Jack the Giant Slayer

I guess that eventually I'd end up seeing one of the current crop of fairy tale based films or TV series.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
Snow White and the Huntsman
Red Riding Hood
Beauty and the Beast
The Brothers Grimm
Once Upon a Time (currently on TV2)
Beauty and the Beast (currently on Prime)

Jack the Giant Slayer is a fairly straight telling of the English fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk (with less theft and more heroism). The growing of the beanstalk and fight scenes are made for 3D viewing, though have plenty of impact in 2D. While the second line of the poem no longer mentions the blood of an Englishman, the actors are British and the setting of the film is unmistakably a fairy tale version of Britain.

Fee-fo-fi-fum, ask not where this idea came from.

The fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk, is a story with repeated tension as Jack's curiosity and greed put him in danger again and again. Twice he is saved from the blood sniffing Mr Giant by the kindly Mrs Giant, and the third time he escapes by luck. On each occasion Jack steals from the Giants. After an exciting chase Jack and his mother chop down the beanstalk killing Mr Giant and live happily ever after on the proceeds of crime.

The film is less repetitive and introduces a Disney style princess to be rescued and married and an evil Bond style scheming villain to be stopped. This removes the dubious morality of making a hero out of a recidivist thief and pads out an otherwise trivial plot giving more opportunity for dialogue and extra characters.

Feminists might object to the cutting of both the original female characters and their replacement by nubile eye candy (Eleanor Tomlinson playing Princess Isabelle). While I can't see an obvious reason why the script writer replaced Jack's mother with an uncle, nor why there are no female giants in the film, but I can see that Isobelle serves an essential function as the central character that brings all the others together. To be lusted after and rescued by Jack and Elmont, to be a pawn in Roderick's schemes, to be captured by the giants, to be doted on by her indulgent father (played by Ian McShane) and finally to be part of the happy ending.

To be picky, the mythical kingdom of Cloister makes the perfectionist in me cringe, realistically who'd name a kingdom after an architectural feature? Kingdom of Courtyard or Kingdom of Porch anyone? As we get to see more of the (often CGI) royal palace it looks less like Hampton Court Palace (where some bits were filmed) and more like a cathedral (other bits were filmed in Wells and Norwich Cathedrals). So are we looking at kingdom that has re-purposed religious buildings? Or possibly where monarchy has supplanted religion or merged with the church?

The film is aimed at both kids and adults. It seems to have relatively modest aims of entertaining kids, parents and others with a familiar fairy tale augmented with other familiar themes and populated with characters that are easy to understand. Seen in that light I think Jack the Giant Slayer is entertaining, well paced and acted without being spectacular, challenging or memorable.

Ian's rating 2/5 Anne's rating 3/5

The Other Son

The Other Son opens with Joseph preparing for his compulsory military service in the Israeli Defence Force, when a doctor notices that his blood type is incompatible with his parents. It turns out that he was switched as a baby when his Palestinian mother gave birth while visiting Israel. Babies switched at birth is such a well worn plot device or trope that I half expect that characters are going to break the fourth wall to complain about it. While both families find a host of things to get upset about but script writer isn't one of them.

The story unfolds in a remarkably restrained and laid back way. This is partly because some key parts of the story happen off screen. The two families are initially brought together by the hospital when it apologies for its mistake. They find that there is a common link to France: the Jewish parents are first and second generation immigrants from France and their Palestinian brought up son has just past his baccalaureate and is about to start studying medicine in Paris. When Joseph meets Yacine the easy going Yacine teaches the more uptight Joseph how to sell ice-cream to girls on the beach. The contrasts between the two ways of life, the economic gap, the difference between being on equal terms with the soldiers verses being subject to their whims are all on show but none of it leads to any serious problems.

This is a carefully constructed film is designed to challenge ideas of genetic ethnicity and identity. While the film maker has a clear idea about that it doesn't ram them down your throat. The question of whether parents and children feel more strongly about their biological offspring or parents than they do about the relationship developed over 18 years of child rearing is raised but is not the main point of the film.

Ian's rating 3.5/5, Anne's rating 4/5

Interview with the director Lorraine Lévy.

Sharpe's Escape

For a change I thought I'd do a short book review.

Title: Sharpe's Escape
Author: Bernard Cornwell
Genre: Historical, War
Setting: Napoleonic Wars
Series: Sharpe
Published: 2004

I got interested in Sharpe via the ITV TV series, this novel is one of those written after the TV series.

It is 1810 and the French are making yet another attempt to invade Portugal, the Duke of Wellington leads a combined Anglo-Portuguese Army to defend Lisbon. Captain Sharpe commands the light company of the South Essex Regiment but has taken a disliking to his new second-in-command, Lieutenant Slingsby, the Colonel's brother-in-law. While implementing Wellington's scorched earth policy Sharpe makes an enemy of Ferragus, a Portuguese businessman / thug. Sharpe and his offsider, Sergeant Harper, get separated from the regiment during the retreat after the Battle of Bussaco and have a rollicking series of adventures.

Sharpe's Escape contains a couple of carefully described battle scenes, separated by some individual adventures and introducing a new, spirited and pretty girl to fall in love with our hero. The style of this Sharpe novel is pretty standard.  There is plenty of attention to military details, and a bit of social detail and historical overview thrown in. Sharpe is grumpy for much of the novel, which affects his decision making.  His confrontational nature and private vendettas with Ferragus and Slingsby drive the novel.

Unlike other British officers of the period who typically bought their commissions, Sharpe was promoted from the ranks and is a man who makes his way in the world due to his skill and resourcefulness as a soldier and inspire of his lack of social skills. This dependence on skill makes him more like a modern man and hence easier for the reader to identify with. It also makes him an outsider to the officer class, with a sergeant as his closest friend; allowing Bernard Cornwell to describe the life and concerns of both the officers and other ranks.

Sharpe also uses a Baker rifle rather than a musket or pistol. The rifle at the time was a relatively expensive high-tech weapon, issued to skirmishers rather than ordinary line soldiers. Skirmisher used tactics that seem more sensible to people from the 21st century than those used by line infantry at the time, and skirmishers also got more interesting jobs. Both of these give the author more scope for drawing the reader in and giving Sharpe opportunity to have adventures away from the Army.

Similarly Sarah Fry appeals both to Sharpe and readers because of her independence from and lack of fear of men. An attitude that probably wasn't characteristic of middle class young women of the time.

Sharpe's Escape is well paced, while there is plenty of description it rarely gets in the way of the action. A couple of passages stretch credulity but nowhere near as much as the average action film. This book kept my attention so I finished it more quickly than most books I have read in the last 12 months.

Skyfall

Skyfall opens with a chase scene. Some baddies want a list of NATO undercover agents stored on a laptop. Bond and a young female agent are hunting them through Istambul while being micro managed from London by M and her control centre minions. The chase ends with a gunshot that segues into the opening credit sequence populated with morbid graveyard motifs and in the style of 80's Bond movies.

In an interesting departure from the past, the film centre's around M rather than Bond himself. This is understandable if you consider that Judi Dench's talents have been underutilised in her previous 6 films. While under political attack for loosing the list of undercover agents things take a turn for the worse as MI6 comes under cyber and bomb attack. As we know from John le Carré novels, you don't get to the top of the British secret service without having a few skeletons in the closet. M's skeleton, from her time as Hong Kong station chief, is Raoul Silva. Silva is played in scenery munching style by Javier Bardem (who played the equally evil Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men). Silva is a supremely resourceful, sadistic, gloating camp super-villain in the same league as Dr Julian No, Sir Hugo Drax and Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

While Bardem is having fun as Silva...

"She sent you after me, knowing you're not ready, knowing you would likely die. Mommy was very bad."

... Daniel Craig never breaks into a smile as James Bond. There are no one-liners, very limited flirting and Bond doesn't even enjoy sex with either Tonia Sotiropoulou or Sévérine. While a dour Bond is an interesting departure from the wise-cracking, devil-may-care Bond of the past, it does mean that Bond is less distinguishable from other serious and grim action heroes like Jason Bourne.

Usually Bond combats the villain's plans and superior resources with a few of Q's gadgets, a bit of help from his friends, a dose of luck and lots of spur of the moment improvisations. This time he relies largely on some highly unlikely person resources from his past, in particular a Scottish estate he inherited that has been empty and unused since his childhood but comes equipped with a priest hole, electrically lit tunnel, handy sticks of dynamite and an onsite gamekeeper! This comes across to me as a very lazy plot device from the pages of a Famous Five or Secret Seven novel.

Of the Bond girls, Naomie Harris gets the most screen time and action while Bérénice Marlohe as Sévérine (Silva's girlfriend) is the most exotic and glamorous. Miss Moneypenny get explained, which might have some relevance in a future film but was not necessary to the plot of this one.

This is a Bond movie that both looks back nostalgically at its 20 odd predecessors and breaks new ground. On the plus side giving Judi Dench a bigger role was a great idea and Javier Bardem make a good super-villain as Silva. The Bond girls are good eye-candy, as usual, even if they are under appreciated by Bond himself. The opening chase scene through Istambul and onto the Varda Viaduct is spectacular and much better than Skyfall's finale. On the negative side: not only has Bond lost his sense of fun, he has also become sentimental, and the Skyfall Lodge was a new low in script writing.

Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 3/5

5 Broken Cameras

5 Broken Cameras is Emad Burnat's personal account of how his village tries to defend its land between 2005 and 2010. There are two attacks on the land owned by the people of Bil’in. The Israeli army takes a strip of land to build the West Bank barrier (and its associated road) that cuts off villagers off from most of their land. The Jewish settlers from the adjacent settlement of Modi'in Illit, burn and bulldoze olive trees and build more houses and apartments on some of the cut off land.

In 2005 Bil’in petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court (via an Israeli human rights lawyer). On September 4, 2007, the Court ordered the government to change the route of the wall near Bil'in. The next day the same court legalized the parts of Modi'in Illit being built on Bil'in land (more background here).

5 Broken Cameras is not about the court cases taking place across the border but with the situation on the ground. It is about Emad Burnat filming his family trying to farm on the other side of the barrier. It is about the villagers led by two of his friends demonstrating against the barrier in a well known weekly protest. Protesting against settlers putting portable buildings to claim the land and the villagers putting up building of their own in a counter point. Emad also films the soldiers as they come to the village both day and night to arrest men and boys.

The Israeli soldiers don't like being filmed and constantly tell Emad to stop, even when he is in his own house. The settlers are even more outraged at being filmed and far less restrained in their reactions. During the 5 years that Emad films what is going on in and around Bil'in 5 of his cameras are smashed or shot, this coupled with time in jail and time in hospital means that there are gaps in the narrative but that doesn't detract from the impact of the film. The broken cameras punctuate the film and divide it into chapters.

4 years after Bil'in won in the court, the Israeli army started to dismantle the barrier and built a new wall closer to Modi'in Illit and further from Bil'in but still on their land.

5 Broken Cameras is filmed and narrated by Emad Burnat with editing and further direction by Guy Davidi and funding and post production from various other countries.

If you think that the Jewish-Palestinian conflict is too complicated to understand or that the conflict is all about Jews defending themselves from Palestinian aggression then this is a must see film. If you are already aware of the theft of Palestinian land by Israel, then this more personal view of the situation, filmed and narrated by a local villager (rather than an outsider) may appeal to you.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

The Ambassador

If there is a fine line between serious documentary and comedy then Mads Brügger hasn't found it. Rather he weaves back and forth from wry observation and buffoonary to jaw dropping serious documentary revelations. The Ambassador takes investigative journalism to new territory in film making as Mads takes up the post of Liberia's diplomatic representative in the Central African Republic.

The fact that a Dane is representing one African country in an other, fails to raise an eyebrow in Bengui, is not due to extreme politeness in African culture. Rather it is due to the quaint custom of selling diplomatic posts. The access to government officials coupled with the diplomatic protection that an ambassador or consul has, makes a diplomatic post and passport a valuable commodity to an truly entrepreneurial businessman (or woman). This is especially true in countries where government ministers and officials control the access to valuable commodities such as diamonds, or where you might want to carry small items or large amounts of cash through customs without being searched. Small or poor countries can't afford to send diplomats every other country in the world and in some countries government salaries don't completely meet the lifestyle requirements of government officials. In these cases someone turning up at the right place with the correct amount of cash can purchase a diplomatic passport and accreditation from that country to some other country. Assuming these unpaid diplomats can turn this capital outlay and the access opportunities into a successful business deal or two, it is a win-win situation.

So many of these diplomatic posts and passports are available and so many people want them that there are agencies who act as middlemen and deal with the messy details - for a fee. The Ambassador starts with Mads Brügger approaching two such agencies in search of a suitable passport and credentials. The head of the first of these agencies (a paranoid Brit) bans cellphones and cameras from his meeting with Mads, introducing us to the secret camera work and recording that makes up much of this film. Luckily much of this secret footage is remarkably good and adds to the verisimilitude of the film.

Once armed with a diplomatic passport a slightly foppish "Mr Cortzen" turns up in Bengui as the Honorary Consul for Liberia. Where this "Cinderella of diplomacy" makes contacts with the government, fellow diplomats and other local characters. Some of these are happy to advise or assist the new diplomat in the "do"s and "don't"s of operating in the Central African Republic. This brings up the secondary theme of this film. The interference that foreign governments and foreign companies have over third world countries. The Central African Republic imports a lot of low tech goods that could be manufactured locally, people who have tried to set up factories to manufacture such goods for the local market hit a series of obstacles that eventually bankrupt them. The people that Mads talks to claim these problems are due to outside interference by companies who currently make money out of the status quo. On a larger scale France is accused of interfering at a level varying from not passing on information that might protect the country from military invasion to fomenting coups and murdering people who cross them. This is a subject that is big enough to justify its own separate documentary.

Mads attempts at getting involved in the diamond trade cost him a lot of money in "envelopes of happiness" and illustrate the layers upon layers of people involved in this murky industry. He uses performative journalism, in his own words "instead of disguising as a fly on the wall observing neutrally, I dress for my part and interact as an agent provocateur". This technique gets him a lot closer to his subjects and captures them in their natural environment, in way that traditional journalism almost certainly couldn't.

Ian's rating 5/5

An interview with Mads Brügger.

The Law in These Parts

The most boring documentary format is the studio interview. To keep audience attention the subject being discussed or the people being interviewed must be extraordinarily interesting.

The Law in These Parts opens with a old man unfolding and holding up a poster declaring martial law in Hebrew and Arabic. He tells us this is one of hundreds printed for the IDF years before the Six Day War, in preparation for the possibility that Israel would occupy all or part of an Arab country.

The men interviewed in The Law in These Parts are retired military judges. Some are candid, others are evasive¹, some flip-flop. Mostly their answers, while partisan, are refreshingly free of the trite and unconvincing statements that all too often used to justify Israeli actions. The interviews are interleaved to cover the development of Israeli military jurisdiction over Palestinians chronologically from 1967 to 2011².

The film starts with an explanation of what Law means in a military context, its purpose, how it differs from other law, how Israeli military courts function, how military laws are made and changed (at the whim of the Regional Commander, though there are hints that higher command and politicians also get involved) and how the civilian population finds out what the laws are (sometimes by notices and loudspeaker but more often by being arrested by soldiers). The judges pointed out that military law must match International Law, in particular the Geneva Convention. Though they had trouble with justifying blowing up houses and other actions they said were designed dissuading resistance to with the ban on collective punishment and reprisals in the 4^th Geneva Convention. The contradiction between the Jewish settlements and Article 49 was also touched on. The film skims over the expansion of the Law to cover everything from putting up posers and throwing stones to cosmetics and accountants, and moves onto some of the landmark cases and their consequences.

One aspect of military occupation that Israelis are quite proud of (and the judges being interviewed were no exception) is that the Israeli Supreme Court functions as the court of appeal for populations under Israeli military rule. It is not clearly explained how and why this came about, but consequences of this form one of the main threads of the documentary. One of the cases appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court in 1979 was of some land confiscated by the IDF for military purposes and handed over to settlers the same day. When the Supreme Court later said that the confiscation was illegal the Minister of Agriculture held a meeting to decide how to get around the ruling. One of the interviewees proudly described how he told the Minister of an Ottoman Law that allowed the Ottoman government to confiscate land more than a cock's crow from a village and that hadn't been farmed for at least 3 years³. The Minister, Ariel Sharon, arranged for a helicopter survey of the West Bank looking for such land.

In cases where the Supreme Court overrules the IDF, unlike its normal swift and decisive manner, can take years to begin to rectify the situation. The film also pointed out that overruling of military decisions by the Supreme Court is rare, normally the Supreme Court finds in favour of the military providing a judicial seal of approval for the IDF's actions.

The aspect of the documentary troubled the interviewees the most and one that they were pressed hardest on was their knowledge of and how they dealt with the torture victims and information gained via torture. Most (but not all) of the judges initially claimed they had no knowledge that torture was taking place. When asked how they dealt with Palestinians detainees who said they had been tortured or looked beaten up, the general response was that if there was a conflict between something a Palestinian said and what the GSS (aka Shin Bet or Shabak) said; they always believed the GSS because Palestinians have a reason to lie!

The judges were also asked how the military law applied to Israeli civilians when they are in the Occupied Territories. The answer is that military law somehow does not apply to Israeli civilians nor to the land they are on when they are in the Occupied Territories. On the other hand (and this was something that troubled some of the judges) it seems that Israeli police and civilian law also does not apply to the activities of Israeli civilians acting against Palestinians - a useful legal black hole for "enterprising" Jewish settlers to exploit⁴.

The final thing that some of the interviewees mentioned was that they thought that military law is really only a temporary solution. On the other hand they did not offer an alternative - certainly not withdrawing back to Israel.

Despite its unpromising format and unspecific title, The Law in These Parts is a gripping and informative documentary. A must see for anyone interested in law in the wild west.

Ian's rating 5/5


Footnotes:
1. The oldest and most evasive of the interviewees was 86 year old Justice Meir Shamgar Brig.-Gen. (ret) President of the Israel Supreme Court 1983-95 (first appointed to the court in 1975), served in the IDF from 1948 and was previously a member of the Zionist terror organisation Irgun. In 1944 the British send him to a detention camp in Eritrea, where he studied law by a correspondence course with the University of London.

2. It does not cover military rule in the Golan Heights and Sinai after 1967 or in parts of Israel from 1948-1960s.

3. This sounds similar to an Ottoman law used inside Israel to confiscate land from Israeli Arabs.

4. Actually if Israeli civilians cooperate with or defend Palestinians they are liable to be manhandled, shot or arrested (briefly) by the IDF, whereas Israeli civilians acting against Palestinians will be protected by and assisted by the IDF.

What's in a Name

It's a sad state of affairs when the film festival programme contains only one French comedy - maybe films about policemen are more hip. Maybe nothing else was as funny. Whatever the reason, What's in a Name ticks all the boxes for a great french farce and is definitely one to watch, particularly if you need to have your mind removed from something more tedious.

Claude, Vincent and Pierre

Forty-somethings Elisabeth and Pierre are having a dinner party at their apartment. The guests are Elisabeth's brother Vincent, his pregnant girlfriend Anna, and Claude, a childhood friend of Elisabeth and Vincent. Someone asks what Vincent and Anna are planning to name their baby, and Vincent says the baby will be called Adolphe. This provokes outbursts from everyone present and soon people are saying things they may regret and revealing secrets.Everyone knows everyone very well, and after the dinner party they will know each other slightly better.

The script is witty and fast-paced. There's lots of gesturing and pulling faces. Everyone gets a hard time and no-one's idiosyncrasies are left unexposed . There's not as much physical comedy as some french films but the coffee table does collapse. Your mind is not left to wander and you will laugh. Often. And then you'll pause to ponder the frailty of human relationships.

Anne's rating: 4.5/5 Ian's rating: 5/5 

The Sapphires

Ah ha! The Australians CAN make a cheerful movie involving aboriginal people. Unlike Samson and Delilah and Rabbit Proof Fence and The Tracker, The Sapphires oozes positivity and charm. Sadly, unlike the three films just mentioned, it's really not very good.

The story is fine - back in 1969, three aboriginal sisters and their cousin who all have amazing voices, go off to Vietnam to sing for the entertainment of the American troops. One of them falls in love with their Irish manager and they come home and live happily ever after. As you might expect, the music in this film is great and it's great to look at.

The problem is that the acting is a bit wooden and the script isn't great. There was no point where I forgot I was watching a film. The family home outside Cummeragunga looked like someone had parked a very small wooden house next to some gum trees and dressed up some actors and arranged them on the verandah and in the yard - there was no sense of them actually living there. The romance between Dave and Gail seems contrived and without spark. And any sense of the sisters overcoming prejudice or breaking new ground for the aboriginal people is almost entirely missing. It was quite fun to watch, but  I feel this movie didn't fulfill its potential

Anne's rating 2/5

Sleepless Night

As I have pointed out before, policemen in French films are often not good looking, and viewers can't use clothing and looks to distinguish between plain clothes cops and criminals. Sleepless Nights exploits this ambiguity in an early plot twist. Though given the cops are bent then the ambiguity may be warranted!

It is not a good morning for Vincent, starting with a wound, a lippy son and a less than sympathetic ex-wife, things have only begun to go bad. At work a couple of investigators from internal affairs are sniffing around when he gets a phone call from a Corsican drug dealer, to blackmail him.

Sleepless Nights (or Nuit Blanche) crams a lot of action into a 24 hour period and its long frenetic chase scene in a massive and busy night club to redeem a hostage, reminds me of last year's French thriller Point Blank. Writer / director Frédéric Jardin manages to steer our sympathies away from law and order and get us backing Vincent. He even manages to give Vincent his own Bond girl style moment of relief in the middle of the chase.

It is the third in this year's trilogy of bad cop movies (along side Rampart and Killer Joe). It is the winner in terms of high adrenaline action / chase scenes and the one where the audience can identify most closely with the cop. It is also the most orthodox / traditional in its structure. So I'm not surprised that Warner Bros has acquired the rights to remake it. I doubt if they can do better than the original.

Sleepless Night is also a film that can double as an advert for how much punishment iPhones can take!

Ian's rating 4/5

Lore

World War Two and its aftermath feature in a lot of films, and just when you think that this is a subject you've watched thoroughly enough already, a film with a new slant comes along.

Lore is such a film. It's set in 1945 in Germany and its main character is Lore (short for Hannelore) who is a girl of fourteen or so. Her father is in the SS and from the contents of his bookshelves it would seem that he was deeply involved in the Third Reich's regime of oppression on racial and genetic grounds. We meet our characters in the family home in Berlin where her Father is burning the contents of the bookshelves and plotting to escape and her Mother is packing and organising the children (5 in all) to leave town.

Mother and the children evacuate to an isolated farmhouse in the forest and then  Mother sets off for civilisation to give herself up (we don't know what crimes she is guilty of - perhaps being complicit in those committed by her husband in the course of his job), leaving Lore in charge of her four siblings, the youngest of whom is only a baby and suggesting they make their way to Hamburg to be with their Grandmother, telling the younger children she will meet them there.

The film is the story of the journey. Most adults in 2012 would struggle  taking three children and a baby across Germany  mostly on foot, let alone in a newly occupied country with food shortages and a population on the move. That a teenager achieved it is nothing short of a miracle. She did have some help in the form of a guy a little older than herself, who is masquerading as a Jewish camp survivor. There's the beginnings of a romance there, but their circumstances and her prejudice prevent it flowering.

It's a bleak story and not one to see if you need cheering up. Watching it did mean I contemplated the suffering the war caused to Aryan Germans, particularly their children,  in a way I haven't done previously. Very well acted, it definitely tugs at the heartstrings.

Anne's rating: 3/5,  Ian's rating 2.5/5

Shadow Dancer

In 1993 Collette is on a mission to plant a bomb for the IRA on the London Underground, meanwhile negotiations that will lead to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 are underway. Collette is snatched by MI5 and offered the choice between returning home to her young son (and her IRA pals) as an informer, or a trial and long prison sentence in England and away from her son. Her new handler, Mac, reassures her that MI5 has never lost an informer in Northern Ireland.

Returning home she discovers that she is expected to come up with useful information every week. Meanwhile Mac's boss insists on using the first useful tip immediately and consequently the IRA suspects that someone in her family is an informant for the British. Mac also smells a rat and to protect his new informant has to use his spy skills against his employer to figure out what's going on behind his back.

The film exposes the dark underbelly of spy work; the testy and interdependent relationship between an informer (who is betraying family and friends and runs the risk of death if discovered) and the handler who's job it is to reassure, gain the confidence of and persuade the informer to keep on betraying. Its a relationship that must surely be soul destroying for both parties involved.

This is not a James Bond style spy thriller, while there are action scenes, the centre of the film is the relationships between Collette and her family and IRA associates, between Collette and Mac and between Mac and others in MI5. The is no glamour in Shadow Dancer (apart from Collette's red coat), just the general grimness of life in Belfast, and the potential for things to go fatally wrong.

Ian's rating 3/5, Anne's rating 3/5

Klown

The Incredibly Strange section of the Film Festival programme is usually a bit hit and miss, and this year it seems to be more miss than hit - the other things we've seen being The Cabin in the Woods and Sightseers. I bravely went to Klown by myself, inspired the "blisteringly funny" description. My hopes were further raised immediately beforehand by the review on the TV 3 website, which said "I have not laughed so hard while watching a movie in a very long time. In fact, a friend and I managed to sustain the giggles right through the closing credits and were still guffawing out onto the street afterwards, sides aching, tears rolling down our cheeks".

Klown has a reasonably amusing premise. Two men (Casper and Frank), who appear to be in committed relationships with very nice women, go on a "boys own" canoe and camping trip without their girlfriends. At the last minute, Frank decides he will take his girlfriend's 11 year old nephew Bo along because he wants to demonstrate his potential as a good father. Since the purpose of the trip is debauchery, you can see this isn't going to turn out well, and Casper is justifiably upset.

Anyhow, off they go and Casper tries hard to have sex as often as possible. The trio gets thrown out of a camping ground, capsize their canoe, eat a lot of pancakes, visit a music festival and a brothel and smoke pot. Casper and Frank give Bo a hard time because he has a small penis. And....that's about it. Some of Klown is funny, and some (like Mr Bean), is painful and some is in poor taste. One of the things that annoyed me is that, like lots of American comedy, one of the basic premises of the movie is that men are more stupid than women and I think that this is lazy, and inaccurate. Klown seemed like "Tool Time" or "Malcolm in the Middle" with rude bits. It's always hard to say why something does or doesn't seem funny, but I'll go on record saying I don't find men doing stupid things while women pick up the pieces intrinsically funny. Perhaps I like my comedy to be equal opportunity. I laughed a bit, but not hard and not often. Disappointing.

Anne's rating 1/5

Policeman

Shira practices her speech

Policeman is a film that is clearly divided into 3 acts. Act I focuses on an Israeli police anti-terrorism squad. A group of fit young macho men who like being out in the sun, socialise together and have an eye for beautiful girls. It focuses particularly on Yaron who loves his mother, is devoted to his pregnant wife and has a soft spot for babies. Yaron gets the job of convincing Ariel (who is on sick leave with a brain tumour) that he should take the rap for an incident some time ago when the squad killed some Palestinian civilians. Not that the squad really believes the case will actually come to court.

Act II switches the focus to 4 idealistic left wing activists: Shira (a pretty rich girl) and 3 middle class guys. This group seem held together by undeclared sexual attractions to each other. They are planning a kidnapping in order to read their political grievances on TV. This is a short flowery speech complaining about state asset sales and the widening income gap between rich and poor.

Act III is a billionaire's wedding reception where the activists take 3 billionaires hostage and it become immediately obvious they haven't thought through how the next step is going to play out. During the tense wait Shira berates the bride: "You are not a woman, but a bride. You have no face - you've got make up. You have no breasts, but perfectly fitted bra. You have no body - you have this dress. And this dress is exactly in the size of your personality". In the end it is all over in 2 seconds. As the rest of the police squad leave, Yaron watches Shira die and the credits roll.

Judging from the whispers around me at the end, I was not the only person who was wondering if I had missed something. Thinking about it afterwards I wondered if the film was really about small group dynamics rather than the events, the characters or the politics.

Reviews I have read fall into two camps: those who are confused by the film and those who hail it as a great Israeli political film (e.g. "one of the most provocative films to come out of Israel in recent years; Waltz with Bashir and Lebanon are, by comparison, tame and equivocating" Richard Porton, Cinéaste). If group dynamics is subject of the film then surely it is sociological rather than political, but perhaps I am splitting hairs.

Ian's rating 1/5

In 1988, under international pressure to legitimize his rule over Chile, Augusto Pinochet held a referendum. Vote "Si" for 8 more years of Pinochet or vote "No" to have a presidential election. Each side would get 15 minutes air time on TV late each night for 27 nights (though all the media was under government control anyway, so the No campaign see it as 15 minutes for them and 23 hours and 45 minutes for the government).

The Chilean film No starts with someone from the No campaign trying to recruit advertising 'creative' René to work on the campaign. But René isn't interested, but reluctantly agrees to give his opinion on the material they have so far. After 15 years of dictatorship, Pinochet built up a lot of resentment in those opposed to him (those who were not among the thousands who were killed). This shows in the TV campaign the anti-Pinochet coalition have prepared. In René's opinion with such boring, factual, backward looking and depressing material the No campaign is guaranteed to loose. Challenged to do better he recycles ideas from a recent soft drink advertising campaign and a logo with a rainbow in it. As René is drawn into the No campaign, his boss is recruited by the other side. As the effectiveness of René's approach becomes apparent to the government, the campaign turns nasty both on screen and off screen.

No is an effective vehicle for portraying both the nastiness of the Pinochet's government and the month leading up to the referendum. It is a referendum which many anti-Pinochet people expect the government to rig and so the ending takes people by surprise.

No was filmed using rebuilt Sony U-matic video cameras to give it an authentic early 1980s feel, this means it doesn't look good on a big cinema screen (and for some reason the Embassy had the curtains adjusted wrong, cutting off the first and last letters of some of the sub-titles). There is almost no time given over to character development so even by the end we hardly know René better than the minor characters.

In the final scene René and his boss are working on another advertising campaign using familiar ideas and I wondered if the message was "political campaigning is just advertising".

Ian's rating 2.5/5, Anne's rating 2/5