National Gallery (12A)
four stars
Dir: Frederick Wiseman
Runtime: 181 minutes
IF there were Oscars for keeping cinemagoers in their seats for long stretches, documentary maker Frederick Wiseman would have a shelf full of them. This, his portrait of the National Gallery in London, runs to 181 minutes, a relative sprint compared to At Berkeley (244 minutes) and State Legislature (217 minutes). The point about Wiseman is he is thorough, and what he produces are endlessly fascinating, many layered looks at great institutions. Here, we see everything from tours for the public to internal meetings, with Wiseman's canny eye picking out the highlights. All there for you, and from the comfort of a cinema seat too.
GFT; Filmhouse Edinburgh; Filmhouse Aberdeen; Dundee Arts Centre; Eden Court Inverness, January 11 (plus January 13 at GFT)
Taken 3 (12A)
two stars
Dir: Olivier Megaton
With: Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker
Runtime: 109mins
THE premise may have changed but the problems remain in Taken 3, the latest entry into a franchise that feels increasingly desperate in its attempts to mine box office. Liam Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, the father with "a particular set of skills", who is forced to dust them off once more when framed for the murder of his ex-wife. The ensuing scramble for the truth screams out for the same brutal efficiency that marked out the surprise first film, but instead becomes bogged down amid nonsensical plot devices, hammy family dynamics and Forest Whitaker as a chasing inspector attempting to convince us that he's smarter than the story allows. When the action does arrive it's either too frenetically shot by Olivier Megaton or badly edited so as to dilute the violence for a 12A certificate - with the inevitably harder cut to follow on DVD. It's hard not to feel cheated and exploited as a result.
Reviewed by Rob Carnevale
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