From Hell *
Dir: Albert and Allen Hughes
With: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm, Ian Richardson
121 mins, cert 18
www.fromhellmovie.com
It's one of those titles that must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The movie From Hell is about Jack the Ripper (because that's the return address he put on his weirdo gloating letters). But most of the time it's just so lame it should be called From Heck. So who is this sinister killer, this horrifying force of evil causing cockerney types to gasp with fear and dismay like a nightmare Lionel Bart might have after eating underdone rissoles?
The movie gets stuck into some meaty, fleshy, medium-rare conspiracy theories. Feminists have long complained about turning this vicious murderer into a picturesque figure, and suggested that both his crimes and their subsequent romanticisation are indeed a giant male conspiracy. From Hell avoids this spoilsport approach, but nevertheless suggests a xenophobic, anti-semitic stitch-up, implicating almost every mutton-chopped frock-coated figure of importance in 19th-century London - even getting Queen Victoria in the frame. How different from the home life of our own dear Dame Judi Dench in Mrs Brown.
Since the pioneering work of Thomas Harris, creator of Dr Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, we are now accustomed to think the unthinkable: the killer can be the sleuth, and the sleuth can be the killer. This ultimate refinement on the serial killer tradition is evidently a conspiracy theory too far for From Hell, but Inspector Abberline, played by Johnny Depp, is given a touch of proxy killer-glamour by making him a morphine-sniffing sixth-sense merchant who can see inside the Ripper's head, see what he sees, feel what he feels, slash what he slashes. Depp has a cockney accent: not a bad one by any means, not a Meery Parpins job, and not the awful Irish accent he had for Chocolat. But it just doesn't sound right: his cockney-ness is wrong for his inspector status, while failing to suggest any common cause with the Ripper's cockney victims.
He looks and sounds far more plausible, however, than Heather Graham as the notional local tart. Plenty of her mates, played by British actors, are shown giving handjobs and bunkups. But not Heather. For all we know, she might be keeping the wolf from the door with aromatherapy or management consultancy. At any rate, she is not merely the most glamorous prostitute in 19th-century history but one with the most access to expensive make-up, stylist and skin-care.
Many of the ideas that were sophisticated in the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell look shopworn on screen. There's a lot of stuff about Freemasons, and the occult layout-pattern of various murder-sites and the ley lines of energy in London's ancient streets and waterways. Stop the investigation, you want to cry, and let's go round to Peter Ackroyd's house with an arrest warrant right away.
Cool and Crazy ***
Dir: Knut Erik Jensen
105 mins, cert 15
This diverting documentary is about a male voice choir from a remote fishing village in Norway who sound like a very, very depressed Buena Vista Social Club. Director Knut Erik Jensen's film is unfussy; it does not use a voiceover, nor does it record the questions that elicit reminiscences from the (mostly very elderly) Norwegian gentlemen as they put in a full rehearsal schedule in preparation for a big tour of Russia.
Their music is hauntingly sad: dominated by lyrical evocations of nature and the brevity of man's life. The choristers' attitude to their ensemble is a haunted gratitude for the respite it offers from a pretty bleak, islanded existence on the Finnmark coast. The choir rub along together well enough, until their tour takes them to Murmansk, its environment poisoned by collective Soviet industry, and the choir's one communist becomes involved in a furious row with everyone else. "Lenin was the greatest man of the 20th century!" he roars. "You lot probably think Bjorn from the Fishermens' Union was the greatest!"
The only false note is struck by Jensen's very contrived scenes showing the choir singing for his camera outside in the bitter cold - with the soundtrack clearly added afterwards in a warm and comfy studio. One shivering 96-year-old singer actually has icicles hanging from his nose. The movie's publicity material informs us that this gentleman has since died. I hope the director can live with himself.
Muhammad Ali: The Greatest ****
Dir: William Klein
120 mins, cert 15
A fascinating sidebar to next week's big Ali biopic. William Klein's documentary - never shown before on general release in this country - is in two parts. The first is in black-and-white, about Ali's title fight and controversial rematch with Sonny Liston in 1964; the second part, in colour, is about the mighty 1974 rumble in the jungle with George Foreman.
It's the first half that's interesting. Klein has some riveting material, including a gruesome introduction to the "Louisville syndicate" that backed the then Cassius Clay - their sinister craggy faces looming up like something out of a bad dream. The detail of early 60s Miami, the flickering camera work, the hint of racial tension, the paranoid hints that Liston will lose if the "price is right", all give the film a Zapruder-ish feel. As for the Zaire half, well, it doesn't come close to Leon Gast's superb When We Were Kings. But Ali is always compelling, no matter what he's doing. Look out for a very young Harry Carpenter.
Just Visiting *
Dir: Jean-Marie Poiré
With: Jean Reno, Christian Clavier, Christina Applegate, Matt Ross, Bridgette Wilson, Tara Reid
88 mins, cert PG
A Hollywood remake, co-written by veteran crowd-pleaser John Hughes, of the knockabout 1993 comedy Les Visiteurs, which did big business in its native France, but left British ribs untickled. Jean Reno and co-writer Christian Clavier reprise their roles as the 12th-century nobleman Count Thibault and his smelly Baldrickian squire (although, bafflingly, the clean-shaven Clavier looks better turned out than the broodingly bestubbled Reno). Watching this movie grinding the gearbox of its tired, sub-Crocodile Dundee storyline and mugging its way through the dated and lumpen comedy routines is really very depressing.
