Reviews

Films

The Lookout

Directed by Scott Frank, starred with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels and Isla Fisher

Scott Frank, the writer of Out of Sight, has come up with a cracking armed-robbery thriller: Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Chris, the popular rich-kid and campus hockey star who wrecked his sports car driving like an idiot, killing most of his passengers; now he's a shambling mess with a faulty memory. He has a menial cleaning job at a bank, attends remedial classes to work on his anxiety attacks and shares an apartment with a blind man, Lewis (Jeff Daniels). Then he is befriended by the charismatic bully Gary Spargo, who claims to have dated his sister in school, and turns out to want poor, confused Chris as an inside man and lookout while he robs the bank. Spargo is played by young British actor Matthew Goode, who so comprehensively stole every scene in Woody Allen's Match Point. There, he was every inch the Brit; now, he's every inch the American tough-guy with pitch-perfect accent. It's impressive stuff from Goode, who takes another step closer to the A-list, in a taut, visceral thriller.

Heima

Directed by Dean DeBlois, with Sigur Ros

The music of Iceland's chamber-rock band Sigur Ros often sounds like one long, plangent outro completing a final album track. But I was utterly captivated by this rockumentary about the series of free concerts the band gave in 2006, throughout Iceland (their heima or homeland), even in its remotest and wildest regions. The band seemed charmingly without ego, quite at ease with the communities who showed up to hear their music, and their creativity and open attitude was at one with Iceland's ravishingly beautiful landscape.

The Brothers Solomon

Directed by Bob Odenkirk, with Will Arnett and Will Forte

A regard for accuracy compels me to report, with bowed head, that in the course of this broad, borderline-grossout comedy I chortled loud and often, while my fellow critics sat with the air of those citizens who assembled behind sound-proof glass to witness the execution of the Lindberg baby killer. Will Arnett (from Arrested Development) and

Will Forte play two loser brothers, home-schooled by their dad (Lee Majors), whose dying wish is to have a grandchild. It is in relentlessly bad taste.

Interview

Directed by Steve Buscemi, with: Sienna Miller, Steve Buscemi

There can hardly be a bigger waste of time than this conceited and self-indulgent two-hander directed by Steve Buscemi, remade from a Theo Van Gogh film. Buscemi plays a failing political journalist called Pierre who is humiliatingly assigned to interview bimbo celebrity Katya (Sienna Miller). After a stormy start, the couple play "mind games" with each other.

Man of the Year

Directed by Barry Levinson, with Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney

Cynicism or stupidity? It's hard to say which has the run of this idiotic satire in which Robin Williams plays a talk-show host who runs for president on a ticket of cleaning up politics. Director Barry Levinson has made this film before, and better. A decade ago, his Wag the Dog parodied politics as showbiz image-making. In the absence of satirical bite, what's to see? Surely not the embarrassing romance between Williams and whistleblower Linney? Or the lacklustre thriller that ensues when Linney's shadowy boss (Jeff Goldblum) sets the dogs on her. And those swipes at special interests look a bit rich with the usual slush of product placements.

The Guardian

(China Daily 11/06/2007 page20)