DRAMA
GOOD DICK
(15) 86min COCO
Glasgow-born, Los Angeles-resident 27-year-old filmmaker Marianna Palka has written, directed, co-produced and taken the leading role in her feature debut, which she is currently self-distributing in America. That’s an impressive achievement in itself, but Good Dick is also an uncommonly assured film that’s more than a little daring. Palka’s self-evident drive and talent has been rewarded with a Grand Jury Prize nomination at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and a New Director’s Award win at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June.
Her film is about a young girl (played by Palka) who whiles away her time in the sprawling ‘burbs of Los Angeles watching pornography rented from her local video store. The boys that work there don’t know what to make of the dowdy, monosyllabic and nameless girl, but one of them (another nameless character, played by Jason Ritter, son of the late actor John) is curious and takes a shine to her. His very charming attempts to woo her, however, are met with disdain. But persistence gets him through her front door, and the pair enter into a sadomasochistic relationship, a kind of trial by fire through which the boy must go in order to get the girl.
It’s a bit reminiscent of the Maggie Gyllenhaal/James Spader S&M romance Secretary, except with the power roles reversed. And like that film, Good Dick is, beneath its seedy and disturbing exterior, a very sweet, very affecting and quite sophisticated film. It heralds a bright new talent. (Miles Fielder)
I Selected release from Fri 3 Oct.
44 THE LIST 2—16 Oct 2008
THRILLER 88 MINUTES 108 mins 0
Someone really should keep Al Pacino away from director Jon Avnet. The star of Sea of Love and Car/ito's Way has struck up an unfortunately productive relationship with the hack director of Red Corner and Up Close and Personal. Avnet recently reteamed Pacino with DeNiro for current release Righteous Kill. a non- event predated by this equally drab Seattle-based thriller.
Summoning all the energy of a flickering candle. Pacino plays Jack Gramm. a forensic scientist who finds himself framed for murder by an unseen opponent. Given 88 minutes to prove his innocence and unmask the real culprit. Pacino wearily scrambles between police. suspects and a Death Row killer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) to clear his name.
At his best. Pacino can lift such silliness. but the star sleepwalks through this role: a scene in which Gramm reveals his mournfulness about the death of his sister is so casually underplayed that Pacino might as well have been reminiscing about a missed dental appointment. With a ludicrous cheesy cliffhanging climax. 88 Minutes is rank codswallop that‘s particularly unpalatable to anyone who wants to remember Pacino as a screen giant rather than the old ham he's turning into.
(Eddie Harrison) I On general release from 3 Oct.
ANIMATION FLY ME TO THE MOON 84 mins 0.
DRAMA UNRELATED (15) 100min oooo
British TV director Joanna Hogg's debut feature, shot during a hot summer in the Tuscan hills, has none of the trappings of Merchants lvory's A Room with a View, that other British heritage film made in the same locann.
Forty-something Anna's (Kathryn Worth) marriage is in trouble. She accepts an invitation to spend the summer with her old school friend Verena (Mary Roscoe) at their villa in Tuscany. Long lunches. daytrips. drinking games and nocturnal skinny dips are the order of the day; and Anna soon finds she is more inclined to hang out with the family teenagers rather than those her own age. In particular Verena's son Oakley (deliciously played by Tom Hiddleston) catches her eye and they begin an intense flirtation. With temperatures rising, Anna slowly begins to unravel.
Hogg's fresh style is more reminiscent of an Eric Rohmer tale than anything anglophile while her portrait of an older childless b0urgeois woman is brilliantly drawn out — with imaginative camerawork and editing and a script full of tensions and complexities. Recommended. (Selina Robertson) I GFF, Glasgow, Fri 70—Sun 72 Oct; Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 7 7—Thu 23 Oct.
A 30 film describing man‘s first trip to the moon is a lively sounding prospect. and moments in Ben Stassen's animation offer a genuine wow-factor. depicting a space-rocket blasting into the atmosphere, or the view from above the lunar- lander as it touches down on the moon's white soil. But such moments of poetry are fleeting; Domonic Paris' script is insanely focused on the uninteresting plight of three house—flies who stow away onboard Apollo 1 1 in an attempt to replicate the barnstorming feats of their aviation pioneer Grampa
(Christopher Lloyd).
With occasionally striking but generally patchy BD animation. it's the charmlessness of the bug-eyed insect designs which firmly grounds Fly Me To The Moon. while the xenophobic portrayal of Russians . added to the sexist attitude toward the female characters. will repel any parents attracted to the idea
of an educational space flick.
Fly Me To The Moon '3 uncertain juvenilia is topped off by an ill-advised cameo from Buzz Aldrin. who appears in the final scenes to assure us that the events depicted are 'scientific impossibility‘ and generously dedicates the film to those who worked on the NASA space programme. It's hard to imagine that a lame kiddies flick about talking insects is what the boys at Cape Canaveral wanted, but thanks all the same. Buzz. (Eddie Harrison)
I On general release from Oct 3.