"Live Flesh" (18) Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin
An enthralling melodrama, Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh is very loosely based on the Ruth Rendell novel of the same title. It opens arrestingly on a deserted Madrid in January 1970 as General Franco introduces oppressive legislation and a boy is born in a bus taking his prostitute mother to hospital. It ends in the present with another birth on the streets of Madrid, now thronged with revellers, and with the baby being told that "we stopped being scared in Spain a long time ago".
Those childbirth sequences bookend Almodovar's precisely plotted picture of interlocked destinies involving five protagonists whose lives are changed irrevocably when a bullet is fired one evening. Sancho (Jose Sancho) is a bitter, alcoholic policeman; Clara (Angela Molina) is his despairing wife whom he beats regularly; David (Javier Bardem) is Sancho's young partner who is having a secret affair with Clara; Elena (Franchesca Negri) is an Italian diplomat's daughter in whose apartment the crucial shot is fired; and Victor (Liberto Rabal) is the handsome young man who was born at the outset of the movie and loses his virginity during a brief liaison with Elena.
This entrancing, immensely satisfying film builds on the new maturity and subtlety displayed in Almodovar's previous film, The Flower Of My Secret, as it reveals its serpentine narrative of infidelity, jealousy, guilt, revenge, obsession and destiny. It contains more than a few nods to the greatest of all Spanish directors, Luis Bunuel - and explicitly to his Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz - and features a fine performance from a former Bunuel actress, Angela Molina, in what once would have been the Carmen Maura role. In an exemplary cast, Javier Bardem continues to demonstrate his range and versatility, while the young Liberto Rabal (grandson of the Cannes prize-winning actor, Francisco Rabal) lives up to Almodovar's promise that he inherits the crown left vacant by Antonio Banderas. Michael Dwyer
"Junk Mail" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
This is just some gank off the wire to fill out the space until Michael's pristine prose arrives. Worried your computer isn't Year 2000 compliant? Some simple guidelines and publicly available software can tell you if your system is ready for the next millennium. The Millennium Bug may lurk in any of three locations on a personal computer: in software applications, in the operating system or in the BIOS, the basic instruction set that governs the computer's operation.
Once turned on, a PC relies on its BIOS (basic input/output system) to check the data stored in the system's real-time clock (RTC). The operating system then grabs the date and time from the RTC, and applications draw date information from the operating system. Software compliance should be checked with the program's manufacturer, and there is a good chance such information can be found on the World Wide Web. Diagnosing hardware and operating system susceptibility proves a bit more straightforward.
Users of International Business Machines-compatible machines might face problems if their systems rely on a Pentium processor or an older chip. Some Pentiums, 486s and their predecessors are not century date compliant. Machines with more recent Pentium chips or Pentium II processors should have no hardware problems.
A diagnostic software utility may be downloaded free of charge from the Web site of the U.S. National Software Testing Laboratories The program, called YMARK2000, temporarily sets the computer's internal clock to read 10 seconds before the millennium and then monitors its ability to roll over to 2000. Microsoft Windows, the dominant operating system for Intel-based computers, also exhibits mixed millennium compliance. Michael Dwyer
"Deep Impact" (12s)
Nationwide Whether it's millennial anxiety or just not enough good ideas, the end of the world is a popular Hollywood theme this year, with two competing movies based on the same concept heading our way - that the Earth is threatened by impending collision with a huge comet. We'll have to wait a few more months for the Bruce Willis vehicle, Armageddon, but the first offering, the more seriously-inclined Deep Impact is already upon us - marking, incidentally, the official opening of the summer blockbuster season.
Of course, seriousness is relative, and Deep Impact is in many respects your basic, knobs-on actioner, complete with splendiferous special effects, heroic astronauts and grim-faced world leaders. But director Mimi Leder has aspirations beyond the cardboard characterisation and sloppy scripting of many recent blockbusters.
The story is simple. The US and Russian governments discover that a previously unknown comet the size of Manhattan is on a trajectory around the solar system; scientists confirm that its collision with Earth will cause an "Extinction Level Event" and end life as we know it. They manage to keep the information secret for a while, until rumbled by hard-headed TV journalist Tea Leoni, who thought she was actually on the trail of sexual shenanigans in the White House (this year's obligatory subplot). President Morgan Freeman breaks the bad news to the world, and reveals that a joint US-Russian space probe will attempt to deflect the comet by means of nuclear warheads.
Once these narrative cogs are set whirring, the story divides, following the astronauts, led by Robert Duvall, on their mission, and keeping an eye on Freeman in the White House, while concentrating on Leoni's own emotional problems with her recently-divorced parents (Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell). Meanwhile, out in small-town America, young Elijah Wood - who spotted the darned thing in the first place - provides an on-the-ground perspective on how the public is reacting to the impending catastrophe.
Many of the classic components of the disaster movie are here, but there are some interesting twists. Leder, who made her feature film debut last year with the so-so The Peacemaker, seems interested in offering a more reflective perspective within the limitations of the genre, and Deep Impact owes more to 1950s doomsday movies like On The Beach than to the nod-and-wink slapstick of Independence Day. Perhaps reflecting her own point of view as one of the very few women directing action pictures, Leder's main focus is on her characters' reactions to their imminent demise, and the effect this has on their own lives and relationships. Unusually and refreshingly, there are no bad guys, and although the final special-effects extravaganza shows the limitations of even the most up-to-date digital technology, there are some striking images - helicopters rising like a swarm of hornets from doomed Washington DC, or Ark-like trains of animals being herded into a safe subterranean shelter. Hugh Linehan
"The Man Who Knew Too Little" (15s)
Nationwide Despite his manifest talents, Bill Murray seems to find difficulty in choosing the right sort of cinematic vehicle. For every sublime choice he makes (the peerless Groundhog Day), there's always a stinker to balance it out (the grim Larger Than Life). This Anglo-American farce, which seems to be trying to draw from the same well as last year's Mike Myers caper spoof, Austin Powers, falls into the latter category.
Murray plays a gauche American tourist who arrives unexpectedly in London to spend his birthday with his yuppie younger brother (Peter Gallagher). Frantic to get his embarrassing sibling out of the way before an important business dinner, Gallagher enrols Murray in the Theatre of Life, a participatory street theatre event in which participants play a role in an apparently real-life street drama. But Murray accidentally becomes embroiled with an actual spy conspiracy hatched by elderly British and Russian spooks with the aim of bringing back the Cold War, and finds himself faced with assassins, torturers and call girls, all of whom he assumes to be part of the fictional show.
That's the gag, and it's certainly not enough to sustain this intermittently amusing slapstick comedy, which marks an odd change in direction for director Jon Amiel. Murray is adequate, but he's really at his best playing misanthropes, and his innocent abroad schtick soon begins to pall. Joanne Whalley provides the romantic interest, and there are moderately entertaining cameos from the likes of Alfred Molina and Richard Wilson. Stylistically, Amiel seems to be aiming for a retro look, but the whole thing just ends up looking tired and old-fashioned.
