It's not often you get a 'Film of the Week' article where the reviewer has given the picture a one star critque.
But with Peter Bradshaw you can kind of understand the deicision. Bradshaw's hatchet jobs are magnificent epics, kind of like John Ford's The Searchers but in review form.
So this week we get Bradshaw completely ripping into> the Kidman/Penn thriller The Interpreter with vicious abandon:
Earth has not anything to show more fair than Nicole Kidman playing a UN interpreter, speaking in the imaginary African tribal language of "Ku"! Made up especially for this film! Nicole speaks Ku like a native. She has completely got the hang of Ku. Nicole swims like a dolphin in the deep grammar of Ku.
Did you get that? Let's just repeat that last bit just in case you missed it: "Nicole swims like a dolphin in the deep grammar of Ku."
Bradshaw is well on his way to becoming the Hunter S. Thompson of UK film reviewers, and we love him for it!
And he doesn't much care for Sean Penn's performance either:
Sean Penn's character is supposed to be a widower. His wife ("a dancer") had ran off with another dancer, but the guy managed to crash the car they were in. "Great dancer. Terrible driver," says Sean, his anguished narrowing of crow's feet denoting how sick he's feeling on the inside. That line would be enough to have the screenwriters summoned before the Hague and given 99 years each.
In the Independent Anthony Quinn gives the film two stars, complaining that "there's precious little to set the pulse racing" and predicting that this film is "exactly the kind of thing they won't be queueing for this weekend."
Strangely, in the Times, James Christopher quite enjoys The Interpreter and gives it a repsectable three stars. It "offers something more meaty and topical than the pulling power of its glittering parts" suggests Christopher, and he calls the Penn-Kidman frisson "the most constipated screen romance I have ever seen,"...which makes us want to never ever see this film.
German film The Edukators, on the other hand, sounds like a bit more of a winner. Quinn gives it four stars in the Independent, citing fine performances and great direction, while Bradshaw is also a fan (only three stars this time though), again noting the performaces: "It's well acted, especially by Brühl (known for Good Bye Lenin!"; although Pete reckons that if "Austrian director Michael Haneke had been in charge, he would have done something a lot more extreme with the ending."
There is one voice of dissent though, and that's Wendy Ide in the Times, who thinks The Edukators is only a two star film:
The main problem with the film is that Weingartner’s sympathies so clearly lie with his young activists that he lets them get away with far too much and spends an inordinate amount of time at the beginning of the film justifying their revolutionary zeal.
For Ide this film is "a two-hour rant from a wispy bearded idealist whose idea of brotherhood is to sleep with his best friend’s girlfriend."
Does Ide know soemthing we don't?
Finally this week, let's look at the British film on offer: New Town Original.
The only thing you can say about this film is that it unites the critics...they all think it's rubbish.
Bradshaw awards it two stars saying it's full of "drama-school acting and naive scripting". It's only one star from Quinn, who complains "the pace is leaden and the script lacks colour and wit". And just two more from Wendy Ide who reckons this is "only for audiences young enough to recall alcohol-fuelled snogging in a disco so hot that the walls are sweating".
Shit, that's us!
In the world of film gossip and stuff the thing that's exciting us the most is the DVD release of Primer.
We were very fortunate to catch a screening of Primer at the London Sci-F festival earlier this year and it may very well be our favourite movie of 2005 so far.
Now it's out on DVD (go get it from Play USA now if you have a multi-region DVD player). We promise you it's worth it.
Chud.com has a fresh interview with Primer's director (and star, and writer, and producer) Shane Carruth on its front page right now if you need more convincing.
If it's zombie action you're after then look no further than the trailer for Undead...and talking of scary, it looks like Sam Raimi's next project will be a vampire flick starring Lucy Liu. Sounds good.
