Rockwell as the charismatic incarcerated brother. Avoid at all costs.

CONVICTION played Toronto 2010 and is on release in the US. It opens in Belgium on December 1st, in Germany on February 24th 2011 and in the Netherlands on March 24th.

I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS - Spit or Swallow?

A (very true to the) real life story of Steven Russel (Jim Carrey) - a Christian, a family man, and a closet homosexual - who after a devastating car crash decides he's going to ditch the lies and be true to himself. And that means moving to Miami, becoming as queer as a $12 note, and starting a life of crime, deception and fraud to fund his exuberant "out" lifestyle.

When the conman is finally caught - he goes to prison in Texas where he meets and instantly falls in "love" with the effeminate, vulnerable Philip Morris (Ewan McGregor). The rest of the story documents the jail-breaks, cons and increasingly incredible antics that Russel employs to get close and stay close to Morris. The true story (1, 2) is faithfully represented on screen - and is so strange that it warrants the "This really happened... It really did" on-screen message in the titles.

So that's the basic plot - but what is this film really about? I think the whole experience can be summed up in four points:

1. An unflinching and uncompromising look at gay sex. You expect some boundary-pushing stuff from the directors of BAD SANTA - and I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS doesn't disappoint. If you're uncomfortable with seeing men bone, you've got a real problem here. Whole sequences revolve around homosexual fellatio. Russel's sexuality is revealed by a graphic and unexpected scene of anal intercourse. Ewan McGregor gives more head than a hooker on a Saturday night. The big black guy behind me in the cinema repeatedly told his girlfriend "I'm not comfortable with this" while squirming. The depiction of sex in this film is pretty gritty and down to earth - and very funny - and challenges the Hollywood status quo of not depicting graphic homosexuality. It's an acquired taste - don't take your Granny.
2. A parody of the "gay" scene, and the prejudice it faces. "Golf? But you're a homosexual!" says Morris to Russel as he tries to fit in in a homophobic Texan workplace. The gay stereotype is exposed as fake - Russel's obsession with being as "gay" as he can be takes him to a caricatured extreme which reflects his real character and feelings but little. Russel's wife and colleagues on the other hand comically reflect southern homophobia (and racism). "So does the gay thing and stealing thing go together?" asks Russel's evangelical Christian wife to his boyfriend. In this way both extremes are held up to ridicule. You could argue that they were easy targets though, and the attacks aren't substantial enough to form a really coherent thread.
3. A raucous comedy that shows that real life is stranger than fiction. There's no doubting this film is funny. It wasn't made to shock - rather it was made primarily to amuse. Carrey and McGregor carry off the smitten gay couple perfectly - Carrey especially amuses throughout and gives a performance that thankfully relies little on rubber-faced humour, and far more on talent and comic timing. The sheer bare-faced cheek of his antics, and the exuberant gayness of whole flick, makes it utterly entertaining from beginning to end. It's worth seeing just for a laugh.
4. A dark and tragic portrayal of a broken man. Other reviewers have interpreted I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS as a romance. Don't be fooled, there's nothing romantic about it. Russel suffers acute separation anxiety due to his adoption and later summary rejection by his birth mother. He becomes the ultimate people-pleaser - defining his sense of worth by what others think of him, unable to tell the truth or approach anything resembling intimacy. This vacuum in his sense of identity drives him to attach to models and stereotypes of what he feels he ought to be - the best Christian ever, the best husband and father ever - then the most screaming queer ever, the biggest liar ever. Progressively deadened spiritually and emotionally, he seeks some sort of connection with life and feelings through compulsive thrill seeking - addictive spending, compulsive lying. Finally, he defines himself through a love-addicted and completely dishonest attachment to Philip Morris. Morris is complicit as the co-dependent in this - flattered by Russel's attentions and turning a blind eye to his obvious dysfunctions. Ultimately, Russel becomes nothing more than his pathology - a borderline personality in the truest sense - his sense of self completely eroded.

So in summary, this is a very black comic tragedy, looking the audience straight in the eye and never flinching from giving us reality, however ugly, sweaty or gay. The real tragedy of course is that it's a true story - Russel is a genuine product of a abandonment, dysfunctional family life, prejudice and stereotype.

His various addictions and compulsions are funny, but only in the sense that a visit to the asylum is funny. He represents the spiritual corruption and emptiness of man. His wife, through her prejudice, unwittingly stumbles on a truth - asking whether the gay thing and stealing thing go together. In Russel, we cannot be sure whether any part of his personality is genuine - or whether it is merely another attempt to self-define or self-affirm through some outside object or activity.

Russel is a pathetic character in the truest sense - his tragic end the inevitable conclusion of his many character flaws.

So, overall expect a shock, expect a challenge, expect a laugh - but don't expect to walk away happy.

This is a really solid film - the acting is consistently excellent, the way the story is told is clever, and it covers some very challenging subject matter. But it's not a romance, it's not DUMB AND DUMBER, and it's not for the fainthearted. With that caveat, it comes highly recommended.

I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS played Sundance and Cannes 2009 and was released earlier this year in Belgium, France, Russia, Taiwan, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania and Kazakhstan. It is currently on release in Japan, the UK and the Philippines. It opens next month in Iceland, Brazil, the Netherlands and Germany. It opens in the US on May 7th.

THE BLIND SIDE - insidious, manipulative schmaltz

THE BLIND SIDE is a deeply insidious movie that has been rewarded with Oscar gold, one suspects, as a gesture toward Sandra Bullock's track record in bringing home the cheques with her trademark fluffy romantic-comedies. It is based on the true story of Leigh Anne Tuohy, an All-American soccer mom who gives a home to an enormous black kid from a deprived neighbourhood, seemingly on a whim. Once she has committed to raising him, Leigh Anne does so with ferocious commitment, eventually seeing him into a successful American football career. There is no dramatic tension. Neither is there suspense. It is quite clear that from the polished veneer that we are in the kind of territory where good triumphs over evil and where racial politics are reduced to offensive bland statements. Note how Quinton Aaron, as Michael Oher, is essentially objectified - a passive object with a skill, merely there to respond to Bullock/Touhy's sympathy and actions. I find the Academy lauding this film, and Sandra Bullock's role in particular, rather fascinating. On the one hand, the racial politics of this film affirm the Liberal credentials of the Academy, and you can see them just desperate to acknowledge this film in the same way that they acknowledged CRASH. On the other hand, Leigh Anne Touhy is a character straight out of a liberal humanist's worst nightmares. And I quote, "If you so much as set foot downtown you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the D.A., I'm a member of the NRA and I'm always packing." And so, ladies and gentlemen, we have the current aspirations of both left and right wing America wrapped in a one lady - racially aware but also gun-totin' and bible-quotin'. It does rather feel like Hollywood is trying to have its cake and eat it.

THE BLIND SIDE was released last year in the US and Canada. It was released earlier this year in Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Uruguay. It is currently on release in Argentina, Kuwait, Brazil and Mexico. It opens this weekend in Germany, Portugal, Austria and the UK. It opens on April 19th in Finland and on May 6th in Denmark. It is released on Region 1 DVD today.

Additional tags: Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Lily Collines, Ray McKinnon, Kim Dickens, Alar Kivilo

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - CREATION

CREATION is a handsomely made, beautifully acted biopic of Charles Darwin, focussing on the period during which he wrote his seminal work, ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. Based on the biography by Randal Keynes, the movie stars real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles and Emma Darwin. They are utterly convincing as a deeply loving couple grown distant because of their differing reactions to Darwin's work, more widely, and to familial grief, more closely. Emma looks to the Church for solace, as represented by the orthodox but genuinely concerned Reverend Innes. Charles turns to his science, and experiences a gradual loss of faith. He also, most touchingly, lives in his memories of his relationship with his dead little girl Annie (Martha West). One of the most brutal lines in the film is where Charles asks Emma whether his fancies are an more a prop than her idea of Annie in heaven.

What I love about this film is that, despite the costumes and the lush period settings, which can so often be distancing, there is an immediacy and credibility to the Darwin family. I completely believed in the emotional and intellectual struggle between the two parents, and I was entranced by the relationship between Charles and his daughter Annie. Martha West (daughter of the Dominic West) has genuine charisma, and it's delightful to see Charles' delight in telling his children fantastical stories of different tribes he has encountered on his travels.

The movie also cleverly sidesteps the highly politicised debate (in the US at least) between believing in evolutionary theory and in the Old Testament. Rather than reducing the movie to a bald and crude debate between the two sides, CREATION makes the struggles personal and nuanced. Reverend Innes is orthodox but no fanatic - he wants to be a genuine friend to Darwin. And Darwin is losing faith, but for a personal reason, and sees in the wondrous variety of nature something to be praised.

Given the lamentful tone of the piece, its considered pacing and focus on internal struggle, I was rather surprised to find that CREATION had been directed by Jon Amiel, the man behind action flicks, THE CORE and ENTRAPMENT. But he has completely succeeded in creating a quiet, delicate film in which deep issues are internalised.

CREATION played Toronto 2009 and was released in 2009 in the UK, Greece and New Zealand. It was released earlier this year in the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and the US. It goes on release in Brazil next week and in Argentina on April 15th. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Additional tags: Jon Amiel, John Collee, Randal Keynes, Jim Carter, Martha West, Christopher Young, Jess Hall.

MESRINE: PART 2 - PUBLIC ENEMY #1

In MESRINE PART 2: PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1 we see Mesrine in frumpy middle-age, already notorious as a bank robber and serial prison escapee, but now trying to fuel his reputation with an ill-judged foray into political terrorism. The second part of this all-star cast biopic of the real French thug is thus a tale of hubris and decline, neatly cancelling the glamour, raciness and sheer absurdity of his daring exploits in the first film. Vincent Cassel puts on weight and a series of fruity wigs to play the older Mesrine and he is convincing as a man out of time. The bank robberies of the 1960s look rather quaint in the 1970s - a world where crime is a political act and the players are the PLO and the Baader-Meinhof gang.

Dramatically, Mesrine is contrasted with his co-conspirator Francois Besse (Mathieu Amalric). Besse just wants to keep his head down and out of prison. He doesn't understand Mesrine's need to fan his notoriety and to make ill-judged political forays. He doesn't understand Mesrine's need to taunt his victims - sitting in front of them in disguise and asking if they have had any trouble with a notorious bank robber. Despite the flashes of dark humour in such exchanges, the overall tone of this second film is one of tragedy. Mesrine is a debased and delusional man, kidding himself that his crimes, and his anger at the French state, has some deeper meaning. Even his relationships are debased. Rather than the more genuine love of the mother of his children, he now ends up with Sylvia (Ludivine Sagnier) - a woman who is attracted to Mesrine the myth rather than Mesrine the man.

As in the first film, the quality of the production in Part Two is top notch. From the costumes, to the architecture of the escape scenes to the acting - everything is impressive. I was particularly impressed that despite an opening shot that shows how Mesrine will be brought down, the film-makers still manage to sustain tension throughout, especially in the final sequences leading up to that event.

MESRINE: PUBLIC ENEMY NO 1 played Tokyo 2008 and was released in Belgium, France and Russia in November 2008. It opened in 2009 in the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Croatia, Israel, Slovakia, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Norway, Germany, Denmark, the UK and Japan. It is available on DVD.

Additional tags: jean-francois richet, abdel raouf dafri, gerard lanvin, olivier gourmet

THE LAST STATION - patronising and superficial

THE LAST STATION is a lavishly produced but patronising biopic of Leo Tolstoy's last years - when he was the world's most famous author, but had turned his back on literary fame to pursue a life as a natural philosopher and advocate of interior spirituality and an austere life of renunciation. The movie is written and directed by Michael Hoffman - a director with a somewhat patchy history. In the early 1990s, he directed the scabrous network TV satire SOAPDISH but then settled into much more banal fare such as the Clooney-Pfeiffer rom-com ONE FINE DAY and the warmly photographed but morally equivocal curio THE EMPEROR'S CLUB. THE LAST STATION is also a rather odd film. The warm glow of its lavish photography (Sebastian Edschmid) and the beautiful production design (Patrizia von Brandestein) lend the whole enterprise a Merchant-Ivory glow. Who wouldn't want to be sitting in the real Yasnaya Polyana drinking tea with jam and listening to opera? Everything is wonderfully appointed and nothing more so that the fine cast. There may be grumblings about Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep pulling out of their roles as the ageing Lev and his wife Sofya, but their replacements, Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren are no less weighty. And in his typical role as callow naive voyeur we have James McAvoy, fresh from his apparent success in ATONEMENT, as Lev's secretary Valentin. This being a sort of Merchant Ivory world in which weighty literary stuff slips easily down the throat, Valentin has a love interest - an independent young woman called Masha (ROME's Kerry Condon). Naturally, in a world where all intellectual brain-ache has been banished, we shall be led through the story by our charming ingenu Valentin, and have the larger issue of Love versus Rules thought through by Valentin and Masha.

The tragedy of this film is that it had the real locations and a fine cast and production team at its disposal but chose to create nothing more complicated than a soupy melodrama. Sofya is the matriarch who loves her husband and is proud of his fiction but is contemptuous of the men who would turn his Confession into dogma, and steal her children's inheritance into the bargain. This could have been tragic: a woman of genuine nobility and strength forced to flatter and manipulate and throw hysterics in order to be heard. But Helen Mirren's broad performance plays right out of the newspaper reports that Chertkov would've been planting. Plummer's Tolsoy could have been more tragic still - a deperately intelligent man who is forced to hurt the one he loves in order to move forward with what he thinks is his larger plan - or a tragic buffoon manipulated by the ideologues who want to use his name and claim the copyright on his novels. Who knows? Michael Hoffman makes him a jovial old cock, but nothing more. He never acts but is acted upon. It is a curious void at the centre of the film. I have little to say about the character of Valentin other than that this is a rather stereotypical role for McAvoy and rather unworthy of the opposing (and fictional) character Masha. Kerry Condon is impressive - the only actor who seems to be embracing some kind of truth, but she has little to do. And as for Paul Giamatti's Chertkov, wouldn't it have been more interesting to make him sympathetic? To have us believe that he genuinely cares for, and believes in, Tolstoy, rather than being a cartoon-villain puritan and chancer.

What I'm trying to say is that, at the start of this film, we have established the dramatic tension within ten minutes. Sofya loves Tolstoy and wants his attention and his money. Chertkov loves Tolstoy and wants his name and his money. Sofya shouts and schemes. Chertkov wheedles and schemes. Tolstoy hobbles about between the two and then carc's it in a provincial train station. If you want to make a movie on this subject matter that sustains itself for two hours you have to be willing to dig deeper into motives and to play in shades of grey. You have to be willing to roll up your sleeeves and deal in moral ambiguities as well as in moral certainties. You can't just loll about in beautifully photographed countryside bouncing the same argument back and forth like the world's most dull tennis match.

Additional tags: Michael Hoffman, Kerry Condon, Patrick Kennedy, John Sessions, Sergei Yevtushenko, Sebastian Edschmid, Patrizia von Bradenstein

THE LAST STATION played Telluride 2009 and was released in the US, Canada, Germany and Austria earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens next weekend in the Netherlands. It opens in Singapore on March 4th and in Switzerland on April 1st. Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer have been nominated both for Golden Globes and Academy Awards.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL - Spasticus Autisticus

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is a fast-paced, manically inter-cut biopic of Ian Dury, New Wave singer, genius wordsmith, ladies man and radical. Born working class, crippled by polio, trained by Peter Blake, married to a middle-class portrait painter, father to two kids, living in suburbia. That's how we meet Dury - a punk radical playing shitty pubs with a dodgy band, desperate for fame, and deeply at odds with his suburban home life. Somehow his wife puts up with his shit, even when he shacks up with a pretty West Indian girl much younger than him and moves out. Somehow the Kilburn and the High Roads turn into The Blockheads, the seminal songs are written, and the money comes rolling in. Before you know it, Dury and his crew are in a swanky rented country house, generally pissing about and not getting much work done. His girlfriend and wife are both simultaneously in love and at wits end with him. His young son is much loved but exposed to drugs and not much schooling. His young daughter is basically ignored. The End.

If the plot summary above seemed to have no structure, well, neither does the film. It survives as entertainment purely on the strength, charisma and sheer bravado of Andy Serkis' (best known as Gollum) leading performance. You get a good sense of Dury as wordsmith but you don't really get how he became famous. One minute he's playing pubs, the next he's famous. You never get how his character might have changed. His girlfriend Denise (Naomie Harris) complains that fame has changed him, but the audience doesn't see it. He just seems as much of an egotistical but charming arse as ever. His wife (Olivia Williams) evolves - moves on - but Dury never changes. He's just too clever by half, too selfish by half, and a lot of fun to be around.

If you love Ian Dury's music, you'll get a kick out of this film. Serkis is genius, and ably supported by Olivia Williams and Naomie Harris. But if you don't know who Ian Dury is, this film isn't going to help. You get a lot of stuff about his early life, but it doesn't tell you about art school and how he became a radical performer. You get the starting point (the film posits that being crippled was the defining change) and the final product, but nothing inbetween. You don't have a clue why he's married to an RA.

So, all in all, this is a great little film that could've done with a bit more substance, and a bit more exposition, a little more context.... As it is, it's unlikely to get an audience beyond the core fanbase. Still, anything that makes you dust off your old vinyl, it's no bad things.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is on release in the UK.

NOWHERE BOY - suprisingly conventional Lennon biopic

NOWHERE BOY is a beautifully written, beautifully acted, sensitively directed biopic of the young John Lennon, directed by the reknowned British artist, Sam Taylor-Wood. Set in a perfectly rendered 1950s Liverpool, the film shows a 17 year old Lennon groping toward the truth of why he lives with his Aunt Mimi rather than with his mum and dad, not to mention taking his first steps toward becoming a Beatle.

Aaron Johnson (THE THIEF LORD; ANGUS, THONGS AND PERFECT SNOGGING) is assured as the young Lennon, complete with rock-n-roll quiff and iconic Scouse accent. He pulls off both the cockey laddishness and the vulnerability. His John is witty and playful; promiscuous and arrogant; occasionally violently angry; but also desperately adrift. Kristin Scott-Thomas also gives a nuanced performance as John's Aunt Mimi - both stiff and severe in her middle-class home, but also undoubtedly very loving toward John and possessing a wicked sense of humour. (And to those reviewers criticising Scott Thomas for being too posh, Mimi really didn't have a broad Scouse accent. Indeed, Lennon later commented that he had to broaden his Scouse accent for PR purposes.)

The character that jumps off the screen is John's mum, and Mimi's younger sister, Julia. Anne-Marie Duff's Julia is so full of energy and fun that she simply sweeps you up in her love of life and rock'n'roll music. But like John you can't help but feel something is forced in such buoyancy and we're right to distrust it. Despite being remarried with two small children, Julia obviously suffers from depression and can only truly relate to men through flirtation. This extends to John and his band members, and the delicate way in which Sam Taylor-Wood and her script-writer deal with this is both honest and elegant.

The resulting film is a moving emotional drama that is interesting on its own terms, let alone because it formed an iconic musician.

NOWHERE BOY is a very good film. It reminded me a lot of Tom Ford's feature debut A SINGLE MAN, in that it was both apparently conventional in its structure and visual style but also wonderfully brave in tackling uncomfortable subjects head on, without judgement and without cliché. The conventional style is even more surprising from Taylor-Wood given the nature of her graphic art, and her bizarre short film.

NOWHERE BOY closed London 2009 and is currently on release in the UK and Australia. It will play Sundance 2010. It opens in New Zealand on March 4th; in the Netherlands on April 1st; in Russia on April 15th and in Norway on September 10th.

ME AND ORSON WELLES - thin

British thespian Christian McKay is charismatic, enigmatic and pitch perfect in his portrayal of legendary theatre and film director, Orson Welles. He is all thick, creamy charm and wonderfully, audaciously, self-confident. You want to be in his presence, to be caught up in the excitement of pulling off a daring production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar against all the odds. McKay's Welles convinces us that art matters, and that excellence is possible, and that if the artist wants to charm a little radio secretary or two in the meantime, well, who is he to be pinned down by conventional bourgeois morality? All hail, the brilliant wunderkind Orson Welles, and woe betide you if you dare to question his ducal rights.

The tragedy of ME AND ORSON WELLES is that Richard Linklater has not fashioned a framing device interesting enough to hold our attention when Welles is off screen. Indeed, Welles must be turning in his grave to see his grand personality reduced to romantic-comedy fodder. For, in this ill-advised film, we are asked to see Welles through the eyes of a naive, romantic schoolboy (Zac Efron with his first decent haircut), who gets a bit-part in Welles' production. For much of the movie's runtime, the schoolkid follows Welles around, filching his best pick-up lines and moving in on his PA (Claire Danes) only to get ideas above himself and mess it all up. We are supposed to care about this young kid losing his illusions about what it takes to get ahead, and worse still, to care about his romance with a drippy wannabe writer (Zoe Kazan) with eyes so wide she could be a Disney heroine.

All of this is so much nonsense. What we really care about is Welles and his genius and his relationship with long-time collaborators - his producer John Houseman (Eddie Marsan) and his best friend, Joe Cotton. The movie sags when Welles is off-screen. Frankly, I would've put up with just seeing him schmooze chicks, but what would've been superb would've been a portrayal of how he worked. Sadly, other than one seen where he discusses The Magnificent Ambersons, we get precious little of that.

The resulting film is too frail a frame upon which to hang a biopic of such a great man. It is likely to disappoint all potential audiences. The HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL crowd will no doubt be annoyed to see their pet outshone by an older, less handsome man, and the cineastes will be teased but not satiated by McKay's performance. Little scene gems - a big band led by Jools Holland with Eddi Reader as the singer - are wasted on such a thin film.

ME AND ORSON WELLES played Toronto 2008 but has only just been released in the USA and the UK. Never a good sign.

Preston Sturges Retrospective 5 - THE GREAT MOMENT

After the success of THE LADY EVE, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS and THE PALM BEACH STORY, Preston Sturges took a break from self-penned screwball comedies to direct a historic biopic about a Boston dentist called William Morton who discovered the use of ether as an anaesthetic. Apparently these sorts of medical biopics were rather popular at the time, and one can only assume that Sturges was personally interested in the subject matter. After all, he was already so much better paid than any of his contemporaries, this can't have been a shameless cash-in, can it? The movie opens strongly with a segment that excoriates political process and venality as much as anything in THE GREAT McGINTY: our hero is manipulated into filing a lawsuit to protect his patent that makes him seem like a profiteer and disenfranchises him. The rest of the movie, told in flashback, is only sporadically interesting. Joel McCrea does his best to pull of the drama, but for the first time, Sturges can't quite balance the emotional content with the broad comedy. Admittedly, the main fault for the film's failure is studio meddling to create a contrived happy ending. But one can't help but feel that Sturges either misjudged the material.

THE GREAT MOMENT was released in 1944.

London Film Fest Day 6 - BRIGHT STAR

I had the misfortune of studying Keats in the same term I was taught Byron. As a result, despite admiring his poetry, we teenage girls couldn't help but think Keats a bit of a sap in comparison to dashing, dangerous Byron. He was, after all, just a bourgeois doctor, who talked drippily of sensory experience and the unfortunately named "negative capability" - being open to everything and comfortable with uncertainty. Worse still, his only love affair was with the unfortunately named girl-next-door, Fanny Brawne. As with Byron, Keats' life was cut short, but rather than being killed in a dashing Greek adventure, Keats died of TB - far more pedestrian a death to teenage girls. We teenage girls came to the brutal conclusion that when it came to Keats, it was best to stick to the poetry, and leave off exploring his life because, frankly, he didn't have much of one.

Unfortunately, Jane Campion's new film about the love affair between Keats and Fanny Brawne has not changed my opinion one jot. Ben Whishaw is, of course, a marvellous actor, and is deeply affecting as the limpid Keats, reaching out to touch Fanny's hand at a dinner party. But what can we make of Australian actress Abbie Cornish's Fanny - with her uncertain English accent - and her characterisation as a girl who liked to flirt and sew? Apparently Keats and Fanny bonded over the shared experiences of grief, but frankly, there is not much in this film to suggest why they had such a powerful attraction to each other. By far the most interesting character in the piece is Keats' friend, fellow poet and benefactor, Mr Brown, played by Paul Schneider. He is a fascinating because he was arguably interested in Fanny himself, was evidently a bit of a rogue, but also deeply protective of his friend. Paul Schneider gives a compelling performance but it's a shame that he too cannot pull off the accent required of the role - in this case, Scottish.

When introducing the film, writer-director Jane Campion said that she used to be frightened of poetry and that the audience shouldn't worry if they were, because this film catered to them. That is, to my mind, it's flaw. Because I didn't understand the relationship between Fanny and Keats - because the script and performances hadn't convinced me of it or made it compelling - I was looking to the film for insight into how love had affected Keats' work. But, a few recitations apart, there is very little about the process of writing, or what Keats thought about writing in this film. Indeed, the only clumsy reference to inspiration is in a scene where Fanny's little brother is trying to find a nightingale's nest and then we switch to a scene in which Keats pens his favourite ode. Oh dear.

The upshot is that this film contains a not particularly interesting nor convincing central romance and not much else. Can we say anything positive about it? Well, Jane Campion is, as ever, brilliant at creating a sensory impression - close-ups of flowers, women sewing, etc. The film looks great. But this is by no means a film that should be bracketed with the superb PORTRAIT OF A LADY, THE PIANO or IN THE CUT.

BRIGHT STAR played Cannes, Toronto and London. It is currently on release in the USA, Israel and the Netherlands. It opens in the UK on November 6th and in December in Germany, Greece and Australia. It opens on January 7th in Portugal and on January 13th in France.

Late review - LITTLE ASHES

LITTLE ASHES is a delicate little costume drama/biopic about Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel and Federico Garcia Lorca. Set in an exclusive Madrid university in the period between World War One and the Spanish Civil War. Dali immediately stands out as the new boy because of his archaic dress, beautiful paintings and sensitive soul. Bunuel immediately spots his talents and introduces him to his set of iconoclastic cool kids, who reject establishment authority and want to live life to the full. Here, Dali meets Lorca, and, as alleged in Ian Gibson's biographies, they fall for each other, but Dali is too scared to actually consummate the relationship. He is, ultimately, more in love with himself.

The movie has a lot of things going for it. It looks beautiful, in the Merchant Ivory tradition of beautiful people in beautiful costumes and beautiful settings. Javier Beltran is wonderful as Lorca and Robert Pattinson doesn't disgrace himself as Dali. Problem is, the movie is as repressed as the lovers themselves in dealing with homosexuality, and while a pleasant enough watch, never gets to grips with its subject matter.

LITTLE ASHES was released in Spain, the US and UK in May 2009 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

COCO AVANT CHANEL / COCO BEFORE CHANEL - yawn

I am the target demographic for this film. A woman of a certain age with a penchant for period romance and a handbag collection worth the output of a small African country. Coco Chanel defines a large part of my wardrobe, shoes, handbags and cosmetics. More profoundly, I am a career woman, and Coco Chanel was not just a radical fashion designer but also a formidable businesswoman who founded a global brand.

Why, then, did I find this movie so dull? The problem is that COCO AVANT CHANEL wants to tell us how Coco got to Paris, rather than how, once in Paris, she built her global business. The film argues that to know Coco as a young woman is to know all - a highly reductive stance. So we see very little of Coco designing anything, or of her famous business sense. Rather, the film focuses on her struggle to break out of the role pre-WW1 France had ascribed to her: resigned to being a working class shop-girl, a bauble for rich men to be traded like property, trussed up in corsets and unable to breathe.

It's a shame that a woman as radical and, yes, politicised, as Coco didn't get a movie as brave as she was. Rather we get a rather schmaltzy period romance in which our poor young heroine foists herself upon a rich Milord, only to fall for a young English businessman who will marry for money. The whole thing is filmed beautifully, in sumptuous period settings, with a lush score from Alexandre Desplat. But Coco's spikiness is near-smothered by the sepia-tint. It's also deeply hypocritical for the movie to praise Coco's iconoclastic stance and her fierce independence, while, at the same time, reducing her life to one thwarted love affair.

Shame.

COCO AVANT CHANEL was released earlier this year in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Israel, Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Poland. It is currently on release in the UK. It is released in August in New Zealand, Germany, Argentina, Singapore, South Korea and Norway. It is released in September in Japan, Sweden and the USA. It is released in October in Russia and Brazil; in November in Greece, Finland and Bulgaria and in December in Denmark.

MESRINE: PART ONE - DEATH INSTINCT - a new gangster classic

Jean-François Richet's French gangster biopic is the movie that PUBLIC ENEMIES should've been: part character study, part thriller, part prison break-out movie. It's well-directed, emotionally and intellectually satisfying and superbly acted. It evokes a sense of time and place and involves the audience without glamourising the subject matter.

Richet splits his biopic into two parts, in the manner of Steven Soderbergh's recent biopic of Che Guevara. The movies are self-contained but as soon as I watched one I was desperate to see the other, and they work best as a whole.

Part One opens as a tense thriller - a plump, middle-aged Jacques Mesrine (an award-winning performance from Vincent Cassel) and an enigmatic woman (Chloe Sevigny) are ambushed by the police in late 1970s Paris. The movie then switches to a more youthful Mesrine, witnessing horrific interrogations as a soldier in the Franco-Algerian war - the start of his brutalisation perhaps? After the war, he rejects a bourgeois life and joins his childhood friend working for local mob boss (Gerard Depardieu). Mesrine is smarter than the average thug, more charming, and more honourable. Cassel has us believing that he does want to make good for the sake of his kid, but ultimately, he can't keep straight, and abandons his family for a life on the run in Canada with a similarly inventive, ruthless crim. played by an unrecognisable and ruthless Cecile de France.

The resulting movie is gripping, emotionally affecting, and impartial without being indifferent. Cassel is deeply impressive - but so are Depardieu and de France. The period and mood are brilliantly evoked - style serves content. This film is, simply put, a new gangster classic.

MESRINE PART ONE won three Cesars,for Best Actor, Best Sound and Best Director. MESRINE: PART ONE played Toronto 2008 and opened last year in Belgium, France, Russia, Hungary, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Croatia. It opened earlier this year in Poland, the Netherlands, Israel, Italy, Turkey, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Greece and Brazil. It opens in the UK and US on August 7th.