The Ides of March (15)
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Dir: George Clooney
With: George Clooney, Ryan Gosling
LIKE a candidate running for office, George Clooney’s political drama looks great, sounds the part, but on closer examination is not quite up to the mark.
Clooney (inset below) plays governor Mike Morris, who is running for the Democratic nomination with the help of his press aides Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ryan Gosling (Drive).
Trying to get his man the nomination is rival spin doctor Paul Giamatti, while in the middle is Evan Rachel Wood’s naive intern. Based on Beau Willimon’s play Farragut North, The Ides of March would very much like to be The West Wing when it grows up but is a bit of a guest bedroom into which Clooney crams ideas and characters we’ve seen many times before, like the Machiavellian press chief and the hard-nosed reporter. As supposedly sharp political operators the characters often act with all the nous of students running for Glee Club president. But hey, it all looks good and the endlessly cool Gosling shows he can now out-charm Clooney.
Miss Bala (15)
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Dir: Gerardo Naranjo
With: Stephanie Sigman, Noe Hernandez
THE Mexican drug wars receive an up-close, personal and thrilling examination in this full-on drama by Gerardo Naranjo. Stephanie Sigman plays Laura, a young woman who sees winning a beauty pageant as a way of obtaining a better life for herself, her brother and father.
That plan is shredded when she becomes the witness to a crime. Pulled into the perpetrators’ world against her will, Laura finds there are no depths to which the gangs won’t sink to protect their billion-dollar business. Narnajo, director of I’m Gonna Explode, keeps the story rattling along, piling on the action while never losing sight of Laura, the innocent at the centre of the chaos. Sigman, in what is, remarkably, her first feature film, is terrific.
FEATURE – PAGE 18
Sket (15)
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Dir: Nirpal Bhogal
With: Lily Loveless, Ashley Walters
WE’RE down among the girl gangs in Nirpal Bhogal’s eye-opening London thriller. Aimee Kelly plays Kayla, a canny but troubled teen from Newcastle who moves to London after the death of her mother.
Lost in the big bad Smoke, she finds herself in the brutal embrace of Danielle and her gang, a group of young women determined to out-perform the men when it comes to such charming pursuits as putting the boot in, robbing and generally kicking up hell.
Yet as they soon learn on coming up against local kingpin Trey (Ashley Walters), it’s still a man’s world on the streets. Bhogal’s picture starts off at a great lick, keeping the tension simmering as Kayla finds herself thrown into this wild new world.
Pity the drama quickly boils over into melodrama, with everything, including the shouting and lairiness, ramped up to the max. If you were sitting next to this film on a bus, you’d move.
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