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Our critic round up the week's other new releases
1/2
23 November 2012

Cinema Komunisto

No cert, 100 mins

**

In Mila Turajilic’s documentary a group of sentimental old Yugoslavian film-makers sit and yammer about the good old days (when the cine-mad President Tito fell out with Stalin and decided to create his own film industry via the Belgrade studio, Avala). Except that the epics they made don’t look good and their fawning over the Hollywood types who flocked to Avala is slightly icky. Tito, Yul Brynner, Orson Welles, Sophia Loren... There’s a fascinating documentary to be made about how, and why, these men came to share common ground. Let’s hope someone makes it.

The House I Live In

Cert 15, 108 mins

****

Eugene Jarecki’s documentary about America’s war on drugs has a personal edge as writer David Simon expands on his thesis (subtly laid out in series three of The Wire) that it’s a phoney one, designed to destroy black communities. We meet Jarecki’s black ex-nanny, a lovely woman whose son died of a heroin overdose. She talks about a rape that drove her to find work in the northern US, then the lack of jobs that made her wind up paying more attention to her Jewish charges than her own kids. The director’s point is that the political is always personal. Uncomfortable, compulsive viewing.

Starbuck

Cert 15, 109 mins

***

A fortysomething’s past as an anonymous sperm donor comes back to haunt him when 142 of his offspring file a legal suit to discover his identity. Ken Scott’s French-Canadian comedy drama has won all sorts of prizes but it’s hard to know why. Leading man Patrick Huard is likeable and the central ideas intriguing — is privacy a constitutional right? Is it mad or eminently rational to masturbate for cash? — but there’s no sense of momentum and, tonally, it’s all over the place. Not worth boycotting but hardly a must-see.

First

Cert 12A, 200 mins

**

A bid to cash in on — ahem, celebrate — this summer’s London Olympic dream. Caroline Rowland talks to 12 individuals who took part in the Games for the first time, following them from their homes around the globe to the various contests. British track cyclist Laura Trott is sweet, while an impoverished Albanian girl who flips out when she loses to a rival is affecting. But too many voices compete for our attention and there are no revelations. In fact, brain-battering-banality is the order of the day. If this film were to take part in a race for excellence, the title would not be applicable.

Lawrence of Arabia

Cert PG, 227 mins

*****

Don't be put off by all those Oscars: David Lean’s 1962 epic is not a prestige movie. Young soldier-poet TE Lawrence, fleeing the “fat” Oxfordshire countryside for the “clean” deserts of Arabia, is pettish, nervous, self-conscious, preening, sneaky, sadistic, self-aware, loyal, bold... The list goes on but we don’t feel overwhelmed by the contradictions. They feel natural. So does the story’s arc. The man’s gift for grand gestures sweeps others along with him; he gradually realises he’s not in control of these tides and is hurled into a depression that never quite lifts. As perfectly embodied by Peter O’Toole, pictured, he’s a bipolar boy whose vulnerability allows us to explore East-West politics from an angle that still feels new. Indeed, the epics being churned out in 2012 seem bland by comparison, full of pantomime grotesques, benign patriarchs and token females. Warning: this slyly trippy movie may seriously damage your ability to enjoy anything else.

Ninja Scroll

Cert 18, 94 mins

**

It's a classic, apparently. But this 1993 Japanese animé from Yoshiaki Kawajiri lacks crossover appeal. Soulful samurai Jubei is awfully bland and it’s impossible to take his tortured romance with feisty female ninja Kagero seriously (early on, she’s the victim of an attempted rape, which is portrayed with soft porn-ish glee). The American accents are also grating. Still, credit where it’s due — the animation is spectacular. An encounter between flower petals and a swarm of wasps is especially pretty.

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