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Reviews
ADVENTURE/AMMATION BEOWULF (12A) 114min me
Beowulf is being released on four fOrmats' 35mm. digital, digital 3D and mm This reView is based 0n the NM lerSion, Beowulf being the first mainstream film to successfully employ this technology.
Much of the initial wow factOr is down to the speCial effects. Director Roger Zemeckis (Back to The Future) has been mixmg up live action With cartoons Since he helmed Who Framed Fioger Rabbit back in 1988 before Jumping on the Polar Express 15 years later. Zemeckis is clearly on a mi35ion to Illustrate how far mixing real actors With animation has evolved in two decades by empIOying the performance capture technique utilised in 300 to bring the anonymous epic poem alive.
The fight between the warrior Beowulf and the eVil dragon is a new high mark in action and the technology also has the effect of broadening the range of the cast. Ray Winstone. given the Photoshop treatment. is transformed into a gladiator who can riff on Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus Without looking Sllly while Angelina Jolie is seXier than ever as the eViI mother of Grendel.
Countless brainless blockbusters have demonstrated that great special effects cannot hide a duff script. Thankfully, writers Neil Gaiman (Mirror/Mask, Sandman) and Roger Avary (who contributed to Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and True Romance) have iorned forces to fill in the huge plot holes eVident in the Anglo-Saxon poem. Avary and Gaiman lay on the sexual innuendo and adultery, fleshing out the character of Beowulf into a believany unreliable narrator. Meanwhile. questions relating to the original text that have bothered scholars for centuries (such as: who is the third dragon appearing 50 years after Beowulf has defeated Grendel. here played by Crispin Glover, and his mother?) are now answered.
Purists. however, will be pleased that the writers have not junked the original premise that man is defined by his sins. indeed. it would be a sin to miss this superior blockbuster in this spectacular IMAX version. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 76 Nov.
TRUE CRIME/THRILLER AMERICAN GANGSTER (18) 156min 0”“
Ridley Scott’s American Gangster opens with callous urban cruelty as a man is tied to a chair, doused with petrol and set on fire. But the reasons behind this violent act are less to do with anarchy than with good business, or at least that’s the lesson which dying mob-boss Bumpy Johnson (Clarence Williams III) imparts to aspiring gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). Adapted by Schindler’s List writer Steven Zallian from an article by Mark Jacobson, American Gangster follows Lucas’s trajectory from chauffeur to crime-boss who runs his international heroin empire with the entrepreneurial pride of a businessman. Although the project was previously developed for Training Day director Antione Fuqua, this true story allows Scott to revisit the internecine theme of his 1977 historical drama The Duellists, drawing parallels between Lucas, a family man and respected member of his community, and his nemesis Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), the one good
DRAMA/ROMANCE THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB (12A) 105min 0”
Despite the literary title, the club in this adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler's bestselling book is conceived after Prudie Drummond (Emily Blunt) goes to see the 1999 version of Mansfield Park at the cinema. Similarly, writer/director Robin Swircord conceives of Austen's characters in broad cinematic terms rather than literary ones, ignoring the author's considerable merits as a transcriber and satirist of her times. Yet. while The Jane Austen Book Club is as warmly toned but visually banal as an episode of Desperate Housewives. its consideration of the tangled love lives of a group of Californian women has an enjoyably trashy quality. Will Jocelyn (Maria Bello) get over her dead dog and find true love? How will Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) react to her husband's affair? Will pOOr Prudie emerge from under the shadow of her mother (Lynn Redgrave)? And who'll end up with the Darcy figure as personified by geeky software expert Griggs. played by a suitably shame-faced Hugh Dancy? The books the girls share and discuss could have been written by Victoria Beckham for all the literary analysis on show here. The sun- kissed women featured in The Jane Austen Book Club view the author's canon as nothing more than a romantic guide-book in the vein of self- helpers like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Yet this is nothing like as soppy as this year's other Austen cash-in, Becoming Jane. With Blunt. Bello and a substantial female ensemble all on song. The Jane Austen Book Club's soap opera plotlines prove as compulswely ‘more-ish' as the s0urce book's admirers might expect. (Eddie Harrison)
I General release from Fri 7 6 Nov.
cop who vows to bring Lucas down. A hard-driven cop from the Serpico school of gritty police legwork, Roberts lonely existence presents an inverted reflection of Lucas’ opulent lifestyle, wolfing down a tuna sandwich for his thanksgiving meal while Lucas proudly slices the turkey with his extended family gathered around.
While the title aims for an epic feel, American Gangster unfolds in disappointingly generic terms, at close to three hours this plays the long game of cops and robbers spiked with some memorably brutal street- slayings and cut to a derivative soundtrack of 605 and 705 hits. There’s breezy detail in the threads - check out Denzel‘s furry jim-jams when his model wife unwiser persuades him to show some bling-bling in public. But with Washington and Crowe phoning in bland performances and Scott directing in his usual convoluted, long-winded style, American Gangster’s consideration of the dirty secrets of capitalist America is merely watchable when it really should have kicked ass and taken names. (Eddie Harrison)
I General release from Fri it; llov
' 5—2’: NC. 2227’ THE LIST 39