PRECIOUS (15)
As raw and powerful a drama as you’re likely to see all year
Set in Harlem in 1987, Precious is the story of Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones (newcomer Gabourey Sidibe), an overweight 16-year-old, pregnant for the second time by her own father. She lives with her monstrous mother (Mo’Nique), who treats her like a slave and abuses her in unimaginable ways.
She’s bright enough, but struggles at school without basic reading skills. With the help of a teacher she gets a place at an alternative school where she starts to get herself back on track, but life has a way of letting you down.
Precious is based on the novel Push by Sapphire, who used her own experiences as a teacher of inner city youths as inspiration for her book.
Monumentally depressing, at times stomach churning, some of it is almost impossible to watch. The verbal abuse is almost as devastating as the physical, but some tiny rays of hope are offered.
Sidibe is very good, making Precious believably flawed. But it’s the astonishing work of the Golden Globe winning, and soon to be Oscar winning Mo’Nique that elevates Precious from a chore to something special.
A confessional scene late in the film is so powerful that you almost, almost, begin to have some sympathy towards her.
Less successful is the way director Lee Daniels presents Precious retreating into fantasy to escape her painful world. It’s at its most subtly effective when she sees herself in the mirror as a pretty white girl, but overdone directorial flourishes elsewhere really don’t work, never more so than when Precious imagines herself in a scene from De Sica’s Two Women, speaking Italian like Woody Allen in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. You can understand what he’s going for, but it’s a ludicrous distraction.
But for as raw and powerful a drama as you’re likely to see all year, and a performance from Mo’Nique that deserves every award going, Precious demands to be seen.
Director: Lee Daniels
Running time: 110 mins
EDGE OF DARKNESS (15)
Remake of a BBC thriller series leaves too many blanks to fill in
Mel Gibson takes on his first starring role in eight years in this moderately successful but problematic thriller. He plays a detective with a grown daughter whom he doesn’t see very often, until she’s murdered right in front of him.
She’d been working for a shady research facility with links to nuclear weapons, and Gibson’s investigation leads him towards some very dangerous people.
Like last year’s State of Play, Edge of Darkness is based on a BBC television series, but unlike that film its condensed form is a major issue, with the audience expected to fill in far too many blanks for themselves and too many characters brushed over with little time to understand their role or motivation.
The satisfaction of a film like Taken is watching someone with nothing to lose rampaging his way through the bad guys until they get to the truth. Edge of Darkness promises that but never quite delivers it, except in small doses.
The problem here is that everyone talks in riddles and it’s so murky and dense that you’d need to be the guy running the conspiracy to have any idea what Gibson’s investigation is uncovering from scene to scene.
A grizzled Gibson has aged well into this kind of role, but while there are a couple of genuinely shocking moments, there are few exciting ones.
Director: Martin Campbell
Running time: 117 mins
GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL: All the best from aroung the world
The 6th Glasgow Film Festival is gearing up to bring the best movies to the city.
Running from February 18-28, this year’s event aims to be the best yet.
The opening gala film on February 18 is Micmacs, a comedy adventure from the director of Amelie and Delicatessen, and the organisers are hopeful that director Jean-Pierre Jeunet will fly in for the screening.
Other special guests due to appear include two of Scotland’s finest filmmakers, Kevin MacDonald (The Last King of Scotland) and Peter Mullan (Orphans), as well as Glaswegian comic book superstar Mark Millar and the voice of Darth Vader himself, the legendary James Earl Jones.
The festival closes on February 28 with the world premiere of new Scottish production Legacy. Reuniting two of the stars of The Wire, Idris Elba and Clarke Peters, Legacy is a taut psychological thriller set in New York and Eastern Europe but filmed entirely in Glasgow and Dumfriesshire.
In between is the best that cinema from around the world has to offer. Gala screenings include the first chance to see Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It, Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Robert De Niro’s best performance in years in the poignant drama, Everybody’s Fine.
European and world cinema is well represented with diverse offerings from Bolivia to Iran via Sweden and Israel, as well as a season of the best of new Japanese cinema.
Mini events in the programme include the Music and Film Festival, the Short Film Festival and the always popular FrightFest, which this year includes the prospect of [REC]2 and the delightful sounding Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre.
For those with less gory tastes there’s a Cary Grant season, featuring all his greatest films from the hilarity of His Girl Friday, to his best work with Hitchcock, North by Northwest and Notorious.
See www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk for details.
