www.list.co.uk/film
TEEN COMEDY
ANGUS moms AND PERFEDT snoccmc. (cert tbc) tbcmin OI.
After successfully tackling teenage tomboys in Bend it Like Beckham, Gurinder Chadha takes a step into younger territory with this adaptation of two of Louise Rennison's bestselling books for girls. Looking at life from the perspective of 14-year-old Georgia Nicolson. the film lacks the sharp wit of slick American comedies such as Clueless and Mean Girls, but earns points for featuring actresses who really are the age of the characters they're playing onscreen. Chadha pitches the tone just right for a young female audience. addressing some of the hang-ups and dramas of early womanhood with a surreal and winningly silly tone, but scuppers a lot of this good work by opting for a conventional Hollywood-ster story arc and a conclusion that's positively dripping with cheese.
Still, the director is clearly comfortable working with youngsters. and here she elicits an excellent comic performance from lead actress Georgia Groome; as the central focus in a large cast of new faces. the London To Brighton star exudes real talent and promise. Ultimately. though. while it's good to see a film for school- aged girls that doesn't automatically assume intimate knowledge of all things adult, Angus, Thongs. . . is unlikely to win much love from anyone outside of its specific target audience. (Paul Gallagher)
I General release from Fri 25 Jul. See profile, page 48.
THRILLER DONKEY PUNCH (18) 99min .0
The first fruit of the UK Film Council‘s collaboration with Shane Meadows‘ regular producers Warp X, Donkey Punch is a misguided attempt by Brits to muscle in on the already hackneyed torture-porn genre. Tammi (Nichola Burley) joins her two girlfriends on a holiday in Mallorca. only to be lured onboard a luxury yacht by some unscrupulous boys. After some messy drug taking, Tammi ends up blissing out above the decks while the other girls are making a porn film down below. But. when one girl is unfortunate enough to receive a ‘donkey punch' during sex. breaking her neck, the boys imprison the two remaining girls and a stand-off develops. leading to a series of violent deaths by knife. rope. flare gun and
outboard motor.
A feeble entry into an already overworked genre. writer/director Olly Blackburn's Donkey Punch is a soulless photocopy of a template familiar from Shallow Grave and Dead Calm. The relentlessly unimaginative script constantly tips over into banal absurdity as the vapid characters alternate between trying to kill each other and arguing about what they might or might not say if they have to testify against each other in court. Making such slavish rip-offs used to be the preserve of exploitation filmmakers; the only real surprise here is that it‘s the public who are footing the bill for such poorly-staged amateur dramatics. (Eddie Harrison)
I General release from Fri 78 Jul.
48 THE LISY 17—31 Jul 2008
DOCUMENTARY STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (15) 118min COO.
Legendary American documentarian Errol Morris’ films fall into two catagories, political and wacky, and it was with the former that he won an Academy Award in 2003 for his astonishingly candid portrait of Vietnam-era US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, The Fog of War. His follow-up, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, is another political film, and it’s without a doubt his most serious - and seriously disturbing - film to date.
Standard Operating Procedure is an unflinching account of the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by their US military captors at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Drawing not only on his background as a documentary filmmaker, but also on his previous career as a private eye, Morris has built his investigation around the photographs taken of the abuses by the abusers, which were subsequently made public and immediately caused an enormous scandal. Among the most infamous of them is the picture of private Lynndie England holding a leash attached to a naked and prone pflsonen
Using his self-patented ‘Interrotron’ (a device which
facilitates the questioning of subjects face-to-face without the questioner coming between them and the camera), Morris allows England and her fellow squadies to tell their side of the story. That they see themselves as victims of and scapegoats for a badly mis-managed war has provoked criticism of Morris for being too sympathetic to his subjects, who have, after all, committed acts of torture. But although Morris confines his investigation to Abu Ghraib (partially recreated with some gruesome dramatic re- enactments), the film clearly makes the point that what went on there was sanctioned, implicitly and explicitly, by military command and by the White House. What’s also apparent - and is perhaps the most disturbing thing about the film - is that the appalling abuses committed by these young soldiers might have been committed by anyone thrown into such an insane warzone.
Morris has made a film many viewers will hate, but it’s an important story of our troubled times. As Morris says, the horrific images seen in the photographs crystalise current American foreign policy. And that’s not something filmmakers should shy away from. (Jack Davis)
I General release from 78 Jul.