Issue #40, January 12, 2007

Dave Evans’ MINI – MOVIE REVIEWS

Freedom Writers

Hilary Swank continues her streak of deathly dull, soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated, social justice stories with this tale of a young teacher trying to improve the lot of her class of at-risk children. It’s not that this is bad but it feels too much like painting-by-numbers for all involved, especially in the light of last year’s similarly-themed but extraordinarily realised Half Nelson.

Happily N’Ever After

Surely, to the delight of nobody, this heralds the steady continuing stream of CGI films. Here things hit a new low with CGI plagiarising CGI in this suspiciously Shrek-like story. Cinderella (voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar) must battle her evil step-mother (Sigourney Weaver) for control of the fairytale world. Tedious and clumsy.

Miss Potter

Having perfected her English accent for the Bridget Jones films, Renee Zellweger gets the chance to whip it out all over again in this literary biopic of children’s author, Beatrix Potter. This is delightful fare with Zellweger acting with a subtlety and tenderness she’s not shown before. The supporting cast, headed up by the ever-wonderful Ewan Macgregor and Emily Watson, do her proud.

Arthur and The Invisibles

CGI once again but this comes with a slightly different pedigree. Luc Besson, director of 1994’s superb Leon and the flawed but visually fascinating The Fifth Element, turns his attention to a children’s book of his own writing concerning a ten-year-old boy and his adventures with garden fairies. It’s by no means great but it lacks the cynical and easy recycling of much of contemporary children’s cinema.

Stomp the Yard

The director of I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, Sylvain White, turns his eye to somewhat more realistic concerns in this film about stepping and African-American college fraternities. DJ (Columbus Short) plays a freshman, trying to recover from the death of his brother and ultimately finds his life transformed by the community he finds in college.

Alpha Dog

This is a flashy biopic of the young Southern Californian drug-dealer Jesse James Hollywood, from Nick Cassavetes, the director most recently responsible for loveable schlock-romance The Notebook. Cassavetes is great at handling his mostly young cast and the film manages to engage with what is attractive about that lifestyle without simply glorifying it.

Code Name: The Cleaner

Cedric the Entertainer, Lucy Liu and Desperate Housewives’s Nicolette Sheridan join forces to fill in for the lack of an A or even B-list lead in this absurd action comedy. Cedric plays Jake, a man who wakes up having lost his memory and somehow bumbles his way into a government conspiracy. Straight-to-video.