Closed Circuit
A slick conspiracy yarn with an engaging cast that includes Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall, Julia Stiles, Jim Broadbent and Ciaran Hinds. It has a script from the hands of Steven Knight, who penned the excellent Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises. The idea of a high-profile case in which an accused terrorist is put on trial by a pair of former lovers (Bana and Hall) with lots of baggage has some potential, as does the setting of London with its vast network of CCTV cameras covering virtually every street corner. But Director John Crowley is in so much of a hurry to kick the thriller off that he leaves no time to consider the deeper implications of a society under constant scrutiny, and Bana and Hall seem to be right out of some second-tier TV drama like Spooks, so that even the film’s 96-minute running time seems too long. As a thriller, all the pieces are there, and Broadbent provides a splendid performance, but the chemistry between the two stars never really sparks.
Lovelace
Amanda Seyfried is a lovely actress and brings a special innocence to her portrayal of Linda Lovelace, the star of the famous porn movie Deep Throat. Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman create a world that is true to the glitzy world of 1970s America, looking at the dirty underbelly of cinema, and dwelling lovingly on period detail. These are the highlights of an interesting but flawed film that fails in its primary goal of giving us real insight into a complex and confused character manipulated by powerful forces beyond her understanding. That said, given all the ways that this film might have gone wrong it does a surprisingly good job, and the directors’ serious intentions and sympathy with the central character are never in doubt. There is a wonderful performance by Sharon Stone as Linda’s totally unsympathetic mother, which is almost worth the price of admission all on its own, but 92 minutes is just not enough space to deal with the Deep Throat phenomenon in any depth.
Insidious: Chapter 2
Directed by James Wan, the creative fount of Saw, takes Insidious into sequel territory, and the surprising thing is that it is not too awful. Sure, many critics have pointed out that the only reason Insidious: Chapter 2 exists is because the original film made a bucket full of money. Then again nobody is pretending that this second installment breaks any new ground. It is more than sufficient that Wan is proficient at the technical aspects of the genre and in Insidious: Chapter 2 he proves that he has many tricks up his sleeve. There is some unnecessarily complex time travel going on in the movie, which dilutes the visceral impact as audiences have to scramble a bit to find a path through the sometimes confusing plot, but the efforts of the Lambert family to discover a childhood secret that causes them to be particularly susceptible to the spirit world manages to deliver some high-voltage jolts.
Like Father, Like Son
A new feature from Hirokazu Koreeda, a director who is not afraid to ask the big questions about life, but who has largely dealt with them through rather unconventional films such as After Life, in which he postulates a limbo world in which people have to decide on a single memory to keep through eternity. In Like Father, Like Son he postulates a less metaphysically extravagant scenario, and one more open to a conventional narrative development. Ryota Nonomiya (Masaharu Fukuyama) is a successful businessman who learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must decide whether to choose his true son or the boy he has raised as his own. Koreeda handles this material in his typically gentle, methodically paced style, and some critics see Like Father, Like Son as a successful transition to a more conventional narrative mode.
Good Luck! Boy (加油!男孩)
Debut feature by Shou He (手合) bears a depressing resemblance to a whole swath of recent commercial Taiwanese cinema in its concept and execution. The story revolves around Ah Che (阿澤), who is played by singer, actor and racing car driver Roy Chiu (邱澤), a scam artist pretending to be a musical prodigy. He gets a commission to create a musical performance to take place at the Ren Te Sugar Factory (仁德糖廠) in Tainan City, which serves as the atmospheric heart of the drama. Ah Che discovers that this old building, which, coincidentally, has fond childhood memories for him, is about to be torn down, so he engineers the concert so it becomes part of a movement to save the complex. He brings in talented percussion musicians to use the building and its neglected machinery as a huge musical instrument. The music is by the Ten Drum Art Percussion Group (十鼓擊樂團), who will in fact be taking over the plant as part of a project to turn it into an “environmental theater” (環境劇場). There’s some interesting music, a touch of romance, and spades of sentiment, but not a whole lot of innovation.
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