Review: Apocalypto

UK release date: 5th January

At first sight, writer/director Mel Gibson’s Mayan epic seems intimidating. It’s 140 minutes long, has subtitled Yucatan dialogue and is set in pre-Spanish Mexico. Yet despite appearances it’s no pretentious arthouse film but a thrilling chase movie in which Mayan warrior Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is pursued through the jungle by a vicious rival tribe eager to use him as a blood sacrifice.

Stocking up on sadistic violence, Gibson matches The Passion of the Christ‘s bloodsoaked tableaux with a catalogue of astonishingly gory beheadings and impalements, all set against the forbidding backdrop of Mayan pyramids and lush tropical undergrowth. He directs the set pieces with style, creating an exciting, exhausting action adventure that’s like a strangely compelling hybrid of Mayan mythology, 1980s video nasty Cannibal Holocaust and Tarzan.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 138mins

Review by Jamie Russell

Review: Miss Potter

UK release date: 5th January

Beatrix Potter (Renée Zellweger) didn’t just write and illustrate world-famous children’s books, she was a protofeminist — making a fortune in a man’s world — and an early environmentalist — saving her beloved Lake District from property development. That’s the spin of Babe director Chris Noonan’s heart-warming but overly sentimental costume drama, in which Zellweger gurns a lot through her portrayal of the creative Victorian free spirit.

What makes the film work is Ewan McGregor’s effortless charm as the timid publisher who shares her vision of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and becomes her first romance in the bestselling process, and a sparkling Emily Watson as his spinster sister, who eventually befriends Beatrix.

Directed in picture-postcard style, with occasional flashes of cartoon animation depicting Potter’s creations and inner emotions, this is a sweet and lightweight treat.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 92mins

Review by Alan Jones

Review: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

UK release date: 26th December

Novelist Patrick Süskind’s so-called “unfilmable” story of obsession and murder in 18th-century France gets a ravishing big-screen adaptation courtesy of Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer. An offbeat and sensuous adult fairy tale, it revolves around a chilling turn by Ben Whishaw (Enduring Love) as the Parisian perfumer’s apprentice, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Born with an exceptional sense of smell, Grenouille becomes monstrously fixated on preserving the aroma of young women — particularly the only daughter of merchant Antoine Richis (a poignant Alan Rickman). The tragic horror that unfolds has a seductive quality reminiscent of German Expressionist cinema, which gives Grenouille’s crimes and motivations a darkly romantic edge. But it’s the extraordinary visuals and evocative soundtrack that are the movie’s greatest strengths, re-creating a pungent era so vividly that every frame conjures up mental fragrances. This really is a mesmerising experience, though the faithfulness to the source material makes the film excessively long and occasionally sluggish.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 147mins

Review by Sloan Freer

Review: Flags of Our Fathers

UK release date: 22nd December

Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of US servicemen raising the Stars and Stripes above the Pacific island of Iwo Jima is the starting point for Clint Eastwood’s Second World War epic. Part war movie, part deconstruction of heroism, it follows three of the group — Marines Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes (Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach), and Navy corpsman “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) — as they’re sent home to bolster the fundraising effort. While these men struggle to cope with post-traumatic stress and their reluctant status as heroes, Eastwood reveals the complex interaction of war, propaganda and real lives behind the famous image.

Based on a bestselling memoir by Bradley’s son, this is a technically accomplished yet ponderously worthy film that quickly abandons its probing remit to fall back on misty-eyed platitudes about war as hell and the camaraderie of soldiers under fire. Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima, which depicts events from the Japanese perspective, is due for release in February.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 131mins

Review by Jamie Russell

Review: Pan’s Labyrinth

UK release date: 24th November

In a superlative companion piece to 2001’s The Devil’s Backbone, director Guillermo del Toro uses his extraordinarily rich and detailed visual style to weave entrancing metaphorical fantasy horror through political allegory with stunning brilliance.

In 1944, in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) seeks refuge in a mysterious maze to escape the harsh realities of her life. There, satyr Pan (Doug Jones) sets her three perilous tasks. These mirror her soul-destroying existence and help her to cope with the perversions of innocence that fascism represents in this dark fable for adults.

Superbly acted (Sergi Lopez terrifies as the wicked stepfather who is one of Franco’s torturers), vividly beautiful (the fairy-tale landscapes are exquisite), and uniquely imaginative (a magical and sinister buffet sequence is astonishing), del Toro’s mesmerising phantasmagoria packs a real emotional punch. Coupled with Javier Navarrete’s glorious score, this grim spin on Alice in Wonderland is del Toro’s finest work to date.

Radio Times rating:

*****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 119mins

Review by Alan Jones

Review: Hollywoodland

UK release date: 24th November

Though it has all the hallmarks of a film noir — a gumshoe, a mysterious death and not one but two femmes fatales — Hollywoodland doesn’t quite fit the genre bill. Instead, it’s more a poignant love letter to the glory days of Tinseltown, personified by George Reeves (Ben Affleck), a struggling bit-part player who found fame in the 1950s as TV’s Superman.

The film takes liberties with the facts of Reeves’s life, starting with his apparent suicide in 1959 and telling his story in flashback through the eyes of private eye Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), who is hired by Reeves’s mother to look into her son’s death. Simo uncovers three possible alternatives, all hinged on Reeves’s involvement with a rich, powerful and married woman (Diane Lane).

Despite the convincingly dark, smoky atmosphere to Simo’s investigation, Hollywoodland works better when it’s evoking Reeves’s heyday — a cosmetically genteel world of zoot suits and jazz bands, in which the studio system protected its investments at any price.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 125mins

Review by Damon Wise

Review: The Prestige

UK release date: 10th November

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige manages to seem both highly original and slightly old-fashioned at the same time. Its Victorian English setting is familiar from Hammer horrors but, while there have been many films with an element of magic, few have been set in the world of the professional illusionist.

Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are two magicians whose intense rivalry dates back to a time when they were both apprentices and Angier’s wife died after a trick went wrong. Fuelled by professional jealousy and personal hatred, they dedicate their talents to destroying each other.

The film is told largely in flashback, as befits a director whose previous work includes the reverse-ordered Memento. Nolan constructs a fascinating tale that twists and turns at every opportunity, although there is perhaps one twist too many in a slightly overbaked denouement. But the film is grounded by the seriousness with which he treats his material and by fine performances all round.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 130mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

Review: Starter for Ten

UK release date: 10th November

TV’s University Challenge provides a hilarious framing device for debut director Tom Vaughan’s spirited coming-of-age comedy. Adapted by David Nicholls from his own bestselling novel, it stars a charismatic James McAvoy as a gawky, working-class student navigating through his chaotic fresher year at Bristol University in the mid-1980s.

Bittersweet lessons about life and love follow, precipitated by two headstrong girls (a chalk-and-cheese Alice Eve and Rebecca Hall) and a dream opportunity to compete in his favourite academic telly quiz (whose opening phrase gives the film its title).

With its smart, pop culture-infused dialogue and evocative period soundtrack, this campus charmer has all the buoyancy of a John Hughes teen caper. But it’s the sharp, distinctly British humour and nostalgic warmth that have most appeal. Adroitly combined, they enhance an otherwise conventional plot and bring out the best in a collectively fine cast — especially in the delicious, climactic recreation of University Challenge.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 96mins

Review by Sloan Freer

Review: Sixty Six

It’s 1966 and England is hosting the World Cup Finals. It’s also the year that 12-year-old Bernie celebrates his bar mitzvah. But guess what? The final match and Bernie’s big celebration both fall on the same day. And, as England’s hopes of taking the trophy rise, so the scale of Bernie’s bar mitzvah falls. Suddenly, even close family concoct reasons to be stuck in front of the TV on the day that Bernie has looked foward to for years, and has planned down to the smallest detail. But at least the growing soccer mania leads to an improvement in Bernie’s relationship with his rather distant father.

Gregg Sulkin makes a likeable lead as Bernie and Eddie Marsan gives a solid performance as his dad, but the real revelation in this engaging coming-of-age comedy is Helena Bonham Carter, who’s nicely cast as an ordinary wife and mother.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 93mins

Review by David Aldridge

Review: All the King’s Men

UK Release: 27th October 2006

In his role as wily politician Willie Stark, Sean Penn does a lot of shouting and grand gesticulating, but fails to bring this remake of the 1949 Oscar-winning drama to life. Writer/director Steven Zaillian seems overawed by the task of adapting Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which shows Stark (a character inspired by real-life Louisiana governor Huey P Long) gradually being seduced away from his populist ideals by the lure of power.

Jude Law plays Stark’s right-hand man Jack Burden, who tries to avert scandal while battling his own inner demons. Unfortunately, Zaillian’s script becomes so tangled up in numerous subplots — Burden’s relationship with an old flame (Kate Winslet), to name but one — that supposedly significant revelations have little impact, and so Zaillian is forced to rely on endless talky scenes and a ponderous voiceover to explain the story. And the performances of the undeniably A-list cast, which also includes Anthony Hopkins, seem affected thanks to the ostentatious direction.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 12
Running time 127mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

Review: Marie Antoinette

UK Release: 20th October 2006

Director Sofia Coppola’s modernist take on the life of the infamous 18th-century monarch who said “let them eat cake” plays like an extended 1980s pop video.

Although based on Antonia Fraser’s respected biography, hard fact gives way to a stylised portrait of the naive 14-year-old Austrian princess (a coquettish Kirsten Dunst) as she heads to Versailles to marry the shy Dauphin (a blank Jason Schwartzman). The seven years it took before the consummation of her marriage meant navigating ruthless court protocol, manners and diplomacy, and it’s the pressures of privilege that interest Coppola more than any revolutionary incident.

Historical authenticity is undercut further by bursts of anachronistic pop music (including a masked rave to Siouxsie and the Banshees’s Hong Kong Garden). The film is ravishing to look at, thanks to the production team’s unprecedented access to Versailles, but its frothy charm eventually wears thin.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 122mins

Review by Alan Jones

Review: I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

UK Release: 20th October 2006

The mysterious fate of Moroccan activist Mehdi Ben Barka, who was kidnapped in 1965, has already informed Yves Boisset’s 1972 thriller The Assassination. In this historical drama, Serge Le Péron is less concerned with his disappearance and the attendant world of espionage than the Left Bank scene in mid-1960s Paris, where opportunistic ex-con Georges Figon (Charles Berling) seeks to make his name as a film producer in collaboration with screenwriter Marguerite Duras (Josiane Balasko) and director Georges Franju (Jean-Pierre Léaud).

Atmosphere is everything here, as Le Péron draws on the noirish precedents of Jean-Pierre Melville to create political, criminal and artistic milieux that are contrastingly sinister, scurrilous and self-servingly pretentious. But he does speculate intriguingly about Figon’s relationship with Ben Barka and its consequences for a nation teetering on the brink of implosion.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 102mins

Review by David Parkinson