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2 November 2012

For a Good Time

Cert 18, 86 mins

**

Lauren and Katie (Lauren Anne Miller and Ari Graynor, pictured above) hate each other but land up in the same flat after losing their jobs and boyfriends. They decide that phone sex is the easiest way to make money — or at least Katie, a free spirit, persuades the more reserved Lauren that it is. It’s a long, hot summer and the girls learn to despise their would-be lovers and love each other. So much so, in fact, that if the film had the courage of its convictions, we might have been told they were gay. But it doesn’t and the film’s sparks are only intermittent. Miller, who is credited with both producing and the screenplay in Jamie Travis’s film, goes to it with vim, as does Graynor. But, daring as it tries to be, what we get is silly sentimentality.

Fun Size

Cert 12A, 90 mins

*

Josh Schwartz’s teen comedy sees Victoria Justice being forced to look after her little brother (Jackson Nicoll) on Halloween night in Cleveland, carelessly losing him and thus missing a much-anticipated party. It is one of those films that has been thrown together to please the lowest common denominator without recourse to either wit or wisdom. The only plus is the little boy, with a face like a puckered angel, whose mainly silent exploits make Halloween night some sort of fun.

Tempest

Cert 12A, 77 mins

***

Rob Curry and Anthony Fletcher’s freeform documentary has young people from an east London estate rehearsing and playing Shakespeare’s The Tempest. They haven’t a clue what the play is about at first, but slowly but surely put their own take on it. The result shows how even those who quake at watching or performing Shakespeare can get some kind of personal relevance from his work, and it’s often moving to see them.

The Shining

Cert 15, 142 mins

****

The restored and lengthened version of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic makes most contemporary horror films look like genteel garden parties. This is primarily because the director armed himself with considerably more subtlety than was vouchsafed in Stephen King’s novel. His themes entwine themselves around the watcher like a particularly dangerous snake. A coruscating if often over-the-top performance from Jack Nicholson as the ex-alcoholic novelist who holes himself up with his wife (Shelley Duvall) as caretaker of an out-of-season Colorado hotel has somewhat eclipsed the brilliance of the film-making. But that is undeniable, right down to the superb cinematography of John Alcott. It’s a very bad dream indeed.

Keep the Lights On

Cert 18, 102 mins

***

Ira Sachs’s perceptive film, which chronicles the 10-year affair between a gay Danish film-maker (Thure Lindhardt) and a more closeted Manhattan lawyer (Zachary Booth), is said to be based on Sachs’s own experience. The method used is to drop in intermittently on the pair during the years after 1997, noting the increasing drug dependence of one of them and the obvious fact that neither really suits the other outside the bedroom. If this makes for a strangely unorthodox progress, it does shed light on how relationships can develop, change and finally use up their emotional energy. Lindhardt, the Sachs figure, gives a notably subtle performance in a film that echoes the recent British film Weekend as a convincing, unclichéd portrait of at least one kind of gay life.

Excision

Cert 18, 82 mins

***

Pauline (Annalynne McCord) is a spiky, spotty teenager who hates her parents, loathes school and has bloody nightmares — made worse by the fact that she wants to be a surgeon. The only person she likes is her sister (Ariel Winter), who is crippled with cystic fibrosis. Richard Bates Jr’s debut film is one third psychological drama and two-thirds horror thriller, and you’ll either admire or hate it, but it is much better directed and acted than most of its kind. The gore is fairly awful at times because Pauline’s real life begins to mirror her dreams. But McCord’s intense performance, and that of an almost unrecognisable Traci Lords as her mother, transcend the basic horror material. And Bates’s direction is smart enough to make one feel the melodramatic ending is a waste of time. Malcolm McDowell as Pauline’s teacher and John Waters as her local priest add to the film’s watchability.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

Cert 15, 90 mins

**

Fans of the video game will possibly be pleased that Michael J Bassett’s 3D film version looks much the same. Unfortunately that doesn’t make a good movie as, on the eve of her 18th birthday and after her father’s disappearance, our heroine (Adelaide Clemens) gets plagued by horrific nightmares. Or are they dreams at all? Frankly, it’s difficult to care since those who made the film don’t seem to. Severed 3D fingers fly out at us from the screen, presumably a thrill for its intended audience.

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