Franklyn (Gerald McMorrow, 2008)

The director summed this up as a fleshed-out working out of ideas from a short in which a young woman is recovering from yet another suicide attempt. Always beware hacks when they justify what they've done as being through a need to explore everyone's backstories.

McMorrow piles on everything he can think of and it's all derivative: there's a Rorschach clone stalking a futuristic/gothic city overrun by religious fanatics under an obscurely oppressive government, cutting to Eva Green as the would-be suicide going hysterical with her mother in middle-class North London, Sam Riley (he of the excellent Control) seeing the dead and Bernard Hill agonising over his son's whereabouts. Having no confidence in one film, McMorrow gives us four, and then we have to suffer pointless narrative contortions as they're drawn together by hook and crook. A waste of time for all those involved.

3/10

La graine et le mulet (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2007)

The English title, Couscous, may seem as hackneyed for a film about North African immigrants in France as calling one on Asians in Britain 'Curry', but couscous is at least heavily present as a concern as ageing boatyard worker Slimane is laid off and turns to setting up a couscous restaurant on a boat, drafting in his extended family. The fulcrum of the story, Slimane is also a diffident presence, prone to panic attacks not unrelated to certain members circling him like vultures. The film owes much of its cohesion, despite its rambling length, to Habib Boufares's performance, which carries much strength in its understatement.

Early on, as he loses his job, there is a key scene in which Slimane explains to his daughter that 'they're only taking on non-French people now' and this really encapsulates what's refreshing about the whole attitude of the film: we're not dealing with a straightforward piece on the hardships of immigrants, but, rather, an ordinary working-class family. And the plot subsequently mirrors this by constantly choosing the less predictable turn. If the director is too fond at times of the realism he's chosen to go with by also letting his actors yammer on freeformly, the end result is still rewarding enough.

7/10

The History Boys (Nicholas Hytner, 2006)

Alan Bennett's award-winning play is, for the most part, successfully transferred to the screen by Hytner, previously best known as a director for The Madness of King George: that is to say, it rarely feels stagebound until the postscript, by which stage the shift in tone seems natural.

Eight boys at a public school in '80s Yorkshire are being coached towards Oxbridge, and the headmaster, a dunce masquerading as a martinet, decides that their chances need to be beefed up by more rigorous training than that provided by Richard Griffiths's poesying blimp (basically, his Uncle Monty reworked), whose 'general studies' lessons indulge the boys' playing out of musical numbers and old movie scenes. So, in comes a young new recruit to the staff, who proceeds to tell the boys at once that competence alone will not make them stand out: tactics are called for, from playing devil's advocate to outright lying.

It's not reality by a long chalk: almost every character in turn is employed as a mouthpiece for whatever quip or observation Bennett wants to chuck our way, which frequently jars with most of them, after all, being just teenagers. Griffiths's tentative molestation of his wards is also treated rather too lightly for comfort, as if it were just an endearing foible. But there's no denying the wit at work: it's frequently very funny and also comes with an understated, unsettling undercurrent concerning what it takes to succeed in a class-centred society.

7/10

The Walker (Paul Schrader, 2007)

Woody Harrelson gets to flex his acting chops further as a preening professional companion to a host of Washington politicians' wives, moving further than ever before from the lovable country doofuses of his earlier films.

Carter Page III is a man constantly overshadowed by the looming legends of his forefathers and taking refuge in the superficiality of his chosen milieu, where bon-mots serve as currency, until the murder of an acquaintance, the lover of one of the wives he ferries around social functions for his living, forces him to examine what values he actually has.

The setting of the glass cage that is D.C. high society might at first also seem a departure for Schrader, who as a screenwriter has repeatedly plumbed the depths of breakdown and despair, particularly through his work with Scorsese on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and, most recently, Bringing out the Dead. But at heart the song remains the same: a man comes to realise that he stands alone and can either sink or swim. The Walker doesn't in truth have a great deal to add to this refrain, but gets by creditably enough on dialogue of superior intelligence and a heavy-calibre cast, including Lauren Bacall as an armour-plated society queen. Harrelson, meanwhile, just keeps getting better and better: southern gent pomposity, flamboyant campness and a quiet moral determination are all delivered without a false note.

6/10

Things We Lost in the Fire (Susanne Bier, 2007)

Bier's first Hollywood film sees her pick up on much the same themes as her last Danish piece, Efter brylluppet, that is, the pain of loss and how we come to terms with it in our individual ways. Here, Halle Berry is abruptly widowed and pulls her husband's best friend, junkie-in-precarious recovery Benicio Del Toro, into her orbit to fill the void left by his death.

On the technical side, there's absolutely no need for the modishly deconstructed narrative structure, and it's becoming apparent that Bier will keep trying to squeeze emotional content out of those eye close-ups. Also, both leads are perilously close to being typecast: Berry as the strong but damaged mother in denial of her pain, Del Toro as a mumbling mess just one wrong turn away from the gutter; Monster's Ball and 21 Grams respectively. But at least these are proven parts, and so both are used to their strengths, Del Toro particularly convincing in his instability.

Not a step forward for Bier, then, but still streets ahead of most Hollywood competition in terms of empathic depth.

6/10

The Last Horror Movie (Julian Richards, 2003)

Director Richards at least makes no attempt to deny having been 'influenced' by C'est arrivé près de chez vous, otherwise known as Man Bites Dog, in what is basically a North London retread of Rémy Belvaux's seminal Belgian shocker. So, we follow a serial killer amiably chatting away, documentary cameraman in tow, as he despatches a broad assortment of victims in a range of banally clinical ways. Richards does adopt a slightly different tack - and this would have to be the overriding justification for the plagiarised framework - to Belvaux, in that his killer is actually the instigator of the documentary and as such exercises editorial control, which enables him to dwell over several points about the nature of the voyeurism of the media and, by extension, us, the viewers.

However, his philosophising to camera hits a film-schoolish note far too often, directorially too insecure to proceed without constantly trying to second-guess the critical viewer. In the end it's actually far more effectively black and satirical, as Belvaux seemed to have instinctively grasped with Man Bites Dog, when it lets its sociopath's actions speak for themselves, and our presence as witnesses isn't even acknowledged.

5/10

JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri, 2008)

File under curio: a number of people will watch this just for B-action-movie star Van Damme skirt an uncomfortably close line to how they might see his real life panning out, especially since J-C gets a weepy monologue in the middle to detail his actual life with its failings.
He arrives in Brussels, in the middle of a custody suit for his daughter, and gets sucked into a bank heist where his celebrity status puts him centre-stage, as spokesman for the captors, and then has to start agonising as to whether he can actually do anything resembling all his other personae. None of this will mean much to the casual viewer who hasn't gone through all the set-piece kickboxing moves from Timecop et al. It's also a partial shock to realise that, worldwide, he's still Belgium's biggest star (forget Audrey Hepburn; she was appropriated by others too early on). It's as if Dolph Lundgren was Sweden's.
A neat enough idea is wasted: Van Damme is actually very good at playing the saddo version of his own life, but there's endless wind-and-rewind with a small plot idea that probably fancies itself as Rashomon crossed with Dog Day Afternoon. Not disgraceful, but too big for its post-modern boots.

5/10