Rock and a hard place

Jan 25 2007 Cinema

London, what ensues has a touch of the Educating Rita as he seeks to broaden her tastes and horizons with trips to the theatre and the National Gallery where, presumably casting himself as Adonis, he dubs her Venus after the Velazquez nude.

However, long dormant feelings reawakened, Maurice has other hopes and while she's clear about the limits of any hanky panky, even her rejections fuel his desires.

Until the relationship takes a darker turn when, having acquired a thug boyfriend, she starts abusing his affections and friendship.

Echoing Last Orders with its autumn years backdrop and intimations of mortality while drawing on O'Toole's own life and career for comedic and character reference, there's times when the pacing becomes a little sluggish and, once the central storyline gets going, Phillips is somewhat shunted into the background along with Richard Griffiths and Vanessa Redgrave as respectively a fellow actor chum and Maurice's still loving ex-wife.

However, O'Toole and Whittaker make a splendid double act and when the sparks catch, it offers a sharply funny and incredibly touching portrait of regret, longing and wisdom across the years.

• BOBBY  * * * *
  Cert 15, 119 mins

On Nov 22, 1967, President John F Kennedy was assassinated on Dealey Plaza, Dallas. It seemed America's vision of a New Camelot had died with him, all hope lost and buried. But then, a year later, in the spring of 68 his former Attorney General brother Robert announced he was going to run against Lyndon Johnson on the Democratic ticket.

Late in the evening of June 4, Kennedy was announced as the winner in the crucial California Primaries, a victory that would put him on a direct path to the White House and a policy that would seek an end to the war in Vietnam and an attempt to heal the divisions and violence tearing the country apart.

At 12.15am, after delivering one of the most potent speeches in American history, Kennedy made his way from LA's Ambassador Hotel ballroom to give a press conference. While passing through the food service pantry, he was apparently shot three times and five bystanders wounded by Sirhan Sirhan, a disaffected Palastinian.

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Estevez
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There's ample evidence to discredit this, and conspiracy theorists argue strong parallels with Dallas, but writer-director Emilio Estevez is more interested in being Robert Altman than Oliver Stone. Rather than make RFK, he's rather drawn on the Grand Hotel blueprint to put together an accomplished ensemble work that pulls together some 22 fictionalised characters, all assembled at the Ambassador, and their individual stories and relationships.

Some, such as manager Ebbers (William H Macy) or kitchen worker Jose (Freddy Rodriguez), are directly connected with the preparations, others, such as the factually authentic Diane (Lindsay Lohan) who's marrying a childhood friend (Elijah Wood) to save him from Vietnam, are emblematic of the political climate.

The narrative is full of interwoven and overlapping storylines. Diane and Virginia Fallon (Demi Moore), a faded alcoholic singer, are being attended to by hotel hairdresser Miriam Ebbers (a superb unrecognisable Sharon Stone who's learned of her husband's affair with a switchboard operator (Heather Graham) from Timmons (Christian Slater), the racist kitchen supervisor he's just fired.

Elsewhere, Jose's having to give up his tickets to a vital baseball game to work double shifts, a retired doorman (Anthony Hopkins) is reflecting on the old days, a married couple (Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt) are in crisis, Kennedy aide Wade (Joshua Jackson) is finalising arrangements and a drug dealing hippie (Ashton Kutcher) has given two campaign workers (Brian Geraghty, Shia Lebeouf) their first LSD trip.

Inevitably, not all the plotlines work, but for the most part Estevez (who also plays Fallon's belittled husband) succeeds in detailing the individual hopes and fears while never losing focus of the bigger picture's impending tragedy.

Where his absorbing film scores strongest though is the decision not to have any actor play Kennedy. Instead, opening with a contemporarily resonant montage of the nation in strife, it uses archive audio and newsreel footage of him from the campaign, allowing his eloquence, charisma and passion to underscore the terrible sense of loss and despair his death created and the dark night of the soul into which America was plunged and from which, many would argue, it has still yet to emerge.

• THEM  * * *
  Cert 15, 77 mins

As you might anticipate from the title, this is a horror movie. All the more so since, while it does unfold at night in an isolated house, it doesn't involve psychotic bogie men with knives and, while the setting here is Romania and the terrorised victims French rather than Austrian, it's based on actual events that took place in the Czech Republic.

Looking forward to a weekend alone at their home in the woods, teacher Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and novelist husband Lucas (Michael Cohen), are disturbed by noises from outside. There's nobody there, but then as doors start slamming it, it becomes apparent that there's someone or something in the house. And that's pretty much all you need to know.

Setting the terror in motion with a prologue where a mother and daughter are attacked by forces unseen after their car broke down, the tension and nail-biting dread ratchets up to almost unbearable levels as man and wife flee through their darkened home before attempting to escape into an abandoned sewer.

Relying on brilliant use of sound, spare set design, glimpsed shadow figures and the audience's heightened imaginations, co-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud have created what many are calling this decade's Blair Witch Project. It's better and scarier than that, not least for a coda where you finally get to see the tormentors, chilling the blood with the banality of evil.

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