given a touchineg real personality. not Just a collection of guirks to engineer the next sexual misadventure. If you've witnessed his supporting big screen roles t/t/tc‘ltor'na/t. Bewrtc/red) and the David Brent part in the US version of the Office. you'll find the biggest thrill here rs ‘.'.’£ll(1lllllg the 42-year~old Carell pep his rnovre leading man cherry. As the taglrne says. ‘better late than never.’ rl e:gh Singer;
I (leneral release front Fr/ 2 Sep,
l)(>(2tllv1l NlAllY CZECH DREAM (12A) 90min COO.
Described by its co directors as a 'pr'ovocrrmentary '. C/ecl: Dream is a highly amusing and rexealrng account of the largest ever consumer hoax perpetrated in the C/ech Republic. A pair of film school students. Vit Klusak and Filip Hemunda. decided to devrse a takeadzmtising campaign fora non existent hypermarket on the outskirts of Prague. With the aid of W and radio slots. newspaper ads. llyers. billboards and even a theme song. they managed to attract ever «'1()()() people early on a Saturday morning to the opening of their fictitious store. located in the rnrddle of a field.
noMAth- or lAlvl/x YES
(15) 100min 00000
If, as the Welsh novelist and playwright Gwyn Thomas once pointed out, ‘poetry is trouble dunked in tears’, then verse is ‘madness dipped in hysteria’. To make a movie in verse in this day and age is an act of commercial insanity that has few equivalents, and yet
But C/ech Dream is much more than a sophisticated stunt. As the filmmakers lay bare the process of advertising. we become aware of the ()(Jllll)l'OllUllSIVO strategies by which we as consumers are targeted. We also see how the C/ech government's attempts to encourage people to vote Yes lll the referendum to )0”) the LU relied primarily on a mass advertising offensive.
One does feel sorry for some of the frail and elderly citizens. who turn up to the ‘(I/ech Dream" opening. hoping to pick up some bargain goods. only to realise how they've been manipulated. Yet there's a storcrsrn in many of the responses amongst the
crowd. and a vern of antr~ establishment feeling: one rndrvrdual 3xplarns that he's not surprised because ‘the whole country is a scam'. while another ruefully admits: ‘I thought the era of lies was over It's not.' Meanwhile. across the city. the bogus ads for the 'C/ech Dream' hypermarket are replaced by those for such authentic global brands as l ucky Strikes and Mastercard w a telling vrsual metaphor for contemporary capitalism's relentless onward march. (Tom Dawson)
I Film/rouse. L-drnburg/r from In 2 Sep.
ACIION 'l'l lHIl l l H BORN TO FIGHT (18) 91 min 00.
Followrng on from hrs breakthrough martial arts flick Ong Bak, l'har
writer director Panna Rittikrai delivers up an altogether more reactionary thriller. It's not difficult to see why Born to l/ght (the first frlrn of a proposed franchise) was such a huge hit in its home country. It has all the rrght ingredients a burnt out young policeman Deaw (Dan Chupongl. guest appearances from i hailand's Olympic sports teams and a whole
politics and philandering, her best friend despises her progressive thinking and her goddaughter is withering away with anorexia and self loathing under the hateful
hand of her mother. While down in the belly of the sweaty kitchens ‘He’ is taunted with tales of racism and inequality by his noisy workmates - so much so that he starts thinking the kitchen knife could be put to better use than opening a pomegranate. As horseplay and
when it works as it did in Alex Cox’s remarkable Revengers Tragedy (admittedly adapted from Middleton’s Jacobean original) and here in Sally Orlando Potter’s fifth fictional feature, there are few things more memorable or moving.
Built around the deceptively simple scenario of unhappily married American-Irish scientist ‘Her”s (Joan Allen) affair with Lebanese surgeon ‘He’ (Simon Abkarian) who has been reduced to working in London kitchens since coming to the West, Yes is in fact a journey through these most diseased and worrying of times. Her English husband (Sam Neill) is a veteran of
disease kills their love by degrees, the lust and the dancing stops and they face their fate.
All this and more is spilled out in short four-line verse dialogue format with a lack of self consciousness most filmmakers can only dream of. Touched in part by the work of Vikram Seth, Simon Louvish, Guy Maddin and beholden of the kind of wit and playfulness that has been rare in British cinema since Michael Powell shuttled off this mortal coil, Yes is a dizzying, stunning achievement, an unforgettable dance of demonisation and regret. A rare privilege of a film. (Paul Dale)
I (if 1. Glasgow from In I) See. See prevrew. page 2-1.
lot of gun bla/ing, hrgh kicking action. lhe story concerns itself wrth Deaw and an elite anti-drug unit's attempts to close down an illegal narcotics ring in rural Thailand. Things go wrong. double crosses are made and there is a had man of political import at the centre of it all.
Relentlesst thrilling from the get go. Born to Fight accesses all that is good about the early frlrns of John Woo and the Pang Brothers. It all works very well wrth some excellent hand to—hand gun battles and extended fight scenes making up for some terrible acting and even ropier dialogue. There are certainly more interesting directors working in ‘lharland at the moment (history will prove Wrsrt Sasanatieng and Aprchatpong Weerasethakul to be two of the most influential in world cinema). but there is none more cleverly and honestly commercial than Rittrkrar. (Paul Date)
I Cr'nrM/or/d, Renfrew Street. Glasgow and selected cinemas from F/'/ 2 Sep.
(ll llLLE H RED EYE (12A) 84min 0..
lhe perfect antidote to bloated blockbusters such as Fantastic Four and lhe Island. horror director Wes Craven's taut thriller generates more suspense. character rnvolvernent and excitement in its first 20 minutes than they managed in two hours. Mostly set on board a commercial airliner cruising at 30.000 feet, Red Eye takes a lead from Joel Schumacher's 2002 thriller Phone Booth by rnakrng a vrrtue of its tight parameters.
Hotel manager Lisa Rersert (Rachel McAdarns) realises that her cosy seat next to the superficially charming Jack Rippner (Crllran Murphy) is not a coincidence but a trap. Without alerting their 150 fellow passengers. Jack quietly informs Lisa that her
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