Running parallel to American cinema's renewed interest in the second World War, principally in Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, has been an upsurge in the exploration of neo-Nazism. Bryan Singer's Apt Pupil (showing at next month's Dublin Film Festival) examines the potential for evil within a clever high school student when he encounters a fugitive Nazi war criminal hiding out in northern California, while Tony Kaye's American History X investigates the roots of racism in a bright, articulate young man in southern California.
Kaye's film opens arrestingly on a monochrome sequence in which that young man, Derek Vinyard, responds to the attempted robbery of his car by two young blacks by shooting to kill. A triumphalist gleam radiates from his eyes as he stands awaiting arrest - wearing only boxer shorts to expose a chest prominently tattooed with a swastika - and watched by his younger brother, Danny, who idolises him and is in thrall to his incendiary torrents of racist rhetoric.
Structured in a series of colour sequences set in the present and in extended black-and-white flashbacks, American History X builds with a chilly, simmering power as it unflinchingly tackles the inculcation of extreme white supremacist beliefs, the naked hatred of their expression and their appalling physical manifestations. Be warned that one scene, in particular, is shockingly violent - to the point where the validity of its inclusion is questionable.
The screenplay by David McKenna - inspired by the similarly themed and even tougher Australian drama, Romper Stomper - undermines the movie at a crucial turning point. It offers a transition that is all too simplistically facilitated, suggesting that there is something missing, although it most likely wasn't built into the narrative in the first place.
The suggestion of some things being missing is prompted by the vigorous campaign mounted by Tony Kaye against the film's production company, New Line Cinema, which refused to allow him re-edit the movie in its entirety. This is the first feature film directed by Kaye, who in 1983 took out advertisements to proclaim himself "the most important British director since Alfred Hitchcock" and who is now said to be the highest-paid commercials director in the world.
We may never know if Kaye's proposed re-edit could have saved the film from faltering as it does in its later stages; what matters is that all that precedes that lapse makes for powerful, thoughtful and provocative cinema, shot through with urgency and contemporary relevance.
Edward Norton, arguably the most interesting and adventurous American actor of his generation, richly deserved the Oscar nomination he received for his brilliantly expressive portrayal of the pivotal character, Derek. Edward Furlong most impressively plays the impressionable Danny, and in her best performance since she played Patsy Cline in Coal Miner's Daughter, Beverly D'Angelo features as the brothers' ailing, chain-smoking, widowed mother. By Michael Dwyer
Payback (18) General release
Like American History X, Payback is a violent American drama from a first-time director who was over-ruled by the film's star and production company and whose cut of the film was subjected to tampering in post-production. In this case the star, Mel Gibson, actually brought in his hairdresser to re-shoot some sequences and to film additional material.
Gibson plays Porter, the movie's gravel-voiced narrator and anti-hero, who, double-crossed and left for dead by his wife and his former partner in crime, sets out on an obsessively single-minded mission of vengeance. Porter is the sort of man who robs beggars in the street, as the opening sequence establishes, but this emerges as one of the milder facets of his demeanour as the body count escalates.
Payback marks the directing debut of Brian Helgeland, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of LA Confidential, who shoots the film in a steely, de-saturated visual style and shows a good deal of flair in setting up the many action set-pieces, which are driven along by Chris Boardman's robust score.
That said, his film fails to compare on any level with John Boorman's terrific 1967 film, the multi-layered, existential drama Point Blank, which was drawn from the same source material as Payback - the novel, The Hunter, written by Donald E. Westlake under the name Richard Stark. However much he tries to cut through his movie star persona to capture the mean, close-to-psychotic nature of Porter, Mel Gibson is a wholly inadequate substitute for Lee Marvin, who was at the peak of his form in Boorman's film.
Helgeland sensibly surrounds Gibson with a strong supporting cast who make the most of their limited opportunities as subordinates in a star vehicle - Kris Kristofferson, Gregg Henry, Deborah Kara Unger, David Paymer, Maria Bello, Lucy Alexis Lu and an uncredited James Coburn.
Be advised that Payback is relentlessly and exceptionally violent. By Michael Dwyer
Conte d'Automne/An Autumn Tale (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
At 78, the venerable French film-maker, Eric Rohmer, completes his latest cycle of films - set over the four seasons - with the characteristically wise, low-key and telling Conte d'Autumne, a deceptively simple meditation on friendship, love and loneliness. So simple, and apparently inconsequential, is the first third of the film, when two women in their forties chat about their work and families, that the movie, like Seinfeld, seems to be "a comedy about nothing".
The two women are Isabelle and Magali - close, long-time friends who reflect on their changing circumstances as they stroll through the vineyard so proudly tended by Magali, its owner. Isabelle is preparing for her daughter's imminent wedding, while Magali is a widow with a married daughter and a son who has fallen in love. Magali would like to meet a man with a view to a long-term involvement, but she is nervously reluctant to do anything about it.
When Magali firmly rejects Isabelle's suggestion that she place an ad in a lonely hearts column, Isabelle takes it upon herself to advertise on her friend's behalf, and when the suave salesman, Gerald, replies, Isabelle takes her stratagem even further by meeting him - and assuming the identity and biographical details of Magali. This ploy, of course, carries with it several risks - ???????erald may not take too kindly to the deception when he meets the real Magali; that he might fall for Isabelle herself, or she for him or that Magali may not be at all pleased at being set up like this.and there is a further complication in that Magali's son's girlfriend, Rosina, is encouraging a relationship between Magali and Rosina's former philosophy professor and lover.
Rohmer situates his characters in idyllic locations in the Rhone valley, and he lights and frames them in a succession of classic compositions. With subtle delicacy he reveals their personalities, layer by layer, in this lovingly crafted and serenely paced film which proves as astute as it is entertaining. At its core is the wonderfully natural chemistry between Marie Riviere as Isabelle and Beatrice Romand as Magali - two actresses who made their film debuts with Rohmer in the 1970s and have worked with him several times since then. By Michael Dwyer
The Apple (Members and guests) IFC
Samirah Makhmalbaf's deceptively simple film, based on the true story of a Teheran husband and wife who kept their twin daughters locked in a room for 12 years, is the latest in a line of recent Iranian films which refuse or disrupt the categories of "fiction" or "drama". Eighteen-year-old Makhmalbaf is much less interested than some other Iranian directors in exploring the implications of those categories, but her use of the actual protagonists, and their impressive improvised performances in recreating the story, are what help make The Apple such a confident debut.
Shot over the course of two weeks, to an outline script devised by Makhmalbaf's father, the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the film opens with the family's neighbours finally sending a petition to the authorities complaining about the treatment of the girls, and follows the investigation by care workers as they try to assess the situation. Makhmalbaf re-enacts these events with assurance, and sometimes with a wry sense of humour, employing a series of allegorical symbols to illustrate and illuminate the different points of view. On one level, her film can be seen as an interrogation of patriarchal attitudes taken to an unacceptable extreme in an Islamic culture undergoing social change, but Makhmalbaf's focus remains firmly on her subjects and the detail of their lives.
Showing with The Apple is Kirsten Sheridan's award-winning short film, Patterns, which features a remarkable performance from young Ben Engel as an autistic boy struggling to deal with the problems of everyday life. By Hugh Linehan
Mighty Joe Young (PG) General release
The original 1947 film of Mighty Joe Young was a light-hearted and relatively charming attempt by RKO to rip off its own previous hit, King Kong. This so-so Disney re-make loses the charm, and fails to compensate with its state-of-the-art effects. Much of the fault lies with the lumbering script, which lurches in fits and bounds from over-extended sequences in which nothing much happens to the set-pieces that are the film's raison d'etre, culminating with a Kong-ish rampage across some of Hollywood's best-known landmarks. Some of these set-pieces are memorable enough to hold the attention of the under-12s at whom the movie is aimed, but the younger contingent is likely to become restless during the many longueurs, and older viewers will find little to keep them entertained in the wooden performances of Bill Paxton and Charlize Theron. By Hugh Linehan
The Rugrats Movie (Gen) General release
If you're reading this review, you probably already know that The Rugrats is the children's TV phenomenon of the Nineties (sorry, Tinky Winky). If you've actually gone so far as to sit down and watch the cartoon, you know one big secret of its success: in spite of its ubiquitous pre-school protagonists, for us larger viewers it's really a satirical domestic drama about modern parents.
To heck with the kiddie characters, which are all familiar types from generations of adventure narratives. Check out the grownups: the feminist mom, the single dad, the stay-at-home father, the career-crazed mother - all obsessed to a greater or lesser extent with the quality of their parenting. The satire is simple: in virtually every episode the toddlers run completely out of control, often without the parents even noticing.
This is basically the plot of The Rugrats Movie, only more so. Too much more so. To fill 75 minutes and a large screen - and, perhaps most importantly, to fill in the age gap between the TV show's core under-five fans and their grownup minders - the Rugrats team (producers Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo, directors Norton Virgien and Igor Kovalyov, writers David N. Weiss and J. David Stem) have felt the need to pump up the volume, the pace and the scares. Crucially (and fatally, to my increasingly bored mind), they've de-domesticated it, setting most of the action in a mythically dark and rainy forest, where all the little ones are lost.
The plot has an archetypal core, to be sure: heroic one-year-old Tommy Pickles gets a new baby brother, Dil (in itself a dubious development for their by-the-book mom, Didi). The film chooses to play out their sibling drama amidst the roaring cataracts and slavering wolves of the forest - including a truly frightening, thunder-clapping Cain-and-Abel moment. Meanwhile, the parents' hysteria reaches fever pitch early and rises from there, complete with the 1990s Hollywood standard; media-feeding-frenzy sequences.
The Rugrats come to the big screen with some quite stunning animation, providing a dynamic and convincing sense of movement and space in which the crudely-drawn characters sometimes seem misfited. Also added are a few tolerable songs: bratty Angelica, my daughters' favourite, sings a variation on Blondie's One Way or Another for us thirty-something parents. Thanks, but no thanks. By Harry Browne
