Film
Rough Cuts
Film news and giveaways for beautiful cineaste types
I Ah mate, the Australian Film Festival is coming to Filmhouse, from May 20 to 26. 17 of the most popular Australian features, documentaries and shorts including Oyster Farmer (Sun 22 May) and Strange Bedfellows (Tue 24 May, pictured). Visit www.filmhousecinema.com, 0131 228 2688.
I Between Friday 13 May and Sunday 22 May, the Cameo is to show three films as part of the Mary King's Ghost Fest: two classics of British horror starring Vincent Price — Witchfinder General and Theatre of Blood as well as a special 30 screening of Friday the 73th Part 3.Tickets are available from Cameo Box Office on (0131) 228 4141. In addition we have a horror film quiz on Sunday 15 May 9:30pm in the Cameo Bar with horror soundtracks being played by DJs on both weekends. Visit www.picture houses.co.uk and www.edinburgh ghostfestcouk
I List film writer Tony McKibbin will holding a day course on Cinema and Extremities: Extreme Images Through the History of Film on Saturday 21 May 10am - 4pm at 11 Buccleuch Place. Phone 0131 650 4400 for tickets. I GFT. Glasgow have got some great double bills coming up including Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? plus Mommie Dearest on Sunday 15 May. 2pm , Pope plus The Birds on Sunday 22 May. 2pm and Bringing Up Baby plus The Philadelphia Story on Sunday 29 May, 1pm. All tickets £6 for both films. wmvgftorguk 0141 332 8128.
WIN SIDEWAYS ON DVD
We have five copies of Sideways to give away. Released to buy and rent on the 16 May 2004 through Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. To be in with the chance of winning a copy, just send us an email to promotions @list.co.uk by no later than 26 May 2005. Usual List rules apply.
48 THE LIST 12—26 May 2005
% Reviews
DRAMA PRIVATE (15.)“9H4min I...
Inspired by a real-life incident. and directed by Italian filmmaker Saverio Costanzo. Private bears comparison to Marco Bellocchio's Good Morning Night. Both films are vividly suspenseful and politically charged dramas set within enclosed spaces. but whereas Bellocchio immersed us in the daily routines of Red Brigade terrorists who had captured Aldo Moro. Costanzo explores the experiences of a middle-class Palestinian family whose West Bank house is arbitrarily occupied by a group of Israeli soldiers.
The imposing patriarch (Mohammed Bakri). an English professor. refuses to leave his home. insisting to his terrified wife (Areen Oman) that 'being a refugee is not being'. Placing his trust in Islam and his own principled pacifism ('you don't just fight with guns“). he orders his five children to follow the instructions of the occupying troops. (T he strict upstairs/downstairs division of the
TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE THE JACKET (15) 102min II.
It’s been seven years since John Maybury released his stunning debut, the hypnotic portrait of artist Francis Bacon, Love is the Devil. So you might expect more from a follow-up than The Jacket, a pop psychological potboiler that feels like a reheated 12 Monkeys. Produced by Section Eight, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s company, it’s a hybrid film that tries too hard to defy any generic classification we may place upon it. Part time travel romance, part anti-war tract, part asylum thriller, it’s as confused as the main character, Gulf War veteran Jack Starks (Adrien Brody). The film begins as Starks, upon return from Iraq, finds himself falsely accused of killing a cop. He’s sent to a mental asylum and given an extreme form of sadistic treatment by one Dr Becker (Kris Kristofferson), much to the chagrin of his colleague Dr
building can perhaps be read as an ironic variation on the proposed twin state solution). But his eldest daughter Miriam begins to spy on the invaders. while his son Jamal. inspired by martyrs' videos. plots violent retribution.
Shooting with hand-held digital video cameras. Costanzo achieves a powerful immediacy. particularly when conveying the chaos and terror of the nighttime raids endured by the family. And Bakri provides a compelling performance: if there's a dictatorial
streak to the way his character expects obedience. it's balanced by his dignity and his capacity for love. Private doesn't demonise the Israeli conscripts. and several scenes demonstrate their ordinariness and lack of enthusiasm for their military service. Yet it’s also clear where the director's sympathies lie. and that he has found in this intimate stOry a resonant metaphor for the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. with the final shots suggesting that the cycle of violence and oppression will tragically continue. (Tom Dawson)
I Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 73 May. GFI'. Glasgow from Fri 27 May. See interview. page 51.
DRAMA FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS (12A) 117min 000
Every couple of years there's a new American football movie for British audiences to body swerve (The Replacements. Varsity Blues). This year's model details the stOry of economically challenged Permian High School's 1988 drive to the state final and is a notably flavoursome example of a typically bland genre. Sure. every catch and tumble can be easily
Lorenson (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Put in a straitjacket, injected with drugs and locked in a morgue drawer, he is, somehow, mentally propelled into the future where
he meets Jackie (Keira Knighley), the grown-up version of a young girl he met just before the murder. While she takes some convincing, they fall for each other - and so begins an even more complex set of events. Admittedly, from the synopsis, it makes for a dense and involving plot, which it is, were it not for the fact that it’s merely a cover up for a gaping lack of substance. It doesn’t help that the characters in Massy Tadjedin’s script are rather poorly developed. Wsually, from the dank asylum (with Maybury’s own paintings on the wall) to the tripped-out sequences in the morgue drawer, the film is energetic. But with a rather conventional love story at its heart - not particularly convincingly acted by Brody and Knightley - this is one jacket that doesn’t fit. (James Mottram). I Genera/ release from Fri 6 May.