DVD OF THE WEEK

ME AND ORSON WELLES ****
Dir: Richard Linklater. Starring: Christian McKay, Zac Efron, Clare Danes

I love this movie, which is something I never thought I would say about a film starring Zac Efron. But young Zac, playing an idealistic teenager is just right. It is 1930s New York and he stumbles into a job at the nascent Mercury Theatre, just as aspiring director Orson Welles is about to stage his groundbreaking production of Julius Caesar.
It's a sweet, funny and inspiring tale, combining a love-letter to theatre with a coming of age story, but for devotees of Orson Welles, it is much more, a delightful glimpse of the genius at work, remarkable in its detail and powered by the best performance as Orson yet seen on film. Sweeping aside Vincent D'Onofrio (Ed Wood), Leiv Schreiber (The Cradle Will Rock) and all others, Christian McKay is simply superb as the brilliant, arrogant, driven, petulant Welles (remember, this was a man who was on the cover of Time magazine three times before he was 25).
For Welles-lovers there is an unalloyed joy at spending time in such company, with a womanising Joe Cotton, the harried John Houseman and many others who were later to create the masterpiece that is Citizen Kane, and in seeing visualised famous incidents such as Orson's madcap dashes to radio studio voice-work by specially chartered ambulance.

Watching Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (**) the biggest disappointment is what a bland filmmaker Oliver Stone appears to have become. I was never his greatest fan, but at the very least, the man demanded your attention. Here there seems a huge lack of both individuality and passion, and you have to go back to Any Given Sunday to find much of interest on his resume. This is an MOR retread of the first film with Shia LaBeouf in the Charlie Sheen role, Josh Brolin wasted as an evil trader and Michael Douglas doing little of interest. Lazy.

Director Neil Marshall might be a good example for Kiwi directors, continuing, as he does, to make successful genre movies proudly set in his native Scotland. There've been a couple of horror flicks (Dog Soldiers, The Descent), the frankly nutso Mad Max-style Doomsday, and now Centurion (***) where Michael Fassbender finds himself leading a small bunch of Roman legionnaires behind enemy lines after his legion is wiped out. They battle grimly with local Picts and fans of the era will probably find much pleasure amongst the mud and grunting.

The publicity for some films is their own worst enemy and Plague Town (**) doubly irritates because of its cover's repeated claims of transgressive originality. Could this really be a new breed of horror film, shattering staid mainstream boundaries? No. It's a by-the-numbers retread of many a low-budget shocker as an average family find themselves lost in the backwoods and then menaced by weird mutated kids, isolated offspring of the titular locale. Competently made, but absolutely unremarkable in any way.

I Am Love (****) is a throwback to sumptuous Italian melodramas of the 70s, set in the decadent upper-class world explored by Visconti and other observers of the privileged. Revolving round a family's relationships and often unfolding through shared meals, the film's pivotal indiscretion involves Tilda Swinton's matriarch who finds herself attracted to a young chef, her son's future business partner. Social conventions are cannily observed, the cinematography is ravishing and the music score fabulous – a stately and opulent pleasure.

Sylvester Stallone seems intent on wringing every last drop of sweat from his eighties' action-hero persona. Following the reboots of Rocky and Rambo comes The Expendables (***), wherein Sly assembles other icons of that era for a slightly tired romp through predictable action scenarios, ridding a banana republic of its dictator. Dolph, Bruce, Arnie, Mickey, youngsters Jason and Jet, and a bunch of wrestlers duke it out, Sly gets his ass kicked (you can tell because he says 'I got my ass kicked”), and everything ends back-slappingly.