Just the most delightful Pixar movie yet, as Albert Brooks' worrisome clown fish Marlin travels half way round the world in search of missing son Nemo, aided by Ellen DeGeneres' scatty Dory. Tightly written, warm-hearted but never sentimental, and graced by a series of perfectly judged celebrity cameos headed by Eric Bana's vegetarian shark. Superb.
Revered by film-making legends from Alain Resnais to Martin Scorsese, the Japanese director Yasijuro Ozu specialised in minutely observed and exquisitely composed domestic dramas. Made in 1959, Floating Weeds was one of Ozu's last features, a remake of one of his early silents about backstage politics and romantic turbulence among a troupe of travelling Kabuki theatre players. The subject may sound alien but Ozu makes their problems timeless and universal.
Kooky low-budget Brit-flick gets a moribund Scandinavian once-over as Danish Dogme disciple Lone Scherfig (Italian For Beginners) directs this contrived tale of two contrasting Glaswegian brothers—one is dying, one wants to die; one is sexy, one is square, etc—caught in a love triangle with mousy hospital worker Shirley Henderson. Annoying.
Cynical lapsed communist Daniel Auteuil gets lost driving through a dark forest, and encounters haughty bilingual seductress Kristin Scott Thomas. An episodic shaggy dog story ensues, sprayed with romance and bleak jokes. Pascal Bonitzer writes/directs a unique, odd mystery which is splendidly acted by all. Let's face it, if you're casting a haughty bilingual seductress, Kristin's your woman.
Bright, polished but ultimately lightweight Britcom about a forbidden romance between a London girl of Indian parents (Preeya Kalidas) and a white English boy (James McAvoy), Jeremy Wooding and former NME editor Neil Spencer's debut feature rehashes a bog-standard culture-clash plot. The incorporation of Hindi film song-and-dance numbers into a naturalistic story is a nice touch, but at heart this is the kind of creaky yarn that might have made a generic TV drama at best.
Peter Stollett's refreshing debut is somewhere between Larry Clark's Kids and a witty Lower East Side comedy of manners. It takes a hugely charismatic teen cast, light docu-style shooting and a textured screenplay and then follows eponymous virgin-surgeon Victor (Victor Rasuk) and his embattled Latino clan over one momentous and hormonally challenged summer.
For all his bravado, Vincent Gallo's reputation as a lunatic genius rests chiefly on this (not always intentionally) hilarious/absurd 1998 psalm of self-pity. The writer/director stars as a just-freed convict who forces Christina Ricci's dancer to pretend to be his wife to impress his folks. It's beautifully shot, and support from Mickey Rourke and other cult figures is staunch.
Before The Trip starts, an earnest middle-aged voice warns us that we're about to witness "a shocking commentary on a prevalent trend of our time". This is Roger Corman's ass-covering joke at Middle America's expense:his 1967 drugzploitation classic is nothing more than Jack Nicholson's paean to lysergic acid. Ad exec Peter Fonda takes the trip in question, encountering sundry LA groovers along the way: Bruce Dern, the inevitable Dennis Hopper, even an unknown Gram Parsons. Turn on and tune in!
Swiping gleefully at management, and more affectionately at the unions, this uproarious satire on the politics of British working life is probably the best-loved Boulting Brothers movie. Ian Carmichael stars as the well-meaning university stooge used to provoke a strike by crooked industrialists Richard Attenborough and Dennis Price—but the film belongs to the ever-nimble Peter Sellers, sublime as the buzzcut factory shop steward with a Hitler moustache. A by-the-book cartoon, but curiously sympathetic.
Peter Greenaway's period piece concerns a 17th-century draughtsman (Anthony Higgins) who agrees to make a series of drawings of her country estate for an aristocrat's wife (Janet Suzman) in return for sexual favours. Part picture puzzle, part murder mystery, it's undeniably stylish and intriguing, but also totally unerotic and bleakly existential.
