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DRAMA/SCl-FI
THE HAPPENING
(15) 90min 0.
The best and worst of M Night Shyamalan‘s questionable talents are on display in The Happening, but after The Village and the dire Lady in The Water. it's good to see Shyamalan hitting any sort of form at all. The apocalyptic opening here is enthralling in its nastiness. perfectly setting the scene for the nature-against-human battle ahead. Terrorism paranoia and environmental awareness serve as levers by which Shyamalan controls the impressive pulsating action. but he then allows the narrative to be diverted to teacher protagonist Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and his dull-arsed marital problems. Shyamalan shares with Spielberg a penchant for sentimental endings that ruin great premises.
That said. the 19505 end-of-the- world B-movie feel is accentuated by the appearance of our everyman hero. It's a cartoonish piece of casting. one that counters the assumption that teachers have to be portrayed as nerds. but ultimately it doesn't work - scenes intended to be played straight become unintentionally funny due to Wahlberg's star turn being so gormless.
Zooey Deschanel plays wife Alma: unhappy in the marriage and utterly annoying. Shyamalan makes the mistake of concentrating on this dire pairing in the predictable and over- expositional cheesy ending.
(Kaleem Aftab) I Out now on general release.
DRAMA THE EDGE OF LOVE (15) 110min oooo
granddaughter of Vera and William to writer Sharman MacDonald, this is an arresting, gorgeously designed and costumed tale of near gothic consumption, selfishness, promiscuity and madness. The treachery and brutality of war is everywhere, Thomas’s middle class alcoholic immaturity contrasting constantly with that of Killick, the war hero whose generous soul is eroded by the bloodbath of the battlefield. The acting here is very good (Rhys’ fat-headed ‘Dulan’ is a particular treat) and while The Edge of Love represents a return to the form of 1998’s Love is the Devil for Maybury, his direction of the film is solid but largely uninspired (his recent endeavors into television have clearly cramped his once more experimental style). The thing that is everything here is MacDonald’s screenplay and it does not disappoint for a second. It is musical, in a way that only Welsh inflected dialogue can be, clever, funny, insightful and full of killer lines. Rarely have ideas about the boundaries of female friendship and the hold that memories have over us all been so acutely orientated. (Paul Dale) I Selected release from Fri 27 Jun.
Dylan Thomas, he of the milk wood, once remarked that: ‘When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.’ The Edge of Love is the story of how the great Welsh poet burnt a very big bridge, one that connected him to an early love.
London during the blitz, Welsh chanteuse Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) is making a living singing with a band down the underground stations, which have become impromptu air raid shelters. One evening she happens upon old friend and lover Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys). The spark is still there but Thomas’ muse is now his high-spirited wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller). Vera connects deeply with Caitlin and the three soon become a nihilistic little crew fronted by the charismatic poet. When Vera meets and falls in love with young officer William Killick (Cillian Murphy), however, the group dynamics begin to shift in unpleasant ways.
Based around real events related by the
THRILLER/ACTION WA (18) 1 1 1 min .00
Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar's ultra-violent graphic novel gets the Hollywood blockbuster treatment in this sfx-heavy actioner that benefits from the skewered perspective of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov. who previously delivered the imaginative fantasies Night Watch and Day Watch. Millar's fellow Scot James McAvoy takes the lead as Wesley Gibson. a depressed Chicago office worker who's resigned to a life that sucks until Angelina Jolie's action babe Fox introduces him to a secret society of super-assassins.
Although the film jettisons the second two thirds of Millar's novel — which pits the super-assassins against a cartel of spandex-clad super-powered villains who secretly rule the world — it does retain the book's anarchic attitude and irreverent humour. The script by American writers Michael Brandt. Derek Haas and Chris Morgan could have been a bit sharper. and the toning down of the more extreme elements of the source material — freed from the constraints of normal society. Wesley becomes a murdering rapist in the book — leaves the film lacking in edge. but Bekmambetov's quirky stylistic excesses and his robust handling of the action sequences make up for the script's weaknesses. And McAvoy makes a convincing job of playing Wesley as both pathetic slacker and. followrng his indoctrination into The Fraternity. as an acrobatic marksman who can shoot bullets around corners from the roof of a speeding train. (Jack Davis)
I General release from Fri 27 Jun.
19 Jun—fl Jul 9008 THE LIST 53