An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Scrumptious aesthetics: Atonement
Misfit teen: Hallam Foe
Brilliantly witty: The Hoax
One-sided: The War On Democracy
Young cast: Rocket Science
World War II romance in Atonement, Jamie Bell as a creepy misfit in Hallam Foe and Richard Gere stars in The Hoax.
DVD OF THE WEEK
Atonement
Universal Pictures UK, 15, £19.99
*****
Like all right-minded people, I was just as thrilled at the news Keira Knightley wasn't nominated for an Oscar as I was that this otherwise practically flawless British film is up for seven of them. Which is a bit harsh, because our Keira actually puts in a rather decent turn as Cecilia, a cut-glass, Cambridge-educated beauty on the brink of a passionate affair with the housekeeper's son, Robbie (James McAvoy).
Yet love, happiness and promisingly steamy nookie are all dashed away when her fanciful 13-year-old sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan) accuses Robbie of a sexual crime he didn't commit, with tragic, star-crossed consequences.
Writer Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) has adapted Ian McEwan's 'unfilmable' best-seller with a brilliance and multi-layered intelligence that loses nothing in translation.
Also worthy of mention are Joe Wright's dazzling direction, the superbly nuanced performances, a perfectly attuned soundtrack and aesthetics so scrumptious you could eat them with a spoon.
At once a classy cerebral dissection of the dangerous consolations of fiction and a swoonsomely escapist World War II romance, it's a genuine buy-one-get-one-free treat. Bravo, chaps.
Extras: Deleted scenes, making-of featurette, director commentary. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
Hallam Foe
Walt Disney, 18, £17.99
****
Misfit teens don't come creepier than Jamie Bell's Hallam. The outsider is torn up by his mother's suicide and seeks solace in solitude - as well as his perverse habits of peeping through the windows of his Highlands neighbours, decorating himself in warpaint and dressing up in his dead mother's clothes.
Hallam doesn't sound likeable, but Bell does an astounding job of imbuing the grieving boy with such immense, childlike warmth that you can't help but groan in sympathy - and completely forget Billy Elliot's springy pirouettes.
Admittedly, things get a little hairy after Hallam's seductive and dominating stepmother drives him away to Edinburgh, where he embarks on a disturbed affair with his boss - disturbed because she bears a frightening resemblance to his mother.
But here, director David Mackenzie steps in with a knack for balance, couching suggestions of the Oedipus complex, murder and voyeurism in universally identifiable ideas of love, loss and revenge, resulting in a sharp, challenging and moving film.
Extras: Deleted scenes, director's commentary. Zena Alkayat
The Hoax
Momentum Pictures, 15, £15.99
****
Richard Gere dons the obligatory 'take me seriously' prosthetic nose for his best turn in years.
Fast-paced and brilliantly witty, this is the true story of Clifford Irving (Gere), a slippery but charming rogue of a writer who exists on both moral and financial credit - his books aren't selling and he repeatedly cheats on his wife (Marcia Gay Harden) until, in 1971, he hits on the idea of faking the 'authorised' autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, trusting that he won't be sued due to his subject's paranoid isolation and pending $137million legal payoff to Trans World Airlines.
We may already know his ballsy gamble doesn't pay off, but it's impossible not to fall for Irving's story-spinning chutzpah.
Alfred Molina is a nervy joy as Irving's sweaty accomplice, while director Lasse Hallstrom (My Life As A Dog) effortlessly spins us from playfully gripping conspiracy caper to darkly twisted character study.
Extras: Trailer - pah, what a con.
The War On Demoncracy
Lion's Gate, 12, £19.99
***
Veteran campaigner John Pilger's assured documentary about the Left's last stand in Latin America is unapologetically propagandistic.
No matter that recent election results don't quite bear out his theory that popular leftist movements are sweeping the continent: Pilger has jovial interviewee Hugo Chavez (to whom he is overly deferential) and a bloody history of horrific US intervention to mine, and does so with ferocious passion.
His focus is broadly similar to that of Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine, exploring the Washington Consensus and Milton Friedman's brand of capitalist fundamentalism, which has been 'tried out' to appalling effect in many Latin American countries to the benefit of US interests.
Documents reveal the extent of US complicity in toppling democratic leaders and supporting dictators; witnesses and survivors offer harrowing testimony of torture and mass murder; and Pilger finds the best possible baddie in snarling ex-CIA Latin American division head Duane Clarridge, who brazenly insists General Pinochet's crimes were 'worth it' to protect US national security ('I see,' drawls Pilger, looking down his glasses at possibly the best candidate ever for a cattle prod).
If pretty one-sided, it's still a moving and deeply felt piece of film-making - and Pilger has rarely been so positive.
Extras: None. Siobhan Murphy
Rocket Science
Optimum Home Entertainment, 15, £15.99
***
Spellbound, Jeffrey Blitz's hugely popular, Oscar-nominated spelling bee documentary, charted the choppy waters of high school's winners and losers. The promising young cast of Rocket Science does a good job of capturing that same realism for Blitz's fictional debut.
To make it in the world of US high-school debating, you must be able to spout forth copious words per second to cover every angle of your argument. At New Jersey's Plainsboro High School, Ben is the best there is; that is, until the final, when he suffers a meltdown and wonders what the point of it all is.
This episode prompts Ben's ultra-competitive partner, Ginny, to recruit Hal, a hormonal nervous wreck with a stutter who fails to understand Ginny's motives for shoehorning him into the high-confidence world of debate. Sadly, Hal is denied the punch-the-air ending that would've earned this high-minded high-school flick more at the box office. Still, for making extra-curricular debating watchable, Blitz deserves an A+.
Extras: Interviews, trailer. Sharon Lougher
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