LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
Directed by F. Gary Gray. Starring Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb.
THE PLOT: The film opens with Butler's Clyde Shelton having to witness the two men who have broken into his Philadelphia home brutally killing his wife and young daughter. Justice is not served though, as Foxx's career-climbing prosecutor strikes a deal with one of the men to send the other to death row. Which means Clyde has to sit and wait for ten years before he can take revenge. Cold, bloody, brilliantly calculated revenge.
THE VERDICT: Onboard also as producer, Butler gives it his all as the avenging father who isn't about to take the murder of his wife and child lying down. Or safely locked up inside, for that matter.
It's all a bit Death Wish with a diploma, of course, with maybe a dash of Man On Fire and The Crossing Guard, but Butler plays it with enough fiery passion to almost distract you from the fact that the script has run out of steam - and common sense - by the final act. RATING: ***
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Directed by Orin Peli. Starring Katie Featherston, Michah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Ashley Palmer.
THE PLOT: As with The Blair Witch Project, you soon want something truly painful to happen to the main protagonists here, the incredibly annoying Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat supposedly playing themselves, and seemingly improvising their way through this, at heart, no-budget, schlock-horror two-hander. The latter proves unaware until it's too late that he's actually dating Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), Katie having been the target of a poltergeist ever since she was a small girl. A poltergeist who's happy to follow her wherever she moves.
For his part, techno-geek Micah just wants to catch something on film, the night vision footage of those few minutes when Casper's evil twin does eventually start popping by for a latenight bedroom visit providing the sort of old-fashioned scares William Castle would normally have a hand in.
THE VERDICT: Unashamedly taking the winning formula of The Blair Witch Project - amateur actors videotaping themselves as more and more things go bump in the night - this American box-office success story arrives on our screens more than a little out of time (it was released at Halloween in the US). And certainly, in the cold light of Christmas, it doesn't quite convince.
It's really all Scooby-Doo nonsense, Paranormal Activity offering up nothing new, or, more importantly, particularly scary. If this was a play, I have little doubt that the audience would soon rise up as one and help that poltergeist. RATING: **
BUNNY AND THE BULL
Directed by Paul King. Starring Simon Farnaby, Edward Hogg, Veronica Echegui, Richard Ayoade, Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding.
THE PLOT: Described as a road movie set in a flat, in Bunny And The Bull, the deeply insecure and highly insular Stephen (Hogg) has turned into a low-budget Howard Hughes. And he's happy to tell us why, having had his head wrecked by his highly fearless and extremely selfish best friend, Bunny (Farnaby), and his heart broken by the sultry and superstitious Spanish waitress Eloisa (Echegui). Bunny jumping Eloisa's bones didn't exactly help the increasingly fragile Stephen's belief in mankind either.
King's usual blend of Michel Gondry, Blue Peter, Python and Spongebob Squarepants are all present and correct once more, all wrapped up in an acid trip version of Withnail & I.
THE VERDICT:
Naturally, when it came to making the leap from the small screen wonder The Mighty Boosh to his big screen debut, writer/director Paul King was hoping he wouldn't suffer the usual knee-jerk reaction that comes with such difficult upgrades. Nonetheless, King's surreal-verging-on-bonkers comedy here is not a million latenight spliffs away from the surreal-verging-on-bonkers comedy that is The Mighty Boosh. Which, as I said, Paul King also directed.
No wonder the comparisons have been coming thick and fast, much to King's annoyance. Chances are, there are times when you'll believe you're watching a movie where the Boosh's Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding's stunt doubles hook up with Penelope Cruz's stunt double. Crazy. Still, for about the first hour, this is very nearly wonderful, wondrous stuff... RATING: **
NATIVITY
Directed by Debbie Isitt. Starring Martin Freeman, Ashley Jensen, Pam Ferris, Alan Carr, Marc Wootton, John Sessions.
THE PLOT: Freeman plays another frustrated under-achiever, this time primary school teacher Paul Maddens, given the task of producing St. Bernadette's annual Christmas play. With Snootysville Elementary - or whatever they're called - determined to be the best dressed nativity play in town, Paul decides to up the stakes by claiming his ex-girlfriend-turned-Hollywood-player (Jensen) is flying in with plans to turn his Yuletide spectacular into a movie. And a book. Even though the two haven't spoken in years. Mad.
THE VERDICT: One of those broad British comedies that are quickly (best) forgotten, Nativity! arrives just in time to be ignored during the festive season. Hurrah.
Leading the festive non-cheer is good old Martin Freeman, the amicable Aldershot lad who won our hearts as Tim in The Office. But who then went on to make Hardware. And The Robinsons. And a bunch of feature films that veered between almost-great and undeniably-poor. Naturally, Nativity! belongs in the latter category.
As with writer/director Debbie Isitt's previous offering, Confetti, Nativity! is an improvised comedy that really could have done with a script. It's a little like having fake snow sprayed in your face for an hour and a half. RATING: *
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON
Directed by Chris Weitz. Starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Dakota Fanning, Michael Sheen.
THE PLOT: The fact that, like its predecessor, New Moon is not a particularly well-made movie, or a particularly inventive or imaginative tale (author Meyer being little more than Dan Brown in a buttoned-up dress), means that Pattinson and Stewart (a very fine young actress) have to try that little bit harder to make some diamonds from all this coal.
They're aided in their task this time by a very beefed-up Taylor Lautner, playing the good friend to Stewart's heartbroken Bella when her vampire sweetheart Edward (Pattinson) reckons they're better off apart. As love triangles go, this one has an extra layer of obstacles to get through. Such as Edward being a vampire, whilst Bella is a boring old human. Oh, and Lautner's Jacob is a werewolf. Think of the children! At least they won't have to take any kind of paternity test.
THE VERDICT: Fandemonium is, of course, a wonderful thing to behold, raising handsome young artists - from Elvis to Leo, from The Beatles to, eh, Jedward - to the status of near-deities. And it's certainly the undying lust of many a young woman out there for Robert Thomas Pattinson that has helped both the first, and now the second adaptation, of Stephanie Meyer's Twilightbooks break a few box-office records. So, does it bite? Or suck?
Director Chris Weitz (About A Boy, American Pie) does a decent enough job, given that he had only 10 months to get a special-effects-laden and cliched tale up on screen, but this already feels like a franchise that will make a ferocious amount of money (the third, Eclipse, is in post-production, and due out in June), and will largely be remembered in years to come for the amount of money it made. And how much space Edward took up on young girls' bedroom walls. RATING: **
SERAPHINE
Directed by Martin Provost. Starring Yolande Moreau, Ulrich Tukur, Anne Bennent, Genevieve Mnich.
THE PLOT: As true-life stories go, the rags-to-riches tale of Seraphine de Senlis is hard to beat. It's 1914, Senlis, north of Paris, and German art collector Wilhelm Unde (Ulrich Tukur) knows Seraphine Louis merely as the house maid for his new apartment when he notices one of her many 'naive' religious paintings. When he returns years later, after the war, Wilhelm is dazzled by Seraphine's new paintings, and becomes determined to make her rich and famous.
THE VERDICT: Who says they don't make 'em like they used to? The big winner at this year's Cesar awards, Seraphine is a sweeping, old-fashioned biopic charting the life of the renowned early 20th century French painter. Yolande Moreau is wonderful in the title role, and director Martin Provost is to be commended for giving his film the kind of grace and pace that befits such a subject. RATING: ****
GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL at the IFI
Having just had the French around - despite Thierry Henry recent handiwork - the IFI now play host to those huggable rogues, the Germans, with the best new cinema that fine country has to offer playing there from December 3rd to 13th.
The recent anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subject of German partition are, of course, addressed, in such films as the comic drama Peaceful Times, the factual drama The Miracle Of Leipzig, and Germany 09, thirteen of the country's best filmmakers reflecting on the 20 years since reunification.
Alongside the premieres, there are documentaries and restrospectives aplenty, the IFI German Film Festival being presented in association with the Goethe-Institut Irland. Tickets and full info available on www.ifi.ie.