"Strange Days" (18) Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
Kathryn Bigelow's imaginative and vigorous Strange Days shares the pessimistic prognosis of most futuristic movies not starring Michael J. Fox that things are looking grim. Whereas the majority of movies depicting strife torn apocalyptic landscapes are set decades or centuries ahead, Strange Days happens in an all too uncomfortably real near future.
The clock is ticking. It's six minutes past one in the morning on the eve of New Year's Eve, 1999, as the movie opens and Los Angeles prepares for a mammoth street party to greet the new millennium. The city is in a state of terminal social disorder and tensions have been heightened by the suspicious murder of a militant rap singer who has become the most powerful spokesman for his race. Too terrified to venture outdoors, people stay home hooked on the escapist entertainment of movies, television and the Internet - and "the wire", a three dimensional electronic experience which offers the wearer the ultimate surrogate experience in sex and violence.
Strange Days happens in the nocturnal world of Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), a seedy, fast talking hustler and ex cop, who lives by precariously peddling the vicarious thrills, of the bootleg virtual reality discs known as the wire and promoting himself as the Santa Claus of the subconscious. This, is not like TV, only better, he claims. It's life, a piece of somebody's life straight from the cerebral cortex.
I've lost Faith, he says, but this a reference to the rock singer (played by Juliette Lewis) with whom he is still obsessed though she has left him. His only friends are a low life ex cop, (Tom Sizemore), and the movie's moral centre, Mace (Angela Bassett), a resilient single mother working long hours as a security expert who drives her wealthy clients in armoured limousines.
Although initially too slow burning for its 145 minute duration and saddled with some arch, throwaway dialogue, Kathryn Bigelow's hugely confident and ambitious film fashions a disturbing and all too, credible scenario and fuses it with an unrelenting visceral charge, vertiginous camera angles, breathtaking imagery and startling use of subjective camera. That the movie exhibits kinetic energy to burn will not surprise admirers of Bigelow's work, especially Point Break.
Strange Days is the work of a singular talent, whose single minded determination propels it along with a palpable, excitement for the medium and its possibilities and it is an impeccable film in every technical respect. And it culminates, in the countdown to the millennium, in a brilliantly orchestrated, vast crowd sequence as all points of the narrative converge to deliver retribution, a hint of redemption and even a glimmer of hope for the 21st century.
"The Flower Of My Secret" (15) Light House, Dublin
Another woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown is the central character of the new Pedro, Almodovar movie, The Flower of My Secret, the director's least flamboyant, and most mature and reflective film to date. This is a rich, captivating and emotional melodrama told with a deeply felt - humanity, and not without Almodovar's characteristic offbeat humour.
It features a warm and dignified performance from Marisa Paredes as Leo, a woman who, in her forties, faces parallel crises in her life the realisation that her husband (Imanol Arias) no longer loves her - a NATO official, he volunteers for a peace keeping mission in Bosnia rather than be with her - and her consequent inability to maintain the lightness, of tone that permeates the romantic novels she pseudonymously churns out.
Almodovar's insightful and sympathetic picture of how Leo copes with all the problems in her life is, rendered all the more expressive and involving by the presence of Marisa Paredes, who plays Leo in an expressive and affecting portrayal that subtly taps the character's honesty and vulnerability. Almodovar's screen play, surrounds Leo with a number of vividly etched supporting characters, many of them played by his regular actors.
They include the splendid Chus Lampreave as Leo's, crotchety mother who detests city life and imagines that skinheads are staring at her all the time, the Picasso faced Rossy De Palma as Leo's much suffering sister; Juan Echanove as the amorous cultural editor of El Pais; Leo's loyal housekeeper (Manuela Vargas), a former flamenco dancer, and her ambitious son played by rising flamenco star Joaquin Cortes, who has the looks and screen presence to be Spain's next Antonio Banderas.
The Flower Of My Secret is the most accomplished and satisfying film to emerge from Spain so far this decade, and the finest film to date from Pedro Almodovar.
"Heavy" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
All the lonely people, where do they all come from? In writer director James Mangold's confident and touching first feature film, Heavy, they congregate at Pete & Dolly's Bar, a roadside tavern where the widowed Dolly (Shelley Winters) is waited on hand and foot, by her doting son, Victor (Pruitt Taylor Vince), the inn's introverted, overweight chef. Into his quiet, uneventful world comes a beautiful young college dropout, Callie (Liv Tyler) on whom he develops a passionate crush.
However, Callie has a boyfriend (Evan Dando, from the Lemonheads), a singer who writes a song about Victor which begins, "Not since Robert De Niro last won an Oscar" - a reference to the obese Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull - before it's drowned out on the soundtrack. The film's other characters include the tavern's world weary waitress played by Deborah Harry, and the resident alcoholic (Joe Grifasi).
Mangold establishes and maintains a low key tone throughout Heavy, a tender, well observed film in which the dialogue is minimal and looks and gestures speaks volumes. His unsentimental and unpatronising picture of shyness, awkwardness and unrequited love elicits strong performances from its central cast. Shelley Winters and Deborah Harry seize upon their best roles in years; Liv Tyler, the daughter of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler, clearly is a star in the making; and Pruitt Taylor Vince, who was memorable as Paul Newman's sidekick in Nobody's Fool is perfectly understated and haunts the movie with his sad, darting eyes.
Hugh Linehan adds:
"When Saturday Comes" (15) Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
There's a good film to be made about soccer, although you wouldn't know it from American writer director Martha Giese's debut effort. Giese's risible film has Sean Bean as a 26 year old Sheffield brewery worker who dreams of making it as a professional footballer. Encouraged by his Irish girlfriend (Emily Lloyd), he finally gets his shot at the big time through the intercession of coach Pete Postlethwaite, but blows it by going on a binge the night before his trial for Sheffield United. Finally, and unsurprisingly, love conquers all and Bean scores a hat trick for Sheffield against Manchester United in the FA Cup semi final.
Despite his obvious enthusiasm for the part, Bean is a bit long in the tooth for an aspiring football star, while Lloyd's Oirish accent and determined chirpiness grate throughout. Connoisseurs of bad movie moments may wish to savour the Irish language lesson which she gives to Bean, or even better the inspirational appearance of the ghost of his kid brother (killed, of course, in a tragic pit accident) on the Bramall Lane terraces during the semi final.
Pedants may point out that there is no coal mine in Sheffield, or that football teams can't play an FA Cup semi final on their home ground. But these are mere quibbles beside the cheesiness of the whole enterprise, with its Hovis ad like depiction of modern life in northern England. Giese claims that her Sheffield born husband and producer James Daly kept her straight on the nuts and bolts of the story, but When Saturday Comes is so riddled with cliches, sentimentality and laughable inaccuracies that it deserves an immediate red card.
