Snow White and the Huntsman
12A, 127 mins
Snow White and who? The Huntsman? What, you may wonder, happened to the happy-go-lucky girl with the seven dwarfs? She’s gone and they don’t get a look-in for at least the first hour of this exciting reworking of the fairy tale by the British newcomer director Rupert Sanders. Kristen Stewart is the gothic-like goody, Snow White, on the run from her murderous stepmother, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), who wants to tear out her heart so she can be young and beautiful for ever. Still, she has two handsome hunks (the Thor star Chris Hemsworth and Sam Claflin) to protect her. The film moves at a good pace, forever keeping you surprised, and the special effects have real flair. And there are plenty of battle scenes and fighting to keep young boys happy. Theron is a great baddy stepmum, a mix of Lady Macbeth and the psycho-feminist Valerie Solanas. Stewart looks good, but can’t deliver lines with any conviction. Still, there’s a real spooky edge to the story, and an undercurrent of pervy sexiness that keeps it from being too sweet and soft. Oh, and those dwarfs? A fine collection of Brit thespians, including Toby Jones, Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane and Ray Winstone, do a great job. CL
Death Watch
12A, 130 mins
Long before Big Brother — or The Truman Show, for that matter — there was this 1980 film by Bertrand Tavernier, which stars Harvey Keitel as a television network employee who has his eyeballs fitted with unnoticeable cameras so he can secretly film a dying woman (Romy Schneider) for a reality show. The dystopian story — set in Glasgow, for no particular reason, and played completely straight — has several nifty ideas and striking flourishes, and the fact that it now looks a bit daft and very quaint just adds to the appeal of this rerelease. EP
The Angels’ Share
15, 101 mins
If you like the look of the comic drama promised in the advertising for Ken Loach’s latest film (the winner of the Jury prize in Cannes last weekend), you should be warned that the movie’s early scenes aren’t at all larky. They introduce a young working-class Glaswegian, Paul Brannigan’s Robbie, whose efforts to shake off his violent past are hampered by a number of people who want to beat him up. There’s a quite jolting shift from this tough realism to the cheerful later stages, in which Robbie’s bad luck disappears as he and his mates plan an elaborate theft of some super-expensive whisky. Perhaps Loach’s point is that if you can survive on Glasgow’s meaner streets, then stealing from middle-class whisky snobs will be a breeze. Whatever the thinking behind it, the film’s heist yarn is entertaining in its simple way. EP
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The Turin Horse
15, 145 mins
The Hungarian director Bela Tarr, 56, has said that this is his final film. And has this habitually gloomy auteur decided that, before retiring, he should, for once, try a multicoloured musical or a frothy romcom? Not likely. The Turin Horse is a work of pure Bela-vision: a black-and-white film in which a bleak, mysterious and always windswept drama is observed in slow camera movements. Janos Derzi and Erika Bok play a father and daughter who live on a barren moor — with only a horse for company — and spend their time trudging through daily routines and eating potatoes. This is presented with a certain grandeur, and I enjoyed it for a while, without finding it greatly resonant — just as you can enjoy a Radiohead song without believing Thom Yorke to be a profound poet. Well before the end, however, the film’s emptiness makes it tedious. EP
Top Cat: The Movie
U, 90 mins
According to his theme song, Top Cat prizes dignity, so he can’t be happy about the ignominious treatment he receives here at the hands of second-rate animators (directed by Alberto Mar). Their version of the old cartoons’ visual style lacks the faint charm of the vintage Hanna-Barbera idiom, so it has no excuse for looking as cheap and televisual as it does. Meanwhile, the script is dull, and our hero no longer sounds like Sergeant Bilko. All in all, this travesty had me yearning for those handy items Top Cat would produce at the end of every television episode as he prepared for bed: ear plugs and a blindfold. EP
