Film

O‘COMEDYI- - ZOOLANDER (12) 89 mins 00..

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Warrants immediate cult status

It's crisis time for Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller). three times winner of Male Model Of The Year award. who has just lost his title to young. blonde upstart Hansel (Owen Wilson). Reckoning there must be more to life than “just being really. really good looking'. Derek plans on setting up in New York a ‘Centre For Kids Who Can't Read Good'. However. flamboyant designer Mugatu (Will Ferrell) signs up the none-too-bright model for his new show. hoping to brainwash him into assassinating the president of Malaysia. who's pledged to abolish sweatshop

labour...

Developed by co-writers Ben Stiller and Drake Sather from a character they created for a TV awards show. Zoolander is a gloriously goofy satire on the New York fashion scene. Crammed with visual and verbal gags and peppered with celebrity cameos. it strings together a series of treasurable set pieces: there‘s the ‘walk-off' between Derek and Hansel. a trip to coalmining country to bond with Dad (Jon Voight) and the explanation as to why the world of fashion is implicated in the last 200 years of American political assassinations. And the deadpan lead performance of Stiller (who also directed and produced) is a comic treat: Derek's pouting series of ‘looks', his snakeskin outfits. his squeaky voice and his terrifying stupidity warrant immediate cult status. (Tom Dawson)

I General release from Fri 30 Nov.

COMEDY

JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK

(18) 95 mins 0...

l was gonna watch this movie, but I got high. No. not really, but Afroman's no 1 hit is on the soundtrack. Welcome to the wonderful world of Kevin Smith. director of cult gems Clerks. Chasing Amy and Dogma. If you already love Smith's films this one will satisfy your every need. as his two best minor but omnipresent characters finally get the starring roles. If you haven't seen the previous films. you're going to miss a whole lot of in- jokes.

In this final instalment of Smith's ‘New Jersey' trilogy. slackers Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) discover

4’

28 THE LIST 29 Nov-13 Dec 2001

Smith’s minor but omnipresent characters finally get

a movie is being made about the comic book characters they inspired (Bluntman and Chronic). They figure if the film is crap they'll get slagged on the internet and this will ruin their chances of getting laid. So off to Hollywood the boys go. Cue hijinx involving a robbery. an orang-utan. a bunch of Charlie '3 Angels types and cameos from Smith regulars Jason Lee and Ben Affleck. as well as Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Wes Craven. The comic dialogue is as sharp and foul-mouthed as ever. but Smith also packs in loads of action and even a few special effects. Can this really be the last outing for Jay and Silent Bob? (Louisa Pearson) I General release from Fri 30 Nov. See feature, pages 24-25.

starring roles

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DRAMA THE BELIEVER (15) 98 mins .00.

A young New York Jewish kid who's also a neo-Nazi has to be about as provocative as subject matter gets. The story of Danny Blint rejecting his yeshiva studies to adopt a skinhead uniform and undertake acts of terrorism. might have been mere cheap sensationalism were it not for two things: the thought-provoking manner in which writer-director Henry Bean investigates the story. and the fact that his script is based on a real case from the 1960s.

Disturbing as Blint's foul-mouthed rhetoric and violent crimes are. far more troubling is the suggestion that his racism is the product of rigorous religious teachings. Furthermore. Blint's beliefs as both Jew and Nazi aren't as oppositional as one would expect something reflected in his anti-Semite group speeches. which are very ambiguous.

Unsurprisingly, The Believer got

Provocative subject matter

Bean (himself a Jewi into hot water in America. But his film is a cerebral. theological and phiIOSOphical inquiry which transcends any accusation of being a ‘primer for racism‘ (the words of the Wiesenthal Centre For Jewish Culture). Finally. in Ryan Gosling, Bean has a lead actors who gives an appropriately sincere performance. (Miles Fielder)

I Selected release from Fri 7 Dec. See prewew. page 26.

COMEDY WOMEN TALKING DIRTY (15) 97 mins .0

Don't be misled by the title: this isn't a provocative expose of phone-sex workers. but a pedestrian ‘female friendship' comedy. which has been awaiting release for a couple of years. Ellen (Gina McKee) is a shy cartoonist who marries a charming yet duplicitous compulsive gambler (James Purefoyi. Cora (Helena Bonham Carter) is her extrovert best pal who winds up as a single mother after being dumped by her French boyfriend. Several years later. at Ellen's post-diverce party. Cora shocks her host by revealing the identity of her second child‘s father . . .

Executive-produced by Elton John. director Coky Giedroyc's follow-up to Ste/la Does Tricks is the sort of insubstantial and unanibitious work that gives British cinema a bad name. Bonham Carter. straining for quirkiness. is wholly miscast as a Scottish single mother. there are a host of predictably “colourful supporting characters (including Richard Wilson and Kenneth Cranham‘s long-term gay c0uple). and lsla Dewar's script (based on her own novel) awkwardly attempts to mix naturalistic drama with sitcom humour. At least cinematographer Brian Tufano photographs Edinburgh and its Surrounding countryside With crisp efficiency. while McKee plays the dreamin introverted Ellen With sensitive restraint. (Tom Dawson) I General release from Fri 7 Dec.

Pedestrian comedy

GAY DRAMA PRESQUE RIEN (18) 100 mins 00..

The sell-out hit of London's Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Preset/e Rien returns to the Filmhouse by popular demand. An intense. moody. homo- erotic feature by Sebastien Lifshitz about a summer romance between two male teenagers. it is dark. enigmatic and sexy.

Dreamer Jeremie Elka‘im is holidaying in the South of France with his depressed mother and surly younger sister when he is literally followed home from the beach by hunky Stephane Rideau. Despite coming from very different backgrounds the men (all in love. and their affair is charted in all its volatile. intoxicated excess. This part of the film is told in flashback; the present follows the distressed loner Elka'im on his return to the deserted reson. as he tries to get his life back together and comprehend what went wrong.

Beautifully performed With real nuance. Pr'esque Rio/i captures the niinutia of first love: the flirting, phy3ical passions and rows. Elki'aim centres the film With a haunted performance reminiscent of Montgomery Clift. while Rideau displays a dangerous quality as the love interest. Exhilirating and sexually (‘il'()\.'()(I{lI|\.(}. Presque Rien comes highly recommended. (John Binnie)

I Filmhouse. Edinburgh from Fri (30 Nov.

Intense, moody and homo-erotic