A Separation You need to pay attention to every detail in the early scenes of this Iranian film if you’re to have the best possible grasp of the drama that unfolds after a middle-class Tehrani family man (Peyman Moaadi) has manhandled his father’s nurse and been accused of causing her to have a miscarriage. Asghar Farhadi’s film captures something of Iranian society, but its essence is universal: an engrossing story of people squirming on morality’s hooks.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon Having recently admitted that even he didn’t much like the second Transformers film, Michael Bay, the director of the series, has made a more considered effort for this third instalment. We still get countless scenes of CGI robots battering seven shades of scrap metal out of each other: many kids’ idea of entertainment, apparently, but hardly pop culture at its finest. Yet at least John Malkovich and Frances McDormand freshen the cast, the comic bits are passable and the climactic scenes allow the human participants a good share of the action for a change.
Delhi Belly Abhinay Deo’s movie has been talked up as an example of the Indian film industry’s increasing efforts to make irreverent pictures for young viewers. It’s a Hangover-style tale of three slackers who fall into a comedy of lewd and violent errors when they accidentally cross a gangster. The actors try too hard, while the script fails to provide enough good jokes. In other words, the film brings Indian cinema into line with the achievements of most British attempts to match Hollywood gross-out comedies.
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The Conspirator The omens aren’t good when an upmarket movie directed by Robert Redford arrives in our cinemas with the resounding lack of fanfare that has preceded this, a dramatised account of the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination. Sure enough, it’s a dull affair, a courtroom drama in which the fate of Mary Surratt, tried alongside the chief conspirators in 1865, is mined for pious lessons about constitutional rights. James McAvoy adopts a gingery beard and his best Henry Fonda manner to play the defending lawyer.
As If I Am Not There Juanita Wilson’s film offers little reward while putting viewers through a slow ordeal: the story of a young Sarajevan woman, Samira (Natasha Petrovic), who is taken prisoner during the Bosnian war and repeatedly raped by soldiers. The only way she can gain any control over her fate is to give herself to the senior officer. We get the general idea that Samira’s will to survive is unbreakable, but — what with her spending much of the movie in silence — no deeper insight into her character is provided.