The Hunt

The darling of many a festival, a film so well-reviewed that it had me waiting on tenterhooks to see it, The Hunt, pairing early Dogme-following director Vinterberg with everybody's favourite Danish actor, is just as good as advanced world has had it.
Mads Mikkelsen seems to have been popping up in every northern European film since his notable turn in Daniel Craig's first Bond outing Casino Royale. He can do everything from tough and nasty to warm and humanistic and here he is in the latter mode as Lucas, a schoolteacher living a fairly isolated life while battling for the custody of his son. Life seems to be improving for him when he is accused of child abuse. He is innocent (that's not a spoiler, it's the main thrust of the film). But in the small close-knit rural community where they live, the adults can't accept that a child is telling lies, and are soon turning viciously against someone they used to trust.
Vinterberg first came to notice as a director with Celebration (Festen) in which lurking secrets were scathingly exposed during a family gathering. The Hunt has a similar eye for detail, continually pointing out how easily seemingly civilised, rational people can lose their moral bearings, and how irrational their behaviour can become. This is a brilliant examination of just how thin that veneer of civilisation really is. Very highly recommended, obviously.

World War Z is a classic case of best intentions going expensively astray. Start with a book that is a 'new take on zombies”, a fresh analytical approach rendered through survivor diaries. Then strip everything out of the story that made the book fresh and new in the first place. Because every film needs an ass-kicking hero and less of that boring analytical stuff. So we have another big generic zombie story, the 'allegory” this time, since all zombie films are of course allegorical, is something to do with overpopulation. The zombie are the fast kind. Brad kicks ass. Everyone yawns.
Occasionally product placement leaps out of its discreet position in the background of a movie and gleefully throttles everything around it to death.

So it is with The Internship , a two hour commercial for the brilliance of Google which nominally pretends to star Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan. They play laid-off salesmen who decide – despite barely knowing how to operate a PC – to win an internship at the aforementioned miraculous and totally wonderful company, largely so they can exclaim regularly about how miraculous and totally wonderful it is. Hilarity does not ensue; everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.

There's a new superhero on the mean streets of Lowbudgetville, half man, half insect, the result of combining stray radiation with mosquito DNA (from – natch – deadly 'Asian Tiger” mosquitoes!). Starring no one you've ever heard of, this is the world of Sucker. Clearly inspired by '50s sci-fi horror - think The Incredible Melting Man - it has our tragic hero taking revenge against those who wronged him. A heavily stylised approach tackles the minimal budget head on (there are some surprisingly effective F/X) and the film, while frequently very funny, never stoops to laughing at itself. Rather wonderful, deservedly destined for cultdom.

Stand Up Guys is one of those old-fashioned hood buddy movies that in the day would have starred Peter Falk and probably Alan Arkin. This time round we have the pleasure of a geriatric pairing of Christopher Walken and Al Pacino, the former collecting the latter (who never squealed) after a twenty year jail term. He's there to show him a good time; and to kill him before morning. Likeable low-key high kinks ensue, the pair eventually springing who else but old buddy Alan Arkin from his rest home for one last crack at the glory days. Very sweet.

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