Review: The Fountain

UK release date: 26th January

You wait years for a film about ancient Mayans and then, like proverbial buses, two movies come along at once. Like Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, The Fountain is one of the most original and extraordinary films of recent times — though a story that features not only ancient Mayans but also a bald man living on a little planet inside a snow globe with just a tree for company is bound to attract accusations of pretentiousness as well as claims of genius.

This third feature from director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) stars Hugh Jackman as a man on a thousand-year odyssey to save his beloved (Rachel Weisz, in multiple roles). In the 16th century, Jackman plays a conquistador searching for the fountain of youth in the Mayan Empire in order to save the Spanish queen from destruction. In modern-day America, Jackman seeks a cure for the cancer that’s killing his wife, and in the 26th century he sits like Buddha beneath his cosmic tree, trying to figure out what it all means.

Some of the audience may be doing the same, but those who stick with the movie will be rewarded with a profoundly rich experience about the meaning of life, death, love and immortality. The performances and music brilliantly complement Aronofsky’s philosophical musings in one of the most haunting, perplexing and visually stunning films since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Radio Times rating:

*****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 96mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

News: Ewan McGregor

McGregor is working harder than ever these days, with this week’s Miss Potter the first of eight movies in which he’ll be starring over the next couple of years.

There’s action thriller The Tourist, alongside the equally prolific Hugh Jackman, animated adventure Agent Crush, alongside the voices of Neve Campbell and near-legendary Sir Roger Moore, comic fantasy I, Lucifer, as man whose body is taken over by Daniel Craig’s Satan, and sci-fi thriller Franklyn, about which little is as yet known other than that McGregor is set to star, and The Great Pretender, where he will play a Hollywood star playing Bonnie Prince Charlie in a film as well as the lookalike extra who is roped in to taking over when the hotshot actor goes missing.

On top of all that, he’ll be cropping up in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream – as yet not set for release on either side of the Atlantic, but likely to be out this year – and the intriguing-sounding Number 13, based around the set of genius director Alfred Hitchcock’s last, never completed, movie, where love triangles and murder abound just as much as they ever did in Hitch’s own flicks. A fair array of different types of films there, and not a lightsabre in sight – which must come as a blessed relief…

News: Rachel Weisz

Brit lovely Rachel Weisz is just one of the big names in this week’s kids’ fantasy Eragon, though she’s only on voice duties. We’ll soon be seeing a lot more of her, however, with a number of big parts in big movies due over the next weeks, months and years.

Due in January, after a perhaps appropriately insanely long wait, is oddball director Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain – a much-delayed, hugely ambitious sci-fi/fantasy romance spanning 1,000 years and three separate, if linked, storylines revolving around Hugh Jackman’s efforts to find Weisz, his one true love. It has been slated at least as much as praised by those who have seen it so far, so could prove interesting.

Then will come more standard fare, with Weisz’s turn in the comedy/romance Definitely, Maybe, written and directed by the writer of Bridget Jones 2 and Wimbledon. But then it’s back to the experimental, with a role in cult director Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones as a woman taking a road trip across the US, and co-starring the likes of Jude Law, Tim Roth, Natalie Portman and Ed Harris. She’ll be teaming up with Wong Kar-Wai again in 2008 for a remake of Orson Welles’ classic The Lady From Shanghai, with Weisz set to take the Rita Hayworth role.

Before that, though, it’s back to comedy, with a part in the Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughan-starring festive bit of fun Fred Claus, due Christmas 2007, as well as another return to Africa following Weisz’s superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener. This time it’ll be a period piece, with Weisz playing the object of Colin Firth’s affections in the 19th century historical drama The Colossus,covering the final years of Cecil Rhodes’ regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Sir Ian McKellen will take on the role of the imperial hero/scoundrel.

Review: Happy Feet

UK release date: 8th December

George Miller, the co-writer of Babe, does for penguins what he did for pigs in this fabulous family adventure. Playing like March of the Penguins: the Musical, it combines jaw-dropping computer animation with contemporary and classic tunes to bring to life a simple but eloquent story of an outcast emperor penguin’s struggle for acceptance.

Moral and ecological messages abound as avian cutie Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) hatches without the ability to sing — a terrible misfortune in an Antarctic community where penguin couples find their mate through song. What he can do however is tap dance brilliantly, leading to social rejection that prompts him to embark on an exciting quest to prove his worth.

Every element of this heart-warming tale is delightful, from the astonishing visuals and imaginative song and dance numbers to the relentlessly paced (and occasionally scary) action sequences. The voice talent is also seriously classy, with Robin Williams in dual roles a highlight in a cast that also includes Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman as Mumble’s parents.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate U
Running time 108mins

Review by Sloan Freer

News: Nicole Kidman

Kidman continues to pick interesting and promising projects, with this week’s fun animated musical Happy Feet yet another impressive entry to her eclectic CV. Despite her 40th approaching looming (on 20th June 2007), she’s busier than ever, bucking the trend of Hollywood actresses finding themselves out of work as their forties come near.

Next year will see three interesting projects for the Aussie beauty. The Invasion, starring alongside new Bond Daniel Craig, will see her play a psychatrist who uncovers an alien invasion – and the key, lying in her critically ill son. Then will come the highly promising – but as yet untitled – new film from Noah Baumbach, the writer/director responsible for brilliantly quirky outings The Squid and the Whale and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Little is yet known other than that it is a comedy drama revolving around a weekend family reunion, and will star Kidman alongside the likes of Jack Black, Jennifer Jason Leigh and John Turturro.

Kidman will also be re-teaming with directos she’s had some success with before. First up is Headhunters, from a script from Birthday Girl writer/director Jez Butterworth, following a group of women from New Jersey who head to Monte Carlo to land rich husbands. Then – and almost certain to have more potential – will come the latest project from Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann, Australia. Set during World War II, Kidman will play an Australian heiress who sets out on a cattle-drive roughneck rancher Hugh Jackman, only to get embroiled in a Japanese invasion.

Most likely to buy a few more fancy designer dresses, however, is bound to be the His Dark Materials triology, the first instalment of which, Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass if you’re in America), should be out around Christmas 2007. Adapted from the bestselling (and really rather good) Philip Pullman novels, Kidman will play the scheming Miss Coulter in all three movies, again alongside Daniel Craig as the dashing Lord Asriel.

News: Hugh Jackman

Jackman’s seemingly got a film out every week these days, so his latest movie news has been covered twice already in the last month.

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: Hugh Jackman

Like his Flushed Away co-star Kate Winslet, Jackman’s also had a fair few movies recently, so his latest film news can be found here. The only new news is that the epic Baz Luhrmann project in which Jackman is set to star with fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman now has a name: Australia. More details on the promising period piece can be found courtesy of The Age.

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

News: Scarlett Johansson

Even before this week’s magical movie, Hollywood’s hottest starlet had got used to working alongside her The Prestige co-star Hugh Jackman on the set of Woody Allen’s Scoop, yet to be scheduled for a UK release, where she plays an American journalism student in London who lands a big story – and an affair with Jackman’s aristocrat. She’ll be cropping up as a student again (well, she is still only 21, with her 22nd on the 22nd of this month) in American Splendor directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s New York-set The Nanny Diaries, where she’ll play the titular nanny, living and trying to keep up with her studies in the household of Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney’s Mr and Mrs X.

But Johansson’s far too canny to risk getting typecast, so it’s good to see her lending her help to the current revival of the period drama, with no less than four historical projects in the works. She is still attached to star as Betsy Balcombe, the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte’s British jailer at the end of the French Emperor’s life, in Napoleon and Betsy – although the project seems to have been on hiatus for some months. More recently announced – though with little as yet known other than that it came from an idea by Johansson herself – is Amazon, which could well be a female version of Gladiator, with Johansson in the Russell Crowe role as an avenging warrior in 200BC.

Most interestingly, however, is a brace of British-based history pieces, both set in the Tudor era. First up, based on the bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory and directed by the man behind the BBC’s recent adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House, is The Other Boleyn Girl. With Eric Bana lined up as Henry VIII and Natalie Portman as his ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn, Johansson will play the “other” Boleyn of the title, Anne’s sister Mary, who was also having an affair with the King. After that, Johansson will take on royalty herself in Mary Queen of Scots, with her in the title role, based on a script by Cracker creator Jimmy McGovern. See? They always told you that history could be cool…

News: Hugh Jackman

Though almost unknown when heended up as a last-minute replacement for Dougray Scott on the first X-Men film back in 2000, Hugh Jackman’s career is now in full-on overdrive, with his turn in this week’s The Prestige just the latest impressive addition to his film CV. With his own X-Men spin-off, Wolverine, due for 2008, this freshest Australian superstar is really churning them out,with lead roles alongside his The Prestige co-star Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen’s Scoop and Rachel Weisz in Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious The Fountain and voice work as a rat in Wallace and Grommit creators Aarman Animation’s Flushed Away and as a penguin in the much-anticipated Happy Feet already completed and ready for imminent release.

Of Jackman’s other upcoming projects, most interesting are likely to be The Tourist, where he’ll play a lawyer who leads Ewan McGregor into a hidden world of sex and kidnapping, genius Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai’s 1930s-set The Lady From Shanghai (again opposite Rachel Weisz), and weirdo Aussie director Baz Lurhmann’s as yet untitled next project, in which Jackman will star alongside fellow antipodean Nicole Kidman. And if that’s not enough, just this week another project has emerged, The Amateur, with Jackman playing a geeky CIA code cracker who turns himself into a killing machine when his wife is killed by terrorists.

At this rate, Jackman could soon see himself making a serious challenge to Russell Crowe and even Mel Gibson as Hollywood’s premiere Australian male – especially if Crowe keeps appearing in dross like A Good Year and Gibson keeps getting drunk and making sexist/racist remarks to police officers…

News: Ewan McGregor

The actor who has managed to combine heroin chic with Jedi heroics continues to churn out an insane number of very varied films, with five last year alone, and another seven in the pipeline after this week’s Scenes of a Sexual Nature. Due out at the start of January, McGregor will next be starring alongside Renée Zellweger as she takes the lead in the Beatrix Potter biopic Miss Potter, yet another potential Oscar contender (there’s always a glut of them at this time of year).

Other potentially interesting projects include the next – as yet untitled – film from Woody Allen, alongside Colin Farrell, Tom Wilkinson and (somewhat bizarrely) former Eastenders actress Tamzin Outhwaite, and The Tourist, in which McGregor will play a man implicated in a woman’s disappearance after being introduced to a sex club by X-Men‘s Hugh Jackman.

Most promising, however, is likely to be I, Lucifer, based on the novel by Glen Duncan in which a man has his body taken over for a month by Satan himself after a deal between the Evil One and God. McGregor will play the unfortunate vessel for the Devil, with new Bond Daniel Craig playing the fallen angel who posesses him. Could be entertaining – and is bound to cause a bit of religious controversy when it finally makes it to our screens.