FATHER OF MY CHILDREN *****

As opposed to directors, film producers are rarely feted. If anything they are generally portrayed as corporate money-grubbers stifling the ‘real' artists' creativity. This film goes some way to redress that balance with its sympathetic portrait of Gregoire Canvel, a charming and successful French producer juggling overwork and a delightful family.
But, despite outward appearances, Gregoire's business is on a knife edge and the film subtly observes the machinations as he frantically seeks extra financing and tries to rein in an extravagant director. We become aware that he is in deep trouble, but almost as soon as we realise this tragedy strikes. This single event (which I won't detail) totally changes the film and the second half is a delicate study of family and friends as they struggle to cope with the aftermath.
This is actually a film based on real life, the producer and his wife being Humbert and Donna Balsan (the wayward director based on the brilliant – if uniquely eccentric – Bela Tarr whose masterwork so far, Satantango, is eight hours long and in black and white and Hungarian) and is skilfully observed and nuanced on many levels.
The cast are uniformly superb, even the kids turning in beautiful natural performances, and the balance between the two poles (business and family) is astutely judged so that this is both a fascinating insight into an area of the film business that we rarely see, and a restrained, sensitive family portrait.

Monsters (****) is another in the current cycle of ‘alien invasion' films (see Skyline, Battle LA) but is a very different proposition from the big war scenario. Here alien spores have been brought back from space and have contaminated the northern part of Mexico. This is now a quarantine zone, off-limits during certain times of the year when creatures are most active. In Monsters, two young Americans (a photographer and an heiress) are stranded in the zone, trying to get back to the States. What develops is a love story set against menacing surroundings, intelligent and impressively-made for its tiny budget. Very cool stuff.
Although it became notorious for production problems with cast and crew coming and going at regular intervals, the final credentials of The Tourist (JJ) are admirable. Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (yes – real name!) previously helmed the foreign film Oscar-winning The Lives of Others, and Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie have fairly unimpeachable qualifications. But what should have been a light frothy Hitchcockian romp in the vein of To Catch a Thief instead is a turgid series of uninvolving chases around an admittedly very attractive Venice. The tone is numbingly flat, the characters unengaging, and the plot holes gaping.
The cover of 2.13 (***) touts a connection with the Saw movies (the same cinematographer I think), but instead of mechanical torture-porn, this is a fairly competent Se7en-like serial killer thriller. Mark Thompson, who also wrote the story, plays an alcoholic detective returning to the force after psychological leave. Of course he steps straight back into the same case that unhinged him as the Shakespeare-spouting killer restarts his face-stripping spree. There would appear to be a terminally irreconcilable plot inconsistency regarding the age of characters in flashback, but leaving logic aside, this ain't bad.
As it's finally been re-released after over two decades I thought I should check out Tron (***) ('the original classic”). And, to my slight surprise, it's still a lot of fun. The story actually holds up, for me, a bit better than the recent sequel while it's interesting to be reminded how irritating Jeff Bridges initial character was. More unexpected is that the special effects, which at the time were groundbreaking but still looked silly, are now so old, odd, and retro that they actually look kinda cool, incredibly artificial but a perfectly reasonable representation of the inside of a computer.