Instead of leaving these hodge podge tales of privileged reveliy. cliche and antiquated moralities Wisely alone. lhompson and director Kirk Waking Ned Jones have decided to turn them into some kind of wretched. heavily altered pro childbirth psychedelic farce fable.
The recently bereaved Cedric Brown (Colin Firth) has way too many kids and no wife. After watching his hired help resign he finds Nanny McPhee (Thompson). a wart- ridden. singletoothed harridan who has a remarkably calming affect on his Wild children. but his troubles are just beginning because now he has to find a new wife before snobby Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury) cuts off his finanCial lifeline.
Veering Wildly in tone between the nicely sadistic and blatant Wildean cliche. Nanny McPhee comes on like a low brow Peter Greenaway parody orchestrated by the worst special effects director in the history of British cinema. But despite moments of
is the best thing that could happen to them is shameful, even by studio standards. As if that wasn't insulting enOLigh. the villain of the piece is a Frenchman who smuggles a WMD into America With the intention of cowering the country before Europe! It's enough to make you wonder whether the White House's spin doctors have turned Tinseltown script doctor.
None of this would be so bad if this sequel to 1997's enjoyable swashbuckler The Mask of Zorro actually swashed buckle. Unfortunately. despite an exciting opening seguence in which the masked avenger takes on a gang of wooden-toothed Confederate thugs atop an unfinished gorge-spanning bridge. Legend remains firmly buckled up. Even spirited tongue-in- cheek play from Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Mr and Mrs Zorro and sturdy direction from Martin Campbell (who's helming the next Bond adventure) can't unmask this rotten. laborious and deeply fraudulent swashbuckler.
(Miles Fielder) I General release from Fri 28 Oct.
COMEDY, FAMlLY NANNY MCPHEE (U) 97min .0
Like some nightmarish tableaux sewn out of reconstituted bonnets and wooden crooks comes Emma Thompson's adaptation of Christianna Brand's Nurse Mathilda stories. Brand was better known for her vicious medical and procedural thrillers (Green for Danger, Death in High Heels). Her Nanny Mathilda books were actually just her way of keeping her meWing children quiet (80 she could return quickly to her beloved husband Roland LeWIs. whose arms she died in after 50 years of marriage).
ROAD MOVIE? BROKEN FLOWERS (15) 106min no.
frequent nausea for anyone With a mental age higher than five. this all moves along at a fairly zippy rate and the final credit sequence is fun. Above all though. it's nice to see lansbury camping it up in her first feature film since Neil Jordan's {he Company of Wolves from 1984. (Paul Dale)
I General release from Fri .9] Oct.
ACTION ADVl NlURl lAMllY SKY HIGH (PG) 99min 0.
Director Mike Surwving Christmas Mitchell takes. with varying degrees of originality. inspiration from Brad Bird ll ie Incredih/es and a whole gamut of classic DC and Marvel comics to mould a mediocre kids' comedy fantasy.
Will Stronghold (Michael Agarano). child of the Commander (Kurt Russell) and .Jetstream (Kelly Preston) - the two greatest superheroes in the world - is about to start a high school where superheroes rub shoulders
Film
With mere mortals. The trouble is that he hasn‘t developed his superpower yet ~ and boy. is he going to need it.
Although Paul Hernandez. Robert Schooley and Mark McCorkle's tongue in cheek script contains glimpses of very dry humour. this is a film aimed mostly at a younger. less sophisticated audience. With the prevalence of poor special effects. schmalt/ and incongruous adult in— jokes. Sky High feels slipshod and painfully formulaic. (Alisa Mandrigin) I Out now on general release.
the Whore (the film is even dedicated to Eustache). And here filmmaker Jim Jarmusch returns with ease to the spare, minimalist charm of his very earliest work
Like Prefab Sprout before him, Don Johnston (Bill Murray) is about to find out some things do indeed ‘hurt more much more than cars and girls’. Don is an ageing bachelor whose most recent young lady Sherry (Julie Delpy) has just walked out on him. At the same time he receives an anonymous letter on pink paper from one of his former girlfriends claiming that the son he never knew he had has left home and may be heading his way. At the insistence of his wannabe detective neighbour and best friend Winston (Jeffrey Wright) Don sets off on a fly and drive adventure across the US to visit each of his five exes to discover the truth behind the scarlet missive.
Broken Flowers is a kind of inverse interpretation (in that it is short, economical and not loquacious) of the remarkable French writer director Jean Eustache’s brilliant 1973 epic of idle observation, The Mother and
(noticeably Stranger Than Paradise and Permanent Vacation). Employing his usual bag of tricks (static and mundane framing, great music and long fades to black) Jarmusch has turned Voltaire's Candide character into ‘a stalker in a [Ford] Taurus’ and the result is a tender, perplexing joy. With gentle reflections on the ageing process, homogenous small town America, the remembrance of the dead, philosophy, girls and computers, Broken Flowers is as wryly funny and as moving as anything Jarmusch has ever made. Boasting an almost obscene amount of talent for a low budget US feature film (Tilda Swinton, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange and Six Feet Under’s Frances Conroy play the women from Don’s back pages), this opaque comedy of freeform miscommunication and disappointment is a bewitching, tantalising ride. (Paul Dale)
I Selected release from In L’l Oct. See feature. page 20.
1‘; ()(‘t .% NU. L’fixlit THE LIST 41