Review: The Holiday

UK release date: 8th December

Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet headline this romantic comedy for the festive season. Watching it is like unwrapping an attractively packed gift only to discover it’s socks again.

Writer/director Nancy Meyers should have observed the advice of her previous film, Something’s Gotta Give, and let a few scenes go. She spends far too much time lingering on humdrum episodes such as Diaz and Winslet emailing each other to arrange a house swap for the holidays. They’re both fleeing the fallout of broken relationships, but inevitably hopping across the pond leads both of them to unexpected romance.

Diaz and Jude Law make a fairly engaging couple, although sadly the early stages of their relationship are clumsily knitted together, while Winslet and Jack Black remain an awkward pairing throughout. But the film’s funny moments are as thinly scattered as the English snow, which mysteriously keeps appearing and disappearing throughout the movie.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 135mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

News: Kate Winslet

Winslet, in cinemas again this week in The Holiday, seems to have a new film out all the time these days, so all her news has already been covered.

Review: Flushed Away

UK release date: 1st December

The first computer-animated feature from the Aardman brigade successfully replicates their Wallace & Gromit claymation aesthetic with convincing and entertaining (if less charming) results.

Hugh Jackman provides the voice of Roddy St James, a posh Kensington pet mouse who is flushed down the toilet into a vast rodent metropolis — a detailed mini-London constructed from rubbish. There he teams up with a streetwise rat (Kate Winslet) to foil the plans of a villainous toad (Ian McKellen) to flood the sewer city during half-time of the World Cup final. And along the way, Roddy finds genuine companionship for the first time.

Visually inventive and with a rich dose of British humour, directors David Bowers and Sam Fell’s film has thrilling adventure for the kids and droll wit for grown-ups. Jean Reno scores big laughs as stereotypical French mercenary Le Frog, but best of all are the singing slugs crooning pop hits as hilarious comment on the action.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate U
Running time 84mins

Review by Alan Jones

News: Kate Winslet

Winslet’s had so many films out recently, with this week’s Flushed Away just the most recent, that all her latest movie news was covered a month ago. Having said that, it has emerged that she was the inspiration for – wait for it… – the new Jaguar XK, a curvy little British number if ever there was one. And Winslet’s not bad either. (Boom boom…)

News: Jack Black

The tubby star of this week’s Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny has gone from second-fiddle sidekick in 2000’s High Fidelity to global superstardom in less than half a decade, so little wonder he’s making the most of it, with a whole slew of projects in the offing. Next up he’ll be seen (perhaps somewhat implausibly) as Kate Winslet’s love interest in romantic comedy The Holiday, due out on 8th December in the UK, with loads more due in the next few years.

Potentially promising is the as-yet untitled project from Noah Baumbach, writer of the superb The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and writer/director of Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale, which will follow a family reunion over the course of a weekend. With Baumbach in charge, it’s impossible to predict what the outcome might be.

Then will come the much-anticipated Be Kind Rewind from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, with Black desperately trying to re-make movies from Back to the Future to The Lion King for a friend’s video store after accidentally wiping his entire stock. And talking of talking animals flicks, Black will aslo voice the lead character in the upcoming Dreamworks flick Kung Fu Panda, alongside the vocal talents of the likes of Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Ian McShane and Jackie Chan. He is also attached to Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright’s Them, and adaptation of the non-fiction book by journalist Jon Ronson, exploring the wacky (and sometimes downright worrying) world of conspiracy theorists. With Wright and Black on board, it’s unlikely this is going to be a straight piece of reportage, however…

Meanwhile, his semi-spoof band Tenacious D seems to be continuing with its tours and occasional gigs – so keep an eye out, and you could catch a sight of Black in the flesh…

Review: Little Children

UK Release: 3rd November 2006

With his debut feature, In the Bedroom, director Todd Field explored the darker side of middle-class suburban angst, and he’s still in the same territory for this follow-up.

The setting is a tight-knit American community, into which convicted sex criminal Ronald McGorvey (an extraordinary turn by Jackie Earle Haley) has been released. He fades into the background quickly, as we’re soon introduced to Sarah (Kate Winslet), a married mother who becomes fascinated with a charming — and equally married — father (Patrick Wilson) at the local playground.

Passions flare, but before you can say “American Beauty” McGorvey bubbles back to the surface as the stories mesh together, leading to an implausible finale that’s not quite as profound as it thinks it is. Though its production values are impeccable and its performances pitch-perfect, Little Children feels intellectually hollow and more than a little exploitative of a hot-button subject.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 136mins

Review by Damon Wise

News: Kate Winslet

With so many movies out at the moment, all the latest Winslet news was covered last week.

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

News: Kate Winslet

Due out on 3rd November, All the King’s Men star Kate Winslet’s performance in Little Children has been earning her fresh Oscar buzz – perhaps it will be fifth time lucky, after nominations for 1995’s Sense and Sensibility, 1997’s Titanic, 2002’s Iris and last year’s The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Playing a married mother who ends up exploring the highs and lows of infidelity, reports from the film festival circuit suggest this is one of her most powerful performances, even if the actress herself has since complained about the graphic nature of the sex scenes, telling reporters “I must remember not to do this ever again”.

She will later crop up doing voice work on the Aardman rat-based animation Flushed Away – out on 1st December – and the animated Shakespeare adaptation Gnomeo and Juliet (due 2008), as well as in the flesh alongside Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Rufus Sewell and Jack Black in The Holiday, due on 8th December this year.

News: Jude Law

While not appearing in the gossip sections of the tabloids over the latest rumours about his relationship with rising starlet Sienna Miller, All the King’s Men’s Law has been a busy boy, having taken most of last year off. First up is The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley director Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering where, alongside Juliet Binoche, Ray Winstone, Martin Freeman and his King’s Men co-star Sean Penn’s wife Robin Wright Penn, Law will play a landscape architect to starts to reassess his life after a run-in with a young burglar.

Next up will be The Holiday, where Law’s King’s Men co-star Kate Winslett plays an unluck-in-love woman who does a house-swap with an equally unfortunate woman, played by Cameron Diaz, in an attempt to turn her life around. Law plays one of the bits of male eye-candy, alongside Rufus Sewell and, somewhat implausibly, scruffy tubster Jack Black.

After a small role in cult Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai’s American road trip movie My Blueberry Nights, hopefully due out in the UK sometime late next year, Law’s most promising – and at the same time most worrying – upcoming project is Sleuth. Starring alongside Michael Caine – who seems to have forgiven Law for destroying his classic character Alfie in the abysmal 2004 remake – this is yet another remake of a British classic, the 1972 flick of the same name in which the younger Caine entered a battle of wits with Laurence Olivier over a marital infidelity. We can but hope that yet more cinematic memories aren’t soiled in the process…

News: Anne Hathaway

The star of The Devil Wears Prada is doing a good job of proving herself as a serious actress as well as an adept comedienne. Following her supporting turn as one of the neglected wives of Brokeback Mountain, her next role is as 19th century novelist Jane Austen in Becoming Jane – a part she won over the likes of Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley. Part funded by the UK Film Council – which has been responsible for more misses than hits, yet sill has some quality movies like The Constant Gardener and the upcoming The Last King of Scotland to its credit – Hathaway’s co-stars will include James Cromwell, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith and rising star James McAvoy.