Film
HISTORICAL DRAMA MUNICH (15) 164min 0000
In late 1972. shonly after the killing of 1 1 athletes at the Munich Olympics. Israel's prime minister Golda Meir sanctioned a secret service vendetta campaign against leading members of the PLO and other Arab terrorist cells. The team of skilled (and. for the purposes of culpability. disenfranchised) Mossad agents who worked in Europe were led by Avner (Eric Bana). He and his men were sent on a mission of vengeance from which
there was no redemption.
Steven Spielberg and writer Tony Angels in America Kuschner chronicle Avner and his gang's bloody adventure as part boys' own travelogue and part schematic paranoid political thriller a la Costa Gavras. Frankenheimer. Lumet and Pollock. Spielberg and regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski work wonders in the tight parameters of the dOCudrama thriller. catching the ramshackle griminess of the business of conducting such a mission in a time before mobile phones and computers. But, having made a film that's almost three hours long. Spielberg and Kuschner are very almost hoisted by his own petards (there is a particularly Cringy Merry Christmas-style sequence between Mossad and PLO cells).
That said. Spielberg is working at his seamless best here and shows great skill with the procedural parts of the story (he's no Melville but he ain't bad). Munich is greatly enhanced by a superb cast which includes Ciaran Hinds. Matthieu Kassovitx. Daniel Craig and Geoffrey Bush. who manage to soften the scripts more expositive sermonising. A satisfyineg intelligent work. (Paul Dale)
I General release from Fri 27 Jan. See feature. page (4.
THRILLER HIDDEN (CACHE) (15) 117min «no
This is just a bit of histOry yOu may want to bear in mind when watching Michael Haneke’s remarkable new film: on 17 October 1961 thousands of Algerian immigrants living in Paris took to the streets in support of the national liberation struggle being waged in Algeria against France by the FLN
38 THE LIST 19 Jan-2 feb 2000
(Front Liberation National). In response. the Paris police department violently attacked the demonstrators. The massaCre took the lives of 200 demonstrators. many of whose bodies were dumped in the Seine.
Over 40 years later Georges (Daniel Auteuil). the presenter of a literary review programme on French TV. and his publisher wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) receive packages containing videos shot outside their nice suburban house. As the tapes and the drawings they come wrapped in become more personal and alarming. Georges begins to lose his mind. and accuse childhood friend Majid (Maurice Benichou) of sending them.
Haneke. the allegedly austere intellectual Austrian filmmaker whose previous films have divided audiences and critics (Funny Games. Code Unknown. Time of the Wolf). has always diffused polemic through the most personal of scenarios. Hidden is undoubtedly his most successful experiment in genre yet. It's a
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DRAMA THE NEW WORLD (12A) 150mm 00.
devastating, giddying examination of middle class srnugness. the burden of the past and the deeply objectional self obsessions of the intellectual. Beautifully acted. paced. edited and directed. it will leave you gasping and perplexed as all great cinema should. If you want to know why 30 French towns and cities burned last autumn. the answer is here. (Paul Dale)
I Film/rouse. Edinburgh from Fri 27 Jan.
ROMANTiC COMEDY HUMOUR HAS IT (12A) 96min 0.
A high concept comedy which manages (unbelievably) to completely bastardise classic The Graduate. Rumour Has It works on the convoluted premise that Sarah (Jennifer Aniston) discovers that The Graduate book and moVie are based on her blood relatives. In a search for her roots she meets Beau (KeVin Costner) the real life doppelganger of Dustin Hoffman. Then in some imbecile's wet dream Beau
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Although her name is never mentioned, Terrence Malick’s latest epic is quickly recognisable as the story of Pocahontas, the Native American girl who risked her life to show mercy to intruder John Smith when he faced
death at the hands of her tribe.
Since describing the elegiac romance of runaways Sheen and Spacek in Badlands in 1973, Malick has only completed two features: prairie melodrama Days of Heaven and ponderous all-star war flick The Thin Red Line, both depicting the cruelties of modern life through a pantheistic lens. Filmed 25 years after he originally wrote the script, Malick's The New World follows suit from the opening sequences, as the approaching ships of John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer) are watched warily from the shores by the ‘naturals’, as Malick terms the indigenous population. Although liberal cinema sometimes adopts the perspective of white people who live as Indians (Little Big Man, Grey Owl), The New World owes its freshness to its protagonist Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher) who is initially romanced by Smith and then by tobacco lord John Rolfe (Christian Bale), who takes her to England. This change of location inspires Malick to find clever pictorial reversals of his usual atavistic tableaux, notably when a natural, clothed in animal skins, tracks his way through the wrought iron gates and sculptured shrubberies of a refined country estate.
The exquisitely realised past look of The New World is Malick’s triumph but the casting is pure folly. Despite its winning heroine, the male stars offer barely a spark between them, leaving a gaping hole where there should be heart. As with Malick’s other films, the mesmerising attention to detail overwhelms the foreground drama, losing all narrative momentum in favour of richly textured moments of feathers drawn across sun-drenched skin, or raindrops silently dropping into deep pools of water. (Eddie Harrison)
I General release from Fri 27 Jan.
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gets to add something else to his list of family conquests and the movie falls apart.
Rumour Has It that director Rob lit/hen
Harry Met Sally Reiner was a late replacement on the [)fOJCCl and it is clear that he never gets to grips with the material. The actors seem completely lost. The usually excellent Mark Buffalo pops up as Aniston's fiance and his earnest performanc; looks like he's acting in a completely different moVIe. In contrast. Shirley Maclaine's slapstick performance as Aniston's mother is overcooked. In fact nobody walks away from this potentiain funny comedy with any credit.
(Kaleem Aftabi
I General release from Fri 12/ Jan.
DRAMA BEE SEASON (12A) 104min 00
Family <liserifranchismnent is a favourite theme of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's screenwriting mum Naomi Foner (The Best of Families and Running on Empty). In adapting Myla Goldberg's 2000 bestseller she uses 1 t-year-old Eliza's (Flora Crossi success in a spelling bee to open up a can of worms in the Nauman household. Her father Saul (Richard Gere) is a religious studies professor at Berkeley (changed from a folk singing cantor in the booki sp(x;ialising in the Kabbalah. Saul believes that Eli/a's prowess with spelling makes her the perfect guinea pig to see if theories about the power of v‘iords in the Kaballah can work in practice. As Eli/a becomes the focus of his attention he starts neglecting his wife (Juliett BlilOCllOl and oldest son (Max Mingliellai. They react by rebelling against Saul and as they do so the story shifts its focus away from Eli/a and towards them. In allownig this change of focus directing partners David Siegel and Scott McGeliee (Suture. The Deep End) thematically and technically shift the film from being a mediocre fictionalised version of Spellbound to something far more tedious and confusing. (Kaleen: Aftab: I General release from Fri 20 Jan.
DRAMA AFTER MIDNIGHT (15) 92min no
This sweet little film from former Italian critic Davrde Ferrario might bring to mind Bill Forsyth's That Sinking Feeling