Wednesday, 11th November 2009

Male power

Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, which won the Palm d’Or in Cannes, is coldly manipulative and, in a way, probably quite facile but, God, it is good. It is so powerfully intriguing that, for 143 minutes, I did not shift in my seat, yawn, sigh, strain to read my watch or even drift into thinking what we might have for dinner (I’d already decided, anyhow; chops). It is set in a small village in Protestant northern Germany just before the first world war and, like Haneke’s other work — Hidden (Caché, 2005); The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste, 2001); Funny Games...

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Wednesday, 4th November 2009

Deprived of emotion

Deborah Ross

The most curious thing about Jane Campion’s Bright Star is that I did not cry, even though I was certain I would. I always cry in films. I cry at the drop of a hat. I cry when it only looks as if a hat might drop. I am continually alert for all hat-dropping possibilities. I cried when Rachel returned to Ross in Friends, and that’s an American sitcom. On TV! And this is about the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which began when he was 25 and she was 18, and finished with his death from...

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Wednesday, 28th October 2009

Innocence betrayed

Deborah Ross

An Education is based on the memoir by the journalist and interviewer Lynn Barber, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby, and, although the word from all the various festivals has been that it is wonderful, I know you will not believe it unless you hear it from me so here you are: it is wonderful. I am even hoping that now we’ve had the book and the film it isn’t the end of Ms Barber spin-offs, and that there may be a dedicated theme park or, failing that, at least an action doll. I don’t know what form it would...

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Wednesday, 21st October 2009

Animal caper

Deborah Ross

Fantastic Mr Fox is actually no more than So-So Mr Fox, if that, and I was pretty bored right from the get-go. The animation is beautiful, the attention to detail is a thing of wonder — with enough mise-en-scènes to keep even the most fanatical mise-en-scène-ists happy — but the story is a mess, the script is banal and, as visually stunning as it all is, it just doesn’t seem to have any kind of soul. I don’t know what Roald Dahl, who wrote the original story, would say, but I’m betting it’s something along the lines of, ‘Clear off....

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Wednesday, 14th October 2009

Bottom of the barrel

Deborah Ross

Couples Retreat and, if you have an ounce of sense, so too will you. Retreat from this movie, and retreat as fast as your little legs will carry you. I didn’t actually intend to see this film this week. I intended to see Terry Gilliam’s Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but events conspired against me, or it was the Gods, who haven’t liked me ever since I put a red T-shirt into a wash with my one good white shirt and then shook my fist at them. (It was quite a fist; it was my only serious white shirt.) I rather...

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Wednesday, 7th October 2009

Easy romp

Deborah Ross

I can’t say I care much for zombies — that is, film zombies; I’ve never met a real one — but the horror-comedy Zombieland is quite fun and does feature such a delicious cameo from Bill Murray it almost makes up for all the overlong scenes in which the zombies groan and stagger and spew black bile and haemorrhage blood and generally do what zombies do. I don’t think I even get zombies. OK, they’re the living dead, but what do they have against the living living? What have the living living ever done to them? Why do they always...

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