At first glance, Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto looks like another exercise in 1970s feelgood nostalgia. And even the cross-dressing lead character, Patrick (Cillian Murphy), seems like another Quentin Crisp clone in the age of Ziggy Stardust. But no, this film is something far darker and more interesting than that. It is, in fact, a Candide-like fable about an innocent from a small Irish town who uses glamour to free himself from the tyranny of reality and the growing terror of the IRA. Patrick Braden was abandoned as a child by his glamorous mother, who had an affair with the local priest (Liam Neeson). As a boy, he shows a passion for women’s clothing that doesn’t go down well with his adopted family or the local priests.
So he heads for London in search of his real mum and true love — and finds lovers, killers, Wombles and cops, plus wonderful high heels. Three stars
Cosmo Landesman
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Set in 1974, this Australian comedy tells of a concert promoter (Joel Edgerton) who, by determinedly doing it his way, manages to secure Frank Sinatra for a series of shows down under. On arrival, Frank is asked some indelicate questions by local journalists, and when he retaliates by bad-mouthing the press during his first performance, he provokes a concerted trade-union backlash that leaves him stranded in his hotel room with no room service. This is indeed what happened to Sinatra in Australia at this time, but Paul Goldman’s film is largely fictitious. Its tone has something of the Aussie uplift of Muriel’s Wedding and Strictly Ballroom — when he is not battling to save the tour, Edgerton’s likeable young wheeler-dealer is falling in love with a woman who has fancied him since they were kids. As Sinatra, Dennis Hopper is required simply to wear a lookalike toupee, play his usual gruff self and mime along to the songs that conveniently coincide with the film’s closing gallop towards a happy ending. Two stars
Edward Porter
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The Truth
15, 119 mins
The director George Milton and his writing partner, Mark Tilton, have certainly tried to do something unusual in this small-budget British production, but the goodwill that this earns them is tested by their incoherent and overlong film. In an isolated house in the wilds of Scotland, a group of therapy-dependent new-age types gather to unburden themselves in communal sessions conducted by an American guru (Elizabeth McGovern). Their narcissism and general idiocy are so overpowering that they continue to worry only about their own development, even when one of the party is murdered. Thanks to a shortage of funny lines, this setup doesn’t amount to much in the way of satire.
As for the possibility of there being some suspense in waiting to see if the killer strikes again, it only later dawned on me that this may have actually been what the film was aiming for. It certainly isn’t achieved in the jumble of events up there on the screen. Two stars
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Edward Porter
The Roost
18, 80 mins
Showing at the ICA, this low-budget horror film by a debutant director, Ti West, is being publicised as an addition to a line of great scary movies by first-timers: Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Evil Dead. To this, all I can say is: “Can’t see it myself.” The Roost has nothing like those films’ inspiration. Monster bats aren’t the wisest choice of menace when you’re filming on a shoestring, and, sure enough, the flying dishcloths that here terrorise a group of college kids have a distinctly Ed Wood-ish look about them. Even so, something might have been made of these critters’ peculiar attribute: that their bite turns people into flesh-eating zombies. But the whole business of ketchup-covered plodders attacking the remaining characters is so sluggishly presented as to suggest that one of those undead ghouls wandered behind the camera, dispatched West and took over as director. One star
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Edward Porter
Cry Wolf
12A, 90 mins
In this teen horror movie, it’s not clear if Owen (Julian Morris), an English newcomer at an American boarding school, is at risk from a serial killer or is just being set up by his supposed friends. These rich brats live for elaborate practical jokes, and one of them is an expert in concocting fake blood. Owen glimpses grisly clues and witnesses alarming events, but there is no cast-iron proof that anyone has been bumped off. In finding adequate excuses for keeping us in the dark, Jeff Wadlow’s film shows a degree of ingenuity. Never, though, are we persuaded to care whether or not a multiple murderer is indeed on the prowl. There’s more suspense in betting on the outcome of a coin toss. Trying to be something more than a typical slasher flick, Cry Wolf ends up as something less. Its gimmick distances the audience from scenes that might have gone with a swing had the killer’s credentials been trustworthy. One star Edward Porter
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