Cinema

Without warning, Tomas Alfredson jumps up and starts wading about the room like a water bird treading over lily pads. ‘There’s a famous sketch by a Swedish comedian,’ he explains by way of a voiceover, ‘in which he’s walking through a meadow of tall grass. He’s walking, struggling through this grass that reaches up above his waist.’ Alfredson pushes out at imaginary foliage around his midriff. ‘Then he steps out into a road and you realise that — all that time — he wasn’t wearing any trousers. Completely naked from the waist down.’ The mime stops as suddenly as it started. ‘That is the cinema of paranoia!

The Social Network 12A, Nationwide The Social Network is a brilliantly entertaining and fascinating film about a subject in which I have absolutely no interest: Facebook. I could be no more surprised if, say, someone were to make a brilliantly entertaining and fascinating film about fish-gutting or car-tuning or being put on hold by the bank before finally being put through to someone you can’t understand. (I am thinking of outsourcing myself to Bombay, just to be similarly annoying.) But this hurtles along so smartly and masterfully the subject sweeps you up as does its main, knotty character: a man who cares nothing for money yet makes zillions while losing his only friend in the process.

Tropic Thunder 15, Nationwide Unrelated 15, Selected Cinemas Tropic Thunder is an action comedy which stars Ben Stiller, is produced by Ben Stiller and is directed by Ben Stiller, from a story by Ben Stiller and a screenplay by Justin Theroux…and Ben Stiller. So if, after this movie, you don’t feel properly Stiller-ed, I can’t think where you would go from here. I would also like to ask: how much Stiller-ing do you need? Whatever, it’s a send-up of Hollywood which starts rather dazzlingly — at last, a funny film that’s actually funny! — but then droops horribly, even becoming a victim of all the absurdities and excesses it is attempting to satirise.

Mongol 15, Nationwide Mongol traces the early years of the legendary warrior Genghis Khan and does not feature, at any point, the world’s greatest adventurer/archaeologist or four fortysomething women living and loving in New York. Yes, it is probably safe to come out now. They’re all gone! However, having said that, the other morning when I went to put on my shoes I did find Indy in one and Carrie in the other. ‘Be off,’ I said as I tipped them out. ‘You’ve had your moment, now shoo!’ So it is safer but I don’t think we are quite out of the woods yet. Be vigilant. And always shake your shoes. So, Mongol, which is a different kettle of fish altogether or, as they say in Mongolia: ‘A different kettle of fish altogether.

Lloyd Evans on the extraordinary story behind Trevor Nunn’s ‘Gone with the Wind’ The heart sinks, almost. The brow droops, a little. A yawn rises in the throat and dies away. Another musical has opened in the West End and, yes, it’s based on a blockbuster movie and, yes, that too was based on a million-selling novel. Those of us who want more new straight plays in the capital and who tire of these revivals-of-revivals are bound to feel a twinge of despair that a song-and-dance version of Gone with the Wind has opened at the New London theatre. Directed by Trevor Nunn too. What could be more tediously predictable?