Twin Falls Idaho (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
An original and fascinating film on the co-dependence of coinjoined twins, Twin Falls Idaho is rendered particularly topical by the recent case of the moral dilemma facing the parents and doctors of conjoined twin sisters at a London hospital. The film, which is fictional, was written by 27-year-old identical twins, Michael and Mark Polish, directed by Michael, and features both brothers in the central roles.
They play Francis and Blake Falls, conjoined twins who were given up for adoption by their mother. The film introduces them on their 25th birthday, when, as a present for Francis, Blake arranges for a prostitute (Michelle Hicks) to come to their hotel room. We see the brothers through her eyes - two good-looking young men with an extraordinary interdependence, as they eat, make a telephone call, play a guitar. Blake, however, is physically stronger than Francis, who has a heart condition.
This precisely photographed film places the viewer in the position of a voyeur as it notes how the twins are used to being stared at by a curious public, and it wittily turns the tables at a Halloween fancy dress party where the twins, in their smart, custom-made, three-legged suit, suddenly don't appear any different to those around them. Twin Falls Idaho is a thoughtful and sensitive film that remains consistently absorbing all the way to its unsentimental and unpredictable conclusion.
Liberty Heights (15) Selected cinemas
The fourth film from writer-director Barry Levinson to be set in his native Baltimore, Liberty Heights was triggered, Levinson says, by his angry reaction to a review of his film, Sphere, in Entertainment Weekly. What specifically annoyed him were what he regarded as derogatory remarks regarding the Jewishness of the psychologist played in Sphere by Dustin Hoffman.
This prompted Levinson to recall his childhood impression that everyone in the world was Jewish, and the same view is expressed at the outset of Liberty Heights by Ben Kurtzman (played by newcomer Ben Foster), a high school student living in middle-class Baltimore in the autumn of 1954, as desegregation is introduced in American schools.
This affectionately-treated rites-of-passage tale, which plays like a prequel to Levinson's 1959-set Diner, follows the experiences of Ben, his brother (Adrien Brody) and their friends as they face up to the religious, racial and class distinctions in their area. The period detail is lovingly recreated in an appealing though rather over-extended film that is handsomely photographed by Chris Doyle (who also lit In the Mood for Love).
Aidan Walsh Master of the Universe (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
This new Irish documentary is an immensely entertaining and surprisingly touching filmed portrait of a unique and colourful character. Filmed over four years by Shimmy Marcus, it follows the experiences of Aidan Walsh, now 46, who achieved a cult following in Dublin with his 1987 album, A Life Story Of My Life, produced by Gavin Friday and Simon Carmody, and his outrageous stage performances.
Keenly structured by Marcus to catch and match both the exuberant and reflective aspects of its subject, the film sometimes plays like Spinal Tap, following a flamboyant personality who insisted on identity cards for his closest friends, stood against Bertie Ahern in a general election (and got 43 votes) and attempted to build a rock'n'roll hotel on the site of what is now the Virgin Megastore in Dublin.
Parallel to observing his wild, anarchic activities, the film confronts his traumatic childhood experiences at the Lota home for boys, and it rightly tackles attitudes to Walsh and whether we are laughing with or at him.
It Was An Accident (18) Selected cinemas
British cinema's inexplicable preoccupation with geezers, guns and Cockney rhyming slang continues dismally with Metin Huseyin's cliche-riddled crime yarn, It Was An Accident. It features Chiwetel Ejiofor as Nicky, who is released after four years in jail for a crime he insists he did not commit, and follows his attempts to go straight and to build a better life for his foul-mouthed young son who is, we are told, a gifted musician.
Back on the streets of Walthamstow, however, Nicky is torn between the love of his life (Thandie Newton), a manic gangster (Max Beesley with his hair bleached and his teeth in braces), former criminal associates and a racist detective. The flaccid screenplay - by Ol Parker, who wrote the far grittier TV film, Loved Up - piles on the ludicrous coincidences and ham-fisted humour to numbing effect.
Ian Kilroy adds: Coyote Ugly (15) General release
Twenty-one year-old Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) is a New Jersey girl with a velvet voice and stunning good looks who goes up to New York determined to make it as a songwriter. However, as the hard reality of life in the big city becomes apparent, her dream is sidelined by the necessity of earning money. She gets a job as a dancing girl in a the city's hottest and newest bar, Coyote Ugly, and finds romance - and, eventually, success.
Coyote Ugly peddles the dubious idea that being a sex object constitutes girl power. The dancing girls who feature in the film are essentially strippers without the stripping, and the message is that money, fame and sex should be coveted above all things. While this will make any feminist furious, there are unlikely to be many among the 12-year-old audience members; it is more likely that a thronged audience of pubescent boys, complete with rioting hormones, will be diverted by the short skirts and titillation on display. Of course the girls can find some diversion too, in the shape of the (sometimes) scantily-clad hunk Kevin (Adam Garcia).
