Apocalypse Now Redux *****
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola
With: Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper, Aurore Clément, Laurence Fishburne, Albert Hall, Harrison Ford
197 mins, cert 15
www.miramax.com/apocalypsenow
The impossible has been achieved: Apocalypse Now has been made more self-indulgent! Francis Ford Coppola's extended new version of his 1979 magnum opus amplifies everything brilliant about it, and everything exasperating. The literary references are still there, still skin-pricklingly irritating and dumb; especially Marlon Brando reading Frazer's Golden Bough and Jessie L Weston's From Ritual to Romance in his lair. (So that's what Colonel Kurtz has been doing - revising for his mock English A-levels.)
And all the objections still hold true: in its utter unconcern with the Indo-Chinese, Apocalypse Now licensed a slew of movies which suggested that the real victims of Vietnam were photogenic n-n-n-nineteen-year-old American soldiers: the "bad trip" theory of imperialism. Incredible to think how solemnly we, the liberal dinner party classes, all agreed that Apocalypse Now was the "good" film about Vietnam as opposed to, say, John Wayne's The Green Berets. Did we explain that distinction to gung-ho screenwriter John Milius?
But what an incredibly exhilarating, dazzling, exciting film it still is. The opening napalm sequence. The Wagner attack sequence. Everything Robert Duvall says and does. And the new footage beefs up the later stretches. Coppola brings back a fascinating, if verbose, scene in a French plantation, in which the old French masters try to explain to the Americans how bitter their white man's burden of empire has felt. It is a restoration that goes a long way to correct the movie's political naivety, though it exposes the limitations of Martin Sheen's blank tough-guy performance, and it's topped off with an embarrassingly softcore Bilitis-style "erotic" moment.
Coppola also brings back the Playboy bunnies for a tragicomic sex scene in their helicopter - contrived, but certainly watchable. And Brando has an outstanding new scene, reading aloud an article about the war from Time magazine claiming that things "smell better" now. "How do they smell to you, soldier?" he asks his prisoner, Martin Sheen. That's a line to match Duvall's napalm-in-the-morning haiku. What passion this film has - what mad daring, what ambition. And what have we got now? CGI. Apocalypse Now is supposed to be a film you grow out of. I can only say it's time to grow back into it again. Because they really don't make them like this any more.
Heist ****
Dir: David Mamet
With: Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay, Patti LuPone, Karen Cliche, Christopher Kaldor
107 mins, cert 15
heist.warnerbros.com
This is a very entertaining and elegant bullion robbery thriller; it is constructed as cunningly as any top-of-the-range act of criminal daring, and teems with playful, seductive misdirections. It has, in fact, some of the perspective trickery of earlier Mamet movies such as House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, but the emphasis is more on the muscular tension of old- fashioned high-stakes thievery with all its elaborate choreography. Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Rebecca Pidgeon and Danny DeVito all get classic Mamet dialogue, firing off zingers like bullets - that is, when they're not actually firing off bullets. Mamet gives a deliciously twisted exchange to Hackman and the unspeakable DeVito as the latter is dying, comparable to Orson Welles' last lines in Touch of Evil.
Me Without You ***
Dir: Sandra Goldbacher
With: Anna Friel, Kyle MacLachlan, Anna Popplewell, Trudie Styler, Michelle Williams, Oliver Milburn
108 mins, cert 15
Sandra Goldbacher has followed up her confident, distinctive debut The Governess with this enjoyable, feelgood comedy: a bittersweet tale of two best friends who grow up amongst the ever-changing pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Dawson's Creek star Michelle Williams does a very good English accent as Holly, the bookish Jewish girl who has an intense relationship with her sexier best mate Marina: Anna Friel, who journeys further into shriekingly neurotic AbFab mode as her character gets older. (Stella McCartney is thanked in the closing credits for "Chloe".) There are many nicely observed touches, but nothing too obvious: no Spacehoppers, thank heavens. We get strong, sympathetic supporting turns from Allan Corduner, as Holly's gentle, understanding dad, and Trudie Styler as Marina's mutton-dressed-as-trendy-lamb mum. It's impossible not to like a film with Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World on the soundtrack.
Spy Game **
Dir: Tony Scott
With: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Omid Djalili
130 mins, cert 15
www.spygame.net
What a very boring actor Robert Redford is. The 64-year-old director-superstar has acquired, in front of the camera, none of the presence of Paul Newman, and has moreover jettisoned the laconic wit of his young performances, choosing only old bimbo roles.
He is a black hole in this movie, a stately, inert figure bringing nothing whatever to his relationship with Brad Pitt other than a chilling reminder of what's in store for Pitt's gorgeous chops.
Redford is supposed to be the veteran CIA operative teaching Pitt the great game of espionage. But when Pitt is imprisoned in China, Redford has to play another game - outsmarting his treacherous superiors who want to hang Pitt out to dry.
Director Tony Scott shows plenty of pizzazz in locations all over the world: but the laborious flashback plot is uninvolving, and his leading men strike no sparks.
Baby Boy *
Dir: John Singleton
With: Tyrese, Taraji P Henson, Omar Gooding, Tamara LaSeon Bass, Candy Ann Brown, Adrienne-Joi Johnson, Ving Rhames, Snoop Dogg, Angell Conwell
129 mins, cert 15
www.spe.sony.com/movies/babyboy
Laden with cliches and sentimentally lenient on its lead character, John Singleton's movie dashes the expectations it raises with the intriguing imagery and ideas of its first five minutes. It opens with a voiceover riff to the effect that modern society infantilises the young black man in America. Jody, played by model and music star Tyrese Gibson, is shown lounging in an enormous womb. He lives with his momma - with two babymommas himself - without ever showing any inclination to grow up and take responsibility. But he is redeemed through, well, violence. He stands up to his girlfriend's obnoxious ex-squeeze, played by the famous rap star who, in honour of his new Hollywood seriousness, styles himself Snoop Dogg, without the Doggy. The ubiquitous, casual sexism is never seriously questioned and many scenarios look worryingly similar to the Wayans brothers' 1996 spoof Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.
Glitter *
Dir: Vondie Curtis-Hall
With: Mariah Carey, Max Beesley, Da Brat, Tia Texada, Valarie Pettiford, Ann Magnuson, Terrence Dashon Howard
104 mins, cert PG
www.glittermovie.com
A sugary, over-produced power ballad of a movie. Mariah Carey plays Billie, a gruesome soft-focus version of herself, overcoming a hazily imagined tough childhood to become a megastar. Unlike Whitney, Billie has no bodyguard, just our own Max Beesley as the tempestuous DJ-boyfriend-manager. It is perfunctorily set in the 1980s, a pointedly backdated period in which Carey can plausibly carry off a Britney-standard of youth and career-heat. At any rate, she is comfortably out-acted by the cherrywood kitchen counter-top in her spiffy Manhattan apartment.
Esther Kahn *
Dir: Arnaud Desplechin
With: Summer Phoenix, Ian Holm, Fabrice Desplechin, Emmanuelle Devos, Frances Barber, Laszlo Szabo, Akbar Kurtha, Claudia Solti, Berna Raif
163 mins, cert 15
www.bacfilms.com/estherkahn
This is a real oddity, and a strange, terrible warning to directors who work outside their native tongue. Award-winning film-maker Arnaud Desplechin (who made the thoroughly intelligent Ma Vie Sexuelle) has directed this adaptation of a short story by the proto-modernist author and critic Arthur Symons. Summer Phoenix is Esther Kahn, a poor young Jewish girl in late 19th-century London who finds fulfilment - of a sort - as a successful actress, mentored by an older man, Nathan (Ian Holm), but falls into wretchedness. Desplechin has no feel whatsoever for 19th-century English, or for Victorian London, and the whole thing feels as if it has been translated from Martian, with a Martian cast and Martian supporting artists in elaborate disguise. Phoenix is extraordinarily wooden (plainly left all at sea by the director), which is very unfortunate considering how frequently we are told what a brilliant actress she's supposed to be. A very long, very unsuccessful two hours and 40 minutes in the cinema.
