man with a mixture of generic Western cliches and laborious exposition. As with all Love‘s previous films this convoluted. ridiculous. badly acted (with the exception of James) disgrace of a film will be bought in its millions on DVD in supermarkets across the land in a few months time. Behold the world we live in, and reach for the gun. (Paul Dale)
I General release from Fri 9 Mar.
MYSTERY/THRlLLEB THE ILLUSIONIST (PG) 110min 000
The thing about the relationship between history and magic is that one man‘s magic is another man's engineering. This is the second film in as many months about the developments made in the dark arts of magic in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. Where Christopher Nolan's superior The Prestige developed the many myths that surrounded the bizarre life and times of legendary magic pioneer Nikola Tesla through a story of rivalry and friendship. The ///usionist brings an odder and more romantic twist to the proceedings.
Based on Steven lviillhauser‘s short story Eisenheim the ///usionist. writer/director Neil Burger's film tells an old fashioned story of master magician Eisenheim's attempts to beat the violence and corruption of the age he lives in (epitomised by Rufus Sewell‘s seedy Crown Prince Leopold). The question is. what drives him to do so? It is of course his childhood love Sophie (Jessica Biel).
The Illusionist is a twisty, turny. intriguing tale of havoc in the Hapsburg kingdom. But between lead Edward Norton's mannered performance. and the oddly cheesy Europud feel to the whole thing. this feels like the kind of project lvlilos Forman may have passed on at the time he made Amadeus. As an investigation of manipulation of light. space. time. and escapism and the influence of Tesla and co on the magic of cinema. however. (especially Robert Wiene‘s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, made a decade after this film is set) The illusionist is at least diverting and thought provoking. (Paul Dale)
I General release from Fri 2 Mar. See profile, right.
MYSTERY/THRILLEB THE GOOD GERMAN (15) 105mm .000
Steven Soderbergh said he decided to direct this adaptation of Joseph Kanon's murder mystery novel set in Berlin at the end of WWII because he wanted to make a movie in the classic film noir style. Soderbergh. who also produced. photographed. and edited The Good German, has certainly achieved that goal with this
EXPERIMENTAL/MYSTERY INLAND EMPIRE (15) 180min ooo
Going into any David Lynch film there is an expectation that you’ll leave the cinema a little confused. As he’s demonstrated with Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, he loves a mystery, especially if it involves
doppelgangers, strange creatures and storylines that don’t quite make sense.
All this is true of Inland Empire, but Lynch, armed for the first time with a digital camera, ventures so far into the excesses of split narrative, talking rabbits and the obscure that only the most die-hard fan will find merit in this celluloid rune.
After viewing the final product, so without hope was Newmarket, the film’s original US distributors that Lynch bought the rights back and released the film himself Stateside. Lynch made this film over a period of two-and-a-half years without ever producing a final script and would turn up on the set before letting the actors know what he wanted them to do that day. This haphazard approach spills over into the plot, and after the initial exposition it’s nigh on impossible to follow the story.
Long time Lynch collaborator Laura Dern plays Nikki, a famous actress coveting a role in a film directed by Kingsley (Jeremy Irons) with the preposterous title On High in Blue Tomorrows. That something is not quite right becomes apparent when her neighbour Grace Zabriskie announces that ‘today is tomorrow’ and that Nikki has won the role. Once filming begins, Nikki becomes her character, Susie Blue, and has an affair with her co-star (Justin Theroux). It soon becomes impossible to tell whether the character we’re watching is Nikki or Susie as there is very little to distinguish the two. Confusion sets in with the introduction of brown rabbits in a pastiche of a modern-day American soap; the characters from the original Polish production of On High in Blue Tomorrows appear, and a troupe of dancers start singing Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s 1962 pop song ‘The Loco- Motion’. Why? Lynch probably doesn’t even know the answer. (Kaleem Aftab) I Selected release from Fri 9 Mar.
1945 Potsdam Peace Conference (during which the Allies carved up the spoils of the war) and revolves around three main characters: guileless US war correspondent Jake Geismer (George Clooney): opportunistic black marketeer Corporal Tully (Tobey Maguire); and opaque German prostitute Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett). Attanasio also manages to seamlessly blend traditional and contemporary storytelling styles, so that the anachronistic use of the kind of explicit language, sex and violence that would have been curtailed in the days of the Hayes Code comes as a genuine shock and yet it doesn‘t feel out of place. And finally. the performances are perfectly pitched in the direct-to-camera. non- introspective acting style of the pre— Method acting 1940s. For once. it appears, they do still make ‘em like they used do. (Miles Fielder)
I General release from Fri 9 Mar.
' f. / immaculate recreation of post-war western cinema. Using vintage camera lenses. simulated rear-projections. swipe cuts between scenes and even archive film of post-war Berlin shot by Hollywood veterans Billy Wilder and William Wyler, Soderbergh's film not only looks but feels like those classics to which it pays homage. specifically Casablanca and The Third Man.
The savvy script by Paul Attanasio (Quiz Show. Donnie Brasco) makes sense of Kanon's complex plot. which is set against the backdrop of the
Name Edward Norton.
Born 18 August 1969, Boston. US.
Background Interested in acting from the age of five. by eight Norton was asking his drama teacher about his characters ‘motivation’. He attended drama schools, but didn't get serious about an acting career until he joined New York’s Signature players. which produces the work of another Edward. Albee. His first screen role was a stuttering psychopath in 1996's schlocky Primal Fear, for which he nevertheless earned the first of his two Oscar nominations. Acclaim and fame followed swiftly with roles in The People Vs Larry Flynt, American History X and Fight Club.
What’s he up to now? Norton has two films coming out in quick succession: The Illusionist. in which he plays a Viennese magician who rescues his childhood sweetheart from corrupt Crown Prince Leopold; and The Painted Veil, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s romance novel relocated to China.
What he says about the romance genre ‘I certainly am a fan of films like Out Of Africa or Brief Encounter or Doctor Zh/‘vago. I find something more meaningful in films that are really a study of the eternal dynamics between men and women. The reason Out ofAfrica holds up as a romantic film is that it's really about loss. It's not about romantic consummation. You get the romance of period and place, and the exoticism of it, but there's something in it that people can recognise themselves in. I respond to that.’
Interesting fact In 1998. when Norton was dating Courtney Love (whom he met working on Larry Flynt), he took public exception to an article in New Yorker magazine about Nick Broomfield's documentary Kurt and Courtney, which suggested Cobain's death may have been murder. Later the same year Norton rocked out playing guitar at two Hole gigs in Los Angeles. (Miles Fielder)
I The Illusionist is on general release from Fri 2 Mar. See review, left.
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