Film Reviews
DRAMA UNDERTOW (CONTRACORRIENTE) (15) 100min ●●●●●
Talk about having your cake and eating it. Impossibly good looking Peruvian fisherman Miguel (Cristian Mercado) has an adoring pregnant wife (Tatiana Astengo) and a hot male lover in the shape of visiting artist Santiago (Manolo Cardona). It’s all anchovy blanca, buggery and baby buzz until the small, close (and close-minded) coastal community gets wind of Miguel’s secret dalliance. And then Santiago disappears.
Javier Fuentes-León’s debut feature is an infuriating blend of magical
realist intent coupled with the more middle-class obsessions of new queer cinema – most noticeably schizophrenic sexual desires, the metaphysical and the overcoming of prejudice in small communities (Brokeback Mountain has so much to answer for). Undertow is like a bad parody of that free love era staple, the bittersweet
love triangle flick, and although writer/director Fuentes-León’s refusal to find simple resolutions for most of the film is to be admired, we are never far from cliché or whimsy. Still nearly everyone in the film is gorgeous and Mauricio Vidal’s cinematography of the beautiful Peruvian coastline is lovely. (Paul Dale) ■ GFT, Glasgow & Cameo, Edinburgh from Fri 6 Aug.
104 THE LIST 5–12 Aug 2010
FANTASY THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE (PG) 111min ●●●●●
The combination of big-budget producer Jerry Bruckheimer and deep-pocketed studio Disney bore attractive if banal fruit with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but muddle-headed fantasy The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is more likely to make audiences want to put a match to Nicolas Cage’s hair extensions than sit through another similar movie. Cribbed thematically from the
‘brooms and buckets’ sequence of Walt Disney’s Fantasia, Jon Turteltaub’s film follows the usual ‘dweeby twit discovers he’s the chosen one’, à la Harry Potter. After an uninspired preamble establishing Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) as a master sorcerer, the narrative picks up when nerdy physics student Dave (Jay Baruchel) stumbles into Blake’s ongoing conflict with rival Maxim Horvath (played by rote Alfred Molina). The notion of a novice intervening in duelling magicians sounds like fun, but The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is more focused on Dave’s sappy romance with pert disc jockey Becky (Teresa Palmer). This is Cage’s seventh collaboration with Bruckheimer, and his third with National Treasure director Turteltaub, who dutifully orchestrates a limp pantomime. Dry and dusty when it should be sparkling, there’s precious little magic here. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Wed 11 Aug.
ALSO RELEASED Step Up 3D (12A) 107min ●●●●● A group of underground street dancers from New York City team up with freshman Moose (Adam G Sevani) and find themselves pitted against the world’s best hip hop dancers in a life-changing showdown. Silly but euphoric and enjoyable street dance flick. If you like this kind of thing, the 3D certainly adds to the fun. General release from Fri 6 Aug. My Night With Maud (U) 110min ●●●●● New digitally- restored print of quintessential bourgeois 1969 drama by late great French new waver Eric Rohmer. The mighty Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as a religious engineer whose belief that he will marry a woman (Françoise Fabian) he has seen only in church is sorely tested during one long evening. Beautifully shot in black and white by Néstor Almendros, this is the film that put Rohmer on the international stage as the king of Gallic loquacious pretension. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 6–Mon 8 Aug. Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky (15) 118min ●●●●● Nuanced and exquisitely detailed but passionless drama about the romance between the queen of couture and the father of modern classical music. Dutch writer/director Jan Kounan (Blueberry, Dobermann) keeps things a little too minimal and cool for comfort, but stars Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen do their best to salvage something from the endless longueurs. Cameo, Edinburgh and selected release from Fri 6 Aug.
THRILLER/COMEDY KNIGHT AND DAY (12A) 109min ●●●●●
‘I’m the guy!’ smirks madcap assassin Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) to mousey June Havens (Cameron Diaz) as he kidnaps her at gunpoint from a Boston café. Sadly, on the evidence of James Mangold’s pumped-up spy thriller, Cruise has little to be so cocky about – the toothy smile may be intact, but this mix of fake CGI and even faker romance never lets either star shine. Blandly reprising his Ethan Hunt persona in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Cruise plays Miller, a seemingly indestructible spy who has a chance encounter at a Kansas airport with the dowdy Havens. Taking her off-track from her sister’s wedding, the dental, mental twosome battle against various anonymous baddies, including a slumming Peter Sarsgaard, who continually narrows his eyes and looks off-screen as if searching for a face-saving exit.
Knight and Day reputedly went through more rewrites than Snow White had dwarves, and the result shows little in the way of a unifying purpose; Diaz flusters while Cruise dons shades and bloodlessly shoots down extras in a poor imitation of Doug Liman ’s superior Mr & Mrs Smith. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 6 Aug.