“That’s what I want. No pity,†explains François Cluzet’s quadriplegic, Paul, to his adviser about his “pitiless†carer, Driss (Omar Sy, very convincing), a Senegalese rough diamond from a La Haine-style estate in Paris.
In Léos Carax’s genre-hopping wonder, a mystery man (Denis Lavant) is chauffeured around Paris in a stretch limousine for a day, emerging nine times and acting out a different prearranged scenario on each occasion.
“If you’re bigger and more stupid you’d be a bully too, it’s called survival of the thickest,†explains the rotund Neil to Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee), a boy who can see ghosts.
The ‘Deep Throat’ star’s biopic, which just premiered at Sundance, squanders its potential.
Fridays are funnier with a classical cartoon at noon, from Deceptive Cadence.
Karl Baxter does wholesale retail in Britain. He bought three huge shipments of DVDs titled The Science of Lance Armstrong.
A hymn to adolescent self-absorption, Ol Parker’s Now Is Good stars Dakota Fanning as a teenage girl with one of those rare strains of terminal cancer which don’t make you look unhealthy.
A bold, atypical thriller from Ealing, scripted by the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan and starring Maggie Smith in her first film role.
Forget the excellent John Thaw series. In Nick Love’s joyless take on Flying Squad hard-nuts Ray Winstone and Plan B play Regan and Carter, boozing, corrupt coppers who are being investigated by internal affairs (Steven Mackintosh) for their diabolical tactics: “There’s even talk of baseball bats”.
James Marsh’s determinedly downbeat tale, set in 1993 during the Northern Ireland peace process, centres on Colette (Andrea Riseborough, excellent), an inept IRA terrorist who is captured by MI5 after bungling a London Tube bombing.