FILM | Reviews
HORROR REMAKE CARRIE (15) 100min ●●●●●
Kimberly Peirce’s update on Stephen King’s Carrie slavishly follows the path taken by Brian De Palma’s 1976 film and fails to make any real impact. Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz) leads a sheltered existence under the care of her deeply religious mother (Julianne Moore) and is shunned by her peers. When she becomes the victim of a prank at her senior prom she exacts a terrifying revenge. Early on, Peirce (whose previous films have included the Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry and eye-opening Iraq War drama Stop-Loss) manages to make use of the contemporary setting by drawing on the potentials of social media in high school bullying. Having set up some intriguing possibilities, Peirce then reverts to a more reverential approach which ultimately robs the film of any power.
The blood-soaked finale is replayed virtually shot-for-
shot, yet is nowhere near as terrifying, while its aftermath feels derivative and poorly executed. It’s a failing that also undermines the performances, with the early work done by Moretz and Moore largely going to waste. Far from recreating a classic for this generation of horror fans, Peirce’s re- imagining of Carrie winds up feeling as redundant as countless other genre remakes. (Rob Carnevale) ■ General release from Fri 29 Nov.
GANGSTER DOM HEMINGWAY (15) 93min ●●●●●
What is Dom Hemingway? That’s the question you might well ask yourself after watching Richard Shepard’s misfire. Is it a gangster movie? Is it a comedy? Is it a touchy-feely family film? Somehow, it tries to be all three, though doesn’t really succeed in any one area, despite an out-there turn from Jude Law that feels culled from Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast and Tom Hardy in Bronson.
A safecracker who’s just done a long prison stretch, Dom (Law) is a violent, volatile and vile criminal with about as much charm as a dose of the clap. His first mission post- jail? Beat up the bloke who’s been with his ex-wife. Second? A marathon cocaine-and-hooker session, courtesy of Mr Fontaine (Demián Bichir), the criminal he went down for. And thirdly? A trip to the South of France to collect his fiscal reward.
It’s amusing to watch Dom in short bursts but here he is shouting and swearing through a flimsy plot not nearly big enough to hold him. While there are some undeniably engaging moments the film leaves us with a flop of a finale. Mona Lisa, this is not. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 15 Nov.
DRAMA NEBRASKA (15) 115min ●●●●●
Alexander Payne’s sixth film Nebraska feels like it could only have been made by him. Returning to the state where he grew up, and where he set his first three films, it’s also the third road movie of his career, after Sideways and About Schmidt. Like the latter, which had Jack Nicholson’s crabby retiree hitting the road to make amends with his estranged daughter, Nebraska deals with an aged character and his offspring. In this case, we meet Montana resident Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), whose curmudgeonly
behaviour makes Nicholson’s Warren Schmidt look positively sunny. When he receives a junk mail flyer claiming he’s won a million dollars, as long as he collects in person, he infuriates his disbelieving wife Kate (June Squibb) and two grown-up sons David and Ross (Will Forte, Bob Odenkirk) when he resolves to make the trip to Lincoln, Nebraska to do exactly that. Deciding to drive him, David sees it as a chance to patch up their relationship.
What follows is touching and thankfully lacking About Schmidt’s dead-eyed cynicism,
but it’s a story also mercifully free of the cloying sentiment that clogs up most Hollywood melodramas. Shot in beautiful black-and-white, it feels like it’s been mailed direct from the 1970s with its portrayal of an economically-depressed small town America.
This feeling is further emphasised by the casting of the veteran Dern, who won Best
Actor in Cannes for his work here, giving a warm, wild-eyed turn that far outstrips anything he’s done in years. Good, too, is Saturday Night Live regular Forte in the role of the put- upon son who learns to appreciate his father afresh. For all their squabbles, it’s probably Payne’s most poetic work yet, a quiet, subtle study of the highs and lows of family life. (James Mottram) ■ Limited release from Fri 6 Dec.
DRAMA KILL YOUR DARLINGS (15) 104min ●●●●●
Currently, the Beat Generation is to American independent cinema what Marvel’s superheroes are to blockbusters, with each year bringing a new incarnation of the same characters. Following Walter Salles’ adaptation of On the Road last year and James Franco’s 2010 take on Allen Ginsberg in Howl, Kill Your Darlings is the ‘origin story’.
It’s 1943, and in the jazz-fuelled corridors of Columbia University the young Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) encounters rebellious Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), eccentric William Burroughs (Ben Foster)
and, later, straight-talkin’ Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). And so forms a new literary generation. As with many films that attempt to trace the emergence of a cultural movement, the formation of
the Beat Generation is hung upon a few key moments of inspiration in a way that feels simplistic. Radcliffe is well-cast as Ginsberg, suggesting a burgeoning creativity at odds with his self- conscious exterior. And in a neat bit of casting, Ginsberg’s academic father is nicely played by David Cross, the comedian who played Ginsberg in Todd Haynes’ 2007 experimental Bob Dylan film I’m Not There. (Paul Gallagher) ■ Limited release from Fri 6 Dec.
60 THE LIST 14 Nov–12 Dec 2013