MikePadgett.com

• Director: Joe Wright
• United Kingdom, 2007
• 

When a young girl uses a series of events to doom the romance of the housekeeper’s son and her elder sister, the course of each of their lives is changed beyond foresight. So goes the story of Atonement, an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s manipulative novel by upcoming British director Joe Wright.

Whilst the first act concentrates on the minute tensions of a pre-war country residence, the remaining drama unfolds on a much broader and more popular canvas set among the young nurses of London’s war effort and the British Expeditionary Force’s evacuation of Dunkirk.

Though our three protagonists comfortably succeed in displacing themselves to a new time and place, the film as a whole still feels unbalanced when detailed portraits are swapped for sweeping landscapes. When all is finally explained with a typical McEwan twist in the dénouement, this beautifully shot, seriously acted film rather struggles for credibility like a swan taking flight.

• Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
• Austria, 2007
• 

A busy master forger, Salomon Sorowitsch is a man with little concern for political ideals. And that’s what keeps him alive when war breaks out and he ends up in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Receiving preferential treatment to other prisoners, Sorowitsch is given the task of forging the currency that will keep the Nazi war effort alive and ruin the Allies’ economies. Put simply, it’s a case of “(y)our money or your life”.

The balance of principles and survival adds massively to the tension of the movie. We are never left in any doubt that Sorowitsch and his colleagues are moments from the same fate as those over the wall. As a result the film feels much weightier than its mere 98 minutes.

Karl Markovics is an agreeably grim Sorowitsch. An opportunist with few redeeming features, but in the circumstances, we still find ourselves rooting for him even though other characters perhaps deserve more regard. Sachsenhausen is certainly no place for lofty words, yet oddly it brings Sorowitsch a sort of redemption.

• Director: Robert De Niro
• United States, 2006
• 

Matt Damon’s got a tough job here. On the one hand he needs to play the absolute stoic, for whom life-changing decisions are met wordlessly with little more than a glassy stare. On the other, he needs us to empathise with him as his personal life falls apart because he puts his country first.

Damon’s a pretty capable stoic, even if he’s pretty doubtful at everything else. His Tom Ripley was unfathomable, inscrutable. His Will Hunting was frustratingly brittle. And he’s got great support on paper: John Turturro (a wonderfully understated turn), Angelina Jolie (unforgivably miscast in a skeletal role), Michael Gambon, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt. Even Joe Pesci pops up briefly to lend a hand.

Trouble is, it doesn’t quite work. Though The Good Shepherd is a period piece, second time director De Niro can’t rely on nostalgia to warm our cockles as he did in A Bronx Tale. As a facsimile Cold War political thriller, it’s agreeably chilly, but the human story that acts as power generator struggles to get going and we’re left freezing outside.

• Director: Kevin Macdonald
• United Kingdom, 2007
• 

James McAvoy’s turn as leading man here is a superb mix of naïveté, youthful exuberance and abject fear. It’s perhaps unfortunate then that Last King will always be remembered - pretty much to the exclusion of everyone and everything else - for Forest Whitaker’s career-defining performance.

As General Idi Amin Dada, the complex, brutal and at times thoroughly unhinged dictator of Uganda, Whitaker is terrifyingly believable. Just as Amin dominated Ugandan life so completely, Whitaker completely owns this movie, his character even managing to dominate the scenes in which he doesn’t appear.

Director Macdonald might not have intended to stake the entire success of the movie on the Amin characterisation working well but it seems that way, with Whitaker justly earning 2007’s Best Actor Oscar, such that you have to wonder what else there is to say about Last King without mentioning him. Art imitating life, indeed.

• Director: Julie Taymor
• United States, 2002
• 

Frida is almost brilliant. For a start, it has to be one of the most beautifully shot films this decade, thanks in no small part to the prodigal cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto who adds these triumphant visuals to his impressive list (Babel, Brokeback Mountain, 21 Grams, Amores Perros). Elliot Goldenthal’s soundtrack, enhanced by onscreen contributions from Lila Downs and Chavela Vargas, is rich and memorable.

What’s remarkable about Frida Kahlo’s art is that it uniquely expresses her internal self, representing multiple emotions often with some extra element that quietly disturbs. This film has all of that visual impact but lacks the emotional bite, leaving the art itself to fill key dramatic moments. It’s a bold tactic that doesn’t quite come off.

Salma Hayek’s portrayal of the Mexican artist is solid but the script, by Taymor and Edward Norton, doesn’t really stretch her enough and the peppering of rather conspicuous gringo dialogue in her part leaves a bitter taste. After two hours of beautiful images, I was left wondering, but for the wrong reasons.

• Director: James Ivory
• United Kingdom, 1992
• 

There’s something grating about the bourgeois self-sufficiency of the upper middle class during Forster’s era, as it sits around babbling blithely about suffrage and philosophy. Yet for all its self-professed modernism, it took two World Wars to truly change the character of English society.

Nevertheless, Forster is documenting progress here and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s screenplay is sharp enough to navigate the material with enough sensitivity and distinction between the three families.

Elsewhere, the locations are formidably rich and well photographed, a feature typical of all Merchant Ivory productions. And defying the otherwise sagging middle section of the film, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson bring fizz to their scenes together, prefacing their brilliance in Ivory’s next and more accomplished effort The Remains Of The Day.

• Director: Neil Burger
• United States, 2006
• 

Looking for some diversion ahead of a long flight, I first came across Steven Millhauser’s unusual oeuvre in Bangkok airport around New Year 2001. Maybe I even judged the book by its cover, but a short story collection entitled The Knife Thrower & Other Stories would catch any travel-weary eye. Indeed, Millhauser’s picaresque work all but cries out to be filmed and the titular tall tale exhibited a strong kinship with The Illusionist, his first story to be committed to celluloid.

Dusty sepia stock and delicate titles open the film. It’s all beautifully rendered, with a stunning Czech location standing in for the grandeur of 19th century Vienna.

The performances of Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti are certainly compelling, but though the opening moments promise much, the creepy, oddball essence of Millhauser’s bric-a-brac bazaar sadly eludes the rest.

• Director: Martin Scorsese
• United States, 2004
• 

The Aviator is not your typical Scorsese movie. As we open on a young Howard Hughes shooting his famously expensive Hell’s Angels, it’s hard to miss the fact that this biopic can’t have been cheap either.

The range of the movie is wide like Hughes’ flying feats. It covers his fascination for aviation of course, but also something of the mental illness from which he suffered in the later part of his life.

Leonardo Di Caprio effectively handles the trajectory of the Hughes character arc, with reasonably good support from Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale and John C. Reilly. Alan Alda’s performance as Sen Brewster is particulary noteworthy. All in all a solid movie, unusually shot with bright, blue filtered light, but in the end rather too much Hollywood gloss prevents us from penetrating the darker tones of the subject’s life.

• Director: Paul Verhoeven
• Netherlands, 2006
• 

With the turbulent Hollywood years behind him, Verhoeven is back in Europe and the opening salvo is a freshly energetic epic that firmly suggests Amsterdam’s finest has rediscovered his mojo.

Ironic then that the only blot in this particular black book is Verhoeven’s oldest trick: a sudden acceleration in the third act, which leaves us as breathless and confused as the indomitable heroine.

Fortunately, Zwartboek is visually eloquent and finely acted, especially by Carice Van Houten as Ellis. Comparisons with Soldier of Orange are inevitable and with a couple of new Dutch projects already in the pipeline, I for one am sighing with relief at Verhoeven’s return to form.