Movie reviews

IT’S a reflection, presumably, of our uncertainty about the world’s immediate future in these times of economic recessions and global warming, but Another Earth (12A) is the second film this year, after Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, to feature a new planet appearing in the solar system.

Distracted by the blue planet’s appearance in the night sky, promising student Rhoda (Brit Marling) makes a fatal error of judgement whilst driving home one night.

The resulting accident kills a wife and two children, leaving a husband, Professor John Burroughs (William Mapother), in a coma.

Released from prison years later, Rhoda takes a menial job to punish herself; when Burroughs emerges from his coma, she goes to his house to confess her sin. Unable to rise to her moment of truth, she pretends she has come to clean the professor’s house, and so begins a relationship built on the rockiest of foundations. Directed by Mike Cahill, who co-wrote the script with Marling, Another Earth is a moody, downbeat affair. Bleached of colour, parsimonious with dialogue, the film is content to allow the twin lead performances dictate the pace and atmosphere, with the result that we find ourselves unwillingly drawn into a claustrophobic relationship that is hedged about and underpinned with lies. Rhoda’s one chance to escape her hell-on-earth experience is to win a place on the space rocket headed for the new Earth, a narrative angle that is deliberately implausible, even as the script indulges itself with quasi-philosophical notions of what it means to have a mirror Earth, with a population identical to that of our own, hanging in the sky. The finale suggests that Cahill and Marling have watched Donnie Darko once too often, but for all its pseudo-cool aura and existential pretensions, Another Earth is essentially a two-hander between Marling and Mapother, and their strong performances, allied to the warped nature of their perverse relationship, results in a thought-provoking film.

PUSS in Boots (G) offers a different kind of alternative reality, this one set in the world of fairytales and serving as a prequel-of-sorts to the Shrek series. Who was Puss (voiced by Antonio Banderas) before he became a sidekick to Shrek? Chris Miller’s movie depicts Puss as a swaggering lothario on an epic quest to find the magic beans from which grow the giant’s beanstalk. Enter Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis), once the sworn blood-brother of Puss when they were both ostracised in the orphanage where they met. Given that Humpty is also on the trail of the magic beans, the pair agree to set out to loot the giant’s castle of its golden eggs, but can Puss really trust Humpty’s feline fatale, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek)?

Puss in Boots is a rollicking adventure tale that offers a knowing, adult take on the fairytale story, while still remaining true to the innocence of its very young target demographic. Adult film buffs, for example, will appreciate the slo-mo action sequences that are included as homage to Sam Peckinpah by way of Quentin Tarantino, while the kids will delight in the simple, arrow-straight narrative that zings from A to B with only a flashback to the blood-brothers’ orphanage days to break the momentum. That said, the setting is a little odd: despite featuring Puss, Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill, the movie is set in Old Mexico, a decidedly un-fairytale place to expect to find Jack’s beanstalk.

GARRY MARSHALL’S latest offering is essentially a rehash of his previous film, Valentine’s Day (2010), as what feels like a cast of thousands collide and fall in and out of love on New Year’s Eve (12A). The stars include Robert De Niro, Jessica Biel, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Jon Bon Jovi, Sarah Jessica Parker and Zac Efron, to mention but a few, and the teeming screen and spaghetti-junction narrative makes it virtually impossible to empathise with any single pairing. It’s possible that Marshall is making the ironic point that New Year’s Eve is the most overrated night out of the year by making an overblown movie about faux romance. But did he really have to inflict on us Ashton Kutcher, Sarah Jessica Parker and Hilary Swank to hammer his point home?