SELECTED FILMS NOW SCREENING
NEW CompliaNCE (15)
Intentionally queasy drama set in a busy fast food restaurant and revolving around an employee who is subjected to an increasingly humiliating and degrading line of questioning after the manager receives a phone call from the police. Based on true events, what transpires may seem incredible, but that’s why it’s so unsettling. Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker and Pat Healy star.
NEW THE CRooDS (pG)
CG-animated adventure about a prehistoric family facing up to its potential demise, this has lots of cutting-edge visuals to dazzle the eye, but the storytelling is caveman basic, revolving around a free-spirited young girl called Eep (Emma Stone) torn between obeying her overprotective father (Nicholas Cage) and running off with an adventure-seeking, fireharnessing caveboy (Ryan Reynolds).
HaNSEl & GRETEl: WiTCH HuNTERS (15)
Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton play grown-up versions of the fairytale orphans who spend their days as guns-for-hire, travelling from village to village, dispensing flaming justice to witches while trading barbed – but in no way amusing – insults with one another. A grim fairytale indeed.
NEW iDENTiTY THiEF (15)
Bridesmaids star Melissa McCarthy is the best thing in this road-trip comedy about a fraudster who steals the identity of Jason Batemen’s uptight financial controller and ends up on the run with him across America. Unfortunately the jokes aren’t funny and too much of the film is rooted in that spurious Hollywood belief that anyone over a certain size is secretly yearning for the acceptance of thin people.
THE iNCREDiblE buRT WoNDERSToNE (12a)
Steve Carell stars as the magician who finds his tired Las Vegas routine challenged by a new form of endurance-related street magic courtesy of an arrogant, fame-hungry illusionist (Jim Carrey). The fact that the latter is a thinly veiled parody of David Blaine (last worthy of parody about a decade ago) should give you an idea how stale this is. If not, the fact that the cast are all ten years too old for their roles will.
NEW JaCK THE GiaNT SlaYER (12a)
A special effects display in search of a story, X-Men director Bryan Singer’s take on Jack and the Beanstalk seems more interested in using digital technology to render hordes of rampaging giants on screen than finding a way to make the fairytale genuinely compelling for a new audience. With Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor and Stanley Tucci.
oz THE GREaT aND poWERFul (12a)
Part loving tribute, part modern reboot, this sort-of prequel to The Wizard of
Oz offers plenty to enjoy without really nailing what makes the 1939 adaptation of L Frank Baum’s story such an enduring classic.
THE papERboY (15)
Committed performances from Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and a very good Nicole Kidman help Precious director Lee Daniels partially salvage this sweaty, swampy tale of sex, lies and murder, but not enough to successfully convince you he knows what he’s doing. Too many narrative strands that go nowhere ensure that The Paperboy just doesn’t deliver.
NEW poST TENEbRaS lux (18)
Purveyor of demanding, poetic provocations such as Japón, Battle
in Heaven and Silent Light, Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas abandons narrative altogether for his latest – a fractured series of vignettes related to a prosperous middle-class family living in the Mexican countryside. Beautifully shot, but with little explication, it confirms Reygadas as a filmmaker who can create forceful images but not always persuasive works of art.
SHEll (15)
Scottish director Scott Graham’s Highland-set tale of loneliness and despair makes for a promising debut even though its story feels a little rote in the provocative sexual themes it attempts to explore. It succeeds in creating a foreboding atmosphere, with the desolate cinematography complementing a powerful performance from newcomer Chloe Pirrie, as the eponymous 17-year-old whose days spent manning her dad’s petrol station mask a curious father-daughter relationship.
SiDE EFFECTS (15)
Steven Soderbergh uses the unscrupulous practices of multinational drug companies as a jumping-off point for a moody, sophisticated but gleefully twisty thriller. Jude Law plays an overworked psychiatrist who prescribes a powerful new antidepressant to Rooney Mara, with unexpected consequences for everyone.
NEW STolEN (15)
Nicholas Cage re-teams with Con Air director Simon West for a cornball action movie about a newly released ex-con who has 12 hours to get his hands on $10 million if he ever wants to see his just-kidnapped daughter alive again. If you can get past some rubbish plotting, it’s surprisingly watchable trash, and offers the sight of Cage talking about Care Bears, delivering lines in Swedish and pulling off a bank heist with a blowtorch.
WElComE To THE puNCH (15)
Eran Creevy’s attempt to make a London-set genre film in the mould of Asian thrillers such as Infernal Affairs kind of works and kind of doesn’t. He has created a plausibly heightened cityscape in which James McAvoy’s obsessive cop and Mark Strong’s ruthlessly disciplined criminal can indulge in a hyper-violent game of cat-and-mouse with relative impunity. On the downside, this hermetically sealed world eventually makes the convoluted plot feel stuffy.