Film REVIEWS
SCI-FI LOOPER (15) 118mins ●●●●●
After his impressive debut Brick and his mildly disappointing follow-up, The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson’s time-travel tale Looper feels like a giant leap forwards. Warmly embracing elements of sci-fi, horror and romance, in a story inspired equally by Peter Weir’s Witness as it is James Cameron’s The Terminator, it’s a marvellous antidote to the stale summer blockbusters (yes, Men In Black 3, we mean you) so often foisted upon us.
The premise is gilt-edged. Set in 2047, Joseph Gordon- Levitt plays Joe, a mob-hired assassin whose targets are sent back to him from thirty years into the future – at a point when time-travel has been invented. His job is simply to shoot, kill and dispose – but things take a deadly turn when he realises his latest hit is his future self (Bruce Willis), who manages to evade death-by-blunderbuss (Joe’s preferred weapon-of-choice, oddly) and escape.
This gives just the barest outline of what is a
tremendously intricate plot, one that sees young Joe hole up in a farmhouse run by single mother Sara (Emily Blunt) as he attempts to track down his older self. What impresses, aside from just how rigorous Johnson has been with the logic of it all, is the manner in which he creates his world. Rather than saturate the screen with digital effects he uses CG subtly and sparingly. Reuniting with Johnson after Brick, Gordon-Levitt leads
the line impressively, while Willis offers up one of his more restrained performances (until a quite glorious action scene towards the end when he finally gets his hands on some hardware). The support is equally fine – Jeff Daniels as Joe’s mob mentor, Paul Dano as his careless friend – but really the outstanding performer here is Rian Johnson. A genre-blending, time-bending morality tale, Johnson’s bravado will leave you breathless. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 28 Sep.
DRAMA UNTOUCHABLE (15) 112min ●●●●● DRAMA BARBARA (TBC) 101min ●●●●●
A colossal hit in its native France, this story, inspired by real events, looks on paper to be the kind of tactless three-hanky issue movie that Hollywood never misses an opportunity to churn out.
Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is a filthy-rich aristocrat
and wheelchair-bound quadriplegic. When Driss (Omar Sy), an impoverished, street-smart and freshly homeless drifter, makes a token appearance – purely to authorise his benefit – at an interview for the position of Philippe’s carer, Philippe decides Driss is just the kind of person he needs. But co-writer/directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano seem very aware of the need to temper their story’s susceptibility to emotional button- pushing, and Untouchable’s overall tone is lighter – and considerably funnier – than its subject matter might lead you to assume. The script has some problems in the third act, relying on predictable plotting in an attempt to trump up some very forced dramatic tension, but this is worth seeing for Cluzet and Sy; they are a great screen double-act, offering a believable relationship that’s funny and moving in all the right ways. (Paul Gallagher) ■ General release from Fri 21 Sep.
64 THE LIST 20 Sep–18 Oct 2012
Germany’s Best Foreign Language Film contender for next year’s Academy Awards recalls the country’s 2007 winner The Lives of Others in as much as it dramatises life lived under the watchful eye of the authorities in East Germany before the wall came down. It’s summer 1980, and paediatrician Barbara
(Nina Hoss) has applied for an exit visa from the GDR only to find herself transferred from Berlin to a small hospital in the provinces near Brandenburg. There, she waits for her lover from West Germany, Jörg (Mark Waschke), to execute her escape, all the while suffering under the surveillance of local officer Schütz (Rainer Bock).
Bucking convention, director Christian Petzold eschews portraying East Germany as a grey state and instead pictures it as something approaching a rural idyll. Although there remains in place a sense of oppression, the dividing line between the repressive East and the liberated West is sufficiently blurred; Barbara’s growing inner conflict encapsulating the more universal questions about the nature of personal responsibility. (Miles Fielder) ■ Selected release from Fri 28 Sep.
DOCUMENTARY DIANA VREELAND: THE EYE HAS TO TRAVEL (PG) 86min ●●●●●
Before Anna Wintour there was Diana Vreeland. The fearsome fashion editor, who worked at Harper’s Bazaar in the 40s and 50s and Vogue during the 60s, was an influential figure who brought ingenuity to the fashion world through her bold and exotic shoots. Her life is celebrated in this thoughtful documentary made by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, her granddaughter-in-law. Featuring a large number of contributors including
Vreeland’s children, former colleagues and well known faces like photographer David Bailey, Vreeland’s story is brought to life through a rich collection of archive images. This isn’t a sugar- coated version though, the film strives to capture what Vreeland was really like, and she comes across as eccentric, visionary and frequently frustrating to work with.
A more reflective look at fashion journalism than The September Issue (which followed Vogue’s current editor, Anna Wintour), this documentary is likely to appeal to those with a more serious interest in the subject matter. (Gail Tolley) ■ Selected release from Fri 21 Sep.