COMEDY/DRAMA SUNSHINE CLEANING (15) 91 min «0
Suicide may be painless, but in the world of black comedies. it's the cleaning up afterwards that really hurts. After her hesitant Sylvia Plath biopic. director Christine Jeffs has latched on to a solid if unexceptional script by first-time writer Megan Holley, focusing on two sisters who set up a business to disinfect crime scenes in a New Mexico backwater.
Played by Enchanted’s Amy Adams. Rose Lorkowski is an ex-cheerleader and now single mother whose dismal domestic situation is not helped by looking out for her feckless sister Norah (Young Victoria's Emily Blunt). Throw in Steve Zahn as Rose's married lover Mac, and Alan Arkin playing the same kind of grouchy grandpa as in Little Miss Sunshine. and Sunshine Cleaning has performers perfectly qualified for a misfit comedy.
Where Jeffs and Holley mess up. however, is in the details; the bile and blood-soaked aftermath the sisters frequently have to clean up is simply too icky to generate laughs, while a subplot involving Norah’s lesbian attraction to the daughter of a suicide victim is poorly developed. Admirers of SherryBaby, Waitress and other small—town tragicomedies will want to take the time to salvage some well- tuned performances here; Adams shines in a blue-collar setting, playing off Blunt's amusingly sullen posturing, and Arkin is reliable as ever.
(Eddie Harrison) I General release from Fri 26 Jun. See interview, opposite.
TRUE CRIME/EPIC KATY"
(15) 118min O.”
The secret 1940 execution of 22,000 Polish POW and other patriotic citizens and its legacy is examined in this multi-thread historical drama from veteran Polish filmmaker Andrej Wajda (Danton, Man of Iron, Ashes and Diamonds).
Shortly after Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, the Red Army invaded a territory of Poland from the east (in direct violation of the Polish-Sowet Non Aggression Pact). One of their first actions was to divide the Polish army inle enlisted men and officers — the former were allowed to return home. the latter were placed in internment camps. Young Polish captain Andrzei (Artur Ziiiiiewskii is a prisoner to the people he thought were his allies. Deported to the USSR. Andrzej eventually becomes one of the many tragedies of a genocide that takes place in the Katyn forest (on Stalin's orders). Oblivious to his fate. his wife Anna (Maia Ostaszewska) is relentless in her search for the truth.
Wise and experienced enough to know that the scars of history can only be traced with the most sensitive of touches. Wajda builds this portrait of the Sowel Union's dirtiest wartime secret through the lives of both those who (tied and those who were left behind. It's a broad canvas and Wajda orchestrates the ceiiiplex narrative with his usual aplomb. dissecting both the Russian cover-up and the Nazi's attempt to use news of the event as propaganda. (Paul Dale)
I Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh and selected release from Mon 29 Jun.
44 THE LIST 25 Jun—9 Jul 2009
TRUE CRIME/THRILLER PUBLIC ENEMIES (15) 143mm .000
Public Enemies always had the potential to be special given that it’s a crime saga from the director of Heat that follows one of America’s most colourful outlaws, as played by one of Hollywood’s most versatile and talented stars.
Fortunately, Michael Mann’s latest is every bit as great as the build-up suggests, with Johnny Depp typically mesmerising as John Dillinger. Based on Bryan Burrough’s book, Public Enemies: America’s
Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34,
the film chronicles Dillinger’s Depression-era crime spree and how it brought about a change in tactics by the FBI.
It’s packed with fascinating characters (from Feds Melvin Purvis and J Edgar Hoover to criminals Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd) and overflowing with bank robberies, shoot-outs and prison breaks. In short, it’s Mann doing what Mann does best.
As with Collateral and Miami Vice, the director has chosen to shoot much of the film in his now trademark
hand~he|d style, which lends the films - and particularly its gunfights - an immediacy that makes the story all the more gripping.
His decision to use as many real locations as possible — including the site of Dillinger’s most famous gunfight at Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin and the site of his death outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre - heightens the authenticity.
There are minor niggles, such as the occasional distortion of history (Nelson’s fate, in particular, might grate), as well as not enough time or depth for Christian’s Bale’s Purvis or Stephen Graham’s Baby Face.
But Depp expertly combines the charisma that helped Dillinger to become dubbed America’s Robin Hood with the inherent danger of a violent, unpredictable gangster. His relationship with Marion Cotillard’s love interest Billie Frechette is nicely played and is genuinely moving. On this form, there are few finer actors working in mainstream Hollywood today.
Public Enemies is gripping, powerful stuff that, even at just shy of two-and-a-half hours, doesn’t feel long enough. (Rob Carnevale)
I (i()llt?.’(ll release fie/ii ill/ed ’ Jill.