"Washington Square" (PG) Selected Cinemas
In The Heiress, William Wyler's icily brilliant 1948 version of Henry James's Washington Square, Olivia De Havilland plays Catherine, the naive young woman caught between a domineering father and a socially unacceptable suitor, as a typical heroine of the time, emerging finally as a tough-as-nails heroine in the mould of Crawford or Davis. On the surface, Agnieska Holland's version, from a screenplay by Dublin-born writer Carol Doyle, is textually more faithful to James's novel in charting this trajectory from naivete to mature realism, but in fact it's just as rooted in its own time as was Wyler's film.
From the opening, elaborate crane shot over a prosperous Boston street, tracking through a bedroom window at the moment when Catherine's mother is dying in childbirth, the film's essential dynamic is laid out - the conflict between male-dominated, buttoned-up social convention and the more messy realities of female sexuality. But this panoramic opening foreshadows the problems in Holland's disappointing film - the juxtapositions are forced, the pacing uneasy and the visual sensibility veers wildly and unconvincingly between the mundane and the operatic. Unlike, say, Jane Campion (an unavoidable comparison in this case), Holland seems not to have the confidence or visual skills to create a convincing structure for what is essentially a late-20th-century feminist interpretation of the story, falling back too often on the cliches of filmed costume drama for support. Amidst this confusion we are forced back on the undeniable competence of the central performances. Leigh, who has turned in some dreadfully mannered performances in the past, is much more impressive here (although she still doesn't entirely overcome her fondness for physical tics). Albert Finney as the overbearing but loving father, and Maggie Smith as the interfering spinster aunt, are adequate throughout, and even Ben Chaplin, who was so unbearably winsome in the romantic comedy The Truth About Cats And Dogs, makes a decent fist of a role memorably played by Montgomery Clift in Wyler's film. Hugh Linehan
"Fairy Tale: A True Story" (PG) Nationwide
Something is stirring in the wooded glades of England, but if Charles Sturridge's film is anything to go by, it may be just the last twitchings of British Heritage Cinema. Sturridge has been one of the foremost exponents of handsome, vacuous costume drama since directing Brideshead Revisited in the early 1980s, and he brings the same approach to this version of the same true story which inspired the recent (and far superior) Photographing Fairies.
In 1917 two young girls produced photographs which seemed to show them playing with seven-inch-tall fairies at the bottom of their garden, the pictures aroused huge interest in a society ravaged by war losses and obsessed with making contact with "the spirit world". The novelist and theosophist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, convinced of the pictures' authenticity, had them widely published, causing a storm of interest around the world.
Superficially, Fairy Tale: A True Story is concerned, like Photographing Fairies, with the impact of these events on a society overshadowed by death, but this is a far more conventional and sentimental film, which shies away whenever possible from these darker implications. Sturridge seems happiest letting his camera roam around the sun-dappled glades in search of images that recall the art of the period, and his two young protagonists (Florence Heath and Elizabeth Earl) never come to life. Little is required from Peter O'Toole as Conan Doyle, while Harvey Keitel tries valiantly to breathe some life into the underwritten character of escapologist and arch-sceptic Harry Houdini. It's difficult to know for what audience the film was made - the point of view shifts so frequently that we never become engaged with any of the characters, and children in particular are unlikely to appreciate its bland monotony. Hugh Linehan
"Wishmaster" (18) Nationwide
"From the director of Scream and A Nightmare On Elm Street", trumpets the publicity for Wishmaster, although it's not clear that Wes Craven did absolutely anything on this blood-soaked horror fantasy other than permit his name to be used on the ads. Given Craven's Spielberg-like status in the world of horror, however, his imprimatur is probably worth more than a few bucks at the box office, and Robert Kurtzman's directorial debut does make a couple of feeble stabs (literally) at the self-referential style of the master's recent films. Kurtzman's main claim to fame, though, is as co-creator and special effects expert on From Dusk Till Dawn, so anyone who evaded the Irish Film Censor's ban on that particular gore-fest will have some idea what to expect. Exploding eyeballs, eviscerated corpses and sundry other staples of the genre figure prominently in a tale whose occasional attempts at wit don't make up for a stunningly incoherent narrative. There are appearances by such luminaries of the scene as Robert Englund (Nightmare On Elm Street) and Tony Todd (Candyman), along with some rather feeble attempts to present the figure of the Djinn, the malevolent ancient spirit of the title, as a riposte to the Disneyfication of ancient myths, but such japes are unlikely to appeal to anyone beyond the 14year-old boys who would have been likely to form Wishmaster's most appreciative audience were it not for the film's certificate. Hugh Linehan
"Paws" (PG) Nationwide
In movie-speak, this would be the pitch: a Jack Russell terrier befriends a lonely teenager, and with the aid of some computer translation software, learns to speak in the voice of Billy Connolly. So far, so good, but the problem with this Australian comedy targeted at children and young teens is that the producers appear to have forgotten to write an actual script before going into production. The result is a film in which nothing much happens, and nobody is likely to care very much. There are goodies and baddies, there's a rudimentary plot about a missing computer disk, and Connolly has a couple of good lines, but Paws doesn't have enough respect for its young audience to come up with enough of a storyline to sustain its mercifully brief 73 minutes. Hugh Linehan
"The Real Blonde" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
Manhattan is the setting for writer-director Tom DiCillo's fourth feature, The Real Blonde - his closest so far to a Woody Allen movie - in which Matthew Modine (as a struggling actor) and Catherine Keener (as a make-up artist) are a couple who don't have sex any more.
The movie is mostly entertaining despite a rather convoluted narrative and its setting up of such easy targets as the fashion industry, calculatedly shock-inducing advertising, inane US soap opera, Madonna videos - and a movie titled Il Piano which generates heated debate in a restaurant. "All men are bastards" is the movie's refrain - even the most ostensibly trustworthy males such as a psychiatrist (Buck Henry) who fantasises about fondling Keener's breasts and the self-defence instructor (Denis Leary) who makes a pass at her after a class. Michael Dwyer
