Film Reviews
ALSO RELEASED Please Give (15) 90min ●●●●● Writer/director Nicole Holofcener (Lovely and Amazing, Friends with Money) continues on her fairly unique track of putting morally conflicted working women centre stage. Holofcener’s favourite actor Catherine Keener plays a morally bankrupt New Yorker who makes no secret of the fact that she wants her neighbour dead so she can make her apartment bigger, but then feels guilty about the fact that her furniture business makes money selling off the unwanted furniture of the dead. It’s these fluctuating ethical values that make Holofcener’s characters so brutal and rude, but here she fails to find anything fresh to say in this oddly saccharine comedy of bad manners. Rebecca Hall pops up as a lovesick sister. General release from Fri 18 Jun. Killers (12A) 100min ●●●●● Following a sudden break-up, Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) believes she’ll never fall in love again. But when she reluctantly joins her parents on a trip to the French Riviera, Jen meets the man of her dreams, the dashing, handsome Spencer Aimes (Ashton Kutcher). Three years later, they are married and living the ideal suburban life. And then one morning bullets start flying and Spencer tells her that he is in fact a super spy. Witless, unfunny and lacking in any kind of chemistry between the leads, this action comedy is a forgettable dud. Don’t waste your money. General release from Fri 18 Jun.
HORROR/MYSTERY BLACK DEATH (15) 101min ●●●●●
British director Christopher Smith has proved himself a sure hand in crafting low-ish budget commercial chillers with Creep, Severance and Triangle. This, his fourth feature, is by far his most ambitious yet. Set in 13th century England at a time when the country was ravaged by the bubonic plague, it’s an entertainingly gruesome hack-and-slash gore-fest with an intelligent but never pretentious political subtext. And while the plot is somewhat predictable – especially if you’re familiar with the films Smith references, variously Witchfinder General, The Name of the Rose, Apocalypse Now, The Wicker Man, even Monty Python and the Holy Grail – the appropriately grim look and feel of Black Death, together with solid performances from a decent cast and some handsomely staged set-pieces easily hold the attention for its modest running time. Angelic-faced Eddie Redmayne (Angel Clare from the
BBC adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles) plays a young monk named Osmund whose faith is being tested by the outbreak of the plague and the onset of
manhood. When a group of the bishop’s holy soldiers led by Sean Bean’s knight Ulric arrive at his monastery and demand from the abbot (David Warner) a guide to show them the way to a distant village that has mysteriously survived the plague, the acolyte volunteers for the dangerous mission. En route to their damned destination, Ulric reveals that the village has renounced god and is in thrall to a necromancer, and so the scene is set for a battle of beliefs between Christians and pagans. The analogy between that clash of religions and the
one currently being played out in the Middle East is nicely drawn. Similarly, the parallels between an invading hoard supposedly representing God’s will, but actually working to maintain the power of the church, and the present day west’s bogus oil economy-driven war on terror are neatly sketched in. Smith, however, is first and foremost interested in delivery genre thrills, and so we get lashings of skull-splitting swordplay and wince-inducing torture scenes all of which take place in an authentically atmospheric grotty grey landscape. (Miles Fielder) ■ Selected release from Fri 10 Jun.
COMEDY/SPOOF MACGRUBER (15) 98min ●●●●●
After the deluge of unfocused Scary Movie/Date Movie parodies, green shoots of comedic recovery arrived in the form of last year’s witty blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite and this revival of Saturday Night Live character MacGruber, an ’80s action hero complete with body warmer, shades and a removable car stereo he carries around with him. As with other SNL spin-offs, notably Wayne’s World, the results are patchy but often lively, benefiting from a game cast’s deadpan delivery of an astonishingly vulgar script. When pony-tailed playboy Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) steals a nuclear warhead and aims it at the White House, the US government reaches out to South American mountains, where ‘the ultimate tool’ MacGruber (Will Forte) has lived in semi-retirement for ten years, distraught over the death of his wife on their wedding day. Persuaded by his army buddy (Powers Boothe) to find the missing missile, MacGruber quickly allies himself with straight- laced CIA man Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) and sultry romantic interest Vicki St Elmo (Kristen Wiig).
Jorma Taccone’s film is better at remounting clichés than deflating them, but rises to a few laugh-out-loud set-pieces including MacGruber’s homo-erotic team-building skills, unlikely decoys, and the best sex-scene since Team America, amusingly contrasting Top Gun pop-video aesthetics with bumping, grinding reality.
A dismal box-office flop in the US, MacGruber is a welcome return to the Airplane!
tradition of dry cinematic observation leavened with crude, silly jokes; it’s likable, deliberately offensive style deserves a little more appreciation. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 18 Jun.
54 THE LIST 10-24 Jun 2010