Some 'forthcoming attractions':
Ang Lee’s
Brokeback Mountain (Jan 6th)has made all the running in the US critics’ end of year polls. The film is being touted as a gay western, but it’s a love story not a horse opera, even if Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger do play modern-day cowboys. It’s been over-praised, but Ledger's performance is a revelation, and the film is beautiful to look at, surprisingly frank, and ultimately very moving.
Breakfast on Pluto : January 13thNeil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto is another gay story – and infinitely more exuberant, with Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later; Batman Begins) vamping it up as an orphaned Irish transvestite searching for his mammy. Again it’s too long (Jordan and cowriter Patrick MacCabe unwisely number the 37 chapters) and sometimes aggravatingly excitable, but there are marvelously anarchic sequences too, especially as the film throws its determinedly upbeat hero(ine) up against The Troubles.
Jarhead: January 13thJake Gyllenhaal gets up to more macho maneuvers in Sam Mendes’ frustrating Jarhead a grunt’s eye view of Operation Desert Storm that’s vividly impressionistic but shirks the most pressing questions about Iraq.
A Cock and Bull Story: January 20thThe prolific Michael Winterbottom is back with an ingenious take on Laurence Sterne’s ‘unfilmable’ Tristram Shandy, A Cock and Bull Story. Steve Coogan takes the helm playing both father and son and is backed by a stellar British cast that includes Rob Brydon, Stephen Fry, David Walliams and Kelly MacDonald – and is sure to be one of his most commercial hits to date.
Cache (Hidden): January 27thCache is another powerhouse drama from Michael Haneke, the director of The Piano Teacher and Code Unknown, with Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche terrorised by surveillance videos made by persons unknown. A prize-winner at Cannes and the European Film Awards, Cache was probably the strongest movie at Toronto last year and features one of the most shocking scenes you’ll ever see.
Munich- Jan 27th
Oh, and there’s Steven Spielberg’s second movie in six months, Munich, with Eric Bana – a controversial drama focusing on the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics, where 11 Israeli athletes were murdered. The film has divided opinion in the States.
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