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BIRTH
Starring:
Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren
Bacall
Directed by: Jonathan Glazer
Running Time: 100 minutes Released: 5th November
2004
Reviewer: Saxon Bullock
For
film directors, following up a successful debut
movie is harder than it sounds. Do you give the
audience exactly what worked last time, or head
in an adventurous new direction and risk falling
flat on your face? For SEXY BEAST helmer Jonathan
Glazer, there’s certainly no danger of him
playing it safe or being pigeon-holed as a Brit-Crime
filmmaker. Instead, he’s done a complete
u-turn from his violent first movie, serving up
a highly stylised and faintly creepy tale of lost
love and reincarnation.
Furnished with snow-bound New York locations and
a heavyweight cast, it’s a story that opens
with a jogger in Central Park keeling over dead
thanks to a heart attack, and the simultaneous
birth elsewhere of a healthy baby. Ten years later,
and the deceased man’s widow Anna (Kidman)
is finally ready to put her grief behind her and
get married again. However, on the evening her
engagement is announced, a ten-year-old boy called
Sean (Cameron Bright, who’s cornering the
“Creepy Kid” market after GODSEND)
sneaks into her apartment saying he needs to talk
to her. He also says that he’s her dead
husband, and she’ll be making a mistake
if she gets married again…
What could easily have been played as a difficult-to-believe
suspense film ends up more of a metaphysical love
story, as Kidman’s character goes from being
confused and alarmed by this weird kid’s
attentions, to being ready to give up everything
in order to be with him. A large question mark
hangs over whether or not Sean is telling the
truth for most of the movie, but it’s to
Kidman and Bright’s credit that they manage
to put this unlikely relationship across with
a scary amount of conviction. All of their scenes
have a chemistry that’s both fascinating
and disturbing to watch- most notably, the unsettling
and controversial sequence where they end up awkwardly
sharing a bath together.
Unfortunately, while Glazer’s ultra-controlled
direction is an impressive step away from the
visual swagger of SEXY BEAST, it also sucks the
life out of the picture. Closest in tone to Stanley
Kubrick’s highly flawed final project EYES
WIDE SHUT, Glazer’s film is far too restrained
and chilly for its own good, and when the emotional
heat is allowed to rise- such as when Kidman’s
disgruntled fianc_ finally lets out his anger
on his pint-sized rival- the results can be unintentionally
hilarious.
Taking a fantastic concept and treating it with
total realism is a great idea in theory, but one
that BIRTH can’t pull off. Without any emotive
force or visual energy behind it, what should
have been a provocative drama ends up simply as
an unsatisfying and lifeless melodrama with way
too many plot threads left dangling. .
Rating:
* *
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CATWOMAN
Starring:
Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Benjamin Bratt, Lambert
Wilson
Directed by: Pitof
Running Time: 104 minutes Released: August 12th
2004
Reviewer: Saxon Bullock
Ever
since Michelle Pfieffer purred her ways into the
sexual fantasies of the planet in 1992’s
BATMAN RETURNS, a solo Catwoman movie has sounded
like an excellent idea. Unfortunately, Hollywood
has a brilliant knack for taking an excellent
idea and messing it up, with the result that Warner
Bros (still smarting from BATMAN AND ROBIN) have
re-entered the Superhero fray with a blockbuster
that might as well have a large “Kick Me”
sign attached to its back.
Dumping the original Selina Kyle version of Catwoman,
the pathologically daft screenplay lazily throws
THE CROW, THE MASK and SPIDER-MAN into a blender,
and then adds some ridiculous mythology about
Egyptian cats creating a line of masked female
avengers throughout the ages. The latest recruit
for running around wearing a hilariously awful
cat-themed fetish outfit is unlucky designer Halle
Berry- formerly a meek, unconfident loser until
she’s bumped off by her nefarious beauty
tycoon employers Lambert Wilson and Sharon Stone.
Fortunately for her, an unconvincing CGI moggie
is on hand to provide a resurrection, and she’s
soon back in the living with funky feline superpowers,
an all-new attitude and a worrying craving for
catnip. In between romancing bland cop Benjamin
Bratt and a brief spot of jewel thievery, it’s
time for payback- which naturally involves mono-monikered
French director Pitof throwing in extended shots
of Ms Berry’s glistening physique and wiggling
backside.
The tidal wave of negative hype might have some
expecting a BATTLEFIELD EARTH-style disaster,
but this is just another misconceived big-budget
comic book movie without an original bone in its
body. Shot like a two-hour Destiny’s Child
video, the most interesting aspect is the demented
primary-coloured production design, while the
action sequences are sliced up into MTV fast-cut
incoherence, and the unconvincing CGI work is
bafflingly showcased in one gratuitous shot after
another.
It might have been survivable if treated as CHARLIES
ANGELS-style unashamed trash, but the script makes
the mistake of trying to play the ridiculous “Catwoman
vs the Evil Make-up Company” plotline with
a straight-face. Messages of female empowerment
don’t fit comfortably with all the lad-mag
titillation, and the final nail in the coffin
is delivered by yet another embarrassing turn
from Halle “I won an Oscar, you know!”
Berry.
Michelle Pfeiffer has nothing to panic about-
Berry might be easy on the eye, but she’s
a stilted, laughably unsexy Catwoman, missing
out on the essential psychosis of the character
and simply showing off her cleavage at every opportunity.
This misfiring blockbuster might have fitted in
with the crowd ten years ago- but now, when directors
like Sam Raimi and Bryan Singer are showing exactly
what can be done with the Comic Book movie, it’s
a wasted opportunity and a kitty without its claws.
Rating:
* * *
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DONNIE DARKO: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
Starring:
Jake Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnel, Drew Barrymore,
Jena Malone
Directed by: Richard Kelly
Running Time: 133 minutes Released: August 27th
2004
Reviewer: Saxon Bullock
You’ve
got to pity Richard Kelly. Following up a successful
first movie is hard enough, but having made his
directorial debut with DONNIE DARKO, he’s
lumbered himself with having to outdo a genre-defying,
unclassifiable masterpiece that has “Cult”
written through it like a stick of Blackpool Rock.
Only time will tell if there’s a critical
backlash heading in Kelly’s direction- but
this Director’s Cut release isn’t
going to be the start. Instead, he’s confounded
expectation by creating a new remix of the story
with a much darker and more challenging flavour.
The tale of a 1980s teenager and his apocalyptic
visions of a sinister bunny rabbit, the original
movie was one of the most mind-expanding American
films to come along in decades- and that was after
Kelly had been forced to trim it down and remove
some of the more uncommercial, out-there elements.
This fresh cut goes straight back to the source,
digging up twenty minutes of deleted scenes showcased
on the DVD (as well as some brand new footage),
but also remixing the soundtrack, adding new songs,
and including funky special effects shots that
catapult the viewer inside the main character’s
befuddled head.
Kelly even sheds light on the story’s central
“Tangent Universe” concept by editing
material from the fictional book “The Philosophy
of Time Travel” (originally written for
the official website) into the film. Thankfully,
none of this new material is at the expense of
the mystery, with the end result somehow being
even more beautifully perplexing than before.
Everything that was stunning about the original
movie- the dialogue, the satire, Patrick Swayze
being creepy- is all still there, but now it’s
a more focussed and disturbing sci-fi classic
that truly lives up to the “John Hughes
meets Phillip K. Dick” tag. Whatever may
happen to Kelly, it’s safe to say that DONNIE
DARKO’s place in history as the finest SF
movie to feature a Tears For Fears song is well
and truly assured….
Rating:
* * * * *
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