Godzilla 3D
It is a sign of the times that a film about a giant lizard can be the biggest cinematic event of the summer, but Godzilla 3D looks like it will take the prize not just for being a top-notch monster flick, but for sporting mind-blowing CGI and even making some laudable attempt to be about something slightly more than an excuse to see major urban centers obliterated by a reptile. Godzilla has come a long way from the 1950s Toho company films made in Japan. Now the beast is given star treatment, being recreated by the very best computer technology that Hollywood has to offer. Sadly, despite a slew of skillful actors, including Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and Juliette Binoche from all corners of the globe, the human characters are far less interesting than the visual effects. Director Gareth Edwards makes the common mistake in disaster movies of focusing on a relatively banal group of characters, trying to get a human perspective on global mayhem, but a Godzilla movie should first and foremost be about big things hitting each other, and while the destruction is very well handled, the visuals alone are not quite enough to maintain interest for the more than two-hours running time.
The Invisible Woman
This period drama comes with impeccable credentials and while often rather soapy and melodramatic, does a fine job of bringing to life some wonderful characters. At the height of his career, Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) meets Nelly (Felicity Jones), an aspiring actress who becomes his secret lover. It is based on the scholarly biography of Dickens by Claire Tomalin, and sees the two leads work brilliantly together to create a romantic tension as lust and adoration struggle with fear of professional and social consequences for both parties. The whole thing is managed with impeccable good taste, though the dialogue by Abi Morgan sometimes seems on the verge of self-parody with its Victorian colloquialisms. The film has the added bonus of featuring Kristin Scott Thomas as Nelly’s mother, who provides rather dubious moral support to the relationship and is seen on more familiar ground after her outing as a vicious gang matriarch in Only God Forgives. The overall quality and assured touch that Fiennes as director (his second stint behind the camera following the stagy Shakespearean adaptation Coriolanus) shows in this film makes The Invisible Woman an option even for those who find corsets and top hats a bit of a trial.
Omar
A film by award-winning director Hany Abu-Assad, who is probably best-known for the Oscar-nominated Paradise Now in 2005 about two friends who get recruited to be suicide bombers in Tel Aviv. With Omar, Abu-Assad retains his focus to the impact of the Palestinian conflict on young people, in this case Omar (Adam Bakri), a Palestinian baker who routinely climbs over the separation wall to meet up with his girlfriend Nadja (Leem Lubany). He becomes involved in a meaningless act of violence, joining childhood friends Tarek (Eyad Hourani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat) in killing an Israeli soldier. He is arrested and forced to work for the Israelis, but his own betrayal is complicated by the suspicion that one of his friends is a traitor. Deliberately ambiguous in how it approaches the inexorable nexus of violence, Abu-Assad has his eyes firmly fixed on the human cost of a messy conflict, and manages to steer away from easy moral judgements about the often wrong and certainly destructive choices that Omar is forced to make by his circumstances.
Wadjda
Billed as the first feature length film made by a female Saudi director in Saudi Arabia, Wadjda has taken the festival circuit by storm. A 10-year-old girl living in a suburb of Riyadh, Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) is fun loving, entrepreneurial and always pushing the boundaries of what she can get away with. To raise money to buy a green bicycle (a device frowned upon as something not suitable for girls in any case), Wadjda decides to enter a Koran recitation competition to the surprise of her teachers and parents. Director Haifaa Al-Mansour has created a warm-hearted picture that does not gloss over the status of women in Saudi Arabia; because of restrictions placed on women in Saudi Arabia, she was not allowed to interact with her mostly male crew and had to direct the street scenes from a nearby van, watching through a monitor and issuing instructions through a walkie talkie. Quite apart from the praise that Wadjda deserves for getting made at all, this is a sensitively directed and well-paced tale of the small victories in daily life.
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