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HORROR CASE 39 (15) 109min ●●●●●
The current vogue for demonic children flicks doesn’t excuse the unwarranted release of Christian Antibodies Alvart’s long-shelved horror film, in which Renee Zellweger plays Emily Jenkins, a social worker who adopts a malevolent girl with the ability to use her victims worst fears to terrify them to death.
Case 39 kicks off in distasteful style as Emily catches a couple in the act of stuffing their daughter Lillith (Jodelle Ferland) into a flaming oven. With Lillith’s parents quickly installed in jail, Jenkins takes on their responsibilities as the child’s guardian, welcoming the little girl into her house. Only when child psychologist pal Douglas (Bradley Cooper) offers to interview Lillith does Emily begin to understand why the girl’s parents were so intent on toasting her alive. As Lillith dispassionately dispatches those who she dislikes, German filmmaker
Alvart attempts a few Omen-style stunt deaths, ranging from swarms of insects to Ian McShane being mauled by a hellhound. But while creditably avoiding the usual supernatural trappings, Alvart’s unwise positioning of the story within a social work context makes Case 39 both ludicrous and morally dubious. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 5 Mar.
DRAMA CHLOE (15) 96min ●●●●●
Does this sound familiar? A middle- aged gynaecologist Catherine (Julianne Moore), worried that she may no longer be desirable to her flirtatious music professor husband David (Liam Neeson), decides to pay a prostitute Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to test his fidelity. Yes Chloe is based on Anne Fontaine’s French drama Nathalie, which paired Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Beart alongside Gerard Depardieu. Screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Fur) and director Atom Egoyan (unusually not working from his own script), have relocated the tale to a wintry, upscale Toronto, amplified the role of the couple’s teenage son (Max Thieriot), and have, in the second half, squandered dramatic and psychological credibility by veering into erotic thriller territory.
Despite the title and the initial voiceover, the principal character turns out to be Moore’s Catherine, fearing her own ‘invisibility’ as a middle-aged woman in a culture fixated on youthful beauty and accustomed to paying for problems to be solved. You can see why Egoyan was attracted to the ideas around marital mistrust, emotional deception and voyeurism in the source material, but the opulent settings (particularly Catherine and David’s spectacular designer home) and the endless mirror images prove distracting, and the cast deserve better than the ludicrous denouement. (Tom Dawson) ■ Selected release from Fri 5 Mar.
DRAMA HAICHIKO: A DOG’S STORY (PG) 93min ●●●●●
Lasse Hallstrom, director of My Life As A Dog, returns to his canine roots with Hachiko: A Dog’s Story, an unashamedly sentimental version of the story most Scots will recognise as Greyfriars Bobby. The cited real-life inspiration for Hallstrom’s pet- sploitation flick comes from 1920’s Japan, where Hachiko was known as a faithful dog who waited nearly ten years for his master’s return. Transported to an idyllic Rhode
Island setting, this version features Richard Gere and Joan Allen as parents Parker and Kate Wilson, who adopt a puppy found lost in the local railway station. Man and his best friend bond, but are not destined to be permanent companions, leading Hallstrom’s weepie into a final fifteen minutes which feel like one long howl. Much like Marley and Me, but without a jolly screen couple to disguise the film’s maudlin nature, Hachiko’s simple story feels one note and repetitive, never working through notions of Hachiko’s role in family or community with any resonance. The dog, at least, is cute, and Richard Gere seems surprisingly frisky too, and a particular good sport for a scene in which a skunk excretes on his prostrate form. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 12 Feb.
4–18 Mar 2010 THE LIST 45
THRILLER GREEN ZONE (15) 114min ●●●●●
Bourne actor-director combo Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass’ new collaboration dissects the lies that were told to enable and maintain the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The title zone is the international zone of Iraq where the Coalition Provisional Authority (the US and UK basically as represented by Bush and Blair) masterminded their search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) that Saddam Hussein and his hirsute generals were supposed to have hidden and primed. It was in this zone that high-ranking warrant officers were based in the months before the surge of US forces. One such warrant officer is Roy Miller (Matt Damon), a humourless but independently minded investigator whose frustration at constantly leading his team into empty silos and bunkers is making him ask awkward questions of the Pentagon Special Intelligence who provide the information he is acting on. When Miller begins to clash with the Pentagon’s white collar man Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear, superb) he goes off radar. Miller is fortunate enough to be helped by CIA bureau chief Gordon Brown (you see what they did there? Played by Brendan Gleeson) and Iraqi taxi driver Freddy (Glaswegian born actor Khalid Abdalla).
Adapted from Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s brilliant 2007 non fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, Green Zone is a brave and intelligent attempt to engage with a very recent history and it’s implications of governmental abuse of all of us.
Greengrass pares down his style here. Miller is no superhero spy, he’s just a jumped up grunt who cares enough to go in search of the truth, so there are no big set piece fights but lots of running about and hiding - all filmed with this remarkable filmmaker’s usual considered docurealist distance.
This very adult thriller reaches back to the political-commercial work of Costa-Gavras (most notably his 1972 film State of Siege, a thriller set against the background of US counterinsurgency measures in Uruguay at the time, how things don’t change) and even Roger Spottiswood’s very fine 1983 war photographers in Nicaragua drama Under Fire, to find its tone. It is muscular, sexless and deterministic filmmaking and is undoubtedly the best thing Greengrass has done to date. Focused and sparse turns from Damon, Kinnear, Gleeson, Abdalla and Scouse thespian Jason Issacs (as a murderous officer) all help too. (Paul Dale) ■ General release from Fri 12 Mar.