Wilbur (Wants To Kill Himself) (15)
5/5 stars
Dir: Lone Scherfig
With self-slaughter at a premium over Christmas, a wry festive comedy about suicide must have seemed like a risky commericial proposition. The fact is that while suicide is a perpetual undertow here, it's no more central than the warmer themes of family, forgiveness and love in all its forms. The great joy of Wilbur
- and it is, in the end, an improbably joyous film - is its skilful interweaving of the tragic and the comic, the playfully surreal and the bluntly familiar. Jamie Sives is delightful as the eponymous depressive, whose priorities change when he falls in love. Adrian Rawlins and Shirley Henderson are just as engaging in support; but most impressive of all is the agility with which Scherfig and Jensen's script flips between ticklish comedy and gut-wrenching pathos. Films this idiosyncratic, surprising and tender are to be treasured.
Trilogy 3 (PG) 4/5 stars
Dir: Lucas Belvaux
Clearly guided by the principle of saving the best until last, Lucas Belvaux rounds off his trilogy of interrelated films with a work of stunning depth and emotional resonance. Agnes, glimpsed as a minor character in the other stories, is a schoolteacher with a secret: 20 years of morphine addiction. Her policeman boyfriend Pascal keeps her supplied, until the local crime boss cuts off his source. A rich and involving study of need and betrayal, by turns witty, romantic, melancholy and tense.
thirteen (18) 2/5 stars
Dir: Catherine Hardwicke
Do you know where your kids are? Safely ensconced in the bosom of the education system, or bunking off to huff from aerosol cans and shoplift thongs? The debut feature from Catherine Hardwicke, stirs up parental fears as shamelessly as any B-grade 1950s exploitation flick. Its screechy tone would be tiresome enough if it actually had an effective structure,
or a story that ventured
beyond the conventional moralistic trajectory of dizzy highs closely followed by crashing lows. Since it lacks both, it ends up being tedious as well as hysterical.
S.W.A.T. (12A) 1/5 stars
Dir: Clark Johnson
Crude cop thriller, pitched at closeted homosexuals with firearm fetishes. Rule-breaking S.W.A.T. veteran Samuel L Jackson rounds up rookies to help him bring down a drug kingpin (Olivier Martinez).
Brother Bear (U) 2/5 stars
Dir: Aaron Blaise, Robert Walker
Weak Disney animation that backs its vague, confusing story - in which a bear-hating Native American youth is magically transformed into, yes, a bear - with excruciating musical numbers by Phil Collins.
Bodysong (18) 4/5 stars
Dir: Simon Pummell
Meditative arthouse experiment? Educational
documentary? The ultimate action movie? Bodysong
is a project that's distinctly hard to categorise -
except that it might come
in useful if we ever need
a visual record of the
progress of our species to pitch into space or bury
on the moon. Scored by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, it's a beautifully choreographed compiliation of video clips chronicling human life from the
cradle to the grave. By
turns funny, shocking,
moving and downright dirty, it's a unique and fascinating viewing experience.
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