Miss Julie (members and guests only) IFC Dublin
Set in a stately 19th-century Swedish rural house, Mike Figgis's adaptation of August Strindberg's 1888 play, Miss Julie, is essentially a two-hander concerned with issues of sex and class politics, and the destructive potential of both. The action occurs on midsummer's night; Miss Julie (Saffron Burrows) is despondent after the breaking off of her engagement. In the absence of her father, the count, she spends the night drinking with the servants, but soon ends up with one Jean (Peter Mullan), the count's footman. Jean is fiercely ambitious and resentful of the place the class system has allotted him. A victim himself, he preys on Miss Julie's vulnerability, seeing her seduction as a chance to better himself. Caught between the two is Jean's fiancee Christine, sensitively portrayed by Maria Doyle Kennedy.
Where other film adaptations of plays, like Mamet's American Buffalo, have failed in making the transition to the new medium, Figgis, in the main, succeeds with Miss Julie. While the movie is mostly set in the interior of one kitchen, that limitation is successfully overcome by the astounding acting of the two leads - whose male and female roles are perfectly equal and balanced, a rare thing in film.
While some viewers might find the pace of a 19th-century naturalistic theatre text a little trying, and the focus on two characters somewhat claustrophobic, a little effort will ensure complete absorption for the film's 100-odd minutes. Emotional intensity and imaginative use of the camera under Figgis's direction makes Miss Julie utterly contemporary and compelling.
Ian Kilroy
Me, Myself and Irene (18) General release
The latest Bobby and Peter Farrelly comedy may have riled mental health campaigners around the world with its central gag about a man suffering from Split Personality Disorder, but the many viewers who loved There's Something About Mary are likely to be more disappointed by the fact that Me, Myself and Irene is just not as much fun as its predecessor. The Farrellys have suffered dips before - their first hit, Dumb and Dumber, was followed by the tenpin bowling extravaganza, Kingpin, which flopped at the box office. But, as all true Farrelly fans know, Kingpin was an honourable disaster, a celebration of human failure and moral turpitude which was just too extreme for most audiences.
Me, Myself and Irene, though, is just sloppy. Perhaps the fact that the script has been sitting on the shelf since 1990 has something to do with it, but this tale of hapless Rhode Island policeman Charlie Baileygates (Jim Carrey) and his hyper-aggressive alterego, Hank, has, by Farrelly standards, inferior gags and a formulaic plot. Charlie/Hank is assigned to take fugitive golf course designer Renee Zellweger (slightly over-winsome as usual) back to New York, but ends up going on the run to protect her from corrupt cops and crooks, while falling in love along the way. Ho hum. There's none of the inspired brilliance and comic timing here of the zipper scene in Mary, for example, although the brothers' taste for human bodily fluids is as much in evidence as ever. If Carrey's particular brand of over-the-top physical comedy is in any tradition, it's that of Jerry Lewis, and Me, Myself and Irene owes more than a little to Lewis's The Nutty Professor. But having already done that particular schtick, with more style and success, in The Mask (not to mention Batman Forever, The Cable Guy and Liar, Liar), the joke is wearing very thin. After taking more serious roles in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, Me, Myself and Irene is a retrograde step for an actor whose talent doesn't always receive the praise it deserves.
Hugh Linehan
Space Cowboys (12) General release
Clint Eastwood's directorial efforts of recent years have all tended towards the theme that life begins at 65. In the superior weepie, The Bridges of Madison County, he played the virile photographer who sweeps housewife Meryl Streep off her feet. In the risible True Crime, he tried to convince us that he still had the chops to woo women a fraction of his age, while racing to save the innocent on Death Row. In his latest effort, 70-year-old Clint and his wrinkly pals blast off into space to save the world. Presumably, next time out he'll be winning gold at the Olympics.
Actually, Space Cowboys is a good deal more entertaining than True Crime, thanks in large part to its ensemble cast of vintage performers. Donald Sutherland, James Garner and the ( much younger, but still craggy) Tommy Lee Jones, along with Eastwood, are Team Dedalus, a group of USAF test pilots groomed in the 1950s for the first space flight, but ignominiously bumped at the last moment in favour of a chimpanzee. Four decades later, a Soviet satellite is spinning out of its orbit above earth, and only Team Dedalus, with its knowledge of antiquated technology, can fix the problem.
"Preposterous" is too polite a word for this particular scenario, but the veterans approach it with plenty of good humour, which keeps proceedings chugging amiably, if predictably, along for the first hour or so. It's when they lift off that Space Cowboys loses its bearings, turning into an Armageddon-style race against time to avert global catastrophe. As a director, Eastwood has always been rightly acclaimed for his pared-down, no-nonsense style, but he just doesn't have the instincts for this sort of sci-fi action, and the entire movie quickly collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.
Hugh Linehan
