Film REVIEWS
DRAMA A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING (15) 100min ●●●●●
A film by the former lead singer of Kula Shaker might not sound an appetising prospect. But before dismissing A Fantastic Fear of Everything, we should remember that Crispian Mills’ film pedigree is pretty spot-on. He is, after all, the son of Hayley Mills and Boulting brother Roy. Factor in Simon Pegg as your lead and a story partly based on Bruce Robinson’s short story Paranoia in the Launderette and all of a sudden Fantastic Fear looks a rosier prospect. For the first third, at least, it’s just that. Pegg plays Jack, a
children’s author turned crime writer whose research into Victorian killers has morphed him into a recluse fearful of being murdered. Spooky but evocative, these early scenes have a real Edgar Wright energy to the camera work as Jack sits trembling at every noise outside. Pegg, his face twisted in constant terror, is great to watch.
The trouble is the burden falls almost entirely on Pegg to
carry the movie. And that’s not easy when you’ve got the flimsiest of plots to work with (as Jack must get to a meeting with a mysterious Hollywood bigwig but first face his fear of the launderette). There’s a not-that-great love story, involving Amara Karan’s girl-next-door, thrown in, and a serial killer on the loose sub-plot that proves what Kurt Cobain once said: ‘Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.’ While the wheels start spinning in the film’s overly drawn- out launderette sequence, they pretty much come off by the final act, when the pacing sags like an old mattress. Snatches of Bruce Robinson’s voice can be heard, but too often it feels insubstantial, like a sub-Withnail and I, or a League of Gentleman-style sketch. While Mills has a strong visual eye, the result is more flawed than fearless. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 8 Jun.
DOCUMENTARY SING YOUR SONG (12A) 104 mins ●●●●●
HORROR THE INNKEEPERS (15) 101min ●●●●● COMEDY CASA DE MI PADRE (15) 84mins ●●●●●
This timely and thorough account of the extraordinary life of Harry Belafonte finds so much in its subject that it almost suffers by an over- abundance of material. A matinee idol whose benign appeal to white
audiences masked fierce political commitments, and whose mentor was the great singer and activist Paul Robeson, Belafonte used his celebrity to foreground the interests of the civil rights movement, and later to draw attention to other social causes. Great use of archive footage ensures that Susanne
Rostock’s film emphasises both his immense allure as a performer and the seriousness of his early political engagement. Things get rushed towards the end, as the film struggles to encompass all of Belafonte’s later achievements – the We are the World charity single! The relief effort in Haiti! The war on US gang culture! – and starts to err on the side of blind hagiography. But a portrait nonetheless emerges of a man of rare charisma, unflagging energy and staunch beliefs, whose legacy reminds us why Hollywood and activism needn’t necessarily be an embarrassing double act. (Hannah McGill) ■ Selected release from Fri 8 Jun.
88 THE LIST 24 May–21 Jun 2012
Having established his credentials as a serious genre fan with a spot-on homage to 80s horror movies in The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West reaches even further back into the past with this slow-burning thriller.
Like all good haunted house flicks, The
Innkeepers’ setting, the small-town New England Yankee Pedlar Inn, is a character in its own right. It’s also a real place, which West (who stayed there while making House of the Devil) imagines as a run- down motel with a haunted history. About to close its doors for good, the last two employees, a couple of slackers with an interest in the paranormal (Sara Paxton and Pat Healy), take the opportunity to indulge in some ghost-hunting. By allowing time for character development, the creation of atmosphere and building of suspense, and by eschewing gore and saving its big reveal until the end, West has delivered a genuinely involving and disconcerting chiller that’s closer than anything else to a decent 50s B-movie. And, happily, it’s free of the long since tiresome post-modernism recently rekindled by The Cabin in the Woods. (Miles Fielder) ■ General release from Fri 8 Jun.
Will Ferrell as a tough rancher in a violent Spanish- language Western? It could only be a joke, and that’s exactly what Case de mi Padre is, a ragged, silly spoof in the Airplane/Naked Gun mode. Unfortunately, as jokes go, it’s a not particularly funny one. Ferrell reportedly spent a month learning Spanish to
play Armando, a simple-minded Mexican rancher whose brother Raul (Diego Luna) disrupts their family life when he arrives home with sultry new bride Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez). Plans for a wedding are ruined, not only by Armando’s growing infatuation with Sonia, but through the violent intervention of Raul’s drug- cartel boss Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal).
Sam Peckinpah-levels of bloodshed result, but Casa de mi Padre is less a spoof of action movies than an homage to the kind of over-heated soap- opera that might be glimpsed while on holiday. Too silly to take seriously, but without the comic set pieces required to raise laughs, Case de mi Padre is a disappointing oddity that never makes the grade, despite the efforts of an overqualified cast. Next time Ferrell ventures south of the border, he might want to take a gag-writer with him. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 8 Jun.