"Elizabeth" (15) Nationwide
The Indian director Shekhar Kapur came to public attention a couple of years ago with his powerful and controversial The Bandit Queen, a portrait of a woman rising to power in a violent, male-dominated society, and he explores similar themes in his new film, a muscular, well-crafted and superbly performed biopic set in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I.
The Virgin Queen has been a popular subject for film and television drama in the past, with actresses from Bette Davis to Glenda Jackson taking on the role, but Michael Hirst's screenplay is unconcerned with the later years of her rule. His subject is Elizabeth's struggle to take control of her realm, and her parallel transformation from youthful innocent to all-powerful monarch. The template he uses, along with Kapur, is that of the gangster movie, in particular the first two Godfathers, an influence at its most obvious in a climactic sequence which directly echoes the famous christening scene at the close of The Godfather I.
It's an approach which is justified by the material. The Tudor family hatreds, murderous plots and gross betrayals which pepper the plot have obvious parallels with the brutal simplicities of mob law. But what makes Elizabeth so gripping and successful is Kapur's confident direction, both of camera and cast. Set almost completely in the dark, ominous halls and corridors of a succession of medieval castles, the film never becomes claustrophobic or visually uninteresting, and when Kapur opens out the action in an exterior scene - the burning of a group of Protestants as heretics, or the aftermath of a bloody battle in Scotland - he does it with such aplomb that you never remember that this is a relatively small-scale film.
But Elizabeth's greatest strength is in its performances. Cate Blanchett is superb in the title role, believably progressing, Corleone-style, from naive youngster to cold-blooded executioner, and Kapur surrounds her with one of the best casts seen in a film this year. In particular, Geoffrey Rush is wonderful as the queen's amoral, worldly confidant Walsingham, and Kathy Burke is remarkable in the relatively small role of Mary Tudor.
"Small Soldiers" (12) Nationwide
Joe Dante occupies a unique and not always lucrative niche in modern movie-making - too mainstream to have the cult following of a Tim Burton, too acidic to achieve the mass success of a Steven Spielberg. But in films like Gremlins, The 'Burbs and Matinee, his gently subversive take on suburban values has often reaped dividends; and his new, wonderfully dark, children's comedy pokes wicked fun at many of America's favourite fads, from militarism to technophilia, to particularly good effect. Of course, Small Soldiers, relying as it does on hi-tech digital animation, is itself dependent on many of the technologies it satirises, but this is a clever enough movie to have its cake and eat it.
The plot is an updating of one of the most classical childrens' movie ideas - of toys that come to life. In this case, though, they owe their awakening not to magic but to the faulty microchips installed by the greedy corporation which built them. As a result, a murderous platoon of tiny soldiers is set loose on an unsuspecting town. At one point, a collection of Barbie dolls is transformed into a mutant army of tiny Brides of Frankenstein, swarming over their victims while shrieking phrases like; "Your hair is so five minutes ago!"
Another sequence satirises the military siege of General Noriega, with the evil toys blasting their human victims with Spice Girls songs.
Dante has often worked with Steven Spielberg (this film is produced by Spielberg's DreamWorks company), and his movies frequently seem to offer the darker flip-side of Spielberg's wholesome confections. It's particularly refreshing to see Small Soldiers after Saving Private Ryan, which, despite its undeniably brilliant film-making, often lapses into the military myths satirised here. A pity that the Film Censor has seen fit to impose a 12s certificate - this is a movie that small boys would love, and it might make them think as well. Small Soldiers does have its scary moments, but which good children's movie doesn't? A PG certificate would have been more appropriate.
Showing for four evening screenings (at 6.30 p.m. only) at the IFC from Sunday is At Swim Two Birds, Kurt Palm's version of Flann O'Brien's novel, filmed in the director's native Austria. Looked at in purely filmic terms, it's not exceptional, but based as it is on one of the funniest books ever written, it's full of wonderful moments, and it's good to know that Jem Casey's "pome", "The Workman's Friend", with its immortal refrain: "A pint of plain is your only man" is just as evocative when recited in the German.
It's probably just as well that Palm had never been to Ireland before he set out to film the infamous Ringsend cattle-rustling incident, but At Swim-Two-Birds actually lends itself rather well to the director's central European sensibility - the goings-on at the Red Swan Hotel are treated in suitably Kafka-esque style. Flann fans who missed the film at its festival screenings earlier in the year would be well advised to make sure they catch it this time out.
