Deborah Ross

It’s easy to see the way opera Inszenierung is going. We are in for a spate of US-located productions, just as we emerge from 19th-century industrial locations and nondescript car parks. Hollywood, Las Vegas, the prairies, Texas oilfields and the omnipresence of TV, something we are hardly likely to forget, are where Poppea, Giulio Cesare, Die Zauberflöte, Norma, all of Verdi and Wagner, Peter Grimes will find themselves next. Within a week two such disparate pieces as Candide and The Rake’s Progress have received broadly similar treatment, the locations dictating, to a large extent, the kind of characters and the range of their motivations. Absurd in Candide, this was wholly undermining of Rake, if it hadn’t already been a failure on musical grounds.

Mamma Mia PG, Nationwide Mamma Mia has to be the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Or is it off? When you get to my age, it’s such a struggle to remember. Either way, though, if you are now expecting this review to be subtly and cleverly interweaved with punning ABBA song titles then you can just forget it. My, my, how can I resist it? Easily, my dears; easily. Or, as Bubbles says, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight.’ Well, it just goes to show; you can live with someone for years and years and years and still not know everything about them.

The Edge of Love 15, Nationwide The Edge of Love, which is based loosely on real events, explores the ménage à quatre that existed for a few years between the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller), his childhood friend Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) and her eventual husband, William Killick (Cillian Murphy), and if all these people were exactly as portrayed in this film, then so be it but, boy, are they tiresome. If you ever went out to dinner with the Thomases and the Killicks you would say afterwards, ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but what a bore. Did you notice, by dessert, I’d begun to snore?’ (Look, I’m a poet, too! And you know what? It’s not so hard!

Irina Palm 15, Barbican and key cities The big film this week is, I suppose, The Incredible Hulk but I chose not to see it because, aside from anything else, isn’t this the second Hulk film in about ten minutes? When was the Ang Lee one? I have no idea why it’s come round again so soon. Perhaps it’s to do with the Hulk himself, who stormed Marvel’s production offices saying, ‘Why no one make another Hulk? It make Hulk mad. Make Hulk film or Hulk smash truck then Hulk smash you.’ Well, I certainly won’t support such behaviour so, instead, chose to see the smaller, quieter film, Irina Palm. Was Bubbles best pleased? He was not. ‘Bubbles want see Hulk,’ he said. ‘No make Bubbles mad or Bubbles swish water then Bubbles swish you.

Sex and the City 15, Nationwide  I do know that not everyone gets Sex and the City. Bubbles, for example, does not get Sex and the City. ‘I don’t know what you see in this crap,’ he would say, whenever I watched it on television, and before going off to do something pointedly manly in his bowl, like scratch his bits with undisguised gusto. (Seriously, you try living with Bubbles.) But if you do get Sex and the City — note how I use ‘get’, rather than ‘like’, implying that it only appeals to smart, special people, such as myself — you will so love this movie. I totally loved it.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 12A, Nationwide After a 19-year break, Indiana Jones, the world’s greatest adventurer and probably the world’s worst ever archaeologist — listen, even I know you can’t go around ripping open ancient mummies whenever you so fancy — is back. He is back because he has to find an ancient crystal skull before the Russians do, because the Russians want to use its knowledge to open a chain of aromatherapy salons or, failing that, to rule the world. Yes, it is our old friend global domination. So off he goes on the hunt, narrowly escaping — phew!; he really had me scared there for a minute! — from various dangers.

Caramel PG, Key cities Caramel is a lovely and engaging film and just what we all need right now. You may well ask: how do I know what you need? Have I canvassed your friends? Your family? Of course. And what they all say is: yes, this is just the sort of film you need right now. You may choose to see it, then again you may not — that is ultimately up to you — but after all the canvassing I’ve put in, don’t tell me I don’t know what you need. (You also need to cut down on the cheese, but we can save that for another day.) This is a Lebanese film, set in Beirut, but there is no war and no mention of war, just as there are no bombs, no killings and no captives with bags over their heads and hands tied behind their backs.

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? 12A, Nationwide OK, we’re busy people, so straight to the point on this one, and yet I’m already struggling, because there isn’t any point to get straight to. This is a pointless film. It is sans point, has zilch point, scores nul points in the point department. This is a shame. There have been greater shames, but it is still a shame. It’s American director–impresario Morgan Spurlock’s follow-up to Supersize Me, that strangely riveting and entertaining documentary about getting sick and fat on McDonald’s food, but this is nothing like. ‘I need to try to understand what drives an Osama Bin Laden,’ he says at the outset.

Iron Man 12A, Nationwide Iron Man is a Hollywood superhero blockbuster and probably the first of a franchise, even though it already feels like the 64th. These movies are always, in their way, whopping piles of junk, but they can be hugely enjoyable whopping piles of junk. The first Superman with Christopher Reeve, Tim Burton’s Batman Returns and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man were all good, entertaining films, but is there anywhere left to go? The plots are now like old friends: a hero who is one thing by day and another by night; a svelte and lovely lady assistant who has no idea; an evil nemesis always intent on global domination (‘first, you; next, the world!’). But I can stay at home to see old friends. I don’t know if I want to go to the cinema for that.

Persepolis 12A, London and key cities Persepolis, an animated feature about coming of age in Iran, is kind of interesting and is kind of original but its telling moments are told so often it’s like going out to dinner and being served the same course over and over. You’ll look at it coming and think, ‘Oh, no, not that again.’ Actually, this is not entirely true, and possibly unfair. There are some delicious, intensely enjoyable morsels to be had here and there, plus it probably features the best Iranian grandma you’ll see in an animated film about Iran this year. In fact, I’d bet my life on it.

Leatherheads PG, Nationwide Leatherheads is George Clooney’s third outing as a director and the first in which he plays a starring role, and it must have looked good on paper, just as anything with George Clooney’s name attached to it probably looks good on paper. A musical based on the plumbing-supplies aisle in B&Q would probably look good with George Clooney’s name attached to it, plus top Hollywood actresses would likely vie to play the U-bend or plunger. But there are dangers, I suppose, in not having to fight to get projects made and just how dangerous this can be is frighteningly evident in Leatherheads, a slovenly, timid, strenuously studied movie that takes forever to get nowhere, uninterestingly.

Son of Rambow 12A, nationwide Son of Rambow is the tale of two young boys — one from a strict religious background; the other a troubled troublemaker — who come together to shoot a backyard version of Rambo: First Blood to enter it into the BBC’s Screen Test competition. It is a British film, set in some English suburb in the early Eighties, and it is chock-a-block with all the things that usually make films like this work very happily indeed: slapstick; fantasy; derring-do; friendship; getaways on bicycles and scrappy underdogs triumphing over horrid adults.

Beaufort 15, Key Cities Beaufort is the Israeli war film that won the Silver Bear at Berlin and was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film and it is very, very dull. After I had seen it I sent a friend to see it who is much more war-literate than I am and afterwards he said, ‘Thanks. It was very, very dull.’ What, then, does this mean for the Bear that is Silver and the nomination that is Oscar? It’s the rubbish tip for them, my dears; the rubbish tip. It has to be because as you know, and as my more war-literate friend now knows to his cost, I am never wrong. I even quite liked Margot at the Wedding when everyone else said it was rubbish. I do wish all the other critics would get with the programme.

Lars and the Real Girl 12A, Nationwide Lars and the Real Girl is a comedy which tells the story of an introverted, emotionally backward loner (Ryan Gosling, in bad knitwear and anorak) who believes a sex doll is real and introduces her to the local community as his girlfriend. It all sounds gorgeous, as if it is going to be wonderfully distasteful — how could it not be? — but, disappointingly, it just isn’t nearly distasteful enough. This is a shame, particularly if you have been waiting a long time for a decent film featuring bad knitwear and a sex doll, as I have. It is set in some unnamed American Mid-western town and opens in church on a Sunday with the preacher saying that there is only one true law: ‘Love each other.

The Other Boleyn Girl 12A, Nationwide The Other Boleyn Girl, based on the bestselling historical romance by Philippa Gregory, stars Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Scarlett Johansson as the other girl, her ‘plainer’ sister Mary, which, considering Scarlett Johansson has just been voted the most beautiful woman in the world, must be a lesson in Hollywood logic in and of itself. Still, do not despair, at least not until you are ten minutes in, at which point, if you are still awake, you will be despairing like crazy while wishing you’d stayed in.

Margot at the Wedding Nationwide, 15 Margot at the Wedding is one of those unsettling and bothersome films which will bother and unsettle you during, afterwards and possibly for much of the next day, like a flea in the ear. If this is your sort of film, then you will like it and if you don’t — if you like to put a film behind you the moment you leave the cinema, and go for chips — then you probably won’t. I’m not saying one sort of film is better than the other, just what this is, so you know. And now you know that?