Latest video releases reviewed
AGAINST THE ROPES *
Directed by Charles S. Dutton. Starring Meg Ryan, Omar Epps, Charles S. Dutton, Tony Shalhoub, Tim Daly, Kerry Washington 15 cert
Meg Ryan, wearing the clothes of a younger, less busty crack whore, stars as America's most successful boxing manager, Jackie Kallen, in this hamfisted true story of hope, determination and all that rot. Kallen begins the film as a generous-hearted, plucky secretary and ends it as a sour-faced, ill-tempered despot. Ryan is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather good in these later scenes. Donald Clarke
WONDERLAND **
Directed by James Cox. Starring Val Kilmer, Lisa Kudrow, Kate Bosworth Dylan McDermott, Josh Lucas, Tim Blake Nelson, Christina Applegate, Eric Bogosian, Carrie Fisher, Janeane Garofalo, Ted Levine 18 cert
There are still, I suppose, people who, 14 years after GoodFellas, enjoy watching film stars taking cocaine to the accompaniment of The Rolling Stones. Such viewers will be entranced by Cox's routine stroll through the sordid decline of porn star John Holmes. The performances are all competent and the decadent atmosphere well realised, but Wonderland remains little more than a collection of cinematic quirks in search of a story to tell. Donald Clarke
TIME OF THE WOLF/LE TEMPS DU LOUP **
Directed by Michael Haneke. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Patrice Chéreau, Béatrice Dalle, Olivier Gourmet 18 cert
Austrian feel-bad auteur Haneke takes a characteristically cold and dispassionate view of a post-apocalyptic universe in this trying, meandering movie, which fritters away the dramatic possibilities of a riveting premise. Michael Dwyer
DOGVILLE *
Directed by Lars von Trier. Starring Nicole Kidman, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Bettany, Blair Brown, James Caan, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Gazzara, Chloë Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgård, John Hurt (narrator) 15 cert
Von Trier's shallow, rambling, pointless and suffocatingly boring film crawls along for three hours, using a single stylised set for its banal tale of a supposedly mysterious stranger (Kidman) demeaned and abused in a tiny Rocky Mountains village populated entirely by stereotypes. Michael Dwyer
