Movie reviews

IN a way it’s almost a pity that Daniel Craig stars in Cowboys and Aliens (15A).

His brooding presence as Old West outlaw Jake Lonergan, which he undercuts with the occasional hint of a wryly knowing smile, offers at least one bona fide reason to stay with Jon Favreau’s film long after it has established itself as a Western that appears to be aiming for a Guinness Book of Records entry as the most clichéd Western ever made. Boozy preacher? Downtrodden bartender? Hell-raising rancher’s son? Check them off as you go, and then brace yourself for The Big Twist, as bloodthirsty aliens arrive to suck all the gold out of the planet. Unfortunately, the title rather gives away said twist; meanwhile, as a high-concept, genre-blending, nod-and-wink homage to the Western and the alien invasion flick, Cowboys and Aliens is a hollow exercise.

For all the neat period detail the message, ultimately, is that the Western is such a total bust these days that it needs nothing less than a full-blown alien invasion to spice things up. Harrison Ford, who plays the stereotypical ruthless rancher with all the passion of a dead oak, is reduced to snarling in impotent rage at the cartoonish and frankly offensive script. Essentially, it’s a one-joke movie that delivers its punchline far too early, a facile exercise in synthesising the commercial prospects of two of Hollywood’s most iconic genres to create a film that is significantly less than the sum of its parts.

In A Better World (15A) won the Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars. Susannah Bier’s film is a thoughtful exploration of the consequences of violence. Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a doctor confronted by horrific brutality whilst working in sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, back in Denmark, his young son Elias (Markus Rygaard) gets involved in a tit-for-tat game of retaliation against a school bully, which escalates into a potentially lethal scenario. Where Cowboys and Aliens is all sound and fury, signifying nothing, In A Better World (aka Haevnen) is subdued, intense, poetic, worthy and dull. Mind-numbingly literal as it takes the viewer by the hand step-by-step through the various stages of the parallel stories of violent encounter, it is morally prescriptive to the point that you do start to wonder about who, exactly, the film is aimed at. Is it, perhaps, some sub-species of human that has yet to learn that violence is A Bad Thing? Crucially, Anton’s radical departure from the film’s exploration of Morality 101 is the single act in the entire story that doesn’t have consequences, perhaps because the inevitable backlash against Anton’s action would have blown apart Bier’s meticulously constructed sermon.

There’s a certain amount of sermonising to be endured in Glee: The 3D Concert Movie (PG) too, most of it courtesy of fans testifying to the extent to which the High School cabaret TV series has changed their lives for the better. These sections come between on-stage (it’s pushing the Trades Description Act to describe them as ‘live’) performances from the show’s stars, including Brittany, Puck, Rachel, Santana, et al, which more than compensate in raw energy what they lack in actual talent. Without a storyline to link the cover versions of MOR numbers (Queen, Barbara Streisand, Journey, Michael Jackson), the concert movie is little more than a glorified karaoke show, but even the most confirmed cynic has to acknowledge the Beatlemania quality of the audience’s reaction, and the fact that the show itself is toe-tappingly infectious.

Love-struck janitor Jean (Sami Bouajila) writes a billet-doux to Émilie (Audrey Tatou), the owner of the beauty salon where he works; she forwards it on to her heartbroken mother, Maddy (Nathalie Baye), hoping to cheer her up. Thus begins Beautiful Lies (15A), a French romantic-screwball comedy starring Audrey Tatou. The consequences of Émilie’s impulsive gesture results in an unlikely love triangle, and even if the result proves as predictable as most romantic comedies tend to be, Tatou is in radiant form and gives the entirely contrived confection just enough sugaring to make it a pleasantly diverting French fancy.