Movie Reviews: Grabbers, Jackpot, Step Up 4: Miami Heat, 360
Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) is a little too uptight for her own good when she arrives for a two-week stint on Erin Island. The fact that she doesn’t take a drink does not endear her to the locals, and causes friction with Garda Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle), who seems unable to function without booze in his system.
When the island is attacked by aliens, however, the demon drink emerges as the islanders’ saviour — alcohol, logically enough, is a lethal poison to the squid-like creatures.
Written by Kevin Lehane, the script makes a virtue of ‘Oirish’ stereotypes, poking fun at the kind of characters who might well have popped up in the background of The Quiet Man, but it’s at its most blackly comic when it takes on the subject of the centrality of booze in Irish life.
It’s very much a case of one man’s meat is another’s man’s poison, however: where one viewer might see the islanders as stage-Irishmen who go to war against an alien invasion with a pub lock-in, another may well read the film as a subversive satire on Irish attitudes to alcohol.
This viewer tends towards the latter, but there’s much more to Grabbers than its Big Issue. The deadpan humour is deliciously delivered, Bradley and Coyle work very well in tandem, and the minor roles are given full-blooded performances courtesy of Lalor Roddy, David Pearse and Bronagh Gallagher. It’s Alien (1979) by way of The Guard (2011), basically: slick, smart and deliciously irreverent.
(16s) is the second film adaptation, after Headhunters, of a Jo Nesbo novel to hit our screens this year. As was the case with Headhunters, Jackpot goes out of its way to dispel the myth of Scandinavian crime writers documenting a stark, severe and politically correct world.
A fast-paced Norwegian comedy caper, Jackpot opens with a shoot-out and mass slaughter in a strip joint, at which point we cut to a police interrogation room, where Oscar (Kyrre Hellum) — the sole survivor — is being questioned by Detective Solør (Henrik Mestad).
The origins of the story is a group of ex-convicts who win the football pools, and subsequently fall out over how best to carve up the proceeds. Adapted and directed by Magnus Martens, the film is in part a tribute to the blackly comic shenanigans of the Coen Brothers, as the inept criminals double- and triple-cross one another, with Oscar striving desperately to retain some semblance of morality as the corpses pile ever higher.
Events eventually do spiral into the realm of the preposterous as the climax approaches, but otherwise Jackpot is a very enjoyable romp.
The law of diminishing returns should apply to (PG), but while the song and dance remains the same, with Emily (Kathryn McCormick) and Sean (Ryan Guzman) taking every opportunity to reinvent Dirty Dancing, Scott Speer’s movie revolves around the idea of street-dance ‘flash mobs’ as a form of artistic protest against greedy property developer Mr Anderson (Peter Gallagher), who just so happens to be Emily’s dad.
Yes, it’s the ‘poor little rich girl’ tale meets ‘a star is born’, but credit to the makers for trying to reinvent the franchise — and the dance choreography, as always, is energetic, fresh and inventive.
Opening in Vienna, as a young woman auditions to become a high-priced call-girl, Fernando Meirelles’ (15A)
weaves a number of storylines into a globe-trotting plot.
Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Ben Foster and Anthony Hopkins are some of the star names who slip in and out of the narrative, which is ostensibly driven by sex, but is in fact concerned with the human need for emotional connection, and the haunting consequences for those who lack the capacity to do so.
Beautifully filmed and superbly acted, the movie does lack the kind of depth it might have achieved had Meirelles focused on two or three characters.
Even so, and despite falling victim to its own central thesis, it’s an engrossing and thought-provoking piece of work.
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