Film
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Waist Deep (15) 96min
0. Die Hard meets Boyz n the Hood in this promising but ultimately disappointing B movie in which a very beefed up Tyrese Gibson (Flight of the Phoenix. Four Brothers) plays ex-con turned security guard 02 who gets
INTERVIEW
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Soderbergh's contribution concerns a carjacked while his son is still stressed 19508 New York advertising asleep in the backseat. The thugs exeCutive (Robert Downey Jr), who's hold the child for ransom. and O2 relating a reCurring dream to his has 48 hours to come up with strangely distracted analyst (Alan 8100.000. Reminiscent in parts of Arkin): it boasts sharp performances. Larry Cohen‘s excellent 1973 some striking monochrome crime drama Black Caesar and cinematography. and a playful capacity Walter Hill's The Warriors and of to shift between ‘reality' and fantaSy. course The Driver, Waist Deep is You might want to leave the cinema at sadly eventually sunk by a poor this point. because the nonagenarian script and bad characterisation. Michelangelo Antonioni's concluding General release from Fri 3 Nov. tale of a bourgeois couple’s break-up Sixty Six (123) 93min .0. is excruciatingly embarrassing. with its Likeable period comedy set in the pretentious. badly dubbed dialogue summer of 1966 in the middle of and soft-core focus on nubile female World Cup fever. For 12-year-old flesh. (Tom Dawson) Bernie (Gregg Sulkin). though, the DIGITAL EXISTENTIAL I GFT. Glasgow from Fri 3—Wed 8 biggest day of his life is looming — Austere Latvian filmmaker Fred Kelemen here lays down his philosophy Nov only. his Bar Mitzvah — but the Cup Final of filmmaking. is scheduled to take place on the ‘The‘startingpointhr krisana‘was' the atmospheres the city‘ai‘i'aig‘a. ' [gag/AKIN AND same day. and when England I’d spent time there in the past when I was teaching at the Latvian film ENTER'NG makes it through the qualifying academy. For me it was a place full of cinematographic images and (15) 120mm ... rounds. Bernie's longed-for very attractive, even if it was quite gloomy and violent in parts. ceremony looks set to be a
Compared to Western cities, I felt like I was going back in time, and so I wanted to make a film there.
I also wanted to explore existential questions of guilt, and specifically the idea, not of doing something bad, but of not doing the right thing. With all my scripts I play the game of, “What would happen if?” Here I came up with the image of a man not helping a woman who is about to throw herself off a bridge, and the rest of the story developed from that situation.
‘For some people it’s a dream to make a film in Hollywood. My dream was to make a black and white film quickly with friends that was
complete disaster. From the makers of the Bridget Jones films. this frothy. accessible comedy for all the family is thankfully free of mawkishness. A great cast includes Helena Bonham Carter. Stephen Rea and Catherine Tate. General release from Fri 3 Nov. “(twelve and Holding (15) 94min .0. Michael LIE
authentic, and that wouldn’t involve waiting around for years for Urban alienation among disillusioned Cuestra's second feature is a slight financing. We shot it on digital video in a couple of weeks, borrowing middle-class thirtysomethings is a disappointment but still contains equipment and using actors from the Latvian theatre scene, because popular theme in film these days. In plenty to fascinate. Like LIE this is there is no film industry there. Anthony Minghella's largely refreshing another harrowing, quirky coming What interests me about the main character Matiss is how a mixture take on the subject. a number of of age drama. but this time he‘s of guilt and curiosity makes him collect fragments of the woman’s life disconnected individuals are working with an impressive to create a whole picture, which turns out to be illusionary. That’s what connected or re-connected by a ensemble of young actors. There's the audience does in watching a film: it pieces together bits of resolutely non-philanthropic catalyst contradictory Rudy and Jacob information to come up with a version of the world. event — a burglary. When a yOtlng and (both plated by Conor Donovan). We’ve tried to release Krisana in Latvia, although it’s very difficult fatherless Bosnian-English thief named fat kid Leonard (Jesse Camacho) because the cinemas there are dominated by Hollywood films. There’s Miro (Rafi Gavron) takes part in the and intense skinny girl Malee (Zoe an incredible fight going on from the mainstream to destroy the robbery of an architects office in the Weizenbaum). They are all twelve possibilities of what cinema can be, and I think we have to try and resist semi-gentrified Kings Cross area of years old and left pretty much to this. Film isn’t just an economic product, it needs to be seen as an art London. the crime brings one of the their own devices by their troubled form, like music or theatre or opera, and to be subsidised more by the firm's partners. Will (Jude Law). into parents. They are all however state. Nobody says we should stop printing the novels of Dostoevsky contact with the boy's mother. Amira about to suffer some serious because they’re not massively popular anymore.’ (Juliette Binoche). The uneasy growing pains. Excellent I Krisana is showing at GFT. Glasgow on Wed 75 and Thu 16 Nov only. romance that follows provides Will with performances are weakened by Filrnhouse, Edinburgh from Mon 27—Thu 30 Nov only. See review. the emotional sustenance he wasn't Anthony Cipriano's willfully opaque getting from his relationship with script which film veers wildly from __ _ distant girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright the warmth of Reiner's Stand By Attacks. as irreverence meets Egg?” Penn) and her autistic daughter. As the Me to the hysterical coldness irrelevance. as hereisin and (15) 105mm ... pieces of this Jigsaw puzzle of inter- Jacob Estes' Mean Creek (via the GSSGWVGHOSS DTOVC lBSS "7100mm than connected lives slowly fit together. the work of Todd Solondz and Gregg luck and humanity. On paper the prospect of three characters' relationships with one Araki). Still well worth checking Of course. while Bong Joon-ho internationally feted directors each another are renewed. out. Cinewor/d Renfrew Street. respects the demands of the monster contributing to a trilogy of half hour It's a nicely played ensemble piece Glasgow from Fri IO Nov. genre. he no less respects his own films about erotic love might seem an that also boasts a few interesting need to work Wllh the inCidentals and enticing prospect. but this supporting characters: Will's uptight the anti-macho. There's a very funny portinanteau [)l'()](}(2l veers from the partner Sandy (Martin freeman). who's together a little too neatly. and a moment near the end of the film when sublime to the ridiculous. trying to woo the office cleaner: hard- climactic scene that brings together all the would-be-heroic brother proves as Wong Kar-wr-rai. in fetishistic In the but fair police detective Bruno (Ray of the main protagonists is fumblingly incompetent as anybody Mood for Love vein. is responsible for Winstone). who's attempting to set unconvincing. But Minghella's handling else. as The Host offers Simultaneously the most satisfying segment. Set in Miro on the straight and narrow; and of shifting emotional lives (reflected in the big laugh and the big climax. nocturnal 19(30s Hong Kong. it's a hooker With a tarnished heart of gold his use of London's modern changing ("l-Oh)“ MCKIDlJIHl gorgeously shot and designed study Oana (Vera Farmiga). whose wry cityscape) is generally sound. I Cineworld Renlrew Street. Glasgow; of the sensually charged working attitude towards life first lifts Will out of (Miles Fielder) Cineworld. Edinburgh and Cariieo, relationship between a courtesan his apathetic state. Ultimately. the I General release from Fri IO Nov. Edinburgh from Fri 10 Nov. (Gong l i) and her tailor (Chang Chen). jigsaw puzzle of these lives fits See Profile, Film index.
9— 16 Nov 2006 THE LIST 43