Jurassic Park III **
Dir: Joe Johnston
With: Sam Neill, William H Macy, Laura Dern, Téa Leoni
92 mins, cert PG
www.jurassicpark.com
This great dinosaur of a movie is shambling towards well-merited extinction. Not even the intelligent presence of William H Macy and, indeed, Sam Neill - a veteran of JP1 - can prevent it winding up in the brontosaurus graveyard. Neill plays Dr Alan Grant, the palaeontologist inveigled by Macy into going to Isla Sorna, that, erm, second island full of cloned dinosaurs which was discovered for JP2. Neill goes with a mixed-bag crew whom the raptors pick off in status order. The FX creatures are still terrific, but an ice age of indifference and over- familiarity is closing in.
Solas ****
Dir: Benito Zambrano
With: Ana Fernández, María Galiana, Charlos Alvarez-Novoa, Paco De Osca
98 minutes, cert 15
Spanish writer/director Zambrano's debut feature is a superbly performed, deeply moving study of anger, regret, love and dignity. It is also one of the rare films that shows old people as individuals at the dramatic centre of events. Ana Fernández plays Maria, a 35-year-old pregnant cleaner with a drink problem, angry at the cards life has dealt her. Her mother (María Galiana) has come up from the country to stay with her while the abusive old paterfamilias gets treatment at a nearby hospital. Memories and resentments boil to the surface, and the mother begins a friendship with the old man (Charlos Alvarez-Novoa) who lives next door to Maria. Novoa and Galiana give lovely performances, and Zambrano's movie has a sense of serenity and clarity amid boiling human emotion. An outstanding film.
High Heels and Low Lifes *
Dir: Mel Smith
With: Minnie Driver, Michael Gambon
86 minutes, cert 15
A strained, would-be comedy-thriller set in a tourist version of London, with few laughs and no thrills, largely because the central heist plot is so tiringly implausible. Two feisty babes overhear a robbery in progress and try to blackmail the villains. They are an American, Mary McCormack, and a Brit, Minnie Driver, who plays a remarkably unstressed, glam-looking NHS nurse. At one stage, Driver airily clocks off after this really long "shift" looking like she's sashaying out of Harvey Nicks. John Sessions is excellent value as a weary voiceover producer; likewise Kevin Eldon as the property-obsessed detective. But this is very, very weak.
The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz ***
Dir: Ben Hopkins
With: Thomas Fisher, Ian MacNeice
86 minutes, cert 15
www.tomas-katz.com
A distinctively English, rather than simply British, movie in its loopy, diverting surrealism. Ben Hopkins' film is an essay on the occult ethnography of London; it has something of Will Self and Iain Sinclair; it reminded me of the original Pete'n'Dud Bedazzled, Sir Henry At Rawlinson End and also The Falconer, a 1998 TV movie of surpassing strangeness by Sinclair and Chris Petit. As well as co-writing, Thomas Fisher plays Katz, the enigmatic central character of this black-and-white bad dream who metamorphoses into nine personae. Nothing so obvious as a plot is allowed to cramp this movie's style as it swoops weirdly across the dream landscape of London like a demented, dishevelled bird.
The Truth Game ***
Dir: Simon Rumley
With: Tanya Emery, Wendy Wason
80 minutes, cert 18
Simon Rumley's first feature, Strong Language, was a disquieting, experimental collage of monologues to camera. The Truth Game is more conventional: a dinner party of twentysomething couples which packs a year's worth of confrontations and revelations into one fraught evening. This is an intelligent piece of low-budget cinema, with strong performances. It wasn't as formally adventurous as the first, but maybe it can only fully be judged as part of Rumley's "triptych" of films about young London - the final part, Club Le Monde, is in production.
A L'Attaque! **
Dir: Robert Guédiguian
With: Ariane Ascaride, Gérard Meylan
90 minutes, cert 15
Robert Guédiguian has shown a heartfelt sense of community in his movies, and his A la Place du Coeur was a gutsy rebuke to racism set in Marseille. Here, a family busi ness is driven to bankruptcy by a container firm that goes into receivership to avoid paying tradesmen; so the family take direct action. It seems like a stirring tale about family and community, with a tasty backwash of sex and romance; but Guédiguian doesn't seem to have quite the courage of his storytelling convictions, because it's actually happening in the head of two bickering screenwriters. A film within a film, with scenes being done again differently, metaphors surreally made flesh and so on. This undermines the movie's power, without being especially sophisticated.
Animal Attraction *
Dir: Tony Goldwyn
With: Marisa Tomei, Ashley Judd, Greg Kinnear, Hugh Jackman
98 minutes, cert 12
This by-numbers romantic comedy has Marisa Tomei in the sexy-but-not-too-sexy best friend role, to which she seems eternally condemned. Like cinematic Olestra, it'll slide right through your brain leaving no impression.
The Iron Ladies ***
Dir: Yongyoot Kongthongtoon
With: April, May, June
104 minutes, no certificate
A sports movie with a difference: the true story of a Thai volleyball team composed of gays, transvestites and transsexuals which won the national title in 1996. It's a romp that pokes good-humoured fun at the machismo of Thai society. But did the Iron Ladies really triumph without breaking sweat, or ceasing to camp outrageously about or punching the ball truly hard?
