Film Round-Up Summer 2011

Kevin MacDonald’s documentary Life In A Day (cert 12a; 95 mins) celebrates the advent of the mobile phone camera by compiling footage of different people all around the globe shot by themselves. Though hit and miss, it’s a remarkable achievement which contains some transcendent moments. Would that the same could be said for Just Do It (cert tbc; 93 mins), a very one-sided documentary on the pro-environment UK direct action movement which suggests that capitalism is all bad while the activists are all cuddly and good. It presents a view sorely underrated by the UK media, but is terribly simplistic and in need of some alternate points of view.

Francois Ozon’s Potiche (cert 15; 102 mins) is a likeable French romp in which a businessman falls ill and must let his trophy wife (or ‘potiche’) run his factory. She proves rather good at it and the workforce prefer her methods. Catherine Denueve proves that she can still turn in a decent performance at 70 plus. She also appears very briefly in The Big Picture (cert tbc; 114 mins), a terrific thriller about a man who changes his identity with numerous twists and turns that constantly outguess the audience. It also handles its subject matter with both thought and intelligence.

Meet Monica Velour (cert tbc; 98 mins) casts a brave Kim Catrall as an ageing porn star who a geeky youthful fan sets out to find. It’s a rare actor who’ll take on a warts and all role like this, but she pulls it off. David Schwimmer’s gruelling Trust (cert 15; 105 mins) concerns a teenage girl groomed by a paedophile over the internet; a really tough film to watch, it’s worth the effort.

In the South Korean drama Poetry (cert tbc; 139 mins), a woman must deal with the fact of her grandson’s part in the rape of a Catholic schoolgirl who subsequently committed suicide. Raw and unsentimental, it’s a compelling study of an elderly woman who takes up poetry classes to explore her inner world while her outer world is collapsing on her.

Tackling a very different religious tradition, The Taqwacores (cert 15; 83 mins) has a Muslim student move into the an Islamic apartment block whose residents include musicians, punks and artists. If the ethics of the film seem a little confused, it’s a rare attempt to pin down an Islamic identity within Western culture.