The Officers' Ward ****
Dir: François Dupeyron
With: Eric Caravaca, Denis Podalydès, Grégori Dérangère, Sabine Azéma, André Dussollier, Isabelle Renauld
135 mins, cert 15
This drama about a young French soldier horrifically wounded in the first world war is a gem of a movie by any standards, and compared to recent Anglophone attempts to show the emotional history of war - the bombastic silliness of Charlotte Gray, for example - it shines like a star. François Dupeyron's movie is superbly furnished, passionately acted, and exquisitely photographed and lit.
First shown in Cannes last year, it is here presented in a slightly truncated form without the original coda. Adrien, a sensitive young lieutenant of good family, played by Eric Caravaca, prepares to depart for the front from the festive Gare de l'Est in August 1914. He has a passionate afternoon of love with Clémence (Géraldine Pailhas), a young woman he meets at the station, and goes off to war with one of her earrings as an accidental, treasured souvenir. Almost immediately he is horribly disfigured by a German shell and spends the remaining years of the war in hospital. But when he receives a "Dear John" letter from Clémence, on whose name he had made a prescient play on words ("No clemency in wartime"), he is agonisingly unsure whether to nurse his love for her or let it metamorphose into a terrible but invigorating hate.
This is a war movie, or more accurately an anti-war movie, which spends most of the time away from the trenches. A subsidiary, spiritual war is being endured in the officers' ward - from which all mirrors have tactfully been removed - among the men with shattered faces who stumble around like lost souls in hell. "Why aren't we dead?" they ask each other. The 80-year-old Guy Trejan (who died last year) plays a pompous minister who enters the ward to congratulate the cringing, disfigured Adrien and asks him breezily: "Ready to get back to the front?" This is a richly emotional and deeply considered film. No one with an interest in the Great War should miss it.
The Experiment *
Dir: Oliver Hirschbiegel
With: Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel, Oliver Stokowski, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Stephan Szasz, Polat Dal
120 mins, cert 18 www.dasexperiment.de
Can it really be true that this shallow, unedifying and self-important effort was the official German entry in this year's Oscar foreign language film category? Yes - though it failed to make the final shortlist.
It is avowedly based on the 1971 "Stanford Prison Experiment", in which US college students controversially role-played prisoners and guards and got a bit carried away. Oliver Hirschbiegel's movie transposes the action to modern Germany, in which the chilling psychology expert Professor Thon and his frosty female helpmeet Dr Grimm - a sort of vaguely dishy version of Rosa Klebb - have built a fully working prison wing underneath their university department. It is here that volunteers dress up as inmates and screws. The "experiment" is to find out what happens when these pseudo-warders are let loose without any of the political or operational constraints they would have in real life.
And guess what? They become sinister sadists and the prisoners are brutalised. Well, duh. Did we need an "experiment", to tell us this? Isn't there another "experiment", from 1933 to 1945, that they might have been aware of? Any episode of Big Brother would have had more insight than this silly and obtuse nonsense.
Ali Zaoua ***
Dir: Nabil Ayouch
With: Mounïm Kbab, Mustapha Hansali, Hicham Moussoune, Abdelhak Zhayra, Saïd Taghmaoui, Amal Ayouch
95 mins, cert 15
Ali Zaoua is a Moroccan street child, a runaway from his prostitute mother. With a few friends, he has broken away from the clutches of Dib, a violent Faginesque gang leader, played by Said Taghmaoui - the one familiar actor (from Three Kings and Nationale 7) in a cast of non-professionals and genuine street children. Nabil Ayouch's film, though indulging an occasional weakness for whimsy, is an engaging and powerful piece of work, with real compassion for Morocco's unnoticed, unlamented army of homeless children.
Ikingut **
Dir: Gisli Snær Erlingsson
With: Hjalti Runar Jonsson, Hans Tittus Nakinge, Palmi Gestsson, JonMagnus Ragnarsson, Freydis Kirstofersdottir
88 mins, no cert
www.filmhuset.no/ikingut
A homely fable about an Eskimo boy whose presence terrifies a cranky, xenophobic settlement in Iceland. It has the mixed blessing of having to follow the sensational Inuit epic Atanarjuat the Fast Runner: and it can't quite match the sweep of that picture. The story has sweetness and charm, and reminded me pleasantly of the old Children's Film Foundation features - and it finishes with a worthy, humanistic moral about prejudice: "We're all the same, wherever we come from." Ikingut is screening across Britain this year, as part of the NFT's Incredible Journeys tour for children and young people - though I fear most children are going to find it a bit tame.
Ice Age ***
Dir: Carlos Saldanha, Chris Wedge
With: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Goran Visnjic, Jack Black
95 mins, cert U
www.iceagemovie.com
This digitally animated prehistoric romp is sweet-natured and smart, though perhaps pitched at kids younger than the target audience for Shrek or Monsters Inc. There's a very funny silent sequence at the beginning in which a rodent-like critter pursues a tasty acorn across the icy wastes and triggers off a catastrophic avalanche. Once the voice characterisations begin, a certain slushy sentimentality kicks in, but the story of Manny the Woolly Mammoth and his odd-couple buddy Sid the Sloth is loads of fun. You could do a lot worse for the Easter holidays than this.
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius **
Dir: John A Davis
With: Debi Derryberry, Megan Cavanagh, Martin Short
82 mins, cert U
www.jimmyneutron.com
Based on a TV cartoon show for Nickleodeon channel, this is the story of the perky boy scientist who lives in the quasi-1950s town of Retroville, always knocking up futuristic inventions in his den made from homely things like toasters. It's reasonably lively and sparky with attractive, if familiar-looking, designs for the suburban landscape, and there's a nice gag about the Blair Witch Project. It looks a little run-of-the-mill, but is certainly better than...
Return to Neverland *
Dir: Robin Budd, Donovan Cook
With: Harriet Owen, Blayne Weaver, Corey Burton, Jeff Bennett, Kath Soucie
72 mins, cert U
www.disney.com/neverland
A completely uninspired cartoon Peter Pan sequel from Disney. Set during the second world war, grownup Wendy's daughter Jane whizzes off for a very dull retread of the original hi-jinks with Peter, Tinkerbell and Hook. It's heading for an awfully big adventure at the box office.
