list.co.uk/fi lm Reviews | FILM
SCI-FI PREDESTINATION (15) 95min ●●●●● COMEDY WILD TALES (15) 122min ●●●●●
DRAMA CAKE (15) 102min ●●●●●
Strangely alluring and memorably absurd, the Spierig Brothers’ Predestination is a guilty pleasure that’ll almost have you leaving the cinema believing you’ve just seen the best gender-bending film ever made. Based on Robert A Heinlein’s short story ‘All You Zombies’, it boasts a time-travelling crime- fighter who’s trying to stop New York’s 1970s ‘Fizzle Bomber’. Soon he requires plastic surgery – the kind that makes him look like Ethan Hawke.
Things get weirder when the film shifts from a
sci-fi / noir hybrid to a bar tale as, in the guise of a barkeep, he sets up drinks for an effeminate chap who tells his remarkable, and of course related, story. The compelling cast – including Hawke, Noah Taylor and Sarah Snook – ground the film emotionally, with the drama intensifying as they circle each other in time. Predestination feels like a combination of Cloud
Atlas, Jane Austen and Looper. Pacy and confident though it is, it twists and turns so often that you won’t be sure which way to look. Such manoeuvres gives gloss to a tale of lost love and the horror of truth. Then your mind catches up. Ultimately, it’s a head-scratcher. (Karen Krizanovich) ■ Selected release from Fri 20 Feb.
Announcing its disregard for subtlety from the off, this Oscar-nominated film from Argentina lays on a feast of unhinged antics. Wild Tales introduces us to a collection of characters just as they reach their tipping points with the dark side of modern humanity reflected as if in a circus mirror: broad, warped and very funny. Taking pleasure in misfortune, it encourages us to do likewise. Unlike many similarly structured films, Wild Tales
is written and directed by one man, Damián Szifrón. The pre-credits sequence sees an embittered individual point a plane loaded with his enemies at his parents, while another vignette finds Ricardo Darín’s explosives expert primed to go boom as he deals with patience-obliterating parking fine bureaucracy. Elsewhere, there’s class war-inspired road rage and, best, a wedding from hell.
This is the antithesis of slow cinema, one in the eye for ponderous plots. Szifrón’s jubilantly batty third feature doesn’t reach the heights of classic portmanteau picture Dead of Night, but is still an exemplary example of how to combine multiple stories in a complementary, often exhilarating manner. (Emma Simmonds) ■ Selected release from Fri 27 Mar.
Cake is becoming known as the film in which a Golden Globe-nominated Jennifer Aniston dares to dispense with make-up and act mean. It’s certainly a welcome change from the inanities and indignities of her recent roles in We’re the Millers and Horrible Bosses 2. In director Daniel Barnz’s fourth feature, she captures the physical and emotional anguish of a woman enduring chronic pain, whose life has fallen away from her like a crumbling cliff edge. Suffering from the kind of back trouble that
has made her life a living hell, scarred and sour car-crash survivor Claire (Aniston) has alienated everyone she once held dear. Even her chronic-pain support group has asked her to leave. When group member Nina (Anna Kendrick) commits suicide, Claire is regularly visited by her ghost and becomes obsessed with this woman’s death. Aniston is very good at conveying Claire’s physical
discomfort, the way every movement has become an agony eased by drink, Percocet and casual sex with the gardener. The problem is a soft-centred story that signals exactly where it’s going. It seems cruel to suggest that Cake has a soggy bottom but it does feel only half-baked. (Allan Hunter) ■ General release from Fri 20 Feb.
SCI-FI JUPITER ASCENDING (12A) 127min ●●●●●
It’s clear that Jupiter Ascending is a labour of love for its creators Andy and Lana Wachowski, who have jam-packed their ambitious intergalactic fantasy adventure full of ideas concerning genetics, reincarnation, the growing wealth divide and the mining of Earth’s natural resources. However, it plays out like a convoluted mix of The Princess Diaries meets The Fifth Element, blending a wealth of sci-fi premises and visuals. Mila Kunis is Jupiter Jones, a cleaner who hates her life and dreams of something more. Out of the blue, a bunch of aliens appear to whisk her away but luckily Caine (Channing Tatum), a snarling lycanthrope with special gravity boots, saves the day and guides her to fulfil her true destiny as monarch of Earth. This complicated yarn also features a host of other players,
including Oscar-hopeful Eddie Redmayne as the malevolent ruler of the universe, who’s wickedly intent on harvesting planets, and Sean Bean as a gruff banished alien with serious beef against Caine. Terry Gilliam cameos in an amusing scene which sees Jupiter cutting through excessive bureaucracy to become a citizen and take her rightful place as royalty.
The old-fashioned approach to romance doesn’t sit well, with Kunis playing a damsel-in-distress who gasps every few minutes. There are elements of Richard Donner’s Superman in both the storyline and the scenes in which Caine takes flight. If this film hopes to ascend to comparable greatness it ultimately takes a nosedive, being neither gritty nor particularly entertaining and borrowing from too many classics of the genre. Imagine the loopiest fan-fiction you can, as written by devotees of the aforementioned Gilliam, and you’ll be on the right track. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ General release from Fri 6 Feb.
5 Feb–2 Apr 2015 THE LIST 63