Love And Other

Catastrophes (15) 77 mins *irir‘k Four whole years late with her thesis on 'Doris Day As A Feminist Warrior', Alice is still unrequited in her search for the perfect man. She might have found him in leather-clad classic student Ari, but he’s probably too busy being a cross between Warren Beatty and Jean-Paul Sartre (or so he thinks) to ever notice her. Michael, shy medical student, is also unrequited in his search for a new flatshare, and there may be a place with Mia. If, that is, she Survives her academic wrangling over changing departments, and works out just how committed she is to girlfriend Danni.

Yes, it’s a recognisable world, the campus setting for Emma-Kate

Girl talk: Love And Other Catastrophes

Croghan’s witty, insightfully performed debut feature, for it seems that Australian students go through the same round of insecurity, humiliation and suffering at the hands of university administration as everyone else. Unapologetically compact at just 77 minutes, Croghan’s debut blends deftly structured comedy and wise observation, though more cynical hands might find a suggestion of calculation in its appeal to the studenty audience for which it’s so obviously intended. A terrific last ten minutes, though —- just what are your favourite three films, and Why? -— and positively the only film in history where a lecturer dies of a doughnut overdose. Enjoy it for now, and feel the promise for the future.

(Trevor Johnston)

I Selected release from Fri 23 May

Beavis and Butt-head enjoy the perks of stardom

Beavis And Butt-head Do America (12) 81 mins tr **

Heh, heh, heh-heh, heh-heh, heh. The couch potato anti-heroes of the MTV slacker generation have made it beyond their own slouching-room and onto the big screen With a plot which, while it might not exactly be The Big Sleep, allows for more thought- provocation in the Viewer's mind than an average episode.

As with all good larces worthy of the name, the action is sparked by a misunderstanding > what the phrase ’doing someone' means in the criminal mind and the jism-filled brain of a

teenage zero - and escalates to calamitous extremes as the duo shut down America's electricity, cause a pile- up and invade the White House It all started With a stolen TV, inadvertently leading to involvement With ruthless terrorists, a husful of pensioners and a world-threateninrj gas

If you hate Beavrs And Butt-head, you have Mike Judge to blame The ( reator, director and WM es behind the pair may not have constructed comedy With the subtle inCIsiveness of The S/rnps‘ons or the glorious surrealism of Ron And Stimpy but the series and this film piowdes another slice of Amerii ana if a puke-filled and slothful one (Brian Donaldson)

new releases FILM

Anna Karenina (12) 108 mins *

Bernard Rose’s love of the music got ;

his Beethoven biopic Immortal Beloved

through the screenplay’s sticky-

patches, but all the admiration in the

world has helped not a jot with this ; truly disastrous Tolstoy adaptation. '

The idea is clearly there: take the

novel, of which the doomed Karenina i love story is just a part, as a whole, '

and set it against the authentic

backdrop of imperial Russia. The , execution, however, is scuppered as ' much by idiotic casting Sophie Marceau's Anna and Sean Bean's '

Vronsky are wholly unlikely lovers as it is by the sixth-form inanities of Rose’s turgid attempt at a script. Its reams of purple prose prove virtually

'4‘ £ V

Sean Bean in Anna Karenina

unplayable, even by old troupers like Alfred Molina as Levin, spiritual conscience of the piece and provider of the portentous voiceover. Settings are Viscontian in their lavishness, Tchaikovsky is trowelled on every time a character so much as coughs, and the cumulative effect borders on the laughable. (Trevor Johnston)

l Limited release from Fri 23 May.

Macbeth

(12) 135 mins first

It doesn't have the cinematic brilliance of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo And Juliet or the Ian McKellen Richard III, but this version of the Shakespeare tragedy - shot on location in Scotland certainly leaves behind the stagey stuffiness of old BBC adaptations. Jason Connery and Helen Baxendale make a young, sexy team as the thane and his wife, whose passions for each other spill over as ambition leads to murder. Debut director Jeremy Freeston shows

Jason Connery in Macbeth

a sure and often inspired hand, giving the film a swift pace that drives the story on from the witches' opening scene to Macbeth’s final demise. The acting is very good indeed: Connery surpasses himself, playing the lead character as a man caught up in cruel, unescapable fate and, ultimately, with full knowledge of his crimes. Around him are a group of Scottish stage veterans, who give the film extra weight particularly Kern Falconer’s truly evil Seyton and Graham McTaVish's noble Banquo. (Alan Morrison)

l Selected release from Fri 76 May

When We Were Kings

(U) 84 mins Hr hr

While Scotland was meeting Zaire in football’s World Cup in 1974, the West African nation was hosting the biggest fight in popular memory Ali v Foreman otherWise known as the Rumble In The Jungle. Leon Gast’s documentary shows the hype and the glory of the unrepeatable presence that was Ali while Foreman (and his German Shepherd) is almost cast as the villain. Norman Mailer and Spike Lee add weight With anecdotes and theories. (Brian Donaldson)

ALSO OPENING Jungle 2 Jungle (PG) 105 mins. '

The fact that this Hollywood comedy is based on the French movre Un Incl/en Dans La Ville isn't the only thing that’s familiar about it. Tim Allen, best known for TV’s Home Improvement, teams up again With John Pasquin, the director of his big- screen debut, The Santa Clause, for the story of an about-to-be-divorced businessman unexpectedly reunited With his thirteen-year-old son —- who has been livmg among tribesmen in

Jews x Tim Allen and Sam Huntingdon in Jungle 2 Jungle

the Amazon jungle. But this is no Emerald Forest; instead the mood is closer to Crocodile Dundee as the eyes of an innocent adjust to the urban jungle.

(Alan Morrison) I General release from Fri 23 May

16—29 May 1997 THE usrzs