Film, Issue 686

The Devil's Double

Rambunctious romp with career changing performance from Dominic Cooper

(18) 106min Subtlety is not in director Lee Tamahori’s repertoire. His excellent 1994 debut, Maori drama Once Were Warriors was full of well caught masculine bravado and tearful repercussions but the director’s career went wayward and reached its…

In a Better World (Hævnen)

Oscar-winning, powerfully acted work that loses its way

(15) 117min The winner of the 2011 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the digitally shot In a Better World is another of director Suzanne Bier’s emotionally intense male melodramas, scripted by her regular collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen. It…

Cowboys and Aliens

Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in film rarely rising to cartoonish mayhem title promises

(12A) 118min Comic-book adaptation Cowboys & Aliens is two genre films in one. It mashes up the western with sci-fi – a strategy which worked well in the outer-space frontiers of Star Trek and Star Wars, but creates frustratingly patchy results in…

One Day

Director of An Education tackles David Nicholls' novel

(12A) 108min Following An Education, Danish director Lone Scherfig attempts to conjure the same magic on another slice of hit Brit lit – David Nicholls’ One Day. Fans of the book have already been protesting that the casting of Anne Hathaway as…

The Room

Gloriously awful Rocky Horror-style particapatory film screening

The midnight movies phenomenon is well documented – starting in the 1970s at fleapit cinemas, movies that were too bizarre, too violent or too extreme for the mainstream were shown to cult film-loving audiences in the dead of night. The Rocky Horror…

Profile: Eyad Zahra - Director of Muslim punk scene film The Taqwacores

Film adapts novel by Michael Muhammad Knight

Name Eyad Zahra Born 20 Safar 1403 AH (Islamic calendar) in Cleveland, Ohio. Background Zahra’s family is Syrian. He was the first of his family born in America, his older brother was born in Syria. Growing up, his mother taught him about…

Project Nim

Excellent ape project documentary a complex meditation on human nature

(12A) 99min It’s not surprising that director James Marsh has chosen to follow his Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man On Wire by taking an approach often favoured by bands following up a hit album: don’t mess with the formula, just try and do the…

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Expertly mixes intelligence and spectacle to hugely impressive effect

(12A) 106min After the folly that was Tim Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes in 2001 many questioned the wisdom of trying to breathe new life into the franchise when this prequel was first announced. But Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of…

The Salt of Life (Gianni e le Donne)

Warm and sincere bittersweet comedy with loose, naturalistic style

(12A) 89min Rome-born Gianni Di Gregorio is one of Italian cinema’s late starters. Having studied acting as a young man, he spent many years working as assistant director and screenwriter before beginning a fruitful collaboration with young…

The Taqwacores

Exploration of identity set within American Muslim punk scene

(15) 83min Eyad Zahra’s adaptation of Michael Muhammed Knight’s novel set in the American Muslim punk scene is in the tradition of early 80s music scene movies such as Penelope Spheeris’ Surburbia and Edo Bertoglio’s Downtown 81. First generation…

Elite Squad 2 - The Enemy Within (Tropa de Elite: O Inimigo Agora e Outro)

Returns to Rio's criminal world with pace, plot and violent set pieces

(18) 114min Returning to the favela killing fields of his reactionary 2008 thriller, the schizophrenically talented writer/director Jose Padilha (Bus 174, Garapa) resurrects Captain Nascimento, but this time the right wing, law and order sympathies…

Beautiful Lies (De Vrais Mensonges)

(12a) 104min Despite the efforts of a fine French cast – which includes Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila and Audrey Tautou – this visually unremarkable romantic comedy from writer/director Pierre Salvadori (Wild Target, Priceless), in which mother and…