"Lethal Weapon 4" 18s Nationwide
If the wisdom has it that everyone in Hollywood is trying to make last year's hit movie, then it's hardly surprising that franchises - the big titles that spawn sequel after sequel - are the holy grail of every major studio. But franchises, while lucrative, tend to fall into decline as the law of diminishing returns sets in. Directors leave, stars get older, scripts more self-indulgent, and audiences become bored. Not so Lethal Weapon 4, which was one of this summer's box office hits in the US, and perhaps its competitors should take note, for the formula for success in Richard Donner's comedy thriller series is as simple as they come - Donner just keeps making the same movie over and over again.
If you're not a fan of the particular brand of tongue-in-cheek mayhem practised by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, then this will clearly be a problem. Don't go to Lethal Weapon 4 expecting to see anything you haven't seen before, because the building blocks are exactly the same as usual. Glover is still worrying about his family, Gibson is still finding it hard to commit to his relationship and Joe Pesci is still running around in the background acting the idiot. There's another sinister bunch of foreign nasties who Gibson and Glover will get in the end. Many cars are destroyed and many chops are busted (especially by chief baddie Jet Li, who displays some nifty martial artistry). There are rooftop chases, ridiculous stunts, and the series's only notable stylistic tic - its fascination with water - is amply displayed yet again.
A perfunctory subplot about our two heroes expecting babies (a grandchild for Glover and a first child for Gibson with the sadly under-used Rene Russo, who's still hanging in there from #3) and a nod to the teen market with the advent of comedian Chris Rock as a hyperactive young detective, can't disguise the sheer unoriginality of the whole thing, which is so shameless it's almost admirable.
Hugh Linehan
"Character" (Members and guests) IFC, Dublin
The announcement of the Academy Award-winner in the Best Foreign Film category tends to be a rather depressing experience, with the prize usually going to the schmaltzy or the second-rate. But Character, this year's winner, is a significant exception - an assured and stylish debut feature that introduces a distinctive new directorial talent to the world in Dutch film-maker Mike van Diem.
Set amid the warehouses, merchant buildings and docklands of 1920s Rotterdam, Character stars Fedja van Huet (who bears a remarkable resemblance to the American actor Robert Downey jnr) as Jacob, an ambitious young man raised in poverty by his unmarried mother. Determined to make his way in life, van Huet embarks on a career as a clerk in a legal firm, with plans to climb the social ladder. But across the city lives Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir), his natural father, a mysterious, malevolent figure who is Rotterdam's most feared bailiff. Told in flashback as the police investigate Dreverhaven's murder, van Diem's film charts the intense bond of rivalry and hatred that develops between the older man and his son as van Huet struggles to make his way in life in spite of (or because of) his father's interference.
The social and moral ironies of this strange relationship are observed with a keen eye and considerable cinematic style - Dreverhaven in particular is a remarkable creation, recalling some of the most memorable antiheroes of 1920s Expressionist cinema, and van Diem's camera swoops around him with a bravura energy reminiscent of the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink or Jeunet and Caro's Delicatessen. The violent political strife between workers and police on the streets of the city forms a backdrop to the central relationship, and a counterpoint to the capitalism which exerts such influence over both father and son, and these different threads are intelligently woven in this fascinating, memorable and highly original film. Hugh Linehan
"Love Is the Devil" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
Subtitled Study For A Portrait Of Francis Bacon, John Maybury's Love Is the Devil presents an impressive, impressionistic portrait of the volatile Irish-born artist who died in Madrid six years ago, at the age of 83. Refreshingly eschewing the hackneyed conventions of the traditional biopic, Maybury's film does not purport to draw a complete picture of Bacon, nor a significantly illuminating one of the artist's life and work.
A film-maker and an artist himself, Maybury is a disciple and one-time collaborator of the late Derek Jarman, whose influence is evident throughout the Bacon film. In his work as a prolific pop promo maker Maybury won several awards for his strikingly minimalist video for Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U.
The production of Love Is the Devil clearly was inhibited by the Bacon estate's refusal to give Maybury access to any of his paintings for the film, and many of the artist's closest associates refused to co-operate in any way with the film. Under those circumstances, Maybury opted - wisely, as it happens - to set the film in 1960s London and to focus on the tempestuous relationship between Bacon and George Dyer, the minor East End criminal who become his lover and model.
The film begins at the end, in Paris in 1971 - on the eve of a major Bacon retrospective at the Grand Palais and on the night Dyer fatally overdosed on drink and drugs. The extended flashback that follows spans their eight turbulent years together, starting with the day when they first meet, when Bacon encounters Dyer as a burglar breaking into his home. "Take your clothes off, come to bed and you can take whatever you want," invites Bacon.
Attracted to Dyer's rough-trade persona, Bacon soon becomes his lover in a sado-masochistic relationship. Bacon takes the submissive role in that relationship, but he reciprocates the cruelty in his verbal put-downs of Dyer, an inarticulate man derided by many of Bacon's socially conscious coterie. In one of his Wildean epigrams, Bacon quips: "Champagne is for my real friends, and real pain is for my sham friends."
A quintessential art film about an artist, Love Is the Devil is shot in a stylised, elliptical style which views several of the scenes in the bitchy, boozy environment of The Colony Club in Soho through the distorted image of a drinking glass.
These disturbing pills-and-drink-soaked days chronicled by Maybury are vividly brought to life by Daniel Craig - even more quietly powerful than in his unforgettable portrayal of Geordie in Our Friends In The North - as George Dyer, and by the sublime and complex portrayal of Francis Bacon by Derek Jacobi, a gifted stage actor seizing the rich opportunities offered by his fullest, most challenging screen role to date. In one of many memorable scenes, Jacobi's Bacon brushes his teeth with Vim and colours his hair with shoe polish.
Michael Dwyer
"Kissing a Fool" (15) selected cinemas
Writer-director Doug Ellin makes an entirely inauspicous feature debut with this feeble and witless would-be romantic comedy. It centres on the triangular relationship between two unlikely best friends - the brash womaniser and TV sports reporter, Max (David Schwimmer from Friends) and the sensitive writer, Jay (Jason Lee from Chasing Amy) - and Samantha (Israeli actress Mili Avital) the young woman who is Jay's editor and becomes Max's fiancee after a whirlwind romance.
The contrived and irritating structure of the yarn involves Jay's chain-smoking publisher (Bonnie Hunt) recounting the interconnecting relationships f Jay, Max and Samantha to a pair of wedding guests who appear fascinated by the tale, even though they barely know the characters involved. In Doug Ellin's tiresome scheme of things, I found it impossible to share in their implausible fascination with the story for a minute.
Michael Dwyer
